Speaker 1: And I'm just panicking. Man, I just grew two new
Speaker 1: hearts in my body, and both of them are in
Speaker 1: my ear drums and they are just pounding. I'm going
Speaker 1: cross eyed. And he's right there and he's got his
Speaker 1: head up stretched out. I want to say he is
Speaker 1: about fourteen yards from me, but I mean, I felt
Speaker 1: like I could have jumped out of deer stand on
Speaker 1: top of his back.
Speaker 2: Whitetail deer hunting is the epicenter of American hunting culture period,
Speaker 2: and every year we take some time to celebrate our
Speaker 2: collective favorite animal that we love to hunt, eat, and
Speaker 2: tell stories about. Seeing a big whitetail buck in October
Speaker 2: or November is hard to shake or top in terms
Speaker 2: of outdoor experiences, and a story told in person is
Speaker 2: often the only way to truly communicate the full experience,
Speaker 2: even better than video. Oral storytelling is the original og
Speaker 2: of communication. It's unreplaceable and the most effective at transferring
Speaker 2: a bundle of information. Stories transfer knowledge and teach us.
Speaker 2: They carry our values, They inspire those around us, and
Speaker 2: help us really to even know who we are. Some
Speaker 2: stories immortalize people that we've lost, from cold fronts to
Speaker 2: losing mules to bear charges to an oaklhm full of
Speaker 2: acorns fallen in front of a camera. These stories are genuine,
Speaker 2: But there is one thing that I ask of all
Speaker 2: of you. If you only listen to one story on
Speaker 2: this episode, be sure that it's the last one from
Speaker 2: a man named Med Palmer from Mississippi. You're just gonna
Speaker 2: have to trust me. You've never heard a dear story
Speaker 2: like this one. Whitetail Week is coming up here at
Speaker 2: Meat Eater in a few weeks, and we're just ramping
Speaker 2: things up a bit with this episode. We've got six stories,
Speaker 2: and I really doubt that you're going to want to
Speaker 2: miss this one.
Speaker 3: A trophy is just what a trophy is to the
Speaker 3: person that killed it. And by far, I could kill
Speaker 3: a bone and Crockett and it would not name as
Speaker 3: much to me as this deer. I can assure you
Speaker 3: it's about the story anyway. It ain't about the deer.
Speaker 3: The stories everything were hunting.
Speaker 2: My name is Clay Knukem, and this is the Bear
Speaker 2: Grease Podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant, search
Speaker 2: for insight and unlikely places, and where we'll tell the
Speaker 2: story of Americans who live their lives close to the
Speaker 2: land presented by FHF Gear, American made purpose built hunting
Speaker 2: and fishing gear as designed to be as rugged as
Speaker 2: the place.
Speaker 4: As we explore.
Speaker 2: Our first storyteller is a man whose name is so
Speaker 2: memorable you'll likely never forget it. It's my friend, Lake
Speaker 2: Pickle of Rankin County, Mississippi. He's really a veteran outdoorsman.
Speaker 2: I think he told me he'd filmed over sixty successful
Speaker 2: elk hunts in his life, but he himself is a
Speaker 2: turkey and deer hunting dude. This is a story about
Speaker 2: a buck that at the time was the biggest buck
Speaker 2: he'd ever killed, on a piece of ground that meant
Speaker 2: the world to him. Here's late.
Speaker 5: So I was a college student at Mississippi State, which
Speaker 5: is in star Fore, Mississippi. It was middle of January,
Speaker 5: so we had a week maybe two weeks of dear
Speaker 5: season left, and that time of years, honestly, even though
Speaker 5: it's a late part of the season, can be some
Speaker 5: of the best hunting because that's the rut in that
Speaker 5: part of the state. And we also had this freak
Speaker 5: cold front come through. I mean, don't get me wrong,
Speaker 5: it's normally cold that time of year, but Mississippi is
Speaker 5: not known for having tempts in the teens, and.
Speaker 6: I think that's what we had that time.
Speaker 5: And so I'm sitting in my little duplex house, Startful
Speaker 5: and I'm supposed to be writing an essay on moist
Speaker 5: soil vegetation, but in reality, I had about four words
Speaker 5: typed out on that screen, and I was having this
Speaker 5: internal debate on whether or not I should try to
Speaker 5: fight write in this paper or I knew if I
Speaker 5: got in my truck and stepped on it a little bit,
Speaker 5: I could drive to cater Reda, Mississippi, where we had
Speaker 5: a little piece of family land where I virtually did
Speaker 5: all my deer hunting as a kid.
Speaker 6: And I could be there and just under an hour.
Speaker 5: And that was a big deal because when I was
Speaker 5: a kid, from where I lived, it took us two
Speaker 5: hours to get there. From Startfulle, I could get there
Speaker 5: and under an hour. I think I timed it once.
Speaker 5: From my house to the gate, I could get there
Speaker 5: in fifty three minutes. Finally, I decide I'm not getting
Speaker 5: anywhere with this paper, so I slamm the laptop shut,
Speaker 5: I grabbed my stuff, I get in the truck, and
Speaker 5: I'd go i'd get to the gate and I take
Speaker 5: out walking because I'm already running kind of late because
Speaker 5: I took so long deciding whether or not I was
Speaker 5: going to go. Originally, the spot that I was going
Speaker 5: to go to it's about a two hundred yard walk
Speaker 5: from the truck, and the reason I picked that spot
Speaker 5: is simply because the wind was good and it was
Speaker 5: the closest one to the truck, and I was already
Speaker 5: running kind of late. So I'm walking towards this spot,
Speaker 5: and all of a sudden, I get this hunch. I
Speaker 5: don't need to hunt there. I need to go and
Speaker 5: hunt this spot that we refer to as Daddy Doll's
Speaker 5: food plot, and I'll get to why we call it
Speaker 5: that later, But Daddy Doe's food plot was a little
Speaker 5: bit further walk, and I just had this hunch, and
Speaker 5: so I went with it. I kept walking across the creek,
Speaker 5: getting closer. I get about one hundred yards away. I
Speaker 5: can kind of start to see the food plot, and
Speaker 5: I'm worried there's gonna be deer out there already, because
Speaker 5: sometimes they come out early. I see that the food
Speaker 5: plots empty. I'm like, okay, that's good. And the way
Speaker 5: you get into this stand. There was a ladder stand there,
Speaker 5: so the road kind of dumps you out to the
Speaker 5: edge of the food plot and then you basically.
Speaker 6: Have to cut the corner of the food plot.
Speaker 5: You have to walk about forty fifty yards across the
Speaker 5: food plot, get to the ladder and climb up. And
Speaker 5: like I said, it was freakishly cold that day. I
Speaker 5: want to say it was like eighteen or nineteen degrees.
Speaker 5: So the ground was frozen. That's an important factor. Also,
Speaker 5: we've all been in the woods sometimes after a cold
Speaker 5: front has moved through and everything just gets dead still.
Speaker 5: It's like it'll get so steal in woods like that.
Speaker 5: Sometimes it feels like it makes noise when you breathe.
Speaker 5: And so it's one of those dead still days. Ground
Speaker 5: is frozen. I go to cut across this food plot
Speaker 5: and the first step I take in my boot steps
Speaker 5: on that frozen winter wheat, and it just just made
Speaker 5: this loud, crunching noise. Man, it felt like trying to
Speaker 5: open a peppermint in church. I was just like and
Speaker 5: I froze up, and I thought to myself, you idiot,
Speaker 5: what are you going to do now? Because I was stuck,
Speaker 5: you know, I mean, that was the spot I had
Speaker 5: to go to, but I had to get that fifty
Speaker 5: yards across there, and I was gonna make racket the
Speaker 5: whole way. And all I could think to do was
Speaker 5: my buddy Erin showed me this trick one time. He said,
Speaker 5: if he's hunting in the rut and he has to
Speaker 5: make some noise getting to his stand, he will take
Speaker 5: out his grunt call and he'll take a few steps,
Speaker 5: he'll blow that grunk call and it make it sound
Speaker 5: like it's a buck walking and grunting. And I remember
Speaker 5: when he told me that. I said, that will never work,
Speaker 5: But anyway, I didn't have any other options.
Speaker 6: So there I went.
Speaker 5: Across that food plight, step step step right, I blow
Speaker 5: that grunk call.
Speaker 6: Step step step right.
Speaker 5: I blow the grunk call again the whole way, just
Speaker 5: feeling sillier and sillier. Well, I finally get across their
Speaker 5: get to the base of the ladder, tie my rifle
Speaker 5: off to a rope.
Speaker 6: Shemy up the ladder, hang my pack up. I turn around.
Speaker 5: I start pulling to the rifle up the tree, and
Speaker 5: I was trying to take my time so the barrel
Speaker 5: didn't swing into the middle rung the ladder and make
Speaker 5: even more noise. I remember, I get the rifle about
Speaker 5: half way up, and I picked my head up and
Speaker 5: I just looked down the food plot. The food plot's
Speaker 5: kind of narrow, and it's not that long. I mean,
Speaker 5: that part of Mississippi a lot of pine thickets and stuff.
Speaker 5: It's about ninety yards long, so, you know, kind of
Speaker 5: small plot. But I look down the food plot and
Speaker 5: in the right hand back corner you can't see it
Speaker 5: super clear because some of the tree limbs hanging over,
Speaker 5: but I can tell there's a deer there. And right
Speaker 5: when I looked, he moved. I caught a glimpse of
Speaker 5: handler and I said, oh my goodness, it's a buck.
Speaker 5: So I pulled the gun up the rest of the
Speaker 5: way and it's no sooner do I get the gun up.
Speaker 5: The buck steps out in the food plot where I
Speaker 5: can see him, and he is bristled up looking for
Speaker 5: that grunting that I was doing. And not only is
Speaker 5: that happening, but he is the biggest deer that I
Speaker 5: had ever seen or heard of coming out of that
Speaker 5: part of the country. Now let me pause the story
Speaker 5: real quick and say, Cateretta Mississippi is not known for
Speaker 5: big white tails by any stretch of the imagination.
Speaker 6: I cannot emphasize that enough. I grew up.
Speaker 5: Deer hunting there. I killed my first deer in that area.
Speaker 5: I had grandparents there, aunt's, uncles, cousins. And so you
Speaker 5: go into a lot of houses, you go into a
Speaker 5: lot of barn shops. You just see a lot of
Speaker 5: deer antlers, deer tax near me, deer skulls. You kind
Speaker 5: of get a general feel of what kind of deer
Speaker 5: in the area. And I'm telling you what walked out
Speaker 5: into that food plot, bristled up and looking around was
Speaker 5: big for that area. And I'm going, oh, my gosh, Well,
Speaker 5: he looks around, doesn't see a buck, and he just
Speaker 5: starts milling around in the food plot. And I go
Speaker 5: to rack around in the gun, the gun on him.
Speaker 5: He's the safety off, and I kind of look at
Speaker 5: him in the scope for a little bit and I'm like, oh,
Speaker 5: I just couldn't believe it, you know. But I finally
Speaker 5: decided I needed to do something here. So I put
Speaker 5: the crosshairs on his shoulder, and I remember thinking, just
Speaker 5: breathe and squeeze, do not mess this up, and I
Speaker 5: kept squeezing and kept squeezing, and pow, gun goes off
Speaker 5: and deer falls right there dead. And it all happened so fast,
Speaker 5: And you know, I come out of the gun, I
Speaker 5: look and he's laying there dead in the food plot.
Speaker 5: And at that moment kind of the reality of the
Speaker 5: situation set in on me. Now, that was by far
Speaker 5: the biggest deer that I had ever killed in my
Speaker 5: life at the time, and like I said, the biggest
Speaker 5: deer I'd ever known to come out of that area.
Speaker 6: But here's what I mean.
Speaker 5: Like I said earlier, we referred to that food plot,
Speaker 5: that spot as Daddy Doe's food plot. The reason we
Speaker 5: caught it, that is, Daddy Dole was my grandfather, my
Speaker 5: mom's dad. Him and my grandmother, who we called Mimi,
Speaker 5: lived about a mile up the road from that little
Speaker 5: eighty acre block where virtually all of my early deer
Speaker 5: hunting took place. And man did they mean a lot
Speaker 5: to us, And boy did they love their grandkids, And man,
Speaker 5: so many memories were.
Speaker 6: Tied to that house.
Speaker 5: We're tied to Mimi and Daddy Dole and were tied
Speaker 5: to that little eighty acres in cater Reda Mississippi. Not
Speaker 5: just hunting memories, a lot of them were, but just
Speaker 5: all kinds of good memories. Man and Daddy Dole built
Speaker 5: that food plot, I think mainly he built it for
Speaker 5: us and for folks to enjoy. And he had built
Speaker 5: this gigantic wooden shoot house into this old oak tree
Speaker 5: on that food plot. That I killed my first deer
Speaker 5: out of that shoot house on that food plot. My
Speaker 5: brother killed his first deer out of that shoot house
Speaker 5: on that food plight. My cousin Clancy killed her first
Speaker 5: deer out of that shooting house on that food plot.
Speaker 5: And I don't know how many other deer had been
Speaker 5: killed out of that food plot. Daddy Dole passed away
Speaker 5: when I was a kid. We lost Mimi just a
Speaker 5: few years prior when I was in high school. And
Speaker 5: that old wooden shoot house had rided and fell out
Speaker 5: of that tree a long time ago, and that's why
Speaker 5: we had the ladders down in there now. But as
Speaker 5: I was sitting there looking at that buck laying on
Speaker 5: the ground after killing it in a crazy lucky way,
Speaker 5: I could look at that buck, I could turn my
Speaker 5: head to the left and I could look at the
Speaker 5: remains of that old wooden shooting house on the ground,
Speaker 5: and all I could think to myself was was, man,
Speaker 5: what Daddy Doe and Mimi would think if they could
Speaker 5: see this right now? And I just sat there and
Speaker 5: took it in for a second, and I finally climbed
Speaker 5: down the ladder walked towards that deer and it was
Speaker 5: the first time in my life that I had walked
Speaker 5: up to a buck and it didn't shrink as I
Speaker 5: got up to it. And I called my dad. I
Speaker 5: told him what was going on. Called my mom, told
Speaker 5: her what was going on, and I told Dad. I said, man,
Speaker 5: I really didn't come prepared to kill a deer, because
Speaker 5: now I'm all the way here at the back and
Speaker 5: I can't get my truck back here. I guess I'm
Speaker 5: in for a really long drag. And he said, Man,
Speaker 5: call Uncle Jerry. You know he'd love to come get
Speaker 5: that deer. My uncle Jerry and Katie Sue. Katie Sue
Speaker 5: was Daddy Doe's sister, still lived, you know, just up
Speaker 5: the hill from where me, me and Daddy Doe used
Speaker 5: to called him. I told her what happened. He rode
Speaker 5: down his side by side. I'll never forget he hopped
Speaker 5: out of his side by side looked at that deer.
Speaker 5: He looked at me with his blank stare on his face,
Speaker 5: and he said, Lake, I ain't never seen no deer
Speaker 5: like that come out of here, And that said, I know,
Speaker 5: Uncle Jerry, I can't believe it either. We loaded that
Speaker 5: deer up, we drove it back to their house. Katie
Speaker 5: Sue come out the door with the camera that had
Speaker 5: a roll of film in it, snapped a couple pictures
Speaker 5: of me on the tailgate with that buck.
Speaker 6: And ended up mailing them to my mom. She still
Speaker 6: has them to this day.
Speaker 5: And then she invited me in for supper, and we
Speaker 5: sat around, talked about that deer, talked about the hunt,
Speaker 5: and just went on for I don't know how long,
Speaker 5: about how much Daddy told and me and he would
Speaker 5: have loved it that they'd been here to see it.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 5: Like I said, that happened when I was in college,
Speaker 5: and I've got been fortunate enough to do a lot
Speaker 5: of deer hunts since then. I've killed bigger deer score wise,
Speaker 5: and seen a lot more since then. But to this day,
Speaker 5: I've never had a deer hunt that meant more to
Speaker 5: me than that one. Did that one was that one
Speaker 5: was something and it happened in a crazy way too.
Speaker 2: That was a good story.
Speaker 4: Lake.
Speaker 2: We learned something about calling and your connection to your
Speaker 2: grandparents and their land. Our next storyteller is Mitch Sykes
Speaker 2: from the mountains of western Arkansas. I've known Mitch for
Speaker 2: most of my life and he's about as good a
Speaker 2: big buck hunter as there is in the area that
Speaker 2: we're from. And he's got a heck of a story
Speaker 2: and it involves a big buck and a bear.
Speaker 7: Oh. On this particular deer right here, I had a
Speaker 7: spot on the west end of a mountain up here,
Speaker 7: and it was a big leg that come off the
Speaker 7: west end of the mountain and it was one of
Speaker 7: those special places to where it didn't matter if the
Speaker 7: acrons made, if they didn't make, there was a spot
Speaker 7: there toward the month of October, it was the place
Speaker 7: to be. And on this particular deer here, I had
Speaker 7: went in there, and I believe it was the first
Speaker 7: week of October. I just carried my climbing tree standing there,
Speaker 7: climbed up in the tree and for hunting public land
Speaker 7: in the mountains. I remember that morning pretty well. I
Speaker 7: saw like seven or eight deer, and that was a
Speaker 7: wonderful day, a bunch of does and I think a
Speaker 7: couple of small bucks. And I believe it was on
Speaker 7: a Saturday morning, and about eleven o'clock. I was hunting
Speaker 7: later than I normally do. I just heard something right
Speaker 7: off in front of me there and I looked, and
Speaker 7: here come this buck. I had no idea, I mean,
Speaker 7: and he looked bigger than he was, of course, walking
Speaker 7: right to me. And I got ready and he just
Speaker 7: come in, just feeding on acres, just coming right to me.
Speaker 7: And when he got right in there about where I
Speaker 7: was expecting him to hopefully turn broadside and offer me
Speaker 7: a shot, he got in some brush, just kind of
Speaker 7: followed his nose and got in a little more brush,
Speaker 7: and I'm expecting to hoping he's going to come out,
Speaker 7: and he's probably within fifteen yards of me, and the
Speaker 7: next thing I know, I can tell he's turned. And
Speaker 7: if there was one thing the deer could do and
Speaker 7: get away from me, that's what he did. He just
Speaker 7: took off, feeding away from me. And at that time
Speaker 7: I shot one pin on my bow. I shot a
Speaker 7: twenty yard pin and I would not shoot past thirty yards.
Speaker 7: And this deer got out there what I thought was
Speaker 7: about thirty yards and offered me a shot. And when
Speaker 7: I shot, I thought I had heart shot him. He
Speaker 7: jumped and kicked and took off and ran out there
Speaker 7: about forty yards and he stopped, and I could tell
Speaker 7: he stood there for a long time, and I didn't
Speaker 7: do any I mean, I could tell that I hadn't
Speaker 7: hit him, or hadn't hit him good, and he just
Speaker 7: kind of finally just eased on off. And when I
Speaker 7: got down, my air had blood on it, and there
Speaker 7: was just just a few drops of blood right there
Speaker 7: where I'd hit him. And I was just sick because
Speaker 7: I didn't know if I'd hit him too far back
Speaker 7: or how if I'd just grabbed. I didn't know what
Speaker 7: I had done, but I knew that that was the
Speaker 7: biggest buck that I'd ever shot at with my bow,
Speaker 7: and I was just sick. So every chance I got
Speaker 7: to hunt, that's where I was gonna hunt. And I
Speaker 7: believe it was just maybe three or four days later,
Speaker 7: and I left my climbing stand on this white oak
Speaker 7: tree's It was just a permanent fixture there during deer season,
Speaker 7: and I went in there one morning and I always
Speaker 7: got to my stand about an hour before daylight trying
Speaker 7: to And when I walked into my stand that morning,
Speaker 7: when I got up to the tree, my tree stand
Speaker 7: wasn't there, or I didn't think it was. And the
Speaker 7: closer I got, I'm thinking nobody would have stole my stand,
Speaker 7: you know what happened? And as I got closer, I
Speaker 7: could tell that it was spun around on the back
Speaker 7: side of the tree, and the seat was chewed off
Speaker 7: of it, and the bungee cords. It was just demolished.
Speaker 7: And I knew what had done. So I kind of
Speaker 7: looked it all over and I thought, well, it's I
Speaker 7: can climb in it, I can hunt out of it,
Speaker 7: but I can't sit down. So I went ahead and
Speaker 7: climbed up in it, you know. And I've had this
Speaker 7: dreams of this big buck still going to come in.
Speaker 7: And about thirty minutes after daylight, I looked off up
Speaker 7: the mountain there before I had come in up that egg,
Speaker 7: and here come a bear and it was believe it
Speaker 7: or not, I mean, it was just walking the exact
Speaker 7: same trail I did. Kind of like it was smelling
Speaker 7: of me, you know. And when I come down and
Speaker 7: got in that stand, every morning. I came down that leg,
Speaker 7: and right before I got to my stand, there was
Speaker 7: a little old holler, the real steep holler that was
Speaker 7: just full of trash and briars and holly trees. And
Speaker 7: I always walked down that holler so I wouldn't put scent.
Speaker 7: I thought it might have helped. So and with that
Speaker 7: bear did that same thing. And when he come out
Speaker 7: of that holler, he come right to the base of
Speaker 7: my tree. Wasn't a very big bear. I have no idea,
Speaker 7: maybe one hundred and fifty two hundred pounds. Wasn't no
Speaker 7: great big bear come right to the base of the
Speaker 7: tree there, just like I had. And I could tell
Speaker 7: that he was kind of smelling the tree. And this
Speaker 7: whole time, I'm thinking, I mean, it's legal to shoot
Speaker 7: a bear, but I don't want to mess with him.
Speaker 7: And he kind of started licking the tree, and all
Speaker 7: of a sudden, he just kind of raised up on
Speaker 7: his hind legs and he's smelling the tree, and he
Speaker 7: just grabs hold the tree and just start slowly climbing
Speaker 7: the tree. Has not looked up towards me, has not
Speaker 7: seen me nothing, And he'd climb a little bit and
Speaker 7: he'd lick the tree and he'd look around. Finally, he
Speaker 7: just kept coming and kept coming, and I said, I'm
Speaker 7: gonna have to shoot this bear because the whole time
Speaker 7: I'm thinking he's gonna mess with my stand. I'm gonna
Speaker 7: shoot this bear. And I don't know if you'll remember it,
Speaker 7: but about twenty years ago, Muzzy came out with the
Speaker 7: first maybe fall away rest. It was called a zero effect.
Speaker 7: It was a big awkward apparatus that went on your
Speaker 7: bow and anyway. I remember pulled my bow back, but
Speaker 7: he was he was nearly back underneath me, and my
Speaker 7: arrow would not rest on my rest. It was just
Speaker 7: hanging free. And I said, I'm not gonna I mean,
Speaker 7: I'm not gonna. It's not gonna go where I'm aiming.
Speaker 7: So I let my bow down, and when I did,
Speaker 7: he just kept coming up there. And I thought, well,
Speaker 7: I'm gonna have to make him. I'm not gonna be
Speaker 7: able to shoot him on this tree with me. I'm
Speaker 7: gonna have to make him get down. So I took
Speaker 7: my cap off and I just hit my that rail
Speaker 7: on a summit tree stand. I just hit that rail,
Speaker 7: popped my hat on it, and he looked up at me,
Speaker 7: and boy, when he did, it's like it scared you.
Speaker 7: I mean I could tell he kind of boy. He
Speaker 7: took off real fast, climbing back down the tree, and
Speaker 7: he'd probably up about ten foot at that time, and
Speaker 7: I was probably twenty five foot. And as soon as
Speaker 7: he got on the ground, he just stayed there and
Speaker 7: I could hear popping and looking back at it, he
Speaker 7: was popping his teeth. But I thought he was chewing
Speaker 7: the stuff he had chewed up. I had a bungee cord,
Speaker 7: you know, I had some stuff that he had. My
Speaker 7: seat was still down there that he had chewed off
Speaker 7: the stand. But he was popping his teeth, and in
Speaker 7: just the blink of an eye, that bear just he
Speaker 7: just jumped on that tree. And I mean he just
Speaker 7: he just come up it, just looking right at me,
Speaker 7: coming right up through the grid of my stand. So
Speaker 7: I just want to head. I knew he was being aggressive,
Speaker 7: and I don't know how to say that, and because
Speaker 7: I've never seen a bear be aggressive. I they're always
Speaker 7: trying to run over trees to get away from you.
Speaker 7: But he was being aggressive coming up that tree. And
Speaker 7: about the time he got to my platform, he just
Speaker 7: kind of peeled off on the left. He came all
Speaker 7: the way up to my feet. I don't know if
Speaker 7: when you scare a cat and he climbs up a tree,
Speaker 7: and I mean he's that's the way the bear was climbing.
Speaker 7: He wasn't slowly climbing like he was the first time.
Speaker 7: He was climbing that tree aggressively. And when he got
Speaker 7: right to my feet, he kind of peeled under, you know,
Speaker 7: came to the left of my platform. And I don't
Speaker 7: even remember if I aimed or what, but I shot
Speaker 7: him right through them, I mean, right through the nose
Speaker 7: and down into the chest cavity. And when I did,
Speaker 7: he let out a squall like a coon just why,
Speaker 7: and just fell, you know, twenty five foot whatever. And
Speaker 7: when he hit the ground, I thought I'd killed him dead.
Speaker 7: I mean, he sat there and kicked for just a
Speaker 7: few minutes, and well, all of a sudden he kind
Speaker 7: of got to his feet and he took off run,
Speaker 7: and he ran right into a great old, big pine tree.
Speaker 7: And when he did, he broke about twelve inches of
Speaker 7: my arrow off and he ran off in a thicket.
Speaker 7: I would think that that bear was probably within five
Speaker 7: foot of me least maybe more than that. I mean,
Speaker 7: he was probably within four foot He was right at
Speaker 7: my platform that I was standing on. He was right
Speaker 7: at that height. Of course, I set up there for
Speaker 7: a little bit, you know, kind of thinking what just happened?
Speaker 7: That was I never had anything like that happen. It's
Speaker 7: one of those stories you nearly didn't even tell because
Speaker 7: you said, people are not going to believe me. They're
Speaker 7: not going to think I'm credible by telling that. But
Speaker 7: that is exactly what happened. Anyway, That's kind of how
Speaker 7: that all happened. And I was just sick about the
Speaker 7: whole deal. And I didn't see the deer, and I
Speaker 7: think I hunted that this buck that I had shot
Speaker 7: at that I started the story with. I hunted him
Speaker 7: all through muzzle od in season and I never saw
Speaker 7: that deer again. So in my mind, that was before
Speaker 7: I had trail cameras or anything like that. And in
Speaker 7: my mind I had I had got shot him, that
Speaker 7: I had done something and he wasn't back. And I
Speaker 7: think it was on Halloween morning and here where I hunt.
Speaker 7: If you can, that's something special about you know, if
Speaker 7: a guy could hunt from the twenty fifth of October
Speaker 7: through the if the November, those ten days, you'd have
Speaker 7: more success and have more stories to tell than if
Speaker 7: you hunted a month on either.
Speaker 4: Side of it.
Speaker 7: Where I hunt, that's just a magical time. And that morning,
Speaker 7: I remember I got up in that stand and I
Speaker 7: think I had gotten me a replacement set or something
Speaker 7: like that. But I was sut in the same stand,
Speaker 7: the same place, and right before daylight I heard a
Speaker 7: deer coming from the south going north and it come
Speaker 7: right in, right in underneath me, and I never will
Speaker 7: forget the whole time. It looked like a big deer,
Speaker 7: but it was just a blob. And I'm thinking, that's
Speaker 7: a buck. That's a buck this time of year, that's
Speaker 7: above But I was wrong. It kind of went on west,
Speaker 7: come up in the underneath me, and went on west.
Speaker 7: And about a minute later I could hear a deer
Speaker 7: grunting every breath coming from the south right the same track.
Speaker 7: I didn't know it at the time. I just knew
Speaker 7: that it had big chocolate set of horns, and it
Speaker 7: came in there and it was just about as dark
Speaker 7: as you could see your pens. I could tell it
Speaker 7: was a really good deer. Anyway, I shot it, and
Speaker 7: it ended p whenever I got to it. It was
Speaker 7: the buck that I had seen three weeks before that
Speaker 7: I had shot at, and I had actually grazed him
Speaker 7: from if I'd have been three inches higher out of
Speaker 7: heart shot him, but I just grazed his brisket in
Speaker 7: his front leg with my broad head. But he's the
Speaker 7: best buck I've ever killed with a bow, just to
Speaker 7: He's real narrow, but he's a really good deer. He
Speaker 7: was a good eight point buck.
Speaker 2: Mitch, that was an incredible story. I'm impressed that you
Speaker 2: were able to hold it all together on the buck
Speaker 2: and then shooting straight down at that bear. Deer stories
Speaker 2: aren't always about deer. We're moving right along and going
Speaker 2: back to Mississippi to meet up with a guy named
Speaker 2: Miles Malone. He's a professional nuisance hog and beaver trapper
Speaker 2: and a good white tail hunter. This is a story
Speaker 2: about a very unique buck with a third antler growing
Speaker 2: out of the middle of its forehead. It's a unicorn buck.
Speaker 2: But what's most unique about the hunt is what happens
Speaker 2: when a storm blew a limb full of acorns in
Speaker 2: front of his camera.
Speaker 1: My name is Miles malom I'm from Rudy in Mississippi.
Speaker 4: I at middle of May. It was a pretty day.
Speaker 1: I got off work early when and put out some cameras.
Speaker 1: My plans were not to go back and go check
Speaker 1: my cameras or anything. I just wanted to wait until
Speaker 1: he got, you know, closer season, just see what was around.
Speaker 1: Had a buddy come into town that hunt with and
Speaker 1: he wanted to go scout about right there into June,
Speaker 1: probably June twenty seventh, June twenty eighth.
Speaker 4: And we went.
Speaker 1: I decided to pull my camera cards and I waited
Speaker 1: a couple of days.
Speaker 4: I wo wasn't really just eager to look at them, and.
Speaker 1: Finally when I got home, relaxed, looked at my camera.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like two days. I ended up getting this
Speaker 1: unique buck on camera. He had like a Jsha unicorn
Speaker 1: horn coming out of his head, but.
Speaker 4: You couldn't tell much else about him.
Speaker 1: But I knew that was the one I wanted to
Speaker 1: chase without a doubt, no matter what he turned out being.
Speaker 1: I kept getting him at two cameras, but I couldn't
Speaker 1: get him north south and couldn't figure him out. So
Speaker 1: I started trying to go middle of the day when
Speaker 1: I got time, and I would go and try to
Speaker 1: see where he's crossing this BYU because I'm getting him
Speaker 1: on the other side, I would buy you next to
Speaker 1: a field, and no matter what I did, where I
Speaker 1: thought I had him, couldn't find it. Kept getting pictures
Speaker 1: of him at the other two spots, and it wasn't
Speaker 1: like every day, but was consistent a weekly basis. I
Speaker 1: was getting him, and normally it was like eight thirty
Speaker 1: nine o'clock at night, you know, obviously late at night,
Speaker 1: and the latest on in the morning i'd get him
Speaker 1: on camera would.
Speaker 4: Be like four am, four thirty.
Speaker 1: And I just felt like he was one of them,
Speaker 1: dear that I was gonna have to hunt really hard
Speaker 1: and chase all season long and maybe get lucky.
Speaker 4: And get him. In the rut.
Speaker 1: Time went on and it got time for a velvet season,
Speaker 1: I just said, I'm gonna stick with what I know,
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna go hunt the area and.
Speaker 4: Hopefully I'll be able to see the deer and.
Speaker 1: If I'm in the woods and I spend the time
Speaker 1: in the woods and if he's moving through, I'll eventually
Speaker 1: catch him and might not be able to get a
Speaker 1: shot on him. But I'll be able to see where
Speaker 1: he's going, where he's coming from, and help me dial
Speaker 1: in on him. So I went to my old faithful
Speaker 1: spot and the first hunt was really great.
Speaker 4: I saw a lot of deer. I saw a couple
Speaker 4: of bucks.
Speaker 1: Have me excited, you know, every crunch of a leaf,
Speaker 1: I was like, here he is and it, you know,
Speaker 1: be a possum come marching through the wood that old loud,
Speaker 1: walk through them leaves and just have your heart rattling.
Speaker 1: But the first hunt Velvet season was great, didn't seem
Speaker 1: next day's off you deer a couple of young bucks.
Speaker 1: And the last day of elf season didn't see a deer.
Speaker 1: So I'm spiraling to have a run him out of here.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't want to go check on my
Speaker 1: cameras and boogrihm or bust him up or anything like
Speaker 1: that and leave a bunch of scent in the woods.
Speaker 1: Maybe one two days four season, I decided to go
Speaker 1: out there and go check my cams. Well, when I
Speaker 1: got to the camera, there was a limb in front
Speaker 1: of it, and I was mad, it's just been wasted
Speaker 1: time sitting here, And I moved the oak limb and
Speaker 1: drug it like twenty yards off, and when I got
Speaker 1: home and checked the card, you know, had it sept
Speaker 1: for one second hold my finger down.
Speaker 4: Just it's like a time lapse.
Speaker 1: And I'd been constantly getting you know, doze and yurelings
Speaker 1: in there, and a couple of young bucks and nothing great,
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden, I get to it
Speaker 1: was about five days before opening season when his oak
Speaker 1: limb fell and lo and behold in the background in
Speaker 1: the night picture. I can see it in his rack,
Speaker 1: and he slowly made his way to the oak limb
Speaker 1: and he got on top of it, and he sat
Speaker 1: there and he ate acrens from the limb, and he
Speaker 1: held it down, and he would sit there for two hours,
Speaker 1: eating at it, and he'd leave. Three four hours, he'd
Speaker 1: be right back on it. And it was the first
Speaker 1: time I'd ever seen him come out in daylight. Like
Speaker 1: he came back at like six thirty in the morning
Speaker 1: and was just eating from that oak limb to like
Speaker 1: eight thirty, nine thirty, and then he left, and then
Speaker 1: he was back at like eleven or lunch, and then
Speaker 1: he left. Then he was back four o'clock, and then
Speaker 1: my heart got to beat and I was like.
Speaker 4: What have I done.
Speaker 1: Like he's right there and he's eating from this limb
Speaker 1: and I drug it twenty yards away.
Speaker 4: He got my sin on it.
Speaker 7: I should have flipped it upside down.
Speaker 4: Let him get to the acrons. He couldn't get to.
Speaker 1: Opening day came night before and everybody kept asking me,
Speaker 1: what time are you going hunting in the morning. I said,
Speaker 1: I won't be going hunting till three, and they're like,
Speaker 1: you're going hunt at three in the morning. I said no,
Speaker 1: I said, all the pictures I get of him and
Speaker 1: he leaves and vanishes probably about thirty minutes an hour
Speaker 1: before light breaks, and I don't want to risk going
Speaker 1: in the woods, me trying to get to a stand
Speaker 1: and busting him up. And I was like, I feel
Speaker 1: like my best opportunity of getting him is going in
Speaker 1: way early, getting in my stand, and hopefully catching him
Speaker 1: in the evening. And I did. On Opening day. I
Speaker 1: was sitting in my stand at three o'clock. It was
Speaker 1: like one hundred and eight degrees outside, and I'm sitting
Speaker 1: there thinking what am I doing out here? A lot
Speaker 1: of other people and other camps come hang out at
Speaker 1: watch football and cook, and there are a lot of
Speaker 1: people in town. I'm sitting there hunting and I haven't
Speaker 1: seen it deer. I ain't seeing a squirrel. It started
Speaker 1: getting later and later and nothing, nothing at all. And
Speaker 1: I got to the point where I was just ready
Speaker 1: to go. I just, you know, I wish time would
Speaker 1: hurry up and speed up and it get dark.
Speaker 4: Now I can calm down.
Speaker 1: Usually once it starts getting to that last thirty forty
Speaker 1: five minutes, that magic hour, you know, I normally fired
Speaker 1: up and I gotta have buddy take me to the
Speaker 1: wors goar hole on the face of the earth. And
Speaker 1: I still got hopeing at last thirty forty five minutes
Speaker 1: something could at you know, and I didn't this day.
Speaker 4: I did not have no faith.
Speaker 1: I want to say, probably by you know, that last
Speaker 1: thirty minutes. I did hear deer eating acrons. And this
Speaker 1: deer kind of hung out under the mid store and
Speaker 1: just fed for like fifteen twenty minutes. I never could
Speaker 1: see the deer, but I could see pieces of it
Speaker 1: and I could hear it eating acrens. I've had success
Speaker 1: with Bucks in this area, and I mean they normally
Speaker 1: dude come on out, and this deer wasn't doing it.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to pick up my binoculars or anything
Speaker 1: because I didn't know what it could see. And about
Speaker 1: that time, I look and all I can see is
Speaker 1: that head up and that rack through the leaves.
Speaker 4: I went from.
Speaker 1: Literally ready to go get my truck and get gone
Speaker 1: at the camp till I couldn't breathe and a blink
Speaker 1: of an eye. And I always try to put my
Speaker 1: mind in the situation and practice how I handle it,
Speaker 1: and it never works out, but I still practice it.
Speaker 1: And I practiced this for about two months, and you know,
Speaker 1: I kind of always visualized. I could seem eighty nine
Speaker 1: yards away and slowly prepared, but I wasn't prepared for.
Speaker 4: The ten minutes of shooting.
Speaker 1: Light left when he took another step or two, and
Speaker 1: I had my bow in my hand, all right, ad
Speaker 1: An Aaronnock. When he came out, he started walking my way.
Speaker 1: You know, he's probably only twenty yards from me, and
Speaker 1: I'm just panicking.
Speaker 5: Man.
Speaker 4: I just grew two new hearts in my.
Speaker 1: Body and both of them are in my ear drums
Speaker 1: and they had just pounding. I'm going cross side and
Speaker 1: he's right there and he's got his head up stretched out.
Speaker 1: I want to say, he was about fourteen yards from me,
Speaker 1: but I mean I felt like I could jump out
Speaker 1: of deer stand on top of his back. And as
Speaker 1: I was starting to draw my bow back, it just
Speaker 1: collapsed on me and went down. And I said, what
Speaker 1: just happened? And I'm scared of dead that one. Even
Speaker 1: when I draw this thing back, he's gonna run off.
Speaker 1: And I go draw it back again and it just collapses.
Speaker 1: And I'm sitting there just shaking so bad. And I
Speaker 1: sit there and I think to myself, there is no
Speaker 1: way I can go back to this deer camp to
Speaker 1: all my buddies and tell him that I had him
Speaker 1: at fourteen yards in front of him, and I couldn't
Speaker 1: find a way to draw my boat back. And I said,
Speaker 1: I don't care if I scare him off or not.
Speaker 1: I'm fixed to give this bow everything I got. And
Speaker 1: I pulled back and it came back, and I got
Speaker 1: the pen right there on him, and I let it
Speaker 1: go and it hit him and he took off, and
Speaker 1: you know, I was feeling real good about it. And
Speaker 1: I could see him run. I could see the knot
Speaker 1: kind of going through the mid story. It was like
Speaker 1: Christmas tree light blinking out there. I'd see it, then
Speaker 1: I wouldn't. Then I'd see it, and I wouldn't. But
Speaker 1: I called my buddy and I told him. I said, man,
Speaker 1: I just got him.
Speaker 4: He's at the camp.
Speaker 1: He's like, look, just sitting the stand forty five minutes
Speaker 1: to an hour, do not get down and.
Speaker 4: Go look at your era, just in case he's closed.
Speaker 4: He's like, look, I'm on my way.
Speaker 1: I'm coorblind, so I can't see blood unless it's just
Speaker 1: big old pools of blood. I ain't gonna see it
Speaker 1: in that forty five minutes to an hour I waited
Speaker 1: in that stand. I done convinced myself that I pulled
Speaker 1: or something and hit him in the hind quarter and
Speaker 1: just missed it. All up, I went from feeling great
Speaker 1: on top of the world to just doom and gloom.
Speaker 1: And they finally got there and we got down. I
Speaker 1: was so eager to get down and look, and we
Speaker 1: started finding good blood, and I mean, it wasn't long
Speaker 1: since he was down, and then I just I couldn't
Speaker 1: believe it. He's a mainframe eight point but he has
Speaker 1: a six and a half inch J shape unicorn coming
Speaker 1: out right over about the dead center of his head
Speaker 1: and it's about six and a half inches long. I
Speaker 1: panic freaked out, overthought everything, and I kept telling my fiance,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's gonna take all season.
Speaker 4: You know, I'm probably gonna have to miss events. I'm
Speaker 4: probably gonna have to miss this holidays.
Speaker 1: Like I'm gonna have to spend every second I got
Speaker 1: in the woods just to get a chance. And then man,
Speaker 1: just for opening afternoon, just to have it done. Man,
Speaker 1: what a relief as a memory. I'll never forget, that
Speaker 1: is for sure.
Speaker 2: That's wild that that buck keyed in on those acrons
Speaker 2: like that. And as you heard, Miles knows how to
Speaker 2: correctly pronounce the words spelled aco r n. This next
Speaker 2: story is one of my favorites. It's a deer hunting
Speaker 2: story but really doesn't have much to do with deer.
Speaker 2: It involves a lost mule during a deer hunt and
Speaker 2: my mother's name coming up in a bar. You're just
Speaker 2: gonna have to listen. I told this one once on
Speaker 2: the Bear Grease Render, but I decided that I'm gonna
Speaker 2: tell it again. When bar Nukan was about nine years old,
Speaker 2: I was wanting to take him on his first big
Speaker 2: overnight deer hunting trip back into the mountains. We had
Speaker 2: a young green broke mule named Ellie May, and we
Speaker 2: packed up Ellie May with saddle paniers and carried a
Speaker 2: big camp and went back into the mountains and set
Speaker 2: up our camp. The next day, me and Bear rode
Speaker 2: double Bear's just a little kid back further into the mountains,
Speaker 2: and I tied her up to a tree, and Bear
Speaker 2: and I were gonna go hunting, and we'll tie up
Speaker 2: our mules and leave them all day. I remember we
Speaker 2: sat in a saddle most of the day and all
Speaker 2: we saw was a group of gobbler turkeys that came
Speaker 2: through that saddle. Didn't see a single deer. As it
Speaker 2: started to get dark, we head back to find Elie
Speaker 2: May and then ride back down to our camp. I
Speaker 2: get to the tree, and what do I see but
Speaker 2: a lead rope hanging there with no mule, and the
Speaker 2: lead rope had been chewed. At that time, I had
Speaker 2: never known a mule to chew a lead rope, but
Speaker 2: it was wet, and she had chewed it and broke
Speaker 2: it and was gone. Well here it is black dark bears,
Speaker 2: nine years old, and our mules lost way back in
Speaker 2: the mountains. Well, I pick up the saddle, and we
Speaker 2: go back to camp. The mule is not at camp.
Speaker 2: I get to thinking the mule is probably back at
Speaker 2: the truck, and I just envisioned this mule running around
Speaker 2: on the road out there by my truck with a
Speaker 2: broken lead rope, and somebody calling the sheriff, and the
Speaker 2: sheriff run of my tags, and then calling my wife
Speaker 2: and saying, hey, we found your husband's mule. We think
Speaker 2: something's wrong. I just envisioned like pandemonium spreading from this.
Speaker 2: So we head off in the dark and walk all
Speaker 2: the way back to the truck where we were just
Speaker 2: as it was. One of the closest places of human
Speaker 2: occupation was a bar. Well, it was a Saturday night,
Speaker 2: me and Bear getting the truck. Well, first of all,
Speaker 2: we get there and the mule is not there. The
Speaker 2: mule's not at the truck. So we pull up into
Speaker 2: the parking lot of this bar and there's old trucks
Speaker 2: and cars and people there. And my son's nine years old,
Speaker 2: and so he can't go inside. I tell him, I say, son,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna leave you in this truck, and I want
Speaker 2: you to duck down and hide and just lock the
Speaker 2: doors and I should be back in about ten minutes.
Speaker 2: I leave Bear in the truck in the parking lot
Speaker 2: of this bar. I'm wearing all camo, and I'm telling you,
Speaker 2: it was just like a Western I walk in. Music's loud,
Speaker 2: and every single person that bar looks over at me,
Speaker 2: and clearly I'm kind of out of place. Well, I
Speaker 2: walk up to the bar and find a place and
Speaker 2: kind of lean up against the bar and try to
Speaker 2: get the attention of the bartender. Well, finally I do.
Speaker 2: The music is so loud. She's like, what can I
Speaker 2: get you? And I go, oh, I don't. I don't
Speaker 2: need anything to drink. I came by and I'm yelling
Speaker 2: this because it's so loud. She's leaned into me and
Speaker 2: I'm leaned into her, and everybody in that bar is
Speaker 2: looking at me. I mean, I'm not kidding. And I go,
Speaker 2: my name is Klay Nukem, and I lost my mule,
Speaker 2: and I just wanted to leave my phone number just
Speaker 2: in case, you know, somebody sees it. And she goes,
Speaker 2: what And I yelled even louder. I say, my name
Speaker 2: is Clay Nukem, and I lost my mule, And I
Speaker 2: mean everybody in the bar is listening, And as I'm talking,
Speaker 2: there's five or six people there to my left. And
Speaker 2: at the end of the bar, I see a guy
Speaker 2: stand up and I can tell he's had quite a
Speaker 2: bit to drink, and he yelled across all these people
Speaker 2: to me. He goes, and this was the last thing
Speaker 2: I was expecting to hear come from his mouth. He said,
Speaker 2: is your mom, Judy Nukem. When the words Judy Nukem
Speaker 2: came out of his mouth, I could not believe it.
Speaker 2: I was just like what, And he says it again,
Speaker 2: is your mom, Judy Nukem. That was the last woman
Speaker 2: that I expected to come up in this bar. Just
Speaker 2: for a little context, my mother. We call her Juju,
Speaker 2: and she is a legend in her community for being
Speaker 2: a wonderful, kind, godly, amazing woman whose name should not
Speaker 2: be brought up in a bar.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 2: A lot of scenarios were running through my mind about
Speaker 2: what was about to transpire. I didn't know if I
Speaker 2: was gonna have to fight this guy. I didn't know
Speaker 2: what he was about to say revealed to me about
Speaker 2: my mother that maybe I didn't know. Finally, I go,
Speaker 2: that is my mother and his face just changes countenance
Speaker 2: and A big smile comes on his face and he says,
Speaker 2: I quote she's my teacher, but literally what he said,
Speaker 2: she's my teacher. This is a grown man older than me,
Speaker 2: and he says, she's my teacher. And he goes, she
Speaker 2: used to teach me in elementary school. She was my
Speaker 2: favorite teacher of all time. And I just big smile
Speaker 2: comes on my face. Oh what a relief, and I go, excellent, man, cool,
Speaker 2: I'll tell her you said hi. Got the guy's name,
Speaker 2: wrote down my phone number on a little sticky pad,
Speaker 2: headed out of there. Luckily Bear was okay. Nothing happened
Speaker 2: to him, and it was too late to go back
Speaker 2: up to our camp. We still lost our meals. So
Speaker 2: I head to Juju's house, to my mom and dad's
Speaker 2: house to spend the night, and as soon as I
Speaker 2: walk in the door, I say, me and Barr are
Speaker 2: just at the bar. Guess whose name came up? Anyway,
Speaker 2: long story short. We spent the night and the next
Speaker 2: morning we went back up there and the mule was
Speaker 2: at our camp. No deer were harmed during the proceedings
Speaker 2: of that last story, and I was very relieved to
Speaker 2: hear that my mother was that man's teacher, and for
Speaker 2: the record, I no longer own la may.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: I said at the beginning, if you only listen to
Speaker 2: one story, it should be the one by Med Palmer.
Speaker 2: He's a biologist for the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, a
Speaker 2: veteran deer and turkey hunter, and a general all around woodsman.
Speaker 2: I just want to warn you this one may surprise you.
Speaker 2: I want you to meet Med Palmer.
Speaker 3: My name is Med Palmer from Kapya County, Mississippi. I
Speaker 3: worked for the Mississippi Point Wife It's in park.
Speaker 4: The fall of.
Speaker 3: Twenty and twenty, there was a particular deer on our property.
Speaker 3: My son Gunner, which he's a younger generation, he was
Speaker 3: running cameras and you know, getting ready for both seasons.
Speaker 3: And about two years prior, we started getting a picture
Speaker 3: of the Pacific Book that he was really wanting to
Speaker 3: kill with his bow. But he just couldn't evernarrow him down,
Speaker 3: couldn't find his bed in there, and he was pretty sporadic.
Speaker 3: We just could couldn't pin him down. And then the
Speaker 3: fall of twenty twenty, that end of that summer, around August,
Speaker 3: he'd started putting his cameras out and all of a sudden,
Speaker 3: he started to get pictured of his book, and his
Speaker 3: book was pretty centralized in one location on our property,
Speaker 3: which worked out really good because it was in the
Speaker 3: center of our property and he was really fired up.
Speaker 3: He would just infatuate with both one and he loved
Speaker 3: it because he started out real young shooting deer with
Speaker 3: a rifle. So when he got on up the bowl hunting,
Speaker 3: it's just a lot more ADRIWND than the rush, a
Speaker 3: lot harder to do. But this particular buck, he started
Speaker 3: getting multiple pictures of him, and so we started planning
Speaker 3: on putting stands up in that particular location.
Speaker 4: It worked out.
Speaker 3: He put a camera on a s Pacific oak tree,
Speaker 3: and that oak tree is just one of those oak
Speaker 3: trees that it starts dropping early and drops on end
Speaker 3: to probably about mid December. It's a big water oak
Speaker 3: and that tree started dropping early that year, so he
Speaker 3: put his camera on it and that buck with two
Speaker 3: other bucks, which was nice bucks. The buck he wanted
Speaker 3: to kill was at least the six and a half
Speaker 3: year old buck, and the other two was probably bourn
Speaker 3: and a half year old bucks. They was shooter bucks
Speaker 3: for anybody, but the one he wanted was the one
Speaker 3: we'd had two years prior. Hornwise, he was decent. He
Speaker 3: was probably about seventeen eighteen inch eight point. You know
Speaker 3: its gonna be eight point. It's all he's ever been.
Speaker 3: But he kept watching the weather and everything and the
Speaker 3: wind direction, and he put his block on and he
Speaker 3: ended up putting another lock on beside it at a
Speaker 3: different angle. Got on by the week for bow season,
Speaker 3: and I asked him, I says the buck still coming.
Speaker 3: He said yeah, he said they're still coming. So opening
Speaker 3: weekend of bow season, I mean naturally, that's where he
Speaker 3: was going to be. The wind was perfect that day,
Speaker 3: and he took his girlfriend with him that day. She
Speaker 3: wanted to go, had never hunted in her life, so
Speaker 3: he puts her in the extra lock on right beside
Speaker 3: he is, and he gets up in there. Everything was good,
Speaker 3: and that evening I kept waiting for a text. Well,
Speaker 3: he started getting later and later, and I hadn't got
Speaker 3: that text yet and finally got dark. Well, when he
Speaker 3: made it home, I said he didn't show. He said, yeah,
Speaker 3: he showed, he said, but the two younger bucks, he said,
Speaker 3: they come right to the tree and was feeding like
Speaker 3: they did every eating. He said he was bringing up
Speaker 3: the rear like he does every day, but he skirted
Speaker 3: the tree and he said, I had a shot at
Speaker 3: thirty yards broadside, but there was one limb that was
Speaker 3: blocking it. He said, I was scared it was deflected
Speaker 3: in crippling. He said, I just didn't want to do that.
Speaker 3: And uh, I said, well you did the right thing,
Speaker 3: because that's surely what would have happened. Bow hunt, you know,
Speaker 3: with one stick and that's all it takes. And his
Speaker 3: girlfriend got to see the two bucks right under, so
Speaker 3: she was all fired up and fell in love with Hunt.
Speaker 3: But anyway, he was having the hunted with the wind.
Speaker 3: Of course, on into bow season, the pattern will bucks change,
Speaker 3: bucks will be buddies all through the summer, and then
Speaker 3: for the rut they start getting aggravated one another end
Speaker 3: up fighting and they and they bust up, and that
Speaker 3: apparently is what happened in this situation. In about two
Speaker 3: weeks into the boat season, he started not getting pictures
Speaker 3: of it. So he had decided this boat was getting
Speaker 3: old enough. He said, if I see him my rifle,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna kill him. I said, yeah, need to go
Speaker 3: and kill him because a lot of deer die from
Speaker 3: head trauma. From fight and every year that people don't
Speaker 3: realize that's like twenty five percent. And he said, he said,
Speaker 3: are you gonna shoot him if you see him? I
Speaker 3: said no, I said you want him. I said, you've
Speaker 3: always want him. I said, I promise you won't want
Speaker 3: you that deer. And what I didn't know what that
Speaker 3: time was. On December third of twenty twenty. That same year,
Speaker 3: we had a wounded Veterans deer hunt going on here
Speaker 3: in Capaya County. Baptist Association does it every year. Well,
Speaker 3: I have to speak at it every year with my
Speaker 3: job and kind of help them, you know, lying stuff out.
Speaker 3: And one of the veterans liked to duck hunt, and
Speaker 3: Gonner had heard that some ducks was coming in on
Speaker 3: the Mississippi River, so him and his buddy duck season
Speaker 3: wasn't opening, but it opened the next day. He said,
Speaker 3: if we find ducks, can I take that bedroom. I
Speaker 3: said yes, I said, I said, I'd be fine. We'll
Speaker 3: have to get his duck stamp and everything. I said yeah.
Speaker 3: I said, if he wants to go duck hunt, I
Speaker 3: mean it's his hunt. Whatever he wants to do. So
Speaker 3: they lay up him and his buddy went over there
Speaker 3: that evening to the Missisippi River and put in at
Speaker 3: the Eternal Boat Ramp and apparently right after they put
Speaker 3: in a board hit the boat. We searched were probably
Speaker 3: the largest search effort on the Missichippi River that's ever
Speaker 3: been conducted. I mean it was over a thousand people
Speaker 3: looking at and like a hundred bigy boats the first
Speaker 3: three days, airplanes, helicopters, National Guard. I mean, it was
Speaker 3: a big deal. We never found them, so started and
Speaker 3: you know, December the third. Every day I was on
Speaker 3: the Missisippi River in my boat every day, no matter
Speaker 3: how cold, no matter how windy, rained, whatever. And there
Speaker 3: was a group of gunners' buddies that had boats the
Speaker 3: missip Is the Point Wilife Bushit in Parks. They was
Speaker 3: every day the Warree County Sheriff's office. So we was
Speaker 3: running multiple boats just hoping to find what we could find.
Speaker 3: And we had gone every day. It had got up
Speaker 3: into January and that particular day, chance of ice, the
Speaker 3: windshields down, real cold, the weather conditions and fog on
Speaker 3: that river you just can't see. And I told everybody,
Speaker 3: I said, we can't go tomorrow. You know, we'd unlost two,
Speaker 3: and I don't need to try to lose somebody here.
Speaker 3: So on January the tenth, we wasn't gonna go when
Speaker 3: I'd made that decison. On January the ninth, we wasn't
Speaker 3: gonna go when that gime and give everybody a break.
Speaker 3: And I was home that evening and my buddy call me.
Speaker 3: He said, y'all gonna run the river morrow and I
Speaker 3: said no. I said, the condition is way too dangerous.
Speaker 3: I said, somebody's gonna get killed. I said, we just
Speaker 3: can't do it. And he said, you need to go hunt,
Speaker 3: and I said, yeah, I'm sitting there thinking about it.
Speaker 3: Because I hadn't been to our place since Gunner's accent.
Speaker 3: I knew it was gonna be very, very emotional, you know,
Speaker 3: because that was his domain. That's where he hunted, he
Speaker 3: grew up. He killed his first deer there, first turkey.
Speaker 3: And my buddy asked me, he said, I know you
Speaker 3: said you weren't gonna kill that book. He said, what
Speaker 3: happens if he comes out? And I said he comes out,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna kill him. Went on oor Gunner, you know,
Speaker 3: and I said, there's no way he's gonna come out.
Speaker 3: I mean, there was no, may. We hadn't had a
Speaker 3: picture of this deer. Of course, we hadn't hunted after
Speaker 3: Gunn's accident. But it's just like big bucks do. He
Speaker 3: had vanished, and I told him he's the only deer
Speaker 3: that I'll shoot tomorrow if I see. And I said,
Speaker 3: I'm sure I won't see. I said, but I need
Speaker 3: to go and I need to be there by myself
Speaker 3: and get it over with. So the next morning, I
Speaker 3: get up poor daylight, like you do, and I head
Speaker 3: to our place start walking in. And it was emotional
Speaker 3: walking in, naturally, because I was going by deer stand
Speaker 3: that me and him had put up, or he had
Speaker 3: put up, and I'm thanking of multiple hunts, you know. Well,
Speaker 3: I get in. My stand was the house standing on
Speaker 3: the ground, and it's set up on a pipeline. Then
Speaker 3: I got two long lanes that run different directions off
Speaker 3: of it. Naturally, all I was thinking about was the
Speaker 3: time we'd spent there, you know, and it was it
Speaker 3: was really emotional, and I literally had seen a deer
Speaker 3: at all, and it had gone on up about nine thirty,
Speaker 3: which is pretty unusual, and that kind of weather, especially
Speaker 3: that stands just one of those stands you see deer,
Speaker 3: and I thought, I said, you know, I hadn't even
Speaker 3: seen her deer, I said, but I saw it. I said,
Speaker 3: you know, I'm not here to.
Speaker 4: Kill a deer.
Speaker 3: And at nine forty five, had just looked at my phone.
Speaker 3: I said, at ten o'clock, I'm on leave, and I
Speaker 3: wanted to walk to the stand where Gunner had seen
Speaker 3: the buck and gone get that old whil I was
Speaker 3: trying to get everything over with, you know e mostly
Speaker 3: because I got grandkids, I got other kids. You know,
Speaker 3: we're gonna be going there hunting. I needed to get
Speaker 3: that over with and about I just looked at my
Speaker 3: phone at nine forty five and I laid it down
Speaker 3: a chair beside me and I looked up and guess
Speaker 3: who walks out. It's pretty tough. And when he stepped out,
Speaker 3: my heart stopped. I mean, it's just like this can't be.
Speaker 3: And he just stood there and he looked right as
Speaker 3: to stand at me, just like here I am shooting.
Speaker 3: And I got the gun up and got on him,
Speaker 3: and he just kept standing there and I pulled the
Speaker 3: trigger and he run. He run right to the edge
Speaker 3: of the pipeline and I seen him pol and then
Speaker 3: I sat there and stand for several minutes, you know,
Speaker 3: get myself together. I said, the only day I've ever
Speaker 3: shot in my life that I read it. Walking up
Speaker 3: to that, I knew was letting her dead. And I
Speaker 3: got out of the stand and I started walking to him.
Speaker 3: I said, you know, only God alone could make that happen.
Speaker 3: I think it was God's way let me know that
Speaker 3: the Gunner's okay, you know. So I went to the
Speaker 3: deer and I had my moment with him, you know,
Speaker 3: but it by part of the most emotional deer hunt
Speaker 3: I've ever had in my life. It was something special
Speaker 3: and I ended up having a buddy and he told me, said,
Speaker 3: I'm mounting that deer by I said no, I said,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna mount him.
Speaker 7: Well.
Speaker 3: I took it to the taxi Darmis. When he called
Speaker 3: me and told me it was ready. I went to
Speaker 3: pay him. He said, this deer's would have been paid for.
Speaker 3: Gunner always wanted to camp at our place, and after
Speaker 3: Gunner's accident, I just went on and got a camp
Speaker 3: for my grandkids and my kids and we love him
Speaker 3: and it's actually hanging in the camp. A trophy is
Speaker 3: just what a trophy is to the person that killed it,
Speaker 3: and by bar. I could kill a bone and Crockett
Speaker 3: and it would not mean as much to me as
Speaker 3: this deer. I can assure you it's about the story anyway.
Speaker 3: It ain't about the deer, the stores, everything what.
Speaker 2: There aren't many words that can be said after a
Speaker 2: story like that, other than I want to offer a
Speaker 2: genuine thanks to Med for sharing this story with us.
Speaker 2: I think that in some way, when stuff like this
Speaker 2: is shared, it helps spread the grief out amongst us all,
Speaker 2: so it's not all bunched up in one's bought. Gunner
Speaker 2: Palmer was just sixteen years old. I'd like to dedicate
Speaker 2: this episode of Bear Grease to Gunner Palmer and zeb Hughes.
Speaker 2: I can't thank you enough for listening to Bear Grease
Speaker 2: and Brent's This Country Life podcast. Please share this with
Speaker 2: a friend this week and keep the wild places wild.