Speaker 1: That coyode actually saved me because that deer was he
Speaker 1: was really close to a clearcut that's just nearly impenetrable.
Speaker 1: And you know, I know that in another hour or so,
Speaker 1: I would have gotten down and I would have spooked
Speaker 1: that deer and hit where he was hit. Chances are
Speaker 1: wouldn't have led a lot, and if he'd got in
Speaker 1: that thicket, I may have never found him. But that coyode,
Speaker 1: actually I say, it's kyold, it's God, just put him
Speaker 1: right back there in my lap.
Speaker 2: The time to hunt whitetail deer is officially upon us.
Speaker 2: We all know this time as the fall. That name,
Speaker 2: that noun, the fall, is so familiar to us, we
Speaker 2: might have lost sight of how poetic and simple that
Speaker 2: descriptor actually is. In scientific terms, the fall is the
Speaker 2: season when the northern hemisphere rotates towards the north pole,
Speaker 2: making the days shorter, the weather cooler, and the shadows longer.
Speaker 2: At some point a human walked outside and saw a
Speaker 2: leaf drop. They saw it fall, and they said, let's
Speaker 2: call this the fall. But to a deer hunter, the
Speaker 2: fall is so much more complex. This episode is a
Speaker 2: little bit different. We've got an eclectic cast of storytellers.
Speaker 2: Some are longer stories, some are short, but I hope
Speaker 2: you can sit back and enjoy each one as they
Speaker 2: come from guar holes to cold snaps, to scopes being
Speaker 2: off to deer falling out of the.
Speaker 3: Backs of trucks.
Speaker 2: It's fall time, folks, and that's a good enough reason
Speaker 2: to celebrate. I really doubt that you're gonna want to
Speaker 2: miss this Deer Stories episode. And this is meat Eater's
Speaker 2: Whitetail Week, where you can buy more and save more
Speaker 2: at first light dot com. First Light has the best
Speaker 2: light tail gear on the market, and this week you
Speaker 2: can save on it. And don't forget about those new phelps.
Speaker 2: Deer calls the Acorn Pro, which is an inhale exhale
Speaker 2: grunt bleat. Let's get to our stories.
Speaker 4: He said he'd push it down and very gently stepped
Speaker 4: across it, just like a man. And see he just
Speaker 4: a boy, And I thought, well, yeah, okay, but you
Speaker 4: can look at the rack. You can tell the boys
Speaker 4: tell its truth.
Speaker 2: My name is Clay Knukelem 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 land,
Speaker 2: presented by f HF 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. Man, do I ever love these
Speaker 2: dear stories episodes? But last week is gonna be hard
Speaker 2: to top. Between Lake's Daddy Doyle story and Mitch's Baron
Speaker 2: Buck fiasco, and then Med Palmer's story about the Mississippi
Speaker 2: River and how meaningful and tragic that one was, the
Speaker 2: bar just keeps getting higher. And I'll tell you one
Speaker 2: thing when it comes to storytelling is that you never
Speaker 2: want to tell your story after the best story has
Speaker 2: already been told. But you also might hear a story,
Speaker 2: and you can kind of show up and have the
Speaker 2: best story after you've already heard the players in the field,
Speaker 2: if you know what I mean. Starting us off this
Speaker 2: week is my friend from Western Arkansas, Mitch Sykes.
Speaker 3: He told the story on the last episode.
Speaker 2: This is a public land hunt that I call the
Speaker 2: Hide and Seek book.
Speaker 1: This was in nine, I believe, and my favorite time
Speaker 1: of year, and I have more success with quality deer
Speaker 1: the first musloading season than any other time. And because
Speaker 1: of work I had to leave opening day of musloading season,
Speaker 1: and I was out of town. I was out of
Speaker 1: state from nearly the whole week. And Andy Brown he
Speaker 1: was texting me pictures and they were hunting at the
Speaker 1: WMA and having a lot of success, and of course
Speaker 1: I'm out of town, not getting the hunt, just sick,
Speaker 1: and I got back to Arkansas. Season opened on a
Speaker 1: Saturday and it ended on Sunday, and I got back
Speaker 1: Thursday night. So Friday morning, I got up early and
Speaker 1: I hadn't got to scout or do anything down at
Speaker 1: the WMA, so I just took my climb and stand,
Speaker 1: and I knew a few areas down there, and I
Speaker 1: knew the deer were moving. So my goal for Saturday
Speaker 1: was not to hunt. I was just going to try
Speaker 1: to find a place to hunt that weekend and Clay.
Speaker 1: I went to every I knew in the WMA, and
Speaker 1: I don't know it very well, but I went to
Speaker 1: some spots that historically I had had some success or
Speaker 1: seen deer, and I just couldn't find anything that made
Speaker 1: me want to hang a stand. And I never will
Speaker 1: forget the last place I thought I was gonna have
Speaker 1: time to go. I carried my stand in there, came
Speaker 1: back to the truck nothing, and I was about to think,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna hunt around the house tomorrow. But when
Speaker 1: I walked back into the road where my truck was parked,
Speaker 1: and I threw my stand over in the truck, I
Speaker 1: just looked down the road. I was kind of parked
Speaker 1: in a straight stretch. Three or four deer were in
Speaker 1: the road up there, and they left the road, and
Speaker 1: it was right before dark, I mean like twenty minutes
Speaker 1: before dark dark, and I got to think, well, maybe
Speaker 1: there's some acrons up there falling. I hadn't found acrons.
Speaker 1: I hadn't found any bucks signed, I hadn't found anything.
Speaker 1: So I walked back down the road there. They were
Speaker 1: about one hundred yards from my truck where they were at,
Speaker 1: And when I got there, I could tell there was
Speaker 1: white oak acorns in the road. There was deer crossing
Speaker 1: the road, a lot of deer activity right there in
Speaker 1: just south of the road. Right there, there was a
Speaker 1: little knob that it wasn't one hundred yards to the
Speaker 1: top of it, but it was just like a cow's face.
Speaker 1: It was straight up steep. As I kind of started
Speaker 1: walking up that noob, I kept thinking was it everyone
Speaker 1: in flat no OWT, what's it going to look like
Speaker 1: on top when I get up there? And I finally
Speaker 1: got to the top of it, and there was an
Speaker 1: old log road run right out the top of that
Speaker 1: little ridge, and there was scrapes like you dream about,
Speaker 1: you know, just as big as a hood of a truck,
Speaker 1: several scrapes in that old log road, and to this day,
Speaker 1: the biggest rub that I've ever seen. There was a
Speaker 1: tree about as big as my leg that was rubbed
Speaker 1: pretty good up there. And I had went ahead and
Speaker 1: took my climber, and I said, this is where I
Speaker 1: need to be. So I kind of backed off on
Speaker 1: the north edge of it where I could see out
Speaker 1: the top and back down the south side, and I
Speaker 1: hung my stand on a white oak tree, and I
Speaker 1: went ahead and climbed up it and limbed it out
Speaker 1: and just left it there at the base of the tree.
Speaker 1: And next morning I got in there to hunt. It
Speaker 1: was probably as foggy as any morning I've ever hunted
Speaker 1: in my life. The first time I'd ever been up
Speaker 1: there was the night before. I didn't tack it in
Speaker 1: I thought I can find it. I got there an
Speaker 1: hour before daylight, wanting to be in my stand an
Speaker 1: hour before daylight. And I got up there in the fog,
Speaker 1: didn't get turned around, but I could not find my stand,
Speaker 1: and of course my little headlight it would go three
Speaker 1: foot in front of you and it wouldn't even reach
Speaker 1: the ground. It was a foggy I walked around that
Speaker 1: top of that ridge, by those scrapes, by that rub
Speaker 1: a dozen times, and of course I'm just soaking wet, aggravated,
Speaker 1: knowing that I've just messed that spot up. Finally find
Speaker 1: my tree stand and get up in it, and I'm
Speaker 1: just I'm just sick. I thought, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: see anything. I mean, everything's gonna smell me. And when
Speaker 1: I got up there, it it wasn't real pretty woods.
Speaker 1: It was a lot of little, short, dwarfy post oaks
Speaker 1: and briary and I couldn't see good. I mean, I
Speaker 1: couldn't really see much past thirty yards in any direction,
Speaker 1: but I knew it was in a good spot in boy.
Speaker 1: Just shortly after daylight, I heard something coming from the west,
Speaker 1: right out the top of the ridge. And when I
Speaker 1: first seen it, I could tell it was a buck,
Speaker 1: but I didn't know if it was one I wanted
Speaker 1: to shoot. He had horns that just from the side.
Speaker 1: He didn't look like he had any main beams. But
Speaker 1: he kind of got right there in front of me,
Speaker 1: and he turned and looked at me. He just his
Speaker 1: horns come right back together. But a really nice, real tall,
Speaker 1: tying chocolate horned just an eight point, but a good
Speaker 1: deer one I'm gonna shoot. And it was just like
Speaker 1: I say, it was just brushy, and I couldn't get
Speaker 1: a good shot. And finally I got him stopped. And
Speaker 1: the deer was not far thirty five forty yards through
Speaker 1: a little bit of brush. I guess, maybe more than
Speaker 1: I thought. And I shot, and I thought I was
Speaker 1: right on him. I wasn't nervous, and when I shot,
Speaker 1: of course, smoke filled the air. I never saw that
Speaker 1: deer run off. I never heard him run off. I
Speaker 1: thought I had killed him dead right there. So I
Speaker 1: reloaded my gun. I waited about thirty minutes, probably, and
Speaker 1: I got down and I went over there. I have
Speaker 1: no idea what happened, just like I was shooting a blank.
Speaker 1: There there was no blood, there was no hair. I
Speaker 1: couldn't even tell where the deer had tore up the ground.
Speaker 1: I don't know what happened, but I missed the deer
Speaker 1: and anyways kind of scourged. So I just went back
Speaker 1: and got in the tree climb back up there, and
Speaker 1: I'll never forget. It was about nine pint thirty. I
Speaker 1: hear the same thing coming from the west right out
Speaker 1: the top of the ridge there, and it sounds like
Speaker 1: it's just just without ceasing, just as far as I
Speaker 1: could hear till it got right there, just crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch.
Speaker 1: I can't explain to you how thick the woods were
Speaker 1: right there, but I remember I saw that horizontal movement,
Speaker 1: you know how you can see just that movement of
Speaker 1: something walking, and it probably stopped twenty five thirty yards
Speaker 1: from me fixing to come out where I could had
Speaker 1: a few places to see. It just stopped, and I
Speaker 1: remembered that I had seen like a leg or the
Speaker 1: body of something, and it wasn't a co old. I
Speaker 1: knew it was a deer, and it just stopped, And
Speaker 1: of course I got turned around there and got ready,
Speaker 1: you know, for take a few more steps where I
Speaker 1: could see what it was and possibly shoot. And I'm
Speaker 1: going to try to be conservative when I tell you
Speaker 1: that I sat there, I would say fifteen minutes, so
Speaker 1: long that I started questioning what I had seen. I'm like,
Speaker 1: could that had been a kita that smelled? Because I
Speaker 1: knew I had been all over it. I mean, I
Speaker 1: had walked all over where that deer was at before daylight,
Speaker 1: trying to find my stand. You know, was it a hawk?
Speaker 1: Sometimes you'll see a bird, a big hawk or something
Speaker 1: that movement. But I'm like, no, I heard that deer
Speaker 1: walk in there, but there's no way a deer is
Speaker 1: still standing there at fifteen or twenty minutes and not
Speaker 1: moved a muscle. About that time, I kind of heard
Speaker 1: something back to my right and I looked in there
Speaker 1: was a button buck not thirty yards from me. I mean,
Speaker 1: I was thinking, that must be the deer that I
Speaker 1: saw walk in here. How did he get down the
Speaker 1: mountain thirty yards without me seeing him? And I got thinking, well,
Speaker 1: I was so keyed on that area right there where
Speaker 1: I saw that deer stop. He might have just made
Speaker 1: a little circle and been quiet. I didn't know what
Speaker 1: had happened, but I still something made me think there
Speaker 1: was a deer there and that button buck he was
Speaker 1: feeding on acrons and he come right in there, right
Speaker 1: about the base of my tree. And when he did,
Speaker 1: I saw him throw his head up and he was
Speaker 1: looking right where I had been looking, and he kind
Speaker 1: of he didn't blow, and stopping kind of stomped his
Speaker 1: foot of time or two, but he didn't blow, and
Speaker 1: he just went right back to feet and when he did,
Speaker 1: I heard a twig or something snap right there, So
Speaker 1: of course I kind of got ready again. And when
Speaker 1: that deer stepped out, he is about twenty four inches wide.
Speaker 1: He is a really nice buck. But that deer had
Speaker 1: been that whole time, and I know what it was.
Speaker 1: He smelled me, because before daylight I had been all
Speaker 1: over that and I think he probably he smelled me.
Speaker 1: I don't know that he knew that I was still there,
Speaker 1: but I do believe that that deer had been there
Speaker 1: for close to twenty minutes without moving a muscle and
Speaker 1: ended up when that button buck was right underneath me,
Speaker 1: I guess he felt comfortable and he just walked right
Speaker 1: down there in my face and I shot him with
Speaker 1: the muzzle loader. And he's one of the better deer
Speaker 1: I've ever killed, the only deer I've ever weighed with
Speaker 1: the guts in it. He weighed one hundred ninety four.
Speaker 2: Pounds, witnessing the patience of that buck and then out
Speaker 2: lasting him without getting busted with something special. I think
Speaker 2: big do this a lot, but we usually never know
Speaker 2: it because the deer spooks or just disappears, and maybe
Speaker 2: we never even know it was there. They don't get
Speaker 2: old by being dumb. They say it was a good story, Mitch,
Speaker 2: so good we actually may come back to you at the.
Speaker 3: End for another story.
Speaker 2: Our next story is told by me and Lake Pickle's friend,
Speaker 2: Keith Polk. Keith is one of Lake's turkey hunting mentors
Speaker 2: and a long time friend of his.
Speaker 3: I've just met Keith in the last couple of years.
Speaker 2: Lake's Daddy Dole story is going to be hard to
Speaker 2: top Keith, but it's worth a shot.
Speaker 3: Here's Keith.
Speaker 5: This story took place in the fall of ninety two
Speaker 5: down in Prentice, Mississippi, which is about an hour south
Speaker 5: at Jackson, down in the piney woods. That's where I
Speaker 5: was raised and where I learned to hunt and my
Speaker 5: appreciation for the outdoors begin. And that particular year, my
Speaker 5: good friend Brad Shivers and I we hunted a lot together.
Speaker 5: He had started bow hunting, and this was a two
Speaker 5: week primitive weapon season, and in the first two weeks
Speaker 5: of December that Mississippi has still has actually and Brad
Speaker 5: would be bow hunting this particular evening and was looking
Speaker 5: for a place to see some deer, and so I
Speaker 5: sent him across the creek through some hard woods to
Speaker 5: a food plot that we seldom hunted, but was often
Speaker 5: frequented by, you know, a couple of three four dos.
Speaker 5: And so the cool thing about it was the west
Speaker 5: side of the food plot, there's this little scope of
Speaker 5: hardwoods that protrude out into a large broom sage field,
Speaker 5: and these hardwoods it's some huge cherry bark oak and
Speaker 5: white oak timber. So I just I had suggested that Brad,
Speaker 5: you know, just go getting nestled up in the roots
Speaker 5: of one of those big trees, get where he could
Speaker 5: draw his bow and settle in. Well, that evening I
Speaker 5: go to pick him up, and it's obvious that he
Speaker 5: has seen something or done something I couldn't tell. Man,
Speaker 5: he was excited, and so he proceeds to tell me
Speaker 5: that just before dark he hears some rustling in the
Speaker 5: leaves and he kind of rolls off the tree and
Speaker 5: looks behind him, and he gets to watch this big
Speaker 5: mature rack buck, you know, make a scrape and a rub.
Speaker 5: He's actually rubbing a sapling and pawing at the ground
Speaker 5: and scraping right there. And this is something we hadn't
Speaker 5: ever seen. We'd only seen it on a truth video
Speaker 5: and we were pretty fired up, and I basically interrogated
Speaker 5: bread where'd the deer come from? Where'd the deer go?
Speaker 5: How long did he stay? And we figured that he
Speaker 5: had came and went from this big broom sage field,
Speaker 5: which I had totally overlooked. And so I felt like
Speaker 5: I told Brian, I felt like I could I had
Speaker 5: a really good chance to kill that deer, you know,
Speaker 5: now that we knew where he was coming go. And
Speaker 5: so we're right before Christmas, a week or so passed
Speaker 5: where we're outside of the primitive weapons season. Now we're
Speaker 5: back in the firearm season. And I had gotten an
Speaker 5: Amiker dear Thief climbing stand, and this had been my
Speaker 5: first hunt with it, and I'm sure I had put
Speaker 5: it up in the yard and tested it out. But
Speaker 5: after toting that heavy rascal all the way through those
Speaker 5: hardwoods and getting on the edge of the broom sage
Speaker 5: fill with it. I find me a nice little water
Speaker 5: oak tree and get it on and proceed to climb up. Well,
Speaker 5: I didn't take into account the taper of the tree,
Speaker 5: and my top portion of my climber is angled down.
Speaker 5: You know, it's sloped down pretty severe. So rather than
Speaker 5: doing what I know I should have done and climb
Speaker 5: back down and readjusted the tree, I decided I would
Speaker 5: just readjust it in the tree. So I do, and
Speaker 5: I loosen the wing nut and take it off and
Speaker 5: pull the bolt out and slide the bar. And it's
Speaker 5: quite a complicated process to do up in the heights
Speaker 5: of a water oak, but I pulled it up off,
Speaker 5: or so I thought. I get my bolt in there
Speaker 5: and everything's readjusted, and I go to put the wing
Speaker 5: nut on, and I thought I had started it, and
Speaker 5: so I just took my finger and was gonna thump
Speaker 5: that wing nut to spin it on. And when I
Speaker 5: thumped it, I watched in horror as it plummeted to
Speaker 5: the forest floor. And it was just like watching it
Speaker 5: in slow motion. And I didn't take my eyes off
Speaker 5: of it, like I knew exactly where it fell in
Speaker 5: those leaves. I said, man, I've got to get that nut.
Speaker 5: So I hold the bolt in my left hand and
Speaker 5: start down the tree and I'm trying to be as
Speaker 5: quiet as possible because I've just got super super high
Speaker 5: expectations for this hunt. I just felt really confident. So
Speaker 5: I get down, readjust the tree. I did find the
Speaker 5: wing nut, get it back on, climb back up, get
Speaker 5: in the tree, grab my pullup rope, start to pull
Speaker 5: my rifle up and it's not coming up, and I'm like,
Speaker 5: what's going on.
Speaker 6: I look down and there is.
Speaker 5: This tiny young holly, like a yo pine holly bush
Speaker 5: at the base of my tree, and my pull up
Speaker 5: rope had looped around that tree. And I tugged and
Speaker 5: pulled and I just there. Nothing in me wanted to
Speaker 5: go back down the tree a second time, but that's
Speaker 5: exactly what I had to do. So I go down
Speaker 5: the tree, untangle my pull up rope, get that situated,
Speaker 5: climb back up the tree for the second time, and
Speaker 5: finally get my gun in my hands. And I almost
Speaker 5: left before I climbed back up the second time. I
Speaker 5: really had to have a hard conversation with myself to
Speaker 5: make myself stay but I did, and I just figured
Speaker 5: if nothing else, I'd get a little recont on the
Speaker 5: spot and may have to refine you know where I'm
Speaker 5: sitting for the next hunt, because I surely didn't think
Speaker 5: I would have any success that evening. Well, time clicked on,
Speaker 5: and right before dark something catches my eye and I look,
Speaker 5: and instantly I see a deer. I see a rack.
Speaker 5: I shoulder my rifle, wait for a clear shot, and
Speaker 5: then squeeze a trigger, and it all happened, and under well,
Speaker 5: under a minute, I mean it happened fast. The deer turns,
Speaker 5: runs and he runs out back in the sage field,
Speaker 5: and I see him crash, and I can't believe what
Speaker 5: just happened.
Speaker 3: I'm stoked.
Speaker 5: My first big buck and he's on the ground, and
Speaker 5: I really don't know how big he is. No trail
Speaker 5: cameras back then or anything like that. Never previously seen
Speaker 5: him in the bread had, but I had not. We
Speaker 5: believe it to be the same deer. But I climb down,
Speaker 5: slip out there in the broomsage, and man, there he is,
Speaker 5: and I have killed a giant. And this is giant
Speaker 5: is a relative description, because this deer is all of
Speaker 5: probably one hundred and fifteen hundred and twenty inches a
Speaker 5: typical ten point deer. And man, I am stoked, just
Speaker 5: beyond my mind.
Speaker 6: I'm fired up, so I'd run.
Speaker 5: I'd run back out of the woods, get on my
Speaker 5: three wheeler, head back to the house. I get to
Speaker 5: the house and my brother is in the yard and
Speaker 5: it's not quite dark yet. My brother's in the yard
Speaker 5: talking to family friends named Robbie. Robbie had come to
Speaker 5: see my parents. And Robbie was not a hunter and
Speaker 5: h but Robbie was, you know, he knew my brother
Speaker 5: and I. When I get out of the truck, I've
Speaker 5: not said a word to my brother. We just lock
Speaker 5: eyes and he said you did it didn't And I
Speaker 5: said I did. He said how big is he? I said,
Speaker 5: he's a monster, And may we start? We just get giddy,
Speaker 5: you know, and fired up, And so we end up
Speaker 5: heading back down the creek and Robbie's in between us.
Speaker 5: I guess if liking to a kidnapping, because I don't
Speaker 5: think he went at his own wheel. We just pushed
Speaker 5: him in the truck.
Speaker 6: We were so fired up.
Speaker 5: But we head to the creek and my little Ford Ranger,
Speaker 5: my brother's driving cross the creek bridge, run through the
Speaker 5: logging roads, just flying through the logging roads, and we
Speaker 5: get to the field edge and and go out there,
Speaker 5: and man, I just remember how proud my brother was.
Speaker 5: I just I can remember it like it was yesterday.
Speaker 5: Just we even got Robbie in on dragging the deer
Speaker 5: back into the truck and we loaded the deer up.
Speaker 5: And so there's no social media obviously in ninety two.
Speaker 5: But there was a Shell station and that was our
Speaker 5: gas station and Prentice and that was our social media. Man.
Speaker 5: Everybody typically, especially on a Friday and Saturday night, everybody
Speaker 5: ended up at the Shell station around six thirty or
Speaker 5: seven o'clock, and especially if you'd killed something. Man, that
Speaker 5: was just a gathering place. And so tailgates down the
Speaker 5: bucks on laying there in the bike and here we
Speaker 5: go back through the woods, flying back out to the house. Well,
Speaker 5: on the way out, there's this big I call them
Speaker 5: possum grapevines, but it's just a vine, probably not quite
Speaker 5: an inch in diameter, but it stretches from the right
Speaker 5: side of the road from up high, it comes down,
Speaker 5: makes a loop and it stretches to the left side
Speaker 5: the road. It's just just awed how it grew that way.
Speaker 5: But it makes this loop and you have to slow down.
Speaker 5: We had to slow down in the truck because you
Speaker 5: could bust the window out. It just hangs right there.
Speaker 5: So I remember my brother driving and he drove right
Speaker 5: up there, and he slowed down real fast, and he
Speaker 5: touched it, and it scraped over the hood, over the windshield,
Speaker 5: over the cow, and then bloom, it fell in the
Speaker 5: bed of the truck. As soon as it went over
Speaker 5: the cab and then the bed of the truck. My
Speaker 5: brother just castes it.
Speaker 7: Man.
Speaker 5: We're flying back out of the woods well before we
Speaker 5: get to the creek bridge. We're just reminiscing and I
Speaker 5: look back. I just want to look at my big
Speaker 5: buck one more time, and he's not there, and I
Speaker 5: freak out. I'm like, the buck's gone. My brother locks
Speaker 5: the truck up and literally just bales out and takes
Speaker 5: off running down the road. I jump in the driver's seat,
Speaker 5: throw it in reverse, and here I go, driving and
Speaker 5: reverse down this woods road all the way back, you know,
Speaker 5: trying to catch up with my brother. And I get
Speaker 5: to him and my brother is standing than over that buck.
Speaker 5: That fine had went right over the hood of the truck,
Speaker 5: dropped down into the bed, and that loop just hooked
Speaker 5: right at the base of his antlers and slid him
Speaker 5: ever so gently out in the back of the truck.
Speaker 5: I mean, you couldn't have made it up. But my brother,
Speaker 5: being the big brother that he is, when I get
Speaker 5: out of the truck, he's shaking his head and he says, man,
Speaker 5: he's all busted up, And he wasn't. He was just
Speaker 5: having fun with me. But we load him up and
Speaker 5: we get him to town, and man, I just it
Speaker 5: was just a moment I'll never forget and can remember
Speaker 5: going back in that store probably for the better part
Speaker 5: of the year. They kept a big cork bulletin board there,
Speaker 5: and there on that bulletin board thirty five milimeter picture
Speaker 5: you know, of me in that ten point book, and
Speaker 5: it's just that's a memory, and that's a hunt that
Speaker 5: I'll never forget. I mean, it just it's always right there,
Speaker 5: fresh on my mind.
Speaker 2: You may want to shut that tailgate next time, Keith.
Speaker 2: That story just kind of oozed with the passion and
Speaker 2: zeal of the early years of a hunter's life. And
Speaker 2: I don't think Keith has lost that fire at all.
Speaker 2: But I do think it morphs into a more mature
Speaker 2: state of enjoying the hunt. That's perhaps even better than
Speaker 2: that youthful zeal. That was a great story.
Speaker 3: Keith, way better than Lake's story.
Speaker 2: But now we're going to jump into a medley of
Speaker 2: three short stories. Sometimes the short ones are the best.
Speaker 2: They're the stories that a guy just kind of tells
Speaker 2: off the cuff, you know, doesn't have to have some
Speaker 2: big backstory. And to start us off on the short stories,
Speaker 2: you may remember Henry sou Song from last year. Henry's
Speaker 2: eighty two years old in a veteran mountain bowhunter in
Speaker 2: East Tennessee. He and his son's whitetail room would rival
Speaker 2: any in America period. These boys kill some big deer
Speaker 2: and they do it all with bows. And I have
Speaker 2: never met a man that has more passion about whitetail
Speaker 2: bow hunting than Henry Siouxsong. So after he told his
Speaker 2: story from last year about killing this big mountain buck,
Speaker 2: I asked him, I said, hey, do you have any
Speaker 2: more stories?
Speaker 3: And this is the one he told me.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, I guess I do. I was going to
Speaker 4: tell you about my son when he was young, he
Speaker 4: was hunting Hurry near here, and he said, Dad, I've
Speaker 4: been trying to kill a ten point with a bow.
Speaker 4: He's not a big one. He's just maybe two year
Speaker 4: old ten point, he said, but he's almost human like.
Speaker 4: He said, he's coming to a rye field that somebody's
Speaker 4: got sowed down along the river here, and he said,
Speaker 4: he said, it's amazing. He said, you're going to laugh.
Speaker 4: He walks up to that three he's got a three
Speaker 4: wire barb war fence around his little rye patch. He said,
Speaker 4: I may think you had the back in there and
Speaker 4: they just sew a crave across. But he said, this
Speaker 4: little ten point will come up there. He don't try
Speaker 4: to jump the fence. He puts his horns in the
Speaker 4: fence and pushes it down with his horns and steps
Speaker 4: through it like a man. You know how kids are.
Speaker 4: I thought, okay, I didn't say anything. So he hunted
Speaker 4: down there for I don't know, two or three weeks,
Speaker 4: and he could never get a shot at it. He said,
Speaker 4: to ten point across the roads come a different direction.
Speaker 4: You couldn't You couldn't pin him down, you know, get
Speaker 4: a shot out of the boat. So he goes down
Speaker 4: there and killed it with a rifle and comes back,
Speaker 4: and I'll show it to you a minute.
Speaker 7: I got hang out here.
Speaker 4: You wouldn't believe. I was skeptically start with, but you
Speaker 4: wouldn't believe the war on the bottom of that deer's
Speaker 4: rack where he'd crossed that fence. I believe he'd done it.
Speaker 4: I don't know what reason. Maybe he couldn't jump. I
Speaker 4: don't know, but the rack is almost war half in
Speaker 4: too from where he put his hands or put his
Speaker 4: horns on that fence and pushed it down. He said
Speaker 4: he'd push it down, and very gently stepped across it,
Speaker 4: just like a man. You see. He just a boy.
Speaker 4: And I thought, well, yeah, okay, but it's you can
Speaker 4: look at the rack. You can tell the boys tell
Speaker 4: it's true. That's absolute truth.
Speaker 2: He crossed the fence like a man. I like the
Speaker 2: way he said that, And I saw the rack myself.
Speaker 2: It looked like the buck had been hung in a
Speaker 2: barber wire fence and wore the main beams down. In
Speaker 2: one particular spot where the G three's touched the rack,
Speaker 2: it was wild. Our next story is from another old
Speaker 2: timer by the name of Gerald Brewer, a good friend
Speaker 2: of mine from western Arkansas. This is just a solid
Speaker 2: kind of funny story about when Gerald mentored a kid
Speaker 2: in hunting. I wish Jerald would have cackled in laughter
Speaker 2: like he did the first time he told me this
Speaker 2: when the recorder wasn't going, so just you can kind
Speaker 2: of imagine it. Here is a very special man by
Speaker 2: the name of Jerald.
Speaker 7: Brewer two years ago when I was much youngering. This
Speaker 7: young man I'm speaking of was he probably twelve. His
Speaker 7: dad did not hunt. So he asked me one time
Speaker 7: if i'd take him out and teach him how to hunt,
Speaker 7: because that's what he wanted to do, you know, And
Speaker 7: I'm sure I'll do that, and we go turk hunting.
Speaker 7: And anyway, this one time it was during the black
Speaker 7: powder and mosel Otin season. Well, so I went hunting
Speaker 7: all day, hadn't seen anything to shoot, and so we'd
Speaker 7: started back home is late afternoon and teaching him, being
Speaker 7: a mentor to him. Where we had taken the caps
Speaker 7: offer most of the loaders as the law said, and
Speaker 7: unloaded it and we had laid them in the back
Speaker 7: a much eat in a safe area. About the time
Speaker 7: we'd getting out of the National Forest area where we've
Speaker 7: come to a field or a pasture in about fifty
Speaker 7: sixty yards from the road, there stood the biggest book
Speaker 7: I had ever seen. He's right on the fence line,
Speaker 7: on the inside in the pasture, and we looked at
Speaker 7: him and looked at him, and he was sort of
Speaker 7: looking in the brush across the fence when we sat
Speaker 7: there for quite a while watching it, and it would
Speaker 7: move its head and everything. You know. I had heard
Speaker 7: rumors in the area that the game fish had been
Speaker 7: putting out decoys trying to catch people from violating the law.
Speaker 7: More I looked at it and I said that I've
Speaker 7: never seen a dear that big in this part of
Speaker 7: the world, so that has to be a decoy. And
Speaker 7: I told him, I said, let's go. I said, that's
Speaker 7: a decoy. So we drove on. So it was days later,
Speaker 7: maybe in two weeks or so, we heard the rumors
Speaker 7: that this young man had killed a big buck not
Speaker 7: too far from from that, probably within three or four
Speaker 7: hundred ards of this area on the National Forest. They
Speaker 7: had a food plot and he had killed this big,
Speaker 7: big buck in that food plot, and in fact he
Speaker 7: had brought it to town showing around. He didn't even
Speaker 7: realize that it was a big how big it was.
Speaker 7: You know, he just knew he didn't kill the buck.
Speaker 7: And so anyway, I thought about that that thing was real,
Speaker 7: you know that. So this young man the same way,
Speaker 7: you know, he said, you hear about you know, because
Speaker 7: I would let him shoot. I didn't want to teach
Speaker 7: him wrong, you know of because I wouldn't look too
Speaker 7: good on my part, you know. So anyway, that's my
Speaker 7: dear story.
Speaker 2: It's a good thing y'all didn't shoot that buck, Gerald.
Speaker 2: That was funny again. The first time Jerald told me,
Speaker 2: he cackled like a schoolgirl. And the thing that's really
Speaker 2: funny about it, if you know Gerald, is that he's
Speaker 2: a law abiden man and wouldn't have shot that buck
Speaker 2: if he didn't think it was a decoy. And I
Speaker 2: saw the buck that they're talking about at the taxi
Speaker 2: deermy shop that was killed in that food plot, and
Speaker 2: it was every inch of one hundred and sixty inches.
Speaker 3: A true monster. The next story is a short.
Speaker 2: One, again by a new friend of ours named Bob
Speaker 2: Wilson out of Dixon, Missouri.
Speaker 3: Here's Bob.
Speaker 8: Yes, I'm Bob Wilson, and I live in Mary's County
Speaker 8: in Dixon, Missouri, and I'm going to tell you a
Speaker 8: story about one of my old friends, Vic. He's quite
Speaker 8: an archer. He'd won several state championships. But you'd have
Speaker 8: to know Vic. If you've ever watched Andy Griffith Show
Speaker 8: and Barney Fife, that was Vic. I mean they were
Speaker 8: like identical. But my brother and I were going up
Speaker 8: to hunt and Vic said, hey, can I go with you?
Speaker 8: I said, yeah, you're welcome to go. So we went
Speaker 8: over to one of those food plots and started down
Speaker 8: through there. Well, I didn't know where to put VIC.
Speaker 6: And it was.
Speaker 8: About a half a mile down that food plot, close
Speaker 8: to a half a mile, and it made a ninety
Speaker 8: degree and we stopped there in Vick's where do you
Speaker 8: think I should go? I said, I think there's a
Speaker 8: really good spot right down there, Vic, which I'd never
Speaker 8: seen it before, never been there, And so he said, okay,
Speaker 8: I'll see you guys later. He goes down and my
Speaker 8: brother and I turned the right. We went down and
Speaker 8: got in a couple stands that we thought deer would
Speaker 8: be through set there all morning, never saw a thing.
Speaker 8: So we came back and when we got to that
Speaker 8: ninety where Vic had went, my brother. Dennis said, well,
Speaker 8: it looks like somebody's drug something up through here, and
Speaker 8: I said, well it does.
Speaker 6: So anyway, we.
Speaker 8: Followed the trail back to the truck, got up there
Speaker 8: and there set Vic and he had an eight point
Speaker 8: buck and he said, boy, you really put me in
Speaker 8: a good spot. And I said, I told you that
Speaker 8: was a good place to go. So he was pretty
Speaker 8: proud of me for futting him in that spot.
Speaker 3: The guarhold and plain and simple.
Speaker 2: Has that ever happened to you where you sent somebody
Speaker 2: to a spot that you really didn't think it was
Speaker 2: going to turn out but it did?
Speaker 3: Or have you been garhold? That was a good one.
Speaker 2: Bob our next story is a good one and it's
Speaker 2: told by none other than the Mississippi biologist Med Palmer. Yep,
Speaker 2: the same Med from the last episode. And what I've
Speaker 2: heard over and over since he came on the podcast
Speaker 2: is that Med is a legendary with a capital L,
Speaker 2: Mississippi turkey hunter and woodsman. So when Med talks a feller.
Speaker 3: Better listen.
Speaker 2: Here's Med and this story revolves around a gun.
Speaker 9: My name is Med Palmer from Kapya County, Mississippi. I
Speaker 9: worked for Mississippi Point wife. It's in Parks the year
Speaker 9: of twenty twenty two, which i'd been real busy during
Speaker 9: deer season for work, and I generally start doing most
Speaker 9: of my deer hunting around Christmas. That's when the rut's
Speaker 9: going on on into January, and this particular year, I
Speaker 9: hadn't got to hunt much at all. And it's around
Speaker 9: January the eleventh. I decided I was gonna go hunting
Speaker 9: that morning, and I knew the deer was rutting pretty good,
Speaker 9: and we had a buck on our plate that my
Speaker 9: nephew had pictures of that was an older buck. Holmes
Speaker 9: was messed up pretty bad. And I told all the kids,
Speaker 9: I said, y'all see this buck, showed him all the picture.
Speaker 9: I said, y'all shoot him because he needs to go.
Speaker 9: He's five and a half years old, and I said,
Speaker 9: he's never gonna be anything else, you know. And they
Speaker 9: had killed a lot of deer, so they took him
Speaker 9: to day to shoot him, you know, naturally, and well
Speaker 9: rocked on and nobody had seen him. And that particular morning,
Speaker 9: I was sitting in the stand and I don't know, it's
Speaker 9: probably about nine o'clock bout one hundred yards. This deer
Speaker 9: comes out and I said, you know, one hundred yards
Speaker 9: chip shot and I said, I'll shoot him. Go get
Speaker 9: the truck and you know, be done with it. Well,
Speaker 9: he walks out, laying broadside. I propped up on the
Speaker 9: sandbag and I put the crosshairs on him.
Speaker 6: I pulled the trigger.
Speaker 9: He hits the graunt. So I start getting my stuff.
Speaker 9: You are to get out, and I looked and he
Speaker 9: had disappeared. I'm shooting a three hundred weather ben. I'm
Speaker 9: thinking he shouldn't be disappearing. I said, I don't know,
Speaker 9: what's nothing to happen. So again I out laid my
Speaker 9: stuff in the stand and get down there. And down
Speaker 9: at the end of the lane, I see comes across,
Speaker 9: going back about two hundred yards from me then and
Speaker 9: I was standing where the deer had failed.
Speaker 6: So he runs ended up.
Speaker 9: I found blood going out and the other way the
Speaker 9: deer had went and trailed it back around, and that
Speaker 9: was the deer that come across.
Speaker 6: I said, well, that deer and't even hurt.
Speaker 9: But my son had a blood dog, so calming if
Speaker 9: you he brings him down there, we put the blood
Speaker 9: dog on it. We tracked it deer, probably my own
Speaker 9: a half. He never even laid up. And a couple
Speaker 9: of days later we actually got a picture of the deer.
Speaker 9: I had grazed that deer high right above the shoulder,
Speaker 9: just enough to paralyze them for a minute.
Speaker 6: I reckon. I mean, he was fine.
Speaker 9: I had bought this gun and scot probably twenty seven
Speaker 9: years ago, and that's a Sivorski's cooat and I sighted
Speaker 9: that gun and twenty seven years ago and I have
Speaker 9: never had to move it ever. And I check it
Speaker 9: before the season like everybody does, and about twice through
Speaker 9: the middle of the season, just to make sure. And
Speaker 9: I thought that day that deer got away. I went
Speaker 9: when I was on him, my gun must be. So
Speaker 9: I go to the house when I get home that day,
Speaker 9: I shoot it and it was all had never been
Speaker 9: off in twenty seven years, and I hadn't bumped it,
Speaker 9: hadn't done anything. So I sided it back in or
Speaker 9: the next morning I had the opportunity to go, and
Speaker 9: the weather condition was perfect. It was grizzly rain, and
Speaker 9: you know how bucks loved to move on grizzley rain.
Speaker 9: I go the same stand and I'm sitting there that
Speaker 9: morning and see a couple of doughs that morning, and
Speaker 9: one of them had that way about her. But it
Speaker 9: wasn't any other bucks, was it. And I thought she
Speaker 9: acted like she's starting to come in. Well, she come
Speaker 9: across the lane in a little while later. I'm sure
Speaker 9: it's the same dough come back to the same place.
Speaker 9: And there was a stretch of boat woods and I
Speaker 9: could see her and she just stood there, and I thought,
Speaker 9: that dough is standing there. I believe that the buck
Speaker 9: wanted to come out, but he don't want to come
Speaker 9: across this lane and to go back. When I realized
Speaker 9: my gun was off, I know this is gonna sound crazy.
Speaker 9: But that night when I after I siwed that gun
Speaker 9: and I was thinking, I said my gun was off
Speaker 9: of some kind of I said that I hadn't been
Speaker 9: off and I had bumped or anything. I said, I
Speaker 9: go in the morning, I'm gonna kill a good book.
Speaker 9: My mind was just telling me. I know it sounds crazy,
Speaker 9: and walking in that morning, I thought, I'm going to
Speaker 9: kill the best book I ever killed in my life.
Speaker 9: Because my gun was off and the good Lord letting
Speaker 9: me miss that deer to let me know my gun
Speaker 9: was off, I just knew.
Speaker 6: I just had that feeling.
Speaker 9: I said, it happened for a reason because I'm up
Speaker 9: fanatic with my gun about bumping the scope and making
Speaker 9: sure it's sighted in. And I kept watching that door
Speaker 9: and I said, he's here. I said, he's right here
Speaker 9: somewhere because them old bucks, they just do not like
Speaker 9: to come out and open it. I mean, everybody deer
Speaker 9: hunt knows it. And that dough wanted him to come,
Speaker 9: and I knew, so I just wanted to move the
Speaker 9: sand bag to that side, and I got ready, and
Speaker 9: she started going through those woods rown there about four
Speaker 9: hundred yards and I said, he comes out, I'm about
Speaker 9: to be on my game. And that went on for
Speaker 9: about twenty minutes. You know, my mind was telling me, well,
Speaker 9: you may be wrong, and I about that time he
Speaker 9: steps out, and I'm on my gun. I already got safety, y'all.
Speaker 9: So by now he's halfway crossing, I can see homes
Speaker 9: want my naked out. He was four hundred pitty, y'all.
Speaker 9: And he stopped for this second, and I get on
Speaker 9: him and I pulled the trigger and he falls right there,
Speaker 9: and the doe just stands there. She comes up to
Speaker 9: the buck and starts walking around him until I started
Speaker 9: going to him, and then she's seen me and blue
Speaker 9: and running.
Speaker 6: But he was a He was a really good deer.
Speaker 6: He was typical.
Speaker 9: He wasn't about eighteen and a half, but he had
Speaker 9: real long points. I'm guessing probably one pity, you know,
Speaker 9: for around here, that's a really good deer.
Speaker 2: That was a good story, Mad and I appreciate you
Speaker 2: seeing God's hand involved in your life. Those interactions are
Speaker 2: as real as a man's faith allows for him to
Speaker 2: perceive them. Now, what we're gonna do is go back
Speaker 2: to Mitch Sykes from Arkansas. Mitch is an incredible hunter
Speaker 2: and he's got a short story here involving a kyote.
Speaker 3: Here's Mitch.
Speaker 1: I want to say it was probably an four. I
Speaker 1: never will forget that morning. I think it was Halloween day,
Speaker 1: but the leaves had changed and it was one of
Speaker 1: those cloudy mornings to where the woods were just orange.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was just beautiful and I had gotten
Speaker 1: in there early and right at daylight from the south,
Speaker 1: I just heard a deer coming. And you know how
Speaker 1: it is when you hear a buck walking during the rut,
Speaker 1: it's like a teenage boy dragging his feet, and it
Speaker 1: just was he never stopped. It was just it seemed
Speaker 1: like I hear him coming for one hundred yards and
Speaker 1: I got ready and he was about thirty yards from me,
Speaker 1: going north, and when he went through my openings, of course,
Speaker 1: I was trying to get him to stop, you know,
Speaker 1: with my mouth I could not. I mean just just
Speaker 1: too loud, and he would not stop. And I don't
Speaker 1: condone it, but I ended up shooting that deer walking
Speaker 1: at thirty something yards, and you know, I tried to
Speaker 1: lead him, you know, I tried to hold the way
Speaker 1: he was walking to compensate for that. And I thought
Speaker 1: I hit him pretty good. Knew I hit him a
Speaker 1: little bit back, but I thought I had hit him
Speaker 1: real good. It was right at daylight. He broke and
Speaker 1: ran and went down a little steep drawing up on
Speaker 1: the ridge and kind of stopped and everything kind of
Speaker 1: got quiet, but I didn't hear him crash, and I
Speaker 1: was kind of concerned, and I thought, well, it's early,
Speaker 1: it's a good time of here. I'm just going to
Speaker 1: sit here. I sat there and I thought, think it
Speaker 1: was about the best I can recall. Probably two hours
Speaker 1: went by quite a while, maybe two and a half hours.
Speaker 1: It might have been up around nine thirty and I
Speaker 1: heard something coming from the north and I looked in
Speaker 1: here come a kyt and it came. It didn't get
Speaker 1: real close to me, but it probably got forty yards
Speaker 1: from me, and it crossed that ravine and went over
Speaker 1: east up me, up on that hardwood ridge, kind of
Speaker 1: where my deer had went. And I remember thinking, if
Speaker 1: he didn't find that deer or spook that deer, I
Speaker 1: was thinking the deer was dead. And he kind of
Speaker 1: got out of sight, but I could still hear.
Speaker 6: Him over there on the woods.
Speaker 1: And all of a sudden I heard the brush busting,
Speaker 1: and off come a deer. And here come a really
Speaker 1: good buck from the same direction the buck that I
Speaker 1: had shot had went. Here come a really good buck
Speaker 1: coming right to me. He crossed that ravine and come
Speaker 1: right up there on the ridge with me, and I
Speaker 1: just pulled back and when I shot him, and he's
Speaker 1: the only deer I've ever shot with my bow, and
Speaker 1: I shot him right in the shoulder, and he fell
Speaker 1: just like he had shot him with.
Speaker 6: A thirty oh six.
Speaker 1: I mean, he just he didn't run, He just fell
Speaker 1: over dead. He's kicking of course, but I mean he
Speaker 1: fell right there, and when he did back about the
Speaker 1: last rib, maybe behind the last rib in the flank,
Speaker 1: I saw a hole and it all came together right then.
Speaker 1: That was the buck that I had shot two and
Speaker 1: a half hours earlier. And you know how normally a
Speaker 1: cold screws your hunt up, for that code actually saved
Speaker 1: me because that deer was he was really close to
Speaker 1: a clear cut that's just nearly impenetrable. And you know,
Speaker 1: I know that in another hour or so, I would
Speaker 1: have gotten down and I would have spooked that deer
Speaker 1: and hit where he was hit. Chances are wouldn't have
Speaker 1: led a lot, and if he'd got in that thicket,
Speaker 1: I may have never found him. But that code, actually.
Speaker 6: I say, it's a coyold.
Speaker 1: It's God just put him right back there in my lap.
Speaker 1: I was excited, and I was glad the way it
Speaker 1: all played out. And I just kept on sitting there
Speaker 1: and about I don't really know if it was an
Speaker 1: hour or something like that. Later I heard some deer
Speaker 1: back south of me, and I was looking down there
Speaker 1: and I could see it looked like three or four
Speaker 1: dos milling around, kind of working their way towards me,
Speaker 1: and I just kind of turned on that side of
Speaker 1: the tree, and I was looking back to the south,
Speaker 1: and I heard something coming from the north again, not
Speaker 1: making a lot of noise, but I heard something up there,
Speaker 1: and I remember my initial thought was, I bet that's
Speaker 1: at Kyoke coming back here. And when I turned and
Speaker 1: looked over my shoulder, probably one of the biggest bucks
Speaker 1: I've ever seen in my life was coming right to me.
Speaker 1: The way that country was, that was a leg on
Speaker 1: the west end of a mountain, and it didn't matter
Speaker 1: if you were turkey hunting, if you were squirrel hunting,
Speaker 1: if you were ever in that area and you went
Speaker 1: to walk off, it fled. The terrain just funneled.
Speaker 6: You right there.
Speaker 10: That's why I hunted there.
Speaker 1: And that buck was coming right down that leg right
Speaker 1: to me, I mean gonna come right to me. And
Speaker 1: I figured he was going to see the deer that
Speaker 1: I had shot, and I thought he's going to stop
Speaker 1: and I'm going to get an easy shot at him.
Speaker 1: And he got probably within about twenty yards of me,
Speaker 1: coming head on, and he just stopped. And I was
Speaker 1: hoping he would see the deer laying right there in
Speaker 1: front of him. But he I guess he caught a
Speaker 1: glimpse of the doze back behind me because they were
Speaker 1: kind of milling around. But all of a sudden, and
Speaker 1: I know you've seen him do it when a buck
Speaker 1: will put his head on the ground and start that
Speaker 1: trotting like Pranson. He just pretty fast, you know, and
Speaker 1: grunting every breath. But if he had met another two
Speaker 1: or three seconds, he was a really big club. He
Speaker 1: was one hundred and forty hundred and fifty inch deer.
Speaker 1: He was a really good deer. Out of my life
Speaker 1: forevery But he went down there and I listened to
Speaker 1: him and watched him chase those dos for another five
Speaker 1: or ten minutes. You could hear him grunting, and this
Speaker 1: never did come back through.
Speaker 2: That's an anomaly when a kyote helps you rather than
Speaker 2: hurts you.
Speaker 3: I like it.
Speaker 2: And I'm seeing a theme of predators interrupting your deer
Speaker 2: hunts between that coyote and that bear. Our final storyteller
Speaker 2: for the whole year of our Deer Stories episodes is
Speaker 2: none other than Moe Shepherd from the Ozarks of Arkansas.
Speaker 2: Moe is a diehard public land hunter who's hunted about
Speaker 2: as tough a white tail ground as there is his
Speaker 2: entire life, low deer numbers, lots of hunters with rugged,
Speaker 2: vast wooded terrain. Every time Moe tells the story, I
Speaker 2: learned something. Here's him talking about two separate hunts that
Speaker 2: have a similar theme.
Speaker 3: I want to see if you can pick it out.
Speaker 11: This was approximate eight or nine years ago, right out
Speaker 11: on public land and those ark mountains and the deer
Speaker 11: I was after I found he signed late in the
Speaker 11: year prior to when I harvested the deer, and I
Speaker 11: don't think I ever really hunted.
Speaker 10: I was doing some scouting late in the year, so when.
Speaker 11: It rolled around the next fall, I knew it was
Speaker 11: a really good matureier because there was some really huge
Speaker 11: rubs in there and stuff that I found.
Speaker 10: So I started bowl hunting a little bit for him.
Speaker 11: When the weather was right when I thought I might
Speaker 11: find him there, and I sat in the stand two
Speaker 11: or three different days on and off when the conditions
Speaker 11: were right. Saw a couple of smaller bucks, but I
Speaker 11: didn't see any large bucks. And then the mussli or
Speaker 11: season came about, same scenario.
Speaker 10: I went in there and stand hunted a little bit.
Speaker 10: I didn't even see any bucks, but I saw some
Speaker 10: dose and it rolls around the end of November. Deer
Speaker 10: season opened that year, and it was pretty warm.
Speaker 11: I do remember that I didn't even hunt in there
Speaker 11: with my rifle for the first couple.
Speaker 10: Of days of season.
Speaker 11: It was about after a week they predicted a coal
Speaker 11: front to be moving in. Like I said, it had
Speaker 11: been pretty warm. Well, it really dropped overnight. It dropped
Speaker 11: probably forty degrees or so from the day before.
Speaker 10: It was in the upper twenties. Anyway, that morning, when
Speaker 10: I got up and.
Speaker 11: I told my wife, I said, I'm gonna go after
Speaker 11: that big deer that I hunted early in the season.
Speaker 11: But I'm not gonna go where I've been hunting. I said,
Speaker 11: up in the head of that canyon. I said, there's
Speaker 11: some steep trains, some bluffy trains, some little narrow shelf benches.
Speaker 11: I said, I'm gonna the wind's blown right out of
Speaker 11: the northwest and I can go and drop off in
Speaker 11: there and make my way from the bedding area back
Speaker 11: towards where that sign is. And I said, he'll either
Speaker 11: be looking for doze or he'll be bedded up in there,
Speaker 11: and either way I might get a chance at him.
Speaker 11: So I started off that away and didn't see a deer.
Speaker 10: I hunted for.
Speaker 11: About an hour and a half, the slow slipping along.
Speaker 11: I was on one little shelf and watching the shelf
Speaker 11: blow me on this really steep inclined drain. Like I said,
Speaker 11: there was some bloves in there. I got the spot
Speaker 11: and I thought, boy, this looks good. I think I'll
Speaker 11: just stand here for a while. And I leaned up
Speaker 11: against a tree because that wind was born. It was cold,
Speaker 11: so I didn't want to set much. And I seen
Speaker 11: movement on the bench below me. I think he was
Speaker 11: heading back to bed up. I think he'd been out
Speaker 11: looking for doze on around that mountain side in there,
Speaker 11: and I didn't think I was gonna get a shot
Speaker 11: at because he was moving along pretty good. I grunted
Speaker 11: at him with my voice. He was probably maybe hundred
Speaker 11: down to that next little shelf down there, and it
Speaker 11: didn't even fade. It was loud, so I grunted pretty
Speaker 11: loud with my voice, and I don't know if he
Speaker 11: heard or what, but he slowed down. He was just
Speaker 11: real fast, stiff legged walk and he slowed down and
Speaker 11: when he finally stopped, he's behind some stuff you know,
Speaker 11: all I could see was just bits and pieces of him.
Speaker 10: But I got all ready. I thought, well, if he
Speaker 10: takes off again, maybe I can get him.
Speaker 8: Well.
Speaker 10: When he took off again, he.
Speaker 11: Made four or five fast steps, and then he just
Speaker 11: stopped and I could see his pretty much all his shoulder,
Speaker 11: but I couldn't see much of his neck or the
Speaker 11: rest of his body.
Speaker 10: But I thought I've got an opening there. And I
Speaker 10: was leaned up against that tree.
Speaker 11: I had a pretty good rest, and I put my
Speaker 11: crosshairs on him of my rifle. I was something with
Speaker 11: that day, and squeezed the trigger off, and when the
Speaker 11: recoil finished, I looked down there. I dropped the gun
Speaker 11: down and looked that way. He was laying on the ground.
Speaker 11: I dropped him right in his tracks.
Speaker 10: There.
Speaker 6: He was a big, mature deer.
Speaker 11: He was just under twenty inches wide, the big, main framed,
Speaker 11: eight point, big body deer.
Speaker 10: And I just looked up the sky the hawk, Thank you,
Speaker 10: good Lord. I said that this was a fun hunt.
Speaker 11: I said, been after this deer all year, and I
Speaker 11: think he spent most of his time proud of a night,
Speaker 11: and he'd probably been out all night. And then it
Speaker 11: was cold, and he was on his feet and probably
Speaker 11: looking for doze, but I really think he was heading
Speaker 11: back to that ground where I thought he betted up
Speaker 11: in that head of that canyon in there, And anyway,
Speaker 11: I was really proud of that deer. So the second
Speaker 11: story is from the next year, but it's kind of
Speaker 11: different scenario. I'd hunted this deer a little bit that
Speaker 11: year and even the year before a little bit, but
Speaker 11: I'd never seen him this by sign and stuff. This
Speaker 11: was down lower down in the mountain and there was
Speaker 11: a lot of big flat benches in there where I
Speaker 11: was hunting in and I hunted with my bowl maybe
Speaker 11: three days in there and saw some bucks, but not
Speaker 11: the one I thought was making the big sign.
Speaker 10: Anyway, it came muzzle.
Speaker 11: Outer season, and all I could hunt was the first
Speaker 11: two days, which was a Saturday and Sunday, and then
Speaker 11: I was gonna try to hunt the last two days.
Speaker 11: I couldn't take off work. Usually I take off one
Speaker 11: i want to, but.
Speaker 10: I didn't then.
Speaker 11: But anyway, on Thursday night, I was watching the news
Speaker 11: and stuff on the TV and they were talking about
Speaker 11: I said, sometime Friday during the day, there's a big
Speaker 11: coal front moving in same way had been pretty warm.
Speaker 11: That was in you know, twenty something of October. I
Speaker 11: told my wife again, I said, I'm gonna go to
Speaker 11: work this morning. If that coal front hits, I'm taking
Speaker 11: all my stuff with me. I'm going to go in
Speaker 11: there and getting my stand I've got in there where
Speaker 11: I've been hunting that buck and see if he might
Speaker 11: come out this afternoon. We sure enough, that coal front
Speaker 11: hit during the day and the temperature fell from in
Speaker 11: the sixtiest in the twenties and cold north wind blowing,
Speaker 11: and I actually left work a little bit early, and
Speaker 11: I made my way in there and got up into
Speaker 11: my stand, took cloud's clothes because I was gonna need
Speaker 11: if I was gonna set. It seemed like I got
Speaker 11: up in my stand about three and a half, four
Speaker 11: hours before dark. And I got in my stand and
Speaker 11: I sat and I sat, and I got cold because that.
Speaker 10: Wind blowing on me.
Speaker 11: And I'd stand up a few times and shuffle around
Speaker 11: when I was looking make sure I didn't see anything
Speaker 11: inside of me into this town of warm up. I
Speaker 11: remember it was getting late and the sun had already
Speaker 11: went down because they had cleared off the clouds had
Speaker 11: moved out. When that front moved in, and I thought, man,
Speaker 11: I don't know if I can sit here this much longer,
Speaker 11: not because I'm pretty cold. And about that time, I
Speaker 11: heard a stick or something that was breaking. I looked
Speaker 11: and I seen the dough coming around those little benches
Speaker 11: and there there's a lot of thick brush and there
Speaker 11: was some white oak trees in there, and that's I
Speaker 11: guess the reason a lot of sign was there.
Speaker 10: The deer had been feeding on those white oaks too.
Speaker 11: Anyway, in a matter of fifteen or twenty minutes after
Speaker 11: sun went down, there was like seven or eight different
Speaker 11: deer coming there, and every one of them doats like
Speaker 11: where's the buck at? You know, And most of them
Speaker 11: got on by me, just working their way through those
Speaker 11: white oaks, and I was kind of watching them, and
Speaker 11: i'd look back the way they'd come from a time
Speaker 11: or two, and I thought something might come up the
Speaker 11: hill or something o they're in there.
Speaker 10: And then I heard the lees really rustling.
Speaker 11: It was getting pretty late then pretty dark, but it
Speaker 11: was still shooting light, and I remember thinking, where's that.
Speaker 10: Noise coming from?
Speaker 11: And I thought it was behind me, so I kind
Speaker 11: of turned in my stand and looked up behind me
Speaker 11: and couldn't see anything. So I looked back my left
Speaker 11: where the dose that only two or three them was still
Speaker 11: inside of me, and I looked hard at my right,
Speaker 11: and right on the break of the bench there I
Speaker 11: seen the dough coming pretty fast. She was fast legging it,
Speaker 11: I call it, and she had her tail stuck straight out.
Speaker 10: I thought they suck and chasing.
Speaker 11: Her, and so I got turned in my stand that
Speaker 11: a way, and sure enough she come right blowing me
Speaker 11: down through there, and right behind her was this big
Speaker 11: old buck, and he had his nose down on the
Speaker 11: ground and he wasn't doing nothing, just following her. She
Speaker 11: come out through there in front of me. Probably wasn't
Speaker 11: forty yards, but it's real thick in there. She stopped
Speaker 11: and he stopped, and I couldn't see either one of them.
Speaker 11: It was getting late enough I couldn't make him out,
Speaker 11: And about that time she took off again, and he
Speaker 11: took off, and then they stopped again.
Speaker 10: When they stopped that time, she was in open but
Speaker 10: he was behind a tree. But I see his.
Speaker 11: Head and horns and neck was sticking out, and I
Speaker 11: once started to try to shoot him in the neck,
Speaker 11: and I thought, no, he's this open side muzzler. I
Speaker 11: better not try it, and this luck would have it.
Speaker 11: For all of a sudden, made about two steps and
Speaker 11: stopped right there in the wide open I put the
Speaker 11: bead right against the crease of his shoulder and pulled
Speaker 11: the trigger.
Speaker 10: And little muslor to bowl smoke.
Speaker 11: And when the smoke here, he was laying right there
Speaker 11: on the ground. I could still see him, but it
Speaker 11: was pretty dark, and I was just tickled to death.
Speaker 10: I didn't notice how big he was.
Speaker 11: I just knew he was a good mature deer. I
Speaker 11: got down, climbed down down my tree after washing him
Speaker 11: a bit, and he didn't move or anything other than
Speaker 11: just finishing their life. And I got down and walked
Speaker 11: up to him, and he wasn't as wide as the
Speaker 11: deer I'd killed the year before with my rifle, but
Speaker 11: he was about seventeen inches wide. But he was real heavy,
Speaker 11: and his horn sweeped out and around and curled back
Speaker 11: in towards each other in the front. And he was
Speaker 11: just a big eight point but he was a big
Speaker 11: mature deer. And I think the only reason I got
Speaker 11: that deer was that cold front changing from warm weather
Speaker 11: to cold weather, and they just stay on their feet longer.
Speaker 11: I think he got up before dark and went to
Speaker 11: looking for doze and got on that one and followed
Speaker 11: her right around to where I was sating there waiting
Speaker 11: on him.
Speaker 10: So I slip honey, as I call it, on the
Speaker 10: first deer.
Speaker 11: The second dear I sat in stands pretty much every
Speaker 11: day hunting for him.
Speaker 10: But you just got to stay after it.
Speaker 11: Blat of times kill a little big deer, especially out
Speaker 11: on public land.
Speaker 2: That's some good hunting, Moe. Did you know that Moe's
Speaker 2: family homesteaded in the Ozarks in the mid eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 2: and Moe was raised on what's officially known as Shepherd Mountain,
Speaker 2: named after his ken. I think that's special. And the
Speaker 2: theme of those two deer hunts was hunting on an
Speaker 2: extreme cold front, the front end of an extreme cold front.
Speaker 2: If you could hunt anytime, I think that's what you'd.
Speaker 3: Want to hunt. I tell you, this has been a fun.
Speaker 2: Episode for me, and I hope you've enjoyed it as
Speaker 2: much as I have. These real stories are the lifeblood
Speaker 2: of our American hunting culture, and we all know that
Speaker 2: the whitetail is king of American hunting period it's true.
Speaker 2: I can't thank you enough for listening to Bear Grease
Speaker 2: and Brent's This Country Life podcast. Remember it's whitetail weeket
Speaker 2: meat Eater in first Light, where when you buy more,
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Speaker 2: on some purchases, the free shipping on orders over one
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty dollars. First Light has the best lineup
Speaker 2: of white tail gear on the market. Check it out
Speaker 2: at FirstLight dot com. I look forward to talking about
Speaker 2: these dear stories with the folks on the Render next week.
Speaker 3: Keep the wild Places Wild