00:00:05 Speaker 1: We'd named this dear Mowab, mother of all bucks. I don't nickname every dear, I say, but for some reason or another, that one he deserved a nickname. I test Ryan, and I just said, he's in the field. If you can get here, I'm just gonna sit here and wait. I have a group thread with some friends of mine. I just sent them a message and I said, boys, I'm watching Mowab and I'm waiting for Ryan to get here, to shoot him if the Lord wills it. 00:00:31 Speaker 2: My brothers and sisters, we have found ourselves in the beginning days of one of the great festivals of the natural world. For roughly sixty days, the lives of men will overlap a great pageant, ruddy, grunny, acorn, corn and clover eating pageant. What I'm talking about is whitetailed deer hunting of those connected to the land. Whitetail hunting in the fall is one of the greatest celebrations in North America. On this episode, we're back to the basics, telling deer stories. Every storyteller on this episode bleeds a core bear grease frequency. With some it's their passion, woodsmanship, ingenuity, or just deep knowledge of deer honting in others, it's their nod to tradition, love of family and friends. We're gonna hear seven stories and most of them are gonna surprise you. From rolling apples, good mountain horses, Andy Brown's Dads nineteen fifty six, Chevy Mountain Lions, Charlie and Louisdale Edwards, deer dogs, and peeing out of tree stands. This episode has stories that I promise you you are not gonna hear anywhere else. 00:01:46 Speaker 3: And it's Whitetail Week at meat Eater in First Light, So check out all of. 00:01:52 Speaker 2: The team's social media feeds for tips, tactics, and deals this week. And if you're looking for more white tell content, be sure to check out meat Eater's YouTube for our series called One Week in November and a series called. 00:02:07 Speaker 3: The Buck Truck. 00:02:09 Speaker 2: But regardless, you're here now and you're about to hear some incredible stories, and I really doubt that you're gonna want to miss this one. 00:02:17 Speaker 4: In the meanwhile, I'm about to go to the bathroom in my pants. I've got to go so bad, so I'm like, man. 00:02:23 Speaker 3: I can't hold it anymore. 00:02:25 Speaker 4: I've got to go to the bathroom, and I was like, Hey, this might work. 00:02:38 Speaker 2: My name is Clay Nukem, and this is the Bear Grease Podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant, search for insight and unlikely places, and where we'll tell the story of Americans who live their lives close to the land presented by FHF gear, American made, purpose built hunting and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as the places we explore. When you look at the last several hundred years of history of North American wildlife, it's clear that species ebb and flow in their populations. A man's entire life might overlap with a period of low animal numbers. For instance, if you're born in nineteen fifteen, much of your adult life the bob white quail would have been plentiful, maybe even seeming unlimited. But someone born in nineteen eighty would hardly know that a bob white quail existed. The first twenty five years of my life, turkey numbers boomed, but then dwindled to the point I can hardly find turkeys in the haunts of my youth. 00:03:51 Speaker 3: It's really heartbreaking. 00:03:53 Speaker 2: And think of the stories of the bison hunters of the Great Plains, which those animals went from thirty plus million to less than a thousand continental wide. However, the white tailed deer is another story. It's estimated we have twenty five million white tails, and some believe that's even more than pre European settlement numbers. 00:04:15 Speaker 3: We're living in. 00:04:16 Speaker 2: The heyday of white tail deer hunting. Let me say that again. We're living in the heyday of white tail deer hunting. Seasons are long, bag limits are liberal, and bucks just seem to be. 00:04:27 Speaker 3: Getting bigger everywhere. 00:04:29 Speaker 2: I was talking to a fellow the other day who said the liberal season structures make it hard to even break the law deer hunting anymore. He said, we can do things today we could have never done in the decades past, hunting September, kill six deer year and shoot doze. And the information about deer behavior that the average hunter has access to today is unprecedented. There's actually a really cool documentary that just came out called wild Tail America's Wildest Conservation Story, produced by the National Deer Association. 00:05:05 Speaker 3: Look it up. 00:05:05 Speaker 2: Pretty sure it's going to be on Amazon soon. But let's get to these stories, and our first storyteller is from the highlands of western Arkansas. In his community, he is known as one of the best public land mountain deer hunters around. Dale Craig is a cattle rancher, former ferrier. 00:05:25 Speaker 3: And he's a cowboy. 00:05:27 Speaker 2: I went to school with his son, Clint Craig, who made a big run in the PBR as a professional bull rider. These guys are the real deal, and he and his hunting partner Travis Ross, love using horses for deer hunting. It's my pleasure and honor to introduce you to Dale Craig. 00:05:48 Speaker 5: Well, Clay. This this is a one of my stories of hunting in a public land in This is Dale Craig and I grew up. My dad wouldn't he wasn't a hunter, but my mom come from a family that hunted all the time, and I spent a lot of time with my mom's brother, which my uncle, my first cousin. That's where I learned to hunt. Slipping through the woods. We didn't set We just snuck around. You know, if you jump up a no buck, nine times out of ten, he'll run out there fifty seventy five, sometimes a hundred yards. He's gonna spind around, look back at you and see see what's scared him, and then you can you can shoot him, you know, if it's the bulk you're wanting to kill. And that's how I grew up hunting, and that takes me. Probably one of the neatest hunts that I did over in on the public land was in a November in nineteen ninety eight. There was a good buddy of mine. He'd been after this buck and shot at him and missed him. So it was probably I didn't go back in there for four or five days. Yeah, we camped on the on the main road and we'd ride our horses into this public area. And you know, back in them days, we were get up four o'clock in the morning, Travis saddle horses. I'd cook breakfast. We were gung hole. 00:07:10 Speaker 6: Now. 00:07:11 Speaker 5: I went in there that day and I'd hunted hard all day, hadn't even seen a single deer that day. It got on up, It's two o'clock in the afternoon. You know, how to get little sun, get the beating down here, you get hot. I was hot and sweating. I went around this leg, started off the mountain there, headed back towards my horse, and I got in a bunch of rocks, big old rock out cropping film. I got the smelling, you know how where a buck's been bedding. He just bed today after day after day. And they just there was beds everywhere in these rocks. There was buck crap everywhere, and they'll secrete that that all when they're rubbing their old glands, comes out of their gland. There was just all on the leaves all around. And I walked through there, and finally I foun where that buck had been coming in to this beding area, and he just had a trail war going out. It was headed west. I walked followed that trail out there, and it just dropped off in a big canyon. At the bottom of that canyon, it tied onto the main part of the mountain. So I just sat down there, and that mountain was steep. I had my feet up against a tree, got my grunt call out. I blew my grunt three or four times, stuck it back in my pocket, and had this big old apple. I was hungry. I pulled that apple out and I took her by that apple. I didn't even start chewing on that apple yet, and I heard a brush start crashing on the main part of the mountain. It sounded like I heard a deer coming down through there, and I just kind of froze there for a little bit. And this deer I just see glimpses of it. I mean, it was making a bee line offside that mountain. It was across a big, big canyon, big valley across there. You just see glimpses of it every once in a while. And I could see horns, and I knew it was a good buck. 00:09:05 Speaker 1: When it's and. 00:09:07 Speaker 5: It ran to the bottom there and I could just I couldn't make it out completely if I could see some legs and horns, and uh, you don't have them beech saplings that get real thick on a it is a watered hole. I come off here and there there was a bunch of those and had yellow leaves on them. That deer was behind a bunch of that stuff, and I thought, well, he'll take a step here in a minute and get out there an oat ma and get a shot at him. Well, I had that apple on my left hand, so I just reached over and I laid that apple down in the leaves, and I turned that apple loose, pulling my hand back and that apple took off down the mountain, rolling and it made the god off the sound you ever heard. I thought, I just started cringing. I thought, boy, I have fouled this hunt up. And about that time, that buck he just took off running that towards that out and that apple it would go five six foot in the air and then hit the ground. It just cuts on, cuts on off down the side. And that buck thought it was another deer. And he come running up through there, and I'm I'm talking. He's his old Harris turned wrong side out. He's all bristled up, had his old tongue right out, and it is a block by coming up through there. 00:10:22 Speaker 7: He was ready for a fight. 00:10:24 Speaker 5: And he ran up probably fifty to seventy feet and just threw the brakes on. 00:10:30 Speaker 4: Well. 00:10:31 Speaker 5: Whenever he stopped, there was an old black jack tree there. It had his head and his front part of his front shoulder covered up, but I could see horns, I could see his nose, but from about the third rib back I could see all that. And I finally I picked out a little hole of about three or four inches wide through that black jack brush. I put that cross hair on that and I squeezed it off, and that deer hit the ground. I mean he was dead. Ountain was so steep he went off of it backwards, just slide and went all the way to the creek. And bought him down there on the creek. And he wasn't the biggest set of horns on the deer I've ever killed, but that for a mountain buck. He was probably a one hundred. I've weighed quite a few deer. He'd weigh one hundred and seventy five or more. He was a big, big buck. That apple rolling off air that just if that apple hadn't rolled off their he might not run up there in my face and let me kill him. You know, I'd gut him. And I never killed a deer that I couldn't throw on that horse. I mean, I pick him up and put him up on the throw him up on the saddle. 00:11:40 Speaker 1: But I couldn't load this deer. 00:11:42 Speaker 5: So I had to get my horse in a big was shout in the creek and tied him up there and drug that deer down. That old horse he is generally you could pile deer all over him. And I wrestled that deer up in the saddle tied his front feet to one side of the saddle and his back feet to the gird on the other side, and crawled up in the saddle and wrote back to camp. 00:12:05 Speaker 2: I love the live action drama of Dale's hunt. Just when things seemed like they couldn't get better, a buck responding to a grunt call. That's a good thing, things got worse real quick with that rolling, jumping apple. 00:12:18 Speaker 3: I laughed when he. 00:12:19 Speaker 2: Said that apple was bouncing five feet off the ground. But then when he thought everything was run, the deer shockingly responded by running straight towards that apple, which it clearly thought was a charging buck. That was a good deer story Dale. Our next storyteller is Dale's good friend Travis Ross. He's a full time ferrier and would bleed cornbread if you cut him. Travis is gonna tell a bit about his history as a deer hunter and when Dale introduced him to a new way of hunting. You're gonna hear a few names in this one that anybody that's been listen then the bear grease for a while might know. I'll give you a hint, genuine outlaws. 00:13:06 Speaker 3: Here's Travis. 00:13:09 Speaker 8: Well, this is Travis Russ My dad was a fox and wolf hunter. He run run dogs, they run colts. There was a bunch of that in this country back then, go to field trials whatever. But we also, you know, we deer hunting. We run deer with dogs. You get on stand. Everybody gets a designate spot, and some stands is better than others. But you sit there till the dogs run a deer over you. I mean, I love listening to them. I still do to this day. Love hear a good race. So anyway, I've done that forever and couldn't hard to kill nothing. I mean, it's hard to kill a deer that's coming by you one hundred mile an hour and when you shot at him, you emptied your gun at him. You know, it's a totally different way of hunt. It's just you just shoot till you run out of bullets and you either kill it or you do So anyway, I was a rodeo in two at the time and team roping a little bit and riding bulls, had horses, been working for Dale and his dad, Dawn, working cattling whatever, working for them, And anyway, one year there is nineteen ninety one, Dale said, uh, why don't we go up in the mountains and uh take our horses in there and uh go hunting, take a bedroll. 00:14:26 Speaker 3: We'll spend the. 00:14:27 Speaker 8: Night, come up next day. And I'm like that parked me up, you know, rifle pony in me. I'm all in, I'm about that. Let's go. So we we do, and we'd take off. We leave out about what daylight that morning. We headed up in there and we rode about four or five miles. We found a spot we were in camp. We made camp, which we didn't make camp. We just throw the stuff off our horses and tied them up. 00:14:51 Speaker 3: We went hunting. 00:14:52 Speaker 5: Yeah, we hit it out hunh Well, after. 00:14:54 Speaker 8: A little while, it wasn't very long. I heard a two seventy gold up on side of the mountain. I knew it was him. All well, cool, we got something. And I'd seen some deer and this and that ren You know, I didn't know what I was doing. There ain't no dogs running after I was on up in the afternoon. Probably I'm kind of up on the mountain a little ways there. I heard a up up and I'm listening. I know what that is, and directly got a little closer, a little closer. There's some dogs come over the mountain, and I got to looking there, just a big long leg come off the mountain. It's coming right to where I'm at. And I'm like, you know, if they crossed where I think they are, I go back in the dog mode. 00:15:40 Speaker 7: They're going to run right down here. 00:15:42 Speaker 8: And I used to open and middle of that leg or that gap that was there, and I looked up. Here come this buck just flying off that mountain, just locking them dogs. Right after Well, I had my thirty thirty Winchester full of bullets, like I knew how to do. I went to Levern add him about forty yards and I probably shot five or six times, didn't I I about emptied it. But moral of the story is I couldn't get away from the dog running and the dogs wound up being Louidale and Charlie Edwards's dogs that were running that deer, and I don't know where they come from. Was that the same year we talked about hanging their collars on the limb. 00:16:22 Speaker 5: We were back in there later and they had some dogs that come in there and just bet it up with us. Sinatra was gonna take their tracking collars and hang them up there. 00:16:31 Speaker 8: He's gonna take their collars out and hang them on top of the mountain, leave it up there. 00:16:35 Speaker 5: But we didn't do no Charlie that second time, or no. Louidale told me to eat. He said, I found where you all been camping. Said I had to walk in there and them dogs was betted up there eating up scrapsy'all left. Yeah, I remember they walked in there and got them dogs. 00:16:53 Speaker 8: I never did tell Ludale. If I'd have told Louidale about killing a deer in front of his dog, he probably wouldn't have been mad, but he'd have wanted half of that deer. 00:17:03 Speaker 1: We was all friends. 00:17:04 Speaker 8: He'd have just been like, I can't believe you killed a deer in front of my dog and didn't tell me. We just didn't tell him. Yeah, even though as my first hunt in the mountains, I hunted every year probably until past five years. Yeah, I have hunted them mountains and old boots a horse. Boots was really good at hauling deer and I added up. One year I hauled thirty two deer out of the mountains on boots. I mean you let him up to a deer, dropped the reins on the ground and grabbed it and throwed it on him, and he'd just kind of turn and look at it and go and he'd go out of the mountains just same speed as he went in, which was really slow. 00:17:51 Speaker 3: That was a good story, Travis Ross. 00:17:53 Speaker 2: And for those who've been around Bear Greece for a while, you'll remember our Genuine Outlaws series that started an episode fIF two where we did a profile on Louisdale and Charlie Edwards. That was one of our most listened to series, right up there with Daniel Boone and Hulk Collier. Travis's story also introduced us to deer hunting with dogs, which is a long standing tradition in some parts of the country, well actually very few parts of the country. We could have a debate on the pros and cons of running deer with dogs. 00:18:27 Speaker 3: I'm well aware of the cons, but. 00:18:31 Speaker 2: I believe the traditional use aspects of running dogs is incredibly strong, and that the institution has an incalculatable cultural value in the broad picture of American hunting in the places where it's practiced. I'm an advocate for hunters and traditional use practices. There are plenty of places where you cannot run dogs if you don't want to be around running. 00:18:55 Speaker 3: Dogs go to one of those places. 00:18:58 Speaker 2: I believe in a person's right to hunt the way they see fit, within the boundaries of the law and within the big picture conservation agenda of where they're at. I grew up as a bow hunter in an area where everyone ran dogs, and I never had any trouble. It's just something we calculated for. 00:19:15 Speaker 3: I love it. 00:19:16 Speaker 2: As we'll hear in later episodes, dog hunting is tough and often and inefficient way to hunt. If your goal is to kill deer, way more deer are killed over food plots, corn piles, and out of tree. 00:19:28 Speaker 3: Stands with bows and arrows. 00:19:31 Speaker 2: I love the regional diversity of our country, and I love supporting the way that people want to hunt. And for the record, for the record, it's no joke to take the callers off a hunting dog. That's why Dale and Travis made a joke about taking callers off a hunting dog. They knew not to do that, and they didn't, and it was funny. Our next story teller is none other than Andy Brown from Western Arkansas. He's one of the best storytellers that I know. Andy's in his mid sixties and has a long track record with the Bear Grease podcast. He was a guest on the Louis Dellen Charlie series, and he's told multiple deer in Turkey hunting stories to us. That's part of the reason that I asked him. Remember that I asked Andy specifically to tell us this story, and it's about his upbringing and. 00:20:30 Speaker 3: Particularly about his father. 00:20:33 Speaker 2: I think this story gives some context from where Andy came from, but really where we came from, and that is important to not forget. In Andy's words, this one is a little raw. And remember in this story, Andy is ten years old. Here's Andy Brown. 00:20:55 Speaker 6: Telling the story. What I'd like to do. I'd just like to give you a little history about my dad. My dad's name was Barney and he was tenth of eleven kids born in nineteen nineteen, if that tells you anything. So you know he had a lot of older siblings. You know he was he was a little rough around the edge, as you know. But I don't mind telling you this. He was in reform school and when he got out of reform school, he went to prison for four months and twenty days back when he was in his teenage years. And this is kind of funny too. He did that. He broke into Dick Huddles history at Pine Ridge, Yeah, and went to my uncle and my uncle when him went to the Sheriff's office, he turned himself in. But yeah, but Dad was just it was a whole different generation. And Dad had a lot of faults. But if he told you something, that's what he meant. He was true to his word. And I think that's important in our life is I think telling the truth this most important thing to do. And Dad was that way. But he didn't really care what people thought. But anyway, my dad was not what you would call a I don't know. My dad was a dog man. He loved his dogs, and you know, growing up, that's all I knew. I mean, to deer hunt was the dog hunting, and everybody I knew dog hunting, some of those guys, you know, it wasn't really about the dog gray It was listening to the dog's run, you know. But with Dad, deer hunting was it was more. You know, I think about today, how we're so wanting to kill a big deer and a big rack of horns and brag about the horns. That had nothing to do with the way things were then. It was all about to meet. And I tell this story a lot, but I was for five years I grew up. I was the first one on the bus route and I was the last one off every day. And in five years we never seen but two deer in those five years that we were on a bus route. And this was country bus route. This wasn't a highway. This was back in the sticks. To be honest with you, I don't think that I saw the first ten or eleven years of my life. I don't know that I saw ten deer alive or dead. You know, people today can't imagine that as many deer as we got. I mean, you can leave right here in fifteen minutes you can see a bunch of deer somewhere, you know, But there wasn't any So deer hunting was the guys that get together, and you know, back in those days, it was a meat hunt. They wasn't after the horns. The old stories. You can't bull, you can't buil somebody set of horns. That's the way the more boys believed that. But anyway, one particular story, that's it's a little raw, but this is kind of the way it was. We were north of and dadd Attorney's dogs loose. They come back up there on what we call the new road, and they turned north and they jumped, and we were trying to you know, we were trying to shoot deer the road, you know. I mean we manned the roads. And not only do we man the roads, we manned the highways, you know. And this is nineteen sixty six, you know, nineteen sixty six, nineteen sixty seven, and the first time I ever stood on a stand, I had a single shot twenty two. That's why we hunted. And Dad had a Winchester automatic twenty two. You know, back when you were supposed to wear orange, we wore red. You know, we have a red ball cap on or something red, and lots of times not but this particular time Dad, and I know Larry and Reebay wouldn't mind me saying this, and Autis Ager was a great good friend of his, and so me and Dad and Ottis and his son Larry turned dogs loose up there in the north And in those days they had dogs that deer were going to the river. I mean, that was the deal. They would put them in the river. Eventually they were going to go to the river. But anyway, they had made a big rip in there north and run back in there on the creek and kind of lost it down in the creek. And we were right north of a place called Hiland up there. Dad and I had pulled up there. And this is funny too. Dad had had a fifty six Chevrolet pick up, and of course it was a great truck with a red door, got. 00:25:19 Speaker 7: A red door on the left side. 00:25:22 Speaker 6: And it did the door didn't last, so we had to bail it. You know, you're bailing warded, you know it would. But anyway, we was up there and Dad says, come on, let's go down on the creek. See we catch the dogs. So about the time we headed off the road there, the dogs just jumped out of the creek and they headed back west. And Dad says, they're going to Nelson Hoover Curve. We jumping that old fifty six and men, now there we went, and I'm telling you, sideways in the road and down there around the grave, we'd have met somebody. We'd just run over them, was all we'd have done. Here we go up the highway going west, just as fast as that old truck had run and had a three speed on the call and probably a sixder. But anyway, we was running just as fast as she'd run. And so we run up there and when we start around the curve, Dad goes to slow him down. He said, they're going to cross right here. And about that time, here comes the deer off the bank of the road, and if it gets across the highway, it's gone to the river, you know. And Dad said, hold. 00:26:24 Speaker 7: On, he said, he said, he said, hold ond. 00:26:28 Speaker 6: He slung that thing up the second gear and we just run that deer down and just run over it like I just run over. And what he did the hair just bull like you busted a pillow, you know, in the front end. And he looks back and it's getting up. He throws are reversed. We run back over the back over and the hair is just this going, you know. Anyway, Dad jumps out of the truck with the twenty two and shoots it and it runs off up in the woods, and you know, we're on the highway. I mean, we're right, we're on the highway. Of course, in nineteen sixty six there's not a lot of traffic on. 00:27:03 Speaker 3: The highway anyway. 00:27:06 Speaker 6: About that time here comes about twelve of them. July is off the bank of the road out out in the highway and Aunus and Larry pull up and they're trying to gather dogs and the cars going by, and so we run up the bank and that deer is just laying right inside the woods there and Dad grabs it by the leggings that come on back off the bank and there's a big high clay bank there. We head back off that. Here comes the car. Dad just sits down on that deer. 00:27:34 Speaker 3: Right on the side of the road on the bank. 00:27:36 Speaker 6: You know. There he sense on this steer giving her one of these As the cars go by anyway, we know that thing and gather the dogs up and now there we went. But you know, I tell that story that you know that sounds cruel, but there wasn't a smidgeon of that deer went to waste, and it was it was quite a treat for us, you know, in those days. I don't even know klay if there was fifty sixty deer killed in the county total in those days. And to kill a buck deer was just it was unbelievable. And I said all that say this, you know, Dad, he probably didn't kill twenty five deer in his entire life. And he had my uncle John, which was sixteen years older than him. There was a hunter two. He killed three in his entire life. So when the guys got together and killed a deer, it was a big deal. Everybody split it. There was none that went to waste. In fact, Dad would he would bring when he would come in. A lot of people didn't like the heart and liver. Well Dad did and we did too. And Mother could cook that stuff, to fry that liver and make a big pan of gravy. Be where's the gravy was the best far as you know, but god, it was good. And she'd take the heart and do the same thing. And then he would take lots of times to make a piece of neck, you know, And she would cut part of the meat off the neck and she'd fry at forest, you know, And then she would take the neck bone and put it in a big old pot of bowl and water and throw salt to it and you know, buill it and we'd suck the meat out and the bones and the broth. But whole different world, you know. When I was thinking about this podcast and what somebody might think about what I just said about running over the deer toy we did. She'd run over deer once. We run over the deer twice, you know, and shoot the deer. But I think about I think about some of the other podcasts you've done, and you know, some people being critical, a little bit critical about the way people did things in those days. But you know, really my dad was from a generation that wouldn't have cared what they thought. I mean, he would not have cared. But that's just the way he was, you know, That's the way we grew up. And you know, thank god, down the road, I had an uncle that took he interested in me and taught me how to steal honey. 00:29:56 Speaker 2: You know, that was a good story and a reminder of where we've come from. When I think about a story like this and how much I love it. Clearly, no one, no one including Andy, is suggesting that we be trying to hit deer with our cars. But the story does a great job of showing just how valuable that. 00:30:19 Speaker 3: Deer were to these people. 00:30:21 Speaker 2: Which that value would roll right into Andy's life, which he translated into becoming a master woodsman and hunter, and that would roll into his son my friend Scott Brown, also master woodsman and deer hunter and now into Scott's Boys. Thanks for telling us about your dad, Andy, I think that helps put a lot of this in perspective for us today. Our next storyteller is none other than my old friend Moe Shepherd, another Bear Grease regular and a master public land deer hunters. Got a unique story with a mysterious end. I know you're gonna enjoy it. Here's mope, Okay. 00:31:11 Speaker 7: This deer story took place in the northwest part of Arkansas and those Arc Mountains. It was a late season hunt at the time. There was a muzzler or season ran in latter part of December. I'd already killed a pretty nice buck earlier in the year, and the mask crop was pretty low that year, which made it easier to find deer when its mast is low in the mountains and they really concentrate on where there is some mast. I'd hunted in this particular earlier in the year and found quite a bit of sign. I didn't kill a deer in there anything, but I found quite a bit of sign anyway. About three days prior to when I was going to hunt. This was about I think it was in the year two thousand. I blazed when it was and there was a big snow and ice storm head in northwest Arkansas about the fifteenth or sixteenth of December. Anyway, I decided, well, all that stuff on it was, like I said, there was six seven eight inches of snow and ice on everything, so it had all the ground stuff covered up. So I thought where I wanted to hunt. I had a couple of days to hunt. I thought, well, I'm gonna go up in the head of this big canyon where I've had success before, and I was in there earlier, and there was a lot of I don't know what the real name for is. When I was a kid growing up, they called them sawbars. A lot of people call them green briars. There was a lot of those up in the trees. There were some old home places in there where I was hunting at, and I knew deer would be feeding on them because they couldn't get anything under the frozen forest floor, even if there was acres anything. So I decided to go in there and hunt, but it was really cold. It was in the teens, so I didn't even hunt that morning. Well I'm gonna go in there in the afternoon when the sun comes out and it's a little bit warmer. So I made my way down in there over this slick train and family a good place and got set up on the ground there where I could see down into some of these green briars. And I didn't even go down there where they was at, but I knew there was some deer, and I thought, if there's deer in here, they're gonna come around to these and feet. So I got set there, and i'd set there quite a while I hadn't seen a thing, and then it was probably hour before dark. I seen some movement and I seen a deer coming around the hillside. It was coming towards me, but it was still way out of muzzleload to range. I was just shooting with an old Thompson Center renegade muzzleloader with open sites, and I could see this deer and then it would vanish in the green bars, but I could see it pretty good and when it would move because all that ice and snow was on the ground, Finally it got in range of me. And I wasn't very smart that day that I didn't take me no binoculars or anything. I was just using my eyes. And finally it got and it raised its head and I see it was a pretty nice buck, but it was facing towards me, so I thought, well, I'll just be patient and wait. Finally it got down there, probably sixty yards from me or so, and kind of turned sideways and raised its head up, eat some green bars, and I draw the bead on it. Shot. When I shot, of course the smoke ball and I couldn't see nothing, but I seen the deer running off the same way it came from, back around the hillside. It was about the hour of dark then, so I sat there a little bit set there, and I thought, well, I need to go see if i'd hit it or not. So I walked around there to where i'd shot, and sure enough there was a little bit of hair on that ice and snow and a few specks of blood, and I thought, well, I've made a head on it, so it's getting going to get dark pretty quick. I got my buzzleload to reloaded, so I started trailing it. I trailed it around probably fifty or seventy five yards, and then I couldn't hardly find any blood, and you couldn't hardly see where the deer went because that stuff was frozen so hard. Then I realized I didn't even have a light on me. I'd forgot to bring a light or anything with me, and it was cold. I thought, well, it's in the teens here. This deer is not going to spoil if I did get it, I'm gonna walk out here and come back early in the morning. So I did. I went home and slept the best I could myself. I just can't sleep good when I'm thinking about something like that the next morning, but I did get some breast, so I got in there and went back in there the next morning when I could see good, went right back to where I was sat and looked it all over again, and went back out to where I found the first blood. Didn't see where I hid anything, So I thought, I've made it. I should have made a, you know, a fatal hit on this deer. So I went to where I found the last bud, walk a few specks, and I went to circling and I found a few more spots of blood. I tracked it probably another fifty or seventy five yards, and now I look out there in front of me, and I see coloration on the snow. So I go out there, and there is this blood everywhere on this snow. I figured the deer laid down there or something other. I mean, there's a lot of blood, Like, I don't see how this deer is not laying right here. There's so much blood on this snow and ice, you know. And I've killed a lot of deer through the years, and when one bleeds that much, it's I just don't see hat could live anyway. But there's no deer there. And I look all around. I look up the hill, I look down the hill. I can't find no blood other than right there. Its blood is just scattered everywhere there. So I just start circling in there. I started making my circles. 00:36:05 Speaker 1: Bigger and bigger. 00:36:07 Speaker 7: I spend all day in there looking for that deer, mostly around the hill and down the hill. I just don't see how this deer got up and got out of here, but it's bound to it because it's not here. So I looked all the rest that day, and finally I just give up. I thought I ain't going to find it. I don't know how it done it, but out it got up and got away from me. Anyway, I stayed here almost dark, left back out of there, and went home, jumped forward a little ways. That was in December, the same area I turkey hunt a lot, so it was in the first part April, whenever Turkey season open. I was in there turkey hunting, but I wasn't down as far as I was when I shot the deer. That didn't even cross my money other than I was thinking, you know, this is where I lost that deer. This is where I lost that deer back in December. Didn't find it. 00:36:56 Speaker 8: Well. 00:36:56 Speaker 7: I'm going around a little in their bench up higher, about two little short benches, probably only one hundred and fifty yards up the hill, and I'm pretty close to where I had lost that deer, and I see something white around the hillside there on this same bench I'm walking on. I thought, what am I seeing? I don't know what that is, but something's white out there in a tree. And I get a little bit closer and I can make out looks almost like some bone white. I thought, what am I seeing up in that tree? And it's a big old tree. It's a big old gum tree that's growed down the steep hillside, and it kind of leans a little bit, but it's it's not leaned very much. You couldn't walk up it or anything. You'd have to hug it and climb it to. 00:37:35 Speaker 6: Get up it. 00:37:36 Speaker 7: And I walk on out there where I'm seeing that white and I look up in the tree and lo and behold there is a deer's skull and the set of horns that looks like the deer that i'd shot it. It was like an eight point. It's a pretty nice mountain deer eight point. And the whole spinal column back to the pelvic area was all intact, laying up in a fork on this big gum tree. And I just stood there for a while and I'm thinking, how did that get up there? Then I'm thinking, could that be my deer that I shot that I couldn't find right down below here? And then I'm still thinking, but how in the world did it get up in that tree? And I'm thinking of everything. I thought, well, if that's it, that could explain why I didn't find the deer, you know, But I said, I just can't believe that it got up from all that blood and came up this hill. But then how did it get up in this tree? 00:38:31 Speaker 4: You know? 00:38:31 Speaker 7: I had three thoughts. I thought, maybe a great big bobcat drug this carcass or these bones up in this tree, or maybe a bear drug it up in this tree. Or maybe something is really rare in this part of Arkansas, maybe a mountain lion. I'm not sure how that carcass got up there, but it was way up in this tree. It was probably fifteen or eighteen feet up in this fork in this tree. I'm skeptical by a lot of things than most people are up and drug that carcass up into that tree. Whether it was drug up in there when it was still full size, or if it's a totally different deer, I don't know. That's that's just my assumption. I think that's the deer that I shot in December. But to me, that may explain how all that blood was down there and then it just vanished. But in this same drainage at this time, I hadn't seen one in there. But about three or four years after that, I was bow hunting back in here on the other side of the canyon, which was about a mile away, and I was bow hunting and a climber tree stand and Clay Knukin may not believe it but I told him about it. Anyway, I was sitting in a tree stand and see something moving coming around the hillside, and I thought, well, here comes a deer. And then it got within about thirty five forty yards of me, and then I seen a cat's head come out of some little bushes there. I thought, good gosh, that's a huge bobcat. And then it walks on out from the bushes in the wide opened it probably thirty thirty five yards from me, and it's not a bobcat. It's a cougar or mountain lion. It's got a long tail, and it comes walking by me and then vanishes into the bushes just as quick as it came out. I saw it for probably eight or ten seconds walking in front of me. But in hindsight, at the time that I found that carcass while I was turkey hunting, I believe it had to be one of those three things. It had to be either a bear or a big bobcat or possible mountain lion. I think drug that carcass away and stored it up in that tree to eat on the remnants of the bones. Like I said, when it drugg it up there, I don't know, but that's my theory on the deer that I lost with my muzzloder and then found the carcass the following spring during Turkey Sea. I have that skull and the horns off of that deer that is up in that tree. I always have ropes and stuff with me, you know, for pulling up stuff, for tying stuff up in a tree if I get it a hunting some rugged trunk. And I remember, I thought, how can I get that out of that tree? So I took some of my rope that I had in my pouch, and I tied a rock onto it, and I started throwing it on that rope up at that and I finally throwed it up and I don't know if it's stuck through the ribcage or what, but it stuck any enough I was able to jerk and pull around it, and I pulled that whole thing down out of the forks of that tree. And I still have that skull and that eight point rack hanging in my house right now that I retrieved that day during Turkey season. And also for a final word on all this, I hope that Gary believer Nucombe is listens to this story and that way, maybe that he'll be a little more believer than what he is right now that they're out there. 00:41:45 Speaker 3: MO, that was a good story. But now it's my turn to tell you what I think. I believe. 00:41:51 Speaker 2: It probably was a mountain lion that stole your buck, but not the one you claimed to have seen, because ten mountain lions rarely rag their kills up in trees. Everybody knows that, but I happened to be an expert on a particular type of feline that does. I'm certain the critter that stole your buck was none other than a black panther. 00:42:14 Speaker 3: He drug it up in that gum tree. 00:42:16 Speaker 2: The haters will say it's a lie, but I know the truth. That was a good story, MO, man, what a mystery, What a mystery. Our next story is a short one from my good buddy, Aaron Standful. He's an incredible deer hunter who's killed twenty four bucks that have scored over the poping young minimum with his bow. But guess what, when I asked him to tell the story, not one of those bucks came to his mind, but this story did. Here's an unconventional deer story from Aaron Stanfil. 00:43:01 Speaker 4: I'm not sure where to start. But well, you know, back in those days, I didn't even start bow hunting seriously till I was twenty one. Didn't really start really bow hunting until nineteen ninety seven. You know. Prior to that, the deer numbers from where I was from just weren't there, and if they were, I was unaware of them. Just to see a deer out of a tree stand was awesome. A buck would have been a whole nother deal, but we didn't care at the time. We were just trying to kill a deer. We were just learning how to archery hunt, and it was a big deal to kill a deer with a bow and arrow. It was October of two thousand and one public land, northwest Arkansas, and we had just a mass crop of white oak acorns that year. The trees were just loaded, and I had found a ridge that was just full of deer sign I mean, there was droppings everywhere. And it was the first year that I had to climbing tree stand so it made me more mobile. But anyway, I got up in this huge pine tree and I'm sitting there and acrons are just falling everywhere. I mean, it's just raining white oaks, and directly I see these two little deer. They're feeding up this ridge towards me. And every time that the acrons would fall, I would notice that these these little deer would just they just go over there right where they fell and just start eating them. And they'd eat a couple there, and then they'd fall over here, and then they'd go over there, tree to tree, and I thought, man, it's like, well, wish they'd get in here. And I watched them for over an hour nothing. They just kept going back and forth, and the meanwhile, I'm about to go to the bathroom in my pants. 00:44:39 Speaker 1: I've got to go so bad. 00:44:42 Speaker 4: And back then I didn't go in a bottle. I didn't go on the ground. I thought you had to hold it or you would get winded, you know. So I'm like, man, I can't hold it anymore. I've got to go to the bathroom. So I start doing my business here and I go just a little bit. And when I did, it just went. It was super dry in the leaves and it just. 00:45:02 Speaker 3: Went like that. 00:45:05 Speaker 4: Well those deer they just threw their ears up and just looked over there, and I was like, hey, this might work, and it I immediately went from just going the bathroom to like calling a deer in by going the bathroom. 00:45:20 Speaker 6: You know. 00:45:21 Speaker 4: So I started going again, and they just throw their head up again, and they. 00:45:25 Speaker 3: Start coming towards me. 00:45:27 Speaker 4: Oh yeah, I mean like and then just stop. 00:45:30 Speaker 6: You know. 00:45:31 Speaker 4: Well they just get closer and closer and closer. And I thought, no one's gonna believe. 00:45:36 Speaker 6: No one's gonna believe this. 00:45:37 Speaker 4: By the way, well I just I did that for like ten times. I mean I had to go. Well, finally they get in there, like right in front of me. You know, I thought, I cannot believe this just happened. Well, I drew back and I just smoked that first little old sucker. She runs over there. I thought it was I thought it was a little doe. It ran over there and died, and the other one just ran off. But here it come back. It just come back. I guess it wanted to check on it. It's buddy, you know. 00:46:08 Speaker 7: And I shot it too, and I was so proud. I was so excited. 00:46:11 Speaker 4: I thought, no one's gonna believe that I a lured these deery and by going to the bathroom. Uh, and I end up I ended up killing a little button buck, and uh, I killed a buck and a doe, and uh. We still call that button buck ridge to this day. 00:46:27 Speaker 2: That's some innovative deer calling aaron about as good as Dale Craig rolling an apple down the hill. I love to celebrate a big buck, but I love celebrating just a good deer hunt. Some of my most memorable stories weren't the big ones, and I think it's important we celebrate them. That's what my dad, Gary Believer Nukeam, taught me is that any deer is a real trophy. That's the bear grease way. Our next storytelling is me. This is one of my favorite stories about a red oak raining acrens on a field edge. It would have been about two thousand and six. My daughter was four years old, and it was early bow season in northwest Arkansas. And for whatever reason, I don't recall the circumstances, but Misty was doing something and I had my oldest daughter, Willow with me for the afternoon, which was very common, and I wanted to go deer hunting, but also had Willow. 00:47:34 Speaker 3: She's four years old. 00:47:36 Speaker 2: I had been on places I'd hunted for a long time, a piece of private ground up here in the day before, I'd been on that farm and I had just drove through a pasture and there was a big red oak, I bet it's four foot in diameter, growing along the bank of a creek, and it was raining red oak acorns. 00:47:56 Speaker 3: And I watched about two. 00:47:59 Speaker 2: Hours before a group of deer come out of the field and just make a beeline for that red oak. And I took note of that. And it wasn't the kind of place that you would typically set up to hunt. It just was kind of on the edge of a field, out in the wide open. It was a long ways from any cover, and the tree was so big you couldn't put a stand in it, and there was nowhere else to put a stand for that tree. Well, that afternoon came and I just I said, well, let's go deer hunting, and so I loaded up a bunch of snacks and some books. And I knew something about that particular tree that I hadn't told you yet is that it's set right on the cut bank of the creek, meaning it was the outside bend of this creek. 00:48:46 Speaker 3: So the front side of this tree is looking out over a big field. 00:48:50 Speaker 2: I mean, the roots of this tree are hanging out into thin air over this creek, and this this creek is eroding the roots, and there's about a four foot cut bank directly behind the tree. 00:49:04 Speaker 3: That's point number one. 00:49:05 Speaker 2: Number two is is this red oak was growing out along the edge of this field for so long that it had some fairly low hanging limbs. 00:49:14 Speaker 3: Which is unusual. 00:49:15 Speaker 2: You know, a big red oak in the timber is going to have limbs twenty foot up. This tree had had a limb unusually low to the ground, which would allow for a young spry man like myself to climb up it. So I take Willow with me out to that tree, and I set her down on the cut bank, cleared out a little spot in the rocks, and set her right beside that tree, and gave her her books and her candy, and I shimmeied up that tree to a big limb about as big a round as a big man's thigh, that was about eight feet nine feet off the ground. And I sat on the limb of that red oak, and I could look directly below me and just to the back and see Willow and make eye contact with her and talk to her. But to the field, she was totally out of sight completely. She could have stood up and the deer coming wouldn't have been able to see her. You know, I tied my bow on a string. I set her down there, and. 00:50:27 Speaker 3: I say, Willow, I'm gonna climb up in that tree and wait for a deer. We got to be quiet. 00:50:32 Speaker 2: But you read your books and if you need anything, we can talk. But we just have to talk quiet. And you read your books and eat your snacks, and uh, we're gonna sit here for a while. And you know, made it a big, big something fun in the adventure. And man, she sat down there and she read her books and played and I would just look down and watch her. You know, she's probably thirteen fourteen feet below me, just directly. And man, I hadn't set there an hour. And I look across the field and I see a dough deer step out of that field. And she looks both ways and kind of meanders around, and directly she just comes straight to this red oak. And I draw back my Matthews, Z Max, and that deer is about twelve yards away, and shoot that deer just tendring that dough. 00:51:22 Speaker 3: She doesn't make it out of the field. Willow hears me shoot. 00:51:26 Speaker 2: I look down and she's looking up, and I'm like, got her, and we go retrieve that deer and go home. That hunt was special to me just just because of a unique circumstance. And I think that's part of being a hunter and being having a family, which so many of us do, is you got to make things work. And so I accomplished a bunch that day. I didn't neglect my responsibilities as a father, took my daughter out into the wild and accomplished a big time going at the time, which was to kill a deer with a bow and arrow over a red oak, rain and acrons. 00:52:06 Speaker 3: Big day. I love it. 00:52:11 Speaker 2: I'll never forget looking down from the limb of that red oak at my daughter tucked in behind the cutbank with her books and snacks. 00:52:21 Speaker 3: And cute little smile. 00:52:23 Speaker 2: She was laughing, playing and smiling less than twenty yards from North America's wiliest critter, a white tailed dough. 00:52:30 Speaker 3: I love it. 00:52:32 Speaker 2: Our final story is told by a guy that I've known most of my life, Luke Austin. He's a veteran hunter and woodsman, and I know that you're going to enjoy this one. It exemplifies what honting means to us, and hey, this is a big buck story. 00:52:49 Speaker 3: Here's Luke. 00:52:54 Speaker 1: So I've got two step sons, and I call them my sons because they are just because that step don't mean nothing to me. They're my boys. I've been with both of them hunting. Every hunt we've been on has meant something to me. Like I didn't realize how much it would mean to me too for my sons to kill a deer, and just a deer in general, but also kill a buck deer that was really worth, you know, showing off being proud of out there at my farm. I had been basically managing the deer, being extremely tight on what we shot, and I've kind of at the point in my hunting career I specifically target mature bucks. I've not always been that way. That's just something that's occurred in the last four or five years, which has been very fulfilling to be able to have years and years of history with a specific buck. 00:53:47 Speaker 3: Well. 00:53:47 Speaker 1: I had this particular deer. We had four years of game camera pictures of him, never during the day. I'd seen him during the day one time in three years, and he was right there at our place, which up until probably five years ago. I could count on one hand how many deer I'd seen our on our plays, like there were no deer. Probably at his highest of score, he's one forty ish, which I know around the globe that might not sound like a big deer, but in our area and on my farm, he was a giant. And Thanksgiving rolled around, and my oldest son, Ryan, he's in physical therapy school, has been tied up with school for years and has not had a lot of opportunity to hunt. When he did get to hunt, it was like the conditions were always rotten. He just never had that perfect opportunity. So, I mean he's he's immersed in school, takes a very serious and so you know, he wasn't like me and my crew that you know, we deer hunted and then went to you know, and then worried about school. It's probably it took us all salon to graduate. So anyway, he got to come home with Thanksgiving. The next morning, we decided he was going to go across the road and hunt a spot. Now, I was gonna go hunt out of the ground blind and sit there and watch, you know, one hundred acres of open field right there. I told him when we were on the way there, I said, I am not killing nothing today. I am literally just watching and if something, if a buck comes out, I will call you or text you and you can come on over here. But I said, it's this particular buck when we had nicknamed him. If he comes out, I will shoot him because he is he's the one that we've been after for so long. I will shoot that deer. It's what I told you. So anyway, he goes his way, I go my way. Sitting there in my blind and it's dark and a first light. There's a couple of doors feeding and hadn't been just a few minutes. Here come another couple of deer and come out of the woods and start coming over there towards it. Well, then all of a sudden, here he comes. He comes out of the woods right behind them doors. In a moment he stepped out, I saw it was him, and I texted Ryan and I said, we had named this deer mowab mother of all bucks, is what we So anyway, that's what we had nicknamed him. Which you know, I'm not one of them that I don't nickname every deer, I say, but for some reason or another that one he deserved a nickname. The deer comes out and he's marching right towards those other deer. I test Ryan, and I just said, he's in the field. If you can get here, I'm just gonna sit here and wait. We gotta understand he is as the crow flies, he's half a mile from him, but in order for him to get to me, it's double that. So I said, if you can get here, I'm going to hold off. So anyway, he says, I'm on the way, and here he come, and he he was giving me updates as he was coming. Well, while he's given me updates, I can see back out towards where he's coming from, and I mean he is getting it, trying to get there quick. But he's behind a hill from the deer. They can't see. Well. I have a group thread with some friends of mine and some childhood friends of mine, and we probably don't go a single day that we do not connect with, you know, lifting each other up, talking about old times, you know, praying for each other. You know, we are tight. I just sent them a message and I said, boys, I'm watching mowab and I'm waiting for Ryan to get here. To shoot him if if the Lord wheels it. What was so cool about it is, they started responding, I'm watching the deer, he's over here. I'm watching Ryan through the back window of the blind, and I'm texting some of my closest friends. So they're just like sitting in the blind with me and the deer. He'll run a dough a circle or two and then he'll come back. That's around. Ryan has to come down a fence row and he has to ask to belly crawl for probably about one hundred yards. And I knew he was gonna have trouble getting the gate open. And I mean, because we're hunting on a cattle farm, you know, there's an old, squeaky gate to get to come through. So I crawl out of the blind and crawl over to the gate, open it for him, and then he crawls to me. We crawl in the blind together. And looking back on it now, I wasn't as prepared, didn't have a good shooting stick, didn't even have a really good chair in there. Had a you know, three dollar chair from Dollar General in there, and I get him in the chair. The deer is still there. He's been out there a while. At this point he gets in the chair and I mean, he has just ran a mile. The biggest deer's every laid eyes on is standing in the field in front of him, and he is shook. I'm talking shook up, which I was too. I knew what was hopefully about to happen. I had done all I could do for him. And so he gets he gets in the chair and I have a very special gun in my family that I've told the boys that whichever one of them can get me my first granddaughter, we'll get. We'll get this gun. It's a there's nothing really special about it other than it killed a bunch of deer with it. It's a super shoe and gun and it and it'll shoot a long ways. And Ryan's gun that he was carrying, he was hunting in some pretty low brush and stuff, so he was carrying a specific gun fronting over there, so I swapped guns with him. He was having trouble getting on the deer and it was not a close shot. His two hundred and twenty yards. He says, I think he was. I think I'm on him, and I said, let's squeeze the trigger and he shoots, and he misses, and the deer just kind of jumped and then just started walking off. I mean he knew something that that. I mean, he obviously heard something and he knew something happened, but it didn't booger him too bad. And he walked into the clear cut. There was a whole bunch of other deer in the clearcut there. Of course, Ryan is his confidence is just shook. You know, he's upset that he's missed the deer. I'm upset because there's four years of trying to kill this deer walking away anyway. The deer is not He's not like taking off. He's going upside of the hill, and I'm like, just just regroup, you're gonna get another. 01:00:06 Speaker 3: Shot at him. 01:00:07 Speaker 1: The deer walks upside of the hill, and my view of him, he's perfectly broadside. And Ryan is like, I cannot get on that deer. He's like, I am too, I am too shook up. I cannot get on the deer. When I tell you who I'm about to reference, you'll you'll know him well. But I was about to wayne paid him. I was about to take the gun away from him, you know. 01:00:29 Speaker 3: And uh Andy. 01:00:31 Speaker 1: Brown tells the story of you know, I'm gonna wayne, Paige, you, I'm gonna take that gun away from you. So he's like, here, I can't, I can't do it. So he just hands me the gun. I sit down in that three dollar checker, and of course, you know, I've got years of experience of shooting deer and all this other stuff, and he does not. So I was pretty quick to improvise how to get steady on the deer. And I mean I got rock solid on him. He's I mean I even had time to range him. He's about two hundred and seventy five yards at this point. And I had this just overwhelming feeling. And I know it was because of some of the texts that I had gotten from my friends about that's awesome. You know that I was not shooting the deer that I was waiting for. You know that, man, this is awesome. I hope it comes, I hope it happens, and all this other stuff. And I had this is overwhelming feeling that deer does not mean near as much to me. That's what it remained to him if he gets to kill this thing. And I just said, I'm not shooting him. Get back to seat and I said, look at exactly how I'm set up right here. Now, you got to understand this is all of this is going on live. 01:01:42 Speaker 8: You know. 01:01:43 Speaker 1: So this encounter has been going on for probably at this point thirty minutes from the time I will see him come out of the field to where we're at right now. He gets in the chair and he gets pretty solid on him, and about that time, a doe just turns in front of Moab and heads right back for the field that we had just shot at him in, and that buck totally changed his demeanor. He hooked a bush and then here he comes, and he follows that dough right back out into the field. Caution went away. He comes right back into the field. He walked right back out there to where he was at standing in basically the exact same position he was in. And by that time Ryan had gotten it together and he steadied up on him and he said, I'm on him. I said, let him have it, and he shot and down he went, and Clay, we tore that blind down trying to get out of it. We got out of it, and we started over there towards him and walking up to that deer. Seeing the look on my son's face and emotion for both of us, just the caliber of the deer and the fact that we killed this deer on a piece of ground that has been in my family for one hundred and twenty six years. I was overcome with emotion of I've had this overly blessed life, had the greatest family, the greatest upbringing. You know, was blessed to have this wonderful piece of dirt, to be a steward over to experience a once in a lifetime or deal with my son, And it was just unexplainable for I know you have felt it. I know you have, and I know a lot of my closest friends have felt the exact same thing that I did that day, But it would be really hard to explain to somebody that has not been in that situation. You couldn't have knocked me off the top of that mountain that day. So I've had a lot of time to reflect on that and just realize that it's it's the smallest of details in hunting that may make them the most important memories that you'll have as far as in the hunting circle of memories, because it's normally not the hunts that went perfect, you know, the ones that were easier, not the ones that stick out of my mind. It's the ones that either I worked super hard at or just the unexpected happened, or some crazy, you know, something out of the box happened. And I think that's why I love deer hunting specifically, because the white tailed deer is one of the most elusive creatures God ever created. The protein that we get from them, experiences, memories made with our loved ones and our friends. Also to be able to sit here like this with you and connect with these crazy stories that happened to us that otherwise, you know, we could be friends, but we would not be able to connect with people and have a bond. And so that's why I love hunting. 01:05:06 Speaker 2: As I sat in front of Luke in person as he told this story, when Ryan handed him back the gun, I was a little disappointed, but at the same time, I was screaming in my head for Luke to grab the gun. And then Luke has Moab in his sights. It's deer that they've had so much history with. 01:05:28 Speaker 3: And I was. 01:05:29 Speaker 2: Really surprised again when Luke handed the gun back to Ryan, and I was even more amazed when this ancient buck had survived all these years with all this hunting pressure, immediately changed directions, changed his demeanor, and came right back. Now, that is a good story, Luke, and congrats to Rioting. If you have enjoyed these stories, this is just the beginning of an incredible series. I'll close with these words. In the book The Bear by William Faulkner, he describes a family's annual bear hunt as a yearly pageant of the old bear's furious immortality. That's an interesting phrase, furious immortality, meaning this beast had a drive to survive. 01:06:34 Speaker 3: That was incredible. 01:06:36 Speaker 2: I think that what we love about white tails is their furious immortality. They're hard to kill, and that's what makes the meat so valuable, the hunt so memorable, the annual rituals so strong and long lasting. 01:06:50 Speaker 3: I love it. 01:06:51 Speaker 2: I encourage you this year to keep your whitetail traditions alive, and if you don't have any, make some new ones. Thank you so much for listening to Bear Grease. Be sure to check out Meat Eater and First Light's Whitetail Week. Myself, along with Mark Kenyon, Tony Peterson, Giannis Poottellus, Casey and Tyler from the Element and the whole Meet Eater crew. We'll be sharing white tail tips and tactics on our social media all week. I cannot wait to talk about these stories on the Render next. 01:07:26 Speaker 3: Week with the crew. Have a great week.