Speaker 1: We'd named this dear Mowab, mother of all bucks. I
Speaker 1: don't nickname every dear, I say, but for some reason
Speaker 1: or another, that one he deserved a nickname. I test Ryan,
Speaker 1: and I just said, he's in the field. If you
Speaker 1: can get here, I'm just gonna sit here and wait.
Speaker 1: I have a group thread with some friends of mine.
Speaker 1: I just sent them a message and I said, boys,
Speaker 1: I'm watching Mowab and I'm waiting for Ryan to get here,
Speaker 1: to shoot him if the Lord wills it.
Speaker 2: My brothers and sisters, we have found ourselves in the
Speaker 2: beginning days of one of the great festivals of the
Speaker 2: natural world. For roughly sixty days, the lives of men
Speaker 2: will overlap a great pageant, ruddy, grunny, acorn, corn and
Speaker 2: clover eating pageant. What I'm talking about is whitetailed deer
Speaker 2: hunting of those connected to the land. Whitetail hunting in
Speaker 2: the fall is one of the greatest celebrations in North America.
Speaker 2: On this episode, we're back to the basics, telling deer stories.
Speaker 2: Every storyteller on this episode bleeds a core bear grease frequency.
Speaker 2: With some it's their passion, woodsmanship, ingenuity, or just deep
Speaker 2: knowledge of deer honting in others, it's their nod to tradition,
Speaker 2: love of family and friends. We're gonna hear seven stories
Speaker 2: and most of them are gonna surprise you. From rolling apples,
Speaker 2: good mountain horses, Andy Brown's Dads nineteen fifty six, Chevy
Speaker 2: Mountain Lions, Charlie and Louisdale Edwards, deer dogs, and peeing
Speaker 2: out of tree stands. This episode has stories that I
Speaker 2: promise you you are not gonna hear anywhere else.
Speaker 3: And it's Whitetail Week at meat Eater in First Light,
Speaker 3: So check out all of.
Speaker 2: The team's social media feeds for tips, tactics, and deals
Speaker 2: this week. And if you're looking for more white tell content,
Speaker 2: be sure to check out meat Eater's YouTube for our
Speaker 2: series called One Week in November and a series called.
Speaker 3: The Buck Truck.
Speaker 2: But regardless, you're here now and you're about to hear
Speaker 2: some incredible stories, and I really doubt that you're gonna
Speaker 2: want to miss this one.
Speaker 4: In the meanwhile, I'm about to go to the bathroom
Speaker 4: in my pants. I've got to go so bad, so
Speaker 4: I'm like, man.
Speaker 3: I can't hold it anymore.
Speaker 4: I've got to go to the bathroom, and I was like, Hey,
Speaker 4: this might work.
Speaker 2: My name is Clay Nukem, and this is the Bear
Speaker 2: Grease Podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant, search
Speaker 2: for insight and unlikely places, and where we'll tell the
Speaker 2: story of Americans who live their lives close to the
Speaker 2: land presented by FHF gear, American made, purpose built hunting
Speaker 2: and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as
Speaker 2: the places we explore. When you look at the last
Speaker 2: several hundred years of history of North American wildlife, it's
Speaker 2: clear that species ebb and flow in their populations. A
Speaker 2: man's entire life might overlap with a period of low
Speaker 2: animal numbers. For instance, if you're born in nineteen fifteen,
Speaker 2: much of your adult life the bob white quail would
Speaker 2: have been plentiful, maybe even seeming unlimited. But someone born
Speaker 2: in nineteen eighty would hardly know that a bob white
Speaker 2: quail existed. The first twenty five years of my life,
Speaker 2: turkey numbers boomed, but then dwindled to the point I
Speaker 2: can hardly find turkeys in the haunts of my youth.
Speaker 3: It's really heartbreaking.
Speaker 2: And think of the stories of the bison hunters of
Speaker 2: the Great Plains, which those animals went from thirty plus
Speaker 2: million to less than a thousand continental wide. However, the
Speaker 2: white tailed deer is another story. It's estimated we have
Speaker 2: twenty five million white tails, and some believe that's even
Speaker 2: more than pre European settlement numbers.
Speaker 3: We're living in.
Speaker 2: The heyday of white tail deer hunting. Let me say
Speaker 2: that again. We're living in the heyday of white tail
Speaker 2: deer hunting. Seasons are long, bag limits are liberal, and
Speaker 2: bucks just seem to be.
Speaker 3: Getting bigger everywhere.
Speaker 2: I was talking to a fellow the other day who
Speaker 2: said the liberal season structures make it hard to even
Speaker 2: break the law deer hunting anymore. He said, we can
Speaker 2: do things today we could have never done in the
Speaker 2: decades past, hunting September, kill six deer year and shoot doze.
Speaker 2: And the information about deer behavior that the average hunter
Speaker 2: has access to today is unprecedented. There's actually a really
Speaker 2: cool documentary that just came out called wild Tail America's
Speaker 2: Wildest Conservation Story, produced by the National Deer Association.
Speaker 3: Look it up.
Speaker 2: Pretty sure it's going to be on Amazon soon. But
Speaker 2: let's get to these stories, and our first storyteller is
Speaker 2: from the highlands of western Arkansas. In his community, he
Speaker 2: is known as one of the best public land mountain
Speaker 2: deer hunters around. Dale Craig is a cattle rancher, former ferrier.
Speaker 3: And he's a cowboy.
Speaker 2: I went to school with his son, Clint Craig, who
Speaker 2: made a big run in the PBR as a professional
Speaker 2: bull rider. These guys are the real deal, and he
Speaker 2: and his hunting partner Travis Ross, love using horses for
Speaker 2: deer hunting. It's my pleasure and honor to introduce you
Speaker 2: to Dale Craig.
Speaker 5: Well, Clay. This this is a one of my stories
Speaker 5: of hunting in a public land in This is Dale
Speaker 5: Craig and I grew up. My dad wouldn't he wasn't
Speaker 5: a hunter, but my mom come from a family that
Speaker 5: hunted all the time, and I spent a lot of
Speaker 5: time with my mom's brother, which my uncle, my first cousin.
Speaker 5: That's where I learned to hunt. Slipping through the woods.
Speaker 5: We didn't set We just snuck around. You know, if
Speaker 5: you jump up a no buck, nine times out of ten,
Speaker 5: he'll run out there fifty seventy five, sometimes a hundred yards.
Speaker 5: He's gonna spind around, look back at you and see
Speaker 5: see what's scared him, and then you can you can
Speaker 5: shoot him, you know, if it's the bulk you're wanting
Speaker 5: to kill. And that's how I grew up hunting, and
Speaker 5: that takes me. Probably one of the neatest hunts that
Speaker 5: I did over in on the public land was in
Speaker 5: a November in nineteen ninety eight. There was a good
Speaker 5: buddy of mine. He'd been after this buck and shot
Speaker 5: at him and missed him. So it was probably I
Speaker 5: didn't go back in there for four or five days. Yeah,
Speaker 5: we camped on the on the main road and we'd
Speaker 5: ride our horses into this public area. And you know,
Speaker 5: back in them days, we were get up four o'clock
Speaker 5: in the morning, Travis saddle horses. I'd cook breakfast. We
Speaker 5: were gung hole.
Speaker 6: Now.
Speaker 5: I went in there that day and I'd hunted hard
Speaker 5: all day, hadn't even seen a single deer that day.
Speaker 5: It got on up, It's two o'clock in the afternoon.
Speaker 5: You know, how to get little sun, get the beating
Speaker 5: down here, you get hot. I was hot and sweating.
Speaker 5: I went around this leg, started off the mountain there,
Speaker 5: headed back towards my horse, and I got in a
Speaker 5: bunch of rocks, big old rock out cropping film. I
Speaker 5: got the smelling, you know how where a buck's been bedding.
Speaker 5: He just bed today after day after day. And they
Speaker 5: just there was beds everywhere in these rocks. There was
Speaker 5: buck crap everywhere, and they'll secrete that that all when
Speaker 5: they're rubbing their old glands, comes out of their gland.
Speaker 5: There was just all on the leaves all around. And
Speaker 5: I walked through there, and finally I foun where that
Speaker 5: buck had been coming in to this beding area, and
Speaker 5: he just had a trail war going out. It was
Speaker 5: headed west. I walked followed that trail out there, and
Speaker 5: it just dropped off in a big canyon. At the
Speaker 5: bottom of that canyon, it tied onto the main part
Speaker 5: of the mountain. So I just sat down there, and
Speaker 5: that mountain was steep. I had my feet up against
Speaker 5: a tree, got my grunt call out. I blew my
Speaker 5: grunt three or four times, stuck it back in my pocket,
Speaker 5: and had this big old apple. I was hungry. I
Speaker 5: pulled that apple out and I took her by that apple.
Speaker 5: I didn't even start chewing on that apple yet, and
Speaker 5: I heard a brush start crashing on the main part
Speaker 5: of the mountain. It sounded like I heard a deer
Speaker 5: coming down through there, and I just kind of froze
Speaker 5: there for a little bit. And this deer I just
Speaker 5: see glimpses of it. I mean, it was making a
Speaker 5: bee line offside that mountain. It was across a big,
Speaker 5: big canyon, big valley across there. You just see glimpses
Speaker 5: of it every once in a while. And I could
Speaker 5: see horns, and I knew it was a good buck.
Speaker 1: When it's and.
Speaker 5: It ran to the bottom there and I could just
Speaker 5: I couldn't make it out completely if I could see
Speaker 5: some legs and horns, and uh, you don't have them
Speaker 5: beech saplings that get real thick on a it is
Speaker 5: a watered hole. I come off here and there there
Speaker 5: was a bunch of those and had yellow leaves on them.
Speaker 5: That deer was behind a bunch of that stuff, and
Speaker 5: I thought, well, he'll take a step here in a
Speaker 5: minute and get out there an oat ma and get
Speaker 5: a shot at him. Well, I had that apple on
Speaker 5: my left hand, so I just reached over and I
Speaker 5: laid that apple down in the leaves, and I turned
Speaker 5: that apple loose, pulling my hand back and that apple
Speaker 5: took off down the mountain, rolling and it made the
Speaker 5: god off the sound you ever heard. I thought, I
Speaker 5: just started cringing. I thought, boy, I have fouled this
Speaker 5: hunt up. And about that time, that buck he just
Speaker 5: took off running that towards that out and that apple
Speaker 5: it would go five six foot in the air and
Speaker 5: then hit the ground. It just cuts on, cuts on
Speaker 5: off down the side. And that buck thought it was
Speaker 5: another deer. And he come running up through there, and
Speaker 5: I'm I'm talking. He's his old Harris turned wrong side out.
Speaker 5: He's all bristled up, had his old tongue right out,
Speaker 5: and it is a block by coming up through there.
Speaker 7: He was ready for a fight.
Speaker 5: And he ran up probably fifty to seventy feet and
Speaker 5: just threw the brakes on.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 5: Whenever he stopped, there was an old black jack tree there.
Speaker 5: It had his head and his front part of his
Speaker 5: front shoulder covered up, but I could see horns, I
Speaker 5: could see his nose, but from about the third rib
Speaker 5: back I could see all that. And I finally I
Speaker 5: picked out a little hole of about three or four
Speaker 5: inches wide through that black jack brush. I put that
Speaker 5: cross hair on that and I squeezed it off, and
Speaker 5: that deer hit the ground. I mean he was dead.
Speaker 5: Ountain was so steep he went off of it backwards,
Speaker 5: just slide and went all the way to the creek.
Speaker 5: And bought him down there on the creek. And he
Speaker 5: wasn't the biggest set of horns on the deer I've
Speaker 5: ever killed, but that for a mountain buck. He was
Speaker 5: probably a one hundred. I've weighed quite a few deer.
Speaker 5: He'd weigh one hundred and seventy five or more. He
Speaker 5: was a big, big buck. That apple rolling off air
Speaker 5: that just if that apple hadn't rolled off their he
Speaker 5: might not run up there in my face and let
Speaker 5: me kill him. You know, I'd gut him. And I
Speaker 5: never killed a deer that I couldn't throw on that horse.
Speaker 5: I mean, I pick him up and put him up
Speaker 5: on the throw him up on the saddle.
Speaker 1: But I couldn't load this deer.
Speaker 5: So I had to get my horse in a big
Speaker 5: was shout in the creek and tied him up there
Speaker 5: and drug that deer down. That old horse he is
Speaker 5: generally you could pile deer all over him. And I
Speaker 5: wrestled that deer up in the saddle tied his front
Speaker 5: feet to one side of the saddle and his back
Speaker 5: feet to the gird on the other side, and crawled
Speaker 5: up in the saddle and wrote back to camp.
Speaker 2: I love the live action drama of Dale's hunt. Just
Speaker 2: when things seemed like they couldn't get better, a buck
Speaker 2: responding to a grunt call. That's a good thing, things
Speaker 2: got worse real quick with that rolling, jumping apple.
Speaker 3: I laughed when he.
Speaker 2: Said that apple was bouncing five feet off the ground.
Speaker 2: But then when he thought everything was run, the deer
Speaker 2: shockingly responded by running straight towards that apple, which it
Speaker 2: clearly thought was a charging buck. That was a good
Speaker 2: deer story Dale. Our next storyteller is Dale's good friend
Speaker 2: Travis Ross. He's a full time ferrier and would bleed
Speaker 2: cornbread if you cut him. Travis is gonna tell a
Speaker 2: bit about his history as a deer hunter and when
Speaker 2: Dale introduced him to a new way of hunting. You're
Speaker 2: gonna hear a few names in this one that anybody
Speaker 2: that's been listen then the bear grease for a while
Speaker 2: might know. I'll give you a hint, genuine outlaws.
Speaker 3: Here's Travis.
Speaker 8: Well, this is Travis Russ My dad was a fox
Speaker 8: and wolf hunter. He run run dogs, they run colts.
Speaker 8: There was a bunch of that in this country back then,
Speaker 8: go to field trials whatever. But we also, you know,
Speaker 8: we deer hunting. We run deer with dogs. You get
Speaker 8: on stand. Everybody gets a designate spot, and some stands
Speaker 8: is better than others. But you sit there till the
Speaker 8: dogs run a deer over you. I mean, I love
Speaker 8: listening to them. I still do to this day. Love
Speaker 8: hear a good race. So anyway, I've done that forever
Speaker 8: and couldn't hard to kill nothing. I mean, it's hard
Speaker 8: to kill a deer that's coming by you one hundred
Speaker 8: mile an hour and when you shot at him, you
Speaker 8: emptied your gun at him. You know, it's a totally
Speaker 8: different way of hunt. It's just you just shoot till
Speaker 8: you run out of bullets and you either kill it
Speaker 8: or you do So anyway, I was a rodeo in
Speaker 8: two at the time and team roping a little bit
Speaker 8: and riding bulls, had horses, been working for Dale and
Speaker 8: his dad, Dawn, working cattling whatever, working for them, And anyway,
Speaker 8: one year there is nineteen ninety one, Dale said, uh,
Speaker 8: why don't we go up in the mountains and uh
Speaker 8: take our horses in there and uh go hunting, take
Speaker 8: a bedroll.
Speaker 3: We'll spend the.
Speaker 8: Night, come up next day. And I'm like that parked
Speaker 8: me up, you know, rifle pony in me. I'm all in,
Speaker 8: I'm about that. Let's go. So we we do, and
Speaker 8: we'd take off. We leave out about what daylight that morning.
Speaker 8: We headed up in there and we rode about four
Speaker 8: or five miles. We found a spot we were in camp.
Speaker 8: We made camp, which we didn't make camp. We just
Speaker 8: throw the stuff off our horses and tied them up.
Speaker 3: We went hunting.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we hit it out hunh Well, after.
Speaker 8: A little while, it wasn't very long. I heard a
Speaker 8: two seventy gold up on side of the mountain. I
Speaker 8: knew it was him. All well, cool, we got something.
Speaker 8: And I'd seen some deer and this and that ren
Speaker 8: You know, I didn't know what I was doing. There
Speaker 8: ain't no dogs running after I was on up in
Speaker 8: the afternoon. Probably I'm kind of up on the mountain
Speaker 8: a little ways there. I heard a up up and
Speaker 8: I'm listening. I know what that is, and directly got
Speaker 8: a little closer, a little closer. There's some dogs come
Speaker 8: over the mountain, and I got to looking there, just
Speaker 8: a big long leg come off the mountain. It's coming
Speaker 8: right to where I'm at. And I'm like, you know,
Speaker 8: if they crossed where I think they are, I go
Speaker 8: back in the dog mode.
Speaker 7: They're going to run right down here.
Speaker 8: And I used to open and middle of that leg
Speaker 8: or that gap that was there, and I looked up.
Speaker 8: Here come this buck just flying off that mountain, just
Speaker 8: locking them dogs. Right after Well, I had my thirty
Speaker 8: thirty Winchester full of bullets, like I knew how to do.
Speaker 8: I went to Levern add him about forty yards and
Speaker 8: I probably shot five or six times, didn't I I
Speaker 8: about emptied it. But moral of the story is I
Speaker 8: couldn't get away from the dog running and the dogs
Speaker 8: wound up being Louidale and Charlie Edwards's dogs that were
Speaker 8: running that deer, and I don't know where they come from.
Speaker 8: Was that the same year we talked about hanging their
Speaker 8: collars on the limb.
Speaker 5: We were back in there later and they had some
Speaker 5: dogs that come in there and just bet it up
Speaker 5: with us. Sinatra was gonna take their tracking collars and
Speaker 5: hang them up there.
Speaker 8: He's gonna take their collars out and hang them on
Speaker 8: top of the mountain, leave it up there.
Speaker 5: But we didn't do no Charlie that second time, or no.
Speaker 5: Louidale told me to eat. He said, I found where
Speaker 5: you all been camping. Said I had to walk in
Speaker 5: there and them dogs was betted up there eating up
Speaker 5: scrapsy'all left. Yeah, I remember they walked in there and
Speaker 5: got them dogs.
Speaker 8: I never did tell Ludale. If I'd have told Louidale
Speaker 8: about killing a deer in front of his dog, he
Speaker 8: probably wouldn't have been mad, but he'd have wanted half
Speaker 8: of that deer.
Speaker 1: We was all friends.
Speaker 8: He'd have just been like, I can't believe you killed
Speaker 8: a deer in front of my dog and didn't tell me.
Speaker 8: We just didn't tell him. Yeah, even though as my
Speaker 8: first hunt in the mountains, I hunted every year probably
Speaker 8: until past five years. Yeah, I have hunted them mountains
Speaker 8: and old boots a horse. Boots was really good at
Speaker 8: hauling deer and I added up. One year I hauled
Speaker 8: thirty two deer out of the mountains on boots. I
Speaker 8: mean you let him up to a deer, dropped the
Speaker 8: reins on the ground and grabbed it and throwed it
Speaker 8: on him, and he'd just kind of turn and look
Speaker 8: at it and go and he'd go out of the
Speaker 8: mountains just same speed as he went in, which was
Speaker 8: really slow.
Speaker 3: That was a good story, Travis Ross.
Speaker 2: And for those who've been around Bear Greece for a while,
Speaker 2: you'll remember our Genuine Outlaws series that started an episode
Speaker 2: fIF two where we did a profile on Louisdale and
Speaker 2: Charlie Edwards. That was one of our most listened to series,
Speaker 2: right up there with Daniel Boone and Hulk Collier. Travis's
Speaker 2: story also introduced us to deer hunting with dogs, which
Speaker 2: is a long standing tradition in some parts of the country,
Speaker 2: well actually very few parts of the country. We could
Speaker 2: have a debate on the pros and cons of running
Speaker 2: deer with dogs.
Speaker 3: I'm well aware of the cons, but.
Speaker 2: I believe the traditional use aspects of running dogs is
Speaker 2: incredibly strong, and that the institution has an incalculatable cultural
Speaker 2: value in the broad picture of American hunting in the
Speaker 2: places where it's practiced. I'm an advocate for hunters and
Speaker 2: traditional use practices. There are plenty of places where you
Speaker 2: cannot run dogs if you don't want to be around running.
Speaker 3: Dogs go to one of those places.
Speaker 2: I believe in a person's right to hunt the way
Speaker 2: they see fit, within the boundaries of the law and
Speaker 2: within the big picture conservation agenda of where they're at.
Speaker 2: I grew up as a bow hunter in an area
Speaker 2: where everyone ran dogs, and I never had any trouble.
Speaker 2: It's just something we calculated for.
Speaker 3: I love it.
Speaker 2: As we'll hear in later episodes, dog hunting is tough
Speaker 2: and often and inefficient way to hunt. If your goal
Speaker 2: is to kill deer, way more deer are killed over
Speaker 2: food plots, corn piles, and out of tree.
Speaker 3: Stands with bows and arrows.
Speaker 2: I love the regional diversity of our country, and I
Speaker 2: love supporting the way that people want to hunt. And
Speaker 2: for the record, for the record, it's no joke to
Speaker 2: take the callers off a hunting dog. That's why Dale
Speaker 2: and Travis made a joke about taking callers off a
Speaker 2: hunting dog. They knew not to do that, and they didn't,
Speaker 2: and it was funny. Our next story teller is none
Speaker 2: other than Andy Brown from Western Arkansas. He's one of
Speaker 2: the best storytellers that I know. Andy's in his mid
Speaker 2: sixties and has a long track record with the Bear
Speaker 2: Grease podcast. He was a guest on the Louis Dellen
Speaker 2: Charlie series, and he's told multiple deer in Turkey hunting
Speaker 2: stories to us. That's part of the reason that I
Speaker 2: asked him. Remember that I asked Andy specifically to tell
Speaker 2: us this story, and it's about his upbringing and.
Speaker 3: Particularly about his father.
Speaker 2: I think this story gives some context from where Andy
Speaker 2: came from, but really where we came from, and that
Speaker 2: is important to not forget. In Andy's words, this one
Speaker 2: is a little raw. And remember in this story, Andy
Speaker 2: is ten years old. Here's Andy Brown.
Speaker 6: Telling the story. What I'd like to do. I'd just
Speaker 6: like to give you a little history about my dad.
Speaker 6: My dad's name was Barney and he was tenth of
Speaker 6: eleven kids born in nineteen nineteen, if that tells you anything.
Speaker 6: So you know he had a lot of older siblings.
Speaker 6: You know he was he was a little rough around
Speaker 6: the edge, as you know. But I don't mind telling
Speaker 6: you this. He was in reform school and when he
Speaker 6: got out of reform school, he went to prison for
Speaker 6: four months and twenty days back when he was in
Speaker 6: his teenage years. And this is kind of funny too.
Speaker 6: He did that. He broke into Dick Huddles history at
Speaker 6: Pine Ridge, Yeah, and went to my uncle and my
Speaker 6: uncle when him went to the Sheriff's office, he turned
Speaker 6: himself in. But yeah, but Dad was just it was
Speaker 6: a whole different generation. And Dad had a lot of faults.
Speaker 6: But if he told you something, that's what he meant.
Speaker 6: He was true to his word. And I think that's
Speaker 6: important in our life is I think telling the truth
Speaker 6: this most important thing to do. And Dad was that way.
Speaker 6: But he didn't really care what people thought. But anyway,
Speaker 6: my dad was not what you would call a I
Speaker 6: don't know. My dad was a dog man. He loved
Speaker 6: his dogs, and you know, growing up, that's all I knew.
Speaker 6: I mean, to deer hunt was the dog hunting, and
Speaker 6: everybody I knew dog hunting, some of those guys, you know,
Speaker 6: it wasn't really about the dog gray It was listening
Speaker 6: to the dog's run, you know. But with Dad, deer
Speaker 6: hunting was it was more. You know, I think about today,
Speaker 6: how we're so wanting to kill a big deer and
Speaker 6: a big rack of horns and brag about the horns.
Speaker 6: That had nothing to do with the way things were then.
Speaker 6: It was all about to meet. And I tell this
Speaker 6: story a lot, but I was for five years I
Speaker 6: grew up. I was the first one on the bus
Speaker 6: route and I was the last one off every day.
Speaker 6: And in five years we never seen but two deer
Speaker 6: in those five years that we were on a bus route.
Speaker 6: And this was country bus route. This wasn't a highway.
Speaker 6: This was back in the sticks. To be honest with you,
Speaker 6: I don't think that I saw the first ten or
Speaker 6: eleven years of my life. I don't know that I
Speaker 6: saw ten deer alive or dead. You know, people today
Speaker 6: can't imagine that as many deer as we got. I mean,
Speaker 6: you can leave right here in fifteen minutes you can
Speaker 6: see a bunch of deer somewhere, you know, But there
Speaker 6: wasn't any So deer hunting was the guys that get together,
Speaker 6: and you know, back in those days, it was a
Speaker 6: meat hunt. They wasn't after the horns. The old stories.
Speaker 6: You can't bull, you can't buil somebody set of horns.
Speaker 6: That's the way the more boys believed that. But anyway,
Speaker 6: one particular story, that's it's a little raw, but this
Speaker 6: is kind of the way it was. We were north
Speaker 6: of and dadd Attorney's dogs loose. They come back up
Speaker 6: there on what we call the new road, and they
Speaker 6: turned north and they jumped, and we were trying to
Speaker 6: you know, we were trying to shoot deer the road,
Speaker 6: you know. I mean we manned the roads. And not
Speaker 6: only do we man the roads, we manned the highways,
Speaker 6: you know. And this is nineteen sixty six, you know,
Speaker 6: nineteen sixty six, nineteen sixty seven, and the first time
Speaker 6: I ever stood on a stand, I had a single
Speaker 6: shot twenty two. That's why we hunted. And Dad had
Speaker 6: a Winchester automatic twenty two. You know, back when you
Speaker 6: were supposed to wear orange, we wore red. You know,
Speaker 6: we have a red ball cap on or something red,
Speaker 6: and lots of times not but this particular time Dad,
Speaker 6: and I know Larry and Reebay wouldn't mind me saying this,
Speaker 6: and Autis Ager was a great good friend of his,
Speaker 6: and so me and Dad and Ottis and his son
Speaker 6: Larry turned dogs loose up there in the north And
Speaker 6: in those days they had dogs that deer were going
Speaker 6: to the river. I mean, that was the deal. They
Speaker 6: would put them in the river. Eventually they were going
Speaker 6: to go to the river. But anyway, they had made
Speaker 6: a big rip in there north and run back in
Speaker 6: there on the creek and kind of lost it down
Speaker 6: in the creek. And we were right north of a
Speaker 6: place called Hiland up there. Dad and I had pulled
Speaker 6: up there. And this is funny too. Dad had had
Speaker 6: a fifty six Chevrolet pick up, and of course it
Speaker 6: was a great truck with a red door, got.
Speaker 7: A red door on the left side.
Speaker 6: And it did the door didn't last, so we had
Speaker 6: to bail it. You know, you're bailing warded, you know
Speaker 6: it would. But anyway, we was up there and Dad says,
Speaker 6: come on, let's go down on the creek. See we
Speaker 6: catch the dogs. So about the time we headed off
Speaker 6: the road there, the dogs just jumped out of the
Speaker 6: creek and they headed back west. And Dad says, they're
Speaker 6: going to Nelson Hoover Curve. We jumping that old fifty
Speaker 6: six and men, now there we went, and I'm telling you,
Speaker 6: sideways in the road and down there around the grave,
Speaker 6: we'd have met somebody. We'd just run over them, was
Speaker 6: all we'd have done. Here we go up the highway
Speaker 6: going west, just as fast as that old truck had
Speaker 6: run and had a three speed on the call and
Speaker 6: probably a sixder. But anyway, we was running just as
Speaker 6: fast as she'd run. And so we run up there
Speaker 6: and when we start around the curve, Dad goes to
Speaker 6: slow him down. He said, they're going to cross right here.
Speaker 6: And about that time, here comes the deer off the
Speaker 6: bank of the road, and if it gets across the highway,
Speaker 6: it's gone to the river, you know. And Dad said, hold.
Speaker 7: On, he said, he said, he said, hold ond.
Speaker 6: He slung that thing up the second gear and we
Speaker 6: just run that deer down and just run over it
Speaker 6: like I just run over. And what he did the
Speaker 6: hair just bull like you busted a pillow, you know,
Speaker 6: in the front end. And he looks back and it's
Speaker 6: getting up. He throws are reversed. We run back over
Speaker 6: the back over and the hair is just this going,
Speaker 6: you know. Anyway, Dad jumps out of the truck with
Speaker 6: the twenty two and shoots it and it runs off
Speaker 6: up in the woods, and you know, we're on the highway.
Speaker 6: I mean, we're right, we're on the highway. Of course,
Speaker 6: in nineteen sixty six there's not a lot of traffic on.
Speaker 3: The highway anyway.
Speaker 6: About that time here comes about twelve of them. July
Speaker 6: is off the bank of the road out out in
Speaker 6: the highway and Aunus and Larry pull up and they're
Speaker 6: trying to gather dogs and the cars going by, and
Speaker 6: so we run up the bank and that deer is
Speaker 6: just laying right inside the woods there and Dad grabs
Speaker 6: it by the leggings that come on back off the
Speaker 6: bank and there's a big high clay bank there. We
Speaker 6: head back off that. Here comes the car. Dad just
Speaker 6: sits down on that deer.
Speaker 3: Right on the side of the road on the bank.
Speaker 6: You know. There he sense on this steer giving her
Speaker 6: one of these As the cars go by anyway, we
Speaker 6: know that thing and gather the dogs up and now
Speaker 6: there we went. But you know, I tell that story
Speaker 6: that you know that sounds cruel, but there wasn't a
Speaker 6: smidgeon of that deer went to waste, and it was
Speaker 6: it was quite a treat for us, you know, in
Speaker 6: those days. I don't even know klay if there was
Speaker 6: fifty sixty deer killed in the county total in those days.
Speaker 6: And to kill a buck deer was just it was unbelievable.
Speaker 6: And I said all that say this, you know, Dad,
Speaker 6: he probably didn't kill twenty five deer in his entire life.
Speaker 6: And he had my uncle John, which was sixteen years
Speaker 6: older than him. There was a hunter two. He killed
Speaker 6: three in his entire life. So when the guys got
Speaker 6: together and killed a deer, it was a big deal.
Speaker 6: Everybody split it. There was none that went to waste.
Speaker 6: In fact, Dad would he would bring when he would
Speaker 6: come in. A lot of people didn't like the heart
Speaker 6: and liver. Well Dad did and we did too. And
Speaker 6: Mother could cook that stuff, to fry that liver and
Speaker 6: make a big pan of gravy. Be where's the gravy
Speaker 6: was the best far as you know, but god, it
Speaker 6: was good. And she'd take the heart and do the
Speaker 6: same thing. And then he would take lots of times
Speaker 6: to make a piece of neck, you know, And she
Speaker 6: would cut part of the meat off the neck and
Speaker 6: she'd fry at forest, you know, And then she would
Speaker 6: take the neck bone and put it in a big
Speaker 6: old pot of bowl and water and throw salt to
Speaker 6: it and you know, buill it and we'd suck the
Speaker 6: meat out and the bones and the broth. But whole
Speaker 6: different world, you know. When I was thinking about this
Speaker 6: podcast and what somebody might think about what I just
Speaker 6: said about running over the deer toy we did. She'd
Speaker 6: run over deer once. We run over the deer twice,
Speaker 6: you know, and shoot the deer. But I think about
Speaker 6: I think about some of the other podcasts you've done,
Speaker 6: and you know, some people being critical, a little bit
Speaker 6: critical about the way people did things in those days.
Speaker 6: But you know, really my dad was from a generation
Speaker 6: that wouldn't have cared what they thought. I mean, he
Speaker 6: would not have cared. But that's just the way he was,
Speaker 6: you know, That's the way we grew up. And you know,
Speaker 6: thank god, down the road, I had an uncle that
Speaker 6: took he interested in me and taught me how to
Speaker 6: steal honey.
Speaker 2: You know, that was a good story and a reminder
Speaker 2: of where we've come from. When I think about a
Speaker 2: story like this and how much I love it. Clearly,
Speaker 2: no one, no one including Andy, is suggesting that we
Speaker 2: be trying to hit deer with our cars. But the
Speaker 2: story does a great job of showing just how valuable that.
Speaker 3: Deer were to these people.
Speaker 2: Which that value would roll right into Andy's life, which
Speaker 2: he translated into becoming a master woodsman and hunter, and
Speaker 2: that would roll into his son my friend Scott Brown,
Speaker 2: also master woodsman and deer hunter and now into Scott's Boys.
Speaker 2: Thanks for telling us about your dad, Andy, I think
Speaker 2: that helps put a lot of this in perspective for
Speaker 2: us today. Our next storyteller is none other than my
Speaker 2: old friend Moe Shepherd, another Bear Grease regular and a
Speaker 2: master public land deer hunters. Got a unique story with
Speaker 2: a mysterious end. I know you're gonna enjoy it. Here's mope, Okay.
Speaker 7: This deer story took place in the northwest part of
Speaker 7: Arkansas and those Arc Mountains. It was a late season
Speaker 7: hunt at the time. There was a muzzler or season
Speaker 7: ran in latter part of December. I'd already killed a
Speaker 7: pretty nice buck earlier in the year, and the mask
Speaker 7: crop was pretty low that year, which made it easier
Speaker 7: to find deer when its mast is low in the
Speaker 7: mountains and they really concentrate on where there is some mast.
Speaker 7: I'd hunted in this particular earlier in the year and
Speaker 7: found quite a bit of sign. I didn't kill a
Speaker 7: deer in there anything, but I found quite a bit
Speaker 7: of sign anyway. About three days prior to when I
Speaker 7: was going to hunt. This was about I think it
Speaker 7: was in the year two thousand. I blazed when it
Speaker 7: was and there was a big snow and ice storm
Speaker 7: head in northwest Arkansas about the fifteenth or sixteenth of December. Anyway,
Speaker 7: I decided, well, all that stuff on it was, like
Speaker 7: I said, there was six seven eight inches of snow
Speaker 7: and ice on everything, so it had all the ground
Speaker 7: stuff covered up. So I thought where I wanted to hunt.
Speaker 7: I had a couple of days to hunt. I thought, well,
Speaker 7: I'm gonna go up in the head of this big
Speaker 7: canyon where I've had success before, and I was in
Speaker 7: there earlier, and there was a lot of I don't
Speaker 7: know what the real name for is. When I was
Speaker 7: a kid growing up, they called them sawbars. A lot
Speaker 7: of people call them green briars. There was a lot
Speaker 7: of those up in the trees. There were some old
Speaker 7: home places in there where I was hunting at, and
Speaker 7: I knew deer would be feeding on them because they
Speaker 7: couldn't get anything under the frozen forest floor, even if
Speaker 7: there was acres anything. So I decided to go in
Speaker 7: there and hunt, but it was really cold. It was
Speaker 7: in the teens, so I didn't even hunt that morning.
Speaker 7: Well I'm gonna go in there in the afternoon when
Speaker 7: the sun comes out and it's a little bit warmer.
Speaker 7: So I made my way down in there over this
Speaker 7: slick train and family a good place and got set
Speaker 7: up on the ground there where I could see down
Speaker 7: into some of these green briars. And I didn't even
Speaker 7: go down there where they was at, but I knew
Speaker 7: there was some deer, and I thought, if there's deer
Speaker 7: in here, they're gonna come around to these and feet.
Speaker 7: So I got set there, and i'd set there quite
Speaker 7: a while I hadn't seen a thing, and then it
Speaker 7: was probably hour before dark. I seen some movement and
Speaker 7: I seen a deer coming around the hillside. It was
Speaker 7: coming towards me, but it was still way out of
Speaker 7: muzzleload to range. I was just shooting with an old
Speaker 7: Thompson Center renegade muzzleloader with open sites, and I could
Speaker 7: see this deer and then it would vanish in the
Speaker 7: green bars, but I could see it pretty good and
Speaker 7: when it would move because all that ice and snow
Speaker 7: was on the ground, Finally it got in range of me.
Speaker 7: And I wasn't very smart that day that I didn't
Speaker 7: take me no binoculars or anything. I was just using
Speaker 7: my eyes. And finally it got and it raised its
Speaker 7: head and I see it was a pretty nice buck,
Speaker 7: but it was facing towards me, so I thought, well,
Speaker 7: I'll just be patient and wait. Finally it got down there,
Speaker 7: probably sixty yards from me or so, and kind of
Speaker 7: turned sideways and raised its head up, eat some green bars,
Speaker 7: and I draw the bead on it. Shot. When I shot,
Speaker 7: of course the smoke ball and I couldn't see nothing,
Speaker 7: but I seen the deer running off the same way
Speaker 7: it came from, back around the hillside. It was about
Speaker 7: the hour of dark then, so I sat there a
Speaker 7: little bit set there, and I thought, well, I need
Speaker 7: to go see if i'd hit it or not. So
Speaker 7: I walked around there to where i'd shot, and sure
Speaker 7: enough there was a little bit of hair on that
Speaker 7: ice and snow and a few specks of blood, and
Speaker 7: I thought, well, I've made a head on it, so
Speaker 7: it's getting going to get dark pretty quick. I got
Speaker 7: my buzzleload to reloaded, so I started trailing it. I
Speaker 7: trailed it around probably fifty or seventy five yards, and
Speaker 7: then I couldn't hardly find any blood, and you couldn't
Speaker 7: hardly see where the deer went because that stuff was
Speaker 7: frozen so hard. Then I realized I didn't even have
Speaker 7: a light on me. I'd forgot to bring a light
Speaker 7: or anything with me, and it was cold. I thought, well,
Speaker 7: it's in the teens here. This deer is not going
Speaker 7: to spoil if I did get it, I'm gonna walk
Speaker 7: out here and come back early in the morning. So
Speaker 7: I did. I went home and slept the best I
Speaker 7: could myself. I just can't sleep good when I'm thinking
Speaker 7: about something like that the next morning, but I did
Speaker 7: get some breast, so I got in there and went
Speaker 7: back in there the next morning when I could see good,
Speaker 7: went right back to where I was sat and looked
Speaker 7: it all over again, and went back out to where
Speaker 7: I found the first blood. Didn't see where I hid anything,
Speaker 7: So I thought, I've made it. I should have made a,
Speaker 7: you know, a fatal hit on this deer. So I
Speaker 7: went to where I found the last bud, walk a
Speaker 7: few specks, and I went to circling and I found
Speaker 7: a few more spots of blood. I tracked it probably
Speaker 7: another fifty or seventy five yards, and now I look
Speaker 7: out there in front of me, and I see coloration
Speaker 7: on the snow. So I go out there, and there
Speaker 7: is this blood everywhere on this snow. I figured the
Speaker 7: deer laid down there or something other. I mean, there's
Speaker 7: a lot of blood, Like, I don't see how this
Speaker 7: deer is not laying right here. There's so much blood
Speaker 7: on this snow and ice, you know. And I've killed
Speaker 7: a lot of deer through the years, and when one
Speaker 7: bleeds that much, it's I just don't see hat could
Speaker 7: live anyway. But there's no deer there. And I look
Speaker 7: all around. I look up the hill, I look down
Speaker 7: the hill. I can't find no blood other than right there.
Speaker 7: Its blood is just scattered everywhere there. So I just
Speaker 7: start circling in there. I started making my circles.
Speaker 1: Bigger and bigger.
Speaker 7: I spend all day in there looking for that deer,
Speaker 7: mostly around the hill and down the hill. I just
Speaker 7: don't see how this deer got up and got out
Speaker 7: of here, but it's bound to it because it's not here.
Speaker 7: So I looked all the rest that day, and finally
Speaker 7: I just give up. I thought I ain't going to
Speaker 7: find it. I don't know how it done it, but
Speaker 7: out it got up and got away from me. Anyway,
Speaker 7: I stayed here almost dark, left back out of there,
Speaker 7: and went home, jumped forward a little ways. That was
Speaker 7: in December, the same area I turkey hunt a lot,
Speaker 7: so it was in the first part April, whenever Turkey
Speaker 7: season open. I was in there turkey hunting, but I
Speaker 7: wasn't down as far as I was when I shot
Speaker 7: the deer. That didn't even cross my money other than
Speaker 7: I was thinking, you know, this is where I lost
Speaker 7: that deer. This is where I lost that deer back
Speaker 7: in December. Didn't find it.
Speaker 8: Well.
Speaker 7: I'm going around a little in their bench up higher,
Speaker 7: about two little short benches, probably only one hundred and
Speaker 7: fifty yards up the hill, and I'm pretty close to
Speaker 7: where I had lost that deer, and I see something
Speaker 7: white around the hillside there on this same bench I'm
Speaker 7: walking on. I thought, what am I seeing? I don't
Speaker 7: know what that is, but something's white out there in
Speaker 7: a tree. And I get a little bit closer and
Speaker 7: I can make out looks almost like some bone white.
Speaker 7: I thought, what am I seeing up in that tree?
Speaker 7: And it's a big old tree. It's a big old
Speaker 7: gum tree that's growed down the steep hillside, and it
Speaker 7: kind of leans a little bit, but it's it's not
Speaker 7: leaned very much. You couldn't walk up it or anything.
Speaker 7: You'd have to hug it and climb it to.
Speaker 6: Get up it.
Speaker 7: And I walk on out there where I'm seeing that
Speaker 7: white and I look up in the tree and lo
Speaker 7: and behold there is a deer's skull and the set
Speaker 7: of horns that looks like the deer that i'd shot it.
Speaker 7: It was like an eight point. It's a pretty nice
Speaker 7: mountain deer eight point. And the whole spinal column back
Speaker 7: to the pelvic area was all intact, laying up in
Speaker 7: a fork on this big gum tree. And I just
Speaker 7: stood there for a while and I'm thinking, how did
Speaker 7: that get up there? Then I'm thinking, could that be
Speaker 7: my deer that I shot that I couldn't find right
Speaker 7: down below here? And then I'm still thinking, but how
Speaker 7: in the world did it get up in that tree?
Speaker 7: And I'm thinking of everything. I thought, well, if that's it,
Speaker 7: that could explain why I didn't find the deer, you know,
Speaker 7: But I said, I just can't believe that it got
Speaker 7: up from all that blood and came up this hill.
Speaker 7: But then how did it get up in this tree?
Speaker 4: You know?
Speaker 7: I had three thoughts. I thought, maybe a great big
Speaker 7: bobcat drug this carcass or these bones up in this tree,
Speaker 7: or maybe a bear drug it up in this tree.
Speaker 7: Or maybe something is really rare in this part of Arkansas,
Speaker 7: maybe a mountain lion. I'm not sure how that carcass
Speaker 7: got up there, but it was way up in this tree.
Speaker 7: It was probably fifteen or eighteen feet up in this
Speaker 7: fork in this tree. I'm skeptical by a lot of
Speaker 7: things than most people are up and drug that carcass
Speaker 7: up into that tree. Whether it was drug up in
Speaker 7: there when it was still full size, or if it's
Speaker 7: a totally different deer, I don't know. That's that's just
Speaker 7: my assumption. I think that's the deer that I shot
Speaker 7: in December. But to me, that may explain how all
Speaker 7: that blood was down there and then it just vanished.
Speaker 7: But in this same drainage at this time, I hadn't
Speaker 7: seen one in there. But about three or four years
Speaker 7: after that, I was bow hunting back in here on
Speaker 7: the other side of the canyon, which was about a
Speaker 7: mile away, and I was bow hunting and a climber
Speaker 7: tree stand and Clay Knukin may not believe it but
Speaker 7: I told him about it. Anyway, I was sitting in
Speaker 7: a tree stand and see something moving coming around the hillside,
Speaker 7: and I thought, well, here comes a deer. And then
Speaker 7: it got within about thirty five forty yards of me,
Speaker 7: and then I seen a cat's head come out of
Speaker 7: some little bushes there. I thought, good gosh, that's a
Speaker 7: huge bobcat. And then it walks on out from the
Speaker 7: bushes in the wide opened it probably thirty thirty five
Speaker 7: yards from me, and it's not a bobcat. It's a
Speaker 7: cougar or mountain lion. It's got a long tail, and
Speaker 7: it comes walking by me and then vanishes into the
Speaker 7: bushes just as quick as it came out. I saw
Speaker 7: it for probably eight or ten seconds walking in front
Speaker 7: of me. But in hindsight, at the time that I
Speaker 7: found that carcass while I was turkey hunting, I believe
Speaker 7: it had to be one of those three things. It
Speaker 7: had to be either a bear or a big bobcat
Speaker 7: or possible mountain lion. I think drug that carcass away
Speaker 7: and stored it up in that tree to eat on
Speaker 7: the remnants of the bones. Like I said, when it
Speaker 7: drugg it up there, I don't know, but that's my
Speaker 7: theory on the deer that I lost with my muzzloder
Speaker 7: and then found the carcass the following spring during Turkey Sea.
Speaker 7: I have that skull and the horns off of that
Speaker 7: deer that is up in that tree. I always have
Speaker 7: ropes and stuff with me, you know, for pulling up stuff,
Speaker 7: for tying stuff up in a tree if I get
Speaker 7: it a hunting some rugged trunk. And I remember, I thought,
Speaker 7: how can I get that out of that tree? So
Speaker 7: I took some of my rope that I had in
Speaker 7: my pouch, and I tied a rock onto it, and
Speaker 7: I started throwing it on that rope up at that
Speaker 7: and I finally throwed it up and I don't know
Speaker 7: if it's stuck through the ribcage or what, but it
Speaker 7: stuck any enough I was able to jerk and pull
Speaker 7: around it, and I pulled that whole thing down out
Speaker 7: of the forks of that tree. And I still have
Speaker 7: that skull and that eight point rack hanging in my
Speaker 7: house right now that I retrieved that day during Turkey season.
Speaker 7: And also for a final word on all this, I
Speaker 7: hope that Gary believer Nucombe is listens to this story
Speaker 7: and that way, maybe that he'll be a little more
Speaker 7: believer than what he is right now that they're out there.
Speaker 3: MO, that was a good story. But now it's my
Speaker 3: turn to tell you what I think. I believe.
Speaker 2: It probably was a mountain lion that stole your buck,
Speaker 2: but not the one you claimed to have seen, because
Speaker 2: ten mountain lions rarely rag their kills up in trees.
Speaker 2: Everybody knows that, but I happened to be an expert
Speaker 2: on a particular type of feline that does. I'm certain
Speaker 2: the critter that stole your buck was none other than
Speaker 2: a black panther.
Speaker 3: He drug it up in that gum tree.
Speaker 2: The haters will say it's a lie, but I know
Speaker 2: the truth. That was a good story, MO, man, what
Speaker 2: a mystery, What a mystery. Our next story is a
Speaker 2: short one from my good buddy, Aaron Standful. He's an
Speaker 2: incredible deer hunter who's killed twenty four bucks that have
Speaker 2: scored over the poping young minimum with his bow. But
Speaker 2: guess what, when I asked him to tell the story,
Speaker 2: not one of those bucks came to his mind, but
Speaker 2: this story did. Here's an unconventional deer story from Aaron Stanfil.
Speaker 4: I'm not sure where to start. But well, you know,
Speaker 4: back in those days, I didn't even start bow hunting
Speaker 4: seriously till I was twenty one. Didn't really start really
Speaker 4: bow hunting until nineteen ninety seven. You know. Prior to that,
Speaker 4: the deer numbers from where I was from just weren't there,
Speaker 4: and if they were, I was unaware of them. Just
Speaker 4: to see a deer out of a tree stand was awesome.
Speaker 4: A buck would have been a whole nother deal, but
Speaker 4: we didn't care at the time. We were just trying
Speaker 4: to kill a deer. We were just learning how to
Speaker 4: archery hunt, and it was a big deal to kill
Speaker 4: a deer with a bow and arrow. It was October
Speaker 4: of two thousand and one public land, northwest Arkansas, and
Speaker 4: we had just a mass crop of white oak acorns
Speaker 4: that year. The trees were just loaded, and I had
Speaker 4: found a ridge that was just full of deer sign
Speaker 4: I mean, there was droppings everywhere. And it was the
Speaker 4: first year that I had to climbing tree stand so
Speaker 4: it made me more mobile. But anyway, I got up
Speaker 4: in this huge pine tree and I'm sitting there and
Speaker 4: acrons are just falling everywhere. I mean, it's just raining
Speaker 4: white oaks, and directly I see these two little deer.
Speaker 4: They're feeding up this ridge towards me. And every time
Speaker 4: that the acrons would fall, I would notice that these
Speaker 4: these little deer would just they just go over there
Speaker 4: right where they fell and just start eating them. And
Speaker 4: they'd eat a couple there, and then they'd fall over here,
Speaker 4: and then they'd go over there, tree to tree, and
Speaker 4: I thought, man, it's like, well, wish they'd get in here.
Speaker 4: And I watched them for over an hour nothing. They
Speaker 4: just kept going back and forth, and the meanwhile, I'm
Speaker 4: about to go to the bathroom in my pants.
Speaker 1: I've got to go so bad.
Speaker 4: And back then I didn't go in a bottle. I
Speaker 4: didn't go on the ground. I thought you had to
Speaker 4: hold it or you would get winded, you know. So
Speaker 4: I'm like, man, I can't hold it anymore. I've got
Speaker 4: to go to the bathroom. So I start doing my
Speaker 4: business here and I go just a little bit. And
Speaker 4: when I did, it just went. It was super dry
Speaker 4: in the leaves and it just.
Speaker 3: Went like that.
Speaker 4: Well those deer they just threw their ears up and
Speaker 4: just looked over there, and I was like, hey, this
Speaker 4: might work, and it I immediately went from just going
Speaker 4: the bathroom to like calling a deer in by going
Speaker 4: the bathroom.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 4: So I started going again, and they just throw their
Speaker 4: head up again, and they.
Speaker 3: Start coming towards me.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, I mean like and then just stop.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 4: Well they just get closer and closer and closer. And
Speaker 4: I thought, no one's gonna believe.
Speaker 6: No one's gonna believe this.
Speaker 4: By the way, well I just I did that for
Speaker 4: like ten times. I mean I had to go. Well,
Speaker 4: finally they get in there, like right in front of me.
Speaker 4: You know, I thought, I cannot believe this just happened. Well,
Speaker 4: I drew back and I just smoked that first little
Speaker 4: old sucker. She runs over there. I thought it was
Speaker 4: I thought it was a little doe. It ran over
Speaker 4: there and died, and the other one just ran off.
Speaker 4: But here it come back. It just come back. I
Speaker 4: guess it wanted to check on it. It's buddy, you know.
Speaker 7: And I shot it too, and I was so proud.
Speaker 7: I was so excited.
Speaker 4: I thought, no one's gonna believe that I a lured
Speaker 4: these deery and by going to the bathroom. Uh, and
Speaker 4: I end up I ended up killing a little button buck,
Speaker 4: and uh, I killed a buck and a doe, and uh.
Speaker 4: We still call that button buck ridge to this day.
Speaker 2: That's some innovative deer calling aaron about as good as
Speaker 2: Dale Craig rolling an apple down the hill. I love
Speaker 2: to celebrate a big buck, but I love celebrating just
Speaker 2: a good deer hunt. Some of my most memorable stories
Speaker 2: weren't the big ones, and I think it's important we
Speaker 2: celebrate them. That's what my dad, Gary Believer Nukeam, taught
Speaker 2: me is that any deer is a real trophy. That's
Speaker 2: the bear grease way. Our next storytelling is me. This
Speaker 2: is one of my favorite stories about a red oak
Speaker 2: raining acrens on a field edge. It would have been
Speaker 2: about two thousand and six. My daughter was four years old,
Speaker 2: and it was early bow season in northwest Arkansas. And
Speaker 2: for whatever reason, I don't recall the circumstances, but Misty
Speaker 2: was doing something and I had my oldest daughter, Willow
Speaker 2: with me for the afternoon, which was very common, and
Speaker 2: I wanted to go deer hunting, but also had Willow.
Speaker 3: She's four years old.
Speaker 2: I had been on places I'd hunted for a long time,
Speaker 2: a piece of private ground up here in the day before,
Speaker 2: I'd been on that farm and I had just drove
Speaker 2: through a pasture and there was a big red oak,
Speaker 2: I bet it's four foot in diameter, growing along the
Speaker 2: bank of a creek, and it was raining red oak acorns.
Speaker 3: And I watched about two.
Speaker 2: Hours before a group of deer come out of the
Speaker 2: field and just make a beeline for that red oak.
Speaker 2: And I took note of that. And it wasn't the
Speaker 2: kind of place that you would typically set up to hunt.
Speaker 2: It just was kind of on the edge of a field,
Speaker 2: out in the wide open. It was a long ways
Speaker 2: from any cover, and the tree was so big you
Speaker 2: couldn't put a stand in it, and there was nowhere
Speaker 2: else to put a stand for that tree. Well, that
Speaker 2: afternoon came and I just I said, well, let's go
Speaker 2: deer hunting, and so I loaded up a bunch of
Speaker 2: snacks and some books. And I knew something about that
Speaker 2: particular tree that I hadn't told you yet is that
Speaker 2: it's set right on the cut bank of the creek,
Speaker 2: meaning it was the outside bend of this creek.
Speaker 3: So the front side of this tree is looking out
Speaker 3: over a big field.
Speaker 2: I mean, the roots of this tree are hanging out
Speaker 2: into thin air over this creek, and this this creek
Speaker 2: is eroding the roots, and there's about a four foot
Speaker 2: cut bank directly behind the tree.
Speaker 3: That's point number one.
Speaker 2: Number two is is this red oak was growing out
Speaker 2: along the edge of this field for so long that
Speaker 2: it had some fairly low hanging limbs.
Speaker 3: Which is unusual.
Speaker 2: You know, a big red oak in the timber is
Speaker 2: going to have limbs twenty foot up. This tree had
Speaker 2: had a limb unusually low to the ground, which would
Speaker 2: allow for a young spry man like myself to climb
Speaker 2: up it. So I take Willow with me out to
Speaker 2: that tree, and I set her down on the cut bank,
Speaker 2: cleared out a little spot in the rocks, and set
Speaker 2: her right beside that tree, and gave her her books
Speaker 2: and her candy, and I shimmeied up that tree to
Speaker 2: a big limb about as big a round as a
Speaker 2: big man's thigh, that was about eight feet nine feet
Speaker 2: off the ground. And I sat on the limb of
Speaker 2: that red oak, and I could look directly below me
Speaker 2: and just to the back and see Willow and make
Speaker 2: eye contact with her and talk to her. But to
Speaker 2: the field, she was totally out of sight completely. She
Speaker 2: could have stood up and the deer coming wouldn't have
Speaker 2: been able to see her. You know, I tied my
Speaker 2: bow on a string. I set her down there, and.
Speaker 3: I say, Willow, I'm gonna climb up in that tree
Speaker 3: and wait for a deer. We got to be quiet.
Speaker 2: But you read your books and if you need anything,
Speaker 2: we can talk. But we just have to talk quiet.
Speaker 2: And you read your books and eat your snacks, and uh,
Speaker 2: we're gonna sit here for a while. And you know,
Speaker 2: made it a big, big something fun in the adventure.
Speaker 2: And man, she sat down there and she read her
Speaker 2: books and played and I would just look down and
Speaker 2: watch her. You know, she's probably thirteen fourteen feet below me,
Speaker 2: just directly. And man, I hadn't set there an hour.
Speaker 2: And I look across the field and I see a
Speaker 2: dough deer step out of that field. And she looks
Speaker 2: both ways and kind of meanders around, and directly she
Speaker 2: just comes straight to this red oak. And I draw
Speaker 2: back my Matthews, Z Max, and that deer is about
Speaker 2: twelve yards away, and shoot that deer just tendring that dough.
Speaker 3: She doesn't make it out of the field. Willow hears
Speaker 3: me shoot.
Speaker 2: I look down and she's looking up, and I'm like,
Speaker 2: got her, and we go retrieve that deer and go home.
Speaker 2: That hunt was special to me just just because of
Speaker 2: a unique circumstance. And I think that's part of being
Speaker 2: a hunter and being having a family, which so many
Speaker 2: of us do, is you got to make things work.
Speaker 2: And so I accomplished a bunch that day. I didn't
Speaker 2: neglect my responsibilities as a father, took my daughter out
Speaker 2: into the wild and accomplished a big time going at
Speaker 2: the time, which was to kill a deer with a
Speaker 2: bow and arrow over a red oak, rain and acrons.
Speaker 3: Big day. I love it.
Speaker 2: I'll never forget looking down from the limb of that
Speaker 2: red oak at my daughter tucked in behind the cutbank
Speaker 2: with her books and snacks.
Speaker 3: And cute little smile.
Speaker 2: She was laughing, playing and smiling less than twenty yards
Speaker 2: from North America's wiliest critter, a white tailed dough.
Speaker 3: I love it.
Speaker 2: Our final story is told by a guy that I've
Speaker 2: known most of my life, Luke Austin. He's a veteran
Speaker 2: hunter and woodsman, and I know that you're going to
Speaker 2: enjoy this one. It exemplifies what honting means to us,
Speaker 2: and hey, this is a big buck story.
Speaker 3: Here's Luke.
Speaker 1: So I've got two step sons, and I call them
Speaker 1: my sons because they are just because that step don't
Speaker 1: mean nothing to me. They're my boys. I've been with
Speaker 1: both of them hunting. Every hunt we've been on has
Speaker 1: meant something to me. Like I didn't realize how much
Speaker 1: it would mean to me too for my sons to
Speaker 1: kill a deer, and just a deer in general, but
Speaker 1: also kill a buck deer that was really worth, you know,
Speaker 1: showing off being proud of out there at my farm.
Speaker 1: I had been basically managing the deer, being extremely tight
Speaker 1: on what we shot, and I've kind of at the
Speaker 1: point in my hunting career I specifically target mature bucks.
Speaker 1: I've not always been that way. That's just something that's
Speaker 1: occurred in the last four or five years, which has
Speaker 1: been very fulfilling to be able to have years and
Speaker 1: years of history with a specific buck.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 1: I had this particular deer. We had four years of
Speaker 1: game camera pictures of him, never during the day. I'd
Speaker 1: seen him during the day one time in three years,
Speaker 1: and he was right there at our place, which up
Speaker 1: until probably five years ago. I could count on one
Speaker 1: hand how many deer I'd seen our on our plays,
Speaker 1: like there were no deer. Probably at his highest of score,
Speaker 1: he's one forty ish, which I know around the globe
Speaker 1: that might not sound like a big deer, but in
Speaker 1: our area and on my farm, he was a giant.
Speaker 1: And Thanksgiving rolled around, and my oldest son, Ryan, he's
Speaker 1: in physical therapy school, has been tied up with school
Speaker 1: for years and has not had a lot of opportunity
Speaker 1: to hunt. When he did get to hunt, it was
Speaker 1: like the conditions were always rotten. He just never had
Speaker 1: that perfect opportunity. So, I mean he's he's immersed in school,
Speaker 1: takes a very serious and so you know, he wasn't
Speaker 1: like me and my crew that you know, we deer
Speaker 1: hunted and then went to you know, and then worried
Speaker 1: about school. It's probably it took us all salon to graduate.
Speaker 1: So anyway, he got to come home with Thanksgiving. The
Speaker 1: next morning, we decided he was going to go across
Speaker 1: the road and hunt a spot. Now, I was gonna
Speaker 1: go hunt out of the ground blind and sit there
Speaker 1: and watch, you know, one hundred acres of open field
Speaker 1: right there. I told him when we were on the
Speaker 1: way there, I said, I am not killing nothing today.
Speaker 1: I am literally just watching and if something, if a
Speaker 1: buck comes out, I will call you or text you
Speaker 1: and you can come on over here. But I said,
Speaker 1: it's this particular buck when we had nicknamed him. If
Speaker 1: he comes out, I will shoot him because he is
Speaker 1: he's the one that we've been after for so long.
Speaker 1: I will shoot that deer. It's what I told you.
Speaker 1: So anyway, he goes his way, I go my way.
Speaker 1: Sitting there in my blind and it's dark and a
Speaker 1: first light. There's a couple of doors feeding and hadn't
Speaker 1: been just a few minutes. Here come another couple of
Speaker 1: deer and come out of the woods and start coming
Speaker 1: over there towards it. Well, then all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: here he comes. He comes out of the woods right
Speaker 1: behind them doors. In a moment he stepped out, I
Speaker 1: saw it was him, and I texted Ryan and I said,
Speaker 1: we had named this deer mowab mother of all bucks,
Speaker 1: is what we So anyway, that's what we had nicknamed him.
Speaker 1: Which you know, I'm not one of them that I
Speaker 1: don't nickname every deer, I say, but for some reason
Speaker 1: or another that one he deserved a nickname. The deer
Speaker 1: comes out and he's marching right towards those other deer.
Speaker 1: I test Ryan, and I just said, he's in the field.
Speaker 1: If you can get here, I'm just gonna sit here
Speaker 1: and wait. We gotta understand he is as the crow flies,
Speaker 1: he's half a mile from him, but in order for
Speaker 1: him to get to me, it's double that. So I said,
Speaker 1: if you can get here, I'm going to hold off.
Speaker 1: So anyway, he says, I'm on the way, and here
Speaker 1: he come, and he he was giving me updates as
Speaker 1: he was coming. Well, while he's given me updates, I
Speaker 1: can see back out towards where he's coming from, and
Speaker 1: I mean he is getting it, trying to get there quick.
Speaker 1: But he's behind a hill from the deer. They can't see. Well.
Speaker 1: I have a group thread with some friends of mine
Speaker 1: and some childhood friends of mine, and we probably don't
Speaker 1: go a single day that we do not connect with,
Speaker 1: you know, lifting each other up, talking about old times,
Speaker 1: you know, praying for each other. You know, we are tight.
Speaker 1: I just sent them a message and I said, boys,
Speaker 1: I'm watching mowab and I'm waiting for Ryan to get here.
Speaker 1: To shoot him if if the Lord wheels it. What
Speaker 1: was so cool about it is, they started responding, I'm
Speaker 1: watching the deer, he's over here. I'm watching Ryan through
Speaker 1: the back window of the blind, and I'm texting some
Speaker 1: of my closest friends. So they're just like sitting in
Speaker 1: the blind with me and the deer. He'll run a
Speaker 1: dough a circle or two and then he'll come back.
Speaker 1: That's around. Ryan has to come down a fence row
Speaker 1: and he has to ask to belly crawl for probably
Speaker 1: about one hundred yards. And I knew he was gonna
Speaker 1: have trouble getting the gate open. And I mean, because
Speaker 1: we're hunting on a cattle farm, you know, there's an old,
Speaker 1: squeaky gate to get to come through. So I crawl
Speaker 1: out of the blind and crawl over to the gate,
Speaker 1: open it for him, and then he crawls to me.
Speaker 1: We crawl in the blind together. And looking back on
Speaker 1: it now, I wasn't as prepared, didn't have a good
Speaker 1: shooting stick, didn't even have a really good chair in there.
Speaker 1: Had a you know, three dollar chair from Dollar General
Speaker 1: in there, and I get him in the chair. The
Speaker 1: deer is still there. He's been out there a while.
Speaker 1: At this point he gets in the chair and I mean,
Speaker 1: he has just ran a mile. The biggest deer's every
Speaker 1: laid eyes on is standing in the field in front
Speaker 1: of him, and he is shook. I'm talking shook up,
Speaker 1: which I was too. I knew what was hopefully about
Speaker 1: to happen. I had done all I could do for him.
Speaker 1: And so he gets he gets in the chair and
Speaker 1: I have a very special gun in my family that
Speaker 1: I've told the boys that whichever one of them can
Speaker 1: get me my first granddaughter, we'll get. We'll get this gun.
Speaker 1: It's a there's nothing really special about it other than
Speaker 1: it killed a bunch of deer with it. It's a
Speaker 1: super shoe and gun and it and it'll shoot a
Speaker 1: long ways. And Ryan's gun that he was carrying, he
Speaker 1: was hunting in some pretty low brush and stuff, so
Speaker 1: he was carrying a specific gun fronting over there, so
Speaker 1: I swapped guns with him. He was having trouble getting
Speaker 1: on the deer and it was not a close shot.
Speaker 1: His two hundred and twenty yards. He says, I think
Speaker 1: he was. I think I'm on him, and I said,
Speaker 1: let's squeeze the trigger and he shoots, and he misses,
Speaker 1: and the deer just kind of jumped and then just
Speaker 1: started walking off. I mean he knew something that that.
Speaker 1: I mean, he obviously heard something and he knew something happened,
Speaker 1: but it didn't booger him too bad. And he walked
Speaker 1: into the clear cut. There was a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: other deer in the clearcut there. Of course, Ryan is
Speaker 1: his confidence is just shook. You know, he's upset that
Speaker 1: he's missed the deer. I'm upset because there's four years
Speaker 1: of trying to kill this deer walking away anyway. The
Speaker 1: deer is not He's not like taking off. He's going
Speaker 1: upside of the hill, and I'm like, just just regroup,
Speaker 1: you're gonna get another.
Speaker 3: Shot at him.
Speaker 1: The deer walks upside of the hill, and my view
Speaker 1: of him, he's perfectly broadside. And Ryan is like, I
Speaker 1: cannot get on that deer. He's like, I am too,
Speaker 1: I am too shook up. I cannot get on the deer.
Speaker 1: When I tell you who I'm about to reference, you'll
Speaker 1: you'll know him well. But I was about to wayne
Speaker 1: paid him. I was about to take the gun away
Speaker 1: from him, you know.
Speaker 3: And uh Andy.
Speaker 1: Brown tells the story of you know, I'm gonna wayne, Paige, you,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna take that gun away from you. So he's like, here,
Speaker 1: I can't, I can't do it. So he just hands
Speaker 1: me the gun. I sit down in that three dollar checker,
Speaker 1: and of course, you know, I've got years of experience
Speaker 1: of shooting deer and all this other stuff, and he
Speaker 1: does not. So I was pretty quick to improvise how
Speaker 1: to get steady on the deer. And I mean I
Speaker 1: got rock solid on him. He's I mean I even
Speaker 1: had time to range him. He's about two hundred and
Speaker 1: seventy five yards at this point. And I had this
Speaker 1: just overwhelming feeling. And I know it was because of
Speaker 1: some of the texts that I had gotten from my
Speaker 1: friends about that's awesome. You know that I was not
Speaker 1: shooting the deer that I was waiting for. You know that, man,
Speaker 1: this is awesome. I hope it comes, I hope it happens,
Speaker 1: and all this other stuff. And I had this is
Speaker 1: overwhelming feeling that deer does not mean near as much
Speaker 1: to me. That's what it remained to him if he
Speaker 1: gets to kill this thing. And I just said, I'm
Speaker 1: not shooting him. Get back to seat and I said,
Speaker 1: look at exactly how I'm set up right here. Now,
Speaker 1: you got to understand this is all of this is
Speaker 1: going on live.
Speaker 8: You know.
Speaker 1: So this encounter has been going on for probably at
Speaker 1: this point thirty minutes from the time I will see
Speaker 1: him come out of the field to where we're at
Speaker 1: right now. He gets in the chair and he gets
Speaker 1: pretty solid on him, and about that time, a doe
Speaker 1: just turns in front of Moab and heads right back
Speaker 1: for the field that we had just shot at him in,
Speaker 1: and that buck totally changed his demeanor. He hooked a
Speaker 1: bush and then here he comes, and he follows that
Speaker 1: dough right back out into the field. Caution went away.
Speaker 1: He comes right back into the field. He walked right
Speaker 1: back out there to where he was at standing in
Speaker 1: basically the exact same position he was in. And by
Speaker 1: that time Ryan had gotten it together and he steadied
Speaker 1: up on him and he said, I'm on him. I said,
Speaker 1: let him have it, and he shot and down he went,
Speaker 1: and Clay, we tore that blind down trying to get
Speaker 1: out of it. We got out of it, and we
Speaker 1: started over there towards him and walking up to that deer.
Speaker 1: Seeing the look on my son's face and emotion for
Speaker 1: both of us, just the caliber of the deer and
Speaker 1: the fact that we killed this deer on a piece
Speaker 1: of ground that has been in my family for one
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty six years. I was overcome with emotion
Speaker 1: of I've had this overly blessed life, had the greatest family,
Speaker 1: the greatest upbringing. You know, was blessed to have this
Speaker 1: wonderful piece of dirt, to be a steward over to
Speaker 1: experience a once in a lifetime or deal with my son,
Speaker 1: And it was just unexplainable for I know you have
Speaker 1: felt it. I know you have, and I know a
Speaker 1: lot of my closest friends have felt the exact same
Speaker 1: thing that I did that day, But it would be
Speaker 1: really hard to explain to somebody that has not been
Speaker 1: in that situation. You couldn't have knocked me off the
Speaker 1: top of that mountain that day. So I've had a
Speaker 1: lot of time to reflect on that and just realize
Speaker 1: that it's it's the smallest of details in hunting that
Speaker 1: may make them the most important memories that you'll have
Speaker 1: as far as in the hunting circle of memories, because
Speaker 1: it's normally not the hunts that went perfect, you know,
Speaker 1: the ones that were easier, not the ones that stick
Speaker 1: out of my mind. It's the ones that either I
Speaker 1: worked super hard at or just the unexpected happened, or
Speaker 1: some crazy, you know, something out of the box happened.
Speaker 1: And I think that's why I love deer hunting specifically,
Speaker 1: because the white tailed deer is one of the most
Speaker 1: elusive creatures God ever created. The protein that we get
Speaker 1: from them, experiences, memories made with our loved ones and
Speaker 1: our friends. Also to be able to sit here like
Speaker 1: this with you and connect with these crazy stories that
Speaker 1: happened to us that otherwise, you know, we could be friends,
Speaker 1: but we would not be able to connect with people
Speaker 1: and have a bond. And so that's why I love hunting.
Speaker 2: As I sat in front of Luke in person as
Speaker 2: he told this story, when Ryan handed him back the gun,
Speaker 2: I was a little disappointed, but at the same time,
Speaker 2: I was screaming in my head for Luke to grab
Speaker 2: the gun. And then Luke has Moab in his sights.
Speaker 2: It's deer that they've had so much history with.
Speaker 3: And I was.
Speaker 2: Really surprised again when Luke handed the gun back to Ryan,
Speaker 2: and I was even more amazed when this ancient buck
Speaker 2: had survived all these years with all this hunting pressure,
Speaker 2: immediately changed directions, changed his demeanor, and came right back. Now,
Speaker 2: that is a good story, Luke, and congrats to Rioting.
Speaker 2: If you have enjoyed these stories, this is just the
Speaker 2: beginning of an incredible series. I'll close with these words.
Speaker 2: In the book The Bear by William Faulkner, he describes
Speaker 2: a family's annual bear hunt as a yearly pageant of
Speaker 2: the old bear's furious immortality. That's an interesting phrase, furious immortality,
Speaker 2: meaning this beast had a drive to survive.
Speaker 3: That was incredible.
Speaker 2: I think that what we love about white tails is
Speaker 2: their furious immortality. They're hard to kill, and that's what
Speaker 2: makes the meat so valuable, the hunt so memorable, the
Speaker 2: annual rituals so strong and long lasting.
Speaker 3: I love it.
Speaker 2: I encourage you this year to keep your whitetail traditions alive,
Speaker 2: and if you don't have any, make some new ones.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for listening to Bear Grease. Be
Speaker 2: sure to check out Meat Eater and First Light's Whitetail Week. Myself,
Speaker 2: along with Mark Kenyon, Tony Peterson, Giannis Poottellus, Casey and
Speaker 2: Tyler from the Element and the whole Meet Eater crew.
Speaker 2: We'll be sharing white tail tips and tactics on our
Speaker 2: social media all week. I cannot wait to talk about
Speaker 2: these stories on the Render next.
Speaker 3: Week with the crew. Have a great week.