Speaker 1: My name is Clay Neukman. This is a production of
Speaker 1: the bear Grease podcast called The bear Grease Render, where
Speaker 1: we render down, dive deeper, and look behind the scenes
Speaker 1: of the actual bear Grease podcast, presented by f HF Gear,
Speaker 1: American Maid, purpose built hunting and fishing gear that's designed
Speaker 1: to be as rugged as the place as we explore. Well,
Speaker 1: welcome to the bear Grease Render Podcast. So for anybody
Speaker 1: that is new to this the bear Grease world, the
Speaker 1: Render podcast is where we talk about the bear Grease podcast.
Speaker 1: Bear Grease podcast is a documentary style podcast. Brent right, right,
Speaker 1: and so the Render is where we gather up an
Speaker 1: eclectic crew of usually just like gritty Americans that come
Speaker 1: in here, and we talked about last week's podcast. Man,
Speaker 1: I'm pumped about the eclectic group of people that we
Speaker 1: have here today. So I do my introductions. To my left,
Speaker 1: Brent Reeves looking sharp.
Speaker 2: Brother, always clean, socks good right one left.
Speaker 1: Good man, You're you're this country Life So Brent's the
Speaker 1: host of this country life podcast. We'll come back to that.
Speaker 1: To your left two brothers that you guys are like
Speaker 1: legends in my world. I mean, I'm not kidding I'm
Speaker 1: going to tell you why I understand it. I've got
Speaker 1: Andy and Aaron Stanful here today. Aaron was a storyteller
Speaker 1: on the Dear Stories podcast and he's going to have
Speaker 1: another story on the next podcast. But let me describe
Speaker 1: how I know these guys and then friend, Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I went to prison in two thousand and three. I
Speaker 1: knew no. So I was one of my heroes and
Speaker 1: still is to this day. Is Scott Brown. Scott was
Speaker 1: like four years older than me, which is the perfect
Speaker 1: age to idolize somebody and to kind of be influenced
Speaker 1: by who they are. Scott went to the University of Arkansas.
Speaker 1: I get married, My first married home was in Faedville.
Speaker 1: I start working and Scott was from my hometown. Me
Speaker 1: and Scott start working together, which has worked the same
Speaker 1: place and so and by that time, Scott had knew
Speaker 1: you guys and was hunting with y'all, and he talked
Speaker 1: about you guys like y'all were just like the best
Speaker 1: hunters that ever lived. He did, and so I just
Speaker 1: I believed him back then, And no, no, no, do
Speaker 1: you remember remember one time Aaron, I rode in the
Speaker 1: truck with you and Scott to go hunting. See, I
Speaker 1: was just like a little pip squeak. It was just like,
Speaker 1: it's just like Brown, who's this guy? Why is he here?
Speaker 1: That's the way I felt around you.
Speaker 3: It seemed like a group of guys. We hunted all
Speaker 3: the time. Me, Lucas Scott. We went to the management
Speaker 3: area three days a week. So you've may have been
Speaker 3: on one of those trips.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was, as I remember it, So you don't.
Speaker 1: But didn't you come to our camp one year?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 1: Yeah I did, so that would have been after that,
Speaker 1: probably the same year. Okay, y'all camped in some public
Speaker 1: ground over here, and I went to the camp and
Speaker 1: it was all the guys. I'm getting ahead of myself.
Speaker 1: Let me go ahead and introduce the whole crew, so
Speaker 1: our our buddy here can jump in to Aaron's left.
Speaker 1: Is my dad, Gary the Believer? Nukem? How's it going
Speaker 1: to do? You hear your name come up in the podcast?
Speaker 5: Come down me and I love it. I'm getting all
Speaker 5: most of amous is old render man over there. Yeah
Speaker 5: you agreed with me too. Didn't you knew it was
Speaker 5: a black panther that stole? There's no question about that.
Speaker 5: I mean everybody knows that the rector cougar won't go
Speaker 5: up a tree. Yeah, of course, you gotta had to
Speaker 5: be in a black one like that.
Speaker 1: It's like that one right there. You see our black
Speaker 1: panther over there. Andy. That's nice. Yeah, that's that's a
Speaker 1: nice touch. So the Dad's left, Lucas Austin Luke, good
Speaker 1: to have you, man, Thank you.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 1: Luke was a storyteller too, he man, he had a
Speaker 1: home run on the last the last story on this
Speaker 1: first episode he did. It was fantastic, it really was,
Speaker 1: and I told it so so, Luke, Luke, I've known
Speaker 1: you most of my life, but we weren't our circles
Speaker 1: never they overlapped briefly because you're enough younger than me.
Speaker 6: And uh and then when you and Scott when you
Speaker 6: came to Fatteville, it was about the time I was
Speaker 6: leaving Fayetteville, right, And uh, I remembered you as a
Speaker 6: as a young pup, your dad bringing you the bow shoots,
Speaker 6: and I mean you was a youngster. And uh, I remember,
Speaker 6: so I've known you. When you said a long time,
Speaker 6: that's that's accurate.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know where I remember your face most. Lucas
Speaker 1: was on uh, polaroid pictures at the bow shop for real.
Speaker 1: Oh killer, There's just some things you just remember. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember seeing, you know, this guy four or five
Speaker 1: years older than me that was killing deer and hogs
Speaker 1: and stuff. I feel like you killed. I feel like
Speaker 1: I remember there was a picture of you a hog.
Speaker 1: So anyway, just stuff you remember. But uh, no, I
Speaker 1: told I told Luke that for what a lot of times.
Speaker 1: For what I'm trying to do in a stories podcast,
Speaker 1: a sentimental story is a hard one to pull off,
Speaker 1: and I'm glad I didn't tell him. I'm glad I
Speaker 1: didn't coach him because I just trusted him that he
Speaker 1: would know how to handle a story. I often coach
Speaker 1: people not to tell sentimental stories because everybody's got one
Speaker 1: and they don't always translate. Do you understand what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not trying to be like mean or something,
Speaker 1: but like, everybody's got a story about whether kids first
Speaker 1: deer or this or that, and a lot of times
Speaker 1: it's super meaningful to you, but as far as entertainment value,
Speaker 1: it's hard to translate. He knocked it out of the
Speaker 1: park with this one, Like the I meant it, I
Speaker 1: meant it when I said, sitting there listening to you
Speaker 1: tell the story, I was like, take that gun away
Speaker 1: from that book. And then and then then Ryan gives
Speaker 1: him the gun and I'm like, oh, dang. I was
Speaker 1: a little upset. I was like, shoot, I didn't really
Speaker 1: want him to take it. And then he gets to
Speaker 1: beat and I'm like, yeah, he's about to shoot that
Speaker 1: buck and he's like nope, and I'm like, no, Luke,
Speaker 1: don't give it back to it. Back when I knew Luke,
Speaker 1: he'd have shot the two dos I ever got there.
Speaker 5: That's why I made this statement that I have not
Speaker 5: always been this way, because yeah, one, because when Aaron
Speaker 5: and I run around together, there was nothing safe with me.
Speaker 6: And the things have sure changed. They sure have a
Speaker 6: lot of things have changed.
Speaker 1: Well, now to go back, so, so, Lucas, Aaron, and Andy,
Speaker 1: y'all all knew each other real well for years and years. Aaron,
Speaker 1: tell me how you met Lucas.
Speaker 3: I was a sophomore or a junior, probably sophomore in college.
Speaker 3: Went to the University of Arkansas, and well about the
Speaker 3: first week I walked into a computer class. I don't
Speaker 3: even remember what the class was called, but Anyway, I
Speaker 3: walked in there and I was lost and just just
Speaker 3: trying to find somebody. It looked like me, you know,
Speaker 3: to sit by. And I saw no we sitting over
Speaker 3: the High Country Archery shirt on.
Speaker 1: And.
Speaker 4: That's a mark right there, and I'm.
Speaker 3: Gonna go sit by him. And anyway, we become best
Speaker 3: friends immediately.
Speaker 1: Mm we we did?
Speaker 4: That? Was it? When?
Speaker 1: After that? So in our deer camp the next fall? Yes? Yeah,
Speaker 1: Now that brings up an interesting name, high Country. When
Speaker 1: you told that story to me the other day, what
Speaker 1: the high Country used to be? This is a little
Speaker 1: bit of a rabbit trail. But dad will Dad was
Speaker 1: a big high country man. Back in the day. High
Speaker 1: Country was the top of the line bow in the
Speaker 1: nineteen nineties. It was. It was hard to beat. It
Speaker 1: was fast, good looking, it was. It was I'd like
Speaker 1: to do a marketing a marketing inquiry and a business
Speaker 1: like to understand what happened because they could. They were
Speaker 1: so big. The name was so good, the bows were
Speaker 1: so good. And today I think they're actually still in business.
Speaker 1: I think the name, I think they're still in business,
Speaker 1: but they're like not a major player. Unfortunately. It'd be
Speaker 1: interesting to find out what happened.
Speaker 5: You know, I would bet I would bet they bought
Speaker 5: an airplane.
Speaker 1: What do you mean a lot of companies? You tell
Speaker 1: me what you mean? Well, uh, it's kind of a dealing.
Speaker 5: If you get your you know, you first time you
Speaker 5: really get in a big buck, you want an airplane,
Speaker 5: and sometimes you buy it about ten years.
Speaker 1: Too early, Mike dropped moment from the old banker bought
Speaker 1: an airplane. What kind of high countries did you have?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 1: I had ex caliber, Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I had several, and I blew a lot of up.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 5: They I got one shooting three hundred and forty feet
Speaker 5: per second back when guys were shooting two twenty, you know.
Speaker 5: And I mean you just won a big archery tournament
Speaker 5: with it because I could shoot out to forty yards
Speaker 5: pretty flat. I mean you put it at forty yards
Speaker 5: and just come up two inches and wacko, and uh.
Speaker 1: I you know, it was pretty amazing.
Speaker 5: Took it home and I thought, I'm going to go
Speaker 5: to this really big shoot down in South Arkansas.
Speaker 1: With a bunch of fannies.
Speaker 5: And I pulled my bowl back in the backyard and
Speaker 5: both limbs just folded up. And I never went to
Speaker 5: another tournament until you know, Louie Dell got me to
Speaker 5: go to a tournament one year out of his house,
Speaker 5: and so I just quitch tournaments after that.
Speaker 2: There was a bow shopping Warren, and this was probably
Speaker 2: been man, it was rarely. It was late eighties, maybe
Speaker 2: ninety at the most, and they had a seventy pound
Speaker 2: high Country in there, and I knew the guy that
Speaker 2: run the bow shop and he said, Man, you gotta
Speaker 2: shoot this thing, he said, So, I said what you
Speaker 2: said on He said, seventy pounds, that's all. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: can pull that back. I was worried I wasn't gonna
Speaker 2: have children for a long time. That was the hardest.
Speaker 2: That thing was stout, buddy. I mean you had bows
Speaker 2: back then. A seventy pound bow pulling back today and
Speaker 2: one back thirty years ago. I guess that's been thirty
Speaker 2: years in it. It's a big difference.
Speaker 4: So it was.
Speaker 2: I remember that was my first introduction to the high Country.
Speaker 2: Was that was a man's bow. Yeah, man, I didn't
Speaker 2: get one.
Speaker 1: Er, Andy, when did you start bow hunting?
Speaker 3: Nineteen ninety five? I believe so I was fifteen and
Speaker 3: nine year.
Speaker 1: How much younger Aaron's older brother. I think there's three
Speaker 1: and a half years between us.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I just wasn't strong enough to shoot a
Speaker 3: compound bow until you know, ninety five. Really, I shot
Speaker 3: a crossbow there for a couple of years, and uh
Speaker 3: started bowl hunting ninety five and that was the first
Speaker 3: year that I hadn't even killed a deer before then
Speaker 3: at all, and hunted a lot. And I think in
Speaker 3: the podcast last week, Aaron you mentioned, you know, how
Speaker 3: hard it was to even kill a deer with a
Speaker 3: bow back then. Uh, you know, I don't know if
Speaker 3: it was just a lack of experience or what it was,
Speaker 3: but we it wasn't. I mean, I was hunting hard
Speaker 3: out there and just you know, wasn't seeing the number
Speaker 3: of deer. And anyway, that first year that I started
Speaker 3: bow hunting, ninety five, I killed my limit.
Speaker 1: I limited out that very first year. And uh so, yeah,
Speaker 1: ninety five, yep, ninety five. Dad brought up an interesting
Speaker 1: name there that came upon the podcast Louis Delle Louis.
Speaker 1: If you if you've listened to the Beargrease podcasts, you
Speaker 1: know who Louisdale and Charlie Edwards are. I actually went
Speaker 1: back and listened to all three of those episodes from
Speaker 1: early in the Bear Grease world on Loue Dale and Charlie.
Speaker 1: Because on this episode lou Deale and Charlie came up.
Speaker 1: You probably knew them pretty good, didn't you lose?
Speaker 6: Yeah this, you know, coming from a dog hunting family,
Speaker 6: you know, there were just certain areas of dog men,
Speaker 6: you know, and you knew not to go that way
Speaker 6: with your dogs because that Edwards, you know, that was
Speaker 6: their territory. We had our territory, and uh, you know,
Speaker 6: and back then everybody had a pen full of dogs.
Speaker 6: And of course my family was similar to what Travis
Speaker 6: Ross said. They running his dad, Jean, and my dad
Speaker 6: and uncle and all them running the same circles.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 6: Okay, so your dad fox and wolf hunting was the
Speaker 6: main thing, and uh, and then they just ran ran deer.
Speaker 6: When season opened, it wasn't that they had specific deer dogs.
Speaker 6: They just had running dogs that would run a deer.
Speaker 1: You told me how many many dogs your dad and
Speaker 1: uncle had at one time.
Speaker 6: Between my dad, my uncle, and my grandpa, it was
Speaker 6: not uncommon for us to have fifty hounds. And when
Speaker 6: I say fifty hounds, I'm talking fifty walker running dogs,
Speaker 6: not tree They were specific to running kyotes and fox
Speaker 6: and deer. And uh so I grew up in that
Speaker 6: still hunting was not in my family, so I kind
Speaker 6: of broke the mold with still hunting. You know, in
Speaker 6: my my dad's generation, there were no deer, kind of
Speaker 6: like Andy Brown talking about his dad, Barney, who I
Speaker 6: knew as a young man. He was a character, let
Speaker 6: me tell you. And if you were offended by language,
Speaker 6: you would get offended quickly with it in his presence.
Speaker 4: But he was.
Speaker 6: He was a good man. Loved them July hounds, and
Speaker 6: Andy even mentioned, you know, his dad casting them July
Speaker 6: as well. I come from a family of folks.
Speaker 1: That hated julyes.
Speaker 5: Oh really, yeah, my, if it wasn't a walker, it
Speaker 5: wasn't worth having now.
Speaker 1: But a July as a walker?
Speaker 6: Not in my world?
Speaker 1: Okay, uh not in my world. They weren't. But they
Speaker 1: looked there were. They were a tricolored white, black and
Speaker 1: brown dog. Did they would they have looked any different?
Speaker 6: They were built built basically the same, but there was
Speaker 6: you could tell looking at them if it was a walker,
Speaker 6: if his July.
Speaker 1: What would a July would be?
Speaker 5: Sleeker, thinner, not necessarily, uh maybe, but more they're coloring.
Speaker 6: They'd be more of a yellowish color.
Speaker 4: Uh, then have a lot of white on them.
Speaker 6: You said, really they were they were really they were
Speaker 6: not black white ten They were kind of yellow yellow
Speaker 6: black tan.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 6: Uh, but it is always fun to listen to them
Speaker 6: old timers, you know, fuss the July men, very wi
Speaker 6: is the Walker men. I mean, it was a dividing line.
Speaker 6: It was just like OU and OSU. If you're if
Speaker 6: you're a Sooner fan, if you're a Cowboy fan, you know,
Speaker 6: you could get in to fight quick.
Speaker 1: Now. Travis said something that I would have qualified, but
Speaker 1: I kind of just let it go. He said his
Speaker 1: dad was a fox and wolf hunter. Yes, sir, which
Speaker 1: we all know and he knows it too, that there
Speaker 1: hadn't been wolves around here for one hundred years, right,
Speaker 1: or probably one hundred and thirty years, but.
Speaker 6: That was what everybody referred to as you know, I
Speaker 6: guess back in the original days of whenever it was
Speaker 6: one hundred and thirty years ago or whatever long ago
Speaker 6: it was, we did have wolves and uh. But when
Speaker 6: you hear somebody talking about fox and wolf dogs, that's
Speaker 6: what they're talking about.
Speaker 4: Coyotes.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it was kind of just a given. I
Speaker 1: knew he was talking about running kyotes. Yep, and he
Speaker 1: did too.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Fox and Wolf Hunter.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 6: If you're seeing the associations around the state still to
Speaker 6: this day, they don't say fox and Coat, it's Fox
Speaker 6: and Wolf Foxner associations. Yeah, huh, at least the ones
Speaker 6: I'm familiar with.
Speaker 1: Dad. Did you know Barney Brown and his dad? I
Speaker 1: did not. He dies in the mid nineties. Maybe, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're pretty young. We're Scott and I were. There's about
Speaker 1: a year difference to Scott and I.
Speaker 4: He was.
Speaker 6: Probably ten or so when his when his grandpa passed.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 6: He loved his hounds, probably more I mean I and
Speaker 6: you you've probably heard Andy say this very thing that
Speaker 6: the dogs ate before the family did. I mean, he
Speaker 6: cared for his dogs and because they put meat on
Speaker 6: the table, you know, it was it's kind of a net.
Speaker 1: It was a tool. Yeah. And uh, does your family,
Speaker 1: any of your family still run dogs? They do not.
Speaker 6: Most of My family's gone. My uncle still living, but
Speaker 6: in poor health. And he was the he was the
Speaker 6: sure enough dog man of and who was that. Uh,
Speaker 6: everybody's gonna know him as as dude Austin. His his handle,
Speaker 6: his CB handle is the watchmaker.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 6: He he worked at Thomas Jewelry and had his own
Speaker 6: jewelry store for years, and he his trade was working
Speaker 6: on watches.
Speaker 4: Okay, okay?
Speaker 1: Is it? Are you a little bit sad that that's gone?
Speaker 6: I am because some of my greatest memories of my
Speaker 6: my previous generations, my father, my grandfather, my uncle, and
Speaker 6: all those guys that a lot of them have passed
Speaker 6: on our memories that I was that were made with dogs,
Speaker 6: and and it was a totally different kind of hunting.
Speaker 6: And I know, for for folks that have never done
Speaker 6: it, it might have been you know, it might have been controversial.
Speaker 6: It was never controversial.
Speaker 4: For me.
Speaker 6: I understood, Yeah, you know, I understood the game because
Speaker 6: I saw the love and respect that my family had
Speaker 6: for their hounds and the feeling two different, two totally
Speaker 6: different feelings that you get from running dogs to steal
Speaker 6: hunting running dogs an adrenaline rush, like like I can't explain,
Speaker 6: you know, And there ain't no deer management with that.
Speaker 6: You're not you're not being very select You're not being
Speaker 6: very selective, you know, as I've heard my uncle say
Speaker 6: plenty of times. You know, you just you just build
Speaker 6: a fence of bullets and hope they run into it.
Speaker 6: And but most of them guys did it not for
Speaker 6: not for killing anything. They want to hear good race. Yeah,
Speaker 6: And so having a good dog was was better than
Speaker 6: money and because you could sit.
Speaker 1: Around and talk about it. A good dog for.
Speaker 6: Generations and he's gone, you know. And some of the
Speaker 6: finest men I ever knew, the best storytellers.
Speaker 5: I ever knew, we were dog hunters. They could tell
Speaker 5: a story. And it's kind of an art to telling
Speaker 5: a good story. And not everybody is home their craft.
Speaker 6: I'm afraid I want to get off on a wild
Speaker 6: goose chase here, But I'm afraid our younger generations are
Speaker 6: losing that because of social media and texting and the
Speaker 6: lack of communication. But I'm gonna tell you something, telling
Speaker 6: a story to me will last outlast most things, because
Speaker 6: people are gonna remember a story that they heard, you know,
Speaker 6: just like all of us in here right now, I
Speaker 6: could tell so many stories that we'd be here a week.
Speaker 6: And I'm not sure that a younger person could could
Speaker 6: duplicate that, because I don't know that they've soaked it
Speaker 6: all in or know how to articulate what they've seen,
Speaker 6: what they've experienced. Extremely thankful to have been exposed to
Speaker 6: people that could tell stories, have some stories of my own,
Speaker 6: and and so very important.
Speaker 1: Yeah, did y'all have any exposure to dog hunting, Aaron Andy,
Speaker 1: Very little, but we did have some. So listen. In Arkansas,
Speaker 1: there's like basically four regions of Arkansas. There's the Ozarks,
Speaker 1: there's the Washitalls, which is a southern mountainous region, It's
Speaker 1: the Gulf Coastal Plain, and there's the Delta. It's not
Speaker 1: really four quadrants, but it's like that. In the mountains. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean fifty years ago, you could have run dogs
Speaker 1: anywhere in the whole state, and that would have been
Speaker 1: common throughout the southern United States. Running deer with dogs
Speaker 1: was the way that deer were hunted. And then gradually
Speaker 1: just things changed and dog hunting in the Delta it
Speaker 1: was less practical there because of lots of private land.
Speaker 1: But in the Ozarks. I heard I heard this from
Speaker 1: someone who knows the story that in the nineties there
Speaker 1: was a commissioner of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission
Speaker 1: that lived in the Ozarks. That just wanted dog hunting gone,
Speaker 1: and that was his agenda on his seven year term
Speaker 1: as a Game and Fish officer was to eliminate dog
Speaker 1: hunting in the Ozarks, and he did that.
Speaker 3: I was going to say, I think one reason we
Speaker 3: weren't exposed as much as we hunted public land. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and I think just prior to when we really got
Speaker 3: to hunting, they'd banned hunting with dogs on public land.
Speaker 1: There's the early nineties.
Speaker 3: You know, lots of times we'd be hunting, we could
Speaker 3: hear dogs that were joining the management area on private
Speaker 3: and lots of times they'd run deer to us or
Speaker 3: you know, be honest with you, I remember trying to
Speaker 3: sit close to those fence lines.
Speaker 1: Well there was one year. I don't know who pulled
Speaker 1: the strings.
Speaker 3: I don't know if it was a dad or who
Speaker 3: it was God uscendo that joining property and so we
Speaker 3: could I don't know how many. There were several hundred acres,
Speaker 3: So I mean we we got in there and we did.
Speaker 3: That was my first chance or first opportunity to run dogs,
Speaker 3: and man, I remember it was.
Speaker 1: It was awesome. It was it was excite. I killed
Speaker 1: two deer.
Speaker 4: And I killed a Bobcat.
Speaker 3: So when we when we left Kid, when we left camp,
Speaker 3: I had never been exposed to that. So when we
Speaker 3: left camp, Dad looked at me and he said, you know,
Speaker 3: we're after meat.
Speaker 1: I mean, we we need meat. You know, world, we
Speaker 1: are camped. We don't have any meat. And uh, if
Speaker 1: you see a deer, you you pulled the trigger. And
Speaker 1: uh so here come them dogs. I could hear them
Speaker 1: and and uh man, I was excited, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: of course, just like they told me, here we're two
Speaker 1: dogs out out in front of the of the dogs,
Speaker 1: and I had a level action thirty thirty open sites
Speaker 1: and then they were there were two does and which
Speaker 1: I don't know back then, I don't know what the
Speaker 1: laws were. But anyway, so these two does were out
Speaker 1: in front of these dogs and it was probably one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty hundred and seventy five yards away up
Speaker 1: the haller and made the two best shots I've ever
Speaker 1: made in my life. The first one dropped and second
Speaker 1: one I miss and of course I know levered another
Speaker 1: one in there and I missed a second time. And
Speaker 1: third shot I got that next one, but man, it
Speaker 1: was awesome. I mean, we were all excited and I was,
Speaker 1: I was hoping to holler and had a great time
Speaker 1: doing that. I'd like to have got to do that more. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, to me, it's a lot, it's a lot
Speaker 1: bigger issue than just can you do it in one
Speaker 1: spot or not. When you look across the big traditions
Speaker 1: of hunting in North America, there's really not a lot
Speaker 1: of places where you can still run dogs. And I
Speaker 1: said on the podcast, I grew up as a bow
Speaker 1: hunter in an area where they could run dogs, and
Speaker 1: I killed a few deer in front of dogs unt
Speaker 1: with the cunning Hams, some good friends of mine, and uh,
Speaker 1: and I loved it. But it's you know, we didn't
Speaker 1: have deer dogs. That's not the way we hunted. Dad
Speaker 1: was a bow hunter. But now I am adamant. I mean,
Speaker 1: just I'll debate anybody in the world Brent Reeves on
Speaker 1: the the just the importance, the cultural importance of keeping
Speaker 1: some of this stuff alive. I mean, and yeah, and
Speaker 1: if you live in some area where they're running dogs
Speaker 1: and you don't want to have dogs, and I you know,
Speaker 1: I could talk about the pros and cons, and the
Speaker 1: cons would be dogs don't understand private property, lines and
Speaker 1: they just don't and the deer's going to run somewhere
Speaker 1: and the dog's gonna follow it. And man, the way
Speaker 1: that that was handled in the decades past, when people
Speaker 1: knew their neighbors, they they understood kind of what people
Speaker 1: were doing. Is they just they just kind of tolerated
Speaker 1: when things when a dog came across, or when it
Speaker 1: was just kind of a known thing. And and it worked.
Speaker 1: That a system that worked. And then as the world
Speaker 1: has changed, which it has, a lot people are moving
Speaker 1: into these rural areas. I mean in the seventies, eighties
Speaker 1: and nineties where we all grew up, there wasn't a
Speaker 1: lot of people quote unquote yeah outside, Yeah, there was
Speaker 1: no reason to go there. Today, a lot of people
Speaker 1: buying recreational property in rural America everywhere, coming from different places,
Speaker 1: and and so it's a lot more of a society
Speaker 1: that is it doesn't know each other, that's and so
Speaker 1: there's there's there was a system that worked, and it's
Speaker 1: much harder now. And and even back then when I
Speaker 1: was a kid, I remember people that hated the dog
Speaker 1: runners for sure, and uh, and in my mind, it's
Speaker 1: like for what we're for what we're up against culturally.
Speaker 1: I love it. I love it, and I love that
Speaker 1: there's still there's still a lot of dog running going on.
Speaker 1: A lot of families are still are still doing it,
Speaker 1: and even even some younger generation to people that are
Speaker 1: still running dogs and whatnot.
Speaker 6: Yeah, but it's not it's not extinct. In some of
Speaker 6: the counties that you have a lot of national forest
Speaker 6: in Scott Montgomery Polk, still still a lot of dog hunters.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 6: And I miss it just because you know, it was
Speaker 6: a it was something that generations of my family did
Speaker 6: and uh and still have you know, the connection to
Speaker 6: the memories that were made doing all those things, and
Speaker 6: and you know, I could probably reel off ninety percent
Speaker 6: of the dogs that my uncle and my dad owned.
Speaker 6: I could still I could describe them to you, tell
Speaker 6: them to tell you their names and all those things.
Speaker 4: And uh uh.
Speaker 6: It was the night before modern gun Deer season in
Speaker 6: my family was was better than Christmas Eve gather at
Speaker 6: my grandparents' house. And my grandpa was a War two veteran,
Speaker 6: hardest working man I ever knew, ever will know. He
Speaker 6: had no hobbies zero, but other than he liked to
Speaker 6: go deer hunting. And carried a shot gun buckshot. He'd
Speaker 6: shoot the whirl down.
Speaker 1: He shot.
Speaker 6: I guess he shot at every dear everything and didn't
Speaker 6: kill a lot. You know, he's kind of like, you know,
Speaker 6: kind of like Barney Brown. My grandpa was born. It
Speaker 6: was either in nineteen sixteen or nineteen seventeen, and one time,
Speaker 6: my grandpa was not one to throw a lot of
Speaker 6: kudos your way, a lot of compliments.
Speaker 1: He was a real tough guy.
Speaker 6: But I skinned a deer one day in front of him,
Speaker 6: and he said, you know what you're doing right there,
Speaker 6: And that was maybe one of the first and only
Speaker 6: compliments I ever got for my grandfather and got all that.
Speaker 1: It meant the world to me.
Speaker 6: You know that I had a skill that my grandpa
Speaker 6: thought was pretty neat. But I think that year, I
Speaker 6: think in that one season, I killed more deer in
Speaker 6: one season my grandpa did in his entire life. And
Speaker 6: my grandpa lived to be eighty three years old, so
Speaker 6: he was in that generation of where there were no
Speaker 6: deer at all. You know, I can remember a story.
Speaker 6: I can't remember who told this story, but I know
Speaker 6: it was true because I heard it from more than
Speaker 6: one person that somebody had not made it to church
Speaker 6: that Sunday morning, and on the wherever they were at
Speaker 6: to send it deer across the road, and they drove
Speaker 6: to the church house, kicked open the door, and announced
Speaker 6: to the congregation in the middle of the sermon, I
Speaker 6: just seen it deer across the road. And everybody filtered
Speaker 6: out of the church house, went to the house, gathered
Speaker 6: the dogs, and the race commenced. And to the best
Speaker 6: of my knowledge, this occurred in July.
Speaker 1: It was.
Speaker 6: It was not even a hint of deer. Season, you know,
Speaker 6: season didn't Season did not matter. They've seen it, Dear,
Speaker 6: They're gonna they're gonna do their best try to collect it.
Speaker 1: So, Brent, of the stories you heard, which one stood
Speaker 1: out to you? So there was seven seven stories on
Speaker 1: this episode.
Speaker 2: Well, they were all good.
Speaker 1: Uh. I figured you'd probably like mine the best.
Speaker 4: Did you tell one?
Speaker 1: Probably the apple story? M hmm was great, Craig.
Speaker 4: It was.
Speaker 2: It was, absolutely it was wonderful. And while I was
Speaker 2: listening to it, I could I could see he told
Speaker 2: the story very well, and I could say when he
Speaker 2: dropped that apple, when apple started rolling, I thought, Oh,
Speaker 2: I know where this is going.
Speaker 1: Man, Oh, did you think he was gonna call it, dear.
Speaker 4: I did.
Speaker 2: I did, I really did. I thought this is going
Speaker 2: to be good, and it fell out. It went that
Speaker 2: way because I was reminded of a story a friend
Speaker 2: of mine told me twenty years ago when when the
Speaker 2: snort weeze craze just started coming out, he said, no.
Speaker 7: Deer never did that before. Two thousand and one, exactly before.
Speaker 7: But he said, he said, I bought one of these things.
Speaker 7: He said, I climbed up on my deer stand. He said,
Speaker 7: I was sitting there, he said, I when I first
Speaker 7: sat down on that stand, he said, I pulled it
Speaker 7: out of my pocket. He said, I didn't know which
Speaker 7: end of this thing to blow. He said, I just
Speaker 7: went and blowed it like that. He said, I looked
Speaker 7: at it the next thing I know. I mean it
Speaker 7: was a good deer. It's a one hundred and forty
Speaker 7: inch deer come crashing through and he shot him at
Speaker 7: the bottom of his stand, just from that one little
Speaker 7: blow thing, you know that he did, he said, And
Speaker 7: he wasn't even close to what it sounded like, he said,
Speaker 7: but I heard it coming. So they reminded me of
Speaker 7: that story that I had.
Speaker 1: You know, some unexpected calling in a deer exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And I killed a turkey one time in Missouri, crossing
Speaker 2: the fence, and I was a lot closer to that
Speaker 2: turkey than I thought. When I put my hand on
Speaker 2: that barb war it screeched in the in the staple,
Speaker 2: it went in the turkey golf. I said that by
Speaker 2: the fence posting. Ten seconds later, the turkey poked his
Speaker 2: head up over a heel and I killed him.
Speaker 4: So I know what that guy was dealing with.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so identified you know this, this episode came together
Speaker 1: and I had I had more. I've got twice as
Speaker 1: many stories as what it's been told on this first one,
Speaker 1: and I I cherry picked kind of entitled at the Unexpected,
Speaker 1: because every story there was something unexpected that happened, from
Speaker 1: Dale's Apple to Aaron Peen out of a tree calling
Speaker 1: one in, to uh to uh most Shepherd's mysterious deer
Speaker 1: in the tree, to Andy Brown's dad hitting one with
Speaker 1: a truck.
Speaker 3: Me.
Speaker 1: I threw mine in just because I could my me,
Speaker 1: my daughter down below me, which was just different.
Speaker 4: That's the best story you have ever. You said that,
Speaker 4: I loved it.
Speaker 1: You know what I did. I told that story to Aaron.
Speaker 1: I learned a trick a lot of times. If I'm
Speaker 1: telling a story I recorded in here by myself and
Speaker 1: he was here at the office. Aaron came here at
Speaker 1: the office to tell me a story, and I said, hey,
Speaker 1: let me tell you a story, and it was it
Speaker 1: was easier. It's easier to like kind of. I feel
Speaker 1: like you could do a part two, three, four through
Speaker 1: thirty on deer stories and they would all be fantastic episodes,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, really well, I'm gonna make at least
Speaker 1: one more and maybe even two more. And uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I could have done one on big Bucks. I probably
Speaker 1: will at some point. It's not nearest fun well, it
Speaker 1: might it would be. It could be, though. I mean
Speaker 1: to hear everybody's like biggest Buck story. Might do one
Speaker 1: on the deer that got away. You know, Dad tells
Speaker 1: a story on the next one of a big one
Speaker 1: that got away. It was a great story. I want
Speaker 1: to go back though, to Dale Cragg and the Apple.
Speaker 1: When Dale Craig told me that story, he I told
Speaker 1: him afterwards, I said, that's one of the best stories
Speaker 1: that I've ever heard told on this podcast. I thought
Speaker 1: that just just the way, just the way it happened.
Speaker 1: That's the kind of story I like. But Dale Craig
Speaker 1: is the kind of guy that I don't. I can't
Speaker 1: say that he's never listened to a podcast, but it
Speaker 1: would not surprise me in the least if you just
Speaker 1: if he said, Claire, I've never listened to a podcast
Speaker 1: in my life. I mean, you know Dale Craig Dad,
Speaker 1: You know him, Uh, he's he's a rural cattleman, cowboy, ferrier.
Speaker 1: And I went to his house and this first time
Speaker 1: I've been to his house. I kind of just have
Speaker 1: known him most of my life and I went to
Speaker 1: school with his boys, but they were just kind of
Speaker 1: people I knew and always had a lot of respect for.
Speaker 1: And so I finally went to his house and I said, man,
Speaker 1: I'd love to see some of your deer. And he
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, I got a few out here. And
Speaker 1: I mean people like me have him hanging on the
Speaker 1: wall like right here, you know, and if I meet you,
Speaker 1: I'm like, hey, you want to see my deer? Dale
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, yeah, I got a few. And we
Speaker 1: went out to a storage building and he had some
Speaker 1: racks in there and he pulled them out and set
Speaker 1: them in the grass, and I mean they were just
Speaker 1: all just it was five or six, you know, one
Speaker 1: forty to one fifty inch deer. And I was just like,
Speaker 1: oh man, wow, this and he's telling me the stories.
Speaker 1: You know, this one came from here, and this one
Speaker 1: came from here. Some of the places he could see
Speaker 1: from his house. He looking miles away into the mountains
Speaker 1: from his house. He'd say that deer came from over there.
Speaker 1: And then he's like, come out here for a minute.
Speaker 1: And we walk into his barn and these deer weren't up.
Speaker 1: I envisioned, like just deer all over this barn. He
Speaker 1: had barrels full of racks that he probably hadn't looked
Speaker 1: at in fifteen years that he starts pulling out, and
Speaker 1: I mean like deer that would be mounted on my wall.
Speaker 1: I mean, like one hundred and thirty five one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty inch deer just on the skull.
Speaker 4: He just just admit something to him, wouldn't he as well?
Speaker 1: It reminded me of again, I'm kind of reminiscent on
Speaker 1: the Louisdale and Charlie episodes, but the final episode of
Speaker 1: the louis Dale and Charlie series, I asked Stony Edwards.
Speaker 1: I said, do you have a bunch of the racks
Speaker 1: of the deer that your dad killed? And he was
Speaker 1: like no. And I was like, what do you mean
Speaker 1: you don't have any deer horns or your dad's and
Speaker 1: he said they didn't keep them. I was just like
Speaker 1: what and he said, he said, Clay, he said, when
Speaker 1: we'd have deer camp, he said that week of deer camp,
Speaker 1: whoever killed the biggest deer was a big deal, was
Speaker 1: as big a deal as anything in the world. And
Speaker 1: we'd have those racks setting over there, and he said
Speaker 1: when we started packing up deer camp, Dad would have
Speaker 1: to tell some kid, Hey, if you want to take
Speaker 1: those horns home, you can. I mean, it just didn't
Speaker 1: mean anything to him, and these horns meant something to Dale.
Speaker 1: But my point is this guy is a big buck killer,
Speaker 1: I mean a big buck killer, and you know he's
Speaker 1: not advertising it to the world. He's not. I just
Speaker 1: went to him and cherry picked some of his stories.
Speaker 1: But those are the kind of guys I like to
Speaker 1: have on the Bear Grease podcast, Guys like Luke and
Speaker 1: Aaron and Andy that hadn't been on many podcasts. Well,
Speaker 1: he's a good storyteller. He did a great job of that.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I'm gonna tell you something. He is he is
Speaker 6: one of the hardest working human beings that's ever lived.
Speaker 6: And probably it'd be hard to it'd be hard to
Speaker 6: argue this probably one of the most successful cattle ranchers.
Speaker 1: Around.
Speaker 6: And he is a working dude, and he has he
Speaker 6: has raised some hard working deer killing machines too, and
Speaker 6: his daughter is one of them. She's killed some thumpers.
Speaker 6: But he's he's taught all his kids, Yeah, to live life,
Speaker 6: live a life like him, hard working ex you know,
Speaker 6: good hunters. So yeah, Dale, could they could sit around
Speaker 6: and tell you stories till the cows came home?
Speaker 4: Literally?
Speaker 1: M h Yeah, that was a good one. Andy, which
Speaker 1: which of the stories did you like? Man?
Speaker 3: I remember listening to the episode, I thought, man, this
Speaker 3: is you know, I'm going to talk about this one.
Speaker 3: I mean, every every one of these guys, you know,
Speaker 3: had had something that really struck home with me. You know,
Speaker 3: I just went through the roller coaster emotions throughout the
Speaker 3: whole episode. I felt like, uh, you know, some of
Speaker 3: them are funny. Eron's and Andy's were hilarious, you know,
Speaker 3: and Uh.
Speaker 1: Were you surprised when Annie's dad ran that deer over?
Speaker 3: Unbelievable? You know, to back over the thing again. Was
Speaker 3: just putting the icing on the cake for me. But
Speaker 3: you know, back then, like he said, you know, it
Speaker 3: was you know, there wasn't all that very many deer.
Speaker 3: So when you've seen, when you finally seen a deer,
Speaker 3: you did what you had to do to put meat
Speaker 3: on the table. So that's just where we come from.
Speaker 3: And I really appreciate that that episode or that and
Speaker 3: telling that story, but uh, no for me, you know,
Speaker 3: Luke yours really. I mean, I just want to give
Speaker 3: you a big old bear hug when you finish, you know, man,
Speaker 3: because I can relate with that.
Speaker 1: I mean, I have a six year old boy and
Speaker 1: I'm getting in you know.
Speaker 3: Uh, he's finally getting into it, you know, and he's
Speaker 3: really wanting to be out there. And and this is
Speaker 3: our first year, opening day of weekend, opening weekend of
Speaker 3: both seasons, our first time get out there. And you know,
Speaker 3: every year previously, I've been shooting my bowl a lot,
Speaker 3: you know, in the summer and getting ready and doing
Speaker 3: it all for me. But it's not about me right now.
Speaker 3: It's I just want to get him going. So I
Speaker 3: related to you, you know so much. It's a huge
Speaker 3: sacrifice for you to let you know, him pull the
Speaker 3: trigger on it. And uh yeah, I was basically just
Speaker 3: about in tears at the end of your at the
Speaker 3: end of yours, like I said, I just want to
Speaker 3: give you a big bear hug.
Speaker 1: Yeah I had. I had a lot of feedback on yours, Luke.
Speaker 1: A lot of people really said that was a neat story.
Speaker 1: It was you did a really good job. Luke appreciate it. Yeah, Aaron,
Speaker 1: which one stood out to you? And you can't say Luke's, now, okay, Luke's.
Speaker 1: You could say mine, you want. If mine stood out
Speaker 1: to you, that's fine. I'd like to hear about it.
Speaker 1: But we've given Luke all credit he needs. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is his like second podcast, so I don't want
Speaker 1: him to like start thinking.
Speaker 6: Hey man, you know, man, I'm too busy to be
Speaker 6: a podcaster or so.
Speaker 3: I liked all of them. I did, I liked I
Speaker 3: didn't have a favorite. I did like the fact that
Speaker 3: Andy Brown said he said, if we'd have met a car,
Speaker 3: we'd just run over him.
Speaker 1: Yeah a minute, Yeah, you know, yeah, man, stories like
Speaker 1: Andy I'm cutting you off to be your turn just
Speaker 1: a minute. To me, when I hear a good storyteller,
Speaker 1: it's always some obscure thing they say that isn't relevant,
Speaker 1: you know, Is it highly relevant that you never forget?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, and Andy said, we were coming down through there
Speaker 1: and we're going so fast we to just run over somebody.
Speaker 1: If we'd have seen him, you kind of you just
Speaker 1: like he would have met a car. We'd run over them.
Speaker 2: We did just run over them. Yeah, it's like kids
Speaker 2: and cussing. You can be talked about anything and say
Speaker 2: one cuss word and that's what the kid's gonna go
Speaker 2: back in the house. How do you know that, Brent,
Speaker 2: I'm just saying I saw it on TV.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, But I likeed Andy's honesty with his with
Speaker 1: his dad. Yeah. I enjoyed that.
Speaker 3: I enjoyed the history of his dad and what that meant,
Speaker 3: you know, to his dad. Killing a deer was a
Speaker 3: big deal Feather family. It was part of the sport too.
Speaker 3: But I mean, none of that deer went to waste.
Speaker 3: It would be totally unethical today, you know, to do
Speaker 3: something like that, But back then it was.
Speaker 1: A different time. Yeah, I had enjoyed that. I really did.
Speaker 1: I had to talk Andy into telling that story. So
Speaker 1: Scott told me, he said, man, you ought to get
Speaker 1: my dad to tell about Barnie Brown in that particular story.
Speaker 1: And I had texted Andy and he he didn't respond
Speaker 1: back immediately, and he called me and he said, Clay,
Speaker 1: if I tell that story, they're going to run us
Speaker 1: out of town or you know, something like that. And
Speaker 1: I said, I said, I said, I hear what you're saying.
Speaker 1: And I said, I don't want you to tell if
Speaker 1: you don't want to, I said, for real, But I said,
Speaker 1: I think we can give the context in such a
Speaker 1: way that it'll be it'll actually be really powerful because
Speaker 1: that's where we came from, whether we want to acknowledge
Speaker 1: it or not. And I felt like it the he
Speaker 1: did such a good job of telling the context, the
Speaker 1: history of his dad, I mean, his dad going to
Speaker 1: prison and you know, just the hard times, what it
Speaker 1: meant for them to kill a deer. I mean, just
Speaker 1: it was perfect. I loved it. I loved it. I
Speaker 1: did too break it in Abner Store.
Speaker 4: I wish.
Speaker 5: Yeah, a lot of listeners might not know what he
Speaker 5: was talking about, right, I mean, it's lumb and Abner.
Speaker 5: I mean they were the star Hollywood people and probably
Speaker 5: what the twenties or so.
Speaker 1: So the Dick, I'm glad you said that. So the Dick,
Speaker 1: the Dick Huddleson store in pine Ridge, Arkansas was the
Speaker 1: basically the home office of lum and Abner, which was
Speaker 1: a national radio program that ran for twenty three years
Speaker 1: in America. And these two basically these guys we talked
Speaker 1: about them on our Arkansas podcast, we did, but Lumon
Speaker 1: Abner were the face of the American hillbilly for twenty
Speaker 1: three years when radio was the biggest thing. I mean,
Speaker 1: they were national celebrities like you would have recognized the
Speaker 1: President of the United States and Lomon Abner and and uh.
Speaker 1: And they were based out of pine Ridge, Arkansas, down
Speaker 1: there where we were at. And so the Dick Huddleston
Speaker 1: Store was the Dick Huddleston Lumon Abner store.
Speaker 6: The down store is still there today, it's.
Speaker 5: Now you put a post of that store, yeah, a
Speaker 5: couple of months ago.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So Barney, he he knew how to pickle man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, do I get the little grocery store
Speaker 1: down here? The Lumon Abner stores yeah, well, I thought
Speaker 1: it was interesting that they turned he turned himself in,
Speaker 1: he went and told his uncle. You know, boy, I'd
Speaker 1: like to hear how that story went, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: what happened there. But uh no, that was probably I'm
Speaker 1: kind of like, I'm kind of like, well, a couple
Speaker 1: of you have said all of them. All the stories
Speaker 1: were really meaningful. Andy's was probably was my favorite, just
Speaker 1: because it's so unique. He's just so gifted as a storyteller. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's yes, he's one of the best storyteller. Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah, And I've obviously I've known Andy my entire life,
Speaker 6: spent a lot of time hunting with him, worked with
Speaker 6: him for almost eleven years. And uh that guy can
Speaker 6: tell a story like nobody else. And you you can
Speaker 6: see the same thing. You be standing right next to him,
Speaker 6: see the same thing, and he tells that story, and
Speaker 6: you're sitting there the man that is a At times
Speaker 6: you'll be like, no, wait a minute, was I was
Speaker 6: I there? You know he's got a little more les. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 6: and uh oh, yeah, Scott's got some of the same. Yes,
Speaker 6: Scott can tell he can tell a good story, but
Speaker 6: uh Andy can sit around and tell you countless countless
Speaker 6: stories about his dad, about all his wild youth and
Speaker 6: and all the hunting trips he's been on. And he's
Speaker 6: I know, he won't be offended to be telling this,
Speaker 6: but he is literally a calamity just waiting to happen.
Speaker 6: And you know he's he's notorist for dropping stuff out
Speaker 6: of the tree stand. In fact, he dropped He dropped
Speaker 6: his light out of his tree standing two days ago,
Speaker 6: you know, and it's shining up in the tree.
Speaker 1: Right at him. Crawl down and get it. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: crawled down, got it.
Speaker 6: But uh uh, you know he's he come by it honest.
Speaker 6: His dad, Barney was a storyteller. Uh Barney was Uh,
Speaker 6: he was full of it. I mean he could he
Speaker 6: could put a little icing on the cake and uh
Speaker 6: uh but anyway, that.
Speaker 1: Well, it's it's to me, it's uh, it's a unique
Speaker 1: intersection with somebody with a high level of competency and
Speaker 1: a high level of ability to tell a story come together,
Speaker 1: because anybody could. I mean, you could go to school
Speaker 1: and learn how to tell the story, or you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, storytelling is a big deal in the world. Really,
Speaker 1: when you look at just even television, I mean, everything
Speaker 1: is a story. But when you have somebody like Andy
Speaker 1: who's a veteran hunter and is a is a what
Speaker 1: I would say, I mean, I would one say. I mean,
Speaker 1: he's a bonafide woodsman for the woods. He hunts, he
Speaker 1: knows what's going on, and so when when those two
Speaker 1: things meet, it's it's pretty unique. Yeah, yeah, that which
Speaker 1: one stood out to you? No question?
Speaker 5: They were all pretty boring. And now I tell you what,
Speaker 5: I did you remember that story?
Speaker 6: No?
Speaker 4: I did not.
Speaker 1: It's not one I've really thought. I don't even know.
Speaker 5: I didn't probably didn't even know what happened, but uh,
Speaker 5: you know that it was pretty neat in that you
Speaker 5: accomplished a lot that you you you you held up
Speaker 5: your duties as a father, and you twisted it to
Speaker 5: where you could deer hunt.
Speaker 1: I think we've all done that one way or the other.
Speaker 1: But probably you know. I'm like you, guys.
Speaker 5: Every story was just unbelievable, but I would go with
Speaker 5: most Shepherd.
Speaker 1: Really, I mean, you find your deer up in a tree. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And you know another thing I liked about it.
Speaker 5: You know, I'm out of that age where I don't
Speaker 5: know how to corn hunt, I don't know how to
Speaker 5: put a camera on the side of a tree. I
Speaker 5: just go out and hunt deer, and that's what he
Speaker 5: was doing. He was out there just hunting deer the
Speaker 5: old fashioned way, and he killed that buck and a
Speaker 5: mountain lion pulled it up in that tree. I just
Speaker 5: almost one hundred percent sure or a black panther. It
Speaker 5: could have been a black panther.
Speaker 1: That was That was part of Mo's story that if
Speaker 1: you were paying attention, you would have caught something. He
Speaker 1: said they were deer in that area in the fall,
Speaker 1: and he hadn't even been in there scouting, but he
Speaker 1: knew when the ice came that those deer were going
Speaker 1: to be in those old home places with the greenbrier
Speaker 1: above the ice. That's good woodsman. Yeah, he knew. He
Speaker 1: didn't even have to go scout. He's just like, there'll
Speaker 1: be deer there.
Speaker 5: He wasn't hunting a pinch point or a trail. I mean,
Speaker 5: he was hunting where they were going to eat.
Speaker 1: And I can relate to that. So yep.
Speaker 3: Anyway, that was a significant ice storm that year. I
Speaker 3: told you the story that the day. I remember, well,
Speaker 3: I told you the story the other day of that
Speaker 3: same ice storm. Yes, yeah, yeah, they were starving.
Speaker 1: It was bad.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they had trails in that ice. That's the only
Speaker 3: place they could walk. If they got off those cutout trails,
Speaker 3: they were slipping and sliding everywhere.
Speaker 1: What do y'all think happened to his deer? I mean,
Speaker 1: there's there's debate you could debate, and it would just
Speaker 1: be speculation of did a animal drag his deer from
Speaker 1: that pool of blood? Because I mean a question I
Speaker 1: would have had for it is like, wouldn't you have
Speaker 1: seen drag marks through the ice, like if an like
Speaker 1: if the deer had been laying there and something carried
Speaker 1: it off, But the ice was so hard that they weren't.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like snow. So But there is not a
Speaker 1: beast in these woods that carries like a jaguar or
Speaker 1: a leopard carries stuff up in trees to eat. I
Speaker 1: mean even a mountain lion doesn't do that. A bear
Speaker 1: doesn't do that. Oh you were serious when you said
Speaker 1: they don't do that? Yeah? I thought you were. Could they? Well, well,
Speaker 1: black panther will no. I mean, I'm I'm saying some
Speaker 1: animal acted outside of its norm.
Speaker 5: What do y'all think? Anybody have any Hey? I got
Speaker 5: I got the answer. I know what happened. I mean,
Speaker 5: I know black panthers, and I know I know mountain lions.
Speaker 5: That mountain lion caught that deer right where the big
Speaker 5: block of blood was, and he knew if he drug
Speaker 5: it off, every animal in the woods would follow that trail.
Speaker 5: So he ate quite a bit of it, cleaned the
Speaker 5: blood up was real neat, drug it off, drug it up.
Speaker 1: In that tree, and he was probably a black panther.
Speaker 5: But I don't know that that could be crazy, but
Speaker 5: I just know it could be the deer.
Speaker 1: We all almost every deer I've had the track, I
Speaker 1: don't like tracking them. They're going to do that.
Speaker 5: They're gonna run, They're gonna lay down, they're gonna bleed,
Speaker 5: they're gonna jump, and then the blood gets real thin.
Speaker 5: So the deer probably laid down, something scared it, it
Speaker 5: jumped ran off, and then the mountain lion came in
Speaker 5: drugge good.
Speaker 4: That's the good.
Speaker 1: Maybe it jumped it and then it killed it somewhere else. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The other part of the story was that it was
Speaker 1: real steel deep country and Moe went downhill looking for
Speaker 1: that deer. He kind of made an emphasis that he
Speaker 1: was he didn't go uphill, but that deer was two
Speaker 1: benches up. Yeah, but what do you think, Well, the
Speaker 1: bobcat do that? I mean no, but bobcat won't do that.
Speaker 1: I mean they don't. It's not typical for and I
Speaker 1: mean I'm not a bobcat. Well, I am a bobcat expert.
Speaker 1: I mean, look at me. They're not a leopard or
Speaker 1: African a jaguar. Leopard will take kills up in a tree.
Speaker 1: I mean typically, I don't think a Bobcat's gonna do that.
Speaker 1: I don't think.
Speaker 2: They're big enough. Yeah, not as big as that deer was.
Speaker 2: I thought maybe, and I listened to it. I had
Speaker 2: to back up. I thought, well, he shot the deer
Speaker 2: and it jumped off that bench and letting a tree.
Speaker 2: But it was up above where he shot him.
Speaker 4: Correct.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, So I went back and I thought that, mo,
Speaker 2: I got your answer. I'm fished to call you up.
Speaker 2: And I thought, wait a minute, maybe it was above
Speaker 2: And so I went back to listen to it again,
Speaker 2: and yeah, it was above where he shot it. So
Speaker 2: the only other thing other than something dragging it up
Speaker 2: in that tree is it makes the loop and jumps.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I bed if Moe was here. I bet he'd
Speaker 1: tell you that that physically wouldn't be possibve. I mean,
Speaker 1: I I'm just.
Speaker 4: Having the picture how he's describing it, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I found a deadhead one time,
Speaker 1: about fifteen feet up in a tree. I have no
Speaker 1: idea how I got up there. It was tangled in
Speaker 1: like small small branches. Deerhead, Yeah, deerhead weapon a tree.
Speaker 3: We've got a lot of bald eagles, you know. The
Speaker 3: deer may ran off. The deer may ran off and
Speaker 3: died the moment I found it. It may have rotted down
Speaker 3: the ground and buzzards, coons, everything might have chewed it
Speaker 3: up for days, and then an old bald eagle may
Speaker 3: come in there and grabbed it or I don't know,
Speaker 3: I mean and put up in a tree.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, a melanistic bald eagle. There you go.
Speaker 5: What do you got, Dad? You're right, I didn't know this.
Speaker 5: Mountain lions do not carry prey up trees. So there
Speaker 5: you go. I've been wrong my whole life.
Speaker 1: I didn't say black pans, right. But here's the thing
Speaker 1: is that they're in all animals. There's a typical way
Speaker 1: in which they're going to act, and would a mountain
Speaker 1: line be capable of carrying a deer up a tree?
Speaker 1: And and the thing that's not up for the bait
Speaker 1: is that something carried that up a tree and it
Speaker 1: wasn't a human. I mean it's like a human didn't
Speaker 1: do it, an animal did it. So something did it
Speaker 1: that was here.
Speaker 4: And then it was.
Speaker 1: Pretty compelling to hear him say three years later he
Speaker 1: saw a mountain lion. And you know, for those of
Speaker 1: you guys that don't know Mo, in my mind, Moe
Speaker 1: is like highly credible in terms of any way I
Speaker 1: evaluate someone in the woods. I mean like he's he's
Speaker 1: a real deal, like a lot of these guys that
Speaker 1: I'm talking about. And so I mean he tells me
Speaker 1: he sees him out in line. I believe him, And
Speaker 1: so interesting story.
Speaker 3: Yeah, when you spend as many hours in the woods
Speaker 3: as a guy like him, yeah, you're gonna have a
Speaker 3: story like that. I mean, everything happens to you, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was a great Have you ever seen him
Speaker 1: out in line?
Speaker 4: No? But he has.
Speaker 1: Have you you have seen one in Kansas?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 1: I have absolutely? You forgot I did. I wouldn't. Well,
Speaker 1: I was thinking around here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, twelve thirty in the afternoon, eighty degrees middle of Kansas,
Speaker 3: wide open cattle pasture both sides of the road. Andy
Speaker 3: and I are driving down the dirt road and a
Speaker 3: cat jumps the road. I don't know if he landed
Speaker 3: once or twice, but he jumped a fence, jumps the fence,
Speaker 3: hits the road, jumps again over the fence, and just
Speaker 3: goes right out across a pasture.
Speaker 1: And was gone.
Speaker 3: Middle of the day. And there was no question what
Speaker 3: it was. Mm hm yeah, probably two thousand and ten,
Speaker 3: just guessing. Really, yeah, sure enough.
Speaker 1: Big can in Arkansas, you think, Andy.
Speaker 3: So, my cousin Jared and I were bow hunting around
Speaker 3: Eureka Springs and two the guy that owned the local bow.
Speaker 1: Shop whatever his name, I can't remember.
Speaker 3: We still got the bow shop over on Beaver Dam. Anyway,
Speaker 3: he had pictures of some cattle that had some claw
Speaker 3: marks on the hands of the cattle, and so anyway,
Speaker 3: going knowing that we uh we got permission to bow
Speaker 3: hunt on him and uh yeah. So we we were
Speaker 3: just sitting there bow hunting and a a doe come
Speaker 3: running through the field out of the woods, just really
Speaker 3: you know, running running hard.
Speaker 1: We thought, what in the world you know? And this
Speaker 1: it wasn't all that far away.
Speaker 3: And I wish Jared was here too to confirm the story,
Speaker 3: but because it seems like you always need to people
Speaker 3: to confirm it.
Speaker 1: But yeah, we're not. I know it sure enough. You know,
Speaker 1: here comes a big cat and it was it was
Speaker 1: right as a pasture. So you saw it playing his day.
Speaker 3: Blain's day, running over after this dough up over the
Speaker 3: hill and that was that. So as we sat there,
Speaker 3: Jared he always had a predator call in his pocket,
Speaker 3: and he thought it'd be funny or smart to try
Speaker 3: to call this thing in. He started, you know, on
Speaker 3: this call that like, what in the world are you doing?
Speaker 3: I was trying to get the heck out of there.
Speaker 4: That's the last with Jared.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they didn't come back, didn't come back, didn't come back.
Speaker 1: Well interesting, I've never seen I've never seen one in Arkansas,
Speaker 1: seen seeing them in different parts of the world. But uh, Luke,
Speaker 1: which story stood out to you?
Speaker 6: Well, uh, just like the rest of you guys, they
Speaker 6: all stood out to me. The dog hunting connection with Travis.
Speaker 6: I enjoyed it because talking about transitioning from being a
Speaker 6: lifer dog hunter, going all the way to the mountains
Speaker 6: to try this new method of hunting with Dale and
Speaker 6: to end up right back in the dog race. Because
Speaker 6: I've been in this, I've been in several situations exactly
Speaker 6: like that. You know, I'm off, you know, in the
Speaker 6: nineties and the early two thousands, trying to trying to
Speaker 6: still hunt. You're hear in the distance, you hear that
Speaker 6: dog open, and immediately you start looking to man the
Speaker 6: battle station because you know, golly, I'm sitting in the
Speaker 6: right spot right here, and a lot of times here
Speaker 6: they come.
Speaker 1: Everything changes when you hear a dog too, Guarantee it does.
Speaker 5: Yeah, if you're carrying a lever gun, the hammers getting
Speaker 5: caught getting snapped off your shoulder and your gun trying
Speaker 5: to get all comfortable, and because when it happens, it's
Speaker 5: like that, and you you're shooting skills and all those
Speaker 5: things out the window.
Speaker 6: They go and and you just sling as much ammunition
Speaker 6: towards them as you can.
Speaker 1: Mm hmmm mm hmm. Well, Isaac, what was your favorite story?
Speaker 1: Being out of the tree gave Isaac validation.
Speaker 4: I've heard relief, didn't it.
Speaker 1: I heard that story. I've heard that story for for years,
Speaker 1: and that was the first time I heard it straight
Speaker 1: from you. You're pretty sure you damaged your bladder, huh.
Speaker 3: I spent a lot of hours in a tree stand.
Speaker 3: I mean I used to hunt a lot, and I
Speaker 3: didn't know any better. You know, I'd hold it and
Speaker 3: I remember holding this bad that I would just get
Speaker 3: to hurting, and uh, I don't do that anymore, but.
Speaker 1: I carry a bottle now. I don't know where it does.
Speaker 3: But uh, yeah, I think I damaged my bladder as
Speaker 3: a kid just holding it because I just knew that
Speaker 3: if I was in the bathroom, the deer would smell
Speaker 3: me and then I wouldn't get to kill a deer,
Speaker 3: you know. But that particular day that all worked out,
Speaker 3: that all worked out, that was that was I'll never
Speaker 3: forget that. And they come in just like you had
Speaker 3: a breadcrumbs to the woods.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: The part that he didn't tell was he calls me
Speaker 3: and he says, hey, I've shot some deer, you know.
Speaker 3: So I it was getting dark and I drove up
Speaker 3: there and he's sitting there on the side of the road,
Speaker 3: sitting on top of his climbing tree stand. It's blaring
Speaker 3: you know, where's your deer at He gets up, picks
Speaker 3: up his climbing tree stand and both of those deer
Speaker 3: underneath that time.
Speaker 1: That's to tell that party. That's my favorite part of
Speaker 1: this story. I mean you it was a big deal.
Speaker 1: Lots of my life I to this day. Probably if
Speaker 1: I wasn't after a big buck man, a Yearland deer
Speaker 1: comes by. Oh the idea that you wouldn't shoot at
Speaker 1: Yearland is beyond me. There was no chance I to
Speaker 1: pass them up. I mean that was a big deal.
Speaker 3: Now we were to kill one, I killed two. I
Speaker 3: was talking of the camp. It didn't matter if they
Speaker 3: were Yearlands or not.
Speaker 1: You know that was that was my favorite part about
Speaker 1: that story. And you remember what I said. Do you
Speaker 1: remember how I introduced him. Oh yeah, this man has
Speaker 1: killed at Lite well as of two days ago, twenty
Speaker 1: five deer that went over this story to me that
Speaker 1: you know, you got a big time deer hunter here.
Speaker 5: But when he gets started, there's not as many deer
Speaker 5: back then. No, So I mean, to kill two deer
Speaker 5: in one day, I could relate to that man. I
Speaker 5: mean when I started in seventy seven, Holy Kell people,
Speaker 5: the entire city of Hot Springs. There was only two
Speaker 5: of us that could kill a deer with a bowling era.
Speaker 5: It is a you know, the gun hunter guys didn't
Speaker 5: know how to do it. Yeah, they're raised in deer camps.
Speaker 5: They don't know why to kill the deer with a bow.
Speaker 5: And I didn't even know how to hunt. But it
Speaker 5: just hit me one day, Hey, if i'm hunting humans,
Speaker 5: I'm gonna going to McDonald's and I'm gonna find the McDonald's.
Speaker 5: And so it was real easy for me to kill deer. Now,
Speaker 5: if I could kill two little deer. I told this story.
Speaker 5: I don't know if it's on a podcast, but I'm
Speaker 5: sitting in the stand one day and a big dough
Speaker 5: comes out boy, and I'm getting already I'm gonna nail her.
Speaker 5: And I look back and she's got a smaller dough
Speaker 5: behind her, and I'm thinking, okay, easier to get to
Speaker 5: the truck. Well, I look back and there's two more,
Speaker 5: and the last one was the small one. So I
Speaker 5: let them all walk and I whacked that little doy.
Speaker 1: That's where I come from. Yeah, yeah, yeah, there is
Speaker 1: no zero shame and killing a killing small deer. I mean,
Speaker 1: as long as it's within the boundaries of the law.
Speaker 5: Hey, I got another deal that that might be good
Speaker 5: for some of the youngs. You set your goals in life,
Speaker 5: and many many times you set them way too low.
Speaker 5: But because I started in the seventies, my goal, and
Speaker 5: I didn't know how to deer hunt, My goal was
Speaker 5: to kill a deer every year with a bowl and
Speaker 5: eraw All my buddies thought it was funny, my dad
Speaker 5: thought it was funny. Everybody just laughed at me. So
Speaker 5: my goal was to kill a doe, a deer with
Speaker 5: a bowl and era. So when it got up to
Speaker 5: where you guys were coming on killing big bucks, hey,
Speaker 5: I was still happy.
Speaker 1: To kill a doe.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know where if I said I'm going to
Speaker 5: be a big buck hunter, you know.
Speaker 1: But anyway, Yeah, no, you always said that to me,
Speaker 1: and that made a lot of sense. And it also
Speaker 1: But what I've seen you do, though, is stay true
Speaker 1: to your roots and not really be influenced by what
Speaker 1: society said was valuable. And I'm kind of I kind
Speaker 1: of live in both worlds, like you know. I mean,
Speaker 1: I love to target the mature deer and try to
Speaker 1: kill him, and that's really important to me. But I
Speaker 1: also very quickly can turn into a dough hunter and
Speaker 1: go out and shoot a doe and it just be
Speaker 1: like a big deal and it and it comes from
Speaker 1: that and and yeah, what you would the trend of
Speaker 1: the age is, and especially now that we have exponentially
Speaker 1: more deer than we used to have, options are there's
Speaker 1: more options. They're they're they're you know, and and it's
Speaker 1: kind of funny. It's like something happened about two thousand
Speaker 1: and five twenty ten, and everybody and their mom could
Speaker 1: kill a deer with a bow, I mean it, and
Speaker 1: it it happened probably because of just more people were
Speaker 1: doing it. It happened because there was more information about
Speaker 1: how to do it.
Speaker 3: Uh you know, our technique. The technique changed about that time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and in states where you can bait I mean,
Speaker 1: where where you can bait a deer on private land. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: and it's it's happened around here. I mean it. He
Speaker 1: changed the.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, And we can talk about that another time. But yeah,
Speaker 3: uh it it changed the way deer hunting is today.
Speaker 3: Uh yeah, probably for the worst, but that's a discussion
Speaker 3: we have some of time. But uh, prior to that,
Speaker 3: I did I didn't know people baited deer at all.
Speaker 3: I mean, it just wasn't that something that you heard
Speaker 3: that happened in South Texas.
Speaker 1: We hunted, we hunted, We'd hunt for days to see
Speaker 1: a deer. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I can go get a fourth grader right now, put
Speaker 3: him in a line with a crossbow over a corn pond.
Speaker 3: He can harvest a deer this afternoon and he's never
Speaker 3: shot a deer up cross bow before today. That was
Speaker 3: unheard of on our day. But just the way things
Speaker 3: have changed, and it's a good or bad, it is
Speaker 3: what it is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, no doubt, no doubt, Aaron.
Speaker 6: I think that, like when you and I first met you,
Speaker 6: you thought you didn't have very mey deer coming from
Speaker 6: where I was from first time y'all took me hunting,
Speaker 6: I thought I had died and went to heaven.
Speaker 1: I remember that.
Speaker 6: I mean because I saw more than one deer.
Speaker 1: I remember that. Yeah, there were, well I.
Speaker 5: Saw six or seven deer, you know, I mean, I'm like,
Speaker 5: by golly, the fact. First the first I told this
Speaker 5: to Clay when we were talking about how you and
Speaker 5: I met and everything. The first day we ever hunted together,
Speaker 5: Aaron killed at eleven point buck shot him in the throat.
Speaker 3: Because they got that, because deer still got in my shop. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I said, what happened? He goes, well that's what I
Speaker 3: could see. I'm like, good enough. I was so proud
Speaker 3: of that deer. That's the biggest buck that's ever lived.
Speaker 3: It probably ninety five inches. I mean, I was so
Speaker 3: proud of him.
Speaker 1: Hey, I was gonna I was gonna bring up Aaron
Speaker 1: killed two days ago, Dad one hundred and forty seven
Speaker 1: inch deer with his bowl here.
Speaker 5: Really, yes's amazing, man, I really congratulate people that do that.
Speaker 5: But hey, you one thing I did, I was so
Speaker 5: impatient if a deer walked up, I'm going to kill it.
Speaker 5: No one that if I'd sit there all day, a
Speaker 5: buck probably would walk in. And the way I hunted,
Speaker 5: I had several big bucks come in, usually October twentieth
Speaker 5: through November the fifth, and just it wasn't meant for
Speaker 5: me to kill them. I mean I very seldom ever
Speaker 5: missed a deer. They usually dropped within fifty yards, but
Speaker 5: a big buck would come in. I wouldn't even be nervous,
Speaker 5: you know, And I just do all this kind of
Speaker 5: stuff and finally get on it and forget it's at
Speaker 5: thirty yards and I got my twenty pence. Stuff like
Speaker 5: that just happened.
Speaker 1: And you were and you were hunting public land too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't think you ever killed a deer on private land.
Speaker 1: Probably you probably did one or two.
Speaker 5: Maybe in Texas. I went on a Texas hunt a
Speaker 5: couple of times where I did. But anyway, and another thing,
Speaker 5: most of you guys have be embarrassed to tell this,
Speaker 5: I'm not, but I was afraid of heights. I jumped
Speaker 5: off a big old building when I was ten years old,
Speaker 5: and I think that's why I had my knees replaced.
Speaker 5: And I mean I could not stand up on a stand.
Speaker 5: I could not shoot to the back. I couldn't shoot.
Speaker 5: I let so many deer go on the right hand,
Speaker 5: left hand side. I just let them walk. I mean,
Speaker 5: I hunted for the deer to be right here. I
Speaker 5: didn't even want them in front. I wanted them right there.
Speaker 5: And so I mean, I think about all the deer
Speaker 5: I killed, I probably could have killed twice that many
Speaker 5: if I could have stood up and turned. And as
Speaker 5: I got the last five years, I got a little
Speaker 5: bit over that.
Speaker 4: But it's kind of.
Speaker 5: Everybody's got their own little niche and you got the
Speaker 5: big bucks. And you, I know, you killed a bunch
Speaker 5: of big bucks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Brent, you did it. Deer Stories. So this country
Speaker 1: life with Deer Camp, Deer Camp Stories, Deer Camp.
Speaker 2: Man, let me tell you, petty jam baloney made right
Speaker 2: here in Arkansas. But the pepper realist that that was
Speaker 2: the trick.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm.
Speaker 2: That was good, good stuff.
Speaker 1: It sounded good to me. Man, I thought it was funny.
Speaker 1: He said.
Speaker 3: He still had his mouth full. He was chewing as
Speaker 3: fast as he could when he walked up there. He
Speaker 3: won't make sure his buddy didn't get any of this.
Speaker 1: You have to be hungry. If Brent had half a
Speaker 1: baloney and relish sandwich and you walked up to him
Speaker 1: and you're like, hey, you might have had the rest.
Speaker 4: That's my nephew. Now.
Speaker 2: He's twice as tall as I am, and he could
Speaker 2: he would eat it.
Speaker 1: Sure, that's funny, that's funny. Well, shoot, guys, that's been good,
Speaker 1: been real good. This is just the just the beginning
Speaker 1: of the Deer Stories podcast. This is always one of
Speaker 1: my favorite times of the year because I get to
Speaker 1: go and meet with guys. I mean, just like Luca
Speaker 1: came down to where you live, met with you, Aaron
Speaker 1: came over here. Dad's got a story. I went and
Speaker 1: saw Andy, I went and saw Mo. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: just like it's kind of like for me, it's it's
Speaker 1: a lot of fun gathering up all these stories. And
Speaker 1: I'm interested in other people's stories too. It's hard in
Speaker 1: some ways doing what I'm doing is it's kind of
Speaker 1: a bummer because there's a lot of great people that
Speaker 1: listen to this podcast that hear these stories and are like, oh,
Speaker 1: they need to Clay needs to hear this story. And
Speaker 1: it's very difficult to like parse through. Like if you
Speaker 1: message me, you're like, Clai, I got a great story.
Speaker 1: I mean you do? You probably do? I know you do.
Speaker 2: I tell you what I'm interested in. I would like
Speaker 2: to hear. Does Willow remember that? I would love she?
Speaker 1: I actually brought it up to her. I told her,
Speaker 1: I said, well, you're on the podcast this week, and
Speaker 1: I told her, and she she I don't think she
Speaker 1: has any recollection of that?
Speaker 4: Is that right?
Speaker 2: Because the whole time I was listening to it, and
Speaker 2: I sent you a text when I listened to it,
Speaker 2: that's the best story you have ever told. And I
Speaker 2: was there with you when we told the world the
Speaker 2: story about the bear slipping in on us, you know,
Speaker 2: But that to me was the best story.
Speaker 1: Was it the story or the way told it or both?
Speaker 2: It had to be a combination of all of it,
Speaker 2: because I could see the whole thing playing out, because
Speaker 2: you know, I know you obviously, and Willow, and I
Speaker 2: could see her and I've seen pictures of her when
Speaker 2: she was that age, and I could see all that
Speaker 2: playing out in my head because I would take my
Speaker 2: oldest daughter Amy with me when we would go duck hunting,
Speaker 2: and she'd be sitting in the blind, or i'd take
Speaker 2: Bailey with me, now you know, and she would at
Speaker 2: that age and she'd just be playing the color and
Speaker 2: then just having a ball and while I'm trying to
Speaker 2: kill a deer, but really just spending time with them.
Speaker 2: But to hear them, to hear my daughter Amy, and
Speaker 2: to hear Bailey or my son Hunter tell a story
Speaker 2: from their viewpoint of a story that I've told with
Speaker 2: them with me, it's it's it's different. They see a
Speaker 2: whole different thing, and it's to me, it's a better story.
Speaker 2: So I hate that she don't remember because that's the
Speaker 2: story I would love to.
Speaker 1: I thought about it. I think it was just like
Speaker 1: and I'm not trying to say that we did that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff all the time, but we did that
Speaker 1: stuff all the time. I mean, I think it was
Speaker 1: just like a Tuesday. I mean it was special because
Speaker 1: we killed a deer, and it's special because I, you know,
Speaker 1: just the unit. I never did that again, just like that.
Speaker 1: But I mean they went with me a lot.
Speaker 4: Well, it was just imperfect. It was a perfect story. Yeah,
Speaker 4: that was perfect. It was good.
Speaker 1: I looked. I thought about too a photo I took.
Speaker 1: I've taken a picture of almost every deer that I've
Speaker 1: ever killed, and I cannot find that picture. And I
Speaker 1: think it was the the beginning of the digital age
Speaker 1: for me when I went from actually taking real photos
Speaker 1: that you went to develop. And I think we took
Speaker 1: pictures of that on a cell phone and they just
Speaker 1: are gone. And it was before social media. I wasn't
Speaker 1: on social media then, or nobody was, I guess two
Speaker 1: thousand and six to speak of. And so I think
Speaker 1: that now I can go back twelve years into social
Speaker 1: media and find pictures, which is risky because I mean,
Speaker 1: who's to say, Facebook's gonna be around tomorrow. I mean,
Speaker 1: but anyway, it just it was a gap of about
Speaker 1: five years or were. I hardly have any pictures.
Speaker 5: I know, you run out of time, but I'm the grandpa.
Speaker 5: Let me tell you something that it really impressed me
Speaker 5: is you got a little girl that's real compliant and
Speaker 5: real smart, and you just say you've got to do
Speaker 5: these things and she goes okay, and she did them.
Speaker 1: You're a little boy.
Speaker 5: You got a little boy rocks just forget totally what
Speaker 5: the instructions are, Yeah, and start pitching rocks in the creek.
Speaker 1: Hey, Daddy to watch this. Yeah. Yeah, But little Willow
Speaker 1: she followed the rules. She did she did. You know what.
Speaker 1: I actually thought about another hunt that took place in
Speaker 1: almost the same spot, different scenario with with my two
Speaker 1: youngest sons, Bear and Shepherd. That was a that didn't
Speaker 1: turn out so good. It was in that same field,
Speaker 1: but we had a blind. I actually had a pop
Speaker 1: up blind, and I don't remember the scenario, but I
Speaker 1: had both the boys in there and they were probably
Speaker 1: three and five. So it's been a couple of years
Speaker 1: later because his sister's older and I remember seeing some
Speaker 1: deer way off, like a quarter mile away, off like
Speaker 1: twenty minutes before dark, and the deer weren't gonna make it.
Speaker 1: And I had a bow and I told the boys,
Speaker 1: I said, boys, y'all stay here, I'm going to go
Speaker 1: try to get that deer. And I had them stay
Speaker 1: in the blind, and I slipped out the back and
Speaker 1: went and stalked these deer and was gone for way
Speaker 1: longer than I thought I was gonna be. And when
Speaker 1: I came back, I heard shepherd just crying in the blind,
Speaker 1: just bawling. I mean for like three hundred yards away.
Speaker 1: I could hear him, and I was like, oh no,
Speaker 1: And I went over there, and they got scared. They
Speaker 1: got scared, you know, but I could they could They
Speaker 1: could have seen me the whole time. I was never
Speaker 1: out of sight of that blind, but I was a
Speaker 1: long ways off, and so they lost track of me.
Speaker 1: And then I was on these deer, Aaron, I mean,
Speaker 1: I was like about to kill them, and it got
Speaker 1: dark on me, you know, and I went back. I
Speaker 1: felt terrible, I mean to the point to the point
Speaker 1: I just like almost cried because I could hear him
Speaker 1: from anyway. That was a nightmare. And I learned something
Speaker 1: on that one. I really did like, I was like,
Speaker 1: I will never do that again. And I, you know,
Speaker 1: leaving a kid cuz my dad. I don't off I
Speaker 1: ever told y'all about my dad. But my dad wasn't
Speaker 1: afraid at all to leave me in the woods for
Speaker 1: long in the dark. And I would it. I would
Speaker 1: get scared as could be. But I'm kidding dead, I'm not.
Speaker 1: I did it.
Speaker 5: A lot of it had to do with I didn't
Speaker 5: know how to hunt. Everybody thought you couldn't kill a deer,
Speaker 5: and I was so committed to kill a deer that
Speaker 5: that I wasn't gonna I mean, you know, I'm gonna
Speaker 5: kill deer, and I don't know. If we've got time,
Speaker 5: you can cut this out.
Speaker 1: I don't tell.
Speaker 5: These dead gum followers of years what a whimp you are.
Speaker 5: He's ten years old, true bothers me to see him
Speaker 5: thirteen fifteen years old. He kills his first deer. Well
Speaker 5: at ten years old. I got the best spot in
Speaker 5: the host thinking world, man. I mean I hunted forty years.
Speaker 5: This spot was the spot. I mean, you had everything
Speaker 5: there you wanted, sixty piles of droppings, everything, And I counted.
Speaker 1: Her a single acron tree.
Speaker 5: I counted him, and so I put a stand up
Speaker 5: and there everything was set up perfect. Ten years old.
Speaker 5: We had to be back to town by like ten o'clock.
Speaker 5: I need to kill a deer because I'm only hunting
Speaker 5: on Saturdays, you know, and maybe Sunday morning occasionally.
Speaker 1: And uh, so I walk him in here and I go, okay, right, Clay.
Speaker 1: He climbs up in that tree.
Speaker 5: It's black dark, and so I turned around to walk off,
Speaker 5: and I hear I hear him cray. You know, most
Speaker 5: daddies would have said, hey, don't worry about Clay. I'm
Speaker 5: going to get over here in the corner and sit
Speaker 5: down in that bush and I'm will be right here
Speaker 5: the whole time. But that never entered my mind because
Speaker 5: I got I got one day to kill this deer.
Speaker 5: And if this little dirt ball won't set up there,
Speaker 5: I put him in the car and the truck and
Speaker 5: we went over and I killed. I shot that little deer,
Speaker 5: and uh I got my gold done for the year,
Speaker 5: and I'm ready to quit now. So but but that
Speaker 5: was the craziest thing I'd ever seen. And you don't
Speaker 5: see that anymore. But you're when you got when you
Speaker 5: guys came up and started hunting, you couldn't find stuff
Speaker 5: like that. But for some reason, first ten years I hunted,
Speaker 5: to see thirty forty fifteen piles of droppings under a
Speaker 5: white oak tree was very common.
Speaker 1: Sixty was kind of unusual.
Speaker 5: So I don't know what if you had to come
Speaker 5: in there, there'd have been a whole herd little doze
Speaker 5: walk in.
Speaker 1: So no that that that hunt, It's a wonder I
Speaker 1: made it through. It's because I just it was the
Speaker 1: first time I'd hunted by myself. And I mean it's
Speaker 1: like probably an hour and a half before daylight because
Speaker 1: he had to go drive ten miles to get to
Speaker 1: his It's not like we were hunting like down the ridge.
Speaker 1: He was going somewhere else. It's just the way we
Speaker 1: had to hunt. There were just two good spots, and
Speaker 1: they happened to be miles apart. I don't remember the details,
Speaker 1: but he put me up in that stand and I
Speaker 1: was just like bro oh, I cried like I was scared.
Speaker 1: I was in the fourth grade by myself, and uh oh, yeah.
Speaker 1: It was intense. But really you were so tough. He
Speaker 1: was so tough. We were. We would scout a lot
Speaker 1: of times on full waders, fast forwarders.
Speaker 5: I mean, we'd be running through the woods going right,
Speaker 5: here's a spot, uh anyway, and he'd be he'd be right.
Speaker 5: Might take him a while to catch you up, you know.
Speaker 5: Me and my buddy, we'd do that a lot of
Speaker 5: time just for the fun of it. But it's a
Speaker 5: real effective way of scouting. And Clay would be right
Speaker 5: there with us, never wore out, just wouldn't quit. So
Speaker 5: I thought, man, put him in a tree. Holy cow,
Speaker 5: this would be easy.
Speaker 1: Got scared, Got scared Clay.
Speaker 6: I'd like to say something before we wrap this up,
Speaker 6: because it sounds like we're coming to a close here.
Speaker 6: I don't want to say thank you uh for for
Speaker 6: us getting together. I have to thank our our friend
Speaker 6: Scott Brown for getting us together. Scott's one of the
Speaker 6: He's one of the best hunters woodsman. He does not
Speaker 6: hunt bait. He does not go and travel all over
Speaker 6: the country hunting.
Speaker 1: He hunts.
Speaker 6: He hunts some of the in my opinion, some of
Speaker 6: the worst places you could go to go there, But
Speaker 6: that sir, career is consistent. He'll kill there when nobody
Speaker 6: else will. He's the real deal hunter. But he got
Speaker 6: us together, and in doing so, I'm sitting here today,
Speaker 6: He's sitting across from a couple of guys that I
Speaker 6: realized sitting here, I have missed y'all a lot. And
Speaker 6: as I'm walking up, Aaron's like, how long has it been?
Speaker 6: It's been over twenty years? Has been over twenty years,
Speaker 6: and my goodness, life will just fly right on by,
Speaker 6: right in front of you. And I think of all
Speaker 6: the things that have happened since the last time we've
Speaker 6: seen each other till today, a lot. I mean, both
Speaker 6: my folks are gone, both my brothers are gone. You know,
Speaker 6: I've married and got step sons and you know, and
Speaker 6: done all these different things. I know, y'all, you know,
Speaker 6: probably done the same. And I'm sitting here thinking to myself,
Speaker 6: I'm I'm grateful that that you cut, that you shot
Speaker 6: me a text now and said, hey, you want to
Speaker 6: tell a dear story, And I'm like, I sure, do
Speaker 6: you know, not knowing I was gonna be sitting right
Speaker 6: here looking at you two boy before.
Speaker 3: We got here, Lucas thinking of the very same thing,
Speaker 3: how a white tailed deer can bring us back together,
Speaker 3: you know, and bring us together in the first place. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you hadn't had that high country shirt on. Yeah, we
Speaker 3: probably wouldn't be here together.
Speaker 6: And that was in the That was in the fall
Speaker 6: of nineteen ninety seven when Aaron and I both that
Speaker 6: was both that we were both transferred students going to
Speaker 6: Faetteville not knowing a soul. I mean I didn't, I
Speaker 6: didn't know anybody.
Speaker 1: I didn't either. You know what you said at the
Speaker 1: end of your story, I thought was really powerful in that.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not there's nothing about a white tailed
Speaker 1: deer that is is gonna cause somebody to have a
Speaker 1: I mean, there's nothing magical, and we talk about a
Speaker 1: deer being magical and all this stuff. We loved hunt
Speaker 1: yea yeah, yeah, but really what brought us together because
Speaker 1: what's valuable is a human relationship. Yeah, and all the
Speaker 1: everything that I do inside of Bear Greece and stuff.
Speaker 1: Really we're talking about deer hunting, we're talking about the land,
Speaker 1: we're talking about rivers, we're talking about mountains and lions
Speaker 1: and deer like all this natural stuff. But really what's
Speaker 1: interesting to me is how humans interact with that, and
Speaker 1: then how humans interact together around those things, like the
Speaker 1: relationships that we have and you did such a good
Speaker 1: job of saying, you know, a white tailed deer is
Speaker 1: really what brought us all together and uh and and
Speaker 1: becomes a medium to which you can exchange and have relationship,
Speaker 1: like you'd have a bond like I hadn't seen Area, well,
Speaker 1: I saw you ten years ago. I hadn't seen Andy
Speaker 1: in probably twenty years. And I mean me and you,
Speaker 1: we can anytime we see each other. It's like we
Speaker 1: got a connection. And it's it's deer, but it's but
Speaker 1: it's bigger than that, and that's special. It is it's special.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure there are other things in the world
Speaker 1: that people can connect over, but there is nothing in
Speaker 1: the world that is more more in order and or
Speaker 1: I could even use the word primal than the hunting
Speaker 1: connection between humans. I mean that is the bond that
Speaker 1: made the human species, was hunters connecting. I mean really,
Speaker 1: when you it just like boiled it down to like
Speaker 1: I have to be safe and warm and have shelter.
Speaker 1: I have to reproduce and find a wife, and I
Speaker 1: have to kill stuff to eat. Maybe maybe you could
Speaker 1: throw it a little bit later. I got to find
Speaker 1: some land to grow some crops on. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: like pretty basic level human stuff. So for us to
Speaker 1: come together and talk about deer hunting and how it's
Speaker 1: connected us, it's like, I love it. So yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I thought you did a good job of saying that.
Speaker 6: I appreciate it.
Speaker 4: Good stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, thank you for having us on. It's been fun.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Yeah, well, well we'll do it again. Brent
Speaker 1: closing words Wisdom Go one two three.
Speaker 2: I talked about it in my podcast. It's tradition and
Speaker 2: legacy and the value of sharing something good with people
Speaker 2: that you love and people that you like. There was
Speaker 2: only how many stories were on this podcast. Seven There
Speaker 2: were seven examples of everything right there.
Speaker 4: It was good stuff. M hm. That's it for me.
Speaker 1: Excellent. Thank you all for kind of great to see everybody.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you,