Last summer you might have heard that first lights making waterfowl gear.
They are and it's fantastic. They put out a pretty slick field hunting pattern.
But folks that hunt the dark flooded timber in the Mississippi flyway started grumbling right away.
Well, grumble no more. We just released cash camel.
Specifically formulated for hunting ducks in the flooded hardwoods. It is an awesome camel.
I keep pointing out that it's just like I can picture hunting all kind of turkeys and that stuff.
But it's made for formulated for hunting flooded hardwoods. It is a phenomenal waterfowl camel.
The pattern was designed using the same nature based algorithm used in their other patterns,
but emphasizes micro break up elements and high contrast textures that are most visually
disruptive when you are up close and personal with green heads in the woods.
It's been tested and tweaked over two seasons in Arkansas.
Plus first light donates a portion of every sale of duck hunting gear to delta waterfowl
to support their mission of conserving North American duck and goose populations.
Head over to firstlight.com slash cash like the river in Arkansas cash meaning
C-A-C-H-E. Give it a look today. Again, it is an awesome
camel fly just an awesome waterfowl camel fly just a sweet camel. You might just see me running around,
I don't know, doing whatever and that stuff, but that's not what it's for. It's for duck hunting and
it's great for it.
Welcome to this country life. I'm your host Brent Rees. From Coon hunting to Trot lining and just
general country living, I want you to stay a while as I share my stories and country skills
that will help you beat the system. This country life is proudly presented as part of
meat eaters podcast network bringing you the best outdoor podcast the airways have done.
Alright friends, pull you up a chair or drop that tailgate. I think I got a thing or two to teach you.
Know your trees.
Tree identification is more important than maybe some folks think and being able to tell the
difference between a red oak and a white oak could be the difference in going hungry or coming home
with a sack full of supper. Trees on the landscape tell a story. It's never too late to learn the
differences and it's never been easier to do it right now. Why is it easier right now? Because
right now is when we're talking about it and the amount of information available has never been
greater. I'm challenging you to know the woods you're ambling around in. The more you know,
the better it's going to help you and every pursuit that you have that takes place in the woods.
Know your trees is up next, but first I'm going to tell you a story.
In high school at Warnark and so I took a two-year forestry class at the Votec campus along with
my old watermelon stealing buddy Greg Hayes. I'm starting to think this guy may have been a bad
influence. But our teacher was a bona fide registered forester and his name was Fred Burnett.
It's still Fred Burnett. Anyway, the Warn Votec took students from all over southeast Arkansas
and offered welding, construction trade, nursing, business courses, and forestry. The
forestry class was absolutely outstanding. It was also hard. We had to learn to identify 75 different
species of trees that grew in Arkansas along with their scientific names and be able to identify
them by their leaves and the characteristics of their bark, limbs, and twigs. I loved it and
everything about it. The majority of the instruction weather for mitten was always outside,
which is where I wanted to be anyway. There were around, I don't know, 15 of us, I guess,
in the class from four different area high schools. And like little turkey polts following a
mother hand, we trailed Mr. Burnett all over the school campus, learning about all the aspects
of trees and where they grew. I remember exactly where we were standing a week into school when he
looked at me and told me to identify a tree and give him the scientific name.
We had just started studying this stuff and we were at the south entrance to the school campus
that doesn't even exist anymore. Beside the driveway where the Votec bus was parked was a tree
and everyone in the class was waiting for me to screw it up when I said,
American sweet gum, liquid and bar style, rest of flu, correct, said Mr. Burnett.
And that was 41 years ago and I remember it like it was this morning.
Lucky for me, it was also the first one that I'd learned. I could tell you about 10 different
trees before I started that class, but the scientific names, that was the gravy of the triad game.
We were also blessed to have a school forest, about 15 acres of mixed pine and hardwood,
and that was our real classroom. That's where we made money to finance school projects and
trips. Those woods are gone now and have been for quite a long time, but back then selling
firewood was our mission. I can't imagine this kind of curriculum in schools now, maybe I'm wrong,
but we had chain cells and we used them. A lot of us had used them at home before we ever got
to high school and those that hadn't, Mr. Burnett taught them how to do it. We take turns
notching and cutting trees, trimming the limbs, cutting the log into firewood links, and then take
a bolt and axe or a split in mall, whatever you want to call it, and split the wood for stacking.
At school, chain cells, bolt and axes, sledgehammer, steel wedges, single and double-bed axes were
all at our disposal. It looked like a children's prison gang out there and Mr. Burnett was the warden.
Now having kids from different schools, especially those from rival schools,
always put an extra dynamic of competition amongst the students. Terry was a guy from just such a
school. He was a good guy, a good athlete, but always competitive. Everything was a competition to him.
Terry told me that while I was pretty good with the chains out, that there wasn't a cutoff section
of wood that he couldn't split with the double-bed axe. He then proceeded to demonstrate it by
easily splitting a cut red oak and the pieces ready for the fireplace. Terry was a showoff,
but Brent was diabolical. And when he said they're in a cutoff piece of wood out here that I
can't split, being at my limit of having to listen to him say how good he was at everything,
I accepted his challenge and rolled him up a two-foot in diameter beautifully round cut of sweet
gum. Now anyone that knows anything about splitting wood and burning wood knows that oak cut offs
split good when they're green and great when they've been put up to dry. Sweet gum on the other hand
do not. The twisted woven grain of the sweet gum is terrible for splitting and it's basically useless
as firewood. Whoever cut it down that day must have just been practicing because I can assure you.
Mr. Burnett wasn't about to have us split it up and stack it for sale, but that wasn't Terry's
challenge. He said there wasn't a cutoff out there that he couldn't split with the double-bed
axe. Well remember Greg Hayes, my partner in watermelon crime, my lifelong to this very day friend
that's more like a brother? That guy? Well I blame him for what happened next because he should have
stopped me. He knew just as well as I did that he wasn't going to be able to split that, especially
with an axe. You could have loaded that thing up in a cannon and shot it through a fire truck
and knocked the bark off of it. Sweet gum doesn't split well, but Terry, he was a competitor.
He knew the challenge that lay before him and he walked around that end table size cut off,
sizing it up and looking for a weak spot. He was totalling that double-bed axe like Thor
toast his hammer as he tried to stare it down. He stopped and looked up at each of us like he
knew something we didn't and he grinned. And he spit on that cutoff marking his spot.
I looked at Greg and we smiled. Then that cat slowly raised that axe above his head.
And with one mighty stroke he landed that axe blade precisely where he planned.
It was as surprised as the both of us when the axe bounced straight back,
hitting him with the opposite side blade on the forehead above his left eye.
It was a bang bang play. None of us had time to react for the love of humanity I wasn't trying to kill
him. The amount of litigation that would take place in these times makes me shudder to imagine
what would happen, but those times were different. He had a two-inch cut on his head that bled pretty
good for a few minutes. Mr. Burnett applied some gals from the first day he'd get that he
kept with us and took him to the school nurse and the nursing students got to work on a real
live dummy instead of a plastic one. Now he came out of their smile and after having all those
gals fussing over him and wrapped up like he'd been loaded in the cannon and shot through a firing
truck. But that was all. No one got sued. No one got in trouble. Not bad trouble anyway. Mr.
Burnett had what I'd call a meaningful exchange of ideas with all three of us. And that was it.
This wouldn't be the last adventure in that class, but that's for another time. But before someone
writes in and says anything negative about the supervision or that there was a lack of it,
let me remind you that we had all gone through safety training and chose to ignore what we knew
were tried and true practices of safety in that setting. Mr. Burnett couldn't be everywhere it
wants to keep idiots from causing their own calamity. Just like a coach can't be to prevent an
athlete from injuring themselves or or my high school ag teacher the time I filled a pipe full
of a settling stuff to full of wet paper towels lit it and shot them across the shop and ag class
like a Roman candle. That was all on us. Nobody else. Mr. Burnett will go on to become the
forester at a central Arkansas military base and eventually retire as the fire management officer
for the Arkansas Forester Commission. You don't rise to those positions for being inattentive or
careful. He's a grandpa now and a good man and a great influence on me and that's just how that happened.
It's been said the best deer killers probably don't know what kind of tree they're setting
so why does it matter? It matters because all animals operate on the three necessities of life
food, water and shelter. Food and shelter can be provided by trees and water well that can be
located by the types of trees that you observe. Trees are also a static identifier for a whole bunch
of stuff they'll tell you the potential wildlife it lives there they can tell you the area you're
entering or or leaving as different species growing different terrain types. They can tell you
the general health of the ecosystem you're operating in and possibly be a barometer for your potential
success in that space or at least the opportunity for success. Healthy trees usually dictate healthy wildlife
but not for all wildlife. Sometimes the absence of trees is even more beneficial or at least in that
same area and stay with me. There's no one that likes an open hardwood bottom more than me.
Seeing that grand over story of giant oak trees is both peaceful and nostalgic. It's our nature to
to love things and to have order and the need to find contrast between an open hardwood flat
and a prior latent ticket is a prime example of how predators and prey coexist in the same space.
One time my dad and I were squirrel hunting and slain river bottoms where I grew up.
Open up was treated and we were going to him by cutting across the thicket from one spot
of timber to the next. I was sitting behind him on our big buckskin horse with the toes of my
boots dug in behind the bend of his knees. My hands are run deep in his pockets of his old
army green hunting coat and I was squeezing him as hard as I could to hang on with my face buried
in the middle of his back as we rode through a patch of fire so thick or rabbit would have had to
toe the hatchet with him to get around in. We busted out on the other side and I could relax
and look around. I remember telling him how much I hated those thickets and that I wished all of it
could look like the open timber we were riding in now. And I never will forget how he described it
looking when he was a kid. He just said when I was your age I could run barefooted from Mount
to the cattle forward. Y'all just going to have to trust me on that. That's a long way from
down the river through the woods from those two places. But he said I wouldn't have to worry
about stepping on briars getting hung up in blackberry thickets or even slowing down to look at
deer tracks. When I asked why he wouldn't slow down to look at deer tracks he said because there
wasn't any deer in here to make them. Now don't get me wrong. There were deer in Arkansas way
before my dad was a little boy. Hernando de Soto was traipsing around here for about a year
starting in 1541 and he was trading goods and visiting with the cattle indians who were
wearing buckskins that came from here and the meat that they ate was the large part of their diet.
And I can dig it less than an hour ago. Alexis had me lay out a package of burger to throw
out for supper tonight. Those folks knew what was good and we do too. His point to why the woods
the open was looked so good to me was because we were out there to catch stuff and eat it.
Now here's another side note. He was making a point about predators but don't anyone think for a
minute that he was about to eat one of the squirrels we'd kill that day or any other day. He
wouldn't add one if he'd been starving, slapped the death. He'd help me skin them and even cook them
for me but eat them, not but it reaves and not for any amount of money. He gave them away to
neighbors, traded them to a man down the road for snakebite medicine and anyone that wanted them
but he wouldn't eat one and why he wouldn't eat one. That's a whole other story.
Anyway, he told me the better that we could see the better chance that we had to slip it around
and getting close enough to something to catch it. It worked his own way with animals.
And while that didn't endear me to think it did make me realize that they were important.
It's one of the necessities of life we talked about. Shelter. Those
tickets are where deer lay up to have their phones hidden from any and everything that was running
around trying to make a bambi sandwich out of them. They also hold the brows and a million other
goodies and reasons why they've been official to a multitude of animals found ending around them.
Maybe we'll talk about tickets one day but this this day ain't it. We're talking about trees
and importance of knowing the difference.
Last summer you might have heard that first lights making waterfowl gear. They are and it's
fantastic. They put out a pretty slick field hunting pattern. But folks that hunt the dark
flooded timber in the Mississippi flyway started grumbling right away. Well, grumble no more.
We just released cash camel specifically formulated for hunting ducks in the flooded hardwoods.
It is an awesome camel. I keep pointing out that it's just like I could picture hunting all
kind of turkeys and that stuff. But it's made for formulated for hunting flooded hardwoods. It
is a phenomenal waterfowl camel. The pattern was designed using the same nature-based algorithm
used in their other patterns but emphasizes micro break up elements and high contrast textures
that are most visually disruptive when you are up close and personal with green heads in the woods.
It's been tested and tweaked over two seasons in Arkansas. Plus, first light donates a portion
of every sale of duck hunting gear to delta waterfowl to support their mission of conserving
North American duck and goose populations. Head over to firstlight.com slash cash like the river
in Arkansas cash meaning CACHE. Give it a look today again. It is an awesome camel fly. It's
awesome waterfowl camel flies and just a sweet camel. You might just see me running around. I don't
know doing whatever in that stuff but that's not what it's for. It's for duck hunt and it's great for it.
You don't have to know the scientific names of trees but it's important as hunters and
observers wildlife that we understand as best we can the environment that we find ourselves
operating in. Being able to tell the difference in mass producing trees, evergreens and deciduous
trees that's the ones that lose their leaves in the fall is one of the best areas in your quiver.
And not all deciduous trees lose their leaves at the same rate or begin at the same time.
If you're summer scouting and you're looking to hang a stand in that perfect spot where trails
come together and you want to be there for an October bow hunt in Arkansas and you choose a tree
with limbs that come out at a 90 degree angle with great leaf cover. You'll be shining like a
diamond in a goat's butt by the time that October gets here because the tree you select is more
than likely a black gum. Now that's Nissa Silvatico. It's one of the first trees in the woods to lose
its leaves and usually by October it's as bare as a 10 year old doe. However, the fruit of a black
gum can be made into jelly for us to eat in animals from turkeys to songbirds, cunes, bears and squirrels
and a bunch of others love them. Dear, not so much. They'll feed on the seedlings and the leaves
up to a point. Then as the sapling matures, the leaves lose their attraction and the deer move on
to something else and other animals I mentioned take advantage of with the deer, crossed off their
menu. Also, the black gum tree is very susceptible to heart rocks which could cause them to become hollow
over time. But with their wood being so strong, they can still live for a long, long time. This
creates shelter and dens for mammals, birds, tree dwelling critters, bats and spaces for honey
beehives. All of that in one tree. That's just one of more than a hundred different species of
trees that are native to Arkansas and Louisiana and Kansas. You're looking at about the same number.
Well, you say to yourself, I hunt out West and there aren't many trees out there anyway and
thanks you're aiming enough to make a different to any kind of plans that I'm going to make when
I hunt out there. Well, guess what? It shouldn't make a difference because New Mexico and Arizona,
they sport over 130 different species in Utah. That's close to 250. Obviously, all of
them ain't providing food for a game, but you have to remember that shelter is just as important
and it's one of those three basic requirements for life to keep that in mind. Speaking of shelter,
my friend Meyer means who is the large carnivore program coordinated for the Arkansas game and
fish. He told me once when they were doing some bear den studies. Now bear den studies when they
locate a breeding age sounds that have been radio collared and they hit them with that will
razzle dazzle knockout shot and get all the biological data they can muster from her and any
cubs she may have. But then I went on one of this past March of man, one experience it was.
Anyway, Meyer and his married band of biologists, veterinarians and technicians tracked a collared
south down in South Arkansas where it's common for mama bears to use tree cavities to den in
since the areas are prone to flood. I guess this old guy was prepping for the big one because
Meyer said she was located over 80 feet high in a huge bald cypress tree. That's tax odium
to stitch them for you folks keep them score and just some more gibbers for those that ain't.
But bears are funny creatures and I dig them. Now, I can't speak much about the trees out
west, but I can talk about those I find here. And quercus alba, the white oak, man, it's a blessing
and a curse all rolled up and worn. Now, I can something that produces nature's best acre and
preferred by animals and humans alike be a curse. Wait a minute, did I say humans? I sure did.
I mentioned the cato indians earlier. Well, that's just one tribe of Native Americans that were
trading deer skins and others such plundered the cato and his crew while totalling the lunch
bucket full of acre and base groceries to the meat and greet. My friend Rick Spicer is a flint
napkin, acre and eaten bushcraft teaching guru. If there was such a thing as a human Swiss army
knife, mine would have a Rick Spicer blade in it. Y'all check out Rick's Instagram page
at Packrat Bushcraft and give it a follow. I'll share a link to it on mine and post up his step
method and the recipe he uses to make cinnamon, acre and bread. Cinnamon, acre and bread. Y'all know,
I'm gonna try it this winter so you might as well join me. All right, the curse of the white oak
acre is mainly to bear hunters hunting over bait. I don't have the energy to fuss with folks about
baiting or not baiting. I don't know what we're talking about. Save it for another day and somebody
else. What I'm talking about is how white oak acres can absolutely ruin a baited bear hunt.
Simply put, when they start falling, a black bear will crawl over a mountain of donuts to eat one
acre. Your bait will die better than this go literally overnight. Knowing the trees in your
bear hunt area is crucial if the acres start falling early. You may have to swap it up and change
up your tactics from stand hunt to more of a spot and stock. By knowing tree ID, knowing your trees,
you can look for a stand to white oaks. Check for bear sign. Focus your efforts where you're likely
to cross past with a bear or the bears that have abandoned your bait.
I know I've been talking about bears and and white oaks, but that's only an example. Your target
species could be focusing on the acres of red oaks, pen oaks, or persimmon fruit, or beets tree
massed whatever. Late winter when the acres are all but gone and there's no frogs or crawfish or
bugs around for guns to eat, we'll go to areas where we know there are groups of deciduous
holly trees. That one's called Alex Decidua. Some folks call it a possum hog or a winterberry tree.
That's probably the best name for it because they'll have fruit with everything else is gone.
And when that's the case, we'll be treading those spots on a regular basis.
A lot of you may know that before I turn to a life of fighting crime that I worked in the woods
managing timber. For those that didn't, I used to work in the woods managing timber.
Tree ID was crucial in allowing me to do my job. Crews in timber, which is taking a survey of the
mercenable timber owner, a particular property either by measuring every tree on it or through a
measured sampling of designated intervals required me to tally the different types of trees to
estimate the value of the timber on that land. You should be doing the same now every time you
hit the woods, but not for removing timber, but for removing whatever you're chasing out there,
or at least finding what you're looking for. Everyone I hunt with is always looking for sign,
and I'm the same, but maybe just as important as the sign you're seeing is where it's located
and what's around it. Are they just passing through to get to an area of food or shelter?
The shelter doesn't have to be a place where they sleep.
Shelter can be described as a secure place in which they breed or they rest. How about a
like a big old flat or a pine ridge where a gobler has a strut and so on?
Or white tails bed during the middle of the day. Of course, you can substitute elk and mule deer
or whatever you're after. All I'm saying is to observe the terrain, watch growing there,
the environment, the wind, everything that you can file in the old noodle database for retrieval
when you run across it again, you know, somewhere else. Being able to easily identify the trees
and what uses them will make your scalp quicker and more thick. When all things are the same,
it may be the difference in setting up in a sweet gum grove or a bunch of white elves.
Now I'll close out with this story here that demonstrates the necessity of triaddy.
Back in my timber management days, me and Mr. Leon were more content to be cut and were a half
a mile from the truck when I found a 40 pound pine knot covered in dried gray mud.
For those unfamiliar with a pine knot, it's the rich heart or sap wood of a pine tree.
Some folks call it lighter pine. It's used for killing and starting fires and where I grew up,
it was gold. Everyone that had a fireplace picked it up all year long regardless of where they were.
See a pine knot, pick up a pine knot and told it home.
It was common practice in basically the law of the land, a man with a fireplace or any reason to build
a fire was judged by the amount of pine knots that he had piled up at home. This one was a monster
and it was all mine. Mr. Leon had eyes like a hawk when it came to find the pine knots and it was
like he had a radar. He'd find them and I'd wind up being the one to tow them back to the truck for him.
After all I was the youngster on the crew and I respected him for his age and his service in World War Two.
This day it was hot and we'd been in the woods all day long. We were still a half a mile walk
through a sea of bires from the truck. I'd taken the lead shot in the asmons with my compass
and was breaking the trail for both of us when I spied the end of the mother of all pine knots
poking up from a patch of green bires. Mr. Leon saw me pull it up and throw it over my shoulder.
We'd walked from minute to two and he stopped whistling and said, what you got there son?
Luckily he was behind me and couldn't see me rolling my eyes and making a face at the dumbest
question I was going to hear all day. My pine knot. Oh was that right? With a hand saw
as I said, I believe it is and I wanted to end that with old man but I didn't. He started back
whistling and we kept walking and fighting through the bires and the heat toward the truck.
Now I got to tell you that pine knot was killing me. I was swapping shoulders more than I was walking.
It was over a hundred degrees in that thicket and the only air turning in there was when I was
walking, swapping shoulders with my prize or Mr. Leon's Whistler. I wanted to chunk it but I
knew he'd pick it up and towed it about 50 yards before my conscience made me take it away from
him and towed it form anyway. Still a quarter from the truck he stopped whistling again he said,
you really going to tow that all the way out? Now did he think I couldn't do it? I'll tell you what
is bad as I wanted to fling that pine knot past his ear and almost miss him. I was bound
and determined to have it at the truck when I got there. The last hundred yards was the worst.
I'm telling you. Rain would have had a problem hitting the ground in there. It was so thick
but we broke out of it right beside the truck and I immediately dropped that pine knot.
He stopped whistling and said, you're on a good line back to the trucks, huh?
No idea how to say that. Mr. Leon wasn't very complimentary to anyone about anything.
His usual response to a question or observation was usually negative but I always tried to look
past that because of all that he'd been through in the war. He was a genuine hero to me and
all of a sudden I felt real bad about the way I'd been thinking and acting as we walked out even
though he couldn't see it. He poured the hand to me the first drink from our water keg.
I looked at him and said, Mr. Leon, you want this pine knot? He took a big long drink of water
and he filled his cup again and drank it down. He turned away from me and chunked it back over
his shoulder, hitting me dead in the chest without watered up paper cup and said, I didn't know
pine knot. That's a big red open him. Turned it over and look at the bark that was on the end
you had pointing toward me. He was whistling again when he sat down in the cab of the truck.
It pays to know your trees. Thank you all so much for listening. I truly appreciate you allowed
me a little time to run around in your head every week. I promise to do my dead level best not to
step on anything important. This is Brent Reaves, Sound and All. Y'all be careful.
Last summer you might have heard that first lights making water fall gear. They are and it's fantastic.
They put out a pretty slick field hunting pattern. But folks at hunt the dark flooded timber in the
Mississippi flyaway started grumbling right away. Well, grumble no more. We just released cash
camel specifically formulated for hunting ducks in the flooded hardwoods. It is an awesome camel.
I keep pointing out that it's just like I could picture hunting all kind of turkeys and that stuff.
But it's made for formulated for hunting flooded hardwoods. It is a phenomenal waterfowl camel.
The pattern was designed using the same nature-based algorithm used in their other patterns but
emphasizes micro break up elements and high contrast textures that are most visually
disruptive when you are up close in person with green heads in the woods. It's been tested and
tweaked over two seasons in Arkansas. Plus, first light donates a portion of every sale of duck
hunting gear to delta waterfowl to support their mission of conserving North American duck and
goose populations. Head over to firstlight.com slash cash like the river in Arkansas cash meaning
C-A-C-H-E. Give it a look today again. It is an awesome camel fly. It's an awesome waterfowl camel
flies and just a sweet camel. You might just see me running around. I don't know doing whatever
in that stuff but that's not what it's for. It's for duck hunt and it's great for it.