Speaker 1: H how they made to live and how they got by,
Speaker 1: I don't know, and I can't imagine. I try not
Speaker 1: to complain about anything because they they had all the
Speaker 1: right in the world. And I never heard him or
Speaker 1: my grandmother negative on anything is positive, had a lot
Speaker 1: of respect for him. On this episode of the Bear
Speaker 1: Grease Podcast, I want to introduce you to my friend
Speaker 1: and mentor, James Lawrence. James is seventy two years old
Speaker 1: and he's a master whitetail hunter for the region he lives.
Speaker 1: James's life and hunting career was heavily influenced by one
Speaker 1: of the first deary ever killed in nineteen sixty two.
Speaker 1: It was a giant buck, and previous to him killing
Speaker 1: the buck, he'd found three years of matching sheds. The
Speaker 1: story has many layers and some significant twists and turns.
Speaker 1: James's life has been a significant inspiration to me, and
Speaker 1: it has impacted me on many levels. I want to
Speaker 1: explore how and why some relationships deeply impact our lives.
Speaker 1: You're gonna enjoy a great white tell story, You're gonna
Speaker 1: learn how to still hunt, but I'm also gonna explore
Speaker 1: how relationships helped form our own identity. But before we start,
Speaker 1: I want to ask you a question. Who are the
Speaker 1: influential people in your life? And why? My name is
Speaker 1: Clay Nukelem and this is the Bear Grease Podcast, where
Speaker 1: we'll explore things forgotten but relevant, search for insight and
Speaker 1: unlikely places, and where we'll tell the story of Americans
Speaker 1: who lived their lives close to the land. James Lawrence's
Speaker 1: family homesteaded in a small rural community in the Washingtal
Speaker 1: Mountains of western Arkansas in the mid eighteen hundreds. They
Speaker 1: weren't wealthy people, but common people, typical of the demographic
Speaker 1: of those migrating into the Arkansas Highlands. Most of these
Speaker 1: newcomers came by the way of the Appalachians and were
Speaker 1: of Scotch Irish descent. In the mid eighteen hundreds, up
Speaker 1: to fifty percent of the migrants that were coming into
Speaker 1: the Ozarks came from Middle Tennessee. But James's family came
Speaker 1: directly out of Kentucky into the Washingtals, which is a
Speaker 1: range of mountains south of the Ozarks. To this day,
Speaker 1: the culture of all these regions are almost mirror reflections
Speaker 1: of each other. All the history of James's family is
Speaker 1: held simply in what can be remembered by those still alive.
Speaker 1: If they'd been wealthy, are famous, perhaps some documentable history
Speaker 1: would have deemed their story worthy of remembrance. Today, weathered
Speaker 1: headstones of granite with the name Lawrence are their only
Speaker 1: literary hat tip. This is it right here. That's my folks,
Speaker 1: and that's my grandparents. Um, what was your what was
Speaker 1: your grandmother's name? Edna, Edna Goldie. I feel like in
Speaker 1: order to understand the context of this story, we gotta
Speaker 1: go way back. We're in a cemetery in western Arkansas,
Speaker 1: the Lawrence Family Cemetery. What do you know about your
Speaker 1: family history back in here? Well, the Lawrence has come
Speaker 1: here from the East Kentucky. My dad was James Lawrence,
Speaker 1: My granddad was James Dan Lawrence, and I'm James Edward Larnch. Now,
Speaker 1: your grandma was a dear uter though, Oh yeah, Now
Speaker 1: was that unusual for a woman to be a pretty
Speaker 1: serious deer hunter or a real serious deer hunter like
Speaker 1: she was? Was that unusual or was that comp a
Speaker 1: little of both? A couple of her her sisters were
Speaker 1: serious hunters, you know. And did they hunt because they
Speaker 1: loved it? Or were they hunting for meat. It was
Speaker 1: strictly for meat. You told me that your grandmother taught
Speaker 1: you had a shock poucher deer, her and her brother.
Speaker 1: Shock pouching is when you remove the lower leg bone
Speaker 1: from the four legs of a deer, leaving the dew claws.
Speaker 1: Then you criss cross the legs, tying them together and
Speaker 1: effectively make backpack straps out of a deer so that
Speaker 1: you can carry the deer out of the woods on
Speaker 1: your back. Actually made a video of this that's on
Speaker 1: the meat eater dot com called shock pouching that you
Speaker 1: can see the whole thing that James taught me how
Speaker 1: to do. Do you have any idea where that came from?
Speaker 1: Just that's how they carried her out. Did they do it?
Speaker 1: Just about every year? That's why they when you find
Speaker 1: them and when they come out with him, that's the
Speaker 1: whey they would beg they'd have it. They put off
Speaker 1: tied in the nut and they'd carried them out physically.
Speaker 1: You know what's pretty interesting to think about. To think
Speaker 1: about the eighteen thirties seems like so long ago, But
Speaker 1: if you think about it like this, you're seventy two.
Speaker 1: You knew people that were. Your grandmother was born in
Speaker 1: nineteen o nine, so she would have you know, her
Speaker 1: grandparents would have been people that would have been here
Speaker 1: in the eighteen thirties. So you think about like your
Speaker 1: life was influenced by people whose lives were directly influenced
Speaker 1: by people that had no technology, no cars, no phones,
Speaker 1: like totally almost like primitive like. And so when you
Speaker 1: think about it like that, like you're two steps away
Speaker 1: from I mean, it's like in the scale of human
Speaker 1: history for how long we've been here, that's like a blip.
Speaker 1: I grew up in the same part of Arkansas as James,
Speaker 1: but I didn't meet him until he was sixty two
Speaker 1: years old and I was around thirty. His reputation preceded him,
Speaker 1: and I was told he was one of the best
Speaker 1: mountain deer hunters around. I got his address, drove to
Speaker 1: his house, and knocked on his door cold turkey. I
Speaker 1: introduced myself to a warm, humble, and rugged man who
Speaker 1: opened the door. I received immediate credibility because of the
Speaker 1: man who told me about him, a mutual friend of ours.
Speaker 1: James's response was predictable of the mountain people. If he's
Speaker 1: a friend of yours, then you're a friend of mine,
Speaker 1: I told him I was writing an article about deer
Speaker 1: hunting in the mountains of Arkansas. Our hunting culture has
Speaker 1: gradually moved to being dominated by deer feeders and sacks
Speaker 1: of corn. I'm not necessarily against feeding deer. I do
Speaker 1: it myself some, but it has undisputably degraded the level
Speaker 1: of knowledge about deer and deer hunting in the modern era.
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk to an expert who hunted deer
Speaker 1: in the mountains on public land. Something immediately told me
Speaker 1: I had found one. His face was worn with deep
Speaker 1: wrinkles that had clearly greeted the sun daily for decades.
Speaker 1: I'd learned that he used to be a smoker, but
Speaker 1: had quit for health reason some years ago. In his
Speaker 1: early thirties, James was a game warden, but resigned after
Speaker 1: a series of incidents, one of which involved him ticketing
Speaker 1: a government official for a game violation, but he was
Speaker 1: then later told to rescind the citation in a back
Speaker 1: room meeting with a supervisor. The injustice was too much
Speaker 1: for a man ray eased in the mountains who never
Speaker 1: heard of silver spoons or the advantages of political hierarchy.
Speaker 1: James made his living as a carpenter, stonemason, and cattle farmer.
Speaker 1: He once built an entire complex of buildings in the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies. It was a mountain retreat center, and the
Speaker 1: job called for four hundred tons of native stonework. James
Speaker 1: spent years gathering the rocks by hand and doing the work.
Speaker 1: In my mind, James is representative of the Mountain people,
Speaker 1: hard working, humble, independent, leery of outsiders, but quick to
Speaker 1: befriend you if friendship is offered. He doesn't seem to
Speaker 1: lose a grudge too quickly, but to his friends he's
Speaker 1: deeply loyal and sacrificial. On that first meeting with James
Speaker 1: in two thousand and ten, I looked at a wall
Speaker 1: of white tailed deer racks. The horns were screwed to
Speaker 1: the sheet rock wall in his garage, and they were
Speaker 1: all cut from the skull plate in the same way
Speaker 1: I'd learned that his uncle showed him how to cut
Speaker 1: the skull plates, so they set flat on the wall,
Speaker 1: displaying the rack at a very particular and natural angle.
Speaker 1: His uncle taught him to tan the hide and put
Speaker 1: it back on the skull plate. Bucks that had been
Speaker 1: off the hoof for fifty years still had their original hair.
Speaker 1: They ranged in size from basket rack bucks to mature,
Speaker 1: top notch white tales. For the region. One rack stood
Speaker 1: out from the rest, and the yellowed horns looked old.
Speaker 1: The hair on the skull plate was faded. Surely this
Speaker 1: deer had a story. I walked to the rack and
Speaker 1: touched its rough burrs, and I asked him about the deer.
Speaker 1: I was amazed at the story that he began to
Speaker 1: tell me. But before you hear the story directly from James,
Speaker 1: you've got to understand the context. In the nineteen fifties
Speaker 1: and sixties, deer numbers in Arkansas were low, and for
Speaker 1: an even deeper look into the context, on December eighteenth,
Speaker 1: nineteen oh seven, President Teddy Roosevelt created the Washington nash
Speaker 1: No Forest, and prior to that the region had been
Speaker 1: logged at a landscape level, meaning almost everything was cut.
Speaker 1: With the trees went the wildlife in most of the
Speaker 1: other big game, including bears, but don't get me started
Speaker 1: on that. With the new management of the Forest Service,
Speaker 1: by the nineteen fifties, the forests were recovering, but the
Speaker 1: primary method of deer hunting the low density population was
Speaker 1: with dogs. Using the dogs was a traditional and effective
Speaker 1: method for rousing deer out of their layers, but very
Speaker 1: few hunters at the time knew how to hunt deer
Speaker 1: on their natural patterns. So when you hear this story,
Speaker 1: I think you'll agree that it was an incredible feat,
Speaker 1: especially for a young boy. When I was with my
Speaker 1: uncle out here on weekend when we lived in town
Speaker 1: at the time. All the weekends out here, Uh, he'd
Speaker 1: give me a twenty two rifle, and ammunition was cheap.
Speaker 1: And when I was out here, I was out wondering
Speaker 1: the fields, and all of it was family owned. Right
Speaker 1: here where we're sitting, the first sheds was probably a
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty yards from where we're sitting, across the Costa,
Speaker 1: the head waters of the Costa, and there they were
Speaker 1: just together, touching each other, just laid right on top
Speaker 1: of each other. They do on top each other. And
Speaker 1: I couldn't I couldn't pick them up and run over
Speaker 1: here and show them quick enough. And you would have been, uh,
Speaker 1: you'd have been eleven years old. These first sheds you
Speaker 1: found right here would have been in like nineteen fifty nine,
Speaker 1: probably three years of sheds and then the bucks of
Speaker 1: fifty nine, sixties, sixty one, and sixty two. You killed
Speaker 1: the deer, so you found this, these sheds just right there.
Speaker 1: You pointed out to me a cedar tree that they
Speaker 1: were laying by, And that was during a time when
Speaker 1: there there weren't deering these mountains. During that time, James's
Speaker 1: family would go off to deer camp, but James rarely went.
Speaker 1: He'd stay home and wander around alone on his home place,
Speaker 1: shooting squirrels and rabbits with his twenty two. These early
Speaker 1: solo hunts would set a track for his future hunting,
Speaker 1: but it also brings up the question why I wasn't
Speaker 1: he included in these family outings. I was one of
Speaker 1: the only ones that was out drashing through the woods
Speaker 1: and through the fields and the thickets for the rabbits
Speaker 1: and squirrels. I was jumping deer. You know. I couldn't
Speaker 1: explain it to them because they I was jumping deer
Speaker 1: all the time, and they were going off dog hunting
Speaker 1: and they're occasionally killing deer, and the family wouldn't seeing it.
Speaker 1: They wouldn't follow me around, and I would try to
Speaker 1: tell him what I've seen, and I know it's hard
Speaker 1: to believe. They were off, scattered out hunting and they're
Speaker 1: not seeing anything. They come in and I've got these stories.
Speaker 1: Well they wasn't interesting in my stories. I mean it really,
Speaker 1: here's the here's the bigger question. Why weren't you hunting
Speaker 1: with them? They I went with my granddad and sat
Speaker 1: on a stand freeze to death. We'd build a little
Speaker 1: bitty fire if we're just stay warm. And he was
Speaker 1: waiting on the dogs to run a deer by us.
Speaker 1: Why would it accuse us when there's standards everywhere. We
Speaker 1: would occasionally see deer, but I could stay home and
Speaker 1: I could just walk down the fence rows and I
Speaker 1: could see dere So you started really learning from a
Speaker 1: young age how to hunt these deer. Well, it was
Speaker 1: just from being out. So you saw him. I saw him.
Speaker 1: I saw him twice. So you came back and told
Speaker 1: your family, I saw a big buck, and I know
Speaker 1: I had excitement. I was excited all over. After James
Speaker 1: found the first set of sheds the next fall, he
Speaker 1: actually saw the buck hard horn. He shared the sighting
Speaker 1: with his family, but you can guess the response that
Speaker 1: he got a little kid claiming to have seen a
Speaker 1: giant buck. He was dismissed, you know. I mean it's
Speaker 1: hard to visualize that thing when I was a kid
Speaker 1: seeing the buck of that, yeah, standing a broadside, nothing
Speaker 1: between me and at me. With the twenty two, I
Speaker 1: couldn't go any further. I had to come tell somebody,
Speaker 1: which was my uncle. And I don't know I would
Speaker 1: have got excited if eleven year old kids come up
Speaker 1: and told me what they've just seen in excitement. Uh,
Speaker 1: it just didn't seem to They kind of dismissed you. Well,
Speaker 1: it just feels it hurt my feeling. But I had proof,
Speaker 1: you know. So that second year, so you find these sheds,
Speaker 1: and just to give people a context, that first year sheds,
Speaker 1: I think I scored it in the high one forties,
Speaker 1: one fifties. I mean, so this is not a small deer,
Speaker 1: especially for the late nineteen fifties and the Washtaw Mountains.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is like a major your dear, So
Speaker 1: you come back with the sheds the second year, you're
Speaker 1: you're you, How did you find the second set of
Speaker 1: sheds the same way I had my twenty two and
Speaker 1: it was right over here. I was stumbling around, I
Speaker 1: was squirrel hunting up the road, and I was going
Speaker 1: up that dark I called it dark hollow. There's a
Speaker 1: holler where the road and makes a sharp bend, and
Speaker 1: I'd go up that hollar on rocks basically where I
Speaker 1: could slip up. And you're at the squirrel barking, and
Speaker 1: and I was on my way back come around and basically, oh,
Speaker 1: all but inside of where we're sitting right now, coming down.
Speaker 1: So you pick up the second year sheds of this buck. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the third year. Tell me how you found those horns?
Speaker 1: Same way? How was that stumbling? Where was where was that?
Speaker 1: They were separate? They were on up the head of Costa.
Speaker 1: The Costa Tot is a fast flowing eighty nine mile
Speaker 1: long river in western Arkansas that flows out of the
Speaker 1: Southern Wash. It toss its headwaters basically start on the
Speaker 1: Lawrence family homestead. The word costatat is a Native American
Speaker 1: word that roughly translates into skull crusher. It's known for
Speaker 1: its rapids further down the river. Hey, in the third
Speaker 1: set of sheds, I scored that deer, given it the
Speaker 1: same spread credit as the actual deer in that dear
Speaker 1: gross scored over a hundred seventy. I mean so this
Speaker 1: is in the in the now, we're into the early
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties, and so I mean, this is a this
Speaker 1: is a gross one seventy plus typical. And you have
Speaker 1: found third years. She has. And I want to say
Speaker 1: something like people in the Midwest today, in farm country,
Speaker 1: they'll have history with deer. You know, they'll find two
Speaker 1: or three years the sheds of a buck down here.
Speaker 1: In the nineteen fifties and sixties, that was unheard of.
Speaker 1: It was now the fall of nineteen sixty two. James
Speaker 1: was now thirteen years old, and he'd collected three years
Speaker 1: a giant sheds of a buck almost within sight of
Speaker 1: his house. He'd been dismissed by many of the hunters
Speaker 1: and his family, but things were about to change. And
Speaker 1: so tell me, tell me about that day. Wow, a
Speaker 1: typical deer season day. I'd been roaming around jumping deer,
Speaker 1: as was typical. James stayed home and hunted while his
Speaker 1: family went off to deer camp. He had a stand
Speaker 1: at a deer crossing that he'd often go and sit
Speaker 1: most of the day. By stand, he didn't mean a
Speaker 1: tree stand. It was a stump that he set on.
Speaker 1: Family loaded up and was going. I was out of
Speaker 1: school that day. Family went over and they let me
Speaker 1: stay home because of I've been telling them what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: You know, they were off hunting, and that was what
Speaker 1: I did. I went up and said on that stand
Speaker 1: because it was basically acrossing for year. And this was
Speaker 1: with my new thirty thirty marline. I said to lunch
Speaker 1: time and I was at top of the hill eating
Speaker 1: lunch at our house where we lived, looking down on
Speaker 1: the field and I seen a dough down in the
Speaker 1: field while I was taking a breaking. I hadn't seen
Speaker 1: anything at that time. It was a big deal to
Speaker 1: see it. Dear. Yeah, I had my sandwich, walked back
Speaker 1: down the road. I got caught and it was a
Speaker 1: It was a local person asking me if I've seen
Speaker 1: any dogs or picked up any dogs, or hurt any
Speaker 1: dogs or whatever. Standing there talking to him. They were
Speaker 1: gonna pick up and I looked across the foot of
Speaker 1: the truck out in that field while we were talking,
Speaker 1: I could visualize and I could see horns up above
Speaker 1: safe grass. This is you're looking across the hood at
Speaker 1: this vi here exactly while talking to him, I was
Speaker 1: looking at for that dough. I didn't tell him about
Speaker 1: the dough. I didn't fasten any information anyway. I didn't
Speaker 1: say anything to them, but I kind of wanted them
Speaker 1: to go on, and they did. I went on around
Speaker 1: like I always do, get in that stand setting up
Speaker 1: there in that little cap. I get up there and
Speaker 1: sitting down, and I started thinking about that there did
Speaker 1: I don't really see. I get up and slipped down
Speaker 1: and had a fence to cross to get in that field.
Speaker 1: I slipped down there and a dog jumped up. Man,
Speaker 1: it got me excited. And the dog went out in
Speaker 1: the middle of the field and I've seen a movement
Speaker 1: and here was here was a ship buck just come
Speaker 1: up out of that sage grass and looked at me.
Speaker 1: He was in it bed. He stood up out of
Speaker 1: the grass and he was standing up, raring up to
Speaker 1: get up. When I shot the first time, and you
Speaker 1: hit him the first time. I hit him the first time,
Speaker 1: but you jacked another shellacked another shell, hit him again, disappeared,
Speaker 1: he went down. What did you feel like when you
Speaker 1: walked up to that buck? I'd I don't know how
Speaker 1: to describe it. I still remember the excitement, but you
Speaker 1: know it was I didn't know what to do. James
Speaker 1: set and admired the shed buck for a while, but
Speaker 1: ended up going home to wait on the return of
Speaker 1: his family from deer hunting. Taking to consideration that this
Speaker 1: was the biggest buck anybody in the family would have
Speaker 1: ever seen, and if James could forecast in the future,
Speaker 1: he'd see that it would likely be the biggest buck
Speaker 1: he'd ever kill in his life. You'd think he'd get
Speaker 1: a good response. And I, you know, we talked about
Speaker 1: it before. I didn't get the response that I was.
Speaker 1: You know, they walked up on it, the deer was
Speaker 1: laying there, they feel dressed a deer, and we drug
Speaker 1: it out. And you know, I've got pictures of when
Speaker 1: I was a kid holding my dad's deer. Don't There
Speaker 1: wasn't no picture taking. There wasn't know, so they didn't
Speaker 1: celebrate with you. There wasn't a celebration. My uncle took
Speaker 1: the horns, like I showed you different ones that he
Speaker 1: took it, cut the horns off and put the skin
Speaker 1: back around it and put it on a board it
Speaker 1: And that would have been the biggest deer that any
Speaker 1: of these guys had ever seen. Obviously, you know, my
Speaker 1: dad killed several deer, but they wouldn't nothing, because James,
Speaker 1: you've been hunting right in here since nineteen or late
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties, so that's over sixty years, and this is
Speaker 1: the biggest buck that you've killed this day. And you've
Speaker 1: probably killed over a hundred white tails since then. Well
Speaker 1: over that. Yeah, what I meant to say was that
Speaker 1: he's killed over a hundred mature mountain bucks on public
Speaker 1: land without bait, most without trail cameras, in the majority
Speaker 1: of them from the ground while still hunting. James would
Speaker 1: become a master at hunting the mountains of Arkansas. He
Speaker 1: hunted out of tree stands, but he loved to still
Speaker 1: hunt the buck. I I scored it this deer, James.
Speaker 1: This is what I love about you is that you
Speaker 1: never had that deer scored you. You never even cared
Speaker 1: what it scored. And then I think in two thousand
Speaker 1: and ten, I saw the deer and I said, hey,
Speaker 1: we gotta score that deer, and you were like, yeah,
Speaker 1: let's see what it scored. And I scored that dear,
Speaker 1: GROWTH scored it right at a hundred sixty inches. The
Speaker 1: buck was starting to go downhill. The prior year he
Speaker 1: grows scored a hundred and seventy inches. I can't express
Speaker 1: what an incredible feat this would be to kill a
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty inch deer at any time by anybody,
Speaker 1: but even more so in nineteen sixty two by a
Speaker 1: thirteen year old boy. I asked James how killing the
Speaker 1: buck affected the trajectory of his hunting. Two times before that,
Speaker 1: I went to the dog camp the deer deer season
Speaker 1: for the It was a camp house. It was a
Speaker 1: relative old home place. How was still standing? That was
Speaker 1: the camp My granddad's brother. He was always off still hunting.
Speaker 1: Twice he invited me to go. My uncle invited me
Speaker 1: to go with him, and he started showing me we
Speaker 1: didn't the amazing part of him when a't odd ball
Speaker 1: in the family, just kind of done things different than
Speaker 1: the rest of the boys did. They had hunting dogs
Speaker 1: and he didn't have any. He didn't go to set
Speaker 1: on the deer stand like the rest of them. He
Speaker 1: would go off a different direction. But the thing that
Speaker 1: really I tried all my life to do, he started
Speaker 1: hunting when he took the first step off the road,
Speaker 1: and when he get inside of the road, he didn't
Speaker 1: quit hunting. He when he stepped back in the road
Speaker 1: is when he quit hunting. M when he stepped in
Speaker 1: the woods. He was hunting. Even in the first time
Speaker 1: we left across the road from the cabin over the
Speaker 1: house where the deer camp was at with all the
Speaker 1: barking dogs and the people and excitement and stuff. And
Speaker 1: we started hunting the minute we stepped off the road
Speaker 1: across from cabin. And he taught you how to track there.
Speaker 1: And the man could track a deer, just go through
Speaker 1: the woods and find a track and could stay on it,
Speaker 1: and and where every time I went like mud, this
Speaker 1: is like Lee rock piles, right, he's tracking deer, and
Speaker 1: he's tracking deer. And most of the time I had
Speaker 1: to step in the same tracks that he stepped as
Speaker 1: he slipped through in it. You know, sometimes Clay, we
Speaker 1: wouldn't go thirty yards, and I swear it was thirty minutes.
Speaker 1: And in other times we would travel a little bit faster.
Speaker 1: But I know the first time we went, we was
Speaker 1: almost back inside of the hunting party when we jumped
Speaker 1: the deer and we've been on him for a while,
Speaker 1: and he was, I don't like, just amazed me. So
Speaker 1: I took two different times we did that, and I
Speaker 1: took quite he he showed me, but he didn't really
Speaker 1: show me. I just picked up on what we were
Speaker 1: doing in the way he was doing it. And so
Speaker 1: there was something appealing to you about your uncle what
Speaker 1: was his name, Raymond an Ashcraft, Raymond Nashcraft in the
Speaker 1: way the way he hunted in James, to this day,
Speaker 1: that's the way you prefer to hunt. And you'd call
Speaker 1: it still hunting. That's all that I mean, that's what
Speaker 1: they called it then, and that's all I know how
Speaker 1: to call it. It was still that. Some people call
Speaker 1: it slip hunting. And I don't have the patience that
Speaker 1: I used to. But years ago, I'd spend a day
Speaker 1: and I wouldn't go nowhere. I mean, you know, I
Speaker 1: had dear I thought pinpointed in the area they was in,
Speaker 1: and just amazed me how a little travel I'd be doing.
Speaker 1: But you know, a few steps or a tree, uh,
Speaker 1: And it's amazing how many deer would get up and
Speaker 1: start slipping out away from you that you pick up
Speaker 1: or Yeah. I got more specific with James about the
Speaker 1: details of the style of still hunting that he d
Speaker 1: on a good November morning when you were still hunting
Speaker 1: like you would have done all those years. What kind
Speaker 1: of area were you going to? Why would you be
Speaker 1: going to that area? And then what would you do
Speaker 1: when you got there? When I'd go into the woods,
Speaker 1: unless something calming that I had to be back out,
Speaker 1: if this was a day that was set aside for
Speaker 1: me that I didn't have to come back, I left
Speaker 1: that truck intention to coming back at dark. When I
Speaker 1: leave the woods the year before, I know that I
Speaker 1: had left deer in that area, so I didn't do
Speaker 1: any pre scouting. I just could go back into the
Speaker 1: area where I know that I left good Bucks the
Speaker 1: year before. I had already learned some trails, some saddles,
Speaker 1: some gaps. The area is on the mountain that I
Speaker 1: would finding more signs, so I would go into it
Speaker 1: that way, I didn't disturb anything, and I would hunt
Speaker 1: from the time I've left the road going into the
Speaker 1: woods to the mountain. Basically in our mountains run east
Speaker 1: and west, most of our winds coming out of the south,
Speaker 1: so I always I could calculate which direction I wanted
Speaker 1: to hunt on the mountains. And uh, I think that
Speaker 1: helped more than anything than scouting, because the scout and
Speaker 1: I'd always disturbed deer. This deer hadn't been disturbed this
Speaker 1: area that I hunt. I know there's nobody been in there.
Speaker 1: That's a big key right there, as you intentionally we're
Speaker 1: going in on undisturbed still, honey, it didn't help me
Speaker 1: anybody going in and trying to locate stuff. I would
Speaker 1: go in on something that's already familiar with from the
Speaker 1: year before, and I skipped around. I mean I covered
Speaker 1: quite a bit of ground. But I'd pick out an
Speaker 1: area to go into without any monet that you know,
Speaker 1: the wind, and you would go in with the wind
Speaker 1: at your face or across wind. And then would you
Speaker 1: pick a certain kind of day? Did you need wet
Speaker 1: leaves so he could move quiet? Or could you go
Speaker 1: when it was dry? I didn't. I'd go when I could.
Speaker 1: It didn't matter. I didn't wait on a particular day.
Speaker 1: If it's dry, just took you a little longer. There's
Speaker 1: still on end. But in our reality, I didn't move
Speaker 1: any faster. I don't move any faster. And wet ground
Speaker 1: and I don't dry. If you're setting up in the
Speaker 1: tree stand and you hear a deer coming, if you'll
Speaker 1: walk like a there, you can walk up on a deer.
Speaker 1: A deer will walk and stop and walk and stop.
Speaker 1: And if you do the same thing, you can do
Speaker 1: the same thing to deer. So you you would just
Speaker 1: you'd start hunting as soon as you left the road
Speaker 1: and tracks, just I really, would you just move just slow?
Speaker 1: Like how far would you travel in a given period
Speaker 1: of time. That's a hard question to answer, because sometimes
Speaker 1: I may not be a hundred yards from where I
Speaker 1: was at an hour ago, okay, or hardly there, I
Speaker 1: mean fifty yards even I guess you'd be encouraged by
Speaker 1: seeing signing, like seeing rubs or seeing seeing a little sign.
Speaker 1: And squirrels will happy, bird will happy. You know, if
Speaker 1: there's something moving out here, you're a squirrel barking down here,
Speaker 1: and no one is not barking at you. You know,
Speaker 1: I've sat there many, many, many times in the squirrel
Speaker 1: be barking at a coon or something else, thinking it
Speaker 1: was a deer. Sometimes it's a deer. I could spend
Speaker 1: half a day and not go for yards. What would
Speaker 1: you do? Would you lean up against the tree? Would
Speaker 1: you like find landmarks? And you'd say, I'm gonna try
Speaker 1: to get to there, and then so I did never
Speaker 1: do that, Okay, no landmarks. I mean, I know what
Speaker 1: you're saying, but I would head to the landmark, but
Speaker 1: I wouldn't know if I'm gonna go this direction over
Speaker 1: that holler, I'd take my time getting to it. And
Speaker 1: if I dropped down and then coming over the next
Speaker 1: ridge or a sale, that's when I'd spend a lot
Speaker 1: of time EA's and up and covering all the ground
Speaker 1: on the next area ahead of me. How how do
Speaker 1: you usually see deer? Like? What did they do? And James?
Speaker 1: Are they moving? Are they bedded down? Anything from a
Speaker 1: twitch for an air as a tail, any kind of movement,
Speaker 1: just lock in on it and and not move. You know,
Speaker 1: what about your shots? Are you having to take a
Speaker 1: lot of moving shots? Just of all those deer on
Speaker 1: your wall, what would you say would be the most
Speaker 1: common shot? Just he's standing out there broadside, you shoot him. Well,
Speaker 1: you can't really do that and still hunting. You kind
Speaker 1: of have to take the shot when you get it walking.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you can catch one standing, of course
Speaker 1: you want to brought that shot. Oh no, they probably
Speaker 1: wouldn't standing. They'd moving moving, not not not running, and
Speaker 1: when they're traveling even you know, if you got behind
Speaker 1: the buck, I mean between the doe and the buck
Speaker 1: trailing the dough bucks coming through there, but his head
Speaker 1: on the ground and he's already trailing. When you got
Speaker 1: to plan ahead and pull out. And so you've been
Speaker 1: looking for a gap, you'd you'd you'd kind of try
Speaker 1: to predict where he was gonna be, and you'd be there.
Speaker 1: What kind of what was your go to rifle? Started
Speaker 1: out with the thirty thirty Marlin for many many, many
Speaker 1: many years, and later years, uh got a three o
Speaker 1: eight with a scope on it. And all you're stopping
Speaker 1: around out there, James, I know you would, like you
Speaker 1: you would, you would just learn where you would see
Speaker 1: a buck of all this turn where would you see bucks?
Speaker 1: Was there? Trend most of them were close to two
Speaker 1: thirds of the way up the mountain, and a lot
Speaker 1: of these mountains have a little we call them saddles,
Speaker 1: a little gaps, and most of the time they'd be
Speaker 1: on the upper side of those gaps, looking down on
Speaker 1: the gaps, or I mean they're covering their back to
Speaker 1: You wouldn't stay on top of the mountain, you'd be
Speaker 1: on the side. I'm not hunted a whole lot on
Speaker 1: top really just over the turn, either on the north
Speaker 1: or on the south. For many years, I wouldn't not
Speaker 1: on the south. It's strictly the north. Really we went
Speaker 1: into camping one day or sin of camping with me
Speaker 1: any like the south side. We hunted the south side,
Speaker 1: and it's the big Bucks is on the south side too.
Speaker 1: If you could give me one key for still hunting
Speaker 1: these mountains, what would it be. Patience is ninety nine
Speaker 1: percent of it. And you know, of course the wind
Speaker 1: in your face, James, I, I do you think that
Speaker 1: you have h or a hunter has a sixth sense,
Speaker 1: like a like a sensing of a deer being somewhere?
Speaker 1: I do, yeah, I do. How does that feel to you?
Speaker 1: That's a hard one to describe it. I mean, do
Speaker 1: you feel like you know, you feel like he's here?
Speaker 1: If where is he? You know, and maybe there's no
Speaker 1: real reason to know, you just you know, you just
Speaker 1: sense that he's here. Where is it? You don't move
Speaker 1: your head, you move your eyes, you don't move your body.
Speaker 1: You know that, dear, you're right on top of it,
Speaker 1: and that many times you're right and most of the
Speaker 1: time he busts you. But I mean, you'll finally give
Speaker 1: up and make a move and the deer it would
Speaker 1: be basically in plain sight. Now that's that's when your
Speaker 1: go heart goes to something, when you get and you
Speaker 1: know he's there. And many times Clay they are. You know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just like you know they are, you feel that
Speaker 1: they are. They are. But that was excite part of hunting.
Speaker 1: It's not the kill. That's it's out smart and no buck,
Speaker 1: there's one on one out there when you're still here
Speaker 1: now sitting in a tree. I love that po hunting
Speaker 1: um our gunning, but the excitement that I got growing up.
Speaker 1: But still, let's see, I think that you built your
Speaker 1: whole white tail world going off where nobody else wants
Speaker 1: to go, doing it alone. For the most part, you
Speaker 1: had a few close hunting buddies, you took your wife
Speaker 1: sometimes with you, but you learned how to be a
Speaker 1: master woodsman for these mountains. And that's that is what
Speaker 1: I always from the day I met you, James, was
Speaker 1: I valued your humility. I've I valued your your skill
Speaker 1: and craft and the way you dedicated yourself to know
Speaker 1: these mountains and know these deer the way you do.
Speaker 1: And you just learned how to be successful in a
Speaker 1: re the difficult place. Scott Brown and I grew up
Speaker 1: together and share an appreciation for hunting these mountain bucks
Speaker 1: in our region. He has a good story that puts
Speaker 1: James Is hunting into context. My dad grew up with
Speaker 1: a dad who believed the only way you you could
Speaker 1: hunt a deer was to run dogs. You know. They
Speaker 1: were passionate dog hunters, and that was just the you know,
Speaker 1: to them, the only way to hunt a deer. And
Speaker 1: so there was this thought that you didn't turn the
Speaker 1: dogs out until the frost melted off. So you get
Speaker 1: them in the morning, make some coffee, you'd sit around,
Speaker 1: lets the sun come up, get the frost melted off.
Speaker 1: Then you load all your dogs up. Everybody go get
Speaker 1: on where they felt a deer was going to come
Speaker 1: running by, you know, And there was some art to
Speaker 1: that and anyway they sit around there. This would have
Speaker 1: been probably in sixty seven sixty eight. They're sitting around
Speaker 1: deer camping, and my grandpa's as well, we're gonna go
Speaker 1: get in this gap. There was a certain gap there
Speaker 1: on the mountain. Nor these deer like if they headed south,
Speaker 1: they were going to go through this low gap in
Speaker 1: the mountain and so they leave out. They walk out
Speaker 1: into this big low gap, real pretty When you get
Speaker 1: up there, my grandpa says, come here, I want to
Speaker 1: show you something. You look at. My grandpa goes, look
Speaker 1: at that right there, and and there's a tree stand
Speaker 1: just basically a platform built on it in a tree
Speaker 1: with some big old nail spikes, spikes, railroad tied spikes,
Speaker 1: just just you know, hammered into this tree and this stand.
Speaker 1: You know. He said it was probably twelve or fifteen
Speaker 1: feet off the ground. You know, it's pretty high. Back then, well,
Speaker 1: that had never even seen a tree stand. Was the
Speaker 1: first one he'd ever seen in his life. My grandpa
Speaker 1: looks at that and he says, would you believe that
Speaker 1: somebody would do something like that? No, I I can't believe.
Speaker 1: So you just just unheard of during that time for
Speaker 1: people to hunt out of tree stands. Yeah, And it
Speaker 1: was the first time my dad ever realized that you
Speaker 1: could actually still hunt a deer. You know, he was
Speaker 1: raised that wasn't an option. It was kind of eye
Speaker 1: opening to him that you could, you know, you just
Speaker 1: set in that tree and hill a deer walk by,
Speaker 1: you know, and it sounded like an insurmountable task, you know,
Speaker 1: to set that stand, just waiting on a deer to
Speaker 1: happen by. So anyway, my grandpa just kept on about
Speaker 1: it because I just can't believe anybody is sitting something
Speaker 1: like that. He's just stupid, just setting a stand when
Speaker 1: you could, you know, turn a dog's loose on something,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, just a totally different frame of mind.
Speaker 1: And Dad, Dad kind of said something, well, whose is it.
Speaker 1: My grandpa said, well, it's that Lawrence boy, and Dad,
Speaker 1: so who's that? And so anyway, he got a My
Speaker 1: grandpa kind of elaborated about James Lawrence back in the
Speaker 1: late sixties and said, nobody in this part of the world,
Speaker 1: at least, you know, in southwest Arkansas was even doing
Speaker 1: anything like that, you know, so he's way ahead of
Speaker 1: his time. But yeah, James was doing he was hunting
Speaker 1: low saddles and mountains and the stuff that I grew
Speaker 1: up thirty years later, thirty years later, and I understood
Speaker 1: that that's what you had to do, you know, that's
Speaker 1: what you did hunt deer. Well that wasn't It wasn't
Speaker 1: that way, you know, people, people didn't really start understanding.
Speaker 1: There was kind of this revival, well not a revival,
Speaker 1: but a new understanding of how to deer hunt came
Speaker 1: in the seven or mass distribution of knowledge about deer
Speaker 1: hunting in the seventies eighties, and then in the nineties
Speaker 1: with outdoor television and just increase of outdoor media. But
Speaker 1: a lot of these guys were kind of pioneers for
Speaker 1: how to pattern deer do all this. You like to hunt,
Speaker 1: you like to hunt off horseback too, though, I like
Speaker 1: to hunt horseback, and I like to get as far
Speaker 1: away from rhodes and chicken houses, dogs, you know, and
Speaker 1: get as far back as I can. So you would
Speaker 1: lead the horse in with the saddle paniard, which is
Speaker 1: basically you'd have a riding saddle and then you'd put
Speaker 1: a paniard over and carry all your stuff in. I mean,
Speaker 1: when you were camping, we started out from army duffel bags,
Speaker 1: tying them, balancing them on a saddle. You know, worked
Speaker 1: your way up to that, and then that was wonderful.
Speaker 1: You know, go from backpacking in having that horse carry everything,
Speaker 1: and then you'd get to camp and unloaded, then you
Speaker 1: could ride the horse. We'll see you you taught me
Speaker 1: how to do that. That's the way. That's my favorite
Speaker 1: way to hunt. I missed that so much. There were
Speaker 1: one time you told me you stayed nine days back
Speaker 1: in there by yourself. That's that's the longest I've ever stayed.
Speaker 1: Um And I just want to say that, like out west,
Speaker 1: like there's this big, vast country and you know, people
Speaker 1: go back in on these long hunts. Around here, there
Speaker 1: was very few people that we're getting back in that
Speaker 1: deep and staying that long. I mean, you didn't know
Speaker 1: anybody around here doing that, did you? Nobody did, so
Speaker 1: I just I kind of put that into context. You know.
Speaker 1: It's like for for around here, that was like extreme
Speaker 1: whitetail honey, and would be to this day. I miss it. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, James, you massively inspired me. And I mean
Speaker 1: since we've been good friends for a long time now,
Speaker 1: I mean I model a whole lot of what I
Speaker 1: do after you, you know, And it's my favorite way
Speaker 1: to hunt. And I'm not very good at it. I'm
Speaker 1: not as good at as you are. Oh Man. Mike
Speaker 1: Schultz is one of the leaders in our church and
Speaker 1: he's also a master woodworker. He has also someone whose
Speaker 1: life has significantly impacted mine on many levels. I want
Speaker 1: to discuss with him why and how relationships affect us.
Speaker 1: Mike Schultz, I'm trying to understand why relationships are so
Speaker 1: unique and why some relationships impact us in certain ways.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting that you're the one sitting here, Mike,
Speaker 1: because as you know, you're you're a man that I
Speaker 1: would consider someone who's been deeply influential in my life
Speaker 1: in many ways. I also have seen you be real
Speaker 1: intentional with the mentors and relationships in your life. Why
Speaker 1: does some relationships impact us, Well, that's a good question.
Speaker 1: I think relationships are how we gain an understanding of
Speaker 1: who we are. Relationships can fulfill things inside of us
Speaker 1: that we're looking for. Ultimately, I think humans are designed
Speaker 1: to be relational. That's the starting point. We need each other.
Speaker 1: I found that in my own life some relationships I
Speaker 1: knew or divine. Um, I knew it very early on
Speaker 1: inside of the relationship that there was a connection that
Speaker 1: would be deep and that would be really heart joining
Speaker 1: and heartfelt, and that they would be long term. And
Speaker 1: to me that those are the ones that I know
Speaker 1: are divine, those are the ones that I know that
Speaker 1: are orchestrated. I was side of myself their relationships that well,
Speaker 1: the Bible talks about iron sharpening iron, where each person
Speaker 1: is growing, each person is gaining understanding, each person is
Speaker 1: developing as a human being. Mike, I've heard you talk
Speaker 1: about how the different relationships that you've had in your
Speaker 1: life have helped form personal identity for you. Can you
Speaker 1: expand on that? Yeah, I think the best way I
Speaker 1: can talk about that is just through one example that
Speaker 1: comes to mind, a relationship with people that I've had
Speaker 1: on learning new skills and watching someone who had a
Speaker 1: very high skill level in a particular area. And the
Speaker 1: area that I'm going to talk about is a friend
Speaker 1: of mine that was a very very fine woodworker, cabinet maker.
Speaker 1: I came to him and asked him if he would
Speaker 1: begin to mentor me or teach me in that area.
Speaker 1: He was very generous, and I watched him cut handcut
Speaker 1: dovetails for for drawers, and I was impressed by the
Speaker 1: skill of his hands. And when I first saw it,
Speaker 1: I thought this is impossible to do. Seeing his hands
Speaker 1: and watching him and with his encouragement, it took me
Speaker 1: into a whole another level and I discovered something about
Speaker 1: myself that I could do things beyond what I thought
Speaker 1: were possible. And you know what, he didn't just teach
Speaker 1: you with skill, because I think somebody could just say, well,
Speaker 1: he just taught you how to do something. You could
Speaker 1: have watched it on YouTube. I don't think so. Like
Speaker 1: he he did teach you a skill, but he expanded you.
Speaker 1: So there was like a technology that came into you
Speaker 1: about this high level of skill that you didn't know
Speaker 1: it was possible. And to stretch yourself and to grow
Speaker 1: that wouldn't have came from a YouTube video. That's exactly right, Clay.
Speaker 1: And it was through relationship too. It was through his encouragement.
Speaker 1: That's that was the That was the word that I
Speaker 1: keyed in on, Mike. I've seen you prioritize relationships inside
Speaker 1: of your life. Why do you do that? It's very
Speaker 1: easy to have a lot of friends for somebody like you,
Speaker 1: it is Mike, maybe uh uh. I think the important
Speaker 1: thing inside of relationship is that relationships can grow us,
Speaker 1: or they can stunt us, or they can slow us
Speaker 1: down in our our development as a as a person.
Speaker 1: And it's important to know which relationships are the ones
Speaker 1: that are are nourishing us personally. I want relationships, the
Speaker 1: deep ones are important to me that those ones where
Speaker 1: I become a better human being. Yeah, the uniqueness of
Speaker 1: who we are as an individual is deeply formed by
Speaker 1: the relationships that we form that nourish us. And there
Speaker 1: are aspects of who we are that actually come from
Speaker 1: different relationships that we have. We need a multitude of
Speaker 1: people around us for us to discover really the multifascined
Speaker 1: nature of really who we are. I think about my life,
Speaker 1: I very clearly see that my life is a unique
Speaker 1: combination of all the people I've been close to and
Speaker 1: I have let in. And I believe that's part of
Speaker 1: the divine nature of life. Uh. Is that that understanding
Speaker 1: that I need others that I cannot be an island
Speaker 1: unto myself. James built much of his life around deer hunting.
Speaker 1: He loved the fall and wild places so much he
Speaker 1: decided he'd work hard for ten months of the year
Speaker 1: and hunt the other two. How maybe it was nine
Speaker 1: and three. The wild thing is is that for somebody
Speaker 1: so passionate, he never shared with many people about his success.
Speaker 1: Maybe he even kept it hidden just a little bit,
Speaker 1: or at least by modern standards, hidden. People in the
Speaker 1: community knew about James hunting, but he wasn't one to
Speaker 1: brag on his accomplishments. I think it probably goes back
Speaker 1: to the initial response he got from the first deer
Speaker 1: he ever killed. Sharing things that are valuable to us
Speaker 1: make us vulnerable. James would learn to set his own standards,
Speaker 1: and he'd celebrate his accomplishments with a few close friends.
Speaker 1: He was never bitter, but it made him humble about
Speaker 1: his deer hunting. And trust me, he's the guy you
Speaker 1: want around if you have a successful hunt. He's all
Speaker 1: about celebrating the success of others. I don't know that
Speaker 1: I've ever had a hunting buddy that convinced me with
Speaker 1: more certainty that they'd rather me have success than them.
Speaker 1: So you're hunting really shaped shaped your life in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways. I mean, you built your life kind
Speaker 1: of around deer hunt. May be sad, but true. He
Speaker 1: said something to me one time, he said, I'd lose
Speaker 1: a crop for a good deer hunt. Yeah. Yeah, I've
Speaker 1: used that since then, because you know what, I've built
Speaker 1: my life sort of in the same way we we
Speaker 1: like you have grown up out here in the mountains,
Speaker 1: your whole life. To you, this is just normal life.
Speaker 1: But it's a pretty incredible privilege to be a backwoodsman
Speaker 1: in twenty two money. I can't imagine anything else really,
Speaker 1: and this is my life. I mean, that's uh. I
Speaker 1: was lucky enough this this property I'm own, um factually
Speaker 1: come up with, uh shy sixty acres of the old
Speaker 1: homestead place where I grew up. I didn't dream of
Speaker 1: the situation growing up. I never thought about losing my family,
Speaker 1: my granddad and my uncle's special It's pretty pretty unique
Speaker 1: for this day and age. I'm blessed to be here,
Speaker 1: you know, to be able to do that. What I've
Speaker 1: always noted about James, even from our first meeting, was
Speaker 1: this humility in the midst of notable accomplishments. He's never
Speaker 1: left his humble roots. James became a master woodsman in
Speaker 1: whitetail hunter and rarely got more than ten miles from
Speaker 1: where he was born and raised. He's lived an incredible
Speaker 1: life of adventure in back country hunting that I say
Speaker 1: would rival any hunter that I've ever met. He didn't
Speaker 1: have to travel to exotic hunting destinations to experience the
Speaker 1: incredible bounty, both internal and external, that wild places offer.
Speaker 1: James's dedication to woodsmen craft and the specific style of
Speaker 1: hunting is inspiring and challenging to me personally. His humility
Speaker 1: is a standard to which I evaluate my own life.
Speaker 1: His story also causes me to reflect on the early encounters,
Speaker 1: both positive and negative, that I had in hunting that
Speaker 1: steer me to this day, and this makes me want
Speaker 1: to be a positive voice in the story of the
Speaker 1: young hunters of my life. Relationships build the framework of
Speaker 1: our lives and affect its trajectory. James is one on
Speaker 1: a short list of people that have altered the shape
Speaker 1: of my life in a significant way. And sometimes it's
Speaker 1: hard for me to even understand why. The unique shape
Speaker 1: that is our personal identity is a combination of the
Speaker 1: influential relationships in our life. I just can't get away
Speaker 1: from this idea. Yeah, we're hunters that love wild places,
Speaker 1: wild meat, and adventure, but I believe the thing that
Speaker 1: we're after that's of extreme value is the human relationships
Speaker 1: that we build throughout our life. And what we're passionate
Speaker 1: about connects us to people. It's like a bridge that
Speaker 1: connects us. So for us, hunting is that connector so
Speaker 1: then hunting becomes something really special. The cool thing is
Speaker 1: is that we get to choose who were impacted by
Speaker 1: so choose wisely, no matter how technologically advanced hunting gets.
Speaker 1: I hope we never lose what James has shown me
Speaker 1: is still very much alive in North American hunting, a
Speaker 1: lifestyle dedicated to craft, a pursuit of true woodsmanship for
Speaker 1: the region, and the nurturing of an ageless and adventure
Speaker 1: a spirit that does not lose its seal. Hey, long
Speaker 1: live the beast, long live the hunt, and long live
Speaker 1: our timeless friendships. M