00:00:05 Speaker 1: Late October is upon us. 00:00:07 Speaker 2: The acrons are falling, the clover's eight inches tall, and the woods are full of scrapes, and it's deer season. These Deer Stories episodes are some of my favorite. They feel like when your buddy rolls back up into camp and he has that look on his face and you never know what story is about to come out of his mouth. I guarantee you that all these stories will surprise you. We've got seven storytellers and they hail from the states of Alabama, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. And I really doubt that you're gonna want to miss this one. Some of these are really gonna surprise you. And hey, if you're looking for a unique heirloom deer call that I think is the most versatile call on the market, check out the Phelps Acron grunner in Osage Orange. This call was designed by me and Jason Phelps. It's an inhale exhale o bleat and buck grunt, two calls in one Helps game costs. 00:01:06 Speaker 3: You know, I washed that neude out and I cleaned it up the pists I could, you know. Of course, it had one of those spare tard that deals down in it you know, in the back there, and somehow that blood, that blood got doubt in the spare tard and this is no lie. For a year after that when it got real hot in that it's smelt like a bucknare And that's not that is no lie. And I'm telling you when we sold it, it's smelt like a buckner what he got in there. But uh oh, but just you know, you ain't got no sins if you do stuff like that. But that that's just what we did. You know, we just told it up there like we had good sins. 00:01:58 Speaker 2: My name is Clay nukemb 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 as designed to be as rugged as the places we explore. Our first story is from the Great State of Alabama and involves a variety of wildlife from three different genera species from the rich biota of the American South. Our storyteller, who I'll let introduce himself, analyze the reaction of his hunting partner to all these critters, and decided that he should marry her. The story is short with a lot of surprises. 00:03:00 Speaker 4: And this is Daniel Williams. I'm attacks herrom Us up in North Alabama, and when me and my wife were dating, this was about six months before we got married. I decided to take her down to our hunting club in Selma and take her deer hunting with me. She had never killed a deer and never been deer hunting that many times, but she wanted to go. So we went down and sat on the edge of a big swamp. We actually sat on the ground. The whole thing was grass and water, and we was probably fifty yards from the edge that water. And while we're sitting there, we haven't been there probably two hours. My wife starts getting cold and pulls her gloves out, goes to put the gloves on. Well, she starts screaming, hollering, jump up, and I'm like, what are you doing? She'll be quiet. Well, she pulls her glove off and has this spider between two of her fingers latched onto her hand. I'm talking about the biggest, nastiest spider you've ever seen in your life. I don't know what kind of it was. It was nasty. Then shehes grabbing that thing, kills it, and every thing like, oh my gosh, I can't leave. It just happened unless she checks her gloves, ends up putting her gloves back on, sits back down, and at this point I'm there, I'm pretty impressed because this girl I'm kind of thinking about Mary and just got bit by a spider and you still, dear honey. So we're good. Well, about an hour goes by, it's probably four four point thirty pm. Well, I here's something in the leaves moving, you know, just that it just sat sliding through the leaves. And it's January. So the last thing on my mind is snake. And I look down and the tail of a snake has just gone up under my wife's leg. And we're sitting by this big cypress street. I'm stared, thinking, well my wife at the time, my girlfriend, I'm sarre thinking what do I do? You know? So I tell her, I said, hey, I said, real slowly, just stand up. She said why, I said, just stand up, Just get my hand and just stand up real slow. Well she stood up. That was about an eight or nine inch little snake it wasn't poisonous, had crawled up I guess, out of the ground or something, and they just crawled right up under the thigh. Well, she says it, she starts laughing. Well, I flicked the thing on over there by the water, and I'm there again. Glad. She sits back down. We're still hunting. Well. Two things that's never happened to me ever, is seeing somebody get bit by a spider like that, and a snake crawl up under somebody. In January, we lo and behold. About thirty minutes goes by. It's starting to get dust dark. We hear a gun shot. We off in the distance. We're probably three or four hundred yards from property line, on the other side of the swamp where the property line is. Well, we hear this gun shot. And I told Christian, I said, I'm kind of pay attention. I said, because a lot of times somebody shoots out here in the swamp. You push deer back in the swamp, you may hear him running. Well, sure enough, it wasn't a few seconds here come deer. Well, I hear splash, and hear splashing. I start picking up a dough and I'm pointing to Christian. I said, there's I said, right down through there to look, there's a deer coming. We're sitting there watching her. Well, this dough runs straight at us, gets within probably twenty yards of us, and turns. We're not gonna shoot or we're in their buck hunting. But she turns, runs about ten yards in front of us and buckles like she just got shot with buckshot on a dog drive. I'm talking about face plants, just legs go out from under slides in the leaves. I stand up, I got my gun up, was looking looking through my scope at her, and I come walking over there, got a wear it to her and Christy said, is it dead? And I said yeah, And she said I didn't even hear you shoot. I was like, I didn't shoot. I said, that guy that gun shot, we heard, that's this deer. So through all this that's happened like she don't be a bit by spider, had a snake crawl up on her and then had a deer shot come running and die right in front of us. And she thought that I had shot the thing. You know what I mean, my gun ain't even gone. I said, don't you think you would have heard my rifle. But man, we left there. I told her, I said, if you ever go hunting again, I said, like, we're gonna have to get married, because you ain't there ain't There ain't too many of you running around here, at least not that I've ever met. 00:07:03 Speaker 2: That was a good story, Danny, and sounds like you found a partner for life. Our next story is from my friend Brad the Snakeman Birchfield of mountain Berg, Arkansas. You see him handling snakes on the bear Grease Render. This story involves some unfortunate lip reading. 00:07:26 Speaker 1: Here's bread. 00:07:28 Speaker 4: This is Brad Birchfield. 00:07:31 Speaker 5: This is a story maybe more about parenting than it is about deer honey. But as a child, my dad was always working and didn't really have time to taking me hunting. So I went with my cousin and he would take me out. And of course we were freezing cold and sitting in a blind or it wasn't you know. It was very boring and cold. And when my son got old enough to go hunting, I thought, I don't want him to have a different experience. I want him to be missed bull as I was. So we would not have iPads or games or being a nice blind we'd be, you know, sitting in a stand, freezing. And he was about six at this point, and he wasn't really ready to shoot a big gun. He'd shot twenty two's and shot guns and stuff, and he just wasn't really sure of hisself on a rifle. So he went out with me, and he was all excited, and so we got got to stand late in the afternoon. I think it was probably Thanksgiving Day, and we were sitting there, and of course, all the way out there, I'm telling him not to step on sticks and to be quiet and don't be moving. And so we get up in the stand and put his head his earmuffs on, and I'm telling him, you know, we got to wait, and you know that. 00:08:43 Speaker 3: Magic hour right before dusk. 00:08:45 Speaker 5: We're sitting there and saw a few doze and he was getting excited and had to kind of keep him calm down. And then right at dusk, a nice little six point jumped out of the woods and came out into the field. We were sitting in this in the corner of a field, and so the deer comes out and he looks at me, and I look at him, and I, I want all your listeners to do this, say the word be still, very clearly and very purposely. So I turned around to him and he's looking at me, and I mouthed the words be still, and he looked at me and he looked somewhat confused, and so again I reiterated be still, and he nodded and like he understood, And so I turned around and got back on the scope. Deer was standing broadside about eighty yards, so I shot it, dropped it, took me their ear protection out, took his off, and we hugged and said a little prayer, and of course we were deep into the outdoor channel shows like Ted NuGet and Meat Eater, of course, and we high fived and I told him, I said, you know, the beast is dead. Long live the beast, and we're all excited and kind of started calming down. He kind of looked at me and I said, why did you tell me to pee slowly? And I said what? And he said, you told me to pea slowly? And I said, what are you talking about. I don't even know what that means. He goes, well, I did, and at that point I looked in his little coveralls were pretty much soaked from the waist down, and I said why he was I guess about six years old, so he was definitely old enough to know better. 00:10:27 Speaker 3: But I said, why did you pee your pants? 00:10:31 Speaker 5: And he said, I thought you were You were, you know, getting on me about the stepping on sticks and being quiet and all that. So I just thought maybe you wanted me to pee quietly, and so I did. And so we had a long walk back to the house, about a half mile through the woods, and all the while he's like, would you carry me? And I said no, because you're covered in pea, And so that was our big hunting story for that year. 00:10:59 Speaker 2: That's funny, Brad, You've raised an obedient son. Sounds like some good parenting, but just some unfortunate lip reading. Our next story is from Johnny Johnson from eastern Oklahoma. You may remember him from one of the most compelling episodes of twenty twenty five called Confessions of a Former Outlaw. It was episode three fourteen. Johnny told me a dear story in passing that truly blew my mind. I'm still fixated on it. And he told it to me by accident, moving past it like it was just an uneventful story. I was looking at an impressive wall of public land antlers, all just sawing off skulls screwed onto the wall of his cabin when I keyed in on one that was clearly the biggest. It was probably one hundred and fifty inch ten point, a true public land monarch, especially for these rock piles these deer live in down here. And I said, is that the biggest dealer that y'all killed over here, Johnny? And he says, yes, it is, But we gave one away that was as big, or probably bigger. 00:12:09 Speaker 1: And you got to understand something. 00:12:10 Speaker 2: One hundred and fifty inch deer here is a once in a lifetime buck. And I said, gave it away? What do you mean? And he proceeded to tell me this story. They're hunting in Arkansas, where it's legal to run deer with dogs, and the story starts with the jumped buck. 00:12:29 Speaker 6: Now, we live in a place where we can hunt with dogs. That's why we're here, and we all have dogs, and we have a good camp. And we took our dogs back on the mountain and put them in a place where we'd been finding a lot of bucks. Huh, big footed buck and we got after a buck. It was a good one. We jumped the deer back in the south. He went up on the mountain and spent the biggest part of the day grind and lose them dog. But they were dogs that pretty well stay hooked. They went over the mount went over and come back, then went north. When he crossed the south road, we put three four more fresh dogs on it, and that would make him do something, and he made another run and then went to the river and lost the dog there in the river. Two or three hours later. Everybody give up on him, but Dan and I know the kind of dog that was on this deer, and it wasn't over hoping that he would come back. That was in the morning, early and I've seen him go in the river and back up to a bank like with some logs and backed their whole body into them logs with just their nose sticking up, not even their horns out. You couldn't even even a big horn dear like that. He'd have his head laid back, you couldn't even see it on hits. His nose look like a cork botting in the water. But that deer had done that during that day to loser type of dogs he lost. I've seen dogs baying at a hole of water, no deer there, none to be seen, and I'm standing there looking at that water, and the deer just blow up right under my feet coming out there going It's pretty neat. But the dogs running the deer, they run at north and then came back to the river and that that was it. That was the end of the line, and that probably a couple of hours had passed. I can't say this one hundred percent, but most of the time that deer will go back the same way he went. He more likely that's a route he took when he went north. He's coming back that same way. And that's why we were there watching that field. So if he did come through there, we'd see. So we just kind of went over there and laid around, lost around. We were out in the field. 00:15:05 Speaker 2: Johnny is in the field with his longtime hunting partner Dan. But there's also an older man, a neighbor of Johnny's named Leon, sitting in this truck probably a quarter mile away, watching the field too. 00:15:19 Speaker 5: Well. 00:15:19 Speaker 1: The guy was on the road and the old man. 00:15:23 Speaker 6: Yeah, the old man was on the road, and I was hitting there and eating a donut. I was, and I just looked all the way across that field, and the big buck was walking going back south towards the mountain. He come out of the creek and right walking right up the edge of the field, and Dan the crack shot. Good. Good at there is, I said, Dan, there he is out about choked on that donut. So whatever a couple of bells I had, he took a rest. I don't know how it was four hundred long shot, but from the road where the old man was a lot longer than that and made a shot. I think that's good. Well he shot the old man's man shot and the deer went behind some stuff. 00:16:18 Speaker 2: To clarify, two shots have been fired at the same buck. Dan shot first, then the old man shot. Dan shot was four hundred yards with a haybell rest. The old man's shot was much much further. Johnny and Dan knew without question that Dan had killed the deer. 00:16:37 Speaker 6: And the deer went behind a brush and we went around and there he laid nice I don't know what it scored, big big nice wallhanger over there. 00:16:49 Speaker 1: I mean as big a deer as maybe y'all ever killed. 00:16:53 Speaker 6: Probably bigger dean thing in there, bigger, yeah, big, And the old gentleman that shot at him with out there on the road roll his truck in there where we were and he got out. I said, lay on, that's a heck of a shot you made on that boat and it He kind of stuttered for a little bit and he said, you think I hit tells don't. I'm right you hit it that you're deer. 00:17:20 Speaker 3: Go around here. 00:17:20 Speaker 6: We'll owe that for you. Boy. What's a good And that's the best one we've seen this year. Dan was in agreement with me, and he got it a deer and everybody's happy. 00:17:32 Speaker 2: Just to make this crystal clear, Dan killed this once in a lifetime buck And without even talking about it, Johnny and Dan claimed that the old man had killed it. 00:17:45 Speaker 1: Now it was Dan. 00:17:46 Speaker 2: Now, now you instigated the conversation, though, are you? You're the one who first y'all didn't talk about this. Huh, just kind of like walked up to the old guy. Yeah, and Dan thinks he's killed. Dan's killed the deer. 00:17:58 Speaker 6: Yeah. 00:17:59 Speaker 1: And so Dan was surprised though when you said. 00:18:02 Speaker 6: No, it didn't shock him. Mobilla, He didn't saying that happened before we gave another one away in that same feel to an older gentleman. They were laying there kicking when they drove up and Dan killed it. He had seen it happened before. And that's the kind of guy here. He's good. All most people would have argued with you, yeah, one to fb I and see which way the bullet and what buy the gun and all that. There wasn't any doubt to us as the old gentleman killed a deer, and he was in agreement with me when I said it. That's just the way Dan and I are. He liked everybody to kill one, everybody have one. 00:18:46 Speaker 2: I'm trying to wrap my mind around giving away one of the biggest, if not the biggest deer either of these veteran hunters have ever killed. 00:18:56 Speaker 1: I asked Johnny a simple question. 00:19:00 Speaker 4: Did you do that? 00:19:02 Speaker 6: I liked the old fellow. I know him. He was a friend of mine and he needed to kill a big bug. We've hunted around him for years, and he worked in the log woods. Dan worked for him when he was young, cutting logs in the woods. He was just a friend of our. 00:19:17 Speaker 1: How old do you think he was? 00:19:19 Speaker 6: Oh, late seventies, but not healthy at all. He was down to just hunting from his vehicle. He couldn't get out and hunt, just drive around, and he was watching that field. We took him several times, a couple of times would run there by him. He was sitting in his struck. There went right by the crug. He was just about done hunting. Had a good one to quit on. 00:19:49 Speaker 2: That was a good one to quit on. Can you imagine walking up to the biggest deer you've ever killed and giving it away without even a fight. This story challenges every thread of dear hunting ambition in my soul. I think I'll be thinking about this one for the rest of my life. These are the kind of hidden stories that make all this so rewarding for me. Thank you for sharing that story, Johnny. And if you haven't listened to his Bear Grease episode three fourteen, you probably should. I consider it one of the best stories ever told on this podcast. Our next storyteller needs no introduction. It's Andy Brown from Western Arkansas. He's gonna tell us about his uncle Rve and a brand new nineteen seventy nine dots in B two ten hatchback car. 00:20:48 Speaker 1: So just settle in and enjoyed this story. 00:20:52 Speaker 2: Andy's stories always seem to end with a good laugh. 00:20:58 Speaker 3: So have I had an uncle name of uh, you know everybody. His name was Ira Willis, but it was Uncle Ari to me. That's who I called him. But he was a true he was a true mountain guy, you know. And when I was a kid, he had a lot of patience with me. Even when we lived out east of town. He would come and get me and take me a coon hunt or take me squirreling. But anyway, he was real good about taking me in. He was the guy that taught me about how to hunt saddles and how to hunt gaps. And he was a very patient, patient guy. But anyway, I loved him like a I loved him like a father. I mean, he was a father figure to me. He was the guy that you could go and it was so fun. It's so much fun because even when I was I'd go on my lunch hours lots of time to his house and Uncle Laura get that old two and a half old sage peach can or hunts peach. You know, he'd have to cut out and he before he could. You know, he was the type of guy that he couldn't talk without church back and beaching up red Man and I don't eat chewed them both, but at the time, but he'd get him a chew, and I'm talking about he just didn't get a little chew. He rich in there and he got him a He got him a double big handful of that. You don't he get it in his mouth. And he'd set back and tell stories. So that gets us to the story. We moved back and when I was when I was out west, I had bought my first new car, and it was in nineteen seventy nine Dotson B two ten hatchback and I was proud of that thing. I didn't know how I was going to pay for it, because at that time that car knew was sixty six hundred dollars. But I just didn't know how I was going to get that paid for, you know, back back in the day. But anyway, when we come back, we brought the car back with us, and so happened, Oh Laury, we got us a deer hunt planned and we went south of town and he knew that where there was a couple of apps over there. Anyway, we went over there and we took my car and so got over there you know, of course if you left, he wanted to cook you breakfast at the house, which was two eggs to pieces of sauces and toast. That's what you had in a big cup of coffee that you could just barely stir. I mean it was it was a good coffee. But anyway, we got over there and walked up the canyon and it was just a big, big branch bottom that went in went all the way to the main mountain. And when you get to the main mountain there was a low gap back east in a low gap west. So he sent me to the low gap east. We walked right up a hollow, right up into the gap, and he went up the other way. I walked up there in the man, it was a fine morning. Wind was kind of out of the south, and I'd got over on the north side of the gap and it was just it just like one of them mornings that you just die for, you know. In about eight o'clock, right between me and him on the main mountain, the's a little notch in there, and they was a gobbler turkey come into their goblin, come right through that notch. Now this is middle of November, November fifteenth goblin, just like it was in spring. He just come right in over the top of herding gobble over the mountain. He come right in on top and gobble gobble real big. When he got off on the side and off down, just gobbled out of here. And that same morning I sat there, and of course back in those days, we had turkeys, and we had lots of turkeys. And I was sitting up there, I hadn't seen a deer, hadn't seen anything, and I heard something and it just start got getting louder and louder. And there was forty one. I counted forty one turkeys that come in in one bunch. And it was that time of year where they'd all got together. There was six or seven big gobblers in the bunch. There was young turkeys, there was you know, there was hens. But the best I can remember, there was forty one that I counted because they were all over me, you know, just digging the woods up. So anyway, long, about ten o'clock back north, you could hear this dog coming. It's buried, he hearing, and uh. In a minute, he topped out across the highway across on the next mountain. He come right through what would call Cicero Gap, come right through the gap north of us. And I mean it was a single dog and he was he was he was running. I mean he was you could tell he was, and he was you could tell he was a good dog. And anyway, he just come on this ow ou and come right off down out across the highway out where I'm sitting in that gap. You can look across west over there and you can see a big long leg that went right into that gap where Uncle Larry was. Now Uncle Larry he was a shotgun guy, but that particularly morning he had taken his thirty thirty. He had he had a thirty thirty and he very seldom every hundred with it, but we were still hunting, so he had taken it that morning. But anyway, that dog just oh ow ow. He hit the end of that leg. He gets about halfway up bo and so it's pretty exciting, you know. And of course we didn't have phones, we didn't have radios, we didn't have nothing. But I knew the dog. 00:26:18 Speaker 4: Just outright it. 00:26:19 Speaker 3: It was just hushed, and so I knew, I knew he'd killed the deer. So I couldn't stand. It was about ten thirty, I sailed off the haller, you know, And of course I could. I wasn't but twenty three years old, so I could run up a pine tree, you know, and right over there I went. But I'll never forget walking up into that gap. And when I walked up into the gap, I could see the deer's horns laying. I seen the deer before I actually seen unc Laurie. I got up there, Clay, and that was at that time. I had never seen a buck deer like that. I mean he was a mainframe twelve. I mean a biggin, I mean a big buck. I was just a stop. 00:26:58 Speaker 4: I don't know. 00:26:59 Speaker 3: I was more proud of. I mean, I was ecstatic over the thing, you know. And Uncle Lauri was just like another day, you know. But he was tickled too because he had a couple of sets of horns at his house. He had another mainframe twelve, and he had a mainframe fourteen that he kept inside his house. Uh in the fourteen point and I mean it wasn't it was a mainframe fourteen. It wasn't kickers, but he was narrow. But the other one was a lot like the one he killed. Anyway, we shook hands, and you know, I was just so happy for him. Anyway, we grabbed the deer and we dragged him off down the mountain and it's a long way, it's probably it's probably a quarter maybe back to the rig. He didn't want to gut him in the gap, you know, so we drug him off the mountain and got off down on the branch and we got down there. We gutted that dude and washed him out the best we could. Wasn't hold a lot of water branch. We washed him out the best we could, and so we get him. We dragged him out down to to the to the old Dotson. So we've got the buck deer and the dog and we're at the dots and well, I just soake him up the hatch that dots and we just picked that gutted deer up and we just saw he right in the back of that dots that Dotson. It kind of proppy, but before he wouldn't bleed out, you know what, the thing like, I had good sense and throw that dog right in on top. 00:28:23 Speaker 1: Of h if you don't. 00:28:25 Speaker 3: So anyway, we take off and we come back and we bring him. I lived out at the lake out here on eighth West at the time, and we brought him out. I've got a picture of that deer being him as a polaroid picture of me and him with that deer hanging from a tree. And we gutted the deer. I'm not gutted, but we skinned the deer and we cut him in half. We halfed him, and we called the guy whose name was on the collar. It was one of the Looney boys that lived back over. They were hunting in there south of Nunley, back in there on that still house country. And that deer he was headed to cost you know, I mean, and that's why they do lyne out. But anyway, we took that deer, half, that deer and that dog and we went to his house. And you know, that's what you're supposed to do back then. You know, somebody's dogs running deer. You know, they deserved their portion of it. And he was tickled to death because a lot of people didn't do that. But we took him. We took him half, the deer and the dog. But the car. You know, I washed that dude out and I cleaned it up the fenst I could you know, of course, it had one of those spare tard that deals down in it, you know, in the back there, and somehow that blood, that blood got doubted the spare tard And this is no lie. For a year after that when it got real hot and it's melt like a bucknaire and that's not no lie. And I'm telling you when we sold it, it's smelt like a bucknare what they got out of it there? But uh, but just you know, you ain't got no sis if you do stuff like that. But that's just what we did. You know, we just thowed it up there like we had good sins. 00:30:08 Speaker 2: Yeah, that was a great story. As he spoke, I could just see the landscape. I could see those turkeys, the dog, the buck, and you can imagine them cramming that buck and that dog in that little car and giving half of the deer to the owner of the dog. That's some og stuff, as in original gangster stuff. That was a great story, Andy, Thank you so much for telling it. Our next story is from a good friend of Andy's and mine. He's a veteran white tail hunter named Mitch Sykes, also from western Arkansas. This is about one of the best bucks Mitch is ever killed in the strange thing that he did. 00:30:56 Speaker 7: Well, I'll tell you this, dear, here's another deer that I learned a learned something about. He's one of the better deer i've killed, just a heavy eleven point, but the year before he was just a real nice ten point. And believe it or not, he was just about as big the year before, maybe not as heavy, and he didn't have that kicker right there, but a really good deer. And he was on our place down there where we hunt, and my daughter that's the one she had her heart set on. And I hunted down there a few times, and every time I hunted, I saw him and he was. 00:31:30 Speaker 4: Just he was too big to pass. 00:31:33 Speaker 7: But I passed him because I kept thinking she'd get a shot at him, and she never did and ended up. You know, we go into the next year, and I don't know why. I started putting out a camera, probably the fifteenth thought, no, maybe about the first October. And he is down there, solid at every place where deer scrape and deer travel, he's there, and he's a little bigger, and I mean, she had her heart set on him. 00:31:58 Speaker 4: And she doesn't bow hunt. 00:31:59 Speaker 7: So Muslim season comes and she was in college. She hunted him that first weekend and didn't seem but I was just getting his picture daytime picture. It just wouldn't be where she was at nighttime. I was getting pictures of him. I didn't think he was leaving the place. He was just at every camera, just staying down there. Had a bunch of dos down there in some other bucks, but he was there every day. And I think I hunted him maybe a couple of days early in the week. And the last weekend of Musloaden was coming on, and I took off that Friday to hunt, and I didn't want to hunt down there because I knew she was going to get to come in and hunt over the weekend. So I've got a place leased that I cut hay off of. It's about almost three miles down the river. I hadn't been in there. I've got an old buddy stand that's in a tree that's I'm just hoping that the strap's not rotten, you know. It's one of those that's just there. And I thought, I'm going to go down there for a change of scenery. And I think my wife, going to work maybe the morning before, had seen a good buck crossed the Highway right in there, going into that part of the kind of into that area, and I thought, well, I'll go down there and see what I see. Big old long hay field. It's real narrow, but it's right on the river, and right between the field and the river there's a bunch of switch came, some big old hardwoods. So normally see quite a few deer in there. In that morning. I remember when I got up in my stand, I didn't cut. I didn't cut hay because it had some Johnson grass in it, and we got an early frost, and I didn't want to put up bad hay anyway. That Johnson grass had turned white, and sometimes you don't want to do that when it gets stressed like that, feed it the cows. So there was still some pretty tall Johnson grass out in this field that I. 00:33:39 Speaker 3: Had walked in. 00:33:40 Speaker 7: I'd walk right up the edge of it, got up in my stand, and when I got up there, it was a full moon that morning, and I got settled down, and when I looked I looked down there in the field, I seen something in the moonlight. I could see something white. I could tell it was moving, and I didn't know if it was a skunk's tail or something. But I could tell something was moving. I got my binoculars and it was a buck bedded down not fifty yards from me in that Johnson grass, just a i'm gonna say maybe a two and a half year old eight point real white horn. Is not a big deer at all, but even bedded down, And I thought, man, how did I ever, how did that dear let me walk in here? And not because I had a headlamp on, you know, I don't know. 00:34:26 Speaker 3: He just stayed put. 00:34:27 Speaker 7: But when I got up elevated like that, I could see. But anyway, as he got closer to daylight, the deer finally got up and he just walked right straight away from me. And right on the edge of that field, there's a bunch of big pinoak trees and they dropped penocacres and them deer love and pinocacres, and a bunch of low laying branches. There's scrapes all up and down the edge of that. He kind of walked over there to the edge of that field and went into switch cane and went out of sight. It was right about to break, right about the break of daylight. In anyway, it started getting a little bit lighter, and I just took my binoclars and I thought, well, it's you know, I can probably see to the far end with these binoculars, and I just kind of scanned the field. And when I got back behind me the way I had walked in, I seen a deer standing there under a pinoak tree making a scrape. And as soon as I seen it. 00:35:16 Speaker 3: I said, that is a big buck. 00:35:18 Speaker 7: I mean, that's a big buck. And I was nervous as could be because he was about one hundred and twenty five yards from me, and that field edge stays that and now I'm not comfortable shooting that far with my mussloader. I normally shoot my musloorder about once a year at fifty yards and I'm about an inch high, and I call that good. Yeah, And I remember thinking, I hope he I hope he comes closer to me. But I knew he was going to go right down that field edge where all those scrapes were, and he ended up going right down the edge of that and I had to watch him walk probably about one hundred yards till he got to where I could actually shoot at him. And he was a little over one hundred yards and I just I remembered, I just I just held a little bit higher than I should, you know, kind of like a real high shoulder shot. And when I shot, he took off out of there like I had not touched him, just perfect, just. 00:36:11 Speaker 4: Out of sight. 00:36:12 Speaker 7: And I sat up there like you normally do on an hour or so, you know, worrying about my shot, replaying it in my mind, and got down and went over there. And actually when I got out into the field and I could see, I could see him laying out there, and I was real surprised. When I got to him, I thought, that is that eleven point that we my daughter has been hunting, that I've been getting tons and tons. 00:36:35 Speaker 4: Of pictures up. 00:36:37 Speaker 7: Well, I pulled my card that day and I had this buck on my place. I think it was like at three point thirty nine am, and I killed him about seven am. Three miles it's about two and a half miles down the river. So I would have never believed unbelievable. But you sit there and think, I mean a lot of that's hey, met us and switch. I mean it's not hard terrain, but an old buck just taken off. I mean me and you could be there in you know, an hour or less than that, But you know I was. I was kind of sad for her, but I was excited. 00:37:13 Speaker 8: When you shot that. You didn't think you had. I had no idea shooting a big butck. Yes, yeah, actually, and he was. I actually thought he was. You know, if I'd have missed him, I would have not thought he was that deer. I would have thought he was bigger. They always looked bigger. But I thought he was always a really big buck. 00:37:29 Speaker 1: But he is a beautiful deer man. 00:37:31 Speaker 4: He is a good deer. 00:37:33 Speaker 2: You learn so much from stories like this. Sometimes you wonder where a new buck comes from, and other times you wonder where a buck goes when he never comes back. 00:37:43 Speaker 1: It's rare. 00:37:44 Speaker 2: Someone is on the receiving end of both questions. Thank you, Mitch. Our next story is from the one and only Pablo escaval from Alabama, episode three twenty three of Bear Grease. You can listen to his whole life story, which is very interesting. This their story involves the shedding of clothes. 00:38:20 Speaker 9: Hey, Hello, So my name is Pablo Esqun. I'm from Bailuton, Alabama, originally from Costa Rica. And as I progress with my hunting career. You know, I killed that a point bug rather the small bug. Being the first year ever I went into a drought. A couple of years went by, grinding my way in the woods man trying to find another one. And I'm on this piece of public where it was a rifle days. So as I'm walking down well, I set up for the morning, didn't see anything, climb back down and keep scouting. Dashed hunting like, still hunting my way into it. Finally made it down on these holler sat down for a little bit, didn't see much another you know, two three hours went by and next thing you know, I'm waking up because I was asleeping right, so I woke out for a quick nap, and I was like, well, I might as well keep on hunting. It's about one o'clock in the evening. As I'm still hunting my way into the woods, I thought I seen something moving maybe about one hundred yards. Stopped, got down on my knees the briers and everything was a little bit high, and I decided to just hunker down and wait. 00:39:29 Speaker 4: And I waited, and of course in. 00:39:32 Speaker 9: That moment, every noise becomes a deer, every moving leave any bush becomes a deer. Right, So I'm not having a good time because I'm second gazing myself. And eventually, after a good forty five minutes of standing still, I come to realize that no, I'm I'm fooling myself and I have to keep going. So I stood up and took two steps. Boom, a spike jumps up and takes up running, And I was about to cry, man, because I was like, that was the deer that I was looking for. He runs and he hugs to the right side of a mountain and just goes up. So it broke my heart once again. Then I made another mistake that I was so close, especially being on this route, and I sat on the ruck, like literally on the only rug that I was pretty much right on the spot, sat on it, put my rifle on the ground, and I was reflecting about like, man, how come I keep making these mistakes? How come I keep failing? I'm just not good enough for this. Right. So as I'm beating on myself right there, I heard something and I look up and it's that book that comes down the hill and it stops maybe about forty yards looking at me. While I'm sitting on the rug. The rifle is on the ground, so I'm just like we're doing like a staring contest looking at each other. It's like, oh my god. He takes two steps and I picked up the rifle. He takes two more and stops, and I got a perfect broadshot on him, smoked him with the thirty oh six. 00:41:12 Speaker 4: He takes up. 00:41:13 Speaker 9: Running piles up. 00:41:15 Speaker 3: Man. 00:41:16 Speaker 9: Man, man, we're talking about like a pump dude, you know. Because I was like, I don't know where he came back out. So I got to him. I remember, I took videos and pictures and I was extremely excited, even though it was only a spike. But once again I was breaking the eyes on this bribe, I mean, on this piece of public rud. So walk up to him and then the phone begins. Now I got a dragon, and I forgot that I was doing a stalk hunting. You know, I'm like three miles away from the truck, and I said, not a big deal. Man. At the time, I didn't have a saddle like I do now. I had a climber and he was the one made with his steel instead of aluminum. So he was sixty pounds plus the buck plus the rifle I started making my way out and he got hot. He got very hot that day. And I started stripping down my clothes as I was walking up. 00:42:14 Speaker 4: Man. 00:42:14 Speaker 9: I took my jacket up there, and I took my t shirt up. Then I took my pants off and I made it on top of the hill and I was literally on my box, just on my underwear, and this old man. 00:42:24 Speaker 4: Comes up and he was looking at me. He's like, are you hine? Are you okay? 00:42:29 Speaker 9: And I was like man gasping for air, panting and I was like. 00:42:33 Speaker 4: To kill a buck. He's like, what happened with your code? 00:42:38 Speaker 6: Man? 00:42:38 Speaker 9: And I said, well, it's too hot. And I've been dragging him all the way from that holler. So that old man, he was kind enough that he helped me dragging all the way to the truck. And I didn't have a knife if at the time either as usual, so I was, you know, all the guts, everything is stealing on him. But I was able to make it. And that was the bugs or buck, you know, because I end up walking up with my underwear because I was man, seriously, he was really hot. He was like a live threaten and I was it might have been out that bad, but I was. I was feeling the need to like I hot to cool up. I'm gonna make it, and I sure did. I sure did make it and make it with him. 00:43:19 Speaker 1: That was a good story, Pablo. 00:43:21 Speaker 2: I always appreciate your appetite for learning and your ability to be self deprecating. It's hard not to like somebody that's humble. Thank you so much. Our final story is from an old gentleman from Alabama. He's got walls full of big deer and a custom pine coffin sitting on sawhorses ready for when his time comes. There aren't many folks like him. I'll let him introduce himself. 00:43:54 Speaker 10: I'm Claude Strada from Gastenberg, Alabama. I got an old family the home. I've made a hunting camp out and it entertained a lot of guests over the years, and I considered the best free hunting lodge in Alabama. And a lady killed a buck last year. We've been hunting deal here for thirty years and she was the one hundred and thirty fourth person to kill her first buck hunting out of my campouse, hunting from my camp out, and I just liked being around people, and I like I like entertaining. My wife and I have entertained some parties up to two hundred folks before. We just liked to entertain and give them a chance to hunt. A lot of folks didn't have a place to hunt and didn't know a lot of them didn't know anything about hunting. But then I found out. I don't think I've ever had a woman miss a shop or girl. They're just pretty much one hundred percent on. But we've had some great hunts and great times. This was a house built in eighteen ninety three. It was a railroad town, and when the railroad came through, houses popped up and it was in the family and I ended up with it and just knocked out a couple of walls and made a living area and kitchen and the rest of its bedrooms. I got I think nine beds, and he scattered around. It's just kind of kind of the headquarters. So I started in seventy six. That's when I started turkey hunting. I went back and wrote fifteen or twenty pages of recapt of what I had done up until then, and then since seventy six, every hunt, deal, hunt, turkey hunt, fishing trip, everything is documented you know, hundreds of pages and ultra fine, and I can go back and tell you everybody ever killed a deal on the place, every hunt I've been on, whether I killed a turkey or not, I write the hunt up and I go back and read them occasionally, you know, just pick up when I got on my fourth book. 00:46:29 Speaker 5: And. 00:46:31 Speaker 10: It's something I've enjoyed. I don't let many folk anybody read it because I can talk pretty bad about you in it. If you mess up, I can get pretty brutal. 00:46:44 Speaker 2: Here's a memorable story that involves the men's cologne, Jade East. That's right, Jade East. 00:46:54 Speaker 10: And they've asked me to see if I can tell a deal story. I'm gonna tell the DS toy first. 00:47:03 Speaker 1: I had three. 00:47:04 Speaker 10: Guys from Florida with me, went up to all of them met my brother in law, Lynn Skipper, to gold deal hunting. We were a full day, about thirty minutes and Lynn got out of his car and and we got out, and he reached back in the car and got a bottle of Jdas and put it all over him and we all laughed, said what are you doing? He said, Well, if you want to kill a deal, you got to put on jds, and so we were laughing. You could hels a quarter mile. So all of them put on jade East and they went on in the woods. Lynn walked me in and told him where to go, and I sat in the truck waiting, and about daylight, a big buck some dough came right by me, but I wasn't gonna shoot one. And about eight o'clock all four of them had shot, and I cranked up my true and went in the woods and picked them up. And all four of them had killed nice bucks and then had killed a beautiful seventeen point And it was all because of the jade East lime flavored. Now it's just a perfume, a man's perfume. You put on a little bit, not poll all over you, you know. 00:48:24 Speaker 6: But it worked. 00:48:27 Speaker 10: It was just a miracle, having to catch every buck in the world in rough that day, moving round. 00:48:39 Speaker 2: It's funny the things that you remember from the deer hunting. All I know is those boys must have been playing the wind. I can't thank you enough for listening to bear Grease. These stories always speak to my soul. I feel like deer stories carry inside of them a value system. When you hear a storyteller talk. You can tell what he values by what he emphasizes, what he remembers, how he interprets the situation, and it always just gets me fired up for deer hunting and just makes me grateful, grateful to be able to hunt such a majestic beast as the white tailed deer, America's favorite big game animal. And what a beautiful, precious, sacred time that it is in October, in November when we're hunting them. Brent Lake and I can't thank you enough for listening to this bear grease feed. Thank you for supporting our partners, thank you for sharing this podcast with your friends. And I think we've got one more Deer Stories episode left in US. So keep the wild places wild, because that's where the bears and the bucks live