Mostly Legal

Season 2, Episode 3 - Chapin Renaissance Man, Andrew Bemis - a great guest!

• Stephen Dinkins • Season 2 • Episode 3

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Rarely have we had a guest on the show with as much experience in the outdoors doing so many different things. Andrew is a great friend and a fantastic guest, we hope you enjoy listening as much as we did talking to him and just asking a lot of questions!

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SPEAKER_00

Did what any good dog man would do is stop the You gotta stop the hound.

SPEAKER_01

That's right. So yeah, the dog man. I mean lethal turkeys, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02

It works on turkeys.

SPEAKER_00

What I didn't know at the time is what I was driving up to. Um it's probably an 11 and a half, 12 foot alligator. Wow. WIS was there. I'm not gonna say what bait, but there was one go-to bait that he gloved on the book.

SPEAKER_03

Welcome. You found your way back to the mostly legal podcast. Uh if you've ever missed a buck or sunk a boat or lied about how many birds you killed, you have found your people. We're glad you're here and tuning in. This is Stephen Dinkins, your host, and we're excited to have another fun episode with a special guest from Chapin. He's come over with my brother Scott, who is here with us from Chapin, and of course, we've got Bubba the Barracuda down at the other end, Bubba Johnston. Bubba. We're looking forward to some good conversations and some great stories, maybe more than we want coming out of Chapin this night. But Scott, before we jump in to you and your guests, why don't you uh tell us who we're talking to with the listener of the week?

SPEAKER_04

Sure. Uh listener of the week this week goes out to uh an old friend that I grew up with from Sumter, uh Cooper Wilson, lives down in Charleston now with his wife and family. And uh Cooper is an attorney down there in Charleston, and he shot me a text uh last week about the wives episode that he uh got a kick out of, and I think a lot of people did, um mainly because we were the topic of conversation. We got a hammered stuff. But um, but Cooper, we appreciate you listening and uh just want to ask you to keep uh doing that and share it with people that you think might be interested in what we talk about. Um but we appreciate the support and encouragement as always. We love our listeners.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, thank you, Cooper, very much. And Cooper's daddy, Bum Wilson, was a big Wilson Hall fan back in the day. I can remember him, he'd be on the sideline when Double Nichols was playing back in the day. His thing with Go Blue. I mean, that was the he's all just go blue, he'd be on the sideline. Saw him at a Wilson Hall game last year and kind of reminded him he kind of chuckled. But just a great family. So, dude, thank you again, Cooper, for listening. That's great.

SPEAKER_04

Cooper's a great athlete. Uh he played basketball together today. Sure was. He played basketball in college, and now his sisters were also good athletes. Cooper was the youngest. Um Lucy Gray and uh what was his other sister's name? Presley. Presley. That's right. Um they were both good uh athletes, and uh so it's no surprise that he ended up the same way, but um he was a lot of fun uh back in the day. He was a s he was a freshman my senior year, and um so we got stories that go way back.

SPEAKER_03

So you taught him everything he knows. That's basically what I mean some might, but thanks for listening. Uh Scott, tell us who did you bring with you from Chapin tonight?

SPEAKER_04

So tonight I got one of my good friends, uh Andrew Bemis. Um Andrew grew up in Chapin and uh finally talked him into coming over. Um and Andrew sent me a text, I don't know, a month ago saying he had finally got on the road and had some windshield time and caught up on uh uh the latest episodes. And um Andrew is an outdoorsman of the highest order. Uh anybody from Chapin and Sumter um and everywhere in between that has been outside in the last 30 years has bumped shoulders with Andrew. He um he loves to dog hunt. Um he's been doing that for a long time. He's got a pack of dogs he'll tell us about. Um he plants duffeels, duck ponds, uh, hunts both of those. He's a deer hunter. Um he does food plots. I mean, he there's not a lot that he does do. He's a gator wrangler. Um he's he's killed a lot of gators. Matter of fact, at one time he was the guy that the DNR called to go wrangle a gator out of somewhere that it didn't need to be. When they couldn't get you? Well, that's right. Okay. When I was busy. Um But uh he's he's a great friend, he's got a sweet wife and four kids, and so he stays stretched out. He is a nuclear engineer by trade, um, but what he really likes to do is be outside and be in the woods. So he's a perfect guest for mostly legal. So, Andrew, welcome.

SPEAKER_00

Tell us a little bit more about what you do and uh who your people are over in Chaffin. So, unlike probably 95% of the population of Chafing, I am not a transplant. Been there since I was born. Um, you know, it's amazing. Y'all've probably come up and visited and seen what the town is, but you know, it's amazing how much that town's grown in really the last 15 years. Uh even the lake, you're a fisherman. You know, I I could remember at night fishing out on that lake when I was a teenager. You know, there was areas you could still go and not see house lights on the lake. Not that way anymore. It's not that way anymore. Um, you know, growth is a good thing. Um, but it's uh it brought people in like Scott, got to meet new people, um, made a lot of new friends there. But yeah, Chapin's been my home. My wife, she's from uh right up the road here in Boykin. Um met her over 20 years ago now. Um her daddy Peter McCoy, a lot of y'all probably knew his uh brother Granger. Yes. But uh Dr. McCoy, uh he was my hunting dog vet. Okay. So it was worked out for me, you know. It was meant to be in more than several different ways. Uh marrying her. But yeah, he he always took care of my hunting dogs. I grew up dog hunting and boyking. Uh been hunting at the Boykin Hunting Club for 20-something years. We got four kids, three daughters, one son. Uh the oldest daughter used to love to hunt. She's grown 18 years old now. She's got a boyfriend. You know, she's got a life now. So don't get to go hang with dad and hunt as much. But my son, he's 11, and Scott will tell you, he he lives and breathes life with a fishing rod or a gun.

SPEAKER_03

I love it. Sounds like Benjamin.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. I mean they're friends.

SPEAKER_04

They're tight as ticks. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, they uh they have a lot of good hunts together. They're they're duck hunting partners. I think Scott told a story on here about a duck hunt Benjamin shot a wood duck last year, and that was on some ponds I had done up in Fairfield. And um Yeah, they they have big time. Scott missed a good hunt they had this year.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, I I've heard more information trickles out about that hunt. It seems like every other week they they uh they had plenty of shooting, let's say it that way.

SPEAKER_00

They there was plenty of shooting. Let's just say math is not strong for either of those two 11-year-old boys. Um I can believe it.

SPEAKER_01

Apple did not fall far from the tree, probably. No. Well, you know, it's the spirit of the law.

SPEAKER_03

Amen. Amen to that. So speaking of the law, you've been listening to some of the podcasts at least, Andrew, and you know we love to ask our guests about their run-ins with the law. Uh I don't want to have you, you know, telling yourself too much, but we'd love to hear if you've ever had an infraction with DNR here in the state. Tell us if there's been more than one, give us at least a taste of what kind of trouble you run into out there.

SPEAKER_00

So I have gotten one ticket in my life from DR. Um, this was probably good gosh, maybe 20 years ago. Um we were offshore fishing, a group of buddies and I down in Edinistow, right before we went down there. So, backstory, y'all know how the license system works in the state.

SPEAKER_03

Nothing. How used to work. How used to work.

SPEAKER_00

Bubba can appreciate this then if he knows. But when I was younger, I worked with my uncle's light during the summer. The first summer I worked with him, I made enough money before I turned 15. I bought a lifetime combination hunting and fishing license. Okay. That don't cover saltwater fishing. Gotta have a stamp. So we were getting ready to go down there, and you know, I was the one that thought ahead. I said, all right, we all need to stop and get our saltwater license before we go. So I did. Nobody else did. Um we got down there, we went fishing, we came back, we picked up some friends on the beach, uh, buddy's girlfriend and stuff. We'd been out there fishing all day. We picked, we came up to the beach with the boat, got them in, went rode around the creeks for a little bit and come back in Big Bay Creek, and there's two DR boats right there. So they stopped and checked us, and um I had a license. For whatever reason, they wrote me the ticket, and I still don't know how they got our information messed up. And you know how long it takes in the system before and how you do find out is when you go get another one. So I did have a ticket for that. I did have uh I did have my license that day. But um I've had several other interesting run-ins. Um one that comes to mind with DNR is uh guys 20-something years ago. We were down on Black River, which is Georgetown close to Andrews hunting, duck hunting one morning. And uh we I don't know how familiar you are with that area, but there's a lot of feeder creeks off of Black River that goes back up towards Hemingway, Neesmith area and stuff like that. It used to be really good duck hunting down there before they built all the impoundments around those areas. But me and two buddies was down there duck hunting that morning, and the tide controls that area. So a friend of mine who had a farm down there, he had a nice walkway built through the swamp so you could get out to the main feeder run. But if the tide wasn't right, you couldn't get the boat to it. So we we put in at Mingo Landing that morning. It's a little small landing, went up, we duck hunted that morning, did very well. Um getting our stuff up, just head back to the landing and heard dogs running. And so we sat there for a minute, waited, waited, waited, started hearing the dogs get closer, so we eased down and they're running a nice buck. So did what any good dog man would do is stop the You gotta stop the hound. That's right. So I mean, you're trying to help your fella out. I mean, he wanted to catch the dogs. Yeah, didn't know who they were, but I was worried about the dogs crossing the creek and stuff like that. Stop the dogs. Shot shot the buck, um, you know, had the right kind of shell. Just happened to have the right kind of shell in the box.

SPEAKER_03

Stephen, you know what kind of shell that is he would have? I'm pretty sure I do. It's very lethal on turkeys, isn't it? It works on turkeys, they say that.

SPEAKER_00

So the story gets better. Um, so we was heading on down the creek a little bit more, got closer, and it was a pack of hogs swimming across the creek. So we got one of them too helping out the room. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01

There you go. This man conservationist, a dog helper. I mean, this man's on track.

SPEAKER_00

We was help helping out the farmers. Well, one of my buddies that morning, he he did not feel well, so we we he went up and got on the boardwalk. He waded up through the little feeder creek and got on the boardwalk, went up to the house. And my other buddy and I went back to the landing, and when we pulled up to the landing, there was a lot of trucks there. And two of them was game warning trucks.

SPEAKER_03

That's a bad feeling. Even when you're right, that's a bad feeling.

SPEAKER_00

So we we pulled up, uh I pulled up to the bank, and he quickly got out the boat and went up to the truck, and I went to pull away, and of course they started waving me over. And I said, I got to go back up and get my other buddy out of the swamp. We couldn't get him in here. And the guy said, You coming back? And I said, Yes, sir. And uh so on up the creek I went. Well, my buddy, I'll never forget this, because I didn't know what we were gonna do. I was like, they're gonna hold him up until he's there, you know. So they asked him a bunch of questions. So I went on back up, and it was high tide at that point, so we could get back up to the boardwalk. And I wasn't going back down that creek that day. So he um I'll never forget this. He back then, this was 20-something years ago, cell phones weren't like they were now. I we may have had a truck phone or a bag phone or something, so I had no way to get in touch with him to tell him He was on his own. Yeah, I wasn't coming back. You know, he was in my truck, so but um anyway, he was a quick thinker, and he kind of bent over, grabbed his stomach, and he said, Y'all, I got to go to the bathroom. And he said, I'm gonna run up to the gas station. So I'm gonna run up here to the gas station, I'll come back, just tell him I'll be back in a minute. So he left, came back to the farm too. And uh luckily we were there, met up, and we saw.

SPEAKER_03

There's a lot of invading going on there.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, well, we we're trying to get the deer clean and priorities. Yeah, it was a little more to the story than that. But um there always is. We we sat there for probably an hour or two. We did clean the deer, clean the pig, sitting up there at the house, and curiosity got the best of us. Were those guys still sitting down there at the boat? And uh a friend of mine that owned the farm, he he pulled up shortly after that. So we were smart enough to say, well, we'll we'll drive his truck back up there. We didn't want to haul the boat, you know, back to turnaround and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_03

We're just back up bads with a boat. So we rode back or just a trail.

SPEAKER_00

And you could turn right off the bridge, and uh, you know, you right before you got to the bridge, you went into a boat landing. And at the time, it was three trucks there at that point, and they were putting a boat in. So it was a search and rescue mission at that point, I think. So we went back up to the house, and I remember sitting there on the boardwalk that afternoon because the tide had gone back out, and you could hear a motor just coming up through that swamp, just frailing every tree, every stump, and I don't know how long they went at it, but that ended our trip abruptly. That was probably the most interesting front end we had. So the tide was on your side. The tide, there was a lot of things on our side that day. We had a uh I think we miscounted um on the duck hunt that happened sometimes. Um I don't know that they would have appreciated everything we did to help out the dog hunters that were there and the conservation efforts, but that was kind of one of the moments you sit back and look at and you're like, uh, might be time to play by the rules a little bit more. But when you're in your early twenties and you don't you don't know all the laws and stuff at times. Mostly. You you mostly knew them. We we m mostly knew them that day, I think so.

SPEAKER_01

I mean, and and it's not to say that you you broke any rule. I mean, once y'all got out that boat and got on the land and stopped the dogs, I mean that wasn't you know, that wasn't no big deal. I mean we had shells staged so we could swap over what we was doing that day, too. I mean that's what I'm saying. You got out on that, you got out of the boat and got on the land, and that was all good.

SPEAKER_04

You know, Phil Robertson used to say, if I see blue lights, I hit the woods.

SPEAKER_01

The fact that y'all had the this thing coerced where he was gonna get the stomach cramp and all that, it's just pretty interesting.

SPEAKER_00

No, it's they they'd done that before. That was a well-thought out plan and well, well executed plan, I shouldn't say. It was much not much thinking because I had never seen another car at that boat landing in my life, and we've been going down there for two or three years, but think somebody called on y'all that day. I I well, I think it was the dog hunters. Uh honestly is what it were, because it was a couple trucks with dog boxes down there at the landing, as I think what happened. They probably thought y'all shot the dogs. Might have been weird. We did not shoot the dogs.

SPEAKER_01

Uh no, I'm I'm sure not, but I'm saying that you know, I'm sure that was going through them all, but they shot our dogs or whatever, and uh anyway. We stopped them.

SPEAKER_03

So, Andrew, uh, you've already talked a little bit about different kinds of hunting, and uh Scott said you've loved the outdoors in all kinds of uh different capacities, but what's your what's your favorite? I mean, if you if you had one outdoor, one thing to chase for the fish, you know, for the rest of your life, what would that be?

SPEAKER_00

Probably the dog hunting. Okay. I've done that since I was a little little. A man after Bubba's own heart. You know, we you know, my dad never really lived at home growing up, but my uncles and them, that was that was what we did. You know, we went down, had a hunting club down on Ottery River. Um it was right next to the Boykin Hunting Club at the time, you know, it was right beside Golf Swamp, so you probably heard those uh hunt club names, but we used to go down there and spend the weekends. You know, back then it was you know, we didn't have tracking collars and all that stuff. We you'd spend a night out there, you'd throw your shirt down on the ground, wait for them to come back, and I still love it to the day. We've I've got five now, and the pig hunting I really enjoyed it. I I'm lucky now I got a group of plot hounds that I can take, run deer with, you know, I can throw the vest on them and go pig hunting with them. You know, they're beautiful dogs. Where'd you get those plots? Westminster, South Carolina. Um it's a bear bear hunting stock. Yeah. Um they're all fairly young, under five years old. I think the oldest one's four. Um, but my son, he he loves it, he goes over to the kennel. Um kennel's right there at my house in Chaffin. So it's a it's a pretty nice dog kennel, so they got a good place to live, but you know, that my kids spend time with them. But really, I enjoy it mainly because you know the camaraderie and take your kids, you know, other people have the kids out there. It, you know, I don't, you know, I do enjoy steel hunting some. I don't steel hunt much these days because I'm a professional guide, I guess, for my children and their friends, you know. But and your pastor. And yeah, Scott, Scott's been waiting for.

SPEAKER_01

You take Scott, I get it. I qualify right there all day long.

SPEAKER_00

If you want to kill a deer, go on a dog drive with me because every time I take a guess, they you know, the one time he went with me, I think killed an eight or nine point. But it it seems like every time I take a guess, they kill a nice deer.

SPEAKER_01

I don't know what it is about it, but it it's it's crazy. It's so real quick, let me ask you this, and I don't want to bore the listeners by any means, but right now there's a tremendous debate going on with the whole dog hunting and and hunting deer with dogs thing. They had a meeting over in um Florence last week or whatever. I think twelve hundred people showed up. They have one tonight actually in Orangeburg and then one in Waterboro. Real quick, your take on that, kind of a little bit of background on what's going on with that, and then your take on it real quick.

SPEAKER_00

Just so several years ago this started when the Renegade Hunt Act came out. And I don't know if y'all knew Dr. Banner Boykin, but uh he was the president of Boykin Hunt Club. He was uh Clemson professor at one time, but DNR had reached out to him to see, you know, to start getting in front of some of the issues we were having in South Carolina, and that's when they came up with the Renegade Hunt Act. That was probably six, seven years ago, maybe. Might have been long, might have been longer than that. But um they went and you know, he asked me to help with it. Um we went to Georgia, kind of looked at what they were doing. They had changed some laws a couple years before that, set up a minimum continuous acres amount you had to have. Um you register your dogs, uh specific type of tracking gear and stuff like that. And DNR implemented some of those laws, but you know, South Carolina, I I believe I saw this somewhere recently. Y'all might know better than me, but for the second year in a row is the fastest growing state in the United States.

SPEAKER_01

The number one one-way U-haul destination in the nation. That's right. Uh you know, you go to the secret is out.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. The secret is out. Yeah. It's it it's it's the greatest state to live in in the country. It's it's crazy. Well, you know, COVID changed a lot. I think a lot of people travel more, came down here more during COVID when they were working remotely, and you know, we saw it, we got a place at Frip, and we saw it just explode during COVID. Um so you're gonna have more people coming in. That means less land for more people. Plus the industry coming into the state.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, and I think COVID had a big part in that with all the remote workers, and people started realizing I can live where I want to and keep doing what I am doing. And so they want to find a place that is cheaper to live and ha they have access to more than they have wherever they were, and and we have all that in South Carolina.

SPEAKER_00

And and the other thing that plays into it too is y'all probably notice as well who's got the longest deer season in the United States? South Carolina. August 15th to January the first. Yep. And um you used to see this in the lower part of the state years ago, but you know, Florida and Georgia hunters were coming up, and they would just lease land just to hunt the first two, three months of the year. And it's one of the few places you can go and actually have an opportunity to harvest a buck with velvet. Yeah. Um so that you know, you started seeing it some years ago, but it was more the lower part of the state, and then North Carolina, the so for those who don't know, you know, the fall line is where the seasons change. You know, the upper part of the state, their season doesn't come in until I think for rifles now, October 14th or something like that. So that even condenses it even more into dog hunting country. Yeah. Um and then your paper companies, they started selling off assets a couple years ago, and that was the majority of your large land ownerships, was your paper companies. So when they started dividing up and selling land, that made it harder to at least big tracts of land for it. So now you've seen And the you know, as hedge fund companies essentially own these timber funds, and they'll buy 500 acres here, a thousand acres there, and they'll waste those out, and that's really not good for dog hunting. You know, you need a couple thousand acres to that, you know, where you're not worried about your dogs getting off your property and stuff.

SPEAKER_04

And so at the present day, these meetings are happening to try to fight for the rights.

SPEAKER_01

Well, it's really kind of to get public opinion. DNR has an advisory board that they kind of so South Carolina also the legislature makes the hunting and fishing regulations. They sit, and that's one of we're one of the few states that does that as well. So the South Carolina legislature sets the hunting and fishing regulations, and they have an advisory board, they listen to, which is the DNR advisory board. These these things are trying to get public opinion because they're the hot topic right now, you know, the steel hunter versus the dog hunters and everything. And they kind of wrap this up a little bit, like, and Andrew knows a lot about this and and probably a lot more than he shared as well. But the the long story is, is the hunters, and and and a good friend of a good friend of mine said this, and he he had a little public thing. Matter of fact, um Sandy had a thing that we put out there, and it was very he said it very eloquently, is the anti-hunters, they're united. And if they can keep us separated between dog hunters and till hunters or whatever side you're on, and arguing everything else, it helped to further their cause of anti-hunting. And we need to be real careful and try to be as unified as we can and try to work through our differences in a way that doesn't explode and cause problems with the hunting industry.

SPEAKER_03

Give me a quick executive summary of what the bill, apparently, that is being debated is about. What is it doing?

SPEAKER_01

No proposed bill at this time that I know of.

SPEAKER_00

No, no proposed bill. That's that's right. They're trying to find a common ground. I think there was a something happened, I think, last year that triggered it. Uh, I don't know if it was a confrontation of some sort that triggered this, and DNR said we want to get in front of it. But the the big thing is, you know, most of you, I'm not saying everyone of you steel hunters nowadays, but you know, most people are what you would call management hunters now, trophy maybe not trophy management, quality buck management, however you want it, you know, they're they're out to pursue, you know, nicer deer. You know, historically, Bubba, if you've been as dog hunting as long as you say you have, name of the game back then was to get them. Brown down. That's right. You know, you especially down in the lower part of Sumter, you know, lower part of the state is a lot of cropland. So your farmers are fighting the the deer boom, and as you get population growth, deer lose habitat. Well, they're gonna condense into these areas. So the dog hunt was more about managing your herd than managing your antlers. And that's part of it too, you know, this m you know, most of you steel hunters now, they're focused on something they can put on the wall or put on social media. Yep, sure.

SPEAKER_01

So it's it's a it's a it's an ongoing debate. So like if you really are interested, go out there and look. I mean, you can find a lot of stuff on it and and that kind of stuff. And I don't want to take up all Andrew's time with it. I just want it it is a hot topic right now. I mean, it really is, and and it's it's gonna be ongoing and and the law uh no law for 26 will change. It'd be the 27 laws when the legislature comes back into session where they'll make any kind of changes. But different proposals that the condense of you talking about is they're talking about having a certain number of acres in order to be able to dog hunt continuous acres, um, maybe reducing the number of dogs that you can turn loose, where your property is owned. There's a bunch of different proposals and everything out there that are discussed, nothing nothing written into a bill or anything. But it's it's an interesting topic that if you are in the hunting and fishing world or whatever, go ahead and look at it. It's it's interesting.

SPEAKER_04

Andrew, tell us a bit. We you know, we love to talk about stories and memories. Um so how did you um get into the outdoors? Um you mentioned your uncles um carrying you, but do you remember your first the first deer you ever killed or duck that you ever killed? Um tell us some of that uh memory bank type stuff, yeah. And let's reminisce on some of the some of your earliest exposures.

SPEAKER_00

Well, y'all can probably guess the first way I killed a deer. And so that that'll kind of hook you. You know, if you shoot one in front of a dog, um, you know, it was a 20-gauge single shot. I think it was a New England, you know, it didn't matter if it was a knock your shoulder off. Yes, it would. That is the most brutal way to introduce a kid to hunting is probably give an eight-year-old a 20-gauge single shot. Yeah, you know, that wind could knock down. But um, yeah, some that that that was part of getting hooked on it, you know. I it was probably I was probably close to a teenager before I ever killed a deer, still hunting. Um I grew up on some land. My my grandfather had about a hundred acres, but you know, we didn't trophy manage there. We were just, you know, they still farmed it some, so you were shooting anything you saw to keep them out the crops. Um the duck hunting thing, as you know, I was fortunate enough to grow up on Broad River. Um I think I've shared some of these stories with you, Scott, but a lot of people don't realize it's not that way now, but it used to be a fantastic waterfowl location in this state. Um and even Lake Murray, too, back in the heyday when the hydrilla was there. I mean, it was full of divers, you know, in the late 90s and stuff like that. But, you know, y'all talked about the duck commander before, but you know, as a kid watching those videos of them, and I still never forget the one where they went to duck line and he pulled out the 30-30 and shot the deer. I don't know. You know, but you know, we you know, back when I was a kid on Saturday mornings, you had the Nashville Network, and you only had a couple, you know, that's what I spent my Saturday mornings watching was hunting and fishing shows. Um, you know, if I wasn't in the woods, you know, during deer season, you know, that's what I'll I'd do is watch hunting fishing, and it kind of, you know, it kept me out of a lot of trouble. Yeah. And I I tell people this today a coon dog probably saved me from a lot of trouble in my teenage years and college years, because I was chasing that thing around the woods the majority of my weekday and weekend nights.

SPEAKER_03

That's one thing I've never done is go coon hunting. One of these days I love to go, I closest I came was reading Where the Red Fern Grows and loving that book as a game. That's right.

SPEAKER_00

I was a red bone guy for a long time. I I raised a lot of red bones that lived on Water East State prison farm that they use for tracking. Um because of that book I got into the red the red bones. But uh yeah, I mean that's just it's one of those things, you know, your childhood memories and the people you meet. And I t I tell people all the time, you know, that I get I've gotten to hunt with a lot of neat people and go a lot of places. But if you trace back the beginning of every story, it somehow involves one of my hunting dogs that people have gotten to meet over the years. The the properties and stuff, because I was one of the few people besides Alan Wooten right up the road here that had pig dogs for a long time. Okay. And uh, you know, I got a lot of land, you know, everybody called you during the summer when the corn was up to come get the pigs off the property. Yeah. Um coon hunting back in the day, you know, I I did that for years. I did the PKC, the UKC hunts, trialing dogs. Um, had a had a lot of fun. And I I'd love to get my son into it, but I tell you, that is a that's a tough sport there. You gotta stay at it. You know, you're hunting two, three nights a week to keep that dog, especially if you're gonna competition hunt.

SPEAKER_01

You Grand American, you go to Grand American?

SPEAKER_00

I hunted, so I had a walker dog uh named Lucy, and she she grand nighted out before she was three. And I'll never forget my wife was in medical school and she was doing a residency, and she had to go up and do some rotations up in um I think it was Greenville or something. She was up there, and it was around that time, and I said, I've never hunted it. I've always gone down there, usually always go down there, buy a pair of boots every year. Um I'm assuming y'all know what the Grand American is in Armsburg. But I said, I'm gonna hunt, and I guided back on our swamps on the Watery River, and I w I won my calves both nights and finished third overall when it and that doll was 11 years old. But I said, this is gonna be the end of her, and I still got the plaques and stuff from it. I kept all those, but it it was really neat, and I had a uh plot hound too. So I've had plots for a long time uh out of the Pocahontas bloodline I was lucky to get, and she she was a fantastic coon dog, too. There you go.

SPEAKER_03

Pocahontas bloodline didn't know there was a thing, but now I know. Teaching us all kinds of stuff.

SPEAKER_00

You either come that or the Bob Plot line, and that's where you want to be in the plot world.

SPEAKER_03

There you go. Very good. Uh you've been outside a lot. We've talked a little bit about your favorites, some of your older memories, but has there been a story or two where things got dangerous and you realize you were in a dangerous spot? Maybe you were too cold, maybe you were lost, maybe you were wrecking a boat or a car. Tell us about a time where you things got out of hand a little bit and you weren't sure how to get it back.

SPEAKER_00

Well, Scott alluded to this earlier. So my mother-in-law, the first image she ever got of me was I was hog hunting in the state prison farm one morning, and my truck was parked out close to the gate. I hunt off a Polaris everywhere I go. I got a doll box and a Polaris. And it's just it's that is the way to dog hunt. Okay. And um Polaris is like a side-by-side.

SPEAKER_03

A side-by-side for those listening, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Right. That's right. And um, so anyway, we we had been in there, we killed a couple hogs that morning. It was hot, it was summer morning. And I had on a pair of overalls and I had gotten blood all over my shirt. So I had my shirt off and a pair of overalls on. So anyway, I had just come out to the truck, my phone rang, and it was a game warning from up in uh Kershaw County. He said, I need you to come over here, and the name of the road is right there in Boykin. He said, There's an alligator out in the yard, but there's people here. We need to get this thing out of here. What I didn't know at the time is what I was driving up to. Um it's probably an 11 and a half, 12-foot alligator. Wow. WIS was there. Big lizard. The newspaper was there, all these people there in this thing. And we pulled up, and uh, there was a I'm sure the video's still online somewhere. Oh, we can find it. Yeah, there I my wife I still stink has it, but you know, we got there and had to come up with a way to get this alligator. So we rigged up a snare and I got it out there in the field and snared it, and it rolled around, rolled around, rolled around. And in the meantime, I'm in a pair of flip-flops, overalls, and no shirt on.

SPEAKER_03

You look like you were from chapin.

SPEAKER_00

Yes. That's the boy, that's the boy that I've dated, Mom.

unknown

That's right.

SPEAKER_00

I I'll never forget. I thought I had it worn out, and when I went to get on it, the mash's mouth closed, the tape it closed, it decided to do a death roll or whatever you want to call it. And uh it started rolling with me, and finally I got the best of him. You know, this is a four or five hundred-pound alligator. But of course, so the newspaper got all kinds of pictures of it. It was front page of Canman Chronicles. So my mother-in-law and father-in-law had just come back from uh Israel. They had gone over there for a trip, and Dr. McCoy, of course, saw it and said, That's your probably your future son-in-law, Peggy. I bet that made her proud. That was probably one of those moments where everything seemed like a great idea at the time till it wasn't.

SPEAKER_03

That's kind of the motto of his podcast. He's the perfect guest.

SPEAKER_04

That's exactly right.

SPEAKER_01

Sounds good to it, doesn't it? It really looked good on paper.

SPEAKER_00

So you so you got him up finally, and we taped him up, you know. Um I I know I got a lot of pictures of it, but the video, I I think my wife still has it, but it's we might have to find out for ourselves. It got aired on the news of and it was not it's not nearly as impressive as it sounds when it it was very well Andrew, there's there's I don't know, two or three million people in the state, and they got an alligator they need wrestling.

SPEAKER_03

And uh why in the world did this guy call you?

SPEAKER_00

Well, he saw my truck. He's the Gay Warren saw my truck out there parked by the gate at the prison farm that morning. So he he called me, and I had removed some from you know, probably eight or ten before that. This was back, this was before we had alligator seasons in the state. Right.

SPEAKER_03

That that's only been since maybe a known alligator hunter at this point.

SPEAKER_00

Maybe you could call it that. Uh uh modern day.

SPEAKER_01

Not a lot of Steve Hammer. He's an American Steve Irwin.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Basically, I like that.

SPEAKER_04

He was brave enough or dumb enough to get them. I'm not sure which one of the two of it was.

SPEAKER_00

But you know, it in all in all honesty, it's you know, once you get them worn out, typically you can just throw a towel across their face. Typically. And they bite your head off. And they'll lay there. Um that day I didn't have a towel. Um he wasn't ready to lay down yet.

SPEAKER_03

We gotta find that video.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, we're gonna have to look around. I'll find it and send it to you.

SPEAKER_04

But it's that's pretty dangerous. I would classify that as a dangerous. That qualifies as an answer to the question.

SPEAKER_01

About like Stephen grabbing Scott a couple times over the years.

SPEAKER_03

I think there's a couple alligators I would have rather jumped on. I don't want to mess around with Pony. Pony can't we we we talked about Stephen Lincoln earlier before we started our recording. Andrew is a friend of Stephen's and they know each other, so we were swapping some Lincoln stories, but uh that idea of jumping on Scott makes me remember a time where Scott was in high school and I was rooming with well, I wasn't rooming with Lincoln, I was rooming with Wayne, but Wayne and Lincoln were over at my apartment.

SPEAKER_04

One of our uh beloved sponsors.

SPEAKER_03

Yes, thank you, Burrs and Ridgeway with two R's and two S's. We uh we were over hanging out, and and and Scott got a little chirpy with Lincoln, and Lincoln told him to pipe down, or he was gonna fold him up or tie him up or something, and Scott is not real good at piping down. That's one of his weeks. Really?

SPEAKER_05

So he wasn't still in, right?

SPEAKER_03

So he kept chirping, and and Lincoln tried to manhandle him, and uh it did not go well for Lincoln. And so Wayne tried to help him, and that did not go well. And I just sat back at a distance and just watched and realized my my days of jumping on Scott were probably coming to an end because it did not win well for those two guys. I tried to reason with him from there on out.

SPEAKER_00

He he is one of the most resilient people I've ever met, too. He is not gonna give up when he makes up his mind on something. Well, perseverance pays off eventually at times.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, but you lack your brain if you make up more perseverance. There you go. That's awesome. That I like a lot. So at this time of year, you love the outdoors. This is a busy time of year. What's your next week or two look like? What are the big things you're doing to get ready for the fall? Because there's a lot coming in the fall. It's not just deer. What all are you doing in the land management world?

SPEAKER_00

Dove season is big, so be a lot of spray in the dove fields. Um, still planting a little bit. This year, a lot of people's dove fields struggle because of the drought. So um do a little bit of millet planting so they'll have some later September crop, but a lot of spray in the dove fields. Everybody wants to get their roads ready. You know, everybody calls about forestry mulching this time of year. So that that kind of stuff really. The big thing would be drone spraying. Okay. How did you get into the drone world?

SPEAKER_04

Tell us a little bit about what made you jump that direction.

SPEAKER_00

Um, so I was doing uh seed genetics testing for a seed company out west.

SPEAKER_03

Um Bubba does a lot of that. Oh yeah?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, oh yeah, all the time. So yeah, ironically.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah, okay. Seed genetic testing.

SPEAKER_00

Continue. You know, uh when you work inside of a nuclear plant, you know, most of your life, it's it's great to be outside. So I agronomy is one of my passions. I love farming. I I grew up helping. Uh my granddad, my cousin, you know, my mom was one of seven, and she was way far down. So all the grandkids were adults when I came along. So my granddad kind of relied on me for help, and my uncles did, you know, stuff like that. So I got some exposure to it. I really loved it, you know, being on tractors. And um, so I got in seed testing a couple years ago, you know, just for really the wildlife stuff, planting duck ponds, uh, dove fields, uh, did some other stuff for uh food plots that they'll they would send me different things each year. But I went to a conference and the drone thing was kind of just getting going. Um DJI had just come out with a first, I think the first prototype drone, and there was a company out of Texas that I met up with. They were just getting started, and I got one of their early drones and was playing with it. And you talk about the uh DNR handbook being a lot of rules. Uh the FAA got a lot of them too. It's a big book. It's a real big book. So, you know, the first thing you had to do is get a pilot's license. You gotta, it's a it's not a full-blown, it's a part one, they call it a Part 107, uh, which is an unmanned aircraft license. You know, you go take a written exam just like you would a pilot test. Because this is a big drone. I mean it's it's eight and a half. The the big one I got is about eight and a half foot wide on the wingspan. And can lift what? Uh the biggest one I got now haul 18 gallons. Uh I think there's one out now that'll go up to 30 gallons. So you you're taking off with, you know, 300 pounds of weight in it between the batteries and the liquid. And the skeleton itself with the drone doesn't weigh a whole lot. But um, I started thinking about it and I was like, you know, so many times this would be convenient. You know, dove fields, you know, places you don't want to put an airplane, you know, there's there's gonna be a market for this. Umber, you know, spraying cutovers, you know, you gotta have you certainly can't get in there with a hell I mean an airplane, but you can't a helicopter, but it's not too many people that do that. So I said, you know, with with everything with my wife, if I my toys and stuff, it's it's gotta be some type of justification behind it. Um so I started thinking about it, I'm like, I can kind of get into this, make a little s side money. There you go. You know, and so I got it, I got one of the first drones from them, you know, went through all the licensing and stuff, and it really it just blew my mind the people that started calling, you know, and it a lot of it was dove fields. I mean, probably 90% of what I did the first year was dove fields, and then it kind of grew from there to fungicides, uh spraying systemic fertilizers, you know, nitrogen, stuff like that with them. And you can granular spread with them too. So you got a place that's wet, you know, you want to get in there and put some seed out, you can just fly in there with a spreader on it, you know, instead of using the sprayer, and you can spread out granulars. You can do fertilizers, you can do seed with it. How about ponds?

SPEAKER_01

Like quad vegetation, vegetation tough control on ponds and everything.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, you you do a little bit of ponds. Um, you know, that's a whole nother license when you you're applying in water with Clemson.

SPEAKER_01

I mean, I don't know if you need like like an apprenticeship without anything, but if you need some practice, I think do the pond closed by hand it might be.

SPEAKER_00

We don't want to turn the water over too quickly, doesn't it? You see a you see that a lot with people when they want to treat a pond, that's that's one of the hardest lessons for somebody to learn. They got a pond that gets taken over with a weed and they want to kill it all. Uh it looks good when you kill it, but when the pond turns over and you lose all your fish, it just robs all your oxygen out of the water when all the vegetation starts breaking down. So you it's a it's not a that's not necessarily what you would call instant gratification on a project. That's several years if you do it right and treat one. But yeah, so you, you know, the pond side of it, um, but yeah, it was mostly dove fields first year couple years, but that's really for the next month. I'll probably be doing some of that.

SPEAKER_03

Okay, so just for a second, give uh I want to give you a chance to do a little bit of an infomercial, like because we're talking about these services that you do. You you're saying you're doing for a lot of other landowners. I see your hat is Palmetto. Is that Palmetto Land Management?

SPEAKER_00

Is that right? It's Palmetto Property and Aerial Solutions. I um, you know, we do the drone spraying, we do the forestry mulching, um LIDAR imaging, which has gotten popular. Um I do a lot of that sometimes for construction companies. You can you can literally go in day by day and tell them how much dirt they move with lidar imaging. Um it's really it's amazing where they've come.

SPEAKER_03

The lidar, you're using the drone for that too. You send it up and it takes the mapping.

SPEAKER_00

When I build a duck pond, I do all my imaging layout with the lidar drone. Um helps me figure out where elevations are, and you know, it's essentially a surveying tool now. And you know, a lot of your surveyors now, that's what they're using is drones and stuff and GPS.

SPEAKER_03

Yes, pretty wild. God, technology is advancing so quickly. Uh it's hard to believe it. Just was a few years ago that yeah, it you're having a spare time, he's a nuclear scientist.

SPEAKER_01

I mean, there you go.

SPEAKER_04

I mean he's got a nice set of plots and he runs in the woods. It's and and four children and a and a wife.

SPEAKER_00

Yep. My uh a lot of yeah, a lot of people ask me where I found eight days in a week, but you know, life does slow down at times, and you need to. Uh last couple weekends, I was telling him I took my kids fishing on Saturday morning instead of going out and getting on a machine. You know, I work a lot more now with work and uh or at the nuclear plant. So, you know, I don't see my kids. As much and you know, kids get older too, they're busier, sports and everything. And you know, my my youngest Miller, who's six now, I mean, we went and stayed at Rainbow to last last weekend. She went down there and wanted to go spend a night, got up next morning, we went fishing. It's got a nice big pond on it, and we went frog fishing, which is for a kid, is you know, that's instant gratification when it comes to fishing. When they throw in a frog and pull it back across the wood pads, and when that explosion happens, it is it is amazing.

SPEAKER_01

I mean it don't have to be a kid if we have the gratification throwing it out there.

SPEAKER_04

But well, how's the water displacement on those frogs you were throwing?

SPEAKER_00

Depends on which kind you use. Like a barricade.

SPEAKER_01

Every once in a while when you just talk like that, it just shows ignorance. And I hate that. You don't understand that.

SPEAKER_03

George Norton understood it when he talked about you swimming. Yep.

SPEAKER_04

It's crazy. Have you have you used the urchin in the uh in the pond yet?

SPEAKER_00

So Tucker got one of those things the other day. Uh we ain't catching nothing on it except milfole. But um I I've I keep hearing about them. Uh I think the guy won the guy win Santee this year, the big tournament we won. Um a couple of my friends are fishing them up on the lake, but he he taught me into buying one of those things the other day. Actually, we went in to get some more frogs. And uh I I probably don't know how to fish it. You know, I don't fish like I used to. I mean, when I was in my younger 20s, I used to turn them at fish a lot, and it's it's I don't have the technology to keep up with it these days.

SPEAKER_03

And you mentioned that you used to turn them at fish a lot. You even mentioned before we started recording that you knew of Bubba back then. So I'm just want to ask you, is it is Bubba as good as he says he was back then? Because I mean he talks about it all the time. I'm just curious.

SPEAKER_00

I remember I remember that name in Sumter, you know. Yeah. Yeah. He was pretty good, I think.

SPEAKER_03

Uh I don't know, but you don't have to say that now, you just because you sit in the room.

SPEAKER_00

No, I I think I remember that name talked about a good bit back in those days. I've probably yeah, we took his money again today.

SPEAKER_01

Andrew, Andrew, he threw out the name Buddy Homes. He used to fish for Buddy Home. Buddy is a great fisherman Sumter, and we fish in a lot of the same areas, so I see Buddy a bunch. We fish over in the in the woods across some packs a lot. I'm sure he took you over there back in the day.

SPEAKER_00

And we we caught more fish out of a 14-foot wind yaw than we ever caught out of a bass boat.

SPEAKER_01

So but he he's a great fishman and that kind of stuff. So uh Andrew uh he I'm sure he I'm sure he caught his shear fishing with Buddy back in the day.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, he I mean he taught me about Santee, you know, how to how to fish, you know, going around Sparkleberry, um, upper packs flat. You know, we fished lower lake some. Most of the tournaments blasted out of blacks and stuff back in the day. So when I fished with him, we went out of there. But yeah, he was he always knew how to catch fish. It didn't he had that red stratus. He still got it. Does he? Yeah. He he had a Triton one time, a red stratus. He always had a red truck to match it too. And uh stuffed with the macular, y'all buddy Holmes' boat.

SPEAKER_01

That song gonna shine. I mean he every his truck with wax, his boat with a little bit different than what I have, okay? But it was immaculate.

SPEAKER_00

If you even got close to the cow on that motor with a crankbait, he could sniff it out before you ever hit it. He didn't want a scratch on it.

SPEAKER_01

He was good. He was I mean he actually really did talk about Murray or whatever, had a big tournament over at Murray, and he um he was very gracious, and and he and I can't remember what the guy's name we used to fish the Carolina team trail, did he fish the Carolina team trail with, but they had they had done real well and he he called me inside and he said I had a big I can't remember with the red man tournament or something coming up and he he gave me some tips and put me on some for sure and it was I I always appreciate that because he didn't have to, and that was something he went above and beyond on.

SPEAKER_00

He yeah, he was real good on sand, he was real good on watery too. Lake Watery, he always um not gonna say what bait, but there was one go-to bait that he gloved on. Bubba would tell us I don't know why you're hoping about it. Yeah, I'm serious.

SPEAKER_01

I mean it's changed so much. Let me ask you a question. When you got in the boat with him, how was your attitude? You have a positive attitude when you got in the boat with him. You knew you were catching fish.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, positive mental attitude. That goes a long way done. It it was definitely different than me going by myself. You knew you were gonna catch fish that day.

SPEAKER_03

You just knew it. Well, Andrew, we want to thank you for being with us uh this afternoon to record this episode. It's been a lot of fun. It's been fun getting to know you, getting to hear some of the stories and all the different things you've been involved with in the outdoors.

SPEAKER_04

Very impressive.

SPEAKER_03

Very impressive.

SPEAKER_04

Absolutely, 100%.

SPEAKER_03

Uh, we we want to thank you for being here for this first part, but we also are asking you to hang around. We want to record some more and uh make another episode with you. But as we wrap up this first episode, uh we got some feedback, some positive feedback about the last time we did a word segment. Um, we didn't put it all on Scott and his shoulders. We we had a little group discussion, and we're gonna do that again tonight, even with Andrew, let him join in. Bubba's got a little uh scripture he wants to s read and then speak to, and we'll have a quick discussion as we wrap this up and try to keep our mind on the things that are eternal and that matter.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, so what I'd like to throw out to y'all today in my discipleship group, we've been studying Philippians and Philippians 4 11, and this is Paul, you know, he's he's he's he's writing this letter from in prison, and just says, not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned to whatever. I gotta start that over. I can't read my classes. I'm sorry. Can't read it. Terrible. All right, y'all ready? Yep. All right. So what I'd like to talk to you today about is in Philippians um chapter 4, verse 11. Our D shoot D group has been studying Philippians, and Paul is writing this, of course, from prison. And he says, not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low and I know how to abound, in it in any and every circumstance. And just really stopping there. Um, as you hear Paul writing that, I think it's just contrary to what the world tells us a lot of time that we have to have all these different things in order to be happy. And I think being content in whatever situation we're in is really important for us. Um, because if not, the devil taught for me, I know the devil kind of tricked me, oh, if you have this or you get this, then everything will be okay. And it's always trying to focus on that pursuit of something else as opposed to being content with what the Lord has given you. And I think that's really important for me to understand as we look at our lives. We had the wives on him, we talked about different purchases and everything else, and and I was thinking about that. I was like, you know, how true is that that we need to be content? What a good word from Paul that is to be content in and not necessarily it's not that we don't always have stuff because we do, but even when we don't, that we can be content in that. I just wanted to see what y'all thought about that.

SPEAKER_03

No, it's a good word. My wife and I were just talking with our boys the other day, and we had a couple of things come up that involved material things, and we were reminded, we were reminding each other, honestly, that less is more. Not always, it's not wrong to have some more at times, but it's important to remember that it's good to be nimble uh and it's good not to put your hope or your happiness in things that are temporal because all this stuff is indeed temporal. Uh what what matters is what is gonna last forever, and it's not stuff, certainly not earthly things.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, um Job, I think, says the eyes of man are never satisfied. Um there's there's something in our nature um that makes us always want, always think we need something else, you know, uh whether it's what we've seen our neighbors have or um what we've seen on TV or um our nature is to um want what we don't have. And w one of the secrets I think Paul's getting at there is it's not about possessions, it's learning to um to be content regardless of circumstances or situation or possessions. Um matter of fact, you d you stop reading and uh the next verse or two is I can do all things through Christ who strength strengthens me. Uh Philippians 4 13. And you know, we see that verse a lot, but we don't know that what Paul's actually talking about is learning content can learning to be content. And uh and it takes strength that God provides to recognize, hey, I don't I don't need whatever it I see that I want. Um and it's a lesson we try to teach our kids, but it's also a lesson that we have to remind ourselves of.

SPEAKER_03

Uh and as wholesome as loving the outdoors is, and as wholesome as it is to be outdoors and want to hunt and fish and get your kids out there, that does not exempt us from wanting more. Right. Because there's always another bass boat. There's a bigger center console, there's a nicer shotgun, and all of that stuff is just that's that's sideline stuff. Just enjoy being outside, just enjoy the fish, just enjoy the deer, be with your kids, your friends, your brother. That's what matters.

SPEAKER_01

And I think a good thing for me, a good exercise, I guess, too, is when you start feeling that way, feel like you're kicking rocks or whatever, and that kind of stuff, that you don't have to look around far to see how blessed we are. And if we focus on the blessings God has given us and that kind of stuff, as opposed to trying to say, hey, I need this, then it really helps to change your mindset. Because you don't have to look far to see somebody that's this that's not as in good shape as you are, or whatever. And and so that that helped me as I I look at those kind of situations.

SPEAKER_00

I'm gonna leave y'all with something with this. Uh Scott, I'm sure you've been in Granger McCoy's studio before. You ever looked over there next to his workstations, he's got a three foot by three-foot square box. Yeah. And he liked to tell a story about that box. And what's he say? See, I'm gonna quiz y'all to see if you're paying attention.

SPEAKER_04

I've heard a lot of Granger stories, so you have to remind me.

SPEAKER_00

He said, Everything I need in life, I can put inside of that box, I can stand in that box of what I need. And Peter's brother used to always say, Don't let your possessions possess you. And I kind of feel like you call me out with that verse a little bit because I alluded to it earlier about how busy I am and the last couple weekends finding time, just spend time with my kids, you know, and it it it resets you in life when you forget about what do you need to go do this weekend or everything else. Take that time. That is the most precious commodity.

SPEAKER_03

Amen. Well, we hope that's an encouragement to our listeners as well. We know that we need that, but we hope that's an encouragement to them to try and make the effort to be content in plenty or in want. Um we're excited for y'all listening. We're excited to have Andrew back for another episode. Uh, we look forward to being with you on another mostly legal Monday. Thanks for tuning in.

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Stephen Dinkins

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Bubba Johnston

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Sandy Sanders

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Scott Dinkins

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