00:00:05 Speaker 1: Welcome to This Country Life. I'm your host, Brent Reeves. From coon hunting to trot lining and just general country living, I want you to stay a while as I share my experiences and life lessons. This Country Life is presented by Case Knives from the Store More Studio on Meat Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you the best outdoor podcasts that airways have to offer. All right, friends, grab a chair or drop that tailgate. I've got some stories to share. seeing the forest through the trees. Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, so does the protagonist in today's offering. It is a tale of hope, ambition, tragedy kind of, but triumph most assuredly. And while this next thing has nothing to do with the story, I do want to remind you folks who don't listen all the way to the end, and I can't imagine there's like six of you, but... Because I'm spitting out pure gold from start to finish. But for those six of you that don't listen all the way to the end, you may be one of the ones that needs to hear this more than anybody. Wear your safety harness when you're climbing a tree. Know what you're shooting at before you shoot. And just be safe out there. All right. Join me at the fire. And let's get started. This week's story comes from This Country Life listeners Evan and Mikael Gilliland. The Gillilands are loving and living life up in the Hoosier state. Now, I never hear the word Hoosier that I don't think about a chair flying across a basketball gym floor and an enraged college coach whose bleeped out post-game interview sounds more like Morse code than English. But now, after hearing this story, I have a different image of Hoosiers. And it's one that I think y'all will enjoy as well. So here is a story Evan calls a very heavy yearling. Using his words in my voice, here we go. I grew up in heaven. At least that's how the memories feel. Northeast Indiana is covered up in small lakes and swamps like deer ticks on a whitetail in July, and my family's small farm is planted right in the middle of that outdoor paradise. I had access to all the hunting and fishing goodness of the Midwest right outside my back door. It was a slow night if you only saw 20 whitetails, and you threw back bluegills that weren't larger than than my dad's hard working hands. All while I was growing up in this slice of paradise, my destined to be wife was shuffled all over this land of the free. She was born in Honolulu into a military family, then moved every few years until her teens. Her pets were the only things that didn't fade out of her life. They became her constant happy place. This grew into a love of animals so large She was borderline pro-pedo. Now that deep love and appreciation of animals is what we talked about on our very first phone call, which lasted five hours. I knew right then that I could spend forever with this girl. She told me about all the dogs, cats, lizards, ferrets, and even snakes and little white rats that she'd made friends with over the years. told her about my 4-H livestock and pets. She related well to that, but when I told her my love for wildlife included bringing them inside and warming them up, she may have had a red flag or two shoot up during her assessment of this farm kid that she'd just met. I told her about how much the time spent with my dad meant to me. It was a family-wide tradition that we were simply taking part in the balance of God's creation. Deer would be killed and eaten by something in the woods. That something occasionally was me and my family. And this spoke to her, and she slowly began to open her mind to the idea of calling some of her friends food. I fell head over heels for this girl, and she had a lapse of judgment six months after we met and said yes to marrying me as I proposed in my favorite spot on that family farm. We were so happy. and we had little but puppy love pulling us along. A couple of months later, we went into our first fall hunting season while planning a wedding, and I had no idea that our first hunting experience would test the strength and depth of our relationship. I wanted her to experience with me why I loved hunting so much. In fact, before the hunting season started, I put my tongue in cheek and told her that I loved hunting before I loved her. She knew it was a joke, but she also knew if she wanted to spend as much time with me as possible, she would spend some of that time with me in the woods. I took her out in December for our first hunt together. It was a cold muzzleloader season day. She hogged the buddy heater, and I happily hid my shivers and didn't mention that my toes had gone numb. I could see her eyes light up as birds and squirrels went about in a way that was almost foreign to her. There was something different about how these animals behaved in their natural environment. They weren't altered by the landscape of humanity. There was a contrast between the life and wildlife she knew and the life and wildlife that I knew. At first glance, these squirrels resembled the birdseed-thieving ones in the suburban neighborhood where she lived with her family. Bushy-tailed chick, Four paws, check. Two eyes, check. But watching these wild boys watch for danger while digging through the leaf litter, searching for that last of the untouched acorns was a new and exciting perspective on what it meant to be alive in the outdoors. As she watched the real world of wildlife unfold in front of her, I was double-checking all of my distances with my rangefinder, keeping my eyes peeled for the slightest movement. praying the good Lord would let something good happen so we could do this together forever. About an hour into our hunt, I caught my first glimpse of movement across the field just inside the tree line. It was a doe and two good-sized yearlings. Now, I typically won't harvest a doe with fawns, but I knew the science supported that by this time of year, they would make it just fine without the doe, and I wasn't about to. pass up the opportunity to showcase the beauty of hunting from start to finish so I handed off the binoculars and I took aim this is what I was praying for about a hundred yard shot on a good sized doe that I could butcher and share the bounty with my family and now hers she watched wide eyed through the binoculars as I talked her through the steps I was taking to prepare myself for the shot you see the big one in front Yes. Do you see how she's facing a little bit away? Yes. I'm going to wait for her to turn for a better shot. Okay. Well, she just walked behind that bush. I'll shoot when she steps out. Okay. Here she is. Plug your ears. I'm not sure whose heart was pounding harder when I took that shot. It was her first time and my first time to impress her, and the shot felt good. There had been a small tree just in front of that front leg, but the vitals were clear and I knew I heard an impact from the bullet. Smoke cleared away and the deer was nowhere to be seen and I cautiously expressed excitement and silently thanked the Lord for what just happened. If I had known the full extent of what had really taken place, I would have prayed longer and harder. We waited the customary 20 minutes and walked over to the tree the deer had been standing next to. I couldn't find any blood. I found a few tracks left in the deep black soil and we followed them and shortly afterwards we found a few drops of blood. The amount and color had me concerned, but my concern was mild until I heard the high-pitched bell of a wounded deer ringing through the woods. Dread hit my body from head to toe and I turned towards might soon be bright as her eyes widened with shock and horror and then quickly filled with tears. I tried to calm her fears as I rifled through my hunting bag to realize in a whole new moment of horror that I had failed to bring a reload for my muzzleloader. True to the nature of a 20-year-old male, I said without thinking, Oh no, I don't think I have any more bullets or powder. I grabbed her hand. Somehow holding hands right now wasn't nearly as romantic as usual, but I held tight and I led her about 50 yards further away from the sound of that dying deer, and I told her to wait until I came back. I knew she wouldn't want to be left alone, but knowing I had caused this scenario, it was time for me to resolve it. To make things even worse, when I got to the wounded deer, it was not the big mature doe, it was one of the yearlings, and I had really messed this whole thing up. But only a matter of moments I had put the deer out of its misery and I was left more determined than ever to make clean kills happen on the very first try. Now I had to face problem number two. The pool of tears a hundred yards behind me. I hurried back and did my best to calm things down and assure her that the deer was no longer in pain. don't know how much assurance I brought but I think she saw that I was sincerely sorry both for her and the deer. We slowly made it back over towards where the deer lay and previously I was hoping to showcase the beauty of hunting while downplaying some of the aspects of reality. The reality though could not have been more on display. Yet somehow, in a way that amazes me to this day, the beauty of hunting shined through the grim reality of the moment. I couldn't tell you the thoughts that were going through her head as she kneeled next to this young deer, but mind where I'm about to lose my fiancé. But as she pet the fur, the crying slowed down and she began to admire the soft fur inside the ears and black shiny hooves and the uniquely bumpy black nose i don't know how many times i apologized to both her and the deer as we sat next to it in the marsh grass and eventually she turned to me with no more tears and said you're going to carry this deer out of the woods on your shoulders i'm not about to watch you drag it you're going to give it some dignity This deer is too beautiful to do anything less. I didn't know if I was even able to make that a reality, but I quickly agreed that this was a fair resolve. There must have been a moment in here where she realized the life she was walking into was going to be very different than the one she was leaving. I had stumbled into the reality of her inner strength before she had even fully shared with me the harsh but strengthening details of what life had required her to carry. She had dealt with more shock and trauma than I had, and what she had carried weighed a whole lot more than this yearling I was about to throw over my shoulders. In the last ten years of marriage, I've found that I have needed her inner strength more than I could have realized. God must have heard my prayers too because since then my wife has become an avid hunter. She has killed more bucks than I have. I think this experience is the reason why she has never taken a poor shot. I was beyond proud of her in the fall of 2025 when she called me while I was at work to tell me she'd killed the 170 class non-typical giant she had made her target buck for that season. I couldn't get out there fast enough. She had done it all on her own. She's now giving me advice that I'm taking into the woods with me. But when I carried that deer out of the woods that day, all those years ago, I didn't know that experience would shine a bright light on the inner elements that would carry our relationship through the last decade of our lives together. I made a few mistakes that day. I misidentified one of the yearlings as the big doe as it walked out from behind the brush. Then I let a small tree over the front of its shoulder subconsciously move my crosshairs to the back end of the vitals. All the while, I didn't bring backup loads for my muzzleloader. Those mistakes pale in comparison to some that I've made in life in the years since, but As it did on that day, it mattered that I've done what's necessary to fix them. Been sincerely sorry and have worked towards not making those same mistakes moving forward. Now looking back, I now see that when my soon-to-be bride was willing to accept the imperfection of reality and focus on the beauty rather than the pain, I see that we have had something special to work with together. It's been a decade, and maybe some things aren't exactly the way they were in the moment, but from what I can remember, that's just how that happened. Now, according to Evan, all of this took place up near Stroh, Indiana, on his family's multi-generational farm, and Evan's fiancée, Mikkel, not only witnessed her first deer hunt there, but wasn't far out of baseball chugging distance from that spot when old Evan popped the question to her. I talked to them tonight on the phone, asking them for a few details about where they lived and their families and listened to both of them talk about something that they both loved and respect with a big goofy grin on my face. I don't know how old they are, but they spoke with such youthful exuberance and enjoyment that I couldn't help but see them as kids when I know they're both grown adults. That was just one of the takeaways I got from this story, the other being such a diverse lesson in modern-day understanding. There was a lady who had no exposure to hunting before this trip, zero. And then our man in the field, Evan, took her on arguably the worst hunt scenario you could dream up outside of one of them getting hurt. Now y'all don't be chunking rocks at Evan in the comments. He'll be the first one to tell you that he made a boo-boo that day. A big one. And there's not one of us around that hasn't had something go exactly wrong just like this. Evan is man enough to share it with the world though. The aftermath of that hunt could have gone a few different ways and Yet out of that chaotic moment, the absolute best outcome was reached. A non-hunter looked at the big picture of conservation instead of the momentary trauma that accompanied it. She saw the value in the effort and vowed to be a better participant by preparing herself before she started hunting on her own and utilizing patience and discretion when her opportunities arose. Evan said himself that she had a positive influence on him by doing so. She had a positive influence on me as I stumbled my way through these weekly struggles, realizing that there are still people out there able to change sides if they're willing to see, listen, and experience things for themselves instead of preconceived ideas from someone else. Everyone seems to have an agenda these days, and you're either all in or all out with no middle ground, and that ain't right. Alexis and I went out and had sushi for supper last night. Now, 20 years ago, I would have stopped at a sushi place for fish bait instead of a meal. I ain't took up to eating it with sticks just yet, but I figure it tastes the same either way. The point is, I tried it, and I liked it, just like Mikkel did, just like We all can. I've encountered very little in my tenure on this spinning orb of calamity that was exactly as it appeared. Most things are like an onion, which is, I guess that's really a terrible analogy because every layer you peel back on the onion reveals another layer of onion, but I think you can smell what I'm stepping in when I say that. She kept an open mind and looked at everything involved and then made up her own mind. What a novel idea. Thank y'all so much for listening to all of us here on the Old Bear Grease channel. Clay Lake and I really appreciate it. Try to introduce someone who's new or may not have the same opportunities that you do to get out and enjoy the things that we do, things that we love, and the things that we need to pass on to other folks so they can enjoy it too. Until next week, this is Brent Reeves signing off. Y'all be careful.