Speaker 1: I love the fact that something like that is possible.
Speaker 1: If everything in deer hunting had to be by the books,
Speaker 1: predictable due only to those who put in the work,
Speaker 1: who who had this plan, or who did all the homework,
Speaker 1: whatever it was, if that was the only way that
Speaker 1: you could have these storybook endings to be a little
Speaker 1: bit boring. On this episode of the Burgrease podcast, we're
Speaker 1: talking about two giant public land white tails killed by
Speaker 1: the same man on the same year, all the while
Speaker 1: exploring a universal and ancient idea. It's one that has
Speaker 1: not escaped any culture. It's homogeneous across time, oceans, and
Speaker 1: people's It's the idea of a streak of luck. All
Speaker 1: can agree that beneficial things do happen that are far
Speaker 1: beyond human control. But the catalyst or origin of disfavor
Speaker 1: or where the ideologies to verge. I want to introduce
Speaker 1: you posthumously to an incredible man by the name of
Speaker 1: Aora Lee Province or as they called him, or who
Speaker 1: I interviewed in twenty nineteen, just a month prior to
Speaker 1: his passing at the age of ninety one, Mr Ory
Speaker 1: killed two non typical deer in the fall of nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty five on public land and the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas.
Speaker 1: This was as unlikely as being struck by lightning twice.
Speaker 1: We'll hear from Mr Or himself and meet his son.
Speaker 1: Will also hear from Whitetail Wacko's Mark Kenyon and Tony
Speaker 1: Peterson from Meat Eater's Wired to Hunt podcast, and we'll
Speaker 1: talk with one of the best Ozark Mountain deer hunters
Speaker 1: that I know, most Shepherd about streaks of luck. I
Speaker 1: doubt you're gonna want to miss this one. I think
Speaker 1: that's like sort of the secret sauce to hunting is
Speaker 1: the possibility of that stuff just falling together and having
Speaker 1: an amazing year. You're once in a lifetime encounter. I
Speaker 1: don't I don't know. I think it's so cool. My
Speaker 1: name is Clay Nukelem and this is the Bear Grease Podcast,
Speaker 1: where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant, search for insight
Speaker 1: and unlikely places, and where we'll tell the story of
Speaker 1: Americans who lived their lives close to the land. Presented
Speaker 1: by f HF Gear, American made purpose built hunting and
Speaker 1: fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as the
Speaker 1: places we explore. Hey, Rusty just looking at that, dear,
Speaker 1: And I know you guys don't like to do this,
Speaker 1: but what do you think that, dear, Because we're about
Speaker 1: to do the math to find out if you just
Speaker 1: walked up and saw that, dear. Um, Hotty, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: say he's gonna be really close to one seventy. I'm
Speaker 1: saying up for one sixties. That's just a wild gift.
Speaker 1: I've recruited official score Rusty Johnson to go with me
Speaker 1: to Winslow, Arkansas, to score the first of the two
Speaker 1: bucks that Mr Or killed the nineteen sixty five. As
Speaker 1: we're finishing up Or He's son, Eugene, who's now in
Speaker 1: his seventies, walks up. Mr Eugene, how you doing, Cam? Yeah,
Speaker 1: good to see you. Russe Johnson? What was her name?
Speaker 1: Rusty Johnson too? Mr Eugene looks at the rack of
Speaker 1: his father's twenty six point buck in the back of
Speaker 1: the side by side where we've been measuring the rack.
Speaker 1: We're almost finished. Eugene was just a kid, but he
Speaker 1: was there when this buck was killed. Oh that was
Speaker 1: something else. Now you were You weren't standing beside him
Speaker 1: when he killed this deer, but you were with him
Speaker 1: on the hunt. I was with him on that hunt.
Speaker 1: What do you what do you remember about that day? Well?
Speaker 1: What are you doing here? Now? Can I record you?
Speaker 1: Is all right? I don't care what I remember on
Speaker 1: that day. I remember it was a long, hard day.
Speaker 1: Who getting him out? Yeah? You know, Well he had
Speaker 1: tucked me and set me down, and and he's always
Speaker 1: one of those that just slip along, you know, and
Speaker 1: do his hunting. And so he come back to man
Speaker 1: and said, I've I've shot one. I need you go
Speaker 1: help me track it. So he got me down and
Speaker 1: put me on the blood trail. He said, you'd follow
Speaker 1: this and I will try to go get in front
Speaker 1: of it. So when I went out there a few
Speaker 1: hundred feet or yards whether that lady, he had it
Speaker 1: all covered up. So he wanted you to find surprised
Speaker 1: on it. Now you how old were you? I think
Speaker 1: I was fourteen, So you you would have hunted enough
Speaker 1: to have known that was an incredible dear. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: this story gives us our first glimpse into Oriy Province.
Speaker 1: He was of good humor and wanted to involve his
Speaker 1: son in the seemingly once in a lifetime track job.
Speaker 1: The Horns of the buck are now yellowed and dusty.
Speaker 1: They're mounted a top of white tail mannekin that scarcely
Speaker 1: reflects the anatomical features of a real buck. The hair
Speaker 1: is faded and ghostly. To someone who loves white tails,
Speaker 1: this is a beautiful sight. And I'll have you know
Speaker 1: this is the smaller of the two bucks killed that
Speaker 1: season on public land by Mr or Man Watter unlikely place.
Speaker 1: How many points does this saying heavy three, four, five, six, seven,
Speaker 1: eight nine. I described this buck as a tight racked
Speaker 1: heavy horn for the region mainframe ten point with sixteen
Speaker 1: kicker points on the right side, the brow time clusters
Speaker 1: into what looks like a webbed beaver track. The second time,
Speaker 1: the G two flares into a cluster of five non
Speaker 1: typical points, including a big fly arching towards the limestone
Speaker 1: beneath our feet. Mark Kenyon would faint if he saw
Speaker 1: this deer from a tree stand. I wanted to ask
Speaker 1: Mr Eugene the question that I'm going to ask everyone
Speaker 1: else on this episode, and his answer is what you
Speaker 1: might expect from a son. What do you what do
Speaker 1: you make of a guy that we calculated up that
Speaker 1: he hunted probably eighty years I mean he so eighty
Speaker 1: years and hunting and one year, in one week he
Speaker 1: kills just two. Incredible dear, What are you making that?
Speaker 1: What do mak of that? I mean, like incredible hunter? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I guess they might be some.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it would be in lucky in it,
Speaker 1: but I mean when you come up with something like
Speaker 1: that that close, you know, Uh, I've not done that yet.
Speaker 1: I want to make some definitions clear so that we're
Speaker 1: all talking about the same thing. I would describe luck
Speaker 1: simply as for two of his circumstances that come about
Speaker 1: seemingly by chance rather than the result of someone's actions.
Speaker 1: The second word, we're gonna use his streak, and by
Speaker 1: that I mean when something happens more than once you're
Speaker 1: on a streak. Will combine these two into the phrase
Speaker 1: lucky streak when good stuff starts happening all in a row.
Speaker 1: It's hard to argue with the fact that Mr. Ory
Speaker 1: was a seasoned, decorated, and skilled hunter. There's no argument
Speaker 1: at all. He had a unique style slip hunting the
Speaker 1: Rocky Bluffs where he lived, and he was born and
Speaker 1: bred in these mountains. He knew dear, and he killed
Speaker 1: lots of big deer in his life, but none near
Speaker 1: as big as these two killed on the same year
Speaker 1: when he was thirty eight years old. It's clear that
Speaker 1: it wasn't all luck or just undeserved favored. But I
Speaker 1: think there is more to this story than skill alone.
Speaker 1: He tapped into a streak of good luck. But we
Speaker 1: still don't know how big the smaller deer is, which
Speaker 1: this one is smaller twelve sixteen two, so that dear
Speaker 1: grows scores hundred and seventy one. Good job on a
Speaker 1: quick porch score job. In two thousand eleven, I scored
Speaker 1: this twenty six point buck, almost ten inches under its
Speaker 1: true growth score one seventy one. Old Rusty doesn't miss
Speaker 1: very much. However, the second and clearly bigger buck had
Speaker 1: less judgment calls, and when I scored the buck in
Speaker 1: two thousand and eleven, it had an incredible hundred and
Speaker 1: eighty six gross inches. And to put that into perspective,
Speaker 1: I mean a hundred and seventy inches deer. The vast
Speaker 1: majority of deer hunters will never kill a buck that big,
Speaker 1: guys who have even dedicated their lives to deer hunting.
Speaker 1: But a one eight six is even bigger, and it
Speaker 1: carries two drop times and an almost shot through horn
Speaker 1: where one of Mr Ri's stray bullets almost shattered the
Speaker 1: main beam. This, my friends, in this part of the world,
Speaker 1: is like getting struck by lightning twice A one, one,
Speaker 1: and six. There are lots of ideas around luck, and
Speaker 1: they can basically be broken into two broad categories. The
Speaker 1: first would be the naturalistic interpretation of luck, which would
Speaker 1: be positive and negative events can happen at any time,
Speaker 1: both due to random natural processes, and even improbable events
Speaker 1: can happen by random chance. The second idea would be
Speaker 1: a supernatural interpretation of luck, basically forces outside of this
Speaker 1: natural realm govern at will the events of the earth.
Speaker 1: But I'd like to invite you to step out of
Speaker 1: the western culture worldview that blindly dominates most of a
Speaker 1: into a black and white railroad track ideology, saying that
Speaker 1: you have to pick one or the other. Perhaps they
Speaker 1: could both be operating at the same time. We're trying
Speaker 1: to answer the question of how much human success is
Speaker 1: skill and hard work and how much is seemingly luck.
Speaker 1: The answer to this has big implications for how you
Speaker 1: live your life, and at the end of this podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna tell you about a vivid and specific dream
Speaker 1: that I had about a white tail buck and how
Speaker 1: it changed my life. So stick around. The next part
Speaker 1: of this story creates in me a wide range of emotions.
Speaker 1: We're going to go back to March of twenty nineteen
Speaker 1: and meet Mr Ory and his wife Mary. That day
Speaker 1: he was spry, mentally sharp, in great spirits and good
Speaker 1: health for a ninety one year old man. But one
Speaker 1: month after our interview, Mr Ory passed away. Ending our
Speaker 1: conversation that day, after he had told me he had
Speaker 1: lived in the mountains for ninety years. I jokingly said
Speaker 1: he's got no plans to leave now. He interrupted me
Speaker 1: and said, only up. Mr Ori was an honorable man.
Speaker 1: Posthumous fist bump to Mr. Ri. Every generation has had
Speaker 1: old timers like Ori. When Daniel Boone was alive, he
Speaker 1: would have looked back at the real old timers and
Speaker 1: recognized the same thing that we recognized today when we
Speaker 1: talked to really old people, that planet Earth and the
Speaker 1: humans that are on it are in a constant state
Speaker 1: of unstoppable change. When you see human history, you see
Speaker 1: a trajectory that seems to be leading us someplace My
Speaker 1: interest in history and old stories isn't to stop the
Speaker 1: change or nostalgically revel in the past. But I want
Speaker 1: to track the change and be prepared for the future.
Speaker 1: And God got at the ruthless pace of time, is
Speaker 1: trying to leave behind some stuff that I'm not ready
Speaker 1: to give up. Now, I want to take you deep
Speaker 1: into the Ozarks to meet a human relic hanging on
Speaker 1: the edge of his time on Earth. Mr. Or and
Speaker 1: his wife live about as far back in the mountains
Speaker 1: as you can live in this state. Here's Mr Or here. Hey,
Speaker 1: how are you doing? Oh? I'm doing far good to
Speaker 1: see you, Yeah, to see you. Hello, miss Mary, how
Speaker 1: are you? This is my youngest son, Shepherd. I don't
Speaker 1: think he's ever been over here before. I haven't seen
Speaker 1: him before. Come around and have a seat here. How
Speaker 1: are y'all doing? Excuse the four I was in the
Speaker 1: middle of vacuumen, but I ain't. I got done, so
Speaker 1: don't worry about the hat. Oh this is great. The
Speaker 1: house was quaint and comfortable, with knick knacks and photos
Speaker 1: of children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren on the walls. Through
Speaker 1: the back window you can see a deep Ozark drawl
Speaker 1: a non functioning school bus in an oak barn. The
Speaker 1: mounted bucks from nineteen six hung in two different rooms,
Speaker 1: one in a front bedroom and one in the back.
Speaker 1: By permission, I went and got both bucks off the
Speaker 1: wall and leaned them against the couch for us to
Speaker 1: gander at while we talked. For me, hunting has always
Speaker 1: been synchronized with the rest of my life, and I
Speaker 1: think it helps to put these two bucks and Mr
Speaker 1: Ory Streak into context by learning something about his life.
Speaker 1: Here's Ms Mary talking about the new computer their kids
Speaker 1: bought them, which is pretty high tech. We got this.
Speaker 1: And because he loves be on Monroe, and so he
Speaker 1: can pull up be on Monroe, Leicster Flat, Carter family
Speaker 1: and then he hears all the different and Joe, he'll
Speaker 1: stumble onto somebody here, come here, this, it's these These
Speaker 1: are so good, you know. And I had a little
Speaker 1: last night. They come on, someone, does the Carter family
Speaker 1: come on? They made their first record nineteen point seven
Speaker 1: as Jar was born. Okay, and Monroe's they come on
Speaker 1: in thirty six. Here tell you what my story was.
Speaker 1: They'd always had meat to there's leveling of us children,
Speaker 1: but everybody had a job that someone go up to
Speaker 1: cal Some feed the holes, and some done this and that.
Speaker 1: My job was getting at four o'clock the morning, beautiful,
Speaker 1: go feed the mute and hornishon. Yeah, having my job.
Speaker 1: And I wasn't very big at that time. Up from
Speaker 1: the manger, you know, to get up part put that
Speaker 1: collar on, buck around the bout it. Of course they're
Speaker 1: generalist dogs. Here's more from Mr Ory, starting us into
Speaker 1: his life story. Well, I was born you in the
Speaker 1: tenth nineteen seven, and uh, I grew up. We moved
Speaker 1: from the mountain down to across the holiday every where
Speaker 1: I live, and uh twenty nine and uh, then we
Speaker 1: went to school two weeks at win Free nowhere where
Speaker 1: you were born right here, close somewhere. I was borned
Speaker 1: upon the mountain here about a mile and a half more,
Speaker 1: a massive You weren't born in a hospital, No, no, no,
Speaker 1: they weren't one of us eleven children born in the hospital.
Speaker 1: And so so you were born up here. And then
Speaker 1: we moved down here in twenty nine. Then we moved
Speaker 1: back to the mountain. I went to school down you're
Speaker 1: Winfree two weeks and we come went back to old
Speaker 1: home place that was my mother's dad's place. He homes
Speaker 1: did it from the United States government, and I still
Speaker 1: got the deed. The highland country of Arkansas was not
Speaker 1: valuable or profitable land to homestead. The rocky ground wasn't
Speaker 1: fertile heir to many regions of the country, and it
Speaker 1: was hard to tell. Most people that came here were
Speaker 1: poor and just happy to have land, and some were
Speaker 1: running from something like debt or even the law. But
Speaker 1: hard times produce hard people. In the eighteen thirties, when
Speaker 1: Davy Crockett yep The real David Crockett, passed through Arkansas,
Speaker 1: he said in a public speech he gave in Little
Speaker 1: Rock quote, if I could rest anywhere, it would be Arkansas,
Speaker 1: where the men are the real half horse, half alligator
Speaker 1: breed such as grow nowhere else on the face of
Speaker 1: the universal earth, but just around the backbone of North America.
Speaker 1: End of quote. I suspect the provinces were of such type.
Speaker 1: So how many brothers and sisters did you have? I
Speaker 1: had to five brothers and five sisters, so eleven kids
Speaker 1: and the older. But that's what it may toil. Three
Speaker 1: younger and me and nineteen thirty six, how's nine years old?
Speaker 1: Nineteen thirty six? We got our first radio right, listen
Speaker 1: to the old ridden Cardo family and Bond Monro and
Speaker 1: Charlie Monro. There's together back then. Yeah, and uh that
Speaker 1: was a big deal listening to those old radio programs.
Speaker 1: They was good. They was good. Yeah, I like to
Speaker 1: listen out of yet. I asked Mr Ory what kind
Speaker 1: of work as father did which created the backdrop of
Speaker 1: his childhood. We worked in tam rahab might have worked
Speaker 1: in timber. We worked in Tamarin and farmed a little.
Speaker 1: We had separate dan cows. So he was he was
Speaker 1: hauling logs off the mountain with these mules. Oh yeah, right,
Speaker 1: skinning them and neverthing. So you grew up doing that.
Speaker 1: That's what they've done all of my life. Just about it. Now,
Speaker 1: when did you all start getting more modern? Uh? Log
Speaker 1: and equipment? Like you were a logger most of your life? Well,
Speaker 1: how is up? And that sixty and the nineteen sixties
Speaker 1: you started using mechanized equipment for a calling. Laws really
Speaker 1: trumps sometimes, you know. So you were using mules and
Speaker 1: horses and everything, horse mules. What kind of staws did
Speaker 1: you use, like the two man cross cuts, house cross
Speaker 1: cut sauce? Do you have any of that? Old stuff
Speaker 1: still laying around. Mr Ory is going to describe a
Speaker 1: difficult and unstable period in his life in the nineteen
Speaker 1: forties when he was just a teenager. Chrisis struck their
Speaker 1: family by the early and unexpected death of his father
Speaker 1: from a stroke, and a World war broke out. Well,
Speaker 1: my dad died in forty four and forty one. Why
Speaker 1: the World War two broke out? And UH my brothers,
Speaker 1: three of them waiting service, okay, and UH, I was old,
Speaker 1: just wanted left at home. Okay. I took him my
Speaker 1: mother and UH my nephew, and UH two sisters and
Speaker 1: her brother. So you were just a few years too
Speaker 1: young to be drafted into the war. I was when
Speaker 1: my dead daughter sixteen, and UH when I become eighteen
Speaker 1: the day I was eighteen, A day after I was eighteen.
Speaker 1: My birthday come on Sunday that year. On Monday, I
Speaker 1: registered and I went down in past examination eight David July,
Speaker 1: I got my calls for examination, went down passed, and
Speaker 1: night Dave August got my call service, and UH ministers
Speaker 1: out here, and I had a big tomato crop out
Speaker 1: about ten acres tomaters, and UH and the family there
Speaker 1: we had to have something to live on. But anyway,
Speaker 1: why there's minister out there. He said, this boy they'd
Speaker 1: take care of his mother and these children. And so
Speaker 1: he wrote, Uh, I got deferred until till locked over
Speaker 1: the fifteen another word, truther crop was over. And then uh,
Speaker 1: I've still got my one eight classification. But the war
Speaker 1: was over that time, so you would have gone if
Speaker 1: the war would have Yeah, the lords and I went
Speaker 1: to school. Was um, there's in there they went in Germany.
Speaker 1: It was clear that Mr Ory was proud of his
Speaker 1: one A classification, which meant he was eligible for military
Speaker 1: service and was ready to roll when the tomato crop
Speaker 1: was put up. But by the regional frost date of October,
Speaker 1: the Great World War was over. His brothers came home,
Speaker 1: and stability returned to his family. Here's Mr Ory talking
Speaker 1: about his work after the war ended. And he'll give
Speaker 1: us some insight into the life philosophy of the province. Family. Man.
Speaker 1: My brother we ain't never did have to go to war.
Speaker 1: And so uh he went him, went and cut timmer
Speaker 1: and locked it. I hold it up, I hold it
Speaker 1: on a wagon. He skipped it out and I went
Speaker 1: holt and dumped it off at the mail and that
Speaker 1: was in the late forties anyway, Now, the Great Depression,
Speaker 1: you were just a kid during the Great These hills
Speaker 1: weren't really I mean they were affected by the Great Depression,
Speaker 1: but people were already poor. Yeah, I mean there wasn't
Speaker 1: much you could do to somebody that was just living
Speaker 1: off the land, basically when it comes to economic stress.
Speaker 1: I've right, Yeah, we lived off the land. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty six that was dry here, you know, and
Speaker 1: uh we had a smiter crop and we haul water
Speaker 1: and set them out and they got up and just
Speaker 1: the blooming and everything turned off dry. We never got
Speaker 1: a tomato, but we we worked in the timmer. You know,
Speaker 1: they paper back then they finally got where they brought
Speaker 1: out food stamps and tanks, but we never got in it.
Speaker 1: My dad just wouldn't have nothing to do with that,
Speaker 1: just by principle. He didn't need anything. We we made it.
Speaker 1: We made it without it. We worked and they made it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: What would have been a normal meal for your family
Speaker 1: back then when you were a kid who had plenteteet
Speaker 1: had plenteteeting, We can't raised hogs and vegetables, had a garden.
Speaker 1: I know, you still have a garden, don't you. Well, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we we made it fine. I had about dirty swarms
Speaker 1: of bees back during the war. While you couldn't get sugar.
Speaker 1: Every food is all racing. You couldn't buy nothing. Everybody's
Speaker 1: out of sugar, and I had bees, and we got
Speaker 1: to feed the bees, you know, because it used the
Speaker 1: honey somewhere in other end guns. The World War interfered
Speaker 1: with the United States ability to import sugar, so honey
Speaker 1: was used as a sugar substitute at home and sent
Speaker 1: to the troops abroad. But primarily, bees wax had over
Speaker 1: three hundred and fifty uses in wartime military operations. It
Speaker 1: was used to coat airplanes, coat canvas tents, lubricate all
Speaker 1: types of machinery, and was used on ammunition. The average
Speaker 1: war machine, whether a plane or tank, was said to
Speaker 1: have ten pounds of bees wax on it. Bees Wax
Speaker 1: didn't expand in heat or crack in the cold. The
Speaker 1: American Bee Journal in the nineteen forties had a slogan quote,
Speaker 1: let the bees wax the way to victory. End of quote,
Speaker 1: Who do I sure didn't. Here's Mr. Or giving us
Speaker 1: some geographical data points of his life, and hey, don't
Speaker 1: forget about the dream that I'm going to tell you
Speaker 1: about at the end. How would you describe these mountains there?
Speaker 1: They're rough, yeah, yeah, but they're beautiful. I've never been
Speaker 1: nowhere else for westerns avanners, uh Shamrock, Texas, and uh
Speaker 1: for South there's been a down around war in Arkansas
Speaker 1: and for narths vendors Kansas City for Easter event which
Speaker 1: you have little Rock by today's standards, that's a small
Speaker 1: home range. Remember this is all giving us a context
Speaker 1: for his incredible white tail streak of nineteen six. And man,
Speaker 1: if sixty years from now they're making media about your
Speaker 1: white tail streak, you must be some kind of a
Speaker 1: boss man. Uh, I'd rather like during the war, you know, Wow,
Speaker 1: they wasn't no money much cross ties and selling twenty
Speaker 1: and thirty and thirty five cents apiece and uh it
Speaker 1: just couldn't make much in the tember, so uh at
Speaker 1: when the season open. While we'd go hunting, we didn't
Speaker 1: make more hunting catching possums and cones. We'd even skin
Speaker 1: of skunk, anything that we could get a dollar around,
Speaker 1: selling the hides, selling nights. Yeah so you had tree
Speaker 1: dogs oh yeah right, yeah yeah, So so you were
Speaker 1: making money selling hides back during that time, well, making
Speaker 1: more than you could make at the sawmill, right, So
Speaker 1: you did that as a kid. Now, there weren't many
Speaker 1: deer though, back when you were a kid. No, dear
Speaker 1: at all, none at all, No, no, hardly every you never,
Speaker 1: I've never seen a deer to love us. Oh sixteen.
Speaker 1: They had a game refuge over here they had. We
Speaker 1: had to hunt around him, but he couldn't hunt there.
Speaker 1: They were trying to reintroduce deer. I try. So they
Speaker 1: brought in some deer. Oh yeah, yeah, they brought them
Speaker 1: in it and there's getting more the kind of scattered
Speaker 1: out than the olden season on it. What he's referring
Speaker 1: to is the reintroduction of white tailed deer into the
Speaker 1: Black Mountain region of the Ozarks. According to the records,
Speaker 1: it started in nineteen twenty six with quote several deer
Speaker 1: brought in from Wisconsin, North Carolina in Texas. Then in
Speaker 1: nineteen they released five deer, in nineteen thirty four deer,
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty eight, fourteen deer, and then the restocking
Speaker 1: stopped in the nineteen fifties when it was believed that
Speaker 1: some areas in the Ozarks had deer populations as high
Speaker 1: as thirty deer per square mile, which is actually a
Speaker 1: decent amount of deer. It was said that the Arkansas
Speaker 1: Game and Fish Commission was even buying pet deer from
Speaker 1: people and releasing them into many of the refugees. And
Speaker 1: to look at the bigger picture of what was going
Speaker 1: on in North America, this was a golden era of
Speaker 1: conservation efforts for many big game species. There was widespread
Speaker 1: habitat protection going on. The Passing of the Pittman Robertson
Speaker 1: Act in nineteen thirty seven was huge, and the general
Speaker 1: acceptance of game laws and seasons put to bed the
Speaker 1: old market hunting ideologies. That stuff started to fade away.
Speaker 1: Today is hunters and conservationists were standing on the wildlife
Speaker 1: and habitat decisions made during this period. Here's Mr Ory
Speaker 1: on how he liked to hunt. But you, uh so,
Speaker 1: I remember the story that I wrote about you years ago.
Speaker 1: I called it the bluff hunter, because you used to
Speaker 1: like to stay on the top of these bluffs and
Speaker 1: you can kind of look down and see these flats. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's where these deer would be. But if you
Speaker 1: were up on the bluff you'd kind of be hid
Speaker 1: from him, is that right? They can't smell you. You
Speaker 1: love them and they don't know, So that way you
Speaker 1: can get a I've killed several land down okay. So
Speaker 1: you would just creep along the top of the bluff
Speaker 1: and you'd see him bedded. Yeah, right, I remember you
Speaker 1: used to throw rocks off a bluff too. Sometimes sometimes
Speaker 1: you'd wake them up if you couldn't see why you
Speaker 1: told something down arts kind of make a no water
Speaker 1: because they're wondering what it was, and maybe didn't move
Speaker 1: where he could see him, if there's any there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'd walk twenty today we hunting on blows, hunting blows
Speaker 1: and roughish places. It was Mr or sick control was
Speaker 1: to stay up above the deer on the bluff. Too
Speaker 1: bad he didn't have modern sick control products. Then he
Speaker 1: could have gotten right down there with him and had
Speaker 1: a good hunt, and he wouldn't have had to have
Speaker 1: clumb those blobs. That's a joke for Mark Kenyon. Me
Speaker 1: and Mr Or used the science approved method, play the
Speaker 1: wind like a man, you dirty hillbillies. I do love
Speaker 1: soap boxes. I asked Mr Or to tell me the
Speaker 1: story of his Big Bucks here, he goes, Well, I
Speaker 1: was man, my boy, he was fourteen years old, and
Speaker 1: we went across who we're here and across on torture
Speaker 1: down A point got down on the other point. Why
Speaker 1: I left him on top the hill and I said,
Speaker 1: I've worn down the other with them pines A and
Speaker 1: all them blows there at and stipphon jump up something.
Speaker 1: And I was going climbing over a bluff and I
Speaker 1: scared four deer out of a bed down blow me,
Speaker 1: you know, to run off, And so why is thea's
Speaker 1: on down the bluff? Cut down and went on down
Speaker 1: and found their beds where right threw by it went
Speaker 1: on doubt about sixty five hunter about ninety yards the
Speaker 1: other side of it, and uh, I heard a racket
Speaker 1: behind me, and I looked around and I saw this
Speaker 1: point bucker coming. All I could see is this. You
Speaker 1: could kill one without I think a spiker. He just
Speaker 1: need horns. I could see them horns, and I saw
Speaker 1: he had enough horns his legal shoot. So I couldn't
Speaker 1: see nothing but this between two trees. So I shot
Speaker 1: him in the flanks and I thought, well I crippled him,
Speaker 1: and uh, so I shot him and he come right
Speaker 1: through by me and brought about and I think it's
Speaker 1: ninety three yards and he feel dad right over from me.
Speaker 1: I'll be done. What do you think when you walked
Speaker 1: up to him and started counting those points? What do
Speaker 1: you think? Yeah, but I I can't. I just left
Speaker 1: the yarn wait and got my boy. He's fourteen years old.
Speaker 1: How did you get him out of there? I knew
Speaker 1: about where. We drive him to the creek, on down
Speaker 1: the creek and tug him up the creek because we
Speaker 1: couldn't take him up back up the bluff where I'd
Speaker 1: come from nowhere to him. Her rig was setting on
Speaker 1: top the mountain, so I had to go back up
Speaker 1: ear and get it. But I went and we tuck
Speaker 1: him around the creek and tuck him up the creek
Speaker 1: and run on to some harts. Earned the boy that
Speaker 1: he had a Volkswagen. He took us back to her
Speaker 1: reds and hauled it up to where we could get it.
Speaker 1: I'll be done. And then you killed another one? That
Speaker 1: was it a few years later? When when did you
Speaker 1: kill that? Two weeks later? Two weeks later, I'll be
Speaker 1: during the same area. No, No, it was that north here. Okay,
Speaker 1: So what about this second deer, How did that happen?
Speaker 1: I was checking a man's cattle and uh, up the
Speaker 1: creek here, and he's from Maglect, Texas. And I went
Speaker 1: up earn of course you dare saying, you know, and
Speaker 1: I had my gun women, so he had a big
Speaker 1: pun builder and I just I don't remember. I was
Speaker 1: just what he's doing. Anyway. This deer was just up
Speaker 1: and to ticket there above that running out through there. Huh,
Speaker 1: and I saw them big horns. I started shooting our shot.
Speaker 1: I think he's nine times at whatever it takes. And
Speaker 1: the last shot of shot he fell right backwards. He's
Speaker 1: running fast. He's eighteen points. One of those nine bullets
Speaker 1: hit the left main beam of the buck and almost
Speaker 1: broke it in half. How he re loaded and shot
Speaker 1: that many times I do not know. But regardless, a
Speaker 1: hundred and eighties six inch main frame ten point with
Speaker 1: long curve brow times and an inter set of matching
Speaker 1: G three times that lean into the rack with a
Speaker 1: striking pair of seven inch drop times hit the dirt,
Speaker 1: creating an unmatchable white tail streak for the old bluff hunter.
Speaker 1: Being a partaker of a white tail streak of luck
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that the streaker didn't utilize skill and hard work.
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, most streaks are highly correlated
Speaker 1: to these things. But sometimes stuff happens that is far
Speaker 1: beyond the control or the work ethic of the streaker,
Speaker 1: and it's a beautiful thing when someone ready intersects with fate.
Speaker 1: I actually think that deep down, humans bank on streaks
Speaker 1: of good favor and even plan for them, like it's
Speaker 1: coded in our DNA. For the most part, we know
Speaker 1: that the work we put into our lives will yield
Speaker 1: a standard return. We learned to live off this percentage yield,
Speaker 1: and we know that at any time a streak or
Speaker 1: some kind of unusual favor far beyond our control could
Speaker 1: be coming. And when it does, we get ahead and
Speaker 1: we build our lives off the benefits of the lucky streak.
Speaker 1: The norm of life is only calibrated and understood by
Speaker 1: the outlying data points like two seventy plus bucks in
Speaker 1: the same year. Mark Kenyon of Meet Eaters Wired Hunt
Speaker 1: podcast is one of the most dedicated and meticulous white
Speaker 1: tail hunters that I know. He's intelligent with an analytical
Speaker 1: mind in a monster scrape size work ethic. He hunted
Speaker 1: with me last year on public land in Arkansas and
Speaker 1: killed a buck. You'll be able to watch that hunt
Speaker 1: this falling Meeter's YouTube channel. I wanted to ask Mark
Speaker 1: what he thinks about ory streak. Well, the first thing
Speaker 1: I think is just that I love it. I love
Speaker 1: the fact that something like that is possible. You know,
Speaker 1: if if everything in life, or in deer hunting, in particularly,
Speaker 1: if everything in deer hunting had to be by the
Speaker 1: books predictable due only to those who put in the work,
Speaker 1: who who had this plan, or who did all the homework,
Speaker 1: whatever it was, if that was the only way that
Speaker 1: you could have these storybook endings, it would be a
Speaker 1: little bit boring. I love the fact that there is
Speaker 1: this serendipity in the world and this crazy these crazy
Speaker 1: opportunities that can come from above and just drop in
Speaker 1: your lap. I mean that makes that makes every day
Speaker 1: in the field for me at least kind of magical.
Speaker 1: Here's Mark on how the mystery of deer hunting in
Speaker 1: some ways has disappeared in modern times. And you know
Speaker 1: what's funny, like these days with the way white tail
Speaker 1: hunting is gone, with trial cameras everywhere and sell cameras
Speaker 1: in the way a lot of folks, myself included, sometimes
Speaker 1: study these deer obsessively. You know, some of that mystery
Speaker 1: is disappearing from deer hunting. Right, we know every deer
Speaker 1: on the property, we know every deer we can expect.
Speaker 1: We've already figured out, well, I'll shoot this one. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't shoot that one. I kinda I missed that mystery sometimes,
Speaker 1: and I'm glad and I need to remind myself. This
Speaker 1: story is a great example the fact that the unpredictable
Speaker 1: is still possible, like that unknown dear from a hundred
Speaker 1: miles away could show up and you might have the
Speaker 1: luckiest day your life. And I think we sometimes get
Speaker 1: stuck in the in the silo, I guess, or like
Speaker 1: the tunnel vision. We get tunnel vision. I think is hunters,
Speaker 1: especially white tail hunters, because we operate on these smaller
Speaker 1: playing fields that we study obsessively. And it's it's really
Speaker 1: important and encouraging to remember that ma'am, tomorrow or today,
Speaker 1: the next minute, you're every thing can change. I mean
Speaker 1: when we were on our one week in November hunt
Speaker 1: last year, Clay, I remember both you and I were
Speaker 1: having a tough week, right, it was mostly long days
Speaker 1: on stand, and I remember sitting there thinking, man, nothing
Speaker 1: is going right, but any second now, just the the
Speaker 1: flip of a light switch, it could all change. That
Speaker 1: lucky streak could land in my lap. And for you,
Speaker 1: it did, right, I mean the last minute, of the
Speaker 1: last hour, basically of the last day. There it is.
Speaker 1: And I almost had the same thing too. So I
Speaker 1: think Ory's story is just a great reminder for anyone
Speaker 1: who's having a tough spell, or anyone who's having a
Speaker 1: bad day or a bad season, that man, you can
Speaker 1: hit that streak, you know. I think I think that's
Speaker 1: why we love deer hunting. It really is almost like gambling,
Speaker 1: Like you literally wake up in the morning and you
Speaker 1: do not know what's gonna happen. Most likely it's gonna
Speaker 1: be an uneventful day in the field, aside from being
Speaker 1: in the woods and being immersed in a natural system.
Speaker 1: Most of the time you're not gonna win. But man,
Speaker 1: it's like you're rolling the dice, which day, when's it
Speaker 1: gonna happen? And and is it gonna be a surprise?
Speaker 1: And man, that's that is what I love, and and
Speaker 1: deep down I think deer hunters are really just gamblers
Speaker 1: that anticipation. I don't know if you ever heard of
Speaker 1: anticipatory joy. Have you ever heard about that click? But
Speaker 1: the idea of anticipatory joy is the fact that just
Speaker 1: the excitement and the the anticipation looking forward to that moment,
Speaker 1: sometimes it's better than than everything else. I asked Mark
Speaker 1: if you ever had a lucky streak. Here's what he said.
Speaker 1: So when it comes to lucky streaks, it's something when
Speaker 1: I look back over the course of my lifetime that
Speaker 1: at least within the world of hunting, nothing pops off
Speaker 1: the charts. I can think back to certain days, Oh man,
Speaker 1: that was luckier. I can think about certain hunts that
Speaker 1: a certain thing tipped my way, and you could say
Speaker 1: that was lucky or not. But I don't have that
Speaker 1: Orey hunting streak where two giants fell into my lap.
Speaker 1: I don't have that kind of thing. But what I
Speaker 1: do have is more of a a lucky streak in
Speaker 1: life that has an interesting relationship to hunting. So my
Speaker 1: lucky streak happened. Jeez. I was in college, and at
Speaker 1: this time there are three things I was interested in life, girls,
Speaker 1: getting a full time job, and then I was interested
Speaker 1: in hunting as much as I could too. So It's
Speaker 1: November eight and at this point I was trying to
Speaker 1: get a job with big tech company. At the time,
Speaker 1: business degree was what I was shooting for. And I
Speaker 1: had an opportunity and I got a job offer for
Speaker 1: this big tech company. I was very, very excited about it.
Speaker 1: This seemed like a very lucky, huge opportunity, and it happened.
Speaker 1: I got the job. So that's point number one. On
Speaker 1: this special weekend, this happens to me, I'm feeling pretty
Speaker 1: good about things. The second thing that happens is that
Speaker 1: night I had up north to our family deer camp
Speaker 1: up in northern Michigan. And this spot is an incredible place.
Speaker 1: This is where I learned a deer hunt. This is
Speaker 1: where I learned to love the outdoors, shoot a gun,
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff. But it is a tough
Speaker 1: spot to deer hunt. It's it's been in decline for
Speaker 1: about three decades now. The deer populations have been going down, down, down,
Speaker 1: down down. And at this point in my life, um,
Speaker 1: nobody had killed a deer at our deer camp. And
Speaker 1: I think seven years maybe zero deer had been killed.
Speaker 1: And I had never killed a deer at our deer
Speaker 1: camp on this given year, though it's opening day in November,
Speaker 1: head out there for the evening hunt. I walked way
Speaker 1: back out in this peninsula, heading into a swamp. My
Speaker 1: grandpa was hunting his old box blind that he always hunted.
Speaker 1: We walked out there together and I walked down the
Speaker 1: peninsula climbed up into an old ladder stand that my
Speaker 1: grandpa had set probably ten years prior. I really had
Speaker 1: no good reason to be there other than that was
Speaker 1: on the edge of the swamp and what should be
Speaker 1: a good place. But you know, given the fact there's
Speaker 1: no deer that lived here, it hadn't been historically, but
Speaker 1: I felt it could happen. And to make a long
Speaker 1: story short, about an hour before dark, I spopped movement
Speaker 1: back in the cat tails, pull up my binos. I
Speaker 1: see it's a buck, one of the first bucks I've
Speaker 1: ever seen hunting on this property. I do a little
Speaker 1: can call that little and that deer spins around, walks
Speaker 1: right back to me. I dropped him in his tracks,
Speaker 1: my first buck I'd ever killed on this property, the
Speaker 1: first buck anyone in our family had killed. And like
Speaker 1: I said, seven or so years and now I'm two
Speaker 1: for two the day before I get the job. Now
Speaker 1: today I get my first buck at deer Camp. I'm
Speaker 1: feeling very lucky. And this led me to what happened
Speaker 1: the following Monday. What I haven't mentioned to you is
Speaker 1: that I was in love. I was in love with
Speaker 1: an older woman, and an older woman who just so
Speaker 1: happened to be my boss at my job at the time.
Speaker 1: So she had graduate ated from college the year prior
Speaker 1: to me and was now my manager at the job
Speaker 1: I was working while in school, but I didn't think
Speaker 1: there was any way she would ever go out with me,
Speaker 1: especially her student worker. But I got the job on Friday,
Speaker 1: I got the buck on Saturday. It felt like I
Speaker 1: was I was awfully lucky. So Monday I thought I
Speaker 1: would test the waters see if my luck would hold.
Speaker 1: I walked into her office while we were both working,
Speaker 1: closed the door and I asked her out for dinner.
Speaker 1: She said, yes, my luck held. And now fifteen years later,
Speaker 1: I'm married to her and we've got two kids. So
Speaker 1: that there was my luckiest streak life, love, business, and
Speaker 1: deer I don't think you can get much better than that.
Speaker 1: Now that's a good streak. A job, a buck, and
Speaker 1: a wife. Tony Peterson works closely with Mark. On the
Speaker 1: Wired Hot podcast, asked Tony would sooner kill a buck
Speaker 1: with his bow on public land than look in the eye.
Speaker 1: He is a great bow hunter. I wanted to see
Speaker 1: what he thought about Ori Streak two. Tony, I'm really
Speaker 1: intrigued by this idea of luck, coincidence, good favor, divine intervention,
Speaker 1: like whatever whatever flavor you want to put on it.
Speaker 1: There's something undeniable in the human existence is that sometimes
Speaker 1: sometimes stuff just happens that's seemingly unexplainable, wild wild, good
Speaker 1: stuff happens. And I think we all kind of calculate
Speaker 1: for that sometimes in our lives. But so you've heard
Speaker 1: our province the story is incredible year in n What
Speaker 1: do you make of it? What do you make it?
Speaker 1: What are your thoughts? Man? I think sometimes we do
Speaker 1: just get lucky. But I also think, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm a big believer in sort of attitude and optimism.
Speaker 1: Like I think we go negative a lot, and I
Speaker 1: think it's that's sort of a self fulfilling prophecy. And
Speaker 1: I think sometimes you just get into the right place
Speaker 1: and good stuff happens. And you know, his story is wild, wild,
Speaker 1: but it's like a that's a good thing for hunters
Speaker 1: to pay attention to because that can happen. That happened
Speaker 1: to him, and I'm sure he didn't expect it, you know,
Speaker 1: but it's it's out there. And I think that's like
Speaker 1: sort of the secret sauce to hunting is the possibility
Speaker 1: of that stuff just falling together and having an amazing
Speaker 1: year or once in a lifetime encounter. I don't I
Speaker 1: don't know. I think it's so cool. So what do
Speaker 1: you think about this idea of luck, because that's certainly
Speaker 1: a term that we toss around all the time in hunting.
Speaker 1: I love it that we're involved in something that is
Speaker 1: so untrackable with logic and science, that we we still
Speaker 1: are operating inside is something that we don't know what's
Speaker 1: going to happen when we step into the woods. We
Speaker 1: just don't know. There's so many variables, so it's so complex,
Speaker 1: like so much going on that we're really not that
Speaker 1: far in a lot of ways from like the Native
Speaker 1: Americans who really saw each hunt as this spiritual experience
Speaker 1: and and there was a lot of ritual, a lot
Speaker 1: of a lot of different stuff going into the to
Speaker 1: the hunt, and they would have absolutely believed in in
Speaker 1: a higher power that would be orchestrating things on earth,
Speaker 1: which I absolutely believe as well. But what are your
Speaker 1: thoughts on hunters and this idea of luck. You know,
Speaker 1: you can look at that like with the Native Americans
Speaker 1: and and you know some of the some of the
Speaker 1: traditions and stuff like pre hunt, and you can look
Speaker 1: at it different ways, right, Like you know you're saying
Speaker 1: that there, and you're right, you know, they were looking
Speaker 1: at like a higher calling or or or something in control,
Speaker 1: some kind of interventionist situation there. But you can also
Speaker 1: look at it and go and they were just psyching
Speaker 1: themselves up for a good hunt, like they were doing
Speaker 1: something mentally that matters. And you know when you talk
Speaker 1: about like attitude and hunters, like I do believe to
Speaker 1: some extent, you make your own luck, right, Like I mean,
Speaker 1: there's something going on where if you encounter a hundred
Speaker 1: and sixty seven inchur in the same year and you
Speaker 1: kill them both, like that's pretty wild or you know
Speaker 1: whatever caliber. But I also think if you go out
Speaker 1: there and you're negative, listen, you're not going to have
Speaker 1: a hot streak, Like it's it's it's just not gonna
Speaker 1: if you have a bad attitude. But if you go
Speaker 1: out there and you believe, you know, things could really
Speaker 1: line up for me, or I've put in some work
Speaker 1: and it feels like this is there, there's a jackpot
Speaker 1: at the end of this. Man. It a lot of
Speaker 1: times it comes, and if it doesn't, you still feel
Speaker 1: pretty good about what you did. Do you think that
Speaker 1: having that positive attitude, though, translates into functional effort that
Speaker 1: you wouldn't have given if you'd had a bad attitude.
Speaker 1: So you know, so that's that would be where the
Speaker 1: rubber meets the road, is that you're excited, you're optimistic,
Speaker 1: and that energy and optimism created from that makes you
Speaker 1: scout a little bit longer, take a little bit extra
Speaker 1: step in terms of getting your tree s in set.
Speaker 1: It makes you sit longer, It makes you go on
Speaker 1: a day when maybe you weren't gonna go, but you're
Speaker 1: that optimism was like, man, I gotta go. I mean,
Speaker 1: so there's there's some real teeth to this idea. Oh
Speaker 1: it's it's huge. I mean just think about you know,
Speaker 1: for for it to come together, so you go out
Speaker 1: in the mountains down in Arkansas and for you to
Speaker 1: kill a good buck down there. Think about how many
Speaker 1: decisions you made to get to that point, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. And and those decisions are influenced by
Speaker 1: how you feel there there, how you felt six months
Speaker 1: ago when you were scouting there, how you felt this
Speaker 1: morning when you got up. Everything that we do in
Speaker 1: this space is influenced by how we feel and what
Speaker 1: we believe is going to happen. You know, if we
Speaker 1: if we don't think anything good is going to happen
Speaker 1: out there, there's no way you're putting in the right effort.
Speaker 1: It's really something that you see like on the public
Speaker 1: land white tail side, where you know, some of these
Speaker 1: people out there they kill consistently everywhere they go, and
Speaker 1: it's not because they don't believe, you know, they're gonna
Speaker 1: crash and burn, like they believe they're gonna go out
Speaker 1: and find that good buck and they go do it
Speaker 1: over and over, and so you can assign luck to that.
Speaker 1: But like, man, why would why would somebody be that lucky?
Speaker 1: Like why are why are there just a couple of
Speaker 1: select few out there who are just lucky everywhere they go?
Speaker 1: Like it's not luck anymore? Like maybe there's some maybe
Speaker 1: there's some life circumstances that slipped in there that are
Speaker 1: pretty lucky, and that's like certainly a thing. But they've
Speaker 1: they've got something going on mentally. That's that's a huge
Speaker 1: benefit over a lot of people. I think Mo Shepherd
Speaker 1: was or He's neighbor, but he was only five years
Speaker 1: old when or he killed those big bucks in nineteen sixty.
Speaker 1: He remembers his dad taking him down to the provinces
Speaker 1: to see the giant racks. Living in a community that
Speaker 1: plays value on hunting certainly helped Mo in becoming one
Speaker 1: of the best Big Woods mountain deer hunters that I know.
Speaker 1: I wanted to ask Mo about his best streak and hunting,
Speaker 1: and I'd like to say that Mo is the one
Speaker 1: who introduced me to Mr Ory back in two thousand eleven.
Speaker 1: Here's Mo. Yeah. I think there's a there's a lot
Speaker 1: of streaks and hunting deer, and especially in the mountains,
Speaker 1: and there's good streaks and then there's bad streaks. I
Speaker 1: had a pretty long period of a bad streaks as
Speaker 1: far as killing big deer. I killed a few deer,
Speaker 1: but they were just your normal, average smaller deer. Just
Speaker 1: to put in the freezer. And then in about two
Speaker 1: thousand and fourteen, I hadn't killed any good deer in
Speaker 1: several years, and I found some sign that looked good.
Speaker 1: I decided to go in there, and weather wasn't very good,
Speaker 1: a lot of high winds, cold winds, and I went
Speaker 1: into this area to three days slip hunting, killed a
Speaker 1: really nice, big wide rack deer in there. And then
Speaker 1: from that year I think that was two thousand and
Speaker 1: fourteen to two thousand and twenty, it was kind of
Speaker 1: the same scenario. I would find sign either late in
Speaker 1: the year or the year before or early in the season,
Speaker 1: and I'd go to hunting it and it was just
Speaker 1: like somebody was put to me to where I needed
Speaker 1: to go. I would go in there and set and
Speaker 1: stand some Sometimes I would slip hunt again. But in
Speaker 1: that six year span I killed eight big bucks, I
Speaker 1: mean dandy bucks for the mountains, and the last one
Speaker 1: I killed was in two thousand twenty and he was
Speaker 1: almost twenty two inches wide inside had thirteen points, just
Speaker 1: a massive, big, old mountain deer. I don't know if
Speaker 1: it's if it's any skill involved in it that much,
Speaker 1: or if you're just in the right place at the
Speaker 1: right time. But I've had bad streaks. If that's the
Speaker 1: best streak I've ever had of hunting deer was from
Speaker 1: two thousand fourteen to two thousand and twenty, that's a
Speaker 1: good streak of hunting Mow. And I like that you
Speaker 1: expanded the time to find parameters of a streak to
Speaker 1: potentially encompassing years. If I asked you about your best streak,
Speaker 1: what would come to mind? Don't forget it or minimize it,
Speaker 1: because I think these streaks can be definers in our
Speaker 1: hunting career. And the good news is is that any
Speaker 1: streak can be broken. We've just got to keep hoping
Speaker 1: of working. I had a pointed question I wanted to
Speaker 1: ask Mo, and he had a pointed answer. If you're
Speaker 1: talking about streaks, how much of it is out of
Speaker 1: your control and how much of it is in your control?
Speaker 1: I say about half and half. I mean, like I said,
Speaker 1: I think you can get yourself in the right places
Speaker 1: at the right times. But then that don't mean that
Speaker 1: deer is going to come through there. That don't mean
Speaker 1: he's gonna come through where you can get a shot
Speaker 1: or anything like that. It's and it doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: it's gonna be a big one. No, it doesn't. It
Speaker 1: may just be a nice dear, you know. And that's
Speaker 1: I guess that's a funny part. I use some trail cameras.
Speaker 1: But out of those big eight deer that I told
Speaker 1: you about, I think I've had one of those on
Speaker 1: a camera. That's some good hunting to kill those deers
Speaker 1: simply on sign terrain features and burning the butt leather,
Speaker 1: sitting in a stand, but leather. That's of course language
Speaker 1: for this podcast. Sorry, Juju. Here's Mo and I talking
Speaker 1: about things that are out of our control. This idea
Speaker 1: is so interesting because we're all trying to figure out
Speaker 1: what to do to be more successful, and so you're
Speaker 1: kind of trying to understand just what can I do
Speaker 1: in the woods that's gonna make me more successful. But
Speaker 1: there's always this component that's out of our control. That
Speaker 1: is just what nature gives you. What happens that's standing
Speaker 1: on your control. Yeah, a lot of size of deer,
Speaker 1: deer movement, just how many deer there did the You
Speaker 1: might kill a deer one year that's an exceptional buck.
Speaker 1: And maybe it was because of the weather that spring
Speaker 1: and the previous year that made him have really great antler,
Speaker 1: same big deer I Fid had had struggled the year
Speaker 1: before or through that winter to eight and survive because
Speaker 1: it had no mass crop. He let no putton here,
Speaker 1: as much of that growth into them horns, and he
Speaker 1: would keep these bodies. And so so there's all these
Speaker 1: factors that we can't control, like ORI's year, Like at
Speaker 1: the weather patterns in the ozarks, to see if it
Speaker 1: was a really wet spring or a really mild winter
Speaker 1: the year before, you know, because those deer could have
Speaker 1: just kind of popped up. I'm not being as magnificent
Speaker 1: as they were. Let's talk about if we can depend
Speaker 1: on luck. I think we're all trying to decide how
Speaker 1: much human effort should go into this, and then how
Speaker 1: much we can depend on luck. We can depend on
Speaker 1: good favor that's beyond our control, because the one thing
Speaker 1: that's for sure is that you're not gonna get lucky.
Speaker 1: You're not gonna have favor. If you're not there, you're
Speaker 1: not gonna get lucky. If you can't shoot your bow
Speaker 1: good and you're not accurate with your weapon, you're not
Speaker 1: gonna get lucky. Like when you kill a deer. The
Speaker 1: eleven forty five, going in and planning to sit all day.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's like a little bit of luck and
Speaker 1: that it was a huge buck that came through that
Speaker 1: gap in the bluff, But there was a lot of
Speaker 1: most shepherd being a good hunter and sitting there, and
Speaker 1: there were a lot of people back home eating lunch,
Speaker 1: and so you know, it's like it's hard to not
Speaker 1: say that luck finds those who are doing a lot
Speaker 1: of work. But there's also the component of if ore.
Speaker 1: He had just killed two really high caliber deer for
Speaker 1: the Ozarks, you know, just big eight points, you know,
Speaker 1: hundred deer. We probably wouldn't be talking about him today
Speaker 1: because that would sort of be normal. But when you
Speaker 1: have like lightning strike and you have just to like
Speaker 1: things that are just like off the charts, it's kind
Speaker 1: of wild and and and you've realized that it really
Speaker 1: was something beyond Yeah. I really like what all the
Speaker 1: guys have said, undeserved favor most often finds those who
Speaker 1: are prepared. And I like the half luck half skill equation.
Speaker 1: I think that's a pretty humble answer. The more times
Speaker 1: you roll the dice, the better the odds are that
Speaker 1: you're gonna get lucky or he spend his life in
Speaker 1: the woods, and the hunters who simply go are usually
Speaker 1: the ones who find the luck. The older I get,
Speaker 1: the more grateful I am when I successfully harvest an animal.
Speaker 1: I think it's because I'm aware of the incredible amount
Speaker 1: of things that could have gone wrong that didn't, that
Speaker 1: were beyond by control. And in closing, I absolutely do
Speaker 1: believe that some things were just meant to be. Yes,
Speaker 1: literally scripted into our lives by divine choice and for
Speaker 1: reasons beyond our understanding. Could a dear be scripted into
Speaker 1: your life? That sounds kind of wild, It's probably not normal,
Speaker 1: but I'd have to say yes. You may have heard
Speaker 1: me tell the story, But in July of two thousand
Speaker 1: and seven, I had a dream that I killed a
Speaker 1: twenty four point buck. The dream was so vivid and
Speaker 1: strong I woke up and sketched a picture of the
Speaker 1: rack in day did it, And then on October two
Speaker 1: thousand seven, I killed a hundred and sixty nine inch
Speaker 1: buck with my bow, the biggest buck I'd ever seen.
Speaker 1: The deer had twenty one score able points per the
Speaker 1: rules of the scoring system, but it had twenty four
Speaker 1: points that you could hang a ring on It's not
Speaker 1: a joke. This buck opened the door for me to
Speaker 1: get into the outdoor industry after I had my first
Speaker 1: three articles ever published about the deer. I'd never considered
Speaker 1: working in the outdoor industry, but it was a stair step,
Speaker 1: long term thing, and now fifteen years later, I'm working
Speaker 1: for meat Eater. This is a true story. The devil
Speaker 1: draped in sparkling light driving a candy apple red Cadillac
Speaker 1: couldn't convince me that this was a coincidence. But was
Speaker 1: it luck? I'd say by a prior definition, yes it was,
Speaker 1: but it was much more than luck. I hunted fifteen
Speaker 1: mornings for the buck, employed a solid strategy, but killing
Speaker 1: the deer and the doors that opened were far beyond
Speaker 1: my control. But I would undeniably say that it was supernatural.
Speaker 1: The highlight of the last forty five minutes has been
Speaker 1: introducing to you all to Orally province. When I met
Speaker 1: him in two thousand and eleven, I recognized he was
Speaker 1: a relic ozark man who had lived a humble, joyful
Speaker 1: life of subsistence, hard work, and faith. I like to
Speaker 1: give honor to men like this, men who didn't ask
Speaker 1: for attention and never expected to get any The beauty
Speaker 1: and intrigue of life is that fantastic stories and people
Speaker 1: surround us. And when someone lives into their nineties, it's
Speaker 1: a special thing. It has the possibility of a unique
Speaker 1: overlap of lives. I took with me that day when
Speaker 1: I went to see him that last time, my son Shepherd,
Speaker 1: who was eleven years old at the time, and when
Speaker 1: she Efford is an old man, should the earth persist,
Speaker 1: he will have literally shook hands and engaged with a
Speaker 1: man who was born in nineteen seven. This is kind
Speaker 1: of wild to do this kind of math, but if
Speaker 1: Shephard lived to his ninety one birthday, which would be
Speaker 1: in the year from nineteen to is the span of
Speaker 1: a hundred and seventy two years. If you do the
Speaker 1: same math with Mr Or who passed away in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: he could have interfaced with a man born in eighteen
Speaker 1: thirty six. That's the year Davy Crockett died, in the
Speaker 1: year that Arkansas became a state. Time is moving faster
Speaker 1: than it feels like, and it's a fraudulent master and
Speaker 1: all we can do is steward the time well that
Speaker 1: we've got And man, I'm gonna be looking for a
Speaker 1: shriek and I know where they come for. Thanks so
Speaker 1: much for listening to Bear Greece. Please do me a
Speaker 1: favor by sharing our podcast with your friends and family.
Speaker 1: And I really do appreciate all the iTunes reviews, even
Speaker 1: the guy that tried to talk Arkansas mountain orogeny with
Speaker 1: me mountain building. And hey, if you're looking for some
Speaker 1: killer nuts and bolts deep dives into white tail strategy,
Speaker 1: check out Mark and Tony's Wired to Hunt podcast. And
Speaker 1: I'm sure looking forward to talking with everyone on the
Speaker 1: Render crew about this podcast next week. See you then,