Speaker 1: And so I get to looking at the direction she's
Speaker 1: coming and I see big old horns coming. They look
Speaker 1: like those Texas bucks that go straight out with big
Speaker 1: times going up. I mean, he was the biggest deer
Speaker 1: I guess I've ever seen. On hoof half hour into
Speaker 1: the hunt, they looked up and here's this buck standing
Speaker 1: not that far away, coming right down the middle of
Speaker 1: this strip of beans, and the strip of beans only
Speaker 1: like fifty yards wide, and I thought, holy cow, that's
Speaker 1: one of the biggest bucks I've ever seen. On this
Speaker 1: episode of the Burglaries podcast, we're talking about white tailed deer,
Speaker 1: but this isn't the typical tips, tactics and biology that
Speaker 1: we're here so much. That's useful stuff and I love it,
Speaker 1: But the foundation of why that knowledge is even desirable
Speaker 1: is found in the onion layer deeper. We want the
Speaker 1: knowledge because of how valuable white tails are to us.
Speaker 1: White tailed deer hunting culture in this country is uniquely America.
Speaker 1: There's nothing else like it in the world. The sheer
Speaker 1: numbers of white tails, their wide geographic distribution, and the
Speaker 1: liberal seasons, coupled with the rich and unique heritage we
Speaker 1: have is unparalleled. When you factor in fried backstrap with
Speaker 1: gravy and biscuits on the cool fall evening, you might
Speaker 1: start to understand the American Revolution. It wasn't about taxation
Speaker 1: and representation or t It was about some hillbillies not
Speaker 1: wanting to share their backstrap with the King brothers. We
Speaker 1: found ourselves in the ditch, and we're only on the
Speaker 1: intro anyhow. My first love was undoubtedly white tail hunting,
Speaker 1: with coon hunting rolling in tight on the do claws.
Speaker 1: And we've got a compilation of storytellers on this episode,
Speaker 1: many of which are familiar voices and the bargary stratosphere,
Speaker 1: and a few are new. We've got big bucks, little bucks, missed,
Speaker 1: but bucks bristling, grutting, running bucks, clicking bucks, and bucks
Speaker 1: falling in holes. But one thing's for sure, you're not
Speaker 1: gonna want to miss this one. And I'll accord to
Speaker 1: my eye. I see movement again, and that's when one
Speaker 1: of the biggest bucks that I've ever seen by hunting
Speaker 1: walks out, just a big body, eight point buck walks out.
Speaker 1: I walked under the deer and I'll never forget this.
Speaker 1: I said this out loud. I said, wow, I never
Speaker 1: killed one like that. My name is Clay Nukelem and
Speaker 1: this is the Bear Grease Podcast, where we'll explore things
Speaker 1: forgotten but relevant, search for insight and unlikely places, and
Speaker 1: where we'll tell the story of Americans who lived their
Speaker 1: lives close to the land, presented by f HF gear,
Speaker 1: American made purpose built hunting and fishing gear that's designed
Speaker 1: to be as rugged as the places we explore. Storytelling
Speaker 1: is a sacred thing and foundational to human life. Our
Speaker 1: ancestors not that far back didn't have written language, and
Speaker 1: so oral storytelling was the medium and conduit of human
Speaker 1: culture for way longer than it hasn't been. Clay quipped
Speaker 1: being so dramatic. I'm not I'm being serious. The earliest
Speaker 1: forms of writing appeared around five thousand, five hundred years
Speaker 1: ago on planet Earth, which in the big picture of
Speaker 1: the human story, is equivalent to a single page in
Speaker 1: a book as thick as a car. The Falsome Man,
Speaker 1: the Bros in New Mexico that killed the thirty two
Speaker 1: bison with unique stone points were a live five thousand
Speaker 1: years too early for books, So for them, storytelling was
Speaker 1: the architecture of their world. It carried their values, their worldview,
Speaker 1: their thoughts on divine power, their practical knowledge for how
Speaker 1: to live, how to make a fire, how to nap stone,
Speaker 1: where to can't want to eat, when to run, when
Speaker 1: to fight humans physically talking to humans carried our culture
Speaker 1: for a long time, a long time. And this culture
Speaker 1: that I speak of is the platter on which the
Speaker 1: very thing that makes us humans sits upon. We deeply
Speaker 1: value the wild beasts, but our differences from them are
Speaker 1: so steep it's clear that we're different than the beast.
Speaker 1: We're separate from him. Deep cognition of our surroundings and
Speaker 1: awareness of the past, a deep longing to understand the future,
Speaker 1: making tools, recognition of beauty and art and altruism. All
Speaker 1: these things are diagnostic of humanity. Storytelling is it just
Speaker 1: about relaying the natural events of a moment. Though we
Speaker 1: gain relevant information from stories, lots of it, but they
Speaker 1: carry a sentiment load full of meaning. These stories tell
Speaker 1: us who we are. They give us identity, They tell
Speaker 1: us what's valuable. They highlight what's honorable and what's detestable.
Speaker 1: They give us instruction, advice, and warning. They entertain us,
Speaker 1: and storytelling highlights leaders inside of communities and tribes. It
Speaker 1: was very much that way with the Native Americans, and
Speaker 1: really is still that way today in most places in
Speaker 1: the Earth. Part of being a chief was being able
Speaker 1: to talk the big talk. They honored those whose stories
Speaker 1: inspired people. Stories are everything to us, and they still
Speaker 1: are today, even deer stories. This collection of white tailed
Speaker 1: deer hunting stories is so ridiculously rich in value. I
Speaker 1: struggle to find the words. Every one of these men
Speaker 1: that tell a story admit a frequency that is part
Speaker 1: of the sound of my life. So this stuff didn't
Speaker 1: happen to me, but these stories are personal to me.
Speaker 1: Some of these guys I've known my whole life, and
Speaker 1: others are relatively new friends, but I love them all.
Speaker 1: This first story comes from my friend from Western Arkansas,
Speaker 1: Randy long Legged step I've known Randy Says grade school
Speaker 1: and we were the founding members of an elite invitation
Speaker 1: only club in our high school we called the Timber Scouts.
Speaker 1: Basically all we did was go camping, never any alcohol,
Speaker 1: just good claim fund. Randy's hunt took place on public
Speaker 1: land in Arkansas, and I think you'll be surprised how
Speaker 1: it ends. So a lot of your hunt stories are
Speaker 1: probably gonna be about really great hunters that put a
Speaker 1: lot of preparation into their hunt and really go after
Speaker 1: a deer they've seen on camera seen My story is
Speaker 1: not that at all. To put some context in my story,
Speaker 1: it kind of starts with work. I work retail and
Speaker 1: work a lot of hours in the fall, especially toward
Speaker 1: holiday season. And this particular year, I think it two
Speaker 1: thousand and fifteen, we had inventory in the middle of October,
Speaker 1: so it really cut down my ability to go scout
Speaker 1: for good hunting places or even really to go archery hunting.
Speaker 1: Muzzlelodon season was right in the middle of inventory week,
Speaker 1: and I just decided I needed I needed some relief
Speaker 1: from work, needed to get out and just kind of
Speaker 1: enjoy a day off after working for so many weeks
Speaker 1: and days in a row. And I mentioned it to
Speaker 1: Scott Brown, who I worked for at the time, who
Speaker 1: I considered to be one of the best hunters around,
Speaker 1: and he thought about it for a while, and I
Speaker 1: didn't ask for a place to go, but he just suggested, Hey,
Speaker 1: I know where you should go. There's this great place
Speaker 1: that usually produces good bucks, and you should know how
Speaker 1: to get there because we've gone the previou this Turkey
Speaker 1: season and listen for turkeys up in this saddle. I said,
Speaker 1: you know what, I ain't got a good idea. I
Speaker 1: don't have anywhere else to go, so I'll go give
Speaker 1: that a try. So when day was over, I got
Speaker 1: off at like eight o'clock at night and got home
Speaker 1: and rushed to put all my hunting gear together. And
Speaker 1: I'm usually real meticulous about having everything planned out and ready.
Speaker 1: I grabbed my my powder, my extra powder, and my
Speaker 1: slugs and I keep them in those little powered pirate
Speaker 1: Dex tubes, and I went to bed. I got up
Speaker 1: early the next morning with what I thought was enough
Speaker 1: time to get out there get on the top of
Speaker 1: this saddle on the mountain. When I got out there,
Speaker 1: I'd forgotten that there was a bunch of down pine
Speaker 1: trees everywhere that you had to kind of snake your
Speaker 1: way through to get to the spot where you start
Speaker 1: to climb up the ridge. And the ridge was very,
Speaker 1: very steep, so I kind of slowly made my way
Speaker 1: up because it was really warm that morning too, so
Speaker 1: I realized how out of shape that I was also
Speaker 1: climbing up that and I started realizing that I could
Speaker 1: start to see the first little crack of daylight coming
Speaker 1: and I wasn't in that flow spot yet, and I
Speaker 1: wasn't gonna make it because I didn't know exactly where
Speaker 1: it was with a head lamp on, and I was
Speaker 1: gonna pick a tree and do all that stuff in
Speaker 1: the dark. And I said, you know what I need.
Speaker 1: I need to make something happen right now. So I
Speaker 1: kind of stopped where I was looked around and I
Speaker 1: noticed a really defined game trail. I mean, you could
Speaker 1: ride a mountain bike through this trail as much as
Speaker 1: he was getting used. And I thought, okay, let me
Speaker 1: check the wind. So I check the wind. It's like, okay, perfect,
Speaker 1: I can get above this trail a little higher up
Speaker 1: the hill and watch the trail, and that trail is
Speaker 1: headed to that low gap I was gonna get to.
Speaker 1: And this we'll just have to work, and I'll just
Speaker 1: have to pray that I've got a good enough you
Speaker 1: when the sun comes up that I could get a
Speaker 1: cleaning shut off. But I know I can at least
Speaker 1: hunt that trail. So I did all the work getting
Speaker 1: up in the tree and getting on my stuff, and
Speaker 1: then once I got up there, I think I was
Speaker 1: smart enough to actually bring an extra shirt to change into.
Speaker 1: And then I pulled the Gary nucom and sprayed myself
Speaker 1: down with the scent cover, and then I sat there
Speaker 1: for a few minutes. And as I sat there, the
Speaker 1: sun start come up, and I kind of got mad
Speaker 1: at myself. I was like, you know, I've ruined this
Speaker 1: hunt already. I'm sweaty, I'm not where I'm supposed to be.
Speaker 1: I don't even know if I'm might have a good shot.
Speaker 1: This is gonna be a waste of my time. But
Speaker 1: I'm here, so let me just I'll just enjoy being outside.
Speaker 1: And I sat there for about two hours with nothing,
Speaker 1: didn't hear nothing. I thought, you know, I'm gonna give
Speaker 1: it one more hour and then it'll take me about
Speaker 1: forty five minutes to climb out and then I'll go home.
Speaker 1: It's like, this is this is just gonna be a bust.
Speaker 1: I just probably would have killed one if I'd been
Speaker 1: in the saddles, what I thought. And not more than
Speaker 1: five minutes later, I heard the loudest what I would
Speaker 1: call a growl, but it wasn't really a growl. It
Speaker 1: was just a loud noise and I had no idea
Speaker 1: what kind of animal did it. My first thought was,
Speaker 1: all right, there's about to be a bear walked down
Speaker 1: this trail. Uh, it's gonna go from a deer hunt
Speaker 1: to a bear hunt. So I turned and my gun
Speaker 1: started looking down the trail, and out the corner of
Speaker 1: my eye, I start to see three does kind of
Speaker 1: walking the top of the ridge right above me, just
Speaker 1: grazing their way around and kind of easing through. And
Speaker 1: I watched them until I had to swing around the
Speaker 1: other side of the tree and watch them until they
Speaker 1: went completely out of sight. And they never winded me,
Speaker 1: which is they should have, but they didn't. So I thought, well,
Speaker 1: that's pretty good. But I needed to focus my attension
Speaker 1: back on this bear that's gonna come down the trail
Speaker 1: because there's still something down there. I don't know what
Speaker 1: it is. So turn my gun around and I'm watching,
Speaker 1: and I accorded my eye I see movement again, and
Speaker 1: that's when one of the biggest bucks that I've ever
Speaker 1: seen by hunting walks out, just a big body, eight
Speaker 1: point buck walks out, and I'm like, oh, this is great,
Speaker 1: Like I'm on him. I already know where those dough went,
Speaker 1: So I moved my gun right to where he should
Speaker 1: have went. He walks right into it. I squeezed the
Speaker 1: trigger and nothing happens. I forgot it was a double
Speaker 1: safety gun and I hadn't undone the other safety. I
Speaker 1: quickly undo the other safety. He's moved by that point,
Speaker 1: so I have to swing around the other side of
Speaker 1: the tree. I've got one more chance to shoot this buck.
Speaker 1: I point the gun where those does had gone, and
Speaker 1: he walks right into the perfect spot, and I pulled
Speaker 1: the trigger. When you hunt with the mozzleloader, you never
Speaker 1: know what you're gonna get when the smoke clears. When
Speaker 1: the smoke cleared, he was down on the ground doing
Speaker 1: his final kicks, and I was like, I got him,
Speaker 1: and then he quit kicking. I thought, he's down. I've
Speaker 1: killed this big eight points the biggest one I've ever killed.
Speaker 1: So I texted two people immediately. I texted Clay Knokelem
Speaker 1: and Scott Brown and told him that I've killed this
Speaker 1: big buck on this mountain. Well, while I'm texting Scott,
Speaker 1: that deer starts to kick just a little bit, and
Speaker 1: when he does, he's on such a steep slope he
Speaker 1: starts sliding a little and then he would stop. And
Speaker 1: I'm texting this to Scott and He's like, well, you
Speaker 1: better go ahead and reload, just in case you need
Speaker 1: to put another shot in him, just to finish him off.
Speaker 1: That's whenever I made a a realization that I made
Speaker 1: a huge mistake. I had grabbed two tubes of slugs
Speaker 1: and no powder, so I had nothing that I could
Speaker 1: finally dispatch this deer with. And then I'm starting to
Speaker 1: panic because as he kicks a little bit, he slides
Speaker 1: further down the mountain. At this point, he's even with
Speaker 1: my tree stand. He's under my tree stand, and I'm
Speaker 1: convinced that it's a it's a fatal shot. He's going
Speaker 1: to die, but the humane thing to do is to
Speaker 1: put him down. Why you see him? So I called
Speaker 1: Scott and I'm like, hey, you know where I'm at.
Speaker 1: I need some more powder. You're gonna have to bring
Speaker 1: me some powder. And he informs me, well, let that
Speaker 1: deer get down the hill aways from you. Climb out
Speaker 1: of your stand, stay a good distance away from him,
Speaker 1: but don't lose sight of him. I'll find you in
Speaker 1: the woods and then we'll take care of it. No
Speaker 1: sooner than I hang up the phone, he makes one
Speaker 1: more kick and just really starts sliding off down the hill.
Speaker 1: It's almost like he's on a sled. And then all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, he just disappeared. And I'm dumbfounded because
Speaker 1: I can see further down the mountain, but this deer
Speaker 1: all of a sudden just fell off a cliff and disappeared.
Speaker 1: And then I heard a water splash echo, like if
Speaker 1: you dropped a rock in a well, and I thought,
Speaker 1: what in the heck is going I'm on top of
Speaker 1: a mountain. What There's not even any water up here.
Speaker 1: So I climbed down and I walk over to where
Speaker 1: I had last seen him, and I realized there's a
Speaker 1: mine shaft right there, and he had slid off when
Speaker 1: he gained momentum and slid down. He fell fifteen to
Speaker 1: twenty feet down into a mine shaft hole and landed
Speaker 1: and just a little bit of water in the bottom. Luckily,
Speaker 1: he was expired at this time, so I called Scott
Speaker 1: bag It's like, well, we don't need any powder at
Speaker 1: this point, but we got us some problem because I
Speaker 1: don't know how we're gonna get him out. About an
Speaker 1: hour later, Scott showed up and he brought some rope
Speaker 1: and some other stuff, and we didn't know if we're
Speaker 1: gonna have to call more people or get a come
Speaker 1: along or what we're gonna have to do. We had
Speaker 1: to figure out how to get him out. So Scott
Speaker 1: was able to last so one side of his antlers
Speaker 1: and we both grabbed onto the rope start pulling, and
Speaker 1: as we did it kind of cranked his head to
Speaker 1: the side and his antlers were hitting the rock at
Speaker 1: rock edges and we chip just a little bit of
Speaker 1: his main beam off. We're honest, we can't do that.
Speaker 1: We're gonna totally snap off an antler if we do that.
Speaker 1: So we dropped him back down. Then we decided if
Speaker 1: we last so him on both sides of the antlers,
Speaker 1: we can pull an opposite directions and hoist him straight
Speaker 1: out of the middle when he won't touch anything. So
Speaker 1: we kind of wrapped the ropes around trees, we pulled
Speaker 1: in opposite directions, took everything we had because this is
Speaker 1: this is a big body, dear one. He got to
Speaker 1: the edge, Uh, wrapped my rope around, tied it real quick,
Speaker 1: and I ran over and grabbed his antlers and just
Speaker 1: kind of anchored myself in until Scott could get over
Speaker 1: there to grab Also, because we didn't want to fall
Speaker 1: in the hole with him, because if we did, I
Speaker 1: don't know if anybody else besides Clay knew that we
Speaker 1: were out there dealing with a deer in a in
Speaker 1: a mine shaft. We heaved that thing out of there,
Speaker 1: and when it did, we were just totally exhausted. It
Speaker 1: took everything we had to get him out of that hole.
Speaker 1: That's when the work began getting him down off that
Speaker 1: mountain around all those trees. So later I did some
Speaker 1: research and realized that throughout the mountains there are a
Speaker 1: lot of mine shafts and test minds, and I believe
Speaker 1: what they were looking for was manganese. There. There was
Speaker 1: a time when they thought that there was manganese here
Speaker 1: and that they really went after it for a short
Speaker 1: period of time. So one crazy thing about that mine
Speaker 1: shaft is I took my kids hiking up there just
Speaker 1: a couple of years ago. The springtime in that mine
Speaker 1: shaft was completely full of water and there was a
Speaker 1: fish swimming in it. So nature's crazy. A fish in
Speaker 1: a mind shaft that was completely unconnected from any other
Speaker 1: body of water. Incredible. And that's a great, dear story.
Speaker 1: This next voice that you're gonna hear, you will for
Speaker 1: sure recognize because it's none other than my friend Stephen Runella.
Speaker 1: This story was told by his father to him. And
Speaker 1: just a little background. Steve was born in Michigan, relatively
Speaker 1: late in his dad's life. Frank Ronnella was a World
Speaker 1: War Two vet and was often looking for lessons to
Speaker 1: teach young Steve. This was one of them. This is
Speaker 1: a dear story that didn't happen to me, and it
Speaker 1: didn't happen to my dad. However, my dad would tell
Speaker 1: it all the time, and it was a dear story
Speaker 1: that he would tell and what it was meant to be.
Speaker 1: It was meant to be a don't give up story
Speaker 1: he had. My dad used to have a Yeah, he
Speaker 1: had a lot of stories you would tell that we're
Speaker 1: all had served a purpose, for instance, if he's trying
Speaker 1: to explain an optimist and the pessimist. Or at times
Speaker 1: it would be the difference you a rich kid in
Speaker 1: the poor kid. I'll tell the rich kid poor vert
Speaker 1: kid version real quick. He would say that if you
Speaker 1: took a rich kid and put him in a room
Speaker 1: full of manure, he's just gonna sit there and cry.
Speaker 1: But if you take a poor kid and put him
Speaker 1: in a room full of manure. He's gonna start digging
Speaker 1: because he'll be thinking, with all this manure, there's gotta
Speaker 1: be a pony in here somewhere now here is his
Speaker 1: don't give up dear story. And this happened to a
Speaker 1: buddy of his. Is the guy he's talking about all
Speaker 1: the time. And my dad started like, bow hunting is old.
Speaker 1: I mean bow hunting. You know, on this continent people
Speaker 1: been hunting with bows four or five thousand years. Interestingly,
Speaker 1: bow technology spread from the north southward. The people that
Speaker 1: came over much later than you know, much later than
Speaker 1: the Athabaskans, the hunters that came over that became Eskimo
Speaker 1: and Intuit hunters who came over much later than other
Speaker 1: Native American Native Alaskan groups, they probably carried some kind
Speaker 1: of archery technology that eventually spread southward. So people in
Speaker 1: bow hunting a long time. But then there was like
Speaker 1: a long, long, long long time when people didn't bow hunt,
Speaker 1: and modern day bow hunting kind of became a thing
Speaker 1: in the forties and fifties. And my dad was very
Speaker 1: avid archer back in those days. This is when people
Speaker 1: were hunting with long bows and re curves, but it
Speaker 1: wasn't called traad. Archery is just archery. My dad's buddy
Speaker 1: is driving home from work and he sees a deer
Speaker 1: out in this field where he's been seeing deer lately,
Speaker 1: and he decides he's gonna try to sneak up on
Speaker 1: this deer and get a shot at his boat. So
Speaker 1: he takes his shoes off, right down to his socks.
Speaker 1: My dad always like to point out their white socks.
Speaker 1: And he does his stock up to the through the woods,
Speaker 1: up to the field edge and launches an arrow out there,
Speaker 1: and you can't tell if you got a hit or not,
Speaker 1: and looks and looks and looks, can't find his arrow,
Speaker 1: so he decided to start looking for blood in the
Speaker 1: waning light. Okay, it's getting dark out, but he convinces
Speaker 1: himself that he missed and he starts cutting little half
Speaker 1: circles just to check for blood and doesn't find any
Speaker 1: blood and eventually goes back to his car, put his
Speaker 1: shoes on, drives home. What does my dad like to
Speaker 1: tell the story? That night, the guy is getting ready
Speaker 1: for bed, takes his shoes off, takes his sock off,
Speaker 1: and what does he see on his sock? A couple
Speaker 1: of little blood stains on his sock and it wasn't
Speaker 1: from cutting his foot, and he rushes back out there
Speaker 1: finds his dear What do you think about that? Clean Newcombe?
Speaker 1: Never give up, Mr Ronnello, We have all taken note
Speaker 1: of the core message of this story and we thank
Speaker 1: you for it. Never give up. The next voice you
Speaker 1: might also recognize if you're a Bear Grease regular. Andy
Speaker 1: Brown was on our Turkey Story episode and our Genuine
Speaker 1: Outlaw series about Louis Dell and Charlie Edwards. You might
Speaker 1: remember Andy's laugh if you haven't listened to that series.
Speaker 1: It's probably one of the best stories we've ever told.
Speaker 1: Andy is from the mountains of western Arkansas and is
Speaker 1: a heck of a deer hunter and woodsman. This is
Speaker 1: a tour through Andy's fall of on public land and
Speaker 1: it ends with a non typical surprise. This this is
Speaker 1: probably two thousand fifteen or sixteen. I had an area
Speaker 1: that I really wanted to go look at. It was
Speaker 1: right before muzzloading season and just look for deer sign
Speaker 1: It's really see if there was any acrons And made
Speaker 1: in on the north side of the mountain, and so
Speaker 1: I called my oldest son he was. He was working
Speaker 1: and I said, look, when you get off work today,
Speaker 1: I said, if you don't mind, picked me up on
Speaker 1: the highway north and uh, he said where and I
Speaker 1: told him he said, I'll be there anyway. So I
Speaker 1: I drive up on the top of the mountain and
Speaker 1: went off wrong. I wanted to go off on this
Speaker 1: big leg that goes off the mountain, and but I
Speaker 1: went off wrong and I got in the holler and
Speaker 1: where I went off it was just just straight up
Speaker 1: and down. I had to side hill it out through
Speaker 1: the side, going west and one ft up and two
Speaker 1: feet pack and grabbing hold of trees, try to hold
Speaker 1: on two and finally hit the leg and started off
Speaker 1: the mountain and uh, didn't go a hundred yards until
Speaker 1: I jumped a really nice buck deer. Of course, at
Speaker 1: that time when I went off, all I had was
Speaker 1: pocket off. I didn't have a gun, didn't have a boat,
Speaker 1: didn't even take a twenty two. Wouldn't killing squirrels with
Speaker 1: I just I was on a mission to try to
Speaker 1: make it out before dark where I wanted to go.
Speaker 1: So anyway, jumped a real nice eight point buck and
Speaker 1: one of them, and you know how they are when
Speaker 1: you don't have a gun their team. And uh so
Speaker 1: I fell off the leg and then there's a I
Speaker 1: think the prettiest, prettiest saddle that there is in the world.
Speaker 1: When I got into the saddle, there wasn't a lot
Speaker 1: of deer sign, but the spotted oakay acrens. It was
Speaker 1: just raining acres in there. Of course, you know what
Speaker 1: that means. The bear there was a lot of there's
Speaker 1: a lot of bear sign right there where I was at.
Speaker 1: So anyway, I just kept on plugging. I fell north,
Speaker 1: went up through some rocks and fell off on the
Speaker 1: back side. And the white oaks that year really hadn't
Speaker 1: made at all. But anyway, I fell off the mountain
Speaker 1: and I just kept walking and looking and and just
Speaker 1: wasn't finding any deer sign at all. And um, it's
Speaker 1: a long ways and on the low end to but
Speaker 1: there's a couple more little saddles in there that I
Speaker 1: wanted to look at. And and uh just before I
Speaker 1: bottomed out, I did have the binoculars and I'm looking
Speaker 1: at trees, and you know, I like to look at
Speaker 1: see what cut acrons they got. Of course you have
Speaker 1: to look. They were trying to knock your head going
Speaker 1: off there. But anyway, that particular year, it was really dry,
Speaker 1: just like it's been this fall. I mean, there wasn't
Speaker 1: no water anywhere, and there was a pond. There was
Speaker 1: a game pond that I really wanted to get to
Speaker 1: because I figured that everything in the world would be
Speaker 1: water there, bear, deer, everything. And just so happened when
Speaker 1: I fell off, I hit it just right. I just
Speaker 1: crossed the bottom, pulled it on the top of a
Speaker 1: another little old ridge, and just walked right out to
Speaker 1: this pond. At that time, it was real opening there,
Speaker 1: and since then some of the old spotted oaks have
Speaker 1: fell and it's opened up the canopy and it's just
Speaker 1: a jungle. But anyway, I walk off down to the pond.
Speaker 1: I could look on the kind of the northwest side
Speaker 1: of it, and I could just see a trail coming
Speaker 1: into it. And when I when I walked around there,
Speaker 1: I get us every deer in the country where you
Speaker 1: was using that pond, they just had it muddy where
Speaker 1: they were the old white mud where they were leaving
Speaker 1: on that one side, and of course they was walking
Speaker 1: all the way around it. And one of the biggest
Speaker 1: cotton mouse i've ever seen. I've seen right there that day.
Speaker 1: I mean one of them them double beggings. I mean
Speaker 1: that you're you hate to leave and don't kill you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. It's one of those deals. But anyway,
Speaker 1: when I walked around the pond, there was a buck
Speaker 1: track in the mud, and I took my pocket knife
Speaker 1: and I laid my pocket knife down beside it and
Speaker 1: took a picture of it so I could show Scott
Speaker 1: how big a track this, dear head. It's one of
Speaker 1: the biggest tracks I ever saw and walked on. Now
Speaker 1: Scott was waiting on me, and I told Scott, I said,
Speaker 1: every day in the country is using that. We need
Speaker 1: to hunt that. Now, this is the week before buzzlo
Speaker 1: You know my intentions was I was gonna hunt it
Speaker 1: one day muzzload. Well, you know how it is, You
Speaker 1: muzzloon gets here and you've got another plans and you
Speaker 1: go someplace else and you hunt. Well, we let muzzleloading pass.
Speaker 1: We didn't hunt it, okay, but I did take a tree,
Speaker 1: stand up there and hang on the tree to climber
Speaker 1: and left it. Anyway, Muzzlodon gets there, it passes. We
Speaker 1: didn't hunt. Gun season comes the first week. First two
Speaker 1: weeks a gun season, we didn't hunt well. He gets
Speaker 1: Uh Thanksgiving, I decide I'm gonna walk in there weednasty
Speaker 1: before Thanksgiving. So I walk in there and it's just raining.
Speaker 1: Acrons are at that pond and the deer tracks are
Speaker 1: still there, and check my stand. Of course, the bears
Speaker 1: got my stand and toward the seat out of my stand,
Speaker 1: you know, and I had to fix all that is
Speaker 1: upside that, you know how they do. But anyway, so
Speaker 1: I called Scott. He he works a lot, and I thought, well,
Speaker 1: it's tomorrows Thanksgiving, he may be off. I called him
Speaker 1: and asked him if he wanted. I said, you need
Speaker 1: to go hunt that stand, and he said, man, he
Speaker 1: said I have. I've got to go in to work
Speaker 1: in the morning. There's no way out of it. So
Speaker 1: the next morning I get up, I walk in there.
Speaker 1: It was cool thing. In fact, I think it was
Speaker 1: a pretty good frost that morning. And I'm gonna say
Speaker 1: I think we all agreed yesterday, because I went back
Speaker 1: to that spot yesterday. Uh, we agreed. It's a big mile.
Speaker 1: But anyway, I got in there early and it was
Speaker 1: on Thanksgiving morning. And the way it works out with
Speaker 1: me is of course, we have we have kids and
Speaker 1: they have families and we have we have grandkids, and
Speaker 1: usually we have our Thanksgiving the weekend before with a family,
Speaker 1: and so usually on Thanksgiving it's just Tina Nie. So
Speaker 1: there's not really nothing going on. And I'm a little selfish,
Speaker 1: but I kind of like it that way, you know,
Speaker 1: because I think Thanksgiving Day as a heck of the
Speaker 1: day to hunt. It has been for me over the years. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I walk in there and get up and stand and
Speaker 1: it's it's a finer morning as God ever made. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's there's just a what little bit of breeze there
Speaker 1: is out of the northwest, and it's just enough just
Speaker 1: to just to shake the leaves just a little bit.
Speaker 1: I set up there, and I don't know, it's just
Speaker 1: something about it. The leaves, you know, Thanksgiving a week
Speaker 1: the user fall, and you know it's they're starting to
Speaker 1: fall off the tree, specially when the sun gets up.
Speaker 1: It seems like they just fall off on frosty mornings.
Speaker 1: And everything was it was just perfect. And after a while,
Speaker 1: probably about eight thirty right in behind me on this ridge,
Speaker 1: this ridge runs north and south that goes in there
Speaker 1: just a leg, it makes off, and I heard a
Speaker 1: big calamity behind me, and but it sounded to me
Speaker 1: like a buck chasing the dough. Any kind of quieting
Speaker 1: down there a little bit. And after a while, right
Speaker 1: out from this pond there's a there's a saddle, and
Speaker 1: I caught a little emotion. I looked, and here come
Speaker 1: a seven point buck and he come off down there.
Speaker 1: He's probably a two and a half year old little
Speaker 1: deer and he come down and all the doing around
Speaker 1: and smelling, and he'd go up the ridge and off
Speaker 1: in the holler and back up, and and uh, he
Speaker 1: messed around there for fifteen minutes, probably right there out
Speaker 1: in front of me a little bit. He just walked off,
Speaker 1: walked off, went west. So it kind of got quiet again,
Speaker 1: you know. And and uh, in a minute, I just
Speaker 1: got to hear and something I could hear it. I could.
Speaker 1: I could hear a deer just coming right in hid me,
Speaker 1: just on a mission, snap crunch pal, you know, just
Speaker 1: coming right down the ridge. And I'm up. I like
Speaker 1: to get pretty high. I'm probably three twenty four or
Speaker 1: maybe twenty five ft high, and it just kept coming.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't move, And about that time I just looked
Speaker 1: to my left there and it was a little numbed buck.
Speaker 1: I said, uh huh, that's exactly what mom was off
Speaker 1: cat round and you're you're out here by yourself. And anyway,
Speaker 1: he messed around there a little bit and he turned
Speaker 1: and went right back down the top of the ridge.
Speaker 1: And about ten thirty probably I sat there and soaking
Speaker 1: it all up. I mean, it's a it's a fine morning.
Speaker 1: Had a lot of confidence, you know, that makes a whole,
Speaker 1: That makes a big difference. So I think confidence is everything.
Speaker 1: And you know, I had a I had an uncle
Speaker 1: back when I was in my twenties and thirties that
Speaker 1: when he when he would take you hunting, you packed
Speaker 1: you a lunch because it wasn't one of those where
Speaker 1: you go hunt at eight o'clock and then coming and
Speaker 1: drank coffee and eat breakfast. And you know, he'd always
Speaker 1: say pack your sandwich. And anything he taught me was patience.
Speaker 1: So I'm a type of guy that I can go
Speaker 1: set a half a day as good as anybody. I mean,
Speaker 1: I can get there double early and and I've killed
Speaker 1: a lot of deer between ten and noon. Just because
Speaker 1: of that. Everything kind of calamity. Everything quietens down. But anyway,
Speaker 1: I'm sitting there, and so I get out my grunt
Speaker 1: call and I grown a time or two and and
Speaker 1: it's still quiet, but the wind has shifted and it
Speaker 1: had switched over to the northeast. It was hitting me
Speaker 1: right in the right cheek. And problem. You know how
Speaker 1: it is ten thirty eleven o'clock, the wind, it picks
Speaker 1: up a little bit. But the leaves were crackling, you know,
Speaker 1: when they were drying then uh over the leaves. I
Speaker 1: was sitting there and I just got to hearing something,
Speaker 1: but I couldn't tell where it was at. And then
Speaker 1: I could tell it was a deer. I could tell
Speaker 1: there was a deer coming. I got to look in
Speaker 1: and about that time I just looked over my left
Speaker 1: shoulder and I see him come off the mountain to
Speaker 1: my left. You know how it is with a big buck.
Speaker 1: When you see a big buck, you don't have to
Speaker 1: guess if he's legal. You don't have to guess anything
Speaker 1: with him. I said, look here, you know. And when
Speaker 1: he come off Clay, he was just he was on
Speaker 1: a mission. I mean he was just here he comes
Speaker 1: and he had to drop off the mountain and come
Speaker 1: up to me. And when he dropped off the wind,
Speaker 1: I'm scared to death. He's gonna win me, because what
Speaker 1: little o there was now then was going right to him.
Speaker 1: But there was two or three of them big old
Speaker 1: bullpines there on the side of the ridge. I'm owned,
Speaker 1: and he got them dudes between me and him, and
Speaker 1: I couldn't. I could just see glimpses of him coming
Speaker 1: up there, and I'm thinking, this guy is gonna get
Speaker 1: in my lap and he's gonna win me, and I'm
Speaker 1: gonna let this deer get away from me. In about
Speaker 1: that time, he just walked out from behind the tree.
Speaker 1: And uh, you know a lot of people don't like
Speaker 1: to take a frontal shot. I've never had any issue
Speaker 1: with it, especially one shooting between the front shoulder, in
Speaker 1: the in the chest. I killed him dead in these tracks.
Speaker 1: I mean he never wiggled, but he was only about
Speaker 1: fifteen steps, you know. I mean, he's way too close.
Speaker 1: I made. I just smoked him. I said, wow, And
Speaker 1: I can see the big I could see the big
Speaker 1: G two on the left sticking up there, and I said, man,
Speaker 1: that's a that's a good buck there, you know. And
Speaker 1: by this time, it's you know, it's ten forty five
Speaker 1: something like that. And I'm in there by myself a
Speaker 1: ball and every boy myself, and so I shinny down
Speaker 1: and I walked under the deer. And I never forget this.
Speaker 1: I said this out loud, I said, I said, wow,
Speaker 1: I never killed one like that. I don't really know
Speaker 1: how many points he is. That's he's got all kinds
Speaker 1: of junk on the end. I think he's about a
Speaker 1: nineteen or twenty one. However you want to count those,
Speaker 1: and you know how his archies are. If you hang
Speaker 1: a ring on him, you can count him as a poet,
Speaker 1: you know. But he's a main frame teen. Uh. We
Speaker 1: weighed him. We were able to wane with a gut
Speaker 1: seat him. He weigh a hundred eighty nine pounds. And
Speaker 1: that's that's. That's a big buck for down here. I mean,
Speaker 1: I know they get bigger than that, but I don't
Speaker 1: see a lot of them over two hundred pounds. I
Speaker 1: said all that to say this, And what's kind of
Speaker 1: funny about this is I went in there hunting the
Speaker 1: deer with a foot big as a pocket mine, and
Speaker 1: I killed a deer that that wouldn't the same deer
Speaker 1: because his foot wasn't near as big as the war
Speaker 1: was bout taking the picture of the pocket eye. I
Speaker 1: love the comprehensive way Andy tells the story and what
Speaker 1: an incredible deer. Killing a buck in these mountains is
Speaker 1: an accomplishment, and I tip my hat to anyone who
Speaker 1: can do it consistently. This next story comes from a
Speaker 1: guy who lives in Minnesota, approximately eight hundred and ten
Speaker 1: miles due north of Andy Brown. Tony Peterson works for
Speaker 1: met Eater's Wired to Hunt Whitetail brand and is a
Speaker 1: veteran whitetail bow hunting Yankee. And I love this guy.
Speaker 1: This is the story of his first big buck in
Speaker 1: his home state of Minnesota, the fourteen point in the Beans. Man,
Speaker 1: I gotta set the stage for this because up until
Speaker 1: two thousand and six in my bow hunting here. So
Speaker 1: I started when I was I was twelve years old.
Speaker 1: So I started bow hunting deer in and I had
Speaker 1: you know, I went through the typical progression, you know, killing,
Speaker 1: killing young ones, killing does finally killing a few bucks,
Speaker 1: moving up to the two and a half year old.
Speaker 1: But I got just plateaued on the two and a
Speaker 1: half year olds like I couldn't I could not kill
Speaker 1: a bigger buck. And what it did to me is
Speaker 1: I started to get buck fever insanely bad. I mean,
Speaker 1: I always had it. I still have it to this day,
Speaker 1: but I always had it. But when it came to
Speaker 1: you know, even a deer that was like five inches,
Speaker 1: it was like, I was never going to make that
Speaker 1: shot correctly. And in two thousand and five, I had
Speaker 1: already gotten a few shots at big ones and and
Speaker 1: blown it. And I had a I had a hunt
Speaker 1: in two thousand and five where I had two really
Speaker 1: big bucks come in within ten minutes each other, and
Speaker 1: I missed them both, and I just in my head,
Speaker 1: I was like, this is never gonna happen. You're never
Speaker 1: gonna be able to do this. So fast forward to
Speaker 1: two thousand and six, and this is the first year
Speaker 1: of my life that I couldn't hunt the opening weekend
Speaker 1: in Minnesota. And it's always kind of a tradition with
Speaker 1: my dad and I, and you know, something that meant
Speaker 1: a lot to me. But I just got married. I
Speaker 1: had moved to the suburbs of the Twin Cities, so
Speaker 1: I was miserable there, especially coming from a little dairy
Speaker 1: farming community in southern Minnesota. It was a it was
Speaker 1: a culture shock for me to have a million people
Speaker 1: in my backyard and not have the places to hunt
Speaker 1: that I was used to from growing up. And then
Speaker 1: on top of that, one of my wife's friends, who
Speaker 1: I don't even really know that well, got married on
Speaker 1: bow opener and I had to go, and so the
Speaker 1: whole opening weekend I was kind of ticked off. But
Speaker 1: whatever I had, I had a bad attitude at that
Speaker 1: time because I knew my season was going to be rough.
Speaker 1: I wasn gonna get that much time. I had a job.
Speaker 1: I hated that I would only get one day off
Speaker 1: a week typically, and so you know, to make the
Speaker 1: two hour drive down to hunt was just not that
Speaker 1: feasible most of the time. So anyway, bad attitude, bad job,
Speaker 1: every everything, My world was kind of turned upside down.
Speaker 1: And I was I was just setting this mindset that
Speaker 1: I was like, I'm not going to kill a big
Speaker 1: one ever, Like it's just never gonna happen for you.
Speaker 1: You're gonna be a scrapper shooter your entire life. But
Speaker 1: on the second weekend of the season, I ended up
Speaker 1: working Saturday morning and having a chance. I figured if
Speaker 1: I if I finished work, I could hop right in
Speaker 1: my truck, grabbed my brand new golden Retriever puppy, drive
Speaker 1: down to southern Minnesota, hand the puppy off to my
Speaker 1: buddy's girlfriend, scramble out to the woods, and I could
Speaker 1: get an evening hunt Saturday night, and then hunt Sunday
Speaker 1: and then go home. So I I flew out of there,
Speaker 1: grabbed that puppy, drove way too fast down there, just
Speaker 1: knocked on the door, handed Amy my my little retriever pup,
Speaker 1: and drove right out to the woods. And it happened
Speaker 1: to be one of those nights where it's kind of
Speaker 1: like drizzly and you know, not not really raining hard,
Speaker 1: but kind of wet, just a little bit fallen here
Speaker 1: and there, grace guys, like a perfect day to sit
Speaker 1: on the beans. And you know, it was September. So
Speaker 1: I figured, this is this is kind of a no brainer,
Speaker 1: is what I'm gonna do. But I was almost out
Speaker 1: of time, and so I ran from my truck all
Speaker 1: the way back to the stand, which is maybe I
Speaker 1: don't know half of my three quarters of a mile
Speaker 1: climbed up in there, and I remember, just like setting
Speaker 1: up and get my release on, and thinking there's no way, like,
Speaker 1: there's no way you're going to get a deer tonight.
Speaker 1: You're in here way too late. You probably blew the
Speaker 1: field out. It's like I kind of was just sitting
Speaker 1: there wallowing in myself pity. And you know, half hour
Speaker 1: into the hunt, I looked up and here's this buck
Speaker 1: standing not that far away, coming right down the middle
Speaker 1: of the strip of beans, and the strip of beans
Speaker 1: only like fifty yards wide, and I thought, holy cow,
Speaker 1: that's one of the biggest bucks I've ever seen. And
Speaker 1: he's on his way towards me, and I just could
Speaker 1: not believe he was not only there, but he was
Speaker 1: the only deer in that field, first one to come out.
Speaker 1: And as I'm watching this here, I'm thinking, Okay, he's
Speaker 1: gonna he's gonna keep following that row and you know,
Speaker 1: maybe passed by like twenty five yards. Well, this deer
Speaker 1: never looks up at me and ends up just for
Speaker 1: some reason, crossing a bunch of the rows and browsing
Speaker 1: right at me. And so he gets to like ten
Speaker 1: yards broadside. And I mean, up to this point, every
Speaker 1: big buck in my orbit had got away, Like I
Speaker 1: had I had buck fever so bad, i'd shoot over him.
Speaker 1: I'd rush it, and this deer standing there a gift
Speaker 1: and I draw back and shoot and it's all a blur,
Speaker 1: you know, like it's one of those things where you're
Speaker 1: like filling into the details afterwards. But he runs and
Speaker 1: stops in the field and he takes off, and I
Speaker 1: remember thinking, gosh, I think I saw blood coming out
Speaker 1: of his side, and I thought I saw my fletchings
Speaker 1: disappear right behind his shoulder. And at that point I'm
Speaker 1: not very patient now, but at that point I was
Speaker 1: really not that patient, and I couldn't take it. So
Speaker 1: I got down and went over to where I thought
Speaker 1: I hit him, and there's just blood all over the beans,
Speaker 1: and it's like this surreal moment where you're like, I
Speaker 1: think I might have finally killed a big one. And
Speaker 1: I thought he was just like a pointer. I didn't
Speaker 1: really know what he was other than big mature. So
Speaker 1: I started following the blood trail, and a hundred yards away,
Speaker 1: at the edge of the woods, he's piled up, and
Speaker 1: I just remember walking up to him and not only
Speaker 1: was he's a mainframe eight pointer, but he had six
Speaker 1: stickers and you know, ended up scoring I think a
Speaker 1: d inches or something. Just this like otherworldly dear to me.
Speaker 1: And it was such a lesson because I had I
Speaker 1: had such a bad attitude going into that hunt. You know,
Speaker 1: I was throwing that little pity party for not being
Speaker 1: able to hunt the opening weekend and getting down there
Speaker 1: late and being so limited. I was just in my head,
Speaker 1: I'm like you just you just you don't have a chance, dude.
Speaker 1: And it was like such an easy way to feel
Speaker 1: bad for myself. Plus I just never thought I was
Speaker 1: going to kill a big one, and that dear land
Speaker 1: there was like it was like another world opened up
Speaker 1: for me as a deer hunter. It was like you
Speaker 1: can kill these deer, like they will make mistakes, big
Speaker 1: bucks will screw up if you keep going out there
Speaker 1: and keep doing your thing. And it just I think
Speaker 1: about that dear all the time when I'm hunting now,
Speaker 1: because if I get a bad attitude, or I screw up,
Speaker 1: or I bump one or miss one, it's so easy
Speaker 1: to slide into that negative mindset. I always think about
Speaker 1: that fourteen pointer in the beans just making every bad
Speaker 1: decision possible and just offering himself up to me. And
Speaker 1: it always keeps me going. It always makes me feel
Speaker 1: good because that dear just showed me what was possible
Speaker 1: with this stuff. And I just I love I love
Speaker 1: that hunt and that experience for it because it it
Speaker 1: literally changed the arc of my my hunting career, but
Speaker 1: also my work career. Is just it was something so
Speaker 1: special to me. I love it, Tony, great hunt brother.
Speaker 1: This next voice you'll recognize for sure. James Lawrence is
Speaker 1: my Arkansas Backwoods Mansaul Milling rock Land horse riding, big Woods,
Speaker 1: white tail hunting mentor. He's a member of the Bear
Speaker 1: Grease Hall of Fame. And if you remember, the third
Speaker 1: episode of bear Grease was called The shed Horn Buck
Speaker 1: of nineteen sixty two, which was all about James. This
Speaker 1: is a short story, but it's one of his favorites.
Speaker 1: It's probably me at eighties and most of those most
Speaker 1: of those years I hunted by myself ninety percent of time.
Speaker 1: I don't do a whole lot of setting. I'd usually
Speaker 1: distill hunt slipping through the woods and I like the
Speaker 1: the wind has to be right to under certain area.
Speaker 1: Wind was good that morning. I left my truck across
Speaker 1: the river and started in and the direction I was going.
Speaker 1: The wind was perfect for me. I started up the hollow.
Speaker 1: There's a big mountain on my left, and there was
Speaker 1: a ridge on my right heads and turns into the mountains,
Speaker 1: so this is the easiest access the way. The wind blowing,
Speaker 1: I eased up this hollow and UH to go back
Speaker 1: a little bit. In the past, when I would kill
Speaker 1: a deer, I would always skin the hawks off, put
Speaker 1: him in a baggy, take them home and freeze them
Speaker 1: for cent. If I kill a doe with archery a
Speaker 1: lot of times, if I could, I'd say the bladder
Speaker 1: and use the natural scent. And that's what I've done
Speaker 1: this day. I get in the area where I was hunting,
Speaker 1: I stopped, sit down, I tied those buck hawks, went
Speaker 1: on each foot on my heels. My boat started up.
Speaker 1: Come around a big holly tree just a few yards
Speaker 1: from where I put the hawks on in there with
Speaker 1: the fresh the fresh scrape and what I mean fresh, fresh, fresh,
Speaker 1: till I mean he dug it out. He's down around
Speaker 1: that dragging those buck hawks. I get up the little
Speaker 1: ways and I was going up this hollow to my right,
Speaker 1: and I was walking in the hollow, just stepping on rocks,
Speaker 1: trying not to make any noise. When I could see
Speaker 1: the top of the ridge, I decided to get up
Speaker 1: on top of the ridge, get out of the holler,
Speaker 1: and get up on the ridge, easing along, stopping, leaning
Speaker 1: up against the tree, watching up ahead of me. Wind
Speaker 1: was still good in my favor. I hear something behind me,
Speaker 1: and like I said, I just left the hollow. I probably,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't fit two yards up it.
Speaker 1: And I heard something coming off the mountain behind me.
Speaker 1: For I come down in all and by this time
Speaker 1: I didn't know what it was. And then I turned
Speaker 1: and here this nice bucks coming up the mountain. His
Speaker 1: mouth was open. He was making every time his feet
Speaker 1: hit the ground. It aren't aren't aren't never heard that.
Speaker 1: It wasn't a grunt, wasn't growl, wasn't a snort. His
Speaker 1: mouth was open. The hair on his neck was standing out,
Speaker 1: which made him look a lot bigger. Hair running down
Speaker 1: his back was standing up. And before I could get
Speaker 1: on him, got my rifle up and this was a
Speaker 1: nice buck, and I couldn't get on him, and he
Speaker 1: went out of sight. Well, when he went out of sight,
Speaker 1: I knew that I could see the end of the
Speaker 1: holler where it tied onto the ridge. He didn't come out.
Speaker 1: Everything got quiet, and a little bit I heard him
Speaker 1: again coming down the bridge, got on my trail and
Speaker 1: here he come same way, mouth open hair on his neck,
Speaker 1: which I've never seen before, and I mean, he was
Speaker 1: seriously mad. And I got my rifle up him running,
Speaker 1: I got on him and I squeezed off around none
Speaker 1: of them in. He come on around, and that shot
Speaker 1: put him down, and then everything come m and I
Speaker 1: never get scared in the wood, never get bothered in
Speaker 1: the woods. I always I'd never ever ever experienced anything
Speaker 1: like that. And he went down. Then I realized, and
Speaker 1: it was following the scent that I'd put on. And
Speaker 1: I used the sin after that, but I didn't. I
Speaker 1: don't use it like I did that time. A person
Speaker 1: could get uh in a bad position with a buck,
Speaker 1: with fresh deerhawks tied on and going through the woods
Speaker 1: and having a buck you get in his area. It's
Speaker 1: scary bother me kill a lot of deer. And I've
Speaker 1: never been bothered like that. How did you get that
Speaker 1: deer out of the woods? I don't like, I always
Speaker 1: do feel dressed in and then I've done the shock
Speaker 1: pouched feet together, and he was. It was all downhill,
Speaker 1: so I didn't have a problem getting them out. I
Speaker 1: was back in a pretty good, pretty good ways from
Speaker 1: the truck. He was telling me how you sho pouch one?
Speaker 1: You get it like you always do. Feel dress it.
Speaker 1: I peeled a go around the dew claws on the
Speaker 1: deer and skin it down to the first joint and
Speaker 1: need joint, and I popped that joint off through all
Speaker 1: four legs that way and leave the duke clothes on.
Speaker 1: That makes the deizer. And then you just take the
Speaker 1: right front foot to the left pine foot down together,
Speaker 1: just as tight as again, and do the same to
Speaker 1: the other so down and run your arms through them
Speaker 1: and then lean forward and get up and get your
Speaker 1: rifle in one hand, got horn to the other. Carry
Speaker 1: him out on your back, Carolina back pat. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: carry that one up. It's a whole lot easier than
Speaker 1: dragging one. How long will it take you to shock
Speaker 1: pouch one? The time to go? Just just a few minutes.
Speaker 1: Who taught you how to do that? Basically? My grandmother
Speaker 1: and my grandmother's brother love it. James. If you want
Speaker 1: to see a video of how James taught me to
Speaker 1: shock pouch you deer. Go to the meat eater dot
Speaker 1: com and search for shock pouch, you deer, and you'll
Speaker 1: find it. My, my boy, you're in for a treat now.
Speaker 1: The voice, cadence, worldview and frequency of this next storyteller
Speaker 1: is core to the energy of Bear Greece because it's
Speaker 1: none other than my own sweet dad, Gary Believer Newcomb.
Speaker 1: Dad showed me how to be passionate, to live by
Speaker 1: a value system, to have confidence in my identity, and
Speaker 1: to work hard. But maybe most relevant to this story,
Speaker 1: you taught me how to look for them akers. I
Speaker 1: can't tell you how many times I've heard this Arkansas
Speaker 1: public Land story, but every time I'm on the edge
Speaker 1: of my seat. This is the story of the clicking buck.
Speaker 1: You know, I've hunted since seventy six, and you know
Speaker 1: I really didn't know how to deer hunt. I kind
Speaker 1: of taught myself. I don't have a lot of patients,
Speaker 1: so I don't kill a lot of big bucks. I
Speaker 1: kill a lot of little deer. But every now and
Speaker 1: I run into a big buck. And uh. I found
Speaker 1: this big buck because there was a huge area in
Speaker 1: a sawdust pile where they had logged and there was
Speaker 1: a huge it looked like a fifteen or twenty ft scrape,
Speaker 1: ten ft scrape. And so I got the scouting and
Speaker 1: I started seeing uh, four inch rubs and started seeing
Speaker 1: normal scrapes, big ones. And then you know, I went
Speaker 1: to my m O like I always did, and found
Speaker 1: a place with her acrons, and I put my best
Speaker 1: set up. You know, I put a lock on stand.
Speaker 1: Next day, I can't hunt very long, only a couple
Speaker 1: of hours, and I climb up in that stand. A
Speaker 1: dog comes in, and typically I would have shot that
Speaker 1: dough in a New York second, but I thought, I
Speaker 1: ain't gonna do it this time. I know the bucks
Speaker 1: in here. And so I got to watching her and
Speaker 1: she kind of acted like she was in heat. And
Speaker 1: I don't remember what I twitching her tail, doing things
Speaker 1: that was a little different than other dose. It's twenty three,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say twenty three October, and uh ends up
Speaker 1: she was in heat, probably the only dear coming in.
Speaker 1: She wasn't in. And so I'm sitting there looking around
Speaker 1: watching her feed, and all of a sudden I hear
Speaker 1: big steps coming. I mean, they're this sucker sounding like
Speaker 1: a gorilla. Coming in. You know, I get my bow already,
Speaker 1: and this buck all of a sudden starts going. I
Speaker 1: call it the clicking buck. I would not have even
Speaker 1: known what that was, but a friend of mine had
Speaker 1: just bought a clicking call. It was kind of silly.
Speaker 1: It was a wheel that had little notches in it,
Speaker 1: and you'd spend it did go click click click. So
Speaker 1: I knew what it was, and I go, that's thinking
Speaker 1: clicking buck. So I sit there and I had a
Speaker 1: real thick pine thicket behind me that deer could move
Speaker 1: through but you couldn't see. And then I had this
Speaker 1: big white oak out here, and then just normal woods
Speaker 1: around with a few thickets. And so I'm sitting there
Speaker 1: and I'm turning the best I could to get see
Speaker 1: if at deer's there, it never shows itself, and then
Speaker 1: I hear it turned walk off. Well about ten minutes later,
Speaker 1: a real nice ten point, you know, one twenty class
Speaker 1: probably maybe better, maybe not, but a good ten point
Speaker 1: came up. And he came up almost under my stand.
Speaker 1: I mean, he's he's five yards if you were to
Speaker 1: step it. It It had been five or six yards to
Speaker 1: my shooting side and back then and for thirty years.
Speaker 1: I mean, if it came on on my left side,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't even shoot at him. I sit down Freda Heights,
Speaker 1: and uh so he's right there, man. And about that time,
Speaker 1: loops got real popular to put on your strings, and
Speaker 1: I had a loop on mine, and and something happened
Speaker 1: had changed string, and I just thought, I don't need
Speaker 1: that sissy stuff, so I didn't put a loop on
Speaker 1: my bowl. And so finally I sit there watch him
Speaker 1: for it seemed like an hour, but it's probably five minutes.
Speaker 1: And he never moved, and he had a big tree
Speaker 1: in front of him, not real big, ten inches eight inches,
Speaker 1: and so I kept watching him, and he kept staring
Speaker 1: at that dough, and so finally moved just a little
Speaker 1: bit and I pulled my bow back and I was
Speaker 1: just getting ready to shoot him in my air fell out,
Speaker 1: So he takes off in the dough take off. Well,
Speaker 1: so I think, well, that's all the action we're gonna
Speaker 1: have today. And I needed to get back to town.
Speaker 1: I guess i'd better get down, and uh I was
Speaker 1: about halfway down my ladder and eight point good eight
Speaker 1: point came in. Of course, that spooked him, so I
Speaker 1: went back The next Saturday only hunting on Saturdays basically well,
Speaker 1: on the way home, instead of coming by Blacktop, I
Speaker 1: went through the mountains. I knew a camp there where
Speaker 1: these guys were like trophy hunter type guys. I pulled
Speaker 1: into their camp late that night and I said, told
Speaker 1: him what happened with that clicking bug? And I said,
Speaker 1: what the heck was that? And this guy said, I
Speaker 1: can't tell you exactly. And I've told a lot of people,
Speaker 1: and I'm telling you, I don't know of anybody that
Speaker 1: knew what this clicking buck was all about. But these
Speaker 1: guys acted like they knew, and what they told me
Speaker 1: ended up, I think, being exactly right. They said, I
Speaker 1: can tell you exactly what it is. That is the
Speaker 1: absolute dominant buck in the area. And he's not gonna
Speaker 1: waste his time chasing the dough that's not completely in heat.
Speaker 1: He's said, in two or three days, he'll be with
Speaker 1: that dough like glue. So he came in, he sent
Speaker 1: checked her, he left ten point came in. He's gonna
Speaker 1: follow her. You know you're gonna stay with her. Clicking
Speaker 1: buck leaves. So I come back the next Saturday, climb
Speaker 1: up in the same stand, and she came in straight
Speaker 1: to my shooting lane to the left, and I could
Speaker 1: see her coming from you know, four yards. So she
Speaker 1: comes in same thing, acting kind of crazy, eating acrons,
Speaker 1: and so I get the looking at the direction she's
Speaker 1: coming and I see big old horns coming. They look
Speaker 1: like those Texas bucks that go straight out with big
Speaker 1: times going up. I mean, he was the biggest deer
Speaker 1: I guess I've ever seen on hoof. At the time,
Speaker 1: I said he was one forty. But as I get
Speaker 1: older and think back and learn more about dead, I'm
Speaker 1: telling he was one fifty plus maybe one sixty. I
Speaker 1: mean he was big. And so he pulls up broadside,
Speaker 1: big huge animal, easy shock, thirty two steps. But I
Speaker 1: didn't I didn't know it. I mean I figured he
Speaker 1: was thirty, but I didn't, you know, I stepped it
Speaker 1: off and he was thirty two steps. And so he's
Speaker 1: watching this dough feed. Well I'm twenty five ft up
Speaker 1: and I'm getting away with everything. I mean, I I
Speaker 1: could move, I could do whatever I want head no idea.
Speaker 1: I was there. Of course I did my sense stuff,
Speaker 1: not like I told Bear, but I mean I just
Speaker 1: was clean. And so I get to do and this
Speaker 1: bending over down to my knees and and I wouldn't
Speaker 1: stand up, and I kept looking. I couldn't find a
Speaker 1: hole to shoot him. There was a hickory tree with
Speaker 1: yellow leaves that tells you the time of the year.
Speaker 1: It was had yellow leafs, and and the limbs coming
Speaker 1: off of it low We're only about ten inches long,
Speaker 1: but they all had leaves on them. And so I'd
Speaker 1: move up on the edge of my seat and I've
Speaker 1: been way over and finally I saw a hole. But
Speaker 1: it took me so long to find that hole that
Speaker 1: by that time distance wasn't an issue. I mean, I
Speaker 1: didn't even think about distance. I just pulled down, put
Speaker 1: my twenty pin on him, and shot right on the rea.
Speaker 1: And you know, now, the bows I shoot now, I
Speaker 1: wouldn't have made any difference, I would, you know. I mean,
Speaker 1: they shoot flat, pretty pretty flat. But back then you
Speaker 1: had to know thirty. I mean, I just shot under
Speaker 1: that buck. But uh, it was a thrill lean morning.
Speaker 1: And you know, I had a couple other mornings that
Speaker 1: were just about his thrilling, but that would probably probably
Speaker 1: be the second most exciting hunt I was. Ever. Only
Speaker 1: other one was when I was really a rookie, and
Speaker 1: I had eleven those come in at different times, and um,
Speaker 1: it was pretty thrilling. And and what's kind of interesting
Speaker 1: to me our own inner makings and hidden mechanisms, is
Speaker 1: that the longer I get away from that date, the
Speaker 1: more I regret not clicking my brain in and shooting
Speaker 1: that dear a thirty yards. I mean it, really, I
Speaker 1: mean he would. He would be a wall hanger deluxe.
Speaker 1: I think these stories of failures stand out in our
Speaker 1: minds for a very specific reason. A father's story of
Speaker 1: missed opportunity is supposed to equip the sun not to miss.
Speaker 1: The story still stings me twenty five year later, but
Speaker 1: the clicking buck won't be lost in newcom lore for generations.
Speaker 1: This last white tail hunter needs no introduction. Mark Kenyon
Speaker 1: is my friend and colleague at Meat Eater, and he
Speaker 1: heads up the Wired to Hunt podcast, which is a
Speaker 1: die hard nuts and bolts podcast about white tail deer hunting,
Speaker 1: and you ought to be listening to it if you're
Speaker 1: a white tail man. Mark is a meticulous, hard hunting dude,
Speaker 1: and he came to Arkansas last year with me and
Speaker 1: James Lawrence and killed the buck on public land and
Speaker 1: You can watch that hunt on the meter to YouTube
Speaker 1: channel on Mark's new series Dear Country, which is very cool.
Speaker 1: This is the story of Mark's first buck on his
Speaker 1: family's land in Michigan. It was mid November and we
Speaker 1: were in northern Michigan and my family deer camp, my
Speaker 1: favorite place in the world. And it was one of
Speaker 1: those days where the air was crisp, the leaves crackled,
Speaker 1: snow was just starting to fall. It's one of those
Speaker 1: perfect days that you dream of as a deer hunter.
Speaker 1: When I was a young man, still a teenager, heading
Speaker 1: out for the first evening hunt of guns season, and
Speaker 1: I was walking out to my tree stand with my
Speaker 1: grandpa g P, as I called him, set off from
Speaker 1: the cabin and we walked across the first little field
Speaker 1: we had across the bridge. We get to the second
Speaker 1: little field, and this is where GPS blind was the
Speaker 1: place where, seemingly, in my mind, legends were made. All
Speaker 1: of these stories he told me took place in the
Speaker 1: second field. He walked to the edge of it, and
Speaker 1: this is where we were going to part ways. And
Speaker 1: as we set off, Grandpa looked at me and GP said,
Speaker 1: all right, Mark, good luck. You can do it, and
Speaker 1: he went off his way, and I went off my way,
Speaker 1: and I said, along the creek, heading back along what
Speaker 1: we would call the peninsula. At the end of a
Speaker 1: point was an old ladder stand. And I suppose before
Speaker 1: we go any further, I should tell you a little
Speaker 1: bit about g P and about why he factors into
Speaker 1: this story so much, because Grandpa he was like another
Speaker 1: father to me. He was this legendary figure in my
Speaker 1: life who was always the hero of these stories that
Speaker 1: her growing up. And he was the one who took
Speaker 1: me up to go fishing, and took me up to
Speaker 1: go hunting, and took me out into the woods and
Speaker 1: taught me how to move through the swamp, and taught
Speaker 1: me how to hold still. He was there when I
Speaker 1: first had my first close encounter with the deer, he
Speaker 1: was there when I caught my first big fish. And
Speaker 1: he was always there with these these lessons and these
Speaker 1: rules and these reminders of the right way to do things,
Speaker 1: and and this was true with my dad as well,
Speaker 1: But really Grandpa was the one who who set these
Speaker 1: rules and stones commandments. And I remember the line was
Speaker 1: was drawn in the sand, and you didn't cross. It
Speaker 1: was more important how you did something than what you did.
Speaker 1: And I remember one example of this very well. I
Speaker 1: remember being up a deer camp as a young child,
Speaker 1: and there were some other folks, some friends of my
Speaker 1: uh other relatives, who were up at deer camp for
Speaker 1: the first time, and they did not necessarily do things
Speaker 1: the way that we did things. We would come to
Speaker 1: find out. And there was a buck that went running
Speaker 1: across the field in front of the cabin, and one
Speaker 1: of these friends ran out and grabbed his gun and
Speaker 1: started taking shots at this deer as it ran across
Speaker 1: in front. I remember my grandpa was furious, absolutely furious,
Speaker 1: told him he was gonna have to leave if he
Speaker 1: would ever do something like that again, because we didn't
Speaker 1: ever risk wounding an animal like that. You would never
Speaker 1: take a shot at a moving animal. You would never
Speaker 1: take a shot unless it was just right, to make
Speaker 1: sure it's as quick and ethical as possible. You had
Speaker 1: to do things the right way. And that stuck with
Speaker 1: me throughout all of my years living up as a hunter.
Speaker 1: And as I'm heading out in this night, I'm eighteen
Speaker 1: or nineteen years old, whatever it was, and I'm slipping
Speaker 1: into that tree stand I get there, I'm i gotta
Speaker 1: do it. I gotta get it right. This year, I
Speaker 1: had not gotten a buck at our cabin yet. There's
Speaker 1: not a lot of deer up there, but a really
Speaker 1: special place. And remember getting to that ladder stand and
Speaker 1: slowly going up, up, up, trying not to make a creek.
Speaker 1: Got to the top of the stand, and remember thinking,
Speaker 1: we're all the different places a buck might come through here,
Speaker 1: they come from my left, to come from my right,
Speaker 1: Remember knowing that there was a trail that paralleled that
Speaker 1: creek off to my right side, And so I tried
Speaker 1: to move and get a good shot. You know, see
Speaker 1: if I could get a good shot from that direction.
Speaker 1: And I couldn't really turn very well in the stands.
Speaker 1: So I remember standing up and thinking, they're okay, if
Speaker 1: a buck were to come from that direction, what would
Speaker 1: I do? And so I practiced slowly standing up in
Speaker 1: the ladder stand, slowly spin and having to get down
Speaker 1: on one knee and rest my gun on the armrest
Speaker 1: of this stand, and thinking through, all right, if a
Speaker 1: buck came through there, I'll make this move ever so
Speaker 1: slowly and quietly, and then I could get it. So
Speaker 1: I practiced that in all different directions. Finally I settled in,
Speaker 1: sat down, and waited to see what the night would
Speaker 1: bring along. I remember it was a slow night, and
Speaker 1: I remember my mind thinking, well, this is just gonna
Speaker 1: be like every other hunt. This is just gonna be
Speaker 1: another hunt out here where we see nothing. Maybe I'll
Speaker 1: have some birds come through. Maybe I'll see a partridge. Now,
Speaker 1: maybe you'll hear coyote off from the distance, but not
Speaker 1: too likely we're gonna see anything. I'd seen. Jeez, fewer
Speaker 1: bucks and you can count on one or two hands,
Speaker 1: and all of my years up there, tonight was gonna
Speaker 1: be different. And as lights started to fade, it's down
Speaker 1: to the last half hour of daylight probably, and I
Speaker 1: see something off in the cattails, and I pulled my
Speaker 1: binoculars and I see antlers, and I knew at this
Speaker 1: point any buck was a I want to take a
Speaker 1: crack ass. So I want to get this buck back
Speaker 1: into view. He was straight away into the cattails. I
Speaker 1: lost him, but I had one of those little can calls,
Speaker 1: that little dough bleak candid if you tip over it
Speaker 1: makes that sounded. Reached for that in my backpack and
Speaker 1: the first thing I went to turn it over and
Speaker 1: did one more time, and then I waited. I don't
Speaker 1: know if I breathed. I was hoping so so badly
Speaker 1: for this deer turn around. And then there he was,
Speaker 1: that buckets spawned a d eighty degrees and was walking
Speaker 1: right back towards me. I could just see his head,
Speaker 1: you couldn't see his vitals. He had him holding my gun.
Speaker 1: My heart's beating a million miles a minute. I had
Speaker 1: not shot a buck up here at our cabin before.
Speaker 1: This was something that I never experienced here. But now
Speaker 1: he turns, and he turns back into the cattails, and
Speaker 1: he starts paralleling me. And now I realized he's going
Speaker 1: to move off to my right side, to that side
Speaker 1: that I would have a hard time shooting if I
Speaker 1: didn't do this kind of complicated maneuver I practiced earlier,
Speaker 1: but now I had to do it. And I could
Speaker 1: see him moving through the cat tails, and I thought
Speaker 1: to myself, I could probably shoot him through there, but no,
Speaker 1: I gotta wait. And I don't know how long it took.
Speaker 1: It felt like a year, but finally I saw him
Speaker 1: approaching the one clear land I had, and as he
Speaker 1: stepped into that, I squeezed the truth and he dropped
Speaker 1: right there perfect, And I don't even know how to
Speaker 1: describe my reaction. It was just disbelief. I had actually
Speaker 1: done it. I had actually joined the legends of my
Speaker 1: family here. I had entered my story into the record
Speaker 1: books here in our family cabin, at this place that
Speaker 1: I had grown up, where I had been taught so much,
Speaker 1: where I had kind of marveled under these adults who
Speaker 1: had come before me and taught me how to hunt
Speaker 1: and fish and be an outdoorsman. And finally I had
Speaker 1: secure my place at that table. I would finally have
Speaker 1: a buck on the buck form? Man, Do I love
Speaker 1: some white tell stories? Were truly fortunate in this country
Speaker 1: to live in the heyday of white tail. Honey. We've
Speaker 1: got some challenges with c w D land access, some overcrowding,
Speaker 1: but goodness, it's hard to complain with a little work.
Speaker 1: Anybody in this country can do the stuff that you've
Speaker 1: heard all these guys talk about. These deer live in
Speaker 1: our backyards, and adventure awaits those willing to grind and go.
Speaker 1: We haven't heard about any two inches, and we haven't
Speaker 1: heard from any chest banging killers. But we've heard from
Speaker 1: men of common means that I believe are all extraordinary
Speaker 1: hunters in their own sphere. And they're extraordinary not because
Speaker 1: of the bucks on the wall, though they've got them,
Speaker 1: but because of how much they love white tails and
Speaker 1: hunting them. They just love being in white tail country.
Speaker 1: I can't thank you enough for listening to the Fair
Speaker 1: Grease podcast. We put our heart and soul into this thing,
Speaker 1: and its energy is bird from a love of wild places,
Speaker 1: wild beasts, and wildhearted people. Do me a favor this
Speaker 1: week and share our podcast with your brows and foes
Speaker 1: and have a great week, and I look forward to
Speaker 1: talking to everyone on the Render next week.