This morning, when I was on my bike ride with my dogs. We
had not gone far and I kicked up a hen turkey and one polt that
was with her that I wouldn't call it a juvenile. I guess in human
terms you called a tobber. But it could fly anyway. I let my
fields grow. I just cut paths through them so we can walk through them
and ride our bikes through them. I just let them let them grow,
because I don't I'm not a farmer. I don't grow anything in there.
So I try to give the wildlife habitat. Deep grass is good habitat.
It's a good sanctuary for birds and snakes and insects and turkeys and all kinds
of critters like to get in that grass and it gives them cover. We
kicked up a turkey, as a hen turkey. She had a baby with
her, and the hen went one way and the little man, this little
poult could fly. This thing flew off in the pine trees. I mean
the last time I saw it, it was still gaining altitude. Normally,
the turkeys will level out at some point and they'll hit the ground, but
this thing just kept on and on, and it worried me that I had
split up a hen in one polt. Now you have to expect that a
hen is going to hatch a clutch of at least three, sometimes four,
maybe five eggs. I don't know what the survival rate on small turkey polts
is, but it's low. It's very low. They're susceptible to predators until
they can fly, and until they're old enough to get away from a predator.
The mother will act as a decoy. Sometimes most times she'll just fly
off and leave them. But she only had one, so I'm assuming that
two or three, maybe even four have been either died or been caught by
our predators. And it worried me that I had split this hen in her
poult up because they went in two different directions. And I can only hope
that the hen will call that polp back to her, that baby back to
her, and I'm almost one hundred percent sure she'll start calling for that polp.
They're probably already back together. Now. This just happened thirty minutes ago.
Anyway, I pay attention to things like that. On our walks and
rides, we see all kinds of wildlife almost daily. One day a couple
of weeks ago, I was riding a different route, a different set of
trails, and let's see, we saw the turkeys are split up. Now
they're not together. The hens are off raising their babies, and the hens
that don't have babies, they're grouped together. But the hens that have babies
are solitary and they're just raising their own hens. And they'll start grouping back
up in the fall. But I saw a mother with four polts. Five
minutes later we kicked up a coyote. My little hairless dog chased it.
I was trying to call him back because those codies will just tear those little
dogs up. But luckily he came back, and I think it's a coyote
that's I have been seeing for like the last two years. I don't kill
coyotes. I don't that's a whole other topic. But I leave them alone
because if you kill them, there's just gonna be another one to take their
place. There's such a hearty and robust animal, probably the most persecuted animal
in the history of wildlife, and they still they have never gone down in
numbers. They only thrive in new habitats, and so I leave them alone.
I just leave them alone. And sometimes they take wildlife, but so
do dogs and so do cats, so I leave the coyotes alone. Anyway,
we saw a coyote that was really cool, and then like fifteen seconds
later, I was coming out under a cannop of oaks and pine trees onto
a levee and this giant it's one of the biggest herons I've ever seen,
must have just launched from the top of a tree. And as it was
swooping down into the pond I'm assuming to start feeding, it saw me and
it flared in front of me, about maybe twenty feet in front of me.
I got the most beautiful view of this heron, and oh I wish
I'd had a camera because I could see all its colors and I could see
the definition in its feathers, and of course it saw me, and it
picked up and it flew away. Now, herons and egrets are some of
the most wary birds in the world. You cannot get close to those things
at all. And if you're a duck hunter, you would do well to
stick a heron or some of these egrets in your decoy spread because they're confidence
builders. Anyway, that's another topic, but We used to do that.
I don't know if it worked or not, but we killed a lot of
ducks over those spreads. When we would stick a heron or something that looked
like a heron, especially something white like these white egrets, we'd kill a
lot of ducks over them. Anyway, went a little further, got up
on another levee and there was a snapping turtle going across the levee, and
we just my dogs are smart enough not to mess with a snapping turtle.
They sniffed it and on they went. But I sat there and watched it
for a little while. Now it quit moving. Snapping turtles, if they
see a human around, they just stop. They're ready to fight. I
just watched that snapping turtle for a long time. Went a little further on
the levee. We saw a big cotton mouth snake, and I think that
was it that day. It was one of the best days of seeing wildlife
for me really all this spring and summer. But every day we see deer
codies, we see something some kind of reptile, some kind of fur bearing
animal, and I just love it. Okay, so that's a long.
That's a long. That's a long. Intro to this email that I got
from Jeremy. And this is not a cryptid story. I just had a
few minutes this morning before work, and I thought I would go ahead and
record the story because it's really good. It's not it's just things. This
guy who is tuned in and he's I'm sure he's teaching his son this.
He's tuned into nature and he's still got that wonder of a kid when he
sees animals in the woods, and that is so healthy in my view.
I'm that way, and I feel so lucky that I'm that way that when
I see things. It's almost like I'm if I've seen a heron a hundred
times to see a heron again, and we have. They're everywhere around here,
and the egrets, it's it's always like the first time, you know,
and it just takes your breath away to look at this while well,
this is I can tell reading this man's email that he's the same way.
So I'm going to read his email. I'm going to sign off. It's
a little different podcast, but I just felt like doing it. So I
hope you guys enjoy his story and you feel the sense of wonder and maybe
you will get out if you live in a city. Just get out in
the park and look at the squirrels, watch how they behave. And it's
amazing how animals have learned to survive in urban areas, and some urban animals
even like dogs and cats, which I can't stand. Cats out there wildlife
killers. Your cat is a wildlife killer. You may say, oh,
my cat's sweet. No, your cats go. If you let your cat
out, your cat is killing birds, bird after bird after bird, just
for sport. That's what they do. But anyway, even cats and dogs
can learn to go from urban areas wilderness areas and they learn to survive.
Now some of them can't. I know some of them can't, but some
of them do so. Anyway, the behavior of animals is and without getting
too scientific and reading all about them, etcetera, etc. To me,
they're just fun to watch. They're more fun to watch if I don't get
real scientific with it and just watch how they operate. It's just cool.
It's peaceful. Anyway, I'm gonna read his email and I'll shut up,
and you guys can move on with your day if you're still listening. I
know, I ramble. These things just pop in my mind, so I
say, I'm sorry if it annoys you. But here's the man's email.
He writes, my name is Jeremy, and first off, my son and
I love your show. He asked nearly every morning when I get in my
truck if there's a new Dixie podcast. Now my stories are not cryptid stories,
but they're interesting. Nonetheless, I love to hunt, and I've been
hunting on my own since i was twelve. I'm forty three years old,
and after years of working as a large animal vet tech, there are mornings
that I feel a hard and abuse ninety years old. The last five years,
I've hunted the same spot on our land and breck and Ridge, Texas.
And both of these stories happened last year. The spot that I picked
a hunt is nearly perfect. There are two main trails, and I call
them I forty five and I twenty. The large oak tree that I sit
in stands right at their intersection. Now, I don't sit in a blind
or a chair. I sit on a wide branch. It's a little over
ten feet off the ground from that tree. I've had game that I passed
on and it stood within ten feet of me. And they never know I'm
there, a man? Is that fun? A young doe and her fawn
jumping and bucking and spinning like a bucking bull on a frosty morning. Or
the ridiculously fat squirrel who came by and got within inches and stared at me
for several minutes before barking once and waddling off. I like to get to
my spot well before legal light, and my walk to the tree is only
about three hundred yards, but it takes me quite a while to get there
because I'm slow, and I go slow is not to make noise and spook
any game that might be bedded down close. The first story happened not long
after I got to my spot and had climbed into the tree and settled in.
Dawn was still an hour and a half off. SAW laid back on
the branch and I got comfortable. It was quiet, and the insects and
the night birds were not very chatty, and I heard a clicking sound like
something was tapping on the rough bark of the oak tree not far from me.
I looked around without moving my head, and I didn't see anything,
so I just blew it off. But it kept happening, and it was
always in a different place, but always in my tree, and it was
close. I was getting ready to sit up and see what the hell was
causing that damn tapping, slashing, scraping sound. And then I saw it.
It landed on a branch I had broken off the season before to get
a better alley to shoot through. It was perfectly silhouetted against the starry sky.
It was a small owl about eight inches tall. Well, I nearly
laughed out loud. It had been trying to figure out what the hell was
lying on the tree branch. He had been going from spot to spot and
trying to get a good look at me. And when he landed, he
was only four feet away, bobbing his head up and down. Now I
knew owls made little to no noise when they fly, but this little guy
was flying and landing around me for twenty minutes, within feet and I only
heard his feet grabbing the tree when he landed. It was so cool.
The next story happened a few weeks later on on an afternoon set. And
like everyone who has land we all hear coyotes shipping and howling, and we
know what they sound like. My dad had on more than one occasion that
year, and since he's been sitting on his porch having a drink when the
coyotes start going off, and then a long howl that is not coyote would
sound and the coyotes would go quiet. Well, I joked that we could
have a wolf. Texas does have wolves, and in certain places still has
a few, though it is rare. Not long after, I was enjoying
a beautiful afternoon sitting the tree during hunting season. There was little wind,
and there was lots of sun, and the temperature was in the mid forties,
and out of the corner of my eye I caught movement. It was
coming toward me from the east, and I started to slowly turn my head,
and my first impression was that it was a huge coyote. The holy
crap, that code is massive, I thought, Sweet buttery Jesus, it
is not a coyote. It was twenty five yards away when it froze,
and it sniffed the air, and then it turned to its left and headed
north out of Trot, all the while looking for whatever had spooped it.
Now I would put money on it being what is called a Mexican red wolf.
Now the Mexican red wolf is a fairly contested species, with some scientists
arguing whether it's its own, separate species or a subspecies. Well, this
canid was about forty to forty five pounds, with slightly darker coat than a
cody, and its face was a little different as well, in that it
was a little bit wider. It was a gorgeous animal, and I'm hoping
what I saw that day was a Mexican red wolf. Thank you for your
channel and keep up your ways of off topic rants and an inability to pronounce
the names of locations. We're Southern Rednecks and we say it the way we
want to. God, God bless you and your family. Jeremy, I
don't know have I I must have that reputation. I don't know some things
I can't pronounce, and maybe I've gained a reputation for not being able to
pronounce some things. But if you've never heard it before, and it's spelled
kind of funky like most of the look travel through Mississippi almost every I bet
you sixty percent of the towns and counties and Mississippi are some Indian native name,
and I guarantee you you can't pronounce half of them we live here and
we can't even pronounce them all, or we say I'm wrong, that's a
fact. Anyway, I just love this email, and I felt like talking.
So half this podcast is me talking and half of it is his email.
But I appreciate Jeremy sending it. I remember when I was in my
twenties. Now I've told y'all, I'm a city boy. I am not
a country boy. I was born and raised in metropolitan Memphis, Tennessee.
And even though we did go hunting when I was little, we weren't country
people. Now, all of my ancestors, starting with just my grandparents,
they were country people. They were from Mississippi, and they all came up
through the Depression and even before that, and they were farmers and you know,
and then the Industrial Revolution comes along and people start getting jobs in cities
and that's how we became city people. So I kind of had a country
person influence. But I'm a city boy. I'm not a country boy.
So when I was younger, I was hunting, maybe aside was probably in
my mid twenties. I was hunting at my uncle's place somewhere down around Coldwater,
Mississippi. He had just clearcut his land and he had built these shooting
houses. They're just little four foot by four foot boxes with a window cut
in them and a old metal chair stuck in them, maybe some old carpet
put in the floor to keep your feet quiet while you're sitting in there,
moving around waiting for a deer to come by. Anywhile I was in one
of those shooting houses, I kept hearing this sound on the back of the
shooting house, something crawling on the back of the shooting house. Well,
I had no idea what it was, and being a city boy, not
really you know, I had not been in the woods that much, so
I wasn't used to all the sounds in the woods. I am now because
I because I'm out in the woods every single day, but I wasn't then,
and uh, I couldn't figure out what this was. It's almost like
Jeremy's story about the owl. There were gaps in the walls, you know,
to the outside on these shooting houses, and anything, anything that could
squeeze through there could get in. And I just happened to look up over
my left shoulder and look at a sound and it was one of I don't
know, I think they call them sugar sugar flyers or flying They're little bitty
flying squirrels, is what they are, and they'll fit in the palm of
your hand. And that was just one of these little sugar sugar I can't
remember what they're called, sugar sugar flyers maybe, but it was just it
was latched on to the vertical wall of the shooting house and it was upside
down, and it was had its head cropped up, just looking at me,
and I thought the first thing, I thought, holy shit, that's
a vampire bat. That thing's gonna that things going to eat me up.
And I started with the barrel of my rifle trying to trying to stop at
it and trying to get it to go out. But every time I would
do that, it would just move. It's like I could not catch this
thing. And eventually I could not get it to go out. So I
just eased out the side right by and it never moved it just watch me.
It moved his head as I went out, and I quit hunting that
day, and I was telling my uncles and cousins about it, and they
were just laughing their heads off at me because I thought it was a vampire
path anyway. That's it kind of goes along with Jeremy's email, and I'm
not trying to one up him at all, but it just reminds me of
these stories and that's what we do. But I here's what I appreciate.
I appreciate Jeremy's wonder and the capacity to notice beauty and funny and fun stuff
in nature and put it in a fun light. And that's why I read
this story. So I know this is a different podcast, but it's my
podcast, and by God, I think I can do whatever I want to
when I want to, and so that's what I wanted to do today.
All right, I'll have another one up here in a day or two.
I hope you guys are having a good week. Fourth July is coming up.
Everybody, be safe, don't drink too much beer, drink drink as
much as you can stand, and don't drive, and don't let a firecracker
blow your finger off, and have a good time. Hope you had a
bunch of barbecue and chicken and hamburgers and people out camping and stuff. I
just hope y'all have a great time. We're gonna have a nice Fourth July.
I love you all and we'll see you on the next podcast. Thank y'all.