Podcast

Gunny’s Sea Stories and Smoke Pit Odysseys

I spent 15 years in the U.S. Marine Corps and during that time my friends and I experienced near daily hilarious situations. These stories, often referred to as “Sea Stories” (tall tales) were often told to an audience in designated smoking areas. We believed these stories were unique to the Marine Corps and could, in a funny way, make the branch more…or less…relatable. At some point I started to keep a notebook of my own stories and the ones I picked up while transiting smoke pits. Since most of us didn’t really want our name put into the public, it was a no brainer that the narrator should be a nameless Gunnery Sergeant or “Gunny”. Gunnys are unique to the Marines and often used to symbolize the Corps as a whole. If you want to learn more about Gunnery Sergeants, check out Battle Order’s web post about the Origin of the Gunnery Sergeant.

Episode 1: Deer Choke

Whitetail Deer by Andrew Patrick found at www.pexels.com

Project Process

Since I have never recorded or edited audio before I had to rely on what was already free and available. All of the audio recording was done by my Samsung S22. I downloaded a voice recording app and got to work. My two sound effects clips were done by holding my phone next to the sound I was trying to capture. For the first, I held it close to ground as I walked through some under brush. For the second I just held it in my hand as I turned the keys in the ignition, opened, and closed the door of my truck. For the narration, I found a quiet room and just spoke into the phone. I was surprised by how well my phone seemed to work. Once I was satisfied that I recorded enough content, I saved all of the clips to my laptop. From there I uploaded all of them onto soundtrap.com which I found to be rather intuitive. I was able to adjust the length and order of each clip to make it fit the 2 minute requirement. It didn’t take long for me to learn how to fade certain sound effects or music clips as narration began. If anyone is interested in making podcasts, I highly recommend Sound Trap, its free and really easy to learn.

Credit/Attributions

While editing in Sound Trap I found that there was a toolbar on the right hand side of the site called Sound Library where they offered a lot of melodies for free. In there I used: Drums – Rock Basic Beat 8ths 5, for my intro and outro music. For the banjo effect when learning that Marines had went after the injured deer, I used: Wildfire – Woo (Banjo) E. All of the voice acting was done by me Rob Hatch. The person that wrote the story wishes to remain anonymous, so he’ll just be known as: Gunny.

For context to the “I am green belt” reference, the Marines have their own recognized martial arts discipline known as the Marine Corps Martial Arts Program (MCMAP). MCMAP is a program that every Marine is required to participate in and information about the program can be found at marines.mil the official program web page.

I also want to offer an explanation as to why the fall season was relevant to the behavior of deer. If you are a hunter or grew up around deer hunting, you would consider this to be common knowledge. But for those who do not; male deer (bucks) in the fall months, Sept-Nov will have higher levels of testosterone. So during their breeding season, bucks will often chase females, sometimes into traffic, in an attempt to mate. For a more detailed explanation of deer behavior, the deeranddeerhunting.com web article Behind the Hide is an excellent source.

Transcript

[Drum Music]

00:00:01 Narrator

Welcome to Gunny’s Sea Stories and Smoke Pit Odysseys, where I share stories about daily life in Marine Corps. This story is called Deer Choke. It was a fall day right in the middle of hunting season on Camp Lejeune. A few deer jumped out into the road. A car going the other direction couldn’t avoid it and smashed into one of them. So I turned around, and by the time I walked up, the driver was on the phone.

[sounds of a car door opening and closing]

00:00:33 Narrator

He covered the mouthpiece of his phone and said:

00:00:37 Driver

“I’m on the phone with the MPs.”

00:00:37 Narrator

I nodded and started looking around. That’s when I noticed another car was there, but no one was inside and no one was around either. I looked back at the guy on the phone and asked where they went.

00:00:47 Driver

“That deer I hit was still alive but dragging its back legs. I think they went in after it.”

00:00:51 Narrator

I must have made an exacerbated look on my face. Because before I could say anything, he shrugged his shoulders and said:

00:00:55 Driver

“I have no idea what they’re doing, Gunny.”

[Banjo music plays]

00:01:01 Narrator

Oh, now my Spidey senses are going off. So I follow that trail they left. As I got close, I could hear them talking.

[Sounds of running and crashing through brush]

00:01:10 Unnamed Marine

“Hey, don’t worry. I’m a green belt. I’ve got this.”

00:01:15 Narrator

When I got there, I saw a Marine standing over a deer with both his hands wrapped around its neck, performing a cartoonish looking choke. So I yelled: “whoa, stop, what are you doing?” And without letting go, he just simply looks up at me and says:

00:01:28 Unnamed Marine

“well gunny, we gotta put it out of its misery.”

00:01:32 Narrator

I hold my hand up and I say: “oh my god, no, not like that we aren’t. Let go of that poor thing.” They tried to protest, but I assured them that I’d call the game warden. Then I thanked them for their service and I sent them on their way.

00:01:43 Narrator

I can’t believe what I just saw. This is the last thing I had on my bingo card for this afternoon.