00:00:05 Speaker 1: That coyode actually saved me because that deer was he was really close to a clearcut that's just nearly impenetrable. And you know, I know that in another hour or so, I would have gotten down and I would have spooked that deer and hit where he was hit. Chances are wouldn't have led a lot, and if he'd got in that thicket, I may have never found him. But that coyode, actually I say, it's kyold, it's God, just put him right back there in my lap. 00:00:33 Speaker 2: The time to hunt whitetail deer is officially upon us. We all know this time as the fall. That name, that noun, the fall, is so familiar to us, we might have lost sight of how poetic and simple that descriptor actually is. In scientific terms, the fall is the season when the northern hemisphere rotates towards the north pole, making the days shorter, the weather cooler, and the shadows longer. At some point a human walked outside and saw a leaf drop. They saw it fall, and they said, let's call this the fall. But to a deer hunter, the fall is so much more complex. This episode is a little bit different. We've got an eclectic cast of storytellers. Some are longer stories, some are short, but I hope you can sit back and enjoy each one as they come from guar holes to cold snaps, to scopes being off to deer falling out of the. 00:01:33 Speaker 3: Backs of trucks. 00:01:34 Speaker 2: It's fall time, folks, and that's a good enough reason to celebrate. I really doubt that you're gonna want to miss this Deer Stories episode. And this is meat Eater's Whitetail Week, where you can buy more and save more at first light dot com. First Light has the best light tail gear on the market, and this week you can save on it. And don't forget about those new phelps. Deer calls the Acorn Pro, which is an inhale exhale grunt bleat. Let's get to our stories. 00:02:12 Speaker 4: He said he'd push it down and very gently stepped across it, just like a man. And see he just a boy, And I thought, well, yeah, okay, but you can look at the rack. You can tell the boys tell its truth. 00:02:35 Speaker 2: My name is Clay Knukelem 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 f HF Gear, American made, purpose built hunting and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as the places we explore. Man, do I ever love these dear stories episodes? But last week is gonna be hard to top. Between Lake's Daddy Doyle story and Mitch's Baron Buck fiasco, and then Med Palmer's story about the Mississippi River and how meaningful and tragic that one was, the bar just keeps getting higher. And I'll tell you one thing when it comes to storytelling is that you never want to tell your story after the best story has already been told. But you also might hear a story, and you can kind of show up and have the best story after you've already heard the players in the field, if you know what I mean. Starting us off this week is my friend from Western Arkansas, Mitch Sykes. 00:03:52 Speaker 3: He told the story on the last episode. 00:03:55 Speaker 2: This is a public land hunt that I call the Hide and Seek book. 00:04:06 Speaker 1: This was in nine, I believe, and my favorite time of year, and I have more success with quality deer the first musloading season than any other time. And because of work I had to leave opening day of musloading season, and I was out of town. I was out of state from nearly the whole week. And Andy Brown he was texting me pictures and they were hunting at the WMA and having a lot of success, and of course I'm out of town, not getting the hunt, just sick, and I got back to Arkansas. Season opened on a Saturday and it ended on Sunday, and I got back Thursday night. So Friday morning, I got up early and I hadn't got to scout or do anything down at the WMA, so I just took my climb and stand, and I knew a few areas down there, and I knew the deer were moving. So my goal for Saturday was not to hunt. I was just going to try to find a place to hunt that weekend and Clay. I went to every I knew in the WMA, and I don't know it very well, but I went to some spots that historically I had had some success or seen deer, and I just couldn't find anything that made me want to hang a stand. And I never will forget the last place I thought I was gonna have time to go. I carried my stand in there, came back to the truck nothing, and I was about to think, I'm just gonna hunt around the house tomorrow. But when I walked back into the road where my truck was parked, and I threw my stand over in the truck, I just looked down the road. I was kind of parked in a straight stretch. Three or four deer were in the road up there, and they left the road, and it was right before dark, I mean like twenty minutes before dark dark, and I got to think, well, maybe there's some acrons up there falling. I hadn't found acrons. I hadn't found any bucks signed, I hadn't found anything. So I walked back down the road there. They were about one hundred yards from my truck where they were at, And when I got there, I could tell there was white oak acorns in the road. There was deer crossing the road, a lot of deer activity right there in just south of the road. Right there, there was a little knob that it wasn't one hundred yards to the top of it, but it was just like a cow's face. It was straight up steep. As I kind of started walking up that noob, I kept thinking was it everyone in flat no OWT, what's it going to look like on top when I get up there? And I finally got to the top of it, and there was an old log road run right out the top of that little ridge, and there was scrapes like you dream about, you know, just as big as a hood of a truck, several scrapes in that old log road, and to this day, the biggest rub that I've ever seen. There was a tree about as big as my leg that was rubbed pretty good up there. And I had went ahead and took my climber, and I said, this is where I need to be. So I kind of backed off on the north edge of it where I could see out the top and back down the south side, and I hung my stand on a white oak tree, and I went ahead and climbed up it and limbed it out and just left it there at the base of the tree. And next morning I got in there to hunt. It was probably as foggy as any morning I've ever hunted in my life. The first time I'd ever been up there was the night before. I didn't tack it in I thought I can find it. I got there an hour before daylight, wanting to be in my stand an hour before daylight. And I got up there in the fog, didn't get turned around, but I could not find my stand, and of course my little headlight it would go three foot in front of you and it wouldn't even reach the ground. It was a foggy I walked around that top of that ridge, by those scrapes, by that rub a dozen times, and of course I'm just soaking wet, aggravated, knowing that I've just messed that spot up. Finally find my tree stand and get up in it, and I'm just I'm just sick. I thought, I'm not going to see anything. I mean, everything's gonna smell me. And when I got up there, it it wasn't real pretty woods. It was a lot of little, short, dwarfy post oaks and briary and I couldn't see good. I mean, I couldn't really see much past thirty yards in any direction, but I knew it was in a good spot in boy. Just shortly after daylight, I heard something coming from the west, right out the top of the ridge. And when I first seen it, I could tell it was a buck, but I didn't know if it was one I wanted to shoot. He had horns that just from the side. He didn't look like he had any main beams. But he kind of got right there in front of me, and he turned and looked at me. He just his horns come right back together. But a really nice, real tall, tying chocolate horned just an eight point, but a good deer one I'm gonna shoot. And it was just like I say, it was just brushy, and I couldn't get a good shot. And finally I got him stopped. And the deer was not far thirty five forty yards through a little bit of brush. I guess, maybe more than I thought. And I shot, and I thought I was right on him. I wasn't nervous, and when I shot, of course, smoke filled the air. I never saw that deer run off. I never heard him run off. I thought I had killed him dead right there. So I reloaded my gun. I waited about thirty minutes, probably, and I got down and I went over there. I have no idea what happened, just like I was shooting a blank. There there was no blood, there was no hair. I couldn't even tell where the deer had tore up the ground. I don't know what happened, but I missed the deer and anyways kind of scourged. So I just went back and got in the tree climb back up there, and I'll never forget. It was about nine pint thirty. I hear the same thing coming from the west right out the top of the ridge there, and it sounds like it's just just without ceasing, just as far as I could hear till it got right there, just crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch. I can't explain to you how thick the woods were right there, but I remember I saw that horizontal movement, you know how you can see just that movement of something walking, and it probably stopped twenty five thirty yards from me fixing to come out where I could had a few places to see. It just stopped, and I remembered that I had seen like a leg or the body of something, and it wasn't a co old. I knew it was a deer, and it just stopped, And of course I got turned around there and got ready, you know, for take a few more steps where I could see what it was and possibly shoot. And I'm going to try to be conservative when I tell you that I sat there, I would say fifteen minutes, so long that I started questioning what I had seen. I'm like, could that had been a kita that smelled? Because I knew I had been all over it. I mean, I had walked all over where that deer was at before daylight, trying to find my stand. You know, was it a hawk? Sometimes you'll see a bird, a big hawk or something that movement. But I'm like, no, I heard that deer walk in there, but there's no way a deer is still standing there at fifteen or twenty minutes and not moved a muscle. About that time, I kind of heard something back to my right and I looked in there was a button buck not thirty yards from me. I mean, I was thinking, that must be the deer that I saw walk in here. How did he get down the mountain thirty yards without me seeing him? And I got thinking, well, I was so keyed on that area right there where I saw that deer stop. He might have just made a little circle and been quiet. I didn't know what had happened, but I still something made me think there was a deer there and that button buck he was feeding on acrons and he come right in there, right about the base of my tree. And when he did, I saw him throw his head up and he was looking right where I had been looking, and he kind of he didn't blow, and stopping kind of stomped his foot of time or two, but he didn't blow, and he just went right back to feet and when he did, I heard a twig or something snap right there, So of course I kind of got ready again. And when that deer stepped out, he is about twenty four inches wide. He is a really nice buck. But that deer had been that whole time, and I know what it was. He smelled me, because before daylight I had been all over that and I think he probably he smelled me. I don't know that he knew that I was still there, but I do believe that that deer had been there for close to twenty minutes without moving a muscle and ended up when that button buck was right underneath me, I guess he felt comfortable and he just walked right down there in my face and I shot him with the muzzle loader. And he's one of the better deer I've ever killed, the only deer I've ever weighed with the guts in it. He weighed one hundred ninety four. 00:11:45 Speaker 2: Pounds, witnessing the patience of that buck and then out lasting him without getting busted with something special. I think big do this a lot, but we usually never know it because the deer spooks or just disappears, and maybe we never even know it was there. They don't get old by being dumb. They say it was a good story, Mitch, so good we actually may come back to you at the. 00:12:16 Speaker 3: End for another story. 00:12:18 Speaker 2: Our next story is told by me and Lake Pickle's friend, Keith Polk. Keith is one of Lake's turkey hunting mentors and a long time friend of his. 00:12:28 Speaker 3: I've just met Keith in the last couple of years. 00:12:32 Speaker 2: Lake's Daddy Dole story is going to be hard to top Keith, but it's worth a shot. 00:12:36 Speaker 3: Here's Keith. 00:12:39 Speaker 5: This story took place in the fall of ninety two down in Prentice, Mississippi, which is about an hour south at Jackson, down in the piney woods. That's where I was raised and where I learned to hunt and my appreciation for the outdoors begin. And that particular year, my good friend Brad Shivers and I we hunted a lot together. He had started bow hunting, and this was a two week primitive weapon season, and in the first two weeks of December that Mississippi has still has actually and Brad would be bow hunting this particular evening and was looking for a place to see some deer, and so I sent him across the creek through some hard woods to a food plot that we seldom hunted, but was often frequented by, you know, a couple of three four dos. And so the cool thing about it was the west side of the food plot, there's this little scope of hardwoods that protrude out into a large broom sage field, and these hardwoods it's some huge cherry bark oak and white oak timber. So I just I had suggested that Brad, you know, just go getting nestled up in the roots of one of those big trees, get where he could draw his bow and settle in. Well, that evening I go to pick him up, and it's obvious that he has seen something or done something I couldn't tell. Man, he was excited, and so he proceeds to tell me that just before dark he hears some rustling in the leaves and he kind of rolls off the tree and looks behind him, and he gets to watch this big mature rack buck, you know, make a scrape and a rub. He's actually rubbing a sapling and pawing at the ground and scraping right there. And this is something we hadn't ever seen. We'd only seen it on a truth video and we were pretty fired up, and I basically interrogated bread where'd the deer come from? Where'd the deer go? How long did he stay? And we figured that he had came and went from this big broom sage field, which I had totally overlooked. And so I felt like I told Brian, I felt like I could I had a really good chance to kill that deer, you know, now that we knew where he was coming go. And so we're right before Christmas, a week or so passed where we're outside of the primitive weapons season. Now we're back in the firearm season. And I had gotten an Amiker dear Thief climbing stand, and this had been my first hunt with it, and I'm sure I had put it up in the yard and tested it out. But after toting that heavy rascal all the way through those hardwoods and getting on the edge of the broom sage fill with it. I find me a nice little water oak tree and get it on and proceed to climb up. Well, I didn't take into account the taper of the tree, and my top portion of my climber is angled down. You know, it's sloped down pretty severe. So rather than doing what I know I should have done and climb back down and readjusted the tree, I decided I would just readjust it in the tree. So I do, and I loosen the wing nut and take it off and pull the bolt out and slide the bar. And it's quite a complicated process to do up in the heights of a water oak, but I pulled it up off, or so I thought. I get my bolt in there and everything's readjusted, and I go to put the wing nut on, and I thought I had started it, and so I just took my finger and was gonna thump that wing nut to spin it on. And when I thumped it, I watched in horror as it plummeted to the forest floor. And it was just like watching it in slow motion. And I didn't take my eyes off of it, like I knew exactly where it fell in those leaves. I said, man, I've got to get that nut. So I hold the bolt in my left hand and start down the tree and I'm trying to be as quiet as possible because I've just got super super high expectations for this hunt. I just felt really confident. So I get down, readjust the tree. I did find the wing nut, get it back on, climb back up, get in the tree, grab my pullup rope, start to pull my rifle up and it's not coming up, and I'm like, what's going on. 00:16:57 Speaker 6: I look down and there is. 00:16:58 Speaker 5: This tiny young holly, like a yo pine holly bush at the base of my tree, and my pull up rope had looped around that tree. And I tugged and pulled and I just there. Nothing in me wanted to go back down the tree a second time, but that's exactly what I had to do. So I go down the tree, untangle my pull up rope, get that situated, climb back up the tree for the second time, and finally get my gun in my hands. And I almost left before I climbed back up the second time. I really had to have a hard conversation with myself to make myself stay but I did, and I just figured if nothing else, I'd get a little recont on the spot and may have to refine you know where I'm sitting for the next hunt, because I surely didn't think I would have any success that evening. Well, time clicked on, and right before dark something catches my eye and I look, and instantly I see a deer. I see a rack. I shoulder my rifle, wait for a clear shot, and then squeeze a trigger, and it all happened, and under well, under a minute, I mean it happened fast. The deer turns, runs and he runs out back in the sage field, and I see him crash, and I can't believe what just happened. 00:18:23 Speaker 3: I'm stoked. 00:18:25 Speaker 5: My first big buck and he's on the ground, and I really don't know how big he is. No trail cameras back then or anything like that. Never previously seen him in the bread had, but I had not. We believe it to be the same deer. But I climb down, slip out there in the broomsage, and man, there he is, and I have killed a giant. And this is giant is a relative description, because this deer is all of probably one hundred and fifteen hundred and twenty inches a typical ten point deer. And man, I am stoked, just beyond my mind. 00:18:59 Speaker 6: I'm fired up, so I'd run. 00:19:01 Speaker 5: I'd run back out of the woods, get on my three wheeler, head back to the house. I get to the house and my brother is in the yard and it's not quite dark yet. My brother's in the yard talking to family friends named Robbie. Robbie had come to see my parents. And Robbie was not a hunter and h but Robbie was, you know, he knew my brother and I. When I get out of the truck, I've not said a word to my brother. We just lock eyes and he said you did it didn't And I said I did. He said how big is he? I said, he's a monster, And may we start? We just get giddy, you know, and fired up, And so we end up heading back down the creek and Robbie's in between us. I guess if liking to a kidnapping, because I don't think he went at his own wheel. We just pushed him in the truck. 00:19:47 Speaker 6: We were so fired up. 00:19:48 Speaker 5: But we head to the creek and my little Ford Ranger, my brother's driving cross the creek bridge, run through the logging roads, just flying through the logging roads, and we get to the field edge and and go out there, and man, I just remember how proud my brother was. I just I can remember it like it was yesterday. Just we even got Robbie in on dragging the deer back into the truck and we loaded the deer up. And so there's no social media obviously in ninety two. But there was a Shell station and that was our gas station and Prentice and that was our social media. Man. Everybody typically, especially on a Friday and Saturday night, everybody ended up at the Shell station around six thirty or seven o'clock, and especially if you'd killed something. Man, that was just a gathering place. And so tailgates down the bucks on laying there in the bike and here we go back through the woods, flying back out to the house. Well, on the way out, there's this big I call them possum grapevines, but it's just a vine, probably not quite an inch in diameter, but it stretches from the right side of the road from up high, it comes down, makes a loop and it stretches to the left side the road. It's just just awed how it grew that way. But it makes this loop and you have to slow down. We had to slow down in the truck because you could bust the window out. It just hangs right there. So I remember my brother driving and he drove right up there, and he slowed down real fast, and he touched it, and it scraped over the hood, over the windshield, over the cow, and then bloom, it fell in the bed of the truck. As soon as it went over the cab and then the bed of the truck. My brother just castes it. 00:21:26 Speaker 7: Man. 00:21:26 Speaker 5: We're flying back out of the woods well before we get to the creek bridge. We're just reminiscing and I look back. I just want to look at my big buck one more time, and he's not there, and I freak out. I'm like, the buck's gone. My brother locks the truck up and literally just bales out and takes off running down the road. I jump in the driver's seat, throw it in reverse, and here I go, driving and reverse down this woods road all the way back, you know, trying to catch up with my brother. And I get to him and my brother is standing than over that buck. That fine had went right over the hood of the truck, dropped down into the bed, and that loop just hooked right at the base of his antlers and slid him ever so gently out in the back of the truck. I mean, you couldn't have made it up. But my brother, being the big brother that he is, when I get out of the truck, he's shaking his head and he says, man, he's all busted up, And he wasn't. He was just having fun with me. But we load him up and we get him to town, and man, I just it was just a moment I'll never forget and can remember going back in that store probably for the better part of the year. They kept a big cork bulletin board there, and there on that bulletin board thirty five milimeter picture you know, of me in that ten point book, and it's just that's a memory, and that's a hunt that I'll never forget. I mean, it just it's always right there, fresh on my mind. 00:23:20 Speaker 2: You may want to shut that tailgate next time, Keith. That story just kind of oozed with the passion and zeal of the early years of a hunter's life. And I don't think Keith has lost that fire at all. But I do think it morphs into a more mature state of enjoying the hunt. That's perhaps even better than that youthful zeal. That was a great story. 00:23:45 Speaker 3: Keith, way better than Lake's story. 00:23:50 Speaker 2: But now we're going to jump into a medley of three short stories. Sometimes the short ones are the best. They're the stories that a guy just kind of tells off the cuff, you know, doesn't have to have some big backstory. And to start us off on the short stories, you may remember Henry sou Song from last year. Henry's eighty two years old in a veteran mountain bowhunter in East Tennessee. He and his son's whitetail room would rival any in America period. These boys kill some big deer and they do it all with bows. And I have never met a man that has more passion about whitetail bow hunting than Henry Siouxsong. So after he told his story from last year about killing this big mountain buck, I asked him, I said, hey, do you have any more stories? 00:24:41 Speaker 3: And this is the one he told me. 00:24:44 Speaker 4: Well, yeah, I guess I do. I was going to tell you about my son when he was young, he was hunting Hurry near here, and he said, Dad, I've been trying to kill a ten point with a bow. He's not a big one. He's just maybe two year old ten point, he said, but he's almost human like. He said, he's coming to a rye field that somebody's got sowed down along the river here, and he said, he said, it's amazing. He said, you're going to laugh. He walks up to that three he's got a three wire barb war fence around his little rye patch. He said, I may think you had the back in there and they just sew a crave across. But he said, this little ten point will come up there. He don't try to jump the fence. He puts his horns in the fence and pushes it down with his horns and steps through it like a man. You know how kids are. I thought, okay, I didn't say anything. So he hunted down there for I don't know, two or three weeks, and he could never get a shot at it. He said, to ten point across the roads come a different direction. You couldn't You couldn't pin him down, you know, get a shot out of the boat. So he goes down there and killed it with a rifle and comes back, and I'll show it to you a minute. 00:25:56 Speaker 7: I got hang out here. 00:25:57 Speaker 4: You wouldn't believe. I was skeptically start with, but you wouldn't believe the war on the bottom of that deer's rack where he'd crossed that fence. I believe he'd done it. I don't know what reason. Maybe he couldn't jump. I don't know, but the rack is almost war half in too from where he put his hands or put his horns on that fence and pushed it down. He said he'd push it down, and very gently stepped across it, just like a man. You see. He just a boy. And I thought, well, yeah, okay, but it's you can look at the rack. You can tell the boys tell it's true. That's absolute truth. 00:26:44 Speaker 2: He crossed the fence like a man. I like the way he said that, And I saw the rack myself. It looked like the buck had been hung in a barber wire fence and wore the main beams down. In one particular spot where the G three's touched the rack, it was wild. Our next story is from another old timer by the name of Gerald Brewer, a good friend of mine from western Arkansas. This is just a solid kind of funny story about when Gerald mentored a kid in hunting. I wish Jerald would have cackled in laughter like he did the first time he told me this when the recorder wasn't going, so just you can kind of imagine it. Here is a very special man by the name of Jerald. 00:27:29 Speaker 7: Brewer two years ago when I was much youngering. This young man I'm speaking of was he probably twelve. His dad did not hunt. So he asked me one time if i'd take him out and teach him how to hunt, because that's what he wanted to do, you know, And I'm sure I'll do that, and we go turk hunting. And anyway, this one time it was during the black powder and mosel Otin season. Well, so I went hunting all day, hadn't seen anything to shoot, and so we'd started back home is late afternoon and teaching him, being a mentor to him. Where we had taken the caps offer most of the loaders as the law said, and unloaded it and we had laid them in the back a much eat in a safe area. About the time we'd getting out of the National Forest area where we've come to a field or a pasture in about fifty sixty yards from the road, there stood the biggest book I had ever seen. He's right on the fence line, on the inside in the pasture, and we looked at him and looked at him, and he was sort of looking in the brush across the fence when we sat there for quite a while watching it, and it would move its head and everything. You know. I had heard rumors in the area that the game fish had been putting out decoys trying to catch people from violating the law. More I looked at it and I said that I've never seen a dear that big in this part of the world, so that has to be a decoy. And I told him, I said, let's go. I said, that's a decoy. So we drove on. So it was days later, maybe in two weeks or so, we heard the rumors that this young man had killed a big buck not too far from from that, probably within three or four hundred ards of this area on the National Forest. They had a food plot and he had killed this big, big buck in that food plot, and in fact he had brought it to town showing around. He didn't even realize that it was a big how big it was. You know, he just knew he didn't kill the buck. And so anyway, I thought about that that thing was real, you know that. So this young man the same way, you know, he said, you hear about you know, because I would let him shoot. I didn't want to teach him wrong, you know of because I wouldn't look too good on my part, you know. So anyway, that's my dear story. 00:30:14 Speaker 2: It's a good thing y'all didn't shoot that buck, Gerald. That was funny again. The first time Jerald told me, he cackled like a schoolgirl. And the thing that's really funny about it, if you know Gerald, is that he's a law abiden man and wouldn't have shot that buck if he didn't think it was a decoy. And I saw the buck that they're talking about at the taxi deermy shop that was killed in that food plot, and it was every inch of one hundred and sixty inches. 00:30:41 Speaker 3: A true monster. The next story is a short. 00:30:45 Speaker 2: One, again by a new friend of ours named Bob Wilson out of Dixon, Missouri. 00:30:51 Speaker 3: Here's Bob. 00:30:55 Speaker 8: Yes, I'm Bob Wilson, and I live in Mary's County in Dixon, Missouri, and I'm going to tell you a story about one of my old friends, Vic. He's quite an archer. He'd won several state championships. But you'd have to know Vic. If you've ever watched Andy Griffith Show and Barney Fife, that was Vic. I mean they were like identical. But my brother and I were going up to hunt and Vic said, hey, can I go with you? I said, yeah, you're welcome to go. So we went over to one of those food plots and started down through there. Well, I didn't know where to put VIC. 00:31:30 Speaker 6: And it was. 00:31:31 Speaker 8: About a half a mile down that food plot, close to a half a mile, and it made a ninety degree and we stopped there in Vick's where do you think I should go? I said, I think there's a really good spot right down there, Vic, which I'd never seen it before, never been there, And so he said, okay, I'll see you guys later. He goes down and my brother and I turned the right. We went down and got in a couple stands that we thought deer would be through set there all morning, never saw a thing. So we came back and when we got to that ninety where Vic had went, my brother. Dennis said, well, it looks like somebody's drug something up through here, and I said, well it does. 00:32:10 Speaker 6: So anyway, we. 00:32:11 Speaker 8: Followed the trail back to the truck, got up there and there set Vic and he had an eight point buck and he said, boy, you really put me in a good spot. And I said, I told you that was a good place to go. So he was pretty proud of me for futting him in that spot. 00:32:32 Speaker 3: The guarhold and plain and simple. 00:32:35 Speaker 2: Has that ever happened to you where you sent somebody to a spot that you really didn't think it was going to turn out but it did? 00:32:40 Speaker 3: Or have you been garhold? That was a good one. 00:32:43 Speaker 2: Bob our next story is a good one and it's told by none other than the Mississippi biologist Med Palmer. Yep, the same Med from the last episode. And what I've heard over and over since he came on the podcast is that Med is a legendary with a capital L, Mississippi turkey hunter and woodsman. So when Med talks a feller. 00:33:09 Speaker 3: Better listen. 00:33:10 Speaker 2: Here's Med and this story revolves around a gun. 00:33:19 Speaker 9: My name is Med Palmer from Kapya County, Mississippi. I worked for Mississippi Point wife. It's in Parks the year of twenty twenty two, which i'd been real busy during deer season for work, and I generally start doing most of my deer hunting around Christmas. That's when the rut's going on on into January, and this particular year, I hadn't got to hunt much at all. And it's around January the eleventh. I decided I was gonna go hunting that morning, and I knew the deer was rutting pretty good, and we had a buck on our plate that my nephew had pictures of that was an older buck. Holmes was messed up pretty bad. And I told all the kids, I said, y'all see this buck, showed him all the picture. I said, y'all shoot him because he needs to go. He's five and a half years old, and I said, he's never gonna be anything else, you know. And they had killed a lot of deer, so they took him to day to shoot him, you know, naturally, and well rocked on and nobody had seen him. And that particular morning, I was sitting in the stand and I don't know, it's probably about nine o'clock bout one hundred yards. This deer comes out and I said, you know, one hundred yards chip shot and I said, I'll shoot him. Go get the truck and you know, be done with it. Well, he walks out, laying broadside. I propped up on the sandbag and I put the crosshairs on him. 00:34:39 Speaker 6: I pulled the trigger. 00:34:41 Speaker 9: He hits the graunt. So I start getting my stuff. You are to get out, and I looked and he had disappeared. I'm shooting a three hundred weather ben. I'm thinking he shouldn't be disappearing. I said, I don't know, what's nothing to happen. So again I out laid my stuff in the stand and get down there. And down at the end of the lane, I see comes across, going back about two hundred yards from me then and I was standing where the deer had failed. 00:35:06 Speaker 6: So he runs ended up. 00:35:08 Speaker 9: I found blood going out and the other way the deer had went and trailed it back around, and that was the deer that come across. 00:35:14 Speaker 6: I said, well, that deer and't even hurt. 00:35:16 Speaker 9: But my son had a blood dog, so calming if you he brings him down there, we put the blood dog on it. We tracked it deer, probably my own a half. He never even laid up. And a couple of days later we actually got a picture of the deer. I had grazed that deer high right above the shoulder, just enough to paralyze them for a minute. 00:35:33 Speaker 6: I reckon. I mean, he was fine. 00:35:36 Speaker 9: I had bought this gun and scot probably twenty seven years ago, and that's a Sivorski's cooat and I sighted that gun and twenty seven years ago and I have never had to move it ever. And I check it before the season like everybody does, and about twice through the middle of the season, just to make sure. And I thought that day that deer got away. I went when I was on him, my gun must be. So I go to the house when I get home that day, I shoot it and it was all had never been off in twenty seven years, and I hadn't bumped it, hadn't done anything. So I sided it back in or the next morning I had the opportunity to go, and the weather condition was perfect. It was grizzly rain, and you know how bucks loved to move on grizzley rain. I go the same stand and I'm sitting there that morning and see a couple of doughs that morning, and one of them had that way about her. But it wasn't any other bucks, was it. And I thought she acted like she's starting to come in. Well, she come across the lane in a little while later. I'm sure it's the same dough come back to the same place. And there was a stretch of boat woods and I could see her and she just stood there, and I thought, that dough is standing there. I believe that the buck wanted to come out, but he don't want to come across this lane and to go back. When I realized my gun was off, I know this is gonna sound crazy. But that night when I after I siwed that gun and I was thinking, I said my gun was off of some kind of I said that I hadn't been off and I had bumped or anything. I said, I go in the morning, I'm gonna kill a good book. My mind was just telling me. I know it sounds crazy, and walking in that morning, I thought, I'm going to kill the best book I ever killed in my life. Because my gun was off and the good Lord letting me miss that deer to let me know my gun was off, I just knew. 00:37:21 Speaker 6: I just had that feeling. 00:37:22 Speaker 9: I said, it happened for a reason because I'm up fanatic with my gun about bumping the scope and making sure it's sighted in. And I kept watching that door and I said, he's here. I said, he's right here somewhere because them old bucks, they just do not like to come out and open it. I mean, everybody deer hunt knows it. And that dough wanted him to come, and I knew, so I just wanted to move the sand bag to that side, and I got ready, and she started going through those woods rown there about four hundred yards and I said, he comes out, I'm about to be on my game. And that went on for about twenty minutes. You know, my mind was telling me, well, you may be wrong, and I about that time he steps out, and I'm on my gun. I already got safety, y'all. So by now he's halfway crossing, I can see homes want my naked out. He was four hundred pitty, y'all. And he stopped for this second, and I get on him and I pulled the trigger and he falls right there, and the doe just stands there. She comes up to the buck and starts walking around him until I started going to him, and then she's seen me and blue and running. 00:38:24 Speaker 6: But he was a He was a really good deer. He was typical. 00:38:28 Speaker 9: He wasn't about eighteen and a half, but he had real long points. I'm guessing probably one pity, you know, for around here, that's a really good deer. 00:38:38 Speaker 2: That was a good story, Mad and I appreciate you seeing God's hand involved in your life. Those interactions are as real as a man's faith allows for him to perceive them. Now, what we're gonna do is go back to Mitch Sykes from Arkansas. Mitch is an incredible hunter and he's got a short story here involving a kyote. 00:39:31 Speaker 3: Here's Mitch. 00:39:34 Speaker 1: I want to say it was probably an four. I never will forget that morning. I think it was Halloween day, but the leaves had changed and it was one of those cloudy mornings to where the woods were just orange. I mean, it was just beautiful and I had gotten in there early and right at daylight from the south, I just heard a deer coming. And you know how it is when you hear a buck walking during the rut, it's like a teenage boy dragging his feet, and it just was he never stopped. It was just it seemed like I hear him coming for one hundred yards and I got ready and he was about thirty yards from me, going north, and when he went through my openings, of course, I was trying to get him to stop, you know, with my mouth I could not. I mean just just too loud, and he would not stop. And I don't condone it, but I ended up shooting that deer walking at thirty something yards, and you know, I tried to lead him, you know, I tried to hold the way he was walking to compensate for that. And I thought I hit him pretty good. Knew I hit him a little bit back, but I thought I had hit him real good. It was right at daylight. He broke and ran and went down a little steep drawing up on the ridge and kind of stopped and everything kind of got quiet, but I didn't hear him crash, and I was kind of concerned, and I thought, well, it's early, it's a good time of here. I'm just going to sit here. I sat there and I thought, think it was about the best I can recall. Probably two hours went by quite a while, maybe two and a half hours. It might have been up around nine thirty and I heard something coming from the north and I looked in here come a kyt and it came. It didn't get real close to me, but it probably got forty yards from me, and it crossed that ravine and went over east up me, up on that hardwood ridge, kind of where my deer had went. And I remember thinking, if he didn't find that deer or spook that deer, I was thinking the deer was dead. And he kind of got out of sight, but I could still hear. 00:41:32 Speaker 6: Him over there on the woods. 00:41:33 Speaker 1: And all of a sudden I heard the brush busting, and off come a deer. And here come a really good buck from the same direction the buck that I had shot had went. Here come a really good buck coming right to me. He crossed that ravine and come right up there on the ridge with me, and I just pulled back and when I shot him, and he's the only deer I've ever shot with my bow, and I shot him right in the shoulder, and he fell just like he had shot him with. 00:41:57 Speaker 6: A thirty oh six. 00:41:58 Speaker 1: I mean, he just he didn't run, He just fell over dead. He's kicking of course, but I mean he fell right there, and when he did back about the last rib, maybe behind the last rib in the flank, I saw a hole and it all came together right then. That was the buck that I had shot two and a half hours earlier. And you know how normally a cold screws your hunt up, for that code actually saved me because that deer was he was really close to a clear cut that's just nearly impenetrable. And you know, I know that in another hour or so, I would have gotten down and I would have spooked that deer and hit where he was hit. Chances are wouldn't have led a lot, and if he'd got in that thicket, I may have never found him. But that code, actually. 00:42:44 Speaker 6: I say, it's a coyold. 00:42:45 Speaker 1: It's God just put him right back there in my lap. I was excited, and I was glad the way it all played out. And I just kept on sitting there and about I don't really know if it was an hour or something like that. Later I heard some deer back south of me, and I was looking down there and I could see it looked like three or four dos milling around, kind of working their way towards me, and I just kind of turned on that side of the tree, and I was looking back to the south, and I heard something coming from the north again, not making a lot of noise, but I heard something up there, and I remember my initial thought was, I bet that's at Kyoke coming back here. And when I turned and looked over my shoulder, probably one of the biggest bucks I've ever seen in my life was coming right to me. The way that country was, that was a leg on the west end of a mountain, and it didn't matter if you were turkey hunting, if you were squirrel hunting, if you were ever in that area and you went to walk off, it fled. The terrain just funneled. 00:43:49 Speaker 6: You right there. 00:43:50 Speaker 10: That's why I hunted there. 00:43:52 Speaker 1: And that buck was coming right down that leg right to me, I mean gonna come right to me. And I figured he was going to see the deer that I had shot, and I thought he's going to stop and I'm going to get an easy shot at him. And he got probably within about twenty yards of me, coming head on, and he just stopped. And I was hoping he would see the deer laying right there in front of him. But he I guess he caught a glimpse of the doze back behind me because they were kind of milling around. But all of a sudden, and I know you've seen him do it when a buck will put his head on the ground and start that trotting like Pranson. He just pretty fast, you know, and grunting every breath. But if he had met another two or three seconds, he was a really big club. He was one hundred and forty hundred and fifty inch deer. He was a really good deer. Out of my life forevery But he went down there and I listened to him and watched him chase those dos for another five or ten minutes. You could hear him grunting, and this never did come back through. 00:44:55 Speaker 2: That's an anomaly when a kyote helps you rather than hurts you. 00:44:59 Speaker 3: I like it. 00:45:00 Speaker 2: And I'm seeing a theme of predators interrupting your deer hunts between that coyote and that bear. Our final storyteller for the whole year of our Deer Stories episodes is none other than Moe Shepherd from the Ozarks of Arkansas. Moe is a diehard public land hunter who's hunted about as tough a white tail ground as there is his entire life, low deer numbers, lots of hunters with rugged, vast wooded terrain. Every time Moe tells the story, I learned something. Here's him talking about two separate hunts that have a similar theme. 00:45:38 Speaker 3: I want to see if you can pick it out. 00:45:45 Speaker 11: This was approximate eight or nine years ago, right out on public land and those ark mountains and the deer I was after I found he signed late in the year prior to when I harvested the deer, and I don't think I ever really hunted. 00:46:00 Speaker 10: I was doing some scouting late in the year, so when. 00:46:02 Speaker 11: It rolled around the next fall, I knew it was a really good matureier because there was some really huge rubs in there and stuff that I found. 00:46:08 Speaker 10: So I started bowl hunting a little bit for him. 00:46:11 Speaker 11: When the weather was right when I thought I might find him there, and I sat in the stand two or three different days on and off when the conditions were right. Saw a couple of smaller bucks, but I didn't see any large bucks. And then the mussli or season came about, same scenario. 00:46:27 Speaker 10: I went in there and stand hunted a little bit. I didn't even see any bucks, but I saw some dose and it rolls around the end of November. Deer season opened that year, and it was pretty warm. 00:46:36 Speaker 11: I do remember that I didn't even hunt in there with my rifle for the first couple. 00:46:41 Speaker 10: Of days of season. 00:46:42 Speaker 11: It was about after a week they predicted a coal front to be moving in. Like I said, it had been pretty warm. Well, it really dropped overnight. It dropped probably forty degrees or so from the day before. 00:46:54 Speaker 10: It was in the upper twenties. Anyway, that morning, when I got up and. 00:46:57 Speaker 11: I told my wife, I said, I'm gonna go after that big deer that I hunted early in the season. But I'm not gonna go where I've been hunting. I said, up in the head of that canyon. I said, there's some steep trains, some bluffy trains, some little narrow shelf benches. I said, I'm gonna the wind's blown right out of the northwest and I can go and drop off in there and make my way from the bedding area back towards where that sign is. And I said, he'll either be looking for doze or he'll be bedded up in there, and either way I might get a chance at him. So I started off that away and didn't see a deer. 00:47:27 Speaker 10: I hunted for. 00:47:27 Speaker 11: About an hour and a half, the slow slipping along. I was on one little shelf and watching the shelf blow me on this really steep inclined drain. Like I said, there was some bloves in there. I got the spot and I thought, boy, this looks good. I think I'll just stand here for a while. And I leaned up against a tree because that wind was born. It was cold, so I didn't want to set much. And I seen movement on the bench below me. I think he was heading back to bed up. I think he'd been out looking for doze on around that mountain side in there, and I didn't think I was gonna get a shot at because he was moving along pretty good. I grunted at him with my voice. He was probably maybe hundred down to that next little shelf down there, and it didn't even fade. It was loud, so I grunted pretty loud with my voice, and I don't know if he heard or what, but he slowed down. He was just real fast, stiff legged walk and he slowed down and when he finally stopped, he's behind some stuff you know, all I could see was just bits and pieces of him. 00:48:17 Speaker 10: But I got all ready. I thought, well, if he takes off again, maybe I can get him. 00:48:21 Speaker 8: Well. 00:48:21 Speaker 10: When he took off again, he. 00:48:22 Speaker 11: Made four or five fast steps, and then he just stopped and I could see his pretty much all his shoulder, but I couldn't see much of his neck or the rest of his body. 00:48:31 Speaker 10: But I thought I've got an opening there. And I was leaned up against that tree. 00:48:34 Speaker 11: I had a pretty good rest, and I put my crosshairs on him of my rifle. I was something with that day, and squeezed the trigger off, and when the recoil finished, I looked down there. I dropped the gun down and looked that way. He was laying on the ground. I dropped him right in his tracks. 00:48:46 Speaker 10: There. 00:48:47 Speaker 6: He was a big, mature deer. 00:48:48 Speaker 11: He was just under twenty inches wide, the big, main framed, eight point, big body deer. 00:48:53 Speaker 10: And I just looked up the sky the hawk, Thank you, good Lord. I said that this was a fun hunt. 00:48:57 Speaker 11: I said, been after this deer all year, and I think he spent most of his time proud of a night, and he'd probably been out all night. And then it was cold, and he was on his feet and probably looking for doze, but I really think he was heading back to that ground where I thought he betted up in that head of that canyon in there, And anyway, I was really proud of that deer. So the second story is from the next year, but it's kind of different scenario. I'd hunted this deer a little bit that year and even the year before a little bit, but I'd never seen him this by sign and stuff. This was down lower down in the mountain and there was a lot of big flat benches in there where I was hunting in and I hunted with my bowl maybe three days in there and saw some bucks, but not the one I thought was making the big sign. 00:49:42 Speaker 10: Anyway, it came muzzle. 00:49:44 Speaker 11: Outer season, and all I could hunt was the first two days, which was a Saturday and Sunday, and then I was gonna try to hunt the last two days. I couldn't take off work. Usually I take off one i want to, but. 00:49:54 Speaker 10: I didn't then. 00:49:55 Speaker 11: But anyway, on Thursday night, I was watching the news and stuff on the TV and they were talking about I said, sometime Friday during the day, there's a big coal front moving in same way had been pretty warm. That was in you know, twenty something of October. I told my wife again, I said, I'm gonna go to work this morning. If that coal front hits, I'm taking all my stuff with me. I'm going to go in there and getting my stand I've got in there where I've been hunting that buck and see if he might come out this afternoon. We sure enough, that coal front hit during the day and the temperature fell from in the sixtiest in the twenties and cold north wind blowing, and I actually left work a little bit early, and I made my way in there and got up into my stand, took cloud's clothes because I was gonna need if I was gonna set. It seemed like I got up in my stand about three and a half, four hours before dark. And I got in my stand and I sat and I sat, and I got cold because that. 00:50:43 Speaker 10: Wind blowing on me. 00:50:44 Speaker 11: And I'd stand up a few times and shuffle around when I was looking make sure I didn't see anything inside of me into this town of warm up. I remember it was getting late and the sun had already went down because they had cleared off the clouds had moved out. When that front moved in, and I thought, man, I don't know if I can sit here this much longer, not because I'm pretty cold. And about that time, I heard a stick or something that was breaking. I looked and I seen the dough coming around those little benches and there there's a lot of thick brush and there was some white oak trees in there, and that's I guess the reason a lot of sign was there. 00:51:11 Speaker 10: The deer had been feeding on those white oaks too. 00:51:13 Speaker 11: Anyway, in a matter of fifteen or twenty minutes after sun went down, there was like seven or eight different deer coming there, and every one of them doats like where's the buck at? You know, And most of them got on by me, just working their way through those white oaks, and I was kind of watching them, and i'd look back the way they'd come from a time or two, and I thought something might come up the hill or something o they're in there. 00:51:33 Speaker 10: And then I heard the lees really rustling. 00:51:35 Speaker 11: It was getting pretty late then pretty dark, but it was still shooting light, and I remember thinking, where's that. 00:51:41 Speaker 10: Noise coming from? 00:51:41 Speaker 11: And I thought it was behind me, so I kind of turned in my stand and looked up behind me and couldn't see anything. So I looked back my left where the dose that only two or three them was still inside of me, and I looked hard at my right, and right on the break of the bench there I seen the dough coming pretty fast. She was fast legging it, I call it, and she had her tail stuck straight out. 00:51:59 Speaker 10: I thought they suck and chasing. 00:52:00 Speaker 11: Her, and so I got turned in my stand that a way, and sure enough she come right blowing me down through there, and right behind her was this big old buck, and he had his nose down on the ground and he wasn't doing nothing, just following her. She come out through there in front of me. Probably wasn't forty yards, but it's real thick in there. She stopped and he stopped, and I couldn't see either one of them. It was getting late enough I couldn't make him out, And about that time she took off again, and he took off, and then they stopped again. 00:52:27 Speaker 10: When they stopped that time, she was in open but he was behind a tree. But I see his. 00:52:31 Speaker 11: Head and horns and neck was sticking out, and I once started to try to shoot him in the neck, and I thought, no, he's this open side muzzler. I better not try it, and this luck would have it. For all of a sudden, made about two steps and stopped right there in the wide open I put the bead right against the crease of his shoulder and pulled the trigger. 00:52:47 Speaker 10: And little muslor to bowl smoke. 00:52:48 Speaker 11: And when the smoke here, he was laying right there on the ground. I could still see him, but it was pretty dark, and I was just tickled to death. 00:52:56 Speaker 10: I didn't notice how big he was. 00:52:57 Speaker 11: I just knew he was a good mature deer. I got down, climbed down down my tree after washing him a bit, and he didn't move or anything other than just finishing their life. And I got down and walked up to him, and he wasn't as wide as the deer I'd killed the year before with my rifle, but he was about seventeen inches wide. But he was real heavy, and his horn sweeped out and around and curled back in towards each other in the front. And he was just a big eight point but he was a big mature deer. And I think the only reason I got that deer was that cold front changing from warm weather to cold weather, and they just stay on their feet longer. I think he got up before dark and went to looking for doze and got on that one and followed her right around to where I was sating there waiting on him. 00:53:36 Speaker 10: So I slip honey, as I call it, on the first deer. 00:53:39 Speaker 11: The second dear I sat in stands pretty much every day hunting for him. 00:53:42 Speaker 10: But you just got to stay after it. 00:53:44 Speaker 11: Blat of times kill a little big deer, especially out on public land. 00:54:02 Speaker 2: That's some good hunting, Moe. Did you know that Moe's family homesteaded in the Ozarks in the mid eighteen hundreds, and Moe was raised on what's officially known as Shepherd Mountain, named after his ken. I think that's special. And the theme of those two deer hunts was hunting on an extreme cold front, the front end of an extreme cold front. If you could hunt anytime, I think that's what you'd. 00:54:28 Speaker 3: Want to hunt. I tell you, this has been a fun. 00:54:31 Speaker 2: Episode for me, and I hope you've enjoyed it as much as I have. These real stories are the lifeblood of our American hunting culture, and we all know that the whitetail is king of American hunting period it's true. I can't thank you enough for listening to Bear Grease and Brent's This Country Life podcast. Remember it's whitetail weeket meat Eater in first Light, where when you buy more, you save more, with discounts up to two hundred dollars on some purchases, the free shipping on orders over one hundred and fifty dollars. First Light has the best lineup of white tail gear on the market. Check it out at FirstLight dot com. I look forward to talking about these dear stories with the folks on the Render next week. 00:55:21 Speaker 3: Keep the wild Places Wild

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