00:00:05 Speaker 1: I love the fact that something like that is possible. If everything in deer hunting had to be by the books, predictable due only to those who put in the work, who who had this plan, or who did all the homework, whatever it was, if that was the only way that you could have these storybook endings to be a little bit boring. On this episode of the Burgrease podcast, we're talking about two giant public land white tails killed by the same man on the same year, all the while exploring a universal and ancient idea. It's one that has not escaped any culture. It's homogeneous across time, oceans, and people's It's the idea of a streak of luck. All can agree that beneficial things do happen that are far beyond human control. But the catalyst or origin of disfavor or where the ideologies to verge. I want to introduce you posthumously to an incredible man by the name of Aora Lee Province or as they called him, or who I interviewed in twenty nineteen, just a month prior to his passing at the age of ninety one, Mr Ory killed two non typical deer in the fall of nineteen sixty five on public land and the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas. This was as unlikely as being struck by lightning twice. We'll hear from Mr Or himself and meet his son. Will also hear from Whitetail Wacko's Mark Kenyon and Tony Peterson from Meat Eater's Wired to Hunt podcast, and we'll talk with one of the best Ozark Mountain deer hunters that I know, most Shepherd about streaks of luck. I doubt you're gonna want to miss this one. I think that's like sort of the secret sauce to hunting is the possibility of that stuff just falling together and having an amazing year. You're once in a lifetime encounter. I don't I don't know. I think it's so cool. My name is Clay Nukelem 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 lived 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. Hey, Rusty just looking at that, dear, And I know you guys don't like to do this, but what do you think that, dear, Because we're about to do the math to find out if you just walked up and saw that, dear. Um, Hotty, I'm gonna say he's gonna be really close to one seventy. I'm saying up for one sixties. That's just a wild gift. I've recruited official score Rusty Johnson to go with me to Winslow, Arkansas, to score the first of the two bucks that Mr Or killed the nineteen sixty five. As we're finishing up Or He's son, Eugene, who's now in his seventies, walks up. Mr Eugene, how you doing, Cam? Yeah, good to see you. Russe Johnson? What was her name? Rusty Johnson too? Mr Eugene looks at the rack of his father's twenty six point buck in the back of the side by side where we've been measuring the rack. We're almost finished. Eugene was just a kid, but he was there when this buck was killed. Oh that was something else. Now you were You weren't standing beside him when he killed this deer, but you were with him on the hunt. I was with him on that hunt. What do you what do you remember about that day? Well? What are you doing here? Now? Can I record you? Is all right? I don't care what I remember on that day. I remember it was a long, hard day. Who getting him out? Yeah? You know, Well he had tucked me and set me down, and and he's always one of those that just slip along, you know, and do his hunting. And so he come back to man and said, I've I've shot one. I need you go help me track it. So he got me down and put me on the blood trail. He said, you'd follow this and I will try to go get in front of it. So when I went out there a few hundred feet or yards whether that lady, he had it all covered up. So he wanted you to find surprised on it. Now you how old were you? I think I was fourteen, So you you would have hunted enough to have known that was an incredible dear. Oh yeah, this story gives us our first glimpse into Oriy Province. He was of good humor and wanted to involve his son in the seemingly once in a lifetime track job. The Horns of the buck are now yellowed and dusty. They're mounted a top of white tail mannekin that scarcely reflects the anatomical features of a real buck. The hair is faded and ghostly. To someone who loves white tails, this is a beautiful sight. And I'll have you know this is the smaller of the two bucks killed that season on public land by Mr or Man Watter unlikely place. How many points does this saying heavy three, four, five, six, seven, eight nine. I described this buck as a tight racked heavy horn for the region mainframe ten point with sixteen kicker points on the right side, the brow time clusters into what looks like a webbed beaver track. The second time, the G two flares into a cluster of five non typical points, including a big fly arching towards the limestone beneath our feet. Mark Kenyon would faint if he saw this deer from a tree stand. I wanted to ask Mr Eugene the question that I'm going to ask everyone else on this episode, and his answer is what you might expect from a son. What do you what do you make of a guy that we calculated up that he hunted probably eighty years I mean he so eighty years and hunting and one year, in one week he kills just two. Incredible dear, What are you making that? What do mak of that? I mean, like incredible hunter? Yeah, I mean, you know, I guess they might be some. I don't know if it would be in lucky in it, but I mean when you come up with something like that that close, you know, Uh, I've not done that yet. I want to make some definitions clear so that we're all talking about the same thing. I would describe luck simply as for two of his circumstances that come about seemingly by chance rather than the result of someone's actions. The second word, we're gonna use his streak, and by that I mean when something happens more than once you're on a streak. Will combine these two into the phrase lucky streak when good stuff starts happening all in a row. It's hard to argue with the fact that Mr. Ory was a seasoned, decorated, and skilled hunter. There's no argument at all. He had a unique style slip hunting the Rocky Bluffs where he lived, and he was born and bred in these mountains. He knew dear, and he killed lots of big deer in his life, but none near as big as these two killed on the same year when he was thirty eight years old. It's clear that it wasn't all luck or just undeserved favored. But I think there is more to this story than skill alone. He tapped into a streak of good luck. But we still don't know how big the smaller deer is, which this one is smaller twelve sixteen two, so that dear grows scores hundred and seventy one. Good job on a quick porch score job. In two thousand eleven, I scored this twenty six point buck, almost ten inches under its true growth score one seventy one. Old Rusty doesn't miss very much. However, the second and clearly bigger buck had less judgment calls, and when I scored the buck in two thousand and eleven, it had an incredible hundred and eighty six gross inches. And to put that into perspective, I mean a hundred and seventy inches deer. The vast majority of deer hunters will never kill a buck that big, guys who have even dedicated their lives to deer hunting. But a one eight six is even bigger, and it carries two drop times and an almost shot through horn where one of Mr Ri's stray bullets almost shattered the main beam. This, my friends, in this part of the world, is like getting struck by lightning twice A one, one, and six. There are lots of ideas around luck, and they can basically be broken into two broad categories. The first would be the naturalistic interpretation of luck, which would be positive and negative events can happen at any time, both due to random natural processes, and even improbable events can happen by random chance. The second idea would be a supernatural interpretation of luck, basically forces outside of this natural realm govern at will the events of the earth. But I'd like to invite you to step out of the western culture worldview that blindly dominates most of a into a black and white railroad track ideology, saying that you have to pick one or the other. Perhaps they could both be operating at the same time. We're trying to answer the question of how much human success is skill and hard work and how much is seemingly luck. The answer to this has big implications for how you live your life, and at the end of this podcast. I'm gonna tell you about a vivid and specific dream that I had about a white tail buck and how it changed my life. So stick around. The next part of this story creates in me a wide range of emotions. We're going to go back to March of twenty nineteen and meet Mr Ory and his wife Mary. That day he was spry, mentally sharp, in great spirits and good health for a ninety one year old man. But one month after our interview, Mr Ory passed away. Ending our conversation that day, after he had told me he had lived in the mountains for ninety years. I jokingly said he's got no plans to leave now. He interrupted me and said, only up. Mr Ori was an honorable man. Posthumous fist bump to Mr. Ri. Every generation has had old timers like Ori. When Daniel Boone was alive, he would have looked back at the real old timers and recognized the same thing that we recognized today when we talked to really old people, that planet Earth and the humans that are on it are in a constant state of unstoppable change. When you see human history, you see a trajectory that seems to be leading us someplace My interest in history and old stories isn't to stop the change or nostalgically revel in the past. But I want to track the change and be prepared for the future. And God got at the ruthless pace of time, is trying to leave behind some stuff that I'm not ready to give up. Now, I want to take you deep into the Ozarks to meet a human relic hanging on the edge of his time on Earth. Mr. Or and his wife live about as far back in the mountains as you can live in this state. Here's Mr Or here. Hey, how are you doing? Oh? I'm doing far good to see you, Yeah, to see you. Hello, miss Mary, how are you? This is my youngest son, Shepherd. I don't think he's ever been over here before. I haven't seen him before. Come around and have a seat here. How are y'all doing? Excuse the four I was in the middle of vacuumen, but I ain't. I got done, so don't worry about the hat. Oh this is great. The house was quaint and comfortable, with knick knacks and photos of children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren on the walls. Through the back window you can see a deep Ozark drawl a non functioning school bus in an oak barn. The mounted bucks from nineteen six hung in two different rooms, one in a front bedroom and one in the back. By permission, I went and got both bucks off the wall and leaned them against the couch for us to gander at while we talked. For me, hunting has always been synchronized with the rest of my life, and I think it helps to put these two bucks and Mr Ory Streak into context by learning something about his life. Here's Ms Mary talking about the new computer their kids bought them, which is pretty high tech. We got this. And because he loves be on Monroe, and so he can pull up be on Monroe, Leicster Flat, Carter family and then he hears all the different and Joe, he'll stumble onto somebody here, come here, this, it's these These are so good, you know. And I had a little last night. They come on, someone, does the Carter family come on? They made their first record nineteen point seven as Jar was born. Okay, and Monroe's they come on in thirty six. Here tell you what my story was. They'd always had meat to there's leveling of us children, but everybody had a job that someone go up to cal Some feed the holes, and some done this and that. My job was getting at four o'clock the morning, beautiful, go feed the mute and hornishon. Yeah, having my job. And I wasn't very big at that time. Up from the manger, you know, to get up part put that collar on, buck around the bout it. Of course they're generalist dogs. Here's more from Mr Ory, starting us into his life story. Well, I was born you in the tenth nineteen seven, and uh, I grew up. We moved from the mountain down to across the holiday every where I live, and uh twenty nine and uh, then we went to school two weeks at win Free nowhere where you were born right here, close somewhere. I was borned upon the mountain here about a mile and a half more, a massive You weren't born in a hospital, No, no, no, they weren't one of us eleven children born in the hospital. And so so you were born up here. And then we moved down here in twenty nine. Then we moved back to the mountain. I went to school down you're Winfree two weeks and we come went back to old home place that was my mother's dad's place. He homes did it from the United States government, and I still got the deed. The highland country of Arkansas was not valuable or profitable land to homestead. The rocky ground wasn't fertile heir to many regions of the country, and it was hard to tell. Most people that came here were poor and just happy to have land, and some were running from something like debt or even the law. But hard times produce hard people. In the eighteen thirties, when Davy Crockett yep The real David Crockett, passed through Arkansas, he said in a public speech he gave in Little Rock quote, if I could rest anywhere, it would be Arkansas, where the men are the real half horse, half alligator breed such as grow nowhere else on the face of the universal earth, but just around the backbone of North America. End of quote. I suspect the provinces were of such type. So how many brothers and sisters did you have? I had to five brothers and five sisters, so eleven kids and the older. But that's what it may toil. Three younger and me and nineteen thirty six, how's nine years old? Nineteen thirty six? We got our first radio right, listen to the old ridden Cardo family and Bond Monro and Charlie Monro. There's together back then. Yeah, and uh that was a big deal listening to those old radio programs. They was good. They was good. Yeah, I like to listen out of yet. I asked Mr Ory what kind of work as father did which created the backdrop of his childhood. We worked in tam rahab might have worked in timber. We worked in Tamarin and farmed a little. We had separate dan cows. So he was he was hauling logs off the mountain with these mules. Oh yeah, right, skinning them and neverthing. So you grew up doing that. That's what they've done all of my life. Just about it. Now, when did you all start getting more modern? Uh? Log and equipment? Like you were a logger most of your life? Well, how is up? And that sixty and the nineteen sixties you started using mechanized equipment for a calling. Laws really trumps sometimes, you know. So you were using mules and horses and everything, horse mules. What kind of staws did you use, like the two man cross cuts, house cross cut sauce? Do you have any of that? Old stuff still laying around. Mr Ory is going to describe a difficult and unstable period in his life in the nineteen forties when he was just a teenager. Chrisis struck their family by the early and unexpected death of his father from a stroke, and a World war broke out. Well, my dad died in forty four and forty one. Why the World War two broke out? And UH my brothers, three of them waiting service, okay, and UH, I was old, just wanted left at home. Okay. I took him my mother and UH my nephew, and UH two sisters and her brother. So you were just a few years too young to be drafted into the war. I was when my dead daughter sixteen, and UH when I become eighteen the day I was eighteen, A day after I was eighteen. My birthday come on Sunday that year. On Monday, I registered and I went down in past examination eight David July, I got my calls for examination, went down passed, and night Dave August got my call service, and UH ministers out here, and I had a big tomato crop out about ten acres tomaters, and UH and the family there we had to have something to live on. But anyway, why there's minister out there. He said, this boy they'd take care of his mother and these children. And so he wrote, Uh, I got deferred until till locked over the fifteen another word, truther crop was over. And then uh, I've still got my one eight classification. But the war was over that time, so you would have gone if the war would have Yeah, the lords and I went to school. Was um, there's in there they went in Germany. It was clear that Mr Ory was proud of his one A classification, which meant he was eligible for military service and was ready to roll when the tomato crop was put up. But by the regional frost date of October, the Great World War was over. His brothers came home, and stability returned to his family. Here's Mr Ory talking about his work after the war ended. And he'll give us some insight into the life philosophy of the province. Family. Man. My brother we ain't never did have to go to war. And so uh he went him, went and cut timmer and locked it. I hold it up, I hold it on a wagon. He skipped it out and I went holt and dumped it off at the mail and that was in the late forties anyway, Now, the Great Depression, you were just a kid during the Great These hills weren't really I mean they were affected by the Great Depression, but people were already poor. Yeah, I mean there wasn't much you could do to somebody that was just living off the land, basically when it comes to economic stress. I've right, Yeah, we lived off the land. Yeah, and nineteen thirty six that was dry here, you know, and uh we had a smiter crop and we haul water and set them out and they got up and just the blooming and everything turned off dry. We never got a tomato, but we we worked in the timmer. You know, they paper back then they finally got where they brought out food stamps and tanks, but we never got in it. My dad just wouldn't have nothing to do with that, just by principle. He didn't need anything. We we made it. We made it without it. We worked and they made it. Yeah. What would have been a normal meal for your family back then when you were a kid who had plenteteet had plenteteeting, We can't raised hogs and vegetables, had a garden. I know, you still have a garden, don't you. Well, yeah, yeah, we we made it fine. I had about dirty swarms of bees back during the war. While you couldn't get sugar. Every food is all racing. You couldn't buy nothing. Everybody's out of sugar, and I had bees, and we got to feed the bees, you know, because it used the honey somewhere in other end guns. The World War interfered with the United States ability to import sugar, so honey was used as a sugar substitute at home and sent to the troops abroad. But primarily, bees wax had over three hundred and fifty uses in wartime military operations. It was used to coat airplanes, coat canvas tents, lubricate all types of machinery, and was used on ammunition. The average war machine, whether a plane or tank, was said to have ten pounds of bees wax on it. Bees Wax didn't expand in heat or crack in the cold. The American Bee Journal in the nineteen forties had a slogan quote, let the bees wax the way to victory. End of quote, Who do I sure didn't. Here's Mr. Or giving us some geographical data points of his life, and hey, don't forget about the dream that I'm going to tell you about at the end. How would you describe these mountains there? They're rough, yeah, yeah, but they're beautiful. I've never been nowhere else for westerns avanners, uh Shamrock, Texas, and uh for South there's been a down around war in Arkansas and for narths vendors Kansas City for Easter event which you have little Rock by today's standards, that's a small home range. Remember this is all giving us a context for his incredible white tail streak of nineteen six. And man, if sixty years from now they're making media about your white tail streak, you must be some kind of a boss man. Uh, I'd rather like during the war, you know, Wow, they wasn't no money much cross ties and selling twenty and thirty and thirty five cents apiece and uh it just couldn't make much in the tember, so uh at when the season open. While we'd go hunting, we didn't make more hunting catching possums and cones. We'd even skin of skunk, anything that we could get a dollar around, selling the hides, selling nights. Yeah so you had tree dogs oh yeah right, yeah yeah, So so you were making money selling hides back during that time, well, making more than you could make at the sawmill, right, So you did that as a kid. Now, there weren't many deer though, back when you were a kid. No, dear at all, none at all, No, no, hardly every you never, I've never seen a deer to love us. Oh sixteen. They had a game refuge over here they had. We had to hunt around him, but he couldn't hunt there. They were trying to reintroduce deer. I try. So they brought in some deer. Oh yeah, yeah, they brought them in it and there's getting more the kind of scattered out than the olden season on it. What he's referring to is the reintroduction of white tailed deer into the Black Mountain region of the Ozarks. According to the records, it started in nineteen twenty six with quote several deer brought in from Wisconsin, North Carolina in Texas. Then in nineteen they released five deer, in nineteen thirty four deer, in nineteen thirty eight, fourteen deer, and then the restocking stopped in the nineteen fifties when it was believed that some areas in the Ozarks had deer populations as high as thirty deer per square mile, which is actually a decent amount of deer. It was said that the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission was even buying pet deer from people and releasing them into many of the refugees. And to look at the bigger picture of what was going on in North America, this was a golden era of conservation efforts for many big game species. There was widespread habitat protection going on. The Passing of the Pittman Robertson Act in nineteen thirty seven was huge, and the general acceptance of game laws and seasons put to bed the old market hunting ideologies. That stuff started to fade away. Today is hunters and conservationists were standing on the wildlife and habitat decisions made during this period. Here's Mr Ory on how he liked to hunt. But you, uh so, I remember the story that I wrote about you years ago. I called it the bluff hunter, because you used to like to stay on the top of these bluffs and you can kind of look down and see these flats. Yeah, and that's where these deer would be. But if you were up on the bluff you'd kind of be hid from him, is that right? They can't smell you. You love them and they don't know, So that way you can get a I've killed several land down okay. So you would just creep along the top of the bluff and you'd see him bedded. Yeah, right, I remember you used to throw rocks off a bluff too. Sometimes sometimes you'd wake them up if you couldn't see why you told something down arts kind of make a no water because they're wondering what it was, and maybe didn't move where he could see him, if there's any there. Yeah, I'd walk twenty today we hunting on blows, hunting blows and roughish places. It was Mr or sick control was to stay up above the deer on the bluff. Too bad he didn't have modern sick control products. Then he could have gotten right down there with him and had a good hunt, and he wouldn't have had to have clumb those blobs. That's a joke for Mark Kenyon. Me and Mr Or used the science approved method, play the wind like a man, you dirty hillbillies. I do love soap boxes. I asked Mr Or to tell me the story of his Big Bucks here, he goes, Well, I was man, my boy, he was fourteen years old, and we went across who we're here and across on torture down A point got down on the other point. Why I left him on top the hill and I said, I've worn down the other with them pines A and all them blows there at and stipphon jump up something. And I was going climbing over a bluff and I scared four deer out of a bed down blow me, you know, to run off, And so why is thea's on down the bluff? Cut down and went on down and found their beds where right threw by it went on doubt about sixty five hunter about ninety yards the other side of it, and uh, I heard a racket behind me, and I looked around and I saw this point bucker coming. All I could see is this. You could kill one without I think a spiker. He just need horns. I could see them horns, and I saw he had enough horns his legal shoot. So I couldn't see nothing but this between two trees. So I shot him in the flanks and I thought, well I crippled him, and uh, so I shot him and he come right through by me and brought about and I think it's ninety three yards and he feel dad right over from me. I'll be done. What do you think when you walked up to him and started counting those points? What do you think? Yeah, but I I can't. I just left the yarn wait and got my boy. He's fourteen years old. How did you get him out of there? I knew about where. We drive him to the creek, on down the creek and tug him up the creek because we couldn't take him up back up the bluff where I'd come from nowhere to him. Her rig was setting on top the mountain, so I had to go back up ear and get it. But I went and we tuck him around the creek and tuck him up the creek and run on to some harts. Earned the boy that he had a Volkswagen. He took us back to her reds and hauled it up to where we could get it. I'll be done. And then you killed another one? That was it a few years later? When when did you kill that? Two weeks later? Two weeks later, I'll be during the same area. No, No, it was that north here. Okay, So what about this second deer, How did that happen? I was checking a man's cattle and uh, up the creek here, and he's from Maglect, Texas. And I went up earn of course you dare saying, you know, and I had my gun women, so he had a big pun builder and I just I don't remember. I was just what he's doing. Anyway. This deer was just up and to ticket there above that running out through there. Huh, and I saw them big horns. I started shooting our shot. I think he's nine times at whatever it takes. And the last shot of shot he fell right backwards. He's running fast. He's eighteen points. One of those nine bullets hit the left main beam of the buck and almost broke it in half. How he re loaded and shot that many times I do not know. But regardless, a hundred and eighties six inch main frame ten point with long curve brow times and an inter set of matching G three times that lean into the rack with a striking pair of seven inch drop times hit the dirt, creating an unmatchable white tail streak for the old bluff hunter. Being a partaker of a white tail streak of luck doesn't mean that the streaker didn't utilize skill and hard work. As a matter of fact, most streaks are highly correlated to these things. But sometimes stuff happens that is far beyond the control or the work ethic of the streaker, and it's a beautiful thing when someone ready intersects with fate. I actually think that deep down, humans bank on streaks of good favor and even plan for them, like it's coded in our DNA. For the most part, we know that the work we put into our lives will yield a standard return. We learned to live off this percentage yield, and we know that at any time a streak or some kind of unusual favor far beyond our control could be coming. And when it does, we get ahead and we build our lives off the benefits of the lucky streak. The norm of life is only calibrated and understood by the outlying data points like two seventy plus bucks in the same year. Mark Kenyon of Meet Eaters Wired Hunt podcast is one of the most dedicated and meticulous white tail hunters that I know. He's intelligent with an analytical mind in a monster scrape size work ethic. He hunted with me last year on public land in Arkansas and killed a buck. You'll be able to watch that hunt this falling Meeter's YouTube channel. I wanted to ask Mark what he thinks about ory streak. Well, the first thing I think is just that I love it. I love the fact that something like that is possible. You know, if if everything in life, or in deer hunting, in particularly, if everything in deer hunting had to be by the books predictable due only to those who put in the work, who who had this plan, or who did all the homework, whatever it was, if that was the only way that you could have these storybook endings, it would be a little bit boring. I love the fact that there is this serendipity in the world and this crazy these crazy opportunities that can come from above and just drop in your lap. I mean that makes that makes every day in the field for me at least kind of magical. Here's Mark on how the mystery of deer hunting in some ways has disappeared in modern times. And you know what's funny, like these days with the way white tail hunting is gone, with trial cameras everywhere and sell cameras in the way a lot of folks, myself included, sometimes study these deer obsessively. You know, some of that mystery is disappearing from deer hunting. Right, we know every deer on the property, we know every deer we can expect. We've already figured out, well, I'll shoot this one. I wouldn't shoot that one. I kinda I missed that mystery sometimes, and I'm glad and I need to remind myself. This story is a great example the fact that the unpredictable is still possible, like that unknown dear from a hundred miles away could show up and you might have the luckiest day your life. And I think we sometimes get stuck in the in the silo, I guess, or like the tunnel vision. We get tunnel vision. I think is hunters, especially white tail hunters, because we operate on these smaller playing fields that we study obsessively. And it's it's really important and encouraging to remember that ma'am, tomorrow or today, the next minute, you're every thing can change. I mean when we were on our one week in November hunt last year, Clay, I remember both you and I were having a tough week, right, it was mostly long days on stand, and I remember sitting there thinking, man, nothing is going right, but any second now, just the the flip of a light switch, it could all change. That lucky streak could land in my lap. And for you, it did, right, I mean the last minute, of the last hour, basically of the last day. There it is. And I almost had the same thing too. So I think Ory's story is just a great reminder for anyone who's having a tough spell, or anyone who's having a bad day or a bad season, that man, you can hit that streak, you know. I think I think that's why we love deer hunting. It really is almost like gambling, Like you literally wake up in the morning and you do not know what's gonna happen. Most likely it's gonna be an uneventful day in the field, aside from being in the woods and being immersed in a natural system. Most of the time you're not gonna win. But man, it's like you're rolling the dice, which day, when's it gonna happen? And and is it gonna be a surprise? And man, that's that is what I love, and and deep down I think deer hunters are really just gamblers that anticipation. I don't know if you ever heard of anticipatory joy. Have you ever heard about that click? But the idea of anticipatory joy is the fact that just the excitement and the the anticipation looking forward to that moment, sometimes it's better than than everything else. I asked Mark if you ever had a lucky streak. Here's what he said. So when it comes to lucky streaks, it's something when I look back over the course of my lifetime that at least within the world of hunting, nothing pops off the charts. I can think back to certain days, Oh man, that was luckier. I can think about certain hunts that a certain thing tipped my way, and you could say that was lucky or not. But I don't have that Orey hunting streak where two giants fell into my lap. I don't have that kind of thing. But what I do have is more of a a lucky streak in life that has an interesting relationship to hunting. So my lucky streak happened. Jeez. I was in college, and at this time there are three things I was interested in life, girls, getting a full time job, and then I was interested in hunting as much as I could too. So It's November eight and at this point I was trying to get a job with big tech company. At the time, business degree was what I was shooting for. And I had an opportunity and I got a job offer for this big tech company. I was very, very excited about it. This seemed like a very lucky, huge opportunity, and it happened. I got the job. So that's point number one. On this special weekend, this happens to me, I'm feeling pretty good about things. The second thing that happens is that night I had up north to our family deer camp up in northern Michigan. And this spot is an incredible place. This is where I learned a deer hunt. This is where I learned to love the outdoors, shoot a gun, all that kind of stuff. But it is a tough spot to deer hunt. It's it's been in decline for about three decades now. The deer populations have been going down, down, down, down down. And at this point in my life, um, nobody had killed a deer at our deer camp. And I think seven years maybe zero deer had been killed. And I had never killed a deer at our deer camp on this given year, though it's opening day in November, head out there for the evening hunt. I walked way back out in this peninsula, heading into a swamp. My grandpa was hunting his old box blind that he always hunted. We walked out there together and I walked down the peninsula climbed up into an old ladder stand that my grandpa had set probably ten years prior. I really had no good reason to be there other than that was on the edge of the swamp and what should be a good place. But you know, given the fact there's no deer that lived here, it hadn't been historically, but I felt it could happen. And to make a long story short, about an hour before dark, I spopped movement back in the cat tails, pull up my binos. I see it's a buck, one of the first bucks I've ever seen hunting on this property. I do a little can call that little and that deer spins around, walks right back to me. I dropped him in his tracks, my first buck I'd ever killed on this property, the first buck anyone in our family had killed. And like I said, seven or so years and now I'm two for two the day before I get the job. Now today I get my first buck at deer Camp. I'm feeling very lucky. And this led me to what happened the following Monday. What I haven't mentioned to you is that I was in love. I was in love with an older woman, and an older woman who just so happened to be my boss at my job at the time. So she had graduate ated from college the year prior to me and was now my manager at the job I was working while in school, but I didn't think there was any way she would ever go out with me, especially her student worker. But I got the job on Friday, I got the buck on Saturday. It felt like I was I was awfully lucky. So Monday I thought I would test the waters see if my luck would hold. I walked into her office while we were both working, closed the door and I asked her out for dinner. She said, yes, my luck held. And now fifteen years later, I'm married to her and we've got two kids. So that there was my luckiest streak life, love, business, and deer I don't think you can get much better than that. Now that's a good streak. A job, a buck, and a wife. Tony Peterson works closely with Mark. On the Wired Hot podcast, asked Tony would sooner kill a buck with his bow on public land than look in the eye. He is a great bow hunter. I wanted to see what he thought about Ori Streak two. Tony, I'm really intrigued by this idea of luck, coincidence, good favor, divine intervention, like whatever whatever flavor you want to put on it. There's something undeniable in the human existence is that sometimes sometimes stuff just happens that's seemingly unexplainable, wild wild, good stuff happens. And I think we all kind of calculate for that sometimes in our lives. But so you've heard our province the story is incredible year in n What do you make of it? What do you make it? What are your thoughts? Man? I think sometimes we do just get lucky. But I also think, you know, I'm I'm a big believer in sort of attitude and optimism. Like I think we go negative a lot, and I think it's that's sort of a self fulfilling prophecy. And I think sometimes you just get into the right place and good stuff happens. And you know, his story is wild, wild, but it's like a that's a good thing for hunters to pay attention to because that can happen. That happened to him, and I'm sure he didn't expect it, you know, but it's it's out there. And I think that's like sort of the secret sauce to hunting is the possibility of that stuff just falling together and having an amazing year or once in a lifetime encounter. I don't I don't know. I think it's so cool. So what do you think about this idea of luck, because that's certainly a term that we toss around all the time in hunting. I love it that we're involved in something that is so untrackable with logic and science, that we we still are operating inside is something that we don't know what's going to happen when we step into the woods. We just don't know. There's so many variables, so it's so complex, like so much going on that we're really not that far in a lot of ways from like the Native Americans who really saw each hunt as this spiritual experience and and there was a lot of ritual, a lot of a lot of different stuff going into the to the hunt, and they would have absolutely believed in in a higher power that would be orchestrating things on earth, which I absolutely believe as well. But what are your thoughts on hunters and this idea of luck. You know, you can look at that like with the Native Americans and and you know some of the some of the traditions and stuff like pre hunt, and you can look at it different ways, right, Like you know you're saying that there, and you're right, you know, they were looking at like a higher calling or or or something in control, some kind of interventionist situation there. But you can also look at it and go and they were just psyching themselves up for a good hunt, like they were doing something mentally that matters. And you know when you talk about like attitude and hunters, like I do believe to some extent, you make your own luck, right, Like I mean, there's something going on where if you encounter a hundred and sixty seven inchur in the same year and you kill them both, like that's pretty wild or you know whatever caliber. But I also think if you go out there and you're negative, listen, you're not going to have a hot streak, Like it's it's it's just not gonna if you have a bad attitude. But if you go out there and you believe, you know, things could really line up for me, or I've put in some work and it feels like this is there, there's a jackpot at the end of this. Man. It a lot of times it comes, and if it doesn't, you still feel pretty good about what you did. Do you think that having that positive attitude, though, translates into functional effort that you wouldn't have given if you'd had a bad attitude. So you know, so that's that would be where the rubber meets the road, is that you're excited, you're optimistic, and that energy and optimism created from that makes you scout a little bit longer, take a little bit extra step in terms of getting your tree s in set. It makes you sit longer, It makes you go on a day when maybe you weren't gonna go, but you're that optimism was like, man, I gotta go. I mean, so there's there's some real teeth to this idea. Oh it's it's huge. I mean just think about you know, for for it to come together, so you go out in the mountains down in Arkansas and for you to kill a good buck down there. Think about how many decisions you made to get to that point, you know what I mean. And and those decisions are influenced by how you feel there there, how you felt six months ago when you were scouting there, how you felt this morning when you got up. Everything that we do in this space is influenced by how we feel and what we believe is going to happen. You know, if we if we don't think anything good is going to happen out there, there's no way you're putting in the right effort. It's really something that you see like on the public land white tail side, where you know, some of these people out there they kill consistently everywhere they go, and it's not because they don't believe, you know, they're gonna crash and burn, like they believe they're gonna go out and find that good buck and they go do it over and over, and so you can assign luck to that. But like, man, why would why would somebody be that lucky? Like why are why are there just a couple of select few out there who are just lucky everywhere they go? Like it's not luck anymore? Like maybe there's some maybe there's some life circumstances that slipped in there that are pretty lucky, and that's like certainly a thing. But they've they've got something going on mentally. That's that's a huge benefit over a lot of people. I think Mo Shepherd was or He's neighbor, but he was only five years old when or he killed those big bucks in nineteen sixty. He remembers his dad taking him down to the provinces to see the giant racks. Living in a community that plays value on hunting certainly helped Mo in becoming one of the best Big Woods mountain deer hunters that I know. I wanted to ask Mo about his best streak and hunting, and I'd like to say that Mo is the one who introduced me to Mr Ory back in two thousand eleven. Here's Mo. Yeah. I think there's a there's a lot of streaks and hunting deer, and especially in the mountains, and there's good streaks and then there's bad streaks. I had a pretty long period of a bad streaks as far as killing big deer. I killed a few deer, but they were just your normal, average smaller deer. Just to put in the freezer. And then in about two thousand and fourteen, I hadn't killed any good deer in several years, and I found some sign that looked good. I decided to go in there, and weather wasn't very good, a lot of high winds, cold winds, and I went into this area to three days slip hunting, killed a really nice, big wide rack deer in there. And then from that year I think that was two thousand and fourteen to two thousand and twenty, it was kind of the same scenario. I would find sign either late in the year or the year before or early in the season, and I'd go to hunting it and it was just like somebody was put to me to where I needed to go. I would go in there and set and stand some Sometimes I would slip hunt again. But in that six year span I killed eight big bucks, I mean dandy bucks for the mountains, and the last one I killed was in two thousand twenty and he was almost twenty two inches wide inside had thirteen points, just a massive, big, old mountain deer. I don't know if it's if it's any skill involved in it that much, or if you're just in the right place at the right time. But I've had bad streaks. If that's the best streak I've ever had of hunting deer was from two thousand fourteen to two thousand and twenty, that's a good streak of hunting Mow. And I like that you expanded the time to find parameters of a streak to potentially encompassing years. If I asked you about your best streak, what would come to mind? Don't forget it or minimize it, because I think these streaks can be definers in our hunting career. And the good news is is that any streak can be broken. We've just got to keep hoping of working. I had a pointed question I wanted to ask Mo, and he had a pointed answer. If you're talking about streaks, how much of it is out of your control and how much of it is in your control? I say about half and half. I mean, like I said, I think you can get yourself in the right places at the right times. But then that don't mean that deer is going to come through there. That don't mean he's gonna come through where you can get a shot or anything like that. It's and it doesn't mean that it's gonna be a big one. No, it doesn't. It may just be a nice dear, you know. And that's I guess that's a funny part. I use some trail cameras. But out of those big eight deer that I told you about, I think I've had one of those on a camera. That's some good hunting to kill those deers simply on sign terrain features and burning the butt leather, sitting in a stand, but leather. That's of course language for this podcast. Sorry, Juju. Here's Mo and I talking about things that are out of our control. This idea is so interesting because we're all trying to figure out what to do to be more successful, and so you're kind of trying to understand just what can I do in the woods that's gonna make me more successful. But there's always this component that's out of our control. That is just what nature gives you. What happens that's standing on your control. Yeah, a lot of size of deer, deer movement, just how many deer there did the You might kill a deer one year that's an exceptional buck. And maybe it was because of the weather that spring and the previous year that made him have really great antler, same big deer I Fid had had struggled the year before or through that winter to eight and survive because it had no mass crop. He let no putton here, as much of that growth into them horns, and he would keep these bodies. And so so there's all these factors that we can't control, like ORI's year, Like at the weather patterns in the ozarks, to see if it was a really wet spring or a really mild winter the year before, you know, because those deer could have just kind of popped up. I'm not being as magnificent as they were. Let's talk about if we can depend on luck. I think we're all trying to decide how much human effort should go into this, and then how much we can depend on luck. We can depend on good favor that's beyond our control, because the one thing that's for sure is that you're not gonna get lucky. You're not gonna have favor. If you're not there, you're not gonna get lucky. If you can't shoot your bow good and you're not accurate with your weapon, you're not gonna get lucky. Like when you kill a deer. The eleven forty five, going in and planning to sit all day. I mean, it's like a little bit of luck and that it was a huge buck that came through that gap in the bluff, But there was a lot of most shepherd being a good hunter and sitting there, and there were a lot of people back home eating lunch, and so you know, it's like it's hard to not say that luck finds those who are doing a lot of work. But there's also the component of if ore. He had just killed two really high caliber deer for the Ozarks, you know, just big eight points, you know, hundred deer. We probably wouldn't be talking about him today because that would sort of be normal. But when you have like lightning strike and you have just to like things that are just like off the charts, it's kind of wild and and and you've realized that it really was something beyond Yeah. I really like what all the guys have said, undeserved favor most often finds those who are prepared. And I like the half luck half skill equation. I think that's a pretty humble answer. The more times you roll the dice, the better the odds are that you're gonna get lucky or he spend his life in the woods, and the hunters who simply go are usually the ones who find the luck. The older I get, the more grateful I am when I successfully harvest an animal. I think it's because I'm aware of the incredible amount of things that could have gone wrong that didn't, that were beyond by control. And in closing, I absolutely do believe that some things were just meant to be. Yes, literally scripted into our lives by divine choice and for reasons beyond our understanding. Could a dear be scripted into your life? That sounds kind of wild, It's probably not normal, but I'd have to say yes. You may have heard me tell the story, But in July of two thousand and seven, I had a dream that I killed a twenty four point buck. The dream was so vivid and strong I woke up and sketched a picture of the rack in day did it, And then on October two thousand seven, I killed a hundred and sixty nine inch buck with my bow, the biggest buck I'd ever seen. The deer had twenty one score able points per the rules of the scoring system, but it had twenty four points that you could hang a ring on It's not a joke. This buck opened the door for me to get into the outdoor industry after I had my first three articles ever published about the deer. I'd never considered working in the outdoor industry, but it was a stair step, long term thing, and now fifteen years later, I'm working for meat Eater. This is a true story. The devil draped in sparkling light driving a candy apple red Cadillac couldn't convince me that this was a coincidence. But was it luck? I'd say by a prior definition, yes it was, but it was much more than luck. I hunted fifteen mornings for the buck, employed a solid strategy, but killing the deer and the doors that opened were far beyond my control. But I would undeniably say that it was supernatural. The highlight of the last forty five minutes has been introducing to you all to Orally province. When I met him in two thousand and eleven, I recognized he was a relic ozark man who had lived a humble, joyful life of subsistence, hard work, and faith. I like to give honor to men like this, men who didn't ask for attention and never expected to get any The beauty and intrigue of life is that fantastic stories and people surround us. And when someone lives into their nineties, it's a special thing. It has the possibility of a unique overlap of lives. I took with me that day when I went to see him that last time, my son Shepherd, who was eleven years old at the time, and when she Efford is an old man, should the earth persist, he will have literally shook hands and engaged with a man who was born in nineteen seven. This is kind of wild to do this kind of math, but if Shephard lived to his ninety one birthday, which would be in the year from nineteen to is the span of a hundred and seventy two years. If you do the same math with Mr Or who passed away in twenty nineteen, he could have interfaced with a man born in eighteen thirty six. That's the year Davy Crockett died, in the year that Arkansas became a state. Time is moving faster than it feels like, and it's a fraudulent master and all we can do is steward the time well that we've got And man, I'm gonna be looking for a shriek and I know where they come for. Thanks so much for listening to Bear Greece. Please do me a favor by sharing our podcast with your friends and family. And I really do appreciate all the iTunes reviews, even the guy that tried to talk Arkansas mountain orogeny with me mountain building. And hey, if you're looking for some killer nuts and bolts deep dives into white tail strategy, check out Mark and Tony's Wired to Hunt podcast. And I'm sure looking forward to talking with everyone on the Render crew about this podcast next week. See you then,

Save this episode