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Speaker 1: Outrageously Dependable. My name is Clay Nukeleman. I'm the host
Speaker 1: of the Bear Hunting Magazine podcast. I'll also be your
Speaker 1: host into the world of hunting the icon of North
Speaker 1: American wilderness affair. We'll talk about tactics, gear conservation, who
Speaker 1: will also bring you into some of the wildest country
Speaker 1: on the planet Chasing Battery. This is a really actual
Speaker 1: episode of the Bear Hunting Magazine podcast for me because
Speaker 1: I'm able to take you into my family deer camp
Speaker 1: on public land in southwest Arkansas with my dad, my brothers,
Speaker 1: my children, and another close friend and his kids. Were
Speaker 1: sitting around the campfire, and it seems like every year
Speaker 1: on Saturday night, we cook a big dinner and we
Speaker 1: end up telling these iconic hunting stories that have have
Speaker 1: shaped us all. I really wanted to capture some of
Speaker 1: the stories of my dad, who's been bow hunting for
Speaker 1: forty years. He's seventy years old, and he he's really
Speaker 1: the one that shaped and mentored me as a hunter,
Speaker 1: and the stories that he tells are all stories that
Speaker 1: impacted me as a as a young hunter, as a kid,
Speaker 1: and as even as a young man. The conversation also
Speaker 1: flows into some of my iconic stories that happened on
Speaker 1: public Land and Southwest Arkansas. And it was really fun
Speaker 1: to to capture this in the moment. This wasn't captured
Speaker 1: over zoom or over a phone call. This was around
Speaker 1: the campfire, and these stories are being narrated to a
Speaker 1: live audience, which is our family and friends. And these
Speaker 1: kind of oral traditions and storytelling is truly something that's ancient,
Speaker 1: no doubt. Men have been telling these kind of stories
Speaker 1: for thousands and thousands of years, and it was really
Speaker 1: fun to to just capture it. And this is what
Speaker 1: we do every year, and I really think you're gonna
Speaker 1: enjoy this podcast. We tell the kind of little snippets
Speaker 1: of multiple really fun hunting stories, but hunting stories that
Speaker 1: all my kids would have already known, but it seems
Speaker 1: like we tell them again and again, and every year
Speaker 1: we keep adding to the to the profile of iconic
Speaker 1: hunting stories. You're gonna enjoy this podcast. It's November the
Speaker 1: ten team and we are at the annual Newcomb Family
Speaker 1: Public Land deer hunt in southwest Arkansas. Dad, how long
Speaker 1: have we been doing this? Oh, he's got a mouthful
Speaker 1: of burger. Let me let me let me tell you
Speaker 1: what we're doing. Let me let me describe the atmosphere here.
Speaker 1: It is cold for Arkansas November. The tenth high temperature
Speaker 1: this morning was around twenty five degrees And we found
Speaker 1: a beautiful log that has been burning all day, a
Speaker 1: huge oak that was hollow in the middle. We set
Speaker 1: it up and it's been burning all day. So we're
Speaker 1: all setting around a huge campfire. There's about fifteen of
Speaker 1: us here and this is this is and we're eating dinner.
Speaker 1: We all all the me and my brothers, my dad
Speaker 1: and Ty cooked a big dinner for the kids. Hamburgers,
Speaker 1: corn on the cob, French fries, the real deal for
Speaker 1: a Arkansas cook out, Arkansas camp out. But what we're
Speaker 1: gonna do on this podcast is it seems like every
Speaker 1: time we get together, we always talk about some iconic
Speaker 1: hunting stories that have influenced us. And I want to
Speaker 1: talk to my dad about some of his some of
Speaker 1: his early hunting. Dad's been hunting public land since when
Speaker 1: the sixties, seventy, mid seventies, seventies seven. Really that's when
Speaker 1: you started both hunting. Yeah, No one in our family,
Speaker 1: no one in our family, uncle's cousins deer hunting. I
Speaker 1: didn't even know what a deer track looked like. And
Speaker 1: I had a couple of guys, the principle of a
Speaker 1: school and a guy that had about a hundred sixty
Speaker 1: I Q. He knew everything in the world about deer.
Speaker 1: I mean he could tell you the exact date they
Speaker 1: bred and when you know when they dropped, and just
Speaker 1: anything you want to know. And back in the day
Speaker 1: that was unusual. Yeah, And this guy was brilliant. His
Speaker 1: name was Barry Wait four hundred pounds. And we'd go
Speaker 1: to this coffee shop and he taught me about deer.
Speaker 1: He told me one day he said, come to the
Speaker 1: house and I should teach you how to shoot a bowl.
Speaker 1: And so he he gave me a recurve. I hated
Speaker 1: the recurve, but I went and hunted with him, and
Speaker 1: they could not kill deer. It was real funny. And
Speaker 1: and uh, I went with some buddies down south, and
Speaker 1: I had a compound by then, an old bear compound,
Speaker 1: and uh we I heard a guy that was with
Speaker 1: us and he said, bear or deer like white ok acres,
Speaker 1: and I go, holy cow, that's what I've been looking for.
Speaker 1: I mean, I didn't hardly know what a deer track
Speaker 1: looked like, but I figured if you could figure out
Speaker 1: where they were eating, And all of a sudden, I
Speaker 1: started killing deer, I mean every year, and and back
Speaker 1: then it was it was a big deal. Any more,
Speaker 1: what I do is, you know, I'm I'm on the
Speaker 1: bottom of the cotem pole. But in the seventies, if
Speaker 1: you could kill two or three deer year, even if
Speaker 1: they were Southwest Arkansas, you were doing Yeah Central Hospital
Speaker 1: and I've said all the times that you were killing
Speaker 1: there with the boat before it was cool. Yeah, well
Speaker 1: I don't know about that, but it sure was fun.
Speaker 1: And people would ask me how how you do it?
Speaker 1: How do you do it? Well? You do it? And
Speaker 1: you know, man, I just go to McDonald's and shoot
Speaker 1: them as they walking. And you've killed a deer with
Speaker 1: the boat every year for forty years. Yeah, in Arkansas,
Speaker 1: not in the high density areas, but on public land.
Speaker 1: And then, you know, about eighty three, I read an
Speaker 1: article about the way I hunted. A guy in Alabama
Speaker 1: wrote exactly what I was doing. And and then as
Speaker 1: the kids started growing up, they started doing the same stuff,
Speaker 1: but they started killing big bucks. And I never shifted
Speaker 1: to the big bucks because I had plenty of opportunities.
Speaker 1: You know about every three years when you hunt away,
Speaker 1: I hunt big, a big good hundred thirty five hundred
Speaker 1: forty five class buckle walk up, you know, But uh,
Speaker 1: it's too boring for me. I want to kill a
Speaker 1: few deer, and I'd always quit, like to kill them
Speaker 1: when they when they walk. Well, November the fifth man,
Speaker 1: I put my stuff up. I was done. So I hunted.
Speaker 1: I funded five saturdays a year for forty years, and
Speaker 1: if I could go in the afternoons, I would. And
Speaker 1: it was pretty tough to kill two or three deer
Speaker 1: with five saturdays. You had to do a lot of things, right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And so anyway, I've always enjoyed it. And out of
Speaker 1: the kids, Tyler's here, it's Mr Tyler Nukelem. Hey, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna I'm gonna go around the campfire and introduce everybody,
Speaker 1: and Zach Tyler was too young to go with me,
Speaker 1: but I'd take Zack and Clay. Zach liked it. Okay,
Speaker 1: Clay Baby, absolutely, I could not wear him out. No
Speaker 1: one wanted to go with me because I scouted like
Speaker 1: a dead gum, you know, crazy person, because I wouldn't
Speaker 1: hunt unless I could really find there, And so no
Speaker 1: one wanted to go with me. But Clay Baby would
Speaker 1: be by my side. We'd even scout on foilers back
Speaker 1: when you could ride into woods, and and we would
Speaker 1: run banshees through the woods looking for the stuff. I
Speaker 1: knew what to look for. And Clay would never give up.
Speaker 1: Would you be going through creeks, would go through cutovers
Speaker 1: all that was legal back then and in uh you know,
Speaker 1: not telling how much territory. And Clay would never ever
Speaker 1: wear out. And I was a kind of dad that
Speaker 1: I'd made a commitment. I was gonna kill a deer
Speaker 1: every year regardless. And my dad said, you'd never do it.
Speaker 1: My buddy said, you'll never do it. So I was
Speaker 1: so motivated to kill that if you couldn't keep up,
Speaker 1: I didn't baby sits you like dad? Should you know?
Speaker 1: I drug Clay around and he never ever, he never
Speaker 1: quit and uh and now he's taking it onto another level.
Speaker 1: But anyway, that's pretty much my story. Well man, there's
Speaker 1: there's a there's a lot to be said about that
Speaker 1: right there. But part of the reason that I wanted
Speaker 1: to record this here was this is really where I
Speaker 1: cut my teeth. Bow hunting was right here in this
Speaker 1: management area, and this is this is where we scouted,
Speaker 1: this is where you drugged me around, and so it's
Speaker 1: pretty cool. I think we've done this for twenty years,
Speaker 1: man longer. Well eight we moved to Mina in eighty
Speaker 1: four and in in in December of eighty four, we
Speaker 1: moved to Mina. January second or third, I killed the
Speaker 1: dough with my bow in the snow right here in
Speaker 1: this area. And uh, a guy just told me, he said,
Speaker 1: go to this particular you know, areas the public public land.
Speaker 1: And so I just drove around and and I killed
Speaker 1: a dough. That was kind of my signature that I
Speaker 1: was in the right spot. And uh so after that,
Speaker 1: I never hunt in January, but I just wanted to
Speaker 1: do it because we were new and uh one of
Speaker 1: a few times I've ever killed a deer other than
Speaker 1: October or the first two or three days in November.
Speaker 1: I just put my stuff up and tried to be
Speaker 1: a good dad. But dear in October, I was how
Speaker 1: did that work? Zack and Teller? It didn't work good.
Speaker 1: These kids turned out to be just absolute dirt balls.
Speaker 1: No really, they all turned out good and in spite
Speaker 1: of that. But I'm not like you with your kids.
Speaker 1: If you didn't want to play the game hard, that's fine,
Speaker 1: stay home. Tyler was too young, you know, he was
Speaker 1: he was too young to go. But Zach stayed with
Speaker 1: me pretty good, really, But it wasn't Yeah, I was
Speaker 1: too young. You know what was happening. I was probably
Speaker 1: taking a nap in the back of the truck. Hey,
Speaker 1: before we get any further, I got I gotta introduce,
Speaker 1: I gotta I gotta to show the audience. So this
Speaker 1: is like a this is this is like in front
Speaker 1: of a live studio audience. Here, but we're we're we're
Speaker 1: sitting around the fire. And I was gonna say, that's
Speaker 1: that's why these stories are so cool, because we're right here.
Speaker 1: But we've got I'm okay, I'm gonna go right in
Speaker 1: the fire and tell me, tell me who you are.
Speaker 1: We've got one River Newcome. We got my brothers. We
Speaker 1: got Bear Baron Newcomb, my oldest son. We got Liam,
Speaker 1: we got Liam, we got we got a ship, we
Speaker 1: got we got Ike. We got my brother Tyler. Tyler.
Speaker 1: Now Tyler has been hot today. Tyler's not even hunting.
Speaker 1: But he came down here and he came in rolled
Speaker 1: into camp with a cell phone picture of a probably
Speaker 1: a hundred and thirty five in buck that he took
Speaker 1: on the side of the road right up here, and
Speaker 1: he wouldn't tell us where it was. And your name,
Speaker 1: young man, and then I didn't even introduce my dad
Speaker 1: before he jumped on there. But Gary Newcomb, yeah, Gary Newcomb.
Speaker 1: And then we got last but not least, Tarrell. So
Speaker 1: the so it's all Newcombs. So we've got our good friends.
Speaker 1: The Dennison's here with us too, and so we've the
Speaker 1: hunting has been this trip is really not about hunting.
Speaker 1: I would have to say, it's short. It's about getting
Speaker 1: a deer. It's not about getting a deer. But ty
Speaker 1: you did have like the best hunts today. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: saw I saw plenty. I saw four deer in the
Speaker 1: morning and probably tender in the evening hunt, and uh,
Speaker 1: it was. It was a lot of activity. Nothing quite
Speaker 1: worked out for me to get a deer. But boys,
Speaker 1: what have you all been doing all day? Who wants
Speaker 1: to tell you what you've been doing? What have you
Speaker 1: been doing? Well? In the morning hunting and lasted about
Speaker 1: an hour and thirteen minutes before I felt like my
Speaker 1: fingers are about to fall off and started walking down
Speaker 1: the road and Popball came and picked me up. Well
Speaker 1: because he just happened to be driving at the same
Speaker 1: time I was walking. You have your Hunter's Safety Education
Speaker 1: cards so you can actual hunt a by yourself? Yes,
Speaker 1: and a hunt in this afternoon? How did this afternoon?
Speaker 1: What do you guys been doing? Man, you'll been at
Speaker 1: camp all day at camp shooting baby guns and having
Speaker 1: fun shooting bb guns. Uncle Zack, you've been doing some
Speaker 1: fly fishing, a little bit of fly fishing. Thirty minutes
Speaker 1: of hard hunting this morning, thirty minutes a hard hunting river.
Speaker 1: What have you been doing? I don't even know what
Speaker 1: you've been We've just been hanging out the fire, one
Speaker 1: rock and fire and then all right, I extraly, what
Speaker 1: have you been doing? Being cold? Being cold? All right?
Speaker 1: All right? I hear you, Atticus. What have you been doing? Man?
Speaker 1: This is your first deer kimp. How's it been for you? Great?
Speaker 1: Have you had a good time? I have a great one.
Speaker 1: What do you um? I enjoy hunting a lot, and
Speaker 1: you're pretty tough out in the woods. I've noticed you're
Speaker 1: always right on my heels when we're walking. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you're good at not getting your boots wet. Here's
Speaker 1: what I thought I would do. We thought we would
Speaker 1: talk about some iconic stories that have happened right here
Speaker 1: in this area. And I've got one, if not two
Speaker 1: iconic stories. And I want to give a little bit
Speaker 1: of a context to this because you guys have grown
Speaker 1: up and I grew up in a region of the
Speaker 1: country that was rich with public land. And growing up
Speaker 1: where I did, I mean where, well, where we all did,
Speaker 1: there was public land, massive amounts of public land within
Speaker 1: ten minutes any just about any direction that you drove,
Speaker 1: and public land really has a pretty massive influence on
Speaker 1: the culture of regions, you know, because you can I mean,
Speaker 1: the hunting culture as are usually strong. And you just
Speaker 1: you don't you don't realize that, I mean, dad. And
Speaker 1: then we grew up riding four wheelers recreationally in the
Speaker 1: National forest and in places that you could. That was
Speaker 1: a big part of what we did. We grew up hunting.
Speaker 1: We grew up coming down here. There are parts of
Speaker 1: the are parts of this country and for sure most
Speaker 1: of the world. You can't come to a place as
Speaker 1: big as this, with as much game as this and
Speaker 1: go and just hunt. Did you guys know that this
Speaker 1: is like a pretty significant deal? Come on, kids? Yes, yes, honestly,
Speaker 1: I can't recall and if they have w m as
Speaker 1: technically in Texas, but growing up in Texas, I grew
Speaker 1: up on the coast, and all of the deer hunting
Speaker 1: that I knew was on deer leases, so it's always
Speaker 1: somebody's leaks, and so if you wanted to go deer hunting,
Speaker 1: you had to go on the lease. So that's why
Speaker 1: I grew up duck hunting, because I could just go
Speaker 1: up on the coast or going like smaller public places
Speaker 1: and I could duck hunt, or I could dove hunt
Speaker 1: in some places that wouldn't be as that were accessible
Speaker 1: to me without having the land, because we never knew
Speaker 1: anybody with a deer lease. So moving to Arkansas, which
Speaker 1: you did twelve thirteen years ago. That was like a
Speaker 1: pretty well, it's a pretty big deal to have access
Speaker 1: to public line. Yeah, it's great. That's something that's really
Speaker 1: cool about. You know, there's the land down here, there's
Speaker 1: w a up where we're at north of here, and
Speaker 1: like it. It gives me the opportunity to hunt kind
Speaker 1: of like garious talking about you know, my we didn't
Speaker 1: grow up deer hunting. Um, so I can kind of
Speaker 1: start deer hunting without having to have land or at
Speaker 1: least or anything like that. Yeah, Dad, what would you
Speaker 1: say is one of the most iconic hunts that that
Speaker 1: you've had in your bow hunt career? I mean, whether
Speaker 1: it would be like the first deer that you brought
Speaker 1: back and showed people, you know back in the seventies
Speaker 1: when you killed a deer, or whether it was a
Speaker 1: clicking buck that got away, or whether it was Hollywood
Speaker 1: back with the Well mean, you know, I've just got
Speaker 1: I'm full of those stories, you know, Um, the clicking buck,
Speaker 1: we've got to stay. We call the clicking buck. They
Speaker 1: cut it. But I mean one morning I had a
Speaker 1: he ended up being a twelve point and I mean
Speaker 1: he could have been from and he wasn't one thirty five,
Speaker 1: he was one forty to one sixty perfect twelve point
Speaker 1: in uh he he clicked, he clicked, And I've been
Speaker 1: told and I don't know if this is true. You guys,
Speaker 1: some of you guys probably know if you knew, if
Speaker 1: you know Texas Clay or whatever, how you communicate with
Speaker 1: Clay and say your dad was right or your dad
Speaker 1: was wrong. But I stopped at a couple of guys
Speaker 1: that are kind of legendary hunters in this area, and
Speaker 1: I said, you know, I got on the darned stay
Speaker 1: in this morning. Um, a buck walked in, a heavy
Speaker 1: buck and clicked. And I said, I would never know
Speaker 1: what a click was, but my buddy had bought one.
Speaker 1: It just it was just you'd spin a deal and
Speaker 1: it would go click click a click, and and and
Speaker 1: you know, this buck came in clicking. It's like a
Speaker 1: partial grunt. It's like just like that almost it really
Speaker 1: is just real quick grunts. But it sounds like this
Speaker 1: thing like a grunt is a series of clicks. Basically,
Speaker 1: It's just like it's the way it sounded. So anyway,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, man, this is a big animal. He came
Speaker 1: out of a pine thicket. I'm sitting on a white
Speaker 1: oak feeding area and he leaves, and I think, what
Speaker 1: the heck is going on? All of a sudden, a
Speaker 1: ten point, a nice ten point, you know, maybe a
Speaker 1: dred class buck pulls up right here. And that's about
Speaker 1: the time they started putting loops on the bow, and
Speaker 1: I didn't have a loop, and but you know, he
Speaker 1: just stood there watching the snow feed. And so anyway,
Speaker 1: my era fell out of my bow. That's what happens
Speaker 1: to me. And so anyway, I'm thinking the hunt's over. Well,
Speaker 1: a six point comes in and he and they're all
Speaker 1: with they're all tending this dough, right, yeah, they're all
Speaker 1: after in. This little old six point comes in. He's
Speaker 1: pretty good six point and he's looking at He's like
Speaker 1: a little kid, and he's going, what are the adults doing?
Speaker 1: And all of a sudden, he just folds his legs
Speaker 1: and drops to the ground and he's just looking at
Speaker 1: where the dough. The ten point after, I'm so he
Speaker 1: just bedded down while he was but he was looking, man,
Speaker 1: I mean, he was hiding. All of a sudden the
Speaker 1: ten point comes runs him off. So I'm thinking that
Speaker 1: hunts over well, I start climbing down. I had to
Speaker 1: get back to town that morning early. Here he comes
Speaker 1: in the eight point. Well, so the next week I'm
Speaker 1: back at that same spot, and these guys told me
Speaker 1: that that clicking buck will will sent check that dough
Speaker 1: and she's not ready, he'll leave, And that's exactly what
Speaker 1: he did. Well, the next Saturday, he's with this dough.
Speaker 1: He pulls up at thirty yards and watches her feed
Speaker 1: broadside and I got a hickory tree in my way,
Speaker 1: and man, I maneuver round. I mean, I'm twenty two
Speaker 1: feet up and I'm doing this. I finally find a
Speaker 1: hole and by the time I find it, I forget
Speaker 1: the Dere's thirty actually thirty three yards away and I
Speaker 1: put my twenty pen on it. I mean, holy call,
Speaker 1: it was a for this area. You know, it was
Speaker 1: a world beater, and I mean, I'll always remember that.
Speaker 1: So the next week I put Clay in there. He
Speaker 1: comes home from college or whatever, and of course the
Speaker 1: buck never came back. I never heard about it being killed,
Speaker 1: but it's kind of buck you might hear about if
Speaker 1: somebody had killed it. I'm sure they did, but really,
Speaker 1: I got two more stories. You want to might want
Speaker 1: to spread them out. I've got I've got a story
Speaker 1: that like for you that what about the five hog Bottom? Well,
Speaker 1: that's my story I got. I got. Okay, well you
Speaker 1: tell that story and then I'll tell the story connected
Speaker 1: to that, because that's what I want these kids to hear,
Speaker 1: and some of the stories. You know, some years, it
Speaker 1: really when the kids growing up. Some some years, it
Speaker 1: was really tough hunting. Even the way I hunted, it
Speaker 1: was tough. In one year, no one with a bowl
Speaker 1: was hardly killing a deer. And I had one little
Speaker 1: spot that I thought we could kill a deer on it,
Speaker 1: and I put clay on it, and I said, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna go to I'm gonna go to hog Bottom and
Speaker 1: it's leased out now, and I'm gonna be in the
Speaker 1: hogs and the deer. Surely something will happen. Is this
Speaker 1: the story? And so I'm walking in hog Boy, So,
Speaker 1: I mean, this is a place that you had scouted
Speaker 1: for deer, and there was hogs and acorns, and but
Speaker 1: the hogs, I mean, you know, the deer was really
Speaker 1: what I wanted to kill. So I'm walking, I'm walking
Speaker 1: to my stand and I hear hogs coming man. I
Speaker 1: mean it's not one hog. It's thirty hogs. And they
Speaker 1: come offside this ridge and they come through cane is
Speaker 1: and I'm standing there and I'm going, holy smokes, look
Speaker 1: at all these little pigs. You know, they were like
Speaker 1: sixty pound unders to a hundred pounders and some bigger.
Speaker 1: And I'd just go whack and I'd reload, whack, reload.
Speaker 1: I went through all the way down to one arrow
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, and you guys that no
Speaker 1: outdoors you know, I'm telling you what happened. And I
Speaker 1: knew some guys that were big hog hunters from Oklahoma
Speaker 1: ran dogs, road horses, I mean, they were outdoorsmen. And
Speaker 1: I asked him about it. I said, this hog came
Speaker 1: off that mountain and I said it sounded if I
Speaker 1: didn't know what it was, I can't remember what I said.
Speaker 1: It sounded like a lyon a roller. That sucker came
Speaker 1: off that mountain and sounded like a roar. And I'm
Speaker 1: standing on a creek in these halls. All these hogs
Speaker 1: jumped up about the creek was about four ft deep,
Speaker 1: you know, the bank, and they were up there. You
Speaker 1: were you were killing them as they were across as
Speaker 1: they were coming through, I'm I'm killing You're standing in
Speaker 1: a dry creek bed. Yeah, And and as these hogs
Speaker 1: acrossing the creek, you're shooting them one by one and
Speaker 1: they're squealing the whole bunch. I got thirty girls out
Speaker 1: there going. So guess who hears this big the big board.
Speaker 1: So I called old man Green, and I said, what
Speaker 1: was this hog doing? I talked to two hog hunters.
Speaker 1: They said he has two purposes in life. He's to
Speaker 1: breed and protect. And when he heard those Souths squealing,
Speaker 1: he was looking for you. He wanted to eat you.
Speaker 1: So I looked down the creek man, and I mean
Speaker 1: a hog came across that creek that was as just
Speaker 1: about as white as the creek. And he came across
Speaker 1: the creek and I'm sitting there with one eraw, I
Speaker 1: got this four ft bike. He jumps up on the bank.
Speaker 1: He goes up there close to and I had a
Speaker 1: bunch of sous here, but says he came right between them,
Speaker 1: and he started coming down a trail right to me.
Speaker 1: And I'm sitting there at full draw thinking, and I
Speaker 1: had a tree picked out right here, and I go
Speaker 1: dead gimmut boy, and he got to the edge of
Speaker 1: the he can fix the I mean it wasn't eight
Speaker 1: yards six yards from me, And I go, okay, and
Speaker 1: I whacked that sucker right in the forehead with a
Speaker 1: wasp broadhead and the loom namera and the loomonamera broke
Speaker 1: and spun and he ripped the trees. I remember saying
Speaker 1: that it it hit him in the air, just just
Speaker 1: flipped half of it. The other half stayed in his
Speaker 1: head and he turned around. It didn't penetrate nothing, It
Speaker 1: just enough to stick up wasp broadhead right here. And
Speaker 1: he turned and ran up a hill. But if I'd
Speaker 1: let him get in the creek with me, he would
Speaker 1: have just I mean, he'd kill me. You guys wouldn't
Speaker 1: have a grandpa. But such a sissy. I had a
Speaker 1: mint up that tree quicker than you know, you could
Speaker 1: say scalded dog. So anyway, here's the part I like,
Speaker 1: so I go pick Clay up. It seems like you
Speaker 1: might have seen a spike. I can't remember, And I go, Clay, baby,
Speaker 1: we got hogs down in the bottom. I'm are you
Speaker 1: gonna know you going into I'm gonna go to your
Speaker 1: I want you to tell your story, right. Well, but
Speaker 1: first of all, you killed I think you we we
Speaker 1: only killed two or three. We recovered three good size holes.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. And so anyway, Clay, I said, Clay, this
Speaker 1: is gonna be a horrible job. You know, first time
Speaker 1: we'd kill pigs. They were clean. They were cleaner than
Speaker 1: a white tail, no odor, they were just spotless, man.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was the cleanest thing. We got him clean.
Speaker 1: And then then Clay does his thing. He always was
Speaker 1: coming up some crazy you know. I was. I I
Speaker 1: remember because I was fifteen years old because I couldn't
Speaker 1: drive yet, and so Dad, I was with it. I
Speaker 1: was hunting somewhere else. When you kill those pigs, I
Speaker 1: helped you recover them. So I knew where the pigs were.
Speaker 1: And that week at school I told my buddy Jared
Speaker 1: Moore about these hogs, and he was sixteen, and we
Speaker 1: were going to drive his truck down here and go
Speaker 1: hog hunting, but the lights on his pickup didn't work
Speaker 1: and so we couldn't go. So Dad took me down
Speaker 1: there the next week and on Saturday. I remember you
Speaker 1: were wanting to go hunt somewhere else, and you just remember,
Speaker 1: let me let me just interrupt. You know, I got
Speaker 1: to me it was like a little thirteen year old kids.
Speaker 1: So he's fifteen. He's just a kid, I'm telling you know.
Speaker 1: And I'm thinking, how many daddy's are gonna drop their
Speaker 1: kid off with a bow and arrow after that big
Speaker 1: bow where I saw and all those hogs. But I
Speaker 1: just knew Clay can handle it, and I just dropped
Speaker 1: him off and then tell what happened. But it had
Speaker 1: to it had to have been around in mid October
Speaker 1: because it was warm. And I mean, I for some reason,
Speaker 1: I remember everything about that hunt. But I remember you
Speaker 1: dropping me off, and you leave it, and you're just
Speaker 1: point in the direction I should go, you know, like, hey,
Speaker 1: I'll be here after dark to pick you up. And man,
Speaker 1: I remember I didn't walk into the wood fifty yards
Speaker 1: before I heard a pig grunting and I I knock
Speaker 1: an era and I listened, and here's a pig grunting,
Speaker 1: And I mean, I'm serious, hasn't been Dad, hasn't been
Speaker 1: gone ten minutes. And I see a big black hog
Speaker 1: coming through the woods and it's just gonna parallel me
Speaker 1: at about twenty yards. And but by the time I
Speaker 1: get my bow, get my ara knocked, and get everything ready.
Speaker 1: The hog passes by me and I'm just like Dad, come.
Speaker 1: That was one of the first live hogs that I
Speaker 1: had seen. Well. Directly, I hear another hog coming and
Speaker 1: it was a good size hog, and this time I
Speaker 1: didn't let it pass. It came by it about fifteen
Speaker 1: to twenty yards and I shot it and I just
Speaker 1: hit it right behind the shoulder and just tendering this
Speaker 1: hog where the hog runs off. Directly, I hear what
Speaker 1: sounds like an army of hogs coming, and it was
Speaker 1: twenty seven hogs passed by, one by one by one
Speaker 1: by one by one, right in front of me. And
Speaker 1: why I didn't shoot him, I don't know. To this day,
Speaker 1: I can't remember why I didn't. I think I was
Speaker 1: so used to white tail hunting that you shot a
Speaker 1: white tail, and you know, I mean I was you
Speaker 1: just waited for Dad to come pick up. You know
Speaker 1: I did that one time on deer. I could have
Speaker 1: killed two deer, a buck and a dough one morning,
Speaker 1: but I was thinking turkey hunting and I just killed
Speaker 1: the bog too. And to say day, you know, I
Speaker 1: kind of wanted to get my killing over with you know,
Speaker 1: since the only hunted five Saturdays. But anyway, I think
Speaker 1: it's probably what you were thinking. Well, I think I
Speaker 1: just wasn't used to the idea that hogs had unlimited numbers.
Speaker 1: So I let twenty seven hogs passed by me, and
Speaker 1: they were all shots, well about thirty minutes passes, and
Speaker 1: these are the these are the first hogs I've ever
Speaker 1: seen really in the wild. And now I've seen twenty
Speaker 1: nine hogs, and Dad hadn't been gone thirty minutes by
Speaker 1: this point. I wait about thirty minutes, and I go,
Speaker 1: I guess I better go track that hog. So I
Speaker 1: go over there and find blood and start tracking this hog,
Speaker 1: tracking this hog, tracking this hog. And I don't go
Speaker 1: very far, and I start hearing hogs grunting again, and
Speaker 1: I just start moving in closer, moving in closer, and
Speaker 1: I see this like swarm of hogs, and I'm trying
Speaker 1: to interpret what's happening in front of me, and I'm
Speaker 1: moving closer, moving closer, moving closer, and these hogs never spook.
Speaker 1: And what what had happened is that I had shot
Speaker 1: this this big, this big sow hog, and those shows,
Speaker 1: they were totally adult shelt shows. But I guess she
Speaker 1: was the leader, and they were just hanging her and
Speaker 1: hanging out around her and wouldn't run off. And I
Speaker 1: watched them for probably an hour, thinking that they would
Speaker 1: finally just leave, and they never left, and so I
Speaker 1: don't I don't recall what process was going on in
Speaker 1: my mind, but UH put a knife in between my teeth,
Speaker 1: and I got on my hands and knees, and I
Speaker 1: wanted to see how close I could get to him.
Speaker 1: What's up to the process that was going on? I
Speaker 1: think I just I was just curious to see how
Speaker 1: a little for us. I just wanted to see how
Speaker 1: close I could get to him. And why I didn't
Speaker 1: want to shoot another one, I don't know. But I
Speaker 1: put a knife in my teeth and I started walking
Speaker 1: towards them, grunting like a pig, and they let me
Speaker 1: walk right in amongst them. And finally I got to
Speaker 1: where I was within like five and six yards of
Speaker 1: these pigs. And I think because their leader, I was crawled.
Speaker 1: I was on my hands and knees. Did I say
Speaker 1: walking second? Okay, I was. I was on my hands
Speaker 1: and knees with a knife in my mouth, and I
Speaker 1: got I mean right in amongst them, and I guess
Speaker 1: they I guess they felt like their their leader wasn't
Speaker 1: afraid because their leader is laying there on the ground
Speaker 1: because I had shot her and you probably looked like
Speaker 1: a pig. And and finally I got up and I
Speaker 1: just ran them off. I just stood up, and how
Speaker 1: I get out of here in any way? Recovered the hog,
Speaker 1: and uh so I drugged the hog out, and when
Speaker 1: Dad came back at dark, we had a hog. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I pulled up. Man, it's a big old black hog there,
Speaker 1: and I just I mean, it's a daddy. It was
Speaker 1: pretty stinking cool. I mean, how many little ole kids
Speaker 1: you throw out in the big hog woods? And they
Speaker 1: you know, you could have had probably five laying here
Speaker 1: if you had wanted them. Yeah, and now I wish
Speaker 1: I had, now that we realized what a vermin they are.
Speaker 1: I watched Rambo two early. That was right at the
Speaker 1: peak of Rambo's influence on me Zack and Tyler's life.
Speaker 1: Rambo really had a big influence on Tyler. Tyler still
Speaker 1: thinks about Rambo. Hey, Well, that that's a good that's
Speaker 1: a good place to tell you. I think I tell
Speaker 1: this hog story almost every deer camp. But let me
Speaker 1: tell you. Let me tell it to you again, Atticus,
Speaker 1: because this is your first time listen to this story.
Speaker 1: One time Pap Paul found a bunch of hog sign
Speaker 1: under some white oak trees because hogs love white oak acorns.
Speaker 1: And we he found a bunch of hog sign and
Speaker 1: he came and he said, Claire, there's a bunch of
Speaker 1: hog sign up in this place. And I had my
Speaker 1: cousin Todd Marriott with me, and Todd had never killed
Speaker 1: a hog, and we're both hunting, and I said, hey, Todd,
Speaker 1: we ought to go in there and hang double stands
Speaker 1: and hunt those hogs and kill two at the same time. Well,
Speaker 1: this was part of the story, was that we didn't
Speaker 1: realize it was daylight Savings time. So that night when
Speaker 1: we woke up, we woke up an hour early and
Speaker 1: we went out early early in the morning and hung
Speaker 1: these stands like two full hours before daylight. We weren't
Speaker 1: trying to be that early, but it ended up working good, so, Uh,
Speaker 1: day savings caught us. I remember that because we were like,
Speaker 1: when is it gonna get daylight? It just never got daylight,
Speaker 1: never got daylight. Finally we were like we we figured
Speaker 1: it out well. So Todd Marriott and I are sitting
Speaker 1: in a tree together, and sure enough, like clockwork, thirty
Speaker 1: minutes after daylight, here comes a sal and some pretty
Speaker 1: good sized shoots. Shouts are baby young hogs. Let's just
Speaker 1: call him young hogs. And and I also want to
Speaker 1: emphasize that these hogs have no regulation on them. They're
Speaker 1: an invasive species and the gaming fish and everybody in
Speaker 1: the world wants them all killed out. So we don't
Speaker 1: have any problem at all shooting sal's and shooting young ones. Okay,
Speaker 1: I just want to say that because no other big
Speaker 1: game species do we manage that way, right, Like we
Speaker 1: don't want to shoot young bears. We don't want to
Speaker 1: shoot young deer necessarily, But hogs a different story. Do
Speaker 1: y'all know that? Yeah? Okay, got you? So they're nuisanceentials.
Speaker 1: So this this this sal with a bunch of shows
Speaker 1: and a nice boar hog come in to our tree.
Speaker 1: I mean, just perfect. And I tell Todd, I say
Speaker 1: you shoot the sal, I'm gonna shoot the boar. That
Speaker 1: was our agreement. I was gonna shoot the boar. And
Speaker 1: and man, we had to get we had to get
Speaker 1: our timing right. Because like his sal would be turned right,
Speaker 1: but then my board would be turned wrong, and then
Speaker 1: my boy would be turned right and his would be
Speaker 1: turned wrong. And so we draw, and both of us
Speaker 1: will be drawn, and we'll be like we'd be talking
Speaker 1: to each other. I'm ready, I'm good, I'm good, and
Speaker 1: he'd go, no, no, I gotta wait, gotta wait, got away,
Speaker 1: And so we let down and we draw again, and finally,
Speaker 1: after some cycle, both hogs got lined up just right,
Speaker 1: and so we said one and we'd rehearse this one.
Speaker 1: Two whack and man, I hit my hog just right
Speaker 1: where I was aiming, just right behind the shoulder. Smack.
Speaker 1: The hog squeals and runs off, and Todd missed the
Speaker 1: south the sad the era just thuds into a tree
Speaker 1: right underneath the pig in My pig just ran off, squealing,
Speaker 1: and I was upset for Todd. I was like, dang, man,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry you missed, but I was pumped because I
Speaker 1: had taken a super nice board. Had We're still mad
Speaker 1: at We've never Todd, we've never forgiven you, buddy, and
Speaker 1: so we're you know, we're kind of happy, but we're
Speaker 1: kind of sad. We continued to hunt it was early
Speaker 1: in the morning. Directly we hear hog grunting, and we
Speaker 1: hear leaves crunching coming up from the mountain, coming up
Speaker 1: from down below, and who was it? If it wasn't
Speaker 1: the sal and the same shoots. They're they're not the
Speaker 1: brightest town. Actually, it's pretty unusual. And here comes us
Speaker 1: sound the same shows. And by this time I'm thinking, Okay,
Speaker 1: we got a big boar hog that we gotta haul
Speaker 1: out of here. Todd's not really that worried about killing
Speaker 1: a pig. I said, Todd, you ought to shoot one
Speaker 1: of those shows for for meat, and then that way
Speaker 1: we just we got a nice showed for eating, and
Speaker 1: then we got this boar hog. And he said, okay,
Speaker 1: I'll shoot the show. Well, shoot the show. He shoots
Speaker 1: the show. He shoots the show, and all heck breaks
Speaker 1: loose when that show starts squealing. Okay, show, it starts squealing.
Speaker 1: And what do I hear down the mountain? I hear
Speaker 1: what sounds like a freight train coming up the mountain, grutting, popping, chomping, stomping, romping,
Speaker 1: brush crashing stuff. I hear something just from pounding up
Speaker 1: the mountain coming directly to that show that's squealing. And
Speaker 1: just like Papa said earlier that a board is made
Speaker 1: for breeding and protection, here comes a huge boarhog and
Speaker 1: I think, dad gum, this is my lucky day. I
Speaker 1: grabbed another Era and I'm about to kill two. And man,
Speaker 1: he comes up there and he is woofing and popping,
Speaker 1: and he is spinning circles around that pig, just looking
Speaker 1: for whatever is hurting it. I mean he was I
Speaker 1: guess he was expecting to see a coyote or something
Speaker 1: chewing on his back leg. And he is going nuts
Speaker 1: and there's just chaos and Sue and you know, the
Speaker 1: other shows are running around, the salves running around, and
Speaker 1: this board had come out of nowhere. Man, I knock
Speaker 1: an Era draw down on him and I mean just
Speaker 1: tendering this pig, and it runs off down the mountain
Speaker 1: the same way the other one did. Man. Todd and
Speaker 1: I are high fiving in the tree. We're like, yes,
Speaker 1: we got this shoat and we killed two big boar
Speaker 1: hogs with the bow. We're excited. That's a good story, right, Okay.
Speaker 1: We get down out of the tree and I say,
Speaker 1: which hog are we gonna track first? Todd, and we're like, well,
Speaker 1: why don't we track the first one shot Clay. That's
Speaker 1: a good idea, Todd. So we start tracking blood right
Speaker 1: from the tree. What's that? Nope, that was it. So
Speaker 1: we start tracking blood and we track it down the mountain.
Speaker 1: We're following good blood, following good blood, following good blood,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, the blood starts to turn
Speaker 1: to the left and hook to the left, and it
Speaker 1: goes to the left, and I go, hah, this pig
Speaker 1: is kind of going back over a little bit by
Speaker 1: the tree stand And all of a sudden, the blood
Speaker 1: trail turns and starts coming up the mountain and comes
Speaker 1: directly back to the tree. What happened the pig? What
Speaker 1: was it that was running in circles going crazy? It
Speaker 1: was the same pig. How do y'all know that? Y'all
Speaker 1: know that because I told that story before going I mean, like,
Speaker 1: it was like so predictable. It was just it's just
Speaker 1: thrashing your storytelling that, Come on, man, No, So so
Speaker 1: it was the same pig. I shot him like perfect,
Speaker 1: and he ran off down the mountain and he came back.
Speaker 1: And then listen to that, listen to this. This was
Speaker 1: early in the morning, and we blood trailed that pig
Speaker 1: till three pm. And I jumped him up alive in
Speaker 1: a clear cut at three pm, setting in a bed
Speaker 1: of blood about as big as a silver dollar. And
Speaker 1: here's what happened is, at the time, we were shooting
Speaker 1: those jack camera broadheads that were so good for deer
Speaker 1: wash jacket not good. Yeah, And I told you to
Speaker 1: do that too, and they're they were awesome on deer
Speaker 1: they bloon out real big, but for hogs that were terrible. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was shooting a sixty five pound um high country bow,
Speaker 1: which you know was a full size, hard shooting bow,
Speaker 1: and man, I just didn't get any penetration into that shield.
Speaker 1: A boar has a big cardlet shield right behind his shoulder,
Speaker 1: and never found that pig. And boys, let me tell
Speaker 1: you what. That bow would kill a cake buffalo. Okay,
Speaker 1: that just tells you how how how tough these hogs are.
Speaker 1: So this is like a bow that would shoot hard,
Speaker 1: was shooting through stuff and it didn't kill that stinking pig. Anyway,
Speaker 1: that's my pig story. That's a tough one. I got
Speaker 1: a story. They'll put that story to shame. Hey, you guys,
Speaker 1: listen to the story. I don't know if you've ever
Speaker 1: heard it, but when Clay Baby was young, it was
Speaker 1: real fun being his day's real fun with that r
Speaker 1: Zach all did cool stuff. Of course, I like to hunt.
Speaker 1: So Clay was really the hunter, and he he'd bring
Speaker 1: rattlesnake home. He'd come into bedroom at two o'clock, knock
Speaker 1: on the door, Hey, Dad, come out, look look at
Speaker 1: this ice chest. Sure he's got rattle snakes, copper heads.
Speaker 1: I mean, why do you catch snakes? Well, anyway, he's
Speaker 1: always doing stuff like that. Well, I'm out in the mountains.
Speaker 1: We're not in this easy hunting. I mean, this is
Speaker 1: deep into the mountains. And I go Clay. But I
Speaker 1: come home, I go, Clay Baby, I found I found
Speaker 1: some good bucks. I mean, there's there's a good buck
Speaker 1: in this area. And I told him how to get
Speaker 1: to it. You had to have a jeep or four
Speaker 1: wheel or to get in there, or walk for about
Speaker 1: for two a couple of miles. And so anyway, he
Speaker 1: goes in there, and uh, you know, he comes home
Speaker 1: and he walks in the house just like always, and
Speaker 1: I go, well, I want to hear a story. He was, well,
Speaker 1: I killed I killed the deer, and uh, just like
Speaker 1: I don't know for you being cool, I never did ask.
Speaker 1: I didn't know if you've been so anyway. You had
Speaker 1: that green Chevy trucks which you had nice big heavy
Speaker 1: forward you know, four wheel drive set up high anyway,
Speaker 1: so you're able to get in there. Well, I go
Speaker 1: out to that truck and looking the back and there's
Speaker 1: a little buck in a turkey with a ten inch beard.
Speaker 1: You remember that. So I go back in the house.
Speaker 1: I said, club, baby, I mean, you just walked in
Speaker 1: the house like nothing happened, and there's a deer in
Speaker 1: a turkey in the back of your truck with a
Speaker 1: bowling arrow, wasn't it Yeah? And I go, I mean
Speaker 1: and he just was, it's no big deal. And he said, well,
Speaker 1: he said, I went to that stand like you told me,
Speaker 1: and on the way this this deer was right close
Speaker 1: to me, and I just shot it. And I went
Speaker 1: ahead and got on the stand and got the buck.
Speaker 1: Later and he said, a turkey came by and it
Speaker 1: was real foggy. Best I remember. Let me, let me
Speaker 1: stop you, because this is what happened is I was
Speaker 1: on that four wheel drive road, so it was perfectly
Speaker 1: it was perfectly legal. It wasn't like a county road.
Speaker 1: I'm driving up this four wheel drive road and this
Speaker 1: is National Forest and I see it deer across the road.
Speaker 1: And I mean back in those days there weren't a
Speaker 1: lot of deer in the National Forest. It's a pretty
Speaker 1: big deal. Just see a deer. And I mean we
Speaker 1: were just meeting hunting and we were just trying to
Speaker 1: kill a deer. Man. I got out of the truck
Speaker 1: and this deer just went off and was standing there
Speaker 1: thirty yards away. And again I'm not on a county road.
Speaker 1: I mean I'm on like a trail. Yeah. I get
Speaker 1: out of the truck, walk around in the front of
Speaker 1: the truck, step off the side of the road, and
Speaker 1: the deer still standing there at thirty yards. I shoot
Speaker 1: the deer. And I was going hunting, and I remember
Speaker 1: I just ten ring the deer, and I just knew
Speaker 1: that it was gonna die quick, and so I didn't
Speaker 1: even wait for it. I mean, it ran off and
Speaker 1: I was hot on its hills, and about the time
Speaker 1: that it slid into the dirt, I was grabbing it
Speaker 1: up by the hoofs, dragging it back through it in
Speaker 1: the truck and then went hunting. Yeah, so he goes hunting,
Speaker 1: and I don't know what happened, but from a dad's perspective,
Speaker 1: this is what happened. He's in a tree stand probably up.
Speaker 1: Turkey comes in. This is where all the big buck
Speaker 1: sign was, and it was foggy and I think maybe
Speaker 1: even a nice deer might have come by. Anyway, he
Speaker 1: kills runs a good duck up there. Yeah. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was good stuff. And so this turkey comes up and
Speaker 1: he shoots his turkey and uh, the turkey runs off.
Speaker 1: Well he climbs out of the tree, right, yeah, I
Speaker 1: go to look for the turkey. Yeah, so he comes down,
Speaker 1: goes look for the turkey with a turkey runs straight
Speaker 1: to this pig trail and it's just sitting there like
Speaker 1: flew it flew. Do you remember when I shot at it?
Speaker 1: Just pitched the story from here because it's just crazy.
Speaker 1: Do you guys remember the story? This is the you
Speaker 1: wrote about this story? Yeah, we had like I don't
Speaker 1: even remember what the prompt was, but I wrote about
Speaker 1: it and got a really great great let me tell
Speaker 1: you why this story is important. It's because at the
Speaker 1: time I was dating Misty many of you. Here's mother,
Speaker 1: many of you's and many of you school principle, and
Speaker 1: I came back from this hunt and I told Misty
Speaker 1: about it, and that was the That was like the
Speaker 1: icing on the cake that Misty was like, I like
Speaker 1: this guy for real. And I actually took the deer
Speaker 1: in the turkey over at her house. So there's there's
Speaker 1: a lot of play here, guys, especially for you who's
Speaker 1: this woman is their mother? Hey, let's get back to
Speaker 1: the real deal. So I can tell Okay, I can
Speaker 1: tell it. So here's what happened. Is this big turkey
Speaker 1: comes walking up the hill. We had a fall turkey
Speaker 1: season at that time. We don't anymore here in the
Speaker 1: wash Toss. I shoot at this turkey at about twenty
Speaker 1: four yards across this little drainage, and I miss, I miss,
Speaker 1: But the arrow hits the other side of the bank,
Speaker 1: on the opposite side of the turkey. So the turkey
Speaker 1: perceives that the danger is on the opposite sides of
Speaker 1: the turkey, jumps straight up in the air about twelve
Speaker 1: feet and hits the ground and comes running straight towards me. Okay,
Speaker 1: so the sound was, y'all get that I shot? Well,
Speaker 1: the turkey comes back and what I was good at
Speaker 1: back in those days was grabbing another ERA. So I
Speaker 1: grabbed another ERA and it came right up onto the
Speaker 1: stand and I shot it again. And man, that turkey
Speaker 1: turned around. And I was sitting on the side of
Speaker 1: this beautiful mountain and you could look kind of across
Speaker 1: this valley, and man, that turkey just pitched out of
Speaker 1: there like an airplane taking off, and just he just
Speaker 1: spread his wings and he just sailed out across there.
Speaker 1: And if you hunt turkeys very much, you know that
Speaker 1: that's a bad deal because turkeys don't bleed, and you
Speaker 1: can't find them if they get away from you pretty
Speaker 1: much with a bow and ara, a turkey needs to,
Speaker 1: you know, die pretty quickly or you have a hard
Speaker 1: time recovering them. Well, I continue to deer hunt and
Speaker 1: it starts to get dark, and I go, man, I
Speaker 1: better get down and start looking for that turkey. The
Speaker 1: woods were wet, it was it had been raining. And
Speaker 1: remember I've got a deer in the truck too. And
Speaker 1: I get down and I started making some loops down
Speaker 1: off where I saw this turkey flying. I can't find it,
Speaker 1: can't find it. I actually go back to the truck
Speaker 1: and I put my bow in the truck, and I think, man,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go one more time up in this little
Speaker 1: area and just see if I can find that turkey. Remember,
Speaker 1: the woods are wet, so you can walk like super quiet.
Speaker 1: And you remember how I was teaching you to walk today, Atticus. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I was walking like that. And I was walking
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, like I come into view
Speaker 1: of this little pocket that's in a thicket, like probably
Speaker 1: eight to ten feet from me. I come around like
Speaker 1: this corner of vegetation, and I see the turkey, and
Speaker 1: the turkey is laying there with his head up on
Speaker 1: the ground and his eyes closed. I was close enough
Speaker 1: I could see his eyeballs and they were close so
Speaker 1: I can see as I lived right well, I freeze
Speaker 1: in the truck, is like maybe not that far away,
Speaker 1: And I think, let me go back to the truck
Speaker 1: and get my bow, or should I just bum rush
Speaker 1: this turkey and catch it? Always go with the man.
Speaker 1: I watched that turkey's eyes pop open. He pops open,
Speaker 1: he looks at me, and he jumps up and takes
Speaker 1: off running like he's not even hurt. And he is
Speaker 1: running down the mountain, And what choice. Did I have, guys,
Speaker 1: what chase him? Man? I took after that turkey, running
Speaker 1: through briars, jumping over rocks, jumping over logs, and we're
Speaker 1: running downhill and that turkey is gaining ground on me.
Speaker 1: He's getting further and further and further away, and I'm
Speaker 1: just thinking, Dad gum, this turkey is gonna get away
Speaker 1: from me. I'm running, I'm running, I'm running. I'm running.
Speaker 1: We get all the way to the bottom of the mountain,
Speaker 1: where the turkey has no choice but to go back
Speaker 1: up the other mountain. And I don't really know how
Speaker 1: far it was. I should go back there to really see.
Speaker 1: It was like we were running for days, but it
Speaker 1: probably wasn't. We start. We get to the bottom and
Speaker 1: then we start to go up the next ridge and
Speaker 1: where I'm running, running, and I start to gain on
Speaker 1: that turkey, and I remember what it felt like when
Speaker 1: I started to gain on it. It was just like
Speaker 1: I'm gonna catch you, you sucker. And I'm running, running, running, gaining, gaining, gaining, gaining,
Speaker 1: and finally I get about five ft from him, and
Speaker 1: I just dive airborne and just wrap that turkey up,
Speaker 1: poof and slam onto the ground, and both of us
Speaker 1: are so tired. He's got his head up looking at
Speaker 1: me and the eyeballs and I and I it's that
Speaker 1: same eyeball that I saw pop open and look at
Speaker 1: me is now about two inches from my eyeball. And
Speaker 1: we're laying there. And I was so tired that I
Speaker 1: did don't even do anything, just keep him wrapped up.
Speaker 1: I just breathe and he was breathing, and uh. I
Speaker 1: dispatched the turkey, quickly, threw it in the truck, drove home,
Speaker 1: showed hers a dad, and then took it to Misty's
Speaker 1: house and showed her. And so that's why all you
Speaker 1: kids are here. Is this the first time in Bare
Speaker 1: Honey magazine history that the nickname clay Baby has come out?
Speaker 1: That this isn't the first time, of course, it's the
Speaker 1: first time. That's important. I guess that's what happens at
Speaker 1: this deer cab. Oh jeez, well that was that was
Speaker 1: the iconic moment. Iconic moment. Well, what are iconic stories
Speaker 1: happened down here? That I had one about you? And
Speaker 1: you know it didn't need to be about me out
Speaker 1: but there most of them were, and I forgot it.
Speaker 1: But I think of it in a minute. So let
Speaker 1: me tell you a story that I listened. I never
Speaker 1: read about deer hunting and never watched stuff, But recently,
Speaker 1: just the last two or three weeks, I've been watching
Speaker 1: videos of these guys. Tell them about how to deer
Speaker 1: hunt and the stuff I've experienced in seeing They don't
Speaker 1: talk about it, but I'm gonna tell you that this
Speaker 1: this happened to me. What I was fot up on
Speaker 1: the mountain, It took me two and a half hours
Speaker 1: to get there, Clay and get there an hour and
Speaker 1: a half, and uh, I was doing a practice run,
Speaker 1: and I knew where the deer were, kind of knew
Speaker 1: what they were doing, and I didn't. I was lazy.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to get up real early. So I
Speaker 1: got up about eleven or got into the woods. It
Speaker 1: was gonna do an afternoon hunt. I already had a
Speaker 1: forty pounds that this place was so hot. I carried
Speaker 1: a forty pound ambush are upside of that mount with
Speaker 1: an old buddy of mine. Basically a two hour walking
Speaker 1: and where you're hunting, well two and a half for me.
Speaker 1: So anyway, I got to stand up, and I don't
Speaker 1: stand up you know, I probably could have killed twice
Speaker 1: a dear if I could stand up, but I was
Speaker 1: always afraid to stand up when you shut long story
Speaker 1: of the reason on that way. But anyway, so I'm
Speaker 1: sitting on the stand and I had heard the tape.
Speaker 1: I swear I have turned. I've looked all through my house,
Speaker 1: I've gone there. I'd pay I'd pay a thousand dollars
Speaker 1: to have this little tape. And I can't even remember
Speaker 1: the guy's name. And he he told of a call,
Speaker 1: two calls that I used, and one of them was
Speaker 1: what he called a dominant button grunt. And no one
Speaker 1: I knew knew this call. No one talks about it
Speaker 1: on TV, on YouTube, never heard. Well, I get up
Speaker 1: on the stand and I mean, you've got little old
Speaker 1: bitty trees twenty ft tall. I mean, that's how high
Speaker 1: you are in Arkansas is pretty big mountain. It's about
Speaker 1: the third fourth tallest spot in Arkansas. And so I'm
Speaker 1: sitting on this ambusher and I'm on a V tree
Speaker 1: because there's no trees big enough to handle it. And
Speaker 1: I'm right at the V and and I pull out
Speaker 1: my rattling horns and I mean, I don't know what happened,
Speaker 1: But it was like it was scary. I mean, chill
Speaker 1: bumps when I think about it, I feel them right now.
Speaker 1: I mean when I hit those horns, chill bumps for
Speaker 1: going up my back. I mean it was like I
Speaker 1: was killing those horns. And I took that grunt call
Speaker 1: and I did exactly what that guy said to do.
Speaker 1: And here's the call. Did they tell you not to
Speaker 1: do this unless you're after the biggest buck in the woods.
Speaker 1: And it goes, it goes, it's along and it crescendos
Speaker 1: at the end, and I, well, let me tell you,
Speaker 1: I did this thinking call and I'd rattle those horns,
Speaker 1: and I mean it was I've never been able to
Speaker 1: copy what I did physically. I mean it was. It was.
Speaker 1: I was so into it. And all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: behind me, I hear a deer making the same call,
Speaker 1: except he was a little too short. He was going,
Speaker 1: and I thought, that's just thinking a little six point.
Speaker 1: I'm not even gonna monkey with him. There's nowhere I'm
Speaker 1: will shoot a six point on this mountain. So I
Speaker 1: just turned around and there's a little football bump behind me,
Speaker 1: and this thing is flat like a football field, and
Speaker 1: this one little bump. I just turned around and it vitrie.
Speaker 1: Now Clay would have been up and you know he
Speaker 1: would have been at full draw. He'd have kill this buck. Well,
Speaker 1: it ain't my style. So I'm just looking back, thinking,
Speaker 1: here's a little six point coming. He's going. He was
Speaker 1: a little short, you know, he's monkeying up. I'll be
Speaker 1: honest with you, I was doing it right. So he
Speaker 1: comes around the corner and this suckers a hundred forty plus.
Speaker 1: He's got horns sticking way up here. I am pointed
Speaker 1: the wrong way and I'm looking back, afraid to stand
Speaker 1: up on that ambusher. And he pulls up about thirty
Speaker 1: yards right at the end of that football, and his
Speaker 1: horns were tall. They caught up in the trees, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean there, you know he was. They were that
Speaker 1: his horns were taught, and uh, he's disappeared and never
Speaker 1: made nothing sound. But it was the one of the
Speaker 1: most exciting hunts I've ever been on. And he it was.
Speaker 1: And I mean, trust me, they make that call. If
Speaker 1: you do it on a little buck, he's gonna run
Speaker 1: off big bucks. He came in with his ears back,
Speaker 1: his hair up, making that same call I was making,
Speaker 1: but he monkeyed it up a little bit, a little
Speaker 1: too short. So anyway, Clay listened to these stories about
Speaker 1: stuff I was encountering up there in the bear that
Speaker 1: would tear my stuff up that I had to leave
Speaker 1: up there, and he never was interested. And uh, anyway,
Speaker 1: I hunted there a couple of years and learned a
Speaker 1: lot about the mountain, and then when Clay got older,
Speaker 1: he started killing stuff up there. So anyway, that was
Speaker 1: a tremendous hunt that really wasn't iconic hunt because you
Speaker 1: found that there sheds up there, which well I found
Speaker 1: a ship, it wasn't his. I mean, his shed was huge,
Speaker 1: was a heck of a shed you did find. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the bucks the sheds I found were one thirty fives.
Speaker 1: He made those look like he was not quite as
Speaker 1: big as a bucking Howard County, but well, yeah, you
Speaker 1: know he was. He was. They probably would scored about
Speaker 1: the same, but I don't know if they were different.
Speaker 1: You know, I think what's cool about all these stories
Speaker 1: is that these are the stories that it made deep
Speaker 1: impressions on me as kid growing up and as a
Speaker 1: as a as a teenager. And what you don't realize
Speaker 1: is that some of these stories that you're living out
Speaker 1: become iconic stories for your life, and sometimes you don't
Speaker 1: realize it until it's it's it's already done and you
Speaker 1: kind of grow up and you start telling these stories
Speaker 1: over and over. But at the time, those were just
Speaker 1: kind of normal hunts, you know. Yeah, you know. Another
Speaker 1: thing this guy taught me on that tape was an
Speaker 1: Estrius grunt. And it's not the same grunt that I'm
Speaker 1: here and taught in, the same grunt that I use.
Speaker 1: I've had a whole lot of luck with with with
Speaker 1: a what I call attending grunt, which I'm not sure
Speaker 1: what I'm doing is attending grunt, but that's what I
Speaker 1: call it, a little just short, choppy grunts because that's
Speaker 1: what I hear Bucks doing. And then Estris bleak and
Speaker 1: I mean certain years, you know, I mean I'd call
Speaker 1: Clay every day and I'd go dead. Gum. I had
Speaker 1: of were Bucks around me, and I killed a little
Speaker 1: you know, a decent eight point or I missed a
Speaker 1: ten point or you know, using that using that sequence.
Speaker 1: But um, when this guy told me this call, I
Speaker 1: was using stuff I was hearing on on YouTube or
Speaker 1: on videos. But this guy that had this little c D.
Speaker 1: He had another call, and a friend of mine and
Speaker 1: I went to Missouri and we hunted to or three
Speaker 1: different places, and everywhere we went, no one would be
Speaker 1: there'd be twenty camps. No one was killing deer. And
Speaker 1: my friend Mesco and I we would scout. I set
Speaker 1: up and I used this estrus bleak, and I swear
Speaker 1: this buck went nuts. He immediately got up out of
Speaker 1: his bed that looked to me like and started scraping
Speaker 1: and rubbing trees. And when he got through, he came
Speaker 1: right to me. He was a big old body, dear.
Speaker 1: His worms were just decent, and he came right to
Speaker 1: my stand when he got through. And it was because
Speaker 1: of this call. And you know, back then, the nineties
Speaker 1: was when Colin started becoming really popular, and it wasn't
Speaker 1: a thing until then. And I think that's why all
Speaker 1: this impressed you and impacted you so much back in
Speaker 1: the day. And I mean we we all we use
Speaker 1: these calls now, but back then it was almost like magic.
Speaker 1: Because anybody knows this this tape, I mean I would
Speaker 1: I'd easily give somebody a hundred bucks for copy that
Speaker 1: hundred dollars for a copy of the tape. Yeah, who
Speaker 1: give Gary? You know, I mean I learned two calls
Speaker 1: from him, and I mean when I used them that
Speaker 1: you know, not every time obviously, but but but they
Speaker 1: worked in Uh so, hey, Atticus, remember when we found
Speaker 1: that rub today, the deer rub on the tree? What
Speaker 1: do we say? That meant? Actually? What I try to
Speaker 1: impress the girl? That's it. That's it. Yeah, we were
Speaker 1: we were finding rubs and they were asking what they meant.
Speaker 1: So I said, it's just the boys. We kind of
Speaker 1: had a little skit we did. It's pretty informative. Count
Speaker 1: uh back. You know, Clay learned how a turkey hunt
Speaker 1: in one year. He was really better than I was
Speaker 1: after ten or fifteen years of turkey in it because
Speaker 1: I didn't want I didn't I wanted to do my
Speaker 1: own thing. I didn't want somebody to go with me
Speaker 1: and call a bird in. So it took me a
Speaker 1: long time to learn it. Finally I got where I
Speaker 1: can kill one or two birds a year with a gun.
Speaker 1: And then I bow hunt. And so I was at
Speaker 1: one day with my bowl and uh, I was going
Speaker 1: up a mountain and I was real tired and I stopped.
Speaker 1: I remember drinking I drank a coke and then I
Speaker 1: sit back and I called, and I heard two birds
Speaker 1: up above me, two or three. I couldn't see them,
Speaker 1: and they they came around and they did exactly what
Speaker 1: the textbook said, a bird will not come down to you.
Speaker 1: So he went way down the mountain. He came down,
Speaker 1: he got below me. Only one came in. It was
Speaker 1: a big gobbler. He came in strutting, drumming, putting a
Speaker 1: show on. Well, there happened to be a log there
Speaker 1: that was about fourteen sixteen inches laid across with briar
Speaker 1: thicket on both ends. In this turkey got the strutting
Speaker 1: on the other side of that log. And I'm going like,
Speaker 1: holy cow, look at this bird. He's gonna be in
Speaker 1: my freezer here for long. And so man, I'm watching
Speaker 1: him and he he struts up this log and then
Speaker 1: he turns and fans and I'm thinking, this looks like
Speaker 1: an opportunity. And he goes down. He does the same thing,
Speaker 1: comes back something and second time that's his deal, boy,
Speaker 1: And man, I've draw back. And when he does his turn,
Speaker 1: and his fan as soon as he comes back, almost
Speaker 1: shot his head off with a with that big old
Speaker 1: jack hammer, and I mean he didn't go nowhere, boy,
Speaker 1: And uh so anyway, I mean need to kill a curtain.
Speaker 1: But see that was you were you killed a turkey
Speaker 1: on the ground without a blind with a boat back
Speaker 1: before people were doing it. Yeah, I don't want to
Speaker 1: this day. I mean, boy, if you can just kill
Speaker 1: him off the ground. And so anyway, it's time went on.
Speaker 1: I hated just to kill one bird. You know, you
Speaker 1: just think it's luck. But over the years, you know,
Speaker 1: the maybe four years where turkey it was so good
Speaker 1: you could do that that, uh you know, I had
Speaker 1: opportunities to kill probably three or four turkeys, and I
Speaker 1: knew a lot of guys that had killed a lot,
Speaker 1: you know, fifteen or twenty doing that same thing. So
Speaker 1: I wasn't very good at it. Here. Well, I met
Speaker 1: some guys in some of the bigger cities that said
Speaker 1: that they do that. They might have a blind, I
Speaker 1: don't know. But anyway, you know, i'd either miss or
Speaker 1: misjudge or you know, something would happen. But you know,
Speaker 1: with a little luck, I could have killed three or
Speaker 1: four with a with a bow. But that one was
Speaker 1: just so much fun because you know, the way he
Speaker 1: strutted and how that was an iconic Turkey story. I
Speaker 1: remember that, I remember it. Well, Hey, we've gone over
Speaker 1: an hour here, and uh, I need a little just
Speaker 1: a little bit of feedback from from these guys, any
Speaker 1: closing comments from Uncle Tyler. What do you think? Well,
Speaker 1: I would say I was oblivious to a lot of
Speaker 1: those stories. Um, A part of me wonders why I
Speaker 1: didn't get pulled into the hunting culture. You know, whoa
Speaker 1: whoa whoa deep. Yeah, but I'm not blaming you guys,
Speaker 1: but I'm pretty amazed at what's been going on out there.
Speaker 1: You know, Yeah, that's awesome watching Rambo when you get
Speaker 1: I gotta I just gotta tell this one story. You
Speaker 1: might have to make this three to get your own podcast, man,
Speaker 1: get cut it in two or three. But this one
Speaker 1: was this, This was the good one that I thought,
Speaker 1: you know when podcast Clay Baby and I'm I'm hoping
Speaker 1: I'll be in the movies maybe next time. This is
Speaker 1: your smoker. So anyway, we we my good friend and
Speaker 1: I we rode these bunshees. If you know what a
Speaker 1: banshee is, it's the hottest thing you could buy. Really,
Speaker 1: I mean, it was up there yeah, and we wrote
Speaker 1: them pretty hard too. And uh anyway, when I wasn't riding,
Speaker 1: Clay would write it. So we had a big ride
Speaker 1: one day and Clay was on the Benshee and and
Speaker 1: I'm with my brother in law and the kids are
Speaker 1: out run in front. Of course, Clay's screaming his banshee. Well,
Speaker 1: we topped a hill. I see my bunshee where the
Speaker 1: fenders laying on the ground, and my boy's not on it.
Speaker 1: I mean, daddy's like going home to kill the kid.
Speaker 1: What's wrong with him? So I pull up, get the
Speaker 1: looking around. He is in the creek with the deer.
Speaker 1: He's got a deer with a with a headlock on it,
Speaker 1: with his pocket knife out. He's not saying a word.
Speaker 1: He's just wrestling this deer. He's and he finally gets
Speaker 1: this throat cut and and I go, clue, baby, what
Speaker 1: in the world happened? And he goes, well, it's a
Speaker 1: little sucker ran into him. I was going about fifty
Speaker 1: five and this guy just swammed right between the fenders
Speaker 1: and he said he was alive, and he started running off.
Speaker 1: I can't even kill him with my knife. I forgot
Speaker 1: about that. I go, man, you can't make this stuff up, man,
Speaker 1: I mean, anyway, we took that little deal. Mean, it
Speaker 1: wasn't real small, but it was. It was a year.
Speaker 1: We didn't want it to ruin our hunts, so we
Speaker 1: rolled it up in were right. Yeah, we rolled it
Speaker 1: up in a tarp and we rode over to a
Speaker 1: buddy of mine's cabin and he happened to be there
Speaker 1: and we gave it to him. But you know that
Speaker 1: was just And what was strange. It's about a month
Speaker 1: before that I hit a deer but it didn't kill
Speaker 1: it on that same banshee, And you know that was
Speaker 1: another story. But and then you sold it. Do you
Speaker 1: remember that spooked you? I mean that was the beginning
Speaker 1: of the end of fast forward. Right, Well, it wouldn't
Speaker 1: end because we still well, well, well you're right for
Speaker 1: for me though, yeah, for me it was. And now
Speaker 1: our riding mules, we went bad on boys the other direction.
Speaker 1: Yeah to anyone. Well, alright. Closing comments Tyrrell Dennison about
Speaker 1: the deer camp this year, Um, deer camps always great,
Speaker 1: Always glad to be here and always glad for the stories.
Speaker 1: Glad for the story. Man. You almost made one to day.
Speaker 1: It was close. Do you know the hog story happened
Speaker 1: exactly where you miss that dear this morning? Yeah? No, yes,
Speaker 1: River closing comments, No, Rivers got some good stories. How's
Speaker 1: your head? All these people that listen to the podcasts
Speaker 1: heard about your mule accident? Yeah, your daddy lets you
Speaker 1: ride wild mules. My daddy let me ride wild forward
Speaker 1: Uncle Zack closing comments, no comments, no common bar Sadly
Speaker 1: they have nothing. What did you enjoy those stories? Yes? Liam,
Speaker 1: do you enjoy that? Yes? Oh, Liam's tired. Liam's tired.
Speaker 1: I thought we were going coon hunt. Shepherds asleep? Ixter.
Speaker 1: You're looking a little glazed over. Do you want to go? Yes?
Speaker 1: You want to We got the dogs down here, we
Speaker 1: may go coon hunt? All right? Hey, thanks for listening
Speaker 1: to the Bear Hunting Magazine podcast. Hey, do us all
Speaker 1: a favor? Do us all a favor? What could they
Speaker 1: do that would help? Like and subscribe? What could they do? River?
Speaker 1: Like and subscribe? Subscribe to zine Bear hunt Magazine, the
Speaker 1: only what bear hunting magazine or in the world. That's correct,
Speaker 1: you kind of stuttered there, The only old bear hunting
Speaker 1: magazine in that's right, that's right. Rate it five stars
Speaker 1: to podcast rate five stars on iTunes. Yeah, hey they can.
Speaker 1: Did y'all know that they can find this podcast on
Speaker 1: pretty much every major podcast. I mean, it's on Spotify,
Speaker 1: it's on Apple Play, it's on all the Yeah, so
Speaker 1: the Sportsman's Nation is pretty cool deal that old Dan
Speaker 1: Johnson's doing. All right. Hey, thanks guys, thanks for listening
Speaker 1: to Baronning Magazine podcast. And keep the Wild Places wild
Speaker 1: because that's where the Bears live. E