00:00:08 Speaker 1: You're off in God's Country with Reed and Dan Isbel also known as The Brother's Hunt, where we take a weekly drive to the intersection of country music and the outdoors, two things that go together like a crow and a milking bird. 00:00:20 Speaker 2: Or cows and green pastures. 00:00:21 Speaker 1: Produced by Meat Eater and I Heart Podcast. 00:00:24 Speaker 2: So hop on up Ryde shotgunning with us as we take the back roads with some of the biggest stars and creators of the songs You knowing what. 00:00:30 Speaker 1: On today's episode, We're gonna sit down with our buddy Michael hard Rock Harder Rock Hardy, and the conversation went so long, it was it was so much fun and it's so good that we ended up cutting into our We all had co writes and had to be there by eleven by eleven, and we kind of went to like eleven eleven fifteen, so we're in different clothes. We're recording this intro a day later. But man, what a what an interesting cat he is. Man, you're getting an insight into his life. 00:00:59 Speaker 2: But it's also an up for me too, Like I know this people, I mean, we know you, We know these people, and then we're learning more and more about them every time we have an episode. 00:01:09 Speaker 3: You know, Yeah, you're gonna want to listen to this one. 00:01:11 Speaker 2: Man. 00:01:11 Speaker 1: We got some there's some cool stories in there. 00:01:13 Speaker 3: There's some funny, spooky stories and the spooky. But we hope you enjoy it. And thanks for hanging out with us. 00:01:24 Speaker 2: Cameo. Rat looks good. 00:01:25 Speaker 4: Thank you, man, Cartiflage. Dude, let's get into it. Let's get it to are we recording? 00:01:33 Speaker 1: Wait? Wait wait no, we're in it. 00:01:35 Speaker 4: We're already in it. 00:01:36 Speaker 1: We just a new term has just been dealt to us that I've never hang out. 00:01:40 Speaker 3: Quit talking. This is something we got to work on. 00:01:42 Speaker 2: I'm just saying. I was looking at the pattern when I came in. 00:01:45 Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know what what is that? 00:01:47 Speaker 2: That is that real? True? And I couldn't see it. But now you're telling me it's hardy. 00:01:51 Speaker 3: We've got a truck. 00:01:52 Speaker 1: We've got an F one fifty to the end of. 00:01:55 Speaker 3: In the parking lot. 00:01:56 Speaker 1: Yeah, custom with a custom cameos. 00:02:00 Speaker 2: Good, it's awesome. 00:02:01 Speaker 4: I love it. 00:02:01 Speaker 2: Yeah, it was good. 00:02:02 Speaker 3: He's also got what are those what are the moms? Get to moms? 00:02:06 Speaker 1: And then I was like I saw those moms the back of the truck, and I was like what's up, brothers? 00:02:10 Speaker 2: What's up? Dude? 00:02:10 Speaker 3: I was like, I was like, you just cleaning up your Thanksgiving decorations. 00:02:13 Speaker 4: Literally said to a front porch, and that's exactly where they came from. I got a I. 00:02:17 Speaker 3: Got a black. 00:02:18 Speaker 4: Garbage bag full of pumpkins back there. You nailed it that. 00:02:22 Speaker 2: I just did mine. 00:02:24 Speaker 1: I just did it to it like last week, and put up the lights. We need more lights, dude. 00:02:27 Speaker 4: You know what is a pain in the ass is moving pumpkins because there's no structure of pumpkins, dude. 00:02:34 Speaker 1: And we and they've ben't for some reason. 00:02:36 Speaker 4: I don't have a wheel bear out my house and went nuts on the pumpkins. 00:02:42 Speaker 2: To have a wheelbar. I did it my old house. 00:02:44 Speaker 4: I guess I left it there, dude. I'm living up in a neighborhood and I know you try to cut my own grasses. I try to tell you. 00:02:52 Speaker 2: See you know how hard my getting rid of this is so red Dude, Like, I can't you can't help it. Tell I read this, dude. So all I did was take the pumpkins literally pick them up and bowl them. And they bowled off the off the driveway, out across my driveway into the pasture and rolled over and the donkey's eating them that I was gonna say that the squirrels of the rap and I did the same thing with the corn. And this is an interest story about my my son. I got a a four year old that is like kind of you know, wild and four, and then I have a one year old that is just like this dude really don't give it. All he does is like like he is. 00:03:36 Speaker 1: It says tractor. 00:03:37 Speaker 2: He says, Mama, Dad, attractor and ground. This kid, he's got one two teeth that are one tooth we call we call it the galooth tooth. 00:03:51 Speaker 3: I'm telling it looks like a bench seat. 00:03:54 Speaker 2: It's crossing. He is gonna give me a run. So we're tearing off. I'm coming back to why I'm actually on the story. So we're tearing the corn off the stalks and throwing it out into the field for the donkey. And I don't know if a deer wants come to eat it whatever, And we're just kind of throwing it out there, and we go back to get more stalks and I turn around and this dude has gone under the barbed wire is about twenty yards on the other side of the fence with the dang donkey walking right at him, and Shane's like, she's on front porch. She was like, oh my god, dang it. 00:04:27 Speaker 4: Burn, Oh my god. 00:04:29 Speaker 2: I mean you think about it. I mean, nothing happened. He came back and everything's fine. 00:04:34 Speaker 4: Donkeys are literally like killing coyotes and stuff. 00:04:36 Speaker 2: Yeah, you think about a human this big growling out. Oh my god, he was growling that a donkey. I'll tell you, man, we're already into kids, but bro, make sure you want them. 00:04:49 Speaker 4: Yeah, what's the what, Swiperce says, Man, No, I'm just not I'm not prying. 00:04:53 Speaker 2: I'm just saying, make sure. 00:04:54 Speaker 4: You want them. 00:04:54 Speaker 3: We get married when. 00:04:56 Speaker 4: A little over a year ago and we're thinking about it. She's she's call a little bit younger than me, so she wants to travel a little bit more. And I totally get that. When I was her age, I wouldn't even thinking about anything life planning out. So I completely respect it. And we got time. I was like, let's do it. 00:05:14 Speaker 2: You had a little tons of time. 00:05:15 Speaker 4: The only the only thing is thirty three. 00:05:18 Speaker 2: Oh bro, a pup, you got to you have tons of time. 00:05:23 Speaker 4: We just uh, all of our kids, like Hunter Felts is one of my best friends. And like McNair and and all my dude, my friends back home got kids in like middle school. 00:05:32 Speaker 2: You know what different we're all late. Like, we're all I mean, we just had two. I had one. Well I've got two, but I mean me and him and Luke all had kids at the same time. And mcnaire like they all kind of came in the same little window. R yeah, yeah, yeah, So which feels late, but it's not. 00:05:50 Speaker 4: It does. And I think we've made the joke. Let's we're gonna wait till everybody has their second round of kids, and then we're gonna have our first. 00:05:55 Speaker 1: I think with our Me and mcnaer actually talked about this yesterday. We wrote I think with our industry and with our career like it, it takes a little longer to get where you want to be financially or you know, status wise, or kind of like locked in and you have to devote man the amount of time and energy that you have to devote to this thing as a as an artist, for sure, but even as a songwriter, like you don't have I mean, you don't have time and you can make sure your ducks are in the road, yeah, man, and people make it work, and people have kids before way before they move into town, and they make it work. But I think if you if you move here with the intention of, like if you're a single dude moving here with the intention of trying to get your career off the ground as a songwriter or an artist, man, like marriage and kids is kind of not on the forefront of your mind. 00:06:42 Speaker 4: Yeah, definitely so. 00:06:43 Speaker 3: And I was a same boat. 00:06:44 Speaker 1: I mean I didn't me and Jordan get married till I was thirty three, and then we had our first kid. I was thirty five and or thirty four. 00:06:51 Speaker 4: Yeah, we're probably gonna be on that timeline. 00:06:53 Speaker 2: Yeah, that's where I was saying. 00:06:55 Speaker 1: Go ahead and get you go ahead and did just get it quit and get two hundred two and get some of that life. 00:06:58 Speaker 2: Bro. 00:06:58 Speaker 4: Oh man, I think I'm good on that. 00:07:00 Speaker 1: Guess in her two life, Cally wants four come on with that's what I want. 00:07:05 Speaker 2: Yeah, we're it too. And uh, but I come from a big family. You got a sister, don't you. 00:07:10 Speaker 4: I have one sister. Yeah, So it was just do y'all have other siblings to. 00:07:15 Speaker 2: See four? 00:07:15 Speaker 1: Yeah, no way, all four years apart. 00:07:18 Speaker 3: So like my sister, Oh, wow four years Dan, four years May. 00:07:21 Speaker 4: There's twelve years difference between Wow. 00:07:24 Speaker 3: Bless my mama, our baby sister. 00:07:25 Speaker 2: Just met Ernest the other day. She said, oh my god, hilarious because she was like, hey, I think you know my brothers and he was like, what you know? I mean you obviously yeah. He was like. She was like, yeah, Dan and Red is one. She said. He went no, what and he was like, yeah, where was it? He places is really random? But she works down here and he played at some little was that the truest building right here? He played I don't know, he played something and that it was. She was there and he just he played I think he played Tennessee Queen or something. She was like, hey, my brother wrote that. She was like. He was like, no, he didn't. He was like, yeah, it was this one. She was like. 00:08:00 Speaker 1: He was like, oh yeah, if he didn't play that, that was a nice little plug. Yeah for your team, all right, so we could buddy buddy this thing to death. We've got yeah, we've got to my left, a good buddy, a fellow Mississippi, and. 00:08:13 Speaker 4: A dog in the house. 00:08:14 Speaker 2: Today. 00:08:14 Speaker 4: He got that dog and we got Michael Hardy on. 00:08:17 Speaker 1: The couch, dude. This is we've podcasted before. This is a ways back years ago. We were nothing then, not that we're anything now. 00:08:27 Speaker 2: But. 00:08:29 Speaker 3: A little a little bit more more legitimate. 00:08:31 Speaker 4: This is a big time. 00:08:32 Speaker 3: The light The lighting is actually right. 00:08:35 Speaker 1: Saying last time we were just I called a buddy and I was like, hey, bro, we're gonna podcast with Hardy and I don't know how to set up microphone stuff. 00:08:42 Speaker 3: Can you record three dudes? He's like yeah. Man's like all right, that's. 00:08:46 Speaker 4: Right, yeah, man. 00:08:47 Speaker 2: Well I'm good. 00:08:48 Speaker 4: It's it's good to be back, dude, you've been last year. I listened to every single podcast over again, the Deer Standing, and then when I finished, I was like sad because I was like, damn. 00:09:03 Speaker 2: We're back, bro fully yeah Jamison, you know Rogers actually shot a deer listening to our podcast. Did he got to ask him about it? 00:09:13 Speaker 1: It's probably six point oh probably probably six point killer. 00:09:18 Speaker 2: Speaking of six points, oh that's the time I saw you. I said, hey, man, I'll kill a deer tomorrow morning, dude, And I killed that deer. 00:09:27 Speaker 4: You did after the b of my awards. I don't even know how you did that. 00:09:32 Speaker 1: Oh well, honestly, because I'd have killed him if he didn't go murdered me. That's the only deer that we've had on camera that is like, is the that was the guy? 00:09:40 Speaker 2: Man? 00:09:41 Speaker 4: Did you score him? 00:09:43 Speaker 2: No? I haven't, but I would have. I mean with that drop time, dude. 00:09:49 Speaker 3: But he's the sickest one. 00:09:50 Speaker 2: Twenty. 00:09:50 Speaker 4: When you say when twenty, they're like, oh. 00:09:52 Speaker 2: We're talking about six, dude. 00:09:53 Speaker 1: This is a six point seven seven dropped kind of two drops on both sides. 00:09:58 Speaker 3: This deer is is six years old, dude, he was the man. 00:10:00 Speaker 2: That's me. 00:10:01 Speaker 1: It was man, it was They ain't got to see him be the man to down there in the bottom. 00:10:05 Speaker 4: Literally was was he chasing? 00:10:08 Speaker 2: So I'll just set the story up. So I've had this deer. 00:10:11 Speaker 1: I don't talk for thirty five minutes. You're looking at Grace because it's it's a true thing. She's laughing over there because she knows. 00:10:17 Speaker 2: I told one story for forty They asked me to do it, though I wasn't go. I want to hear it. 00:10:26 Speaker 4: I want to hear it. 00:10:27 Speaker 2: So I've been seeing this deer. So I bought my place, acquired some aggredge that backs up to it. And I've been watching this deer that was just a clean six, but he was even as a two year old, it was high, and I was like, man, that's a cool deer. I hope he makes it. Nobody out there wants to shoot a six point. They shoot something bigger. So he just kept getting past, which is awesome. I'd see I saw him the next year and the next year and next year, and we. 00:10:54 Speaker 4: Stayed a six. 00:10:56 Speaker 2: He stayed of six. 00:10:57 Speaker 1: I don't think people in that area, Sorry to interrupt you, I don't. I don't think people in that area knew how special that deer was, man, which I think they looked at him and saw a six point, but didn't see a five year old six point right. 00:11:07 Speaker 2: I found his sheds at four. We found Shyanne was walking around. 00:11:12 Speaker 4: But he was a beast. 00:11:13 Speaker 2: Then he was a beast at four, found him at five. I had him at five, like at eighty yards during rifle, and I was like, man, I mean I was so close to shooting him, but it was like a week before season was out, and I was like, bro, if he'll hang right here and just get one more, dude, he could be something special because you know a lot of times white tail, at least in our area. Make that jump anywhere from four to five, five to. 00:11:39 Speaker 1: Six, six seven, you start seeing some cool, some cool, cool cool stuff. 00:11:43 Speaker 2: Yeah. So the trouble is getting a deer to be that old, right, having enough to hold him. So he stayed, he was staying tight, and I was like, man, I think I can do this. I called read or I face timed him while he was in the field, and I was like, should I let this deer go? And He's like, dude, one more year? Just think about you know, he is right because he was just a big, based heavy his twos. I should have I should have brought I have the sheds. Actually, don't go get them. Okay, so I had he probably had, he probably had thirteen inch twos, but they were, you know, like that. Yeah, So I let him go, didn't shoot him. So I still haven't shot a deer off my property in the six years that I've had it. We could start getting trail paint pictures of him this year. I remember the first trail campaign. Do we We called each other, We're like, is that him? That's gotta be hum And he had he had that, he had just grown that, he had just grown that he never had anything like that before. 00:12:38 Speaker 1: He was the prettiest. 00:12:40 Speaker 2: He was just clean, clean, awesome, heavy six And so when he showed up, he. 00:12:44 Speaker 3: Was trying to drop. 00:12:45 Speaker 1: Sorry, he was trying to drop on the other side, he's got like on the dropping out. If he'd gone one more year, which Dad probably should have passed him this year, and he had a double seven inch dropped on a sea. Chance, he messed up, so I hunted him. 00:13:00 Speaker 2: He wasn't very, he was just old. Yeah, the only way I would explain it. He was so cool, like being an old deer. He would come out pre season, he would come out and eat in my clover plot, in my in my food plots. But the day season started nocturnal. 00:13:17 Speaker 1: It's a different story with you have to hunt those old deer. I say that it was actually probably a week before season started. He went completely nocturnal that day. I'm talking about eleven o'clock this time. I know, right, he would he would go like eleven o'clock at night, and he might pop in there at four or three thirty, but he was never within an hour and a half of sunlight, right goes on, goes through both, so I don't hunt him I was like, I'm not pushing this deer. 00:13:44 Speaker 2: I know he's hanging tight, and he was. We would get nine pictures of him. We never get any daylight pictures of him. Had I was out with Loot this year, so I was in Australia getting trail cam pictures of this. Oh my god, yeah, brutal. So I didn't so, which was actually good because I didn't hunt him. I think outside pressure probably pushed him even more on me. 00:14:04 Speaker 1: You could just thank me for going out there and hunting this deer without you being here and helping me, like me helping you keep that dear down for. 00:14:10 Speaker 2: You too, Thanks dude, So we always find a way to make it about you. So you're welcome. So anyway, I get back. Both season is wrapping up. I hunted him two afternoons. He was starting to get close to daylight. He wasn't in daylight, but he would be like thirty minutes just outside of daylight. 00:14:30 Speaker 3: And we were starting to get toward rud a little bit. 00:14:31 Speaker 2: So we go side on. Uh, something happened. I didn't hunt him, maybe the first week of Muzzloader or we were gone or something. Anyway, we get back Me and reader signing in our musloaders. 00:14:42 Speaker 3: Three afternoon and he goes, oh my god, and. 00:14:45 Speaker 2: I was like, what He's like, he's standing in your food plot right now. And he was four thirty. He was just standing there eating clover. 00:14:51 Speaker 4: Oh my god. 00:14:52 Speaker 2: And Reid was like, and we had that cold front. That was a week of the bm I s. Yeah, so we had a cold front coming. 00:14:58 Speaker 4: Coming after that. After the it was still warm. 00:15:01 Speaker 2: Still warm. It was like seventies was supposed to drop into the thirties. Yeah. 00:15:04 Speaker 4: I hunted that front a little bit, like one day. 00:15:07 Speaker 2: Yeah, it was much did you I guess you must loaded or did you bow? No? A bow crossbow? Nice on the field. So I'm like, cold friend's coming here it comes. Go. The BMIs kicks in that night. I woke up that morning. 00:15:22 Speaker 1: Don't get home till twelve thirty one. I don't know, it was late. 00:15:26 Speaker 2: You were the last you the last person I talked to, like a half Yeah. So I got home, went to bed, woke up stinking, smelling like cigarettes and whiskey, you know. And I was like, man, I ain't going not because I smoked or drink, just because I was around people that did. And I walked outside and I let the dog out, and I might have been peeing off my back porch. I don't know. I might have been standing there whatever, and the wind hit me from the north perfectly in the face, and I was like, damn, dude, this is perfect. And it was drizzling. Yeah, it was as hell, dude. So I was like, all right, I'm going went inside, got my stuff on, stinking knew I stump, but it didn't matter. The wind was perfect. Took my card all the way around, my plaarifs all the way around, came in on the opposite in, walked to my stand. Seven o'clock doors come out. I have to be back at seven thirty. 00:16:22 Speaker 4: Shine. 00:16:22 Speaker 2: It's gonna take my little girls school at seven thirty, so I have to be there with wild ass boon at seven thirty. It's seven. It's seven, seven o'clock. When they come out at seventeen, they all bump back like like you know that they're all looking in the same direction. And I was like, man, something's to my left. And I have an elevated ground blind that I set a couple of years back, and I just peeked through this little sliver of a window and bro he's on a dough really like, I'm looking at him head on. I see the drop time. He is on a doze back dude, And I was like, oh, for aunt, that's what he was saying. So I'm like, I feel the drop and trying to chill out. I reach over get my muzzle loader. I'm coming out of the window with it. I'm like, Okay, if this dough turns this corner and he follows her, he'll be at fifty perfectly brought up. Yeah. Sure enough, she comes up, turns the corner, he comes up behind it, and you know, he's just like kind of you know at that point, because I mean he he did it like he Bretter. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I saw him. I saw the Dame pump and everything. So he gets off and he's walking. You tell he's kind of walking, and I was like, dude, I mean this much of the barrel out of the gun. I went to fifty yards. Smoke, dude. 00:17:39 Speaker 4: Any party run thirty yards, that's awesome. 00:17:42 Speaker 2: But I had I mean, it couldn't have been more like there was no oh my god, he's out of here, or I mean he was owner dude. Yeah, then that deer falls another buck pops out of the trail, same trail breeds her again. Then another buck popped out of the scene. I mean, dude, you just had a hot I had a mag Dude. 00:18:04 Speaker 3: Hot dough changes the game, man. 00:18:06 Speaker 2: Hot dough is stronger than anything you can plant, pour out pour If you got that dough, you're in you have a book. 00:18:14 Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, that's amazing. 00:18:16 Speaker 2: Good for you, dude. 00:18:16 Speaker 4: I'm I'm pumped for your Mississippi. But I got a picture of him. 00:18:29 Speaker 1: Oh the saga still is going with that. 00:18:32 Speaker 2: I like, I like this saga. 00:18:33 Speaker 3: How has that been? 00:18:34 Speaker 4: How long? 00:18:35 Speaker 2: This year? Three years? 00:18:36 Speaker 3: Come on? 00:18:37 Speaker 2: This is the cat. 00:18:39 Speaker 4: He was a one forty as a three year old. 00:18:41 Speaker 2: I swear to god he was the one. 00:18:44 Speaker 4: Forty a three year old. 00:18:47 Speaker 3: This is the cat. 00:18:50 Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, look at that. 00:18:53 Speaker 1: Get that frame from Mississippi too. 00:18:56 Speaker 4: Yeah, he's the biggest buck I've ever had on camera anywhere. I was hunting in Vicksburg three years ago with a buddy of mine and I got a picture of this deer. We have a feeder across from our camp, our deer camp across the pond. That's just kind of a no you set to keep the camera on it. We just you know, it's just anough and we have a feeder over there, just something to see what's you know, just another spot to see what's you know, what's coming through whatever. And he comes in at seven thirty in the morning and eats corn for like an hour. And I've just got like ten pictures of him. And I'm over here in Vicksburg. 00:19:30 Speaker 3: And I'm seeing nothing, no, and. 00:19:31 Speaker 4: I'm just like it's always the case. And I'd never seen him before, and I was like, I have a giant at our deer camp right now. It was last year, two years ago. Two anyway, hunted him hard, never saw him. He would I had a few daylight pictures of him. He just he would come out during the run anything. It was weird. It was really weird. But anyway, we kind of figured out, like my thankfully, my buddy to my my right hunts a big piece of property and he's got cameras everywhere, and we had him. We figured out the loop he was making, you know what I mean. And anyway, it's no good like that it is and he's a good way. It's it's one of those where his name's Dylan, and I've told him I'm like if you kill it or if I kill it. 00:20:11 Speaker 2: I was like, it's a wind like it. 00:20:14 Speaker 4: So anyway, uh, never nobody ever saw him, had daylight pictures of him. Just didn't wasn't in the right place or I was. Usually it was like usually when I was gone. Really what it was is there was a lot. It was always when I'd come back to Nashville and there was no activity out there, no truck doors slamming, you know what I mean. Smart? Yes. So then the next year, this is last year, we got him again. He was taller, but he was damn near pencil horn. 00:20:38 Speaker 2: Yeah. I remember. 00:20:40 Speaker 4: He'd been coming in like six fifteen, six thirty at night. 00:20:42 Speaker 2: But unseasonably hot last year because we were both hunting Mississippi at the same time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, because we were over in West Point. 00:20:49 Speaker 4: Yeah, and I was. I finally I got up at five thirty. There was a north wind and my buddy said, he just left my feet or he's going to cross your cutover and hour. 00:21:00 Speaker 2: And a half, Oh my god, I got. 00:21:02 Speaker 4: Chill taken him. So I get to stand seven fifteen. It's an overcast day and it's a cutover that is new, so everything out there is gray. It's the color of a deer. And it's like two hundred and seventy five yards. I see a dough kind of just trotting across. And I put my gun out the window, and that had. 00:21:20 Speaker 2: Been it had been an hour and a half. I mean, was it close. 00:21:22 Speaker 4: Around an hour and a half and I and I put my gun out there, and he's there. He is two hundred and seventy five yard twenty five six thirty five or thirty thirty oh six, And uh, I didn't shoot him. I had it on him, and I was just like, I'm not the saint. It's not going down like this? 00:21:38 Speaker 2: Why why was it? 00:21:38 Speaker 4: I just I've never made that shot before. 00:21:40 Speaker 2: Too far, too far. 00:21:42 Speaker 1: That's a long It's good on you, man and little man. 00:21:44 Speaker 2: Everybody from west of the Missisippi's gonna be like two hundred seventy five dude, when you when you are from where we are, from your hardwood hunter, well, I mean there's not very many three hundred yard shots where we live. It's just a long shot. 00:21:59 Speaker 1: It's a long shot for especially if you've never taken it before, staring down the scope at an animal that you've you've thought about for the past two years. 00:22:06 Speaker 4: Yeah, that's that, dude. I just I knew. I was like, I can't. I'm not gonna make an ethical shot red And dude, the thing is is we I hunt the last hill before the Pearl River swamp, and I was like, if I shoot this deer high, if I hit him bad and he's gone, you can't. You can't even get to him, like you literally you're crossing creeks rivers like I was. So nobody got him last year, and me and my buddy, well, you know, and it's there's a lot of pressure around there, like a ton of pressure, and so we're every gun show, every morning, every gun shot we heard, please just crossing our fingers. And then season ends. Nobody, you know, you don't see anything on Facebook, and uh, sure enough this summer, my buddy, uh probably like August text beings like I have good news, and I was like yes. So he sends me a picture of him in velvet and he's the biggest you had a picture of Yeah, and he's a he's a five year old. I think he's a he could be a six years. 00:23:01 Speaker 2: We sat a picture one time. 00:23:03 Speaker 1: So you're you have so you know he's alive right now. 00:23:06 Speaker 4: Yeah, well, I mean yeah, I haven't. 00:23:08 Speaker 3: Got pictures of him recently. 00:23:09 Speaker 4: That was there's probably a date on that I don't even remember. 00:23:13 Speaker 2: You cut it off very smartly. You come to send your buddies. 00:23:16 Speaker 4: But we it's one of those like there's enough people around there and we know them, like we would know, yeah, we would know. That's a giant. 00:23:22 Speaker 2: Bro. I'm going to tell you, man, that deer is mid to high fifties. 00:23:29 Speaker 4: I think so we were thinking sixty. 00:23:31 Speaker 2: I think he could absolutely. I can't tell the width on him, but I mean. 00:23:35 Speaker 4: Just he's probably got like a sixteen inside bro his G two. Look at those G two's, Man, he's got. 00:23:44 Speaker 2: Deer thirteen or fourteen. Yeah, he's got splits on both G twos. 00:23:47 Speaker 1: Man, there ain't nothing better than the cat and mouse between big deer. 00:23:53 Speaker 2: Like a big heavy eight too, man, Like just cause he's got eight. He's got points everywhere, but he's a mainframe eight. 00:23:59 Speaker 4: Yeah, he's a Dog's a dog. 00:24:02 Speaker 2: That's a good one. 00:24:02 Speaker 4: So anyway, I still yeah, and I went, uh this past weekend, I hung a lock on back on our back, like where we know that he was crossing, you know, south of it. This guy's a. 00:24:16 Speaker 2: Hunter, just because I remember when you were like getting getting into it. Really, I mean you've always. 00:24:22 Speaker 4: Yeah, I've always deer hunted, but it's it's just different now the past five or six years, I've like there's a jump that had taken it more seriously, and I've I've started killing better deer because of it, and hunting the wind and just hunting the right time. 00:24:36 Speaker 2: And he's going and hanging yesterday I was watching. 00:24:41 Speaker 1: That's a good that's a good segue into let's talk about your hunting history, like when you kind of when you started. Who got you into it? 00:24:49 Speaker 3: Was it your dad? 00:24:50 Speaker 4: My dad? And I was actually with my grandpa when I killed my first dough seven And uh, dude, I killed a spy when I was like twelve or something like that. 00:25:03 Speaker 2: First buck, first buck, don't give us that. 00:25:06 Speaker 4: Legal Back in the day, that's all. 00:25:10 Speaker 2: I thought. 00:25:11 Speaker 1: Nobody come at nobody, come at us. 00:25:15 Speaker 2: There's probably a statue of limitations, you know, probably all right, but now twenty two years whatever. 00:25:20 Speaker 4: And then when I was thirteen, I started hunting by myself. It was twelve or thirteen. First year I killed a like one hundred and twenty five inch eight with a new England Firearm two forty three youth model. Let's go single ships, big, single shot. I bolt Actually I know that you had the same one, but a bolty yep. 00:25:41 Speaker 1: This is North Mississippi or Central East Central. 00:25:45 Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, and uh for ten years, that was the biggest buck I killed. And this was before I mean I was still a teenager. I still wasn't like super into it. We were just going and not hunting wind and just hitting, just sitting in box stands and just praying for the best. So I didn't really kill a whole lot of deer. And then when I was like twenty three, ten years later, I killed a pretty decent buck. And then I went another like eight or nine years without killing a good buck, and then, well. 00:26:12 Speaker 2: You're probably grinding at that time musically. 00:26:14 Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean I had moved up here and I was not hunting a lot back home. 00:26:17 Speaker 1: But also too, like after you and we were kind of the same way, and our dad kind of put us in this position like once you kill that first mature deer two or three year old, you know, three or four year old, one twenty five, one thirty, there's something in you if you are passionate about those animals and hunting that you you don't want to shoot those anymore, Yeah, you want to. You want to start hunting older deer, getting more in tune with with their lifestyle in the woods and trying to figure out those deer instead of just going out there and shooting und percent. 00:26:47 Speaker 4: And it's it's tough because like we don't have big pieces of property, so like there's a lot. 00:26:51 Speaker 3: Of pressure different games. 00:26:53 Speaker 4: There's a lot of people killing killing your deer that you want to watch grow. And that's just part of it, dude, And that's part of the the crap shoot or whatever. 00:27:01 Speaker 2: But it is, it is tough. It's stuff to let them go. 00:27:04 Speaker 4: Man, Dude, I found I ended up buying. So we have a three hundred acre piece of property that we hunt a lot in Mississippi, and it was split between my grandmother and her sister. You know how that is old old land. And so my grandmother's sister, my great aunt, she passed away a long time ago, and her side of the family quit hunting it because they lived in Vicksburg, and so they put it up for sale. So I bought it, keeping our family and all that, and dude, when I bought it and I started actually going out there and doing the work myself and putting out feeders and helping like any way that I could to get set up. It's like karma or God or whichever thing you want to pick. I started killing good deer. It was like when I started putting in the work, and like I bought, I bought the land, and like I start, I've killed a good deer out there three years in a row. Now, yeah, dude, exactly. I think there's something to that. But I got to tell this because this is the funniest story in the world. 00:28:01 Speaker 2: Into it. 00:28:02 Speaker 4: The first year as a landowner, my first sit, I was sitting in a tall ladder stand two seater and uh I had this oh yeah, that's nice. 00:28:13 Speaker 2: You spread out putt right there side in. 00:28:19 Speaker 4: The corner. Yeah, something chair and a half, and uh I had this buckle camera that was like an eight on one side and it was just like a hand on the other side. Dude. 00:28:28 Speaker 2: It was just crazy, like. 00:28:29 Speaker 4: Little chicken head on that lift sid dude, just crazy. I mean he was a true it wasn't big, but he was a non typical deer. Yeah, and I'd had him on camera and I'm sitting here. It's like seventy degrees. I'm sitting here and like nothing. I could have been in shorts and T shirt. It is dead still, and it's my first sit Like I got home like at two pm and I got in the stand at like two thirty and it is so still and it's so dry, and uh dude, I just hear one coming and I was just like, all right, here we go. I look up and it was that buck and I'm left handed, so he was crossing to my left in like a hardwood bottom and I had to make a shot like this to shoot him. 00:29:11 Speaker 1: And uh yeah, I see you had to come on with left handed, so you got. 00:29:16 Speaker 4: And it's in a ladder stand. It did not I didn't have a harness on. So I'm like, you know what I mean, It's not like I can lean into it and like really make a good turn. So dude, I'm shooting him like this off my right shoulder with my left eye and I had it behind his shoulder and I pulled the trigger and he just dropped straight to the ground and I was like, let's go. And so I immediately get down and I go down there and I flip him over and try to, you know, see his exit wound. And I was like, what the hell? And I flipped him back over and I'm you know, rubbing his hair back to see if I can't just find his entry wound. And I realized I made such a bad shot. I hit him in the neck and I dropped him. Dude, I was off. I put it behind his shoulder, but just the way that I was like this and it just couldn't see good. I got so lucky because I could have that could have that flinch, could have gone anywhere. 00:30:02 Speaker 2: I want to tell you. 00:30:03 Speaker 4: I got him right in the neck and I dropped it. 00:30:05 Speaker 3: Dude, I'm pretty sure. 00:30:06 Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure I've had that same situation. And I shot the buck and it was my first ever big Bok. 00:30:11 Speaker 4: I called Dan. 00:30:11 Speaker 1: I saw him drop, roll down, leave scattered. He didn't kick or anything, but roll down like kind of slid down the hill. I was like, let's go, let's go, let's go get down my stand. I'm looking at him. I see him get up and walk off. I'm pretty sure what happened is I made such a bad shot. I shot him in that antler and just shot jarready and knocked him, knocked him out, and he got. 00:30:33 Speaker 2: Up and walked down. That's dangerous, dude, that's done the same thing. Dude that there's some old timers that swear by that next shot that you're tad to do it. 00:30:41 Speaker 4: Man. Yeah, I mean it worked. He was. I mean he was a huge, but he was probably one hundred and fifty pounds. 00:30:46 Speaker 2: I mean, I would venture to say, I would venture to say, are you I think you're a brother's hunt hoodie in that picture? 00:30:55 Speaker 4: I can tell you right now. 00:30:56 Speaker 2: I kind of remember, I think. 00:30:58 Speaker 4: Is this the first year off your first year off of that property as a landowner. Yeah, that's cool. 00:31:03 Speaker 2: Man. So there are people that I mean, I'm sorry, I would say in like top three dead lists. 00:31:11 Speaker 4: He is awesome. Not a brother's money, but he is awesome. 00:31:15 Speaker 2: Yeah, dude, I don't know that deer. You assume me that just a. 00:31:18 Speaker 4: Couple of years ago. Well, y'all took a hiatus. 00:31:20 Speaker 2: Man. 00:31:20 Speaker 4: I was like, I was mad at y'all for not doing the podcast anymore. 00:31:23 Speaker 3: He boys dipped on you for a little bit. 00:31:25 Speaker 2: That's a great, dear man. 00:31:27 Speaker 4: I was excited about it. 00:31:28 Speaker 2: You should be, man, that's us. 00:31:29 Speaker 4: And you know what, sud We scored him because one twenty five is like the number, especially down there. I had a picture of him the night before and his main beam, his normal beam, came all the way out to like the center of his head. Really, I killed him that I saw him that afternoon he had broken it off, that he was one twenty four and like five eights if he'd had his beamy. 00:31:49 Speaker 2: I'm gonna tell you that. I mean, you look at the nose on that deer. Dude, that ain't no pup, bro. 00:31:55 Speaker 1: He sc scored does not matter? Man, Ain't I get hung up on it these days? Everybody, I've never killed a one forty. Well, I've never killed a one low fence. I'm sure y'all saw that I kill. 00:32:10 Speaker 4: But I've killed a forty dude. I got so much hell for that. 00:32:20 Speaker 2: Oh, they. 00:32:26 Speaker 4: You know I've never done it before. And uh, there's all these arguments you can make. You know, you don't say nothing about catching fish in a pond and this and that. But dude, I wanted to do it one time in my life and I will never regret it, and I will have y'all ever done it before? 00:32:39 Speaker 1: I haven't, dude, that's an incredible animal, man, dude. High fence, low fence, it doesn't matter. 00:32:44 Speaker 3: It's any credible animal. 00:32:45 Speaker 4: I learned something, okay, And I just I feel like such a dingus just even trying to explain. But dingus, dingus, dude. But it's still and every place is different. But this place they had a handful of enormous deer. But I saw like three bucks the whole time I was there, and we hunted six hunts. 00:33:10 Speaker 1: Like you still you still have to see the deer. 00:33:13 Speaker 4: It's not like you pick one out in a magazine and they say you go to this stand and he's gonna come out. 00:33:17 Speaker 2: And there are places like that, but you're saying your place was not. 00:33:20 Speaker 4: No. I mean it was on four hundred acres and it was like you know they have they have like packets or whatever. There's like the management buck, which the management buck is like deer like that, dude, and like which is insane. And I killed one like that too on the second or the first day. But that but those bucks are the ones that stayed in there when they fenced it. Yeah, and they call them management bucks, but those are the real bucks. 00:33:42 Speaker 2: R Yeah. 00:33:42 Speaker 4: And what's funny is that I shot a deer like that on the first day because I want, I just I was dying to shoot one and I wanted to. I wanted to, and dude, that deer. It's funny the difference between like a wild deer and like a bread deer. That deer ran significantly further, really made the same exact shot both deer and that the management buck. The real wild buck ran so much further. He got that dog in it. You know. It was one of those things where like we we that was only the second deer I had seen that that day, and uh, you know, he's still got to come out and you still got to shoot him. I still felt like hunting. To me, it was just but I don't know if I ever do it again. But man, it was so fun and it was just crazy. 00:34:27 Speaker 2: All that's all that matters is is if you had fun doing it, and if you do it again, you do it again. If you don't know worries, man, it was, I don't. I told you. 00:34:38 Speaker 4: I should have just posted the management Still ain't. Still ain't. That's gonna be my caption for every every dear. 00:34:46 Speaker 1: I love it. Dan's got another he got another nickname for you? 00:34:56 Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I give everybody nicknames, and my nick name for you you. I should have done it earlier. Was going to be a hard rock hardy. I love that, I know, but it had nothing to do with like the actual music. It's about you've been a dang this is a true blue erahead guy. 00:35:16 Speaker 3: And now listen, wait, I. 00:35:18 Speaker 2: Can't get into it. It's not that it's not that I found one. 00:35:22 Speaker 1: You haven't gotten into it. You know you can't. 00:35:25 Speaker 2: It's not that I can't. I haven't gotten into it because I have never found one. I think that's why I love history. I think it's awesome. I think you know, it's almost like a teleportation kind of thing. You can put yourself back in. 00:35:41 Speaker 4: The because you're it's still there. 00:35:43 Speaker 2: Literally yeah, literally on the ground. 00:35:45 Speaker 4: You're standing, yeah, our stage running around hunting the same animals, but with bullets or which. 00:35:50 Speaker 1: Well that's what That's what me and Combes were talking about. 00:35:53 Speaker 2: Uh. 00:35:53 Speaker 1: In the Midwest is like whoever, however, many years ahead of where we're at right now, people are going to be in shellcasings and they're gonna be like, oh, this is a thirty out six dude shotguns? 00:36:04 Speaker 4: You ever, Like there's old creeks and stuff that back one hundred years ago they made him and that the shellcasing was made out of paper. Yeah, and so now you'll just find the the whatever you call that the cap or that's kind of a similar thing. But you're right, man. 00:36:18 Speaker 1: Combes is big into it because he talks about you as like the Godfather. 00:36:25 Speaker 4: I love that title. 00:36:26 Speaker 2: Yeah he does. I mean he tells everybody that. 00:36:30 Speaker 3: Let's get let's let's just set the scene. 00:36:33 Speaker 1: Hardy's got a he's got a story about arrowheads that were. 00:36:37 Speaker 3: Just gonna let him, let him take off. 00:36:38 Speaker 2: So Combs was probably jacking it all of anyway, he told it pretty pretty well and edge so long. 00:36:45 Speaker 4: He tells us, I'll try to keep it to the cliff notes. 00:36:49 Speaker 1: No, don't, we got time go for so make it good. 00:36:52 Speaker 4: Hunter Phelps again is like one of my best friends in Nashville at all, and he's my big airhead hunting buddy. So this particular time, it was two years ago, I guess at this point, I had COVID two years ago on Christmas, so I didn't get to go do Christmas my family, but I wasn't really sick and it was warm, and I went and found one on Christmas Day, just you can. But anyway, so we're hitting all these bank spots and we're doing all this stuff, and we're finding a couple, and it's getting dark, and we get to this one spot we've never been to before. A hunter goes this way and I go this way. I go down here. I find a big, beautiful arrowhead. And what's big, like not the size of your hand, but like pretty you know what I mean, my whole hand. Yeah, I found a good one, one of the best ones I've ever found. Looked like a big leaf. 00:37:38 Speaker 1: So is this is this a hunting arrowhead or is this like a working arrow? 00:37:41 Speaker 4: More than likely a knife. They call them all arrowheads, but most of them were like knives and spearheads, and only the really small ones are actual arrowheads. And that didn't come until like the Woodland period, which was like way they didn't start holping my bows until way later, way later, thousands of years after you would think, I mean, it's getting real dark. Comes back and he's like, you have to come with me right now. I have to show you something. And I walk with him down the bank to his spot that he went and pictured like a wall, and it's regular gray or not gray brown dirt. And then there's a spot probably like the width of this wall that's just black and gray, and there's flint and animal bones and pottery just like pouring out of this bank. Really it was a campsite, and we were the first people to find it. 00:38:32 Speaker 3: How old was this campsite? In your in your brain? I mean, do you think, I. 00:38:37 Speaker 4: Guess three four thousand years? Yes, that's sick, maybe older. 00:38:43 Speaker 3: That's crazy. 00:38:44 Speaker 2: That's really cool already, Yeah, I mean that's cool to find something. 00:38:48 Speaker 4: The first people to find it. It was I mean, we had to have been because we found so many, so many artifacts right there. 00:38:54 Speaker 3: Did you know what you had found? 00:38:55 Speaker 2: Yeah? 00:38:55 Speaker 4: Okay, so we start finding stuff and uh didn't think anything about it. I go home, and before I go any further, there's there's no no facts really that that point directly to this. But it's the only thing that can explain what I'm about to tell. So it's it's all like jumbled. But I woke up one morning and it took like two weeks, but I woke up one morning. 00:39:23 Speaker 3: Did you brought something back from that? 00:39:24 Speaker 4: I brought like two or three era heads back, and Uh, I woke up one morning and like all the lights were on in my house. And I lived in a house at the time in Joelton. And when I say the middle of nowhere, you could not see it from a helicopter. Dude, it was in my heart. It was. My driveway was like a mile, like a three quarters of a mile long. It went through these hardwoods and these hills and then you just my it was like a kind of a Gatlinburg style cabin. 00:39:49 Speaker 2: It's awesome. Yeah, you still have that place. I remember I said, you're gonna keep that? And you said, have you met my wife? That's literally what he said to me. 00:39:59 Speaker 4: That A no, it won't but dude, and all the lights are on. Yeah, all the lights are on. So and I didn't think anything about it. But I was like, dude, I don't I don't sleep walk like I. 00:40:09 Speaker 2: It was. 00:40:10 Speaker 4: It was really bizarre. And I what I mean is like my mom didn't come and check in and forget to leave some lights on while I was sleeping. There's just no you know there, there's none of this. You can explain anything because there's a gate and a mile long driveway and a house where nobody knows exists. 00:40:24 Speaker 2: So you wouldn't have left the lights on. 00:40:26 Speaker 4: No, I mean it just you just me for the first few times. Yeah, And what it is is it's it wasn't a frame, but the master bedroom. It was only one story upstairs or one room upstairs, and it was an open like master bedroom. Gotcha. So you walk in, you know, the living room, all this, and then the stairs they just go up and there's a master bedroom. 00:40:48 Speaker 2: There's going to it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, golf. 00:40:50 Speaker 4: To kind of essentially, what I'm saying is I couldn't sleep if the lights were on, you know what I mean, Yeah, because the whole house would be room would be left. So anyway, so that happened like three nights in a row. I would go downstairs in the morning and like random, lights would be on in a row in a row, and then some of this might be out of order. CALLI and I were I guess you could say, putting together the guest bedroom, the bed side table, all this stuff. And we hung a mirror behind the bed and my wife is very meticulous and uh and I'm not so it's it's a good balance, but we were hanging this mirror and it had to be perfect, and so we literally were like messing with it for an hour and we finally got it perfect and we looked at it and good job, all right, great, and then we go to bed and we wake up the next morning and the mirror has a giant scratch across the middle of the mirror. 00:41:43 Speaker 2: Getting chew on. 00:41:45 Speaker 4: It was so it was so obs that cow and I told Kelly like, man that something's going on with the house, like lights are coming on and stuff and and uh, there was a window that was open one morning behind my kitchen sceink that was really weird and h yeah. So then Calli was like, I don't like that at all. I mean, we examined it would be like hanging this flag and then the next morning tear down the middle of the flag. 00:42:09 Speaker 1: I mean it was not like the ft. The flag had fallen off, like it literally like things were open that takes human power. 00:42:16 Speaker 4: To Yeah, And so there was a scratch across the mirror and it freaked both of us out. I didn't think anything about it. And then one night we were up there watching Yellowstone and we heard a noise downstairs. And I can't remember if this part was in my head, but I think I remember Cali being like what was that? And I was like it sounded like a chair scared across the floor and didn't think anything about it. And I got up early the next morning and our chair from our kitchen table had been moved like six feet out, like into the middle of our living room, and I was just like, dude. 00:42:50 Speaker 2: The saint cold thing. 00:42:54 Speaker 4: It's becoming a thing. 00:42:55 Speaker 2: Are you ghosty? Are you ghosty? How do you feel you? Where do you range on the here's my thing paranormal scale. 00:43:02 Speaker 4: I think that somehow, some way science can explain something to do with it. And I don't think I think there's a way that they could explain it, and not negate religion. I just think we didn't know that radio waves existed until one hundred years ago, and now look what we've done with invisible waves where you can like talk to people across the world. And this I mean, like you just I think there's a way to explain it. Because I want to believe so bad that it's real. But so all right, here's the meat and potatoes of it. 00:43:33 Speaker 2: Right. 00:43:33 Speaker 4: I woke up and this sounds like a movie, but I swear to God this is true. I woke up, call CALLI so we had windows start opening, lights kept turning on and off, like at the same time. What time period is going on over the course of a couple months, and then Callie said, I can't we're dating at this point, we're not even engage yet, and she's like, I can't keep staying with you. 00:43:56 Speaker 2: It freaks me. 00:43:56 Speaker 4: Out, and really, yeah, I mean she but you know, she lived in town. I lived out in Joel and she didn't stay with me all the time anyway. But she was like, I just until this calms down, Like I was freaking me up to enough to freak her out bad. And I was freaked out when I never like went to bed scared. 00:44:11 Speaker 2: I just. 00:44:13 Speaker 1: Don't. 00:44:13 Speaker 4: I would just wake up and be like, God, something happened again. 00:44:15 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:44:16 Speaker 4: So there was a series of like five or six nights in a row. I never wake up in the middle of the night ever. I never have unless I have to go pee, which I still usually never do. I woke up at two fifty nine or three am on the dot five or six nights in a row, and I would wake up and I would check my clock and it was two fifty nine or three o'clock am on the dot, and uh, there was one night I woke up and it was three am on the dot, and I was in a full on like sweat, Like I thought I. 00:44:52 Speaker 2: Was gonna say TP. I was in a TP. Oh my god, dude, I was here. 00:45:03 Speaker 4: Full on sweat, and uh, I just was I remember, I just I woke up feeling uncomfortable and I was like, what is going on? I got I sat inside of my bed, I turned my lamp on. And when I turned my lamp on, something jumped from. 00:45:17 Speaker 2: My balcohol Wait, wait, something. 00:45:19 Speaker 4: Jumped from the balcony from the loft where my bedroom is. Because there was a rail and you could hear like you could hear like the pressure of like putting a pressure on it, like as if it was sitting on the rail, like it created and then nothing and then boom and it hit the floor and it ran through my house. 00:45:36 Speaker 2: And I jumped up. 00:45:37 Speaker 4: I got up out of bed, and I like turned every light on. I grabbed my gun. I swept my entire house, like every closet, every corner, No doors were open, nothing. I got chill on my thighs and again like there's no way anybody could get in this house, Like there's no way anybody knew it was there, Like it wasn't like a you know what I. 00:45:57 Speaker 2: Mean, no dogs are kind of running, no raccoon. 00:46:02 Speaker 4: And it was the most real, like yeah see, I even thought like it was loud. It was. It was so loud though that it was like it shook the dishes in my like like it was like somebody jumped. I mean, it's hard to explain, no, dude. I swept my whole house. I didn't sleep a wink that night. And then I came home and I told Cally about it, and uh, she was like, we gotta do something. 00:46:22 Speaker 2: And I was like, I agree, let me ask you this in that process or you think it is the has the artifacts even rang in your head that you at that? 00:46:30 Speaker 4: Okay? Yes, So some point in that month two months CALLI was the one. She was like, I think it's that campsite y'all found the other day. And I was like, and you just don't know, man, like that fresh dirt. Oh there's a okay, this was another very important one that I forgot about. 00:46:46 Speaker 2: Yes, So glad there's another one. 00:46:48 Speaker 4: I'm in bro I lay in like the first thing that happened before the light's coming on and everything like the night or two after I brought that stuff home, my truck alarm, I would I locked my truck out of my house. Like that's the one thing I would do at Calli's house wherever it was, I would lock my truck. My alarm went off in my truck every single night for like, and you know when it's cold, like your electronics get squirrely, and that can happen April or May. Yeah, yeah, yeah, like weird stuff like that. And I could not figure out what the deal was. And then one day it just it just stopped doing it and it's never done it ever again. And that was drugs. That was the first same truck. 00:47:23 Speaker 1: But that was the first same truck happened. Yeah, do you have it in Hardy Flooge? 00:47:29 Speaker 4: Then no, I didn't, but you know, Okay, So here's my like's crazy theory is that whatever it was rode home and got in my truck with me, and I swear to god, it was like it was trying to get out or something. I mean, that's the way that I can describe it, because the only way alarm can go off. But if your truck is locked is if somebody's in it and they try to get out. You know, you know what I'm talking about. You're in a locked car and you try to get out of the alarm goes off. Yeah, and that's the only thing that I could think of. 00:48:01 Speaker 2: Yeah, so your truck is going off. It makes sense because I mean, if you lock somebody, if you lock like even if you lock your wife in the car for five seconds while you run in whatever, she's you know, she's like locked the doors while you go on the gas station, if she opens that door, or if she even on some of the newer stuff, if you even move around inside the truck, the alarm on. Yeah, and that's what you're saying. It went off for how long? A week? 00:48:21 Speaker 4: Yeah, at least a week. A couple of times at her apartment, A couple of times in mind, but to. 00:48:25 Speaker 2: Wake up Ford ghost, dude. 00:48:28 Speaker 4: So we came, dude, and I felt like an idiot doing this. But she she bought some Sage and she looked like googled all this stuff indeed, and she was like she was like it says to Sage, every doorway, every crack, every corner in your house, open all the windows and all the doors. You walk in with an intention, and you tell it. You just you tell it to get out, and you you you don't say it like we're afraid of you. You just you tell it to get out. So, dude, I walked in the Jesus all of it, and I was like, and I was just like, I'm you know, if I have something of yours, I'm sorry. I can promise you I treat it with respect, but you're not welcome here. This is our home and you're making us uncomfortable. And we did, we did the thing and open up the doors, and they said, like, you saved a door really good, and you're like, get out of here now. And dude, not a single thing happened after that had left us alone. But here's the craziest thing is my mom my parents used to go out there sometimes and just like hang out, so I I'll get away because they live here in town. 00:49:30 Speaker 2: And my mom. 00:49:31 Speaker 4: Would go out there and she texted me a couple of times before I moved and she was like, and my mom has never told a lie in her life. And she was like, son, I don't know what's going on in your house. She was like, I went in your guest bedroom and the lamp started turning on off and this was after the Sage thing, and she was like, and I said out loud, I'm leaving. I'm getting out of here, and then said that she would walk by the front door which had a lamp beside it, and said it was started turning on off and then she left and she was like, I never will go back. I was after the sage, so if it didn't leave, it at least like left us alone. But I never We never had a problem after that. And that's oh, and then it's getting better, Cally, and I didn't tell anybody about this. 00:50:12 Speaker 3: Podcast rushmore stories right now for sure, dude. 00:50:17 Speaker 4: So I told Hunter about it after everything had finally kind of fizzled down, and he was like, when was that? And I gave him like the exact date and he and he like went back and he was like, dude, they lived in like a townhome. You could ask him about this and he was like, my I woke up one night to my dog barking. He was like, Laila heard his German shepherd. He was like, she never barks in the middle of the night. And I woke up and I heard a big thud downstairs. And they're in like a town home. They have a baby. The dog was upstairs with them. She started barking, and he said that the next morning he went down and his arrowhead case had been unlatched and opened because he brought some stuff home too, and bro he that ain't no hell And uh, maybe I don't. 00:51:08 Speaker 2: Maybe I just don't let that be. 00:51:10 Speaker 4: But you know I didn't. I didn't take that stuff back. I still have it. I mean, there are roast pray over your forward when I leave. What if my truck alarm starts going? 00:51:22 Speaker 2: That would I. 00:51:25 Speaker 1: Bet to like there are I bet there are tons of those stories from artifact like finders and and and arrowhead hunters that have I guarantee you there. I mean, and listen, I'm not a ghosty guy. I've got my own stories of being at the fire hall over here in the piano. 00:51:43 Speaker 4: I've heard about I've heard about the fire hall. I'm not ghosty. 00:51:47 Speaker 3: I'm not ghosty. 00:51:48 Speaker 4: But how can you hear a piano playing and I think something? 00:51:51 Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I did. I heard it was like a word. 00:51:54 Speaker 2: I was. 00:51:55 Speaker 4: I was pooping. 00:51:55 Speaker 1: I don't know if old podcast that's what I was shoey and yeah, I was shooting. And Jason Nicks was he had just left and during the day. No, this is this is like eleven thirty at night. He had Jason Nicks had just like, are you drunk? No, been drink We've been writing? No, dude, I had not. We were we weren't out. This is when I was grounding. Bro was But yeah, same thing I was. 00:52:15 Speaker 2: I was. 00:52:16 Speaker 1: I was shoeing and Jason had just left. I heard the door closed and then I heard on the piano. I heard a chord. But it wasn't like a fling. 00:52:22 Speaker 2: It was like a So it was major. 00:52:26 Speaker 3: Yeah, it was major. 00:52:27 Speaker 4: Maybe that's a good thing. And I was because if it was like. 00:52:31 Speaker 1: Yeah, I would have died right there on the on the party. Yeah, for sure. But I was like, Jason, dude, get out of here. Man, nothing, I call him. He's almost to Mount Juliet, Like it was then I'm not a ghosty guy, but wait, you are a. 00:52:45 Speaker 2: Chickens though you're chicken, I mean, dude. This is one of my favorite stories of really. 00:52:51 Speaker 3: Get to because we got to talk about some geez. 00:52:53 Speaker 2: Who cares about music. So so we go. We obviously we lived well. 00:53:00 Speaker 1: By the way, that's a great story. Oh that's incredible story. 00:53:04 Speaker 2: That way it's one. 00:53:07 Speaker 4: Yes, I've gotten a lot of I've gotten a lot of hell for it. Like I told it on Bobby Bones and everybody. 00:53:12 Speaker 2: Was like, oh you already told cut all that up. 00:53:14 Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, I think they literally they edited it down to make me sound like an idiot. 00:53:19 Speaker 2: No, no, we're not going to do that. That's all. 00:53:20 Speaker 3: That's that's a great and I believe you on a hundred percent. 00:53:23 Speaker 2: So I come downstairs one night, reves as girlfriend's house. 00:53:25 Speaker 1: This is a long time ago, by the way, don't act like it was four. 00:53:28 Speaker 2: Or five years. I'm just kidding. So I come down to get a drink of water. I see him pull in the driveway. 00:53:36 Speaker 1: And back in the day, there's like four or five we got my dad's car, my mom Dan's car, my car, like like Christmas. 00:53:41 Speaker 2: Yeah, we're Christmas something. 00:53:43 Speaker 1: And one of my the dark kind of wears me I used to now, but the dark kind. 00:53:47 Speaker 2: Of things in life is scaring the balls off of read. It's my favorite thing. I see it pull in and I'm like, oh baby, yes, thank you Jesus. I go out the door and I get in towards our shop was just like right across the walkway, from the house. So I get in the door door of the shop and I hear him when he shuts his door. It's like he's already running, like he just shuts his car door and run is running to that. He's like twelve thirty. And just as he gets to like where you would skip up on the steps to turn back into the house, I had a there was a vice there, you know, And I went and it sounded just like a shotgun. Locked up. Dude, he got fainting, goaded and froze, and in minute he was already halfway up the skip and he froze and just went and just fell. I thought I killed it. Oh my god, I thought I killed it. He's what what are you doing? That? 00:54:48 Speaker 1: What? 00:54:49 Speaker 2: It was like on the edge of tears, but also so mad. He could fight me, dude, and I was ies doubled it. Anyway, if you get a chance to scare it in, it's a beautiful thing. 00:54:59 Speaker 1: I don't like being scared. I'm good though. Now I don't get scared anymore. 00:55:02 Speaker 2: So scare me and I graduate. 00:55:06 Speaker 4: Dude. You ever you ever had like a long walk out of the woods, forget your flashlight though? Oh man, Okay, I gotta. I'm gonna tell there's no no, not really, I'm good. So and the ending of this is a regular, you know, normal ending, but I will talk about how weird it is. We've cut it over now, but to walk to one of our stands on that three hundred acre property, and I was hunting a ladder stand on the back side of it, and we all park at the barn and hike. No, just a long walk and there's really no other way to do it than the walk. Is no good place to park all that kind of stuff. So I was out there by myself. I get up in my ladder stands the afternoon and I'm up there and it gets dark, kind of like I've left my flashlight, headlamp or whatever, and. 00:55:52 Speaker 2: Probably had deer on you too, because whenever that happens, you stay later. Oh yeah, you always forget your light whenever you stay later. 00:55:58 Speaker 4: So I get down and there it's like hardwoods and then a creek and then a huge pine thicket that's like forever. It's like an eight hundred yard walk, dark pines to the darkest. It's the darkest, that's where and you hear that wind blowing through them. Dude, so I'm down there by myself. I parked at the barn, I by myself that day, Like no uncles or cousins or anybody's out there. And I get to what we call the big Oak, and I swear to God, it's as big a rhn as this room. It's like the oldest oak tree ever. 00:56:29 Speaker 2: Is still there. 00:56:31 Speaker 4: And it's spooky and and but it's dark. It's there's no moon and it was overcast. I mean it was pitch dark and I can barely see to find the road to get dark. And I get to that oak. 00:56:41 Speaker 2: It was still. 00:56:42 Speaker 4: I smelled cigarette smoke and I was and and and at first, like I just was walking and I was like, somebody's burning a fire. And then I thought, no, that's cigarettes. And I was like, in here on me, dudeunt. 00:56:57 Speaker 2: I was rifle hunt, thank god. 00:56:59 Speaker 4: Yeah, And dude, I did like this, I did. I I threw my gun back off my shoulder and like, knowing me, it was probably still loaded, but yeah, it was anyway, dude, And uh. 00:57:12 Speaker 2: I didn't have a light. 00:57:12 Speaker 4: It was the weirdest feeling in the world because I'm this is down in a bottom, dude, like way down in there. But even halfway back to the truck. 00:57:20 Speaker 2: But I just. 00:57:21 Speaker 4: Remember it being the weirdest feeling in the world, knowing that somebody else was around there. 00:57:25 Speaker 2: Do you think someone else was around there? 00:57:27 Speaker 4: So it ended up being a cousin of mine that never he has the right to hunt this place. 00:57:31 Speaker 2: But he did smell a dude smoking sick. 00:57:34 Speaker 4: Oh yeah, no, I mean it was like it was cigarette smoke, and it was so undeniable that I was like, somebody's and somebody's in here with a sniper getting ready to smoke a cigarette and shoot my head. Like just had again of a quick I mean, but it was just such a weird feeling knowing you're out there alone and then smelling that and being like, there's somebody within the proximity of men. 00:57:54 Speaker 2: I don't have a flashlight. Had he left or was he still there? 00:57:57 Speaker 4: He was still there. I don't know what he was doing. Never So, but I got up back up to the truck and there was a white van up there, and I was just like, and I didn't know the vehicle, and I threw my in the truck and I got out of there, and I called my dad and and anyway, come to find out, it was him, but he had not hunted down there in ten years. He just happened to go down there and probably sit in the woods. But it was just such a weird. I can't describe that feeling of thinking you're completely alone and then you don't under it, being like somebody's in these woods with me. 00:58:24 Speaker 2: You don't have to. Oh I've been there. I scared. Remember that dude that come in and drunk on this turkey hunting that time? Oh yeah, Reid was calling a bird. It was as weird as it was a turkey that needed to be hunted, Like two men couldn't have done there. Just wann't enough room down there. So Red was just cutting his teeth on turkey and call and everything. So he went down there and was hunting the bird, and I just went up the hill and sat to see if anything happened down there. Later, dude, we got there at like five fifteen, early as hell. Van pulls up. What song was it playing? 00:59:05 Speaker 4: Golly it was here or anything? 00:59:07 Speaker 2: It was something like f was like the first time. It's one of those songs. Yeah, real loud. At seven am, Son's already up birds Goblin. He gets out of the truck, dude. 00:59:17 Speaker 1: He's like, dude was going through it, man, Yeah, he was going of this guy. 00:59:21 Speaker 4: No, it wasn't he Tracy Lawrence guy. 00:59:24 Speaker 2: Could it have been the same day dude that's down in Mississippi. That was Grenada. 00:59:30 Speaker 4: Yeah. 00:59:31 Speaker 2: So anyway, this guy comes walking down. He goes walking towards Reed first. So I'm three hundred yards. I can't I can't get in touching. He starts walking down the because Reid's got this bird of goblin. 00:59:42 Speaker 1: I saw him coming and I just start cutting, like, I just start mouth calling. 00:59:45 Speaker 2: Like to let him know he was down there. But he kept him, didn't You Finally were. 00:59:48 Speaker 4: Like, oh yeah, he was going to Turkey. 00:59:51 Speaker 2: Was the definitely had a shock. He was. 00:59:53 Speaker 1: He was walking toward the bird that I had gobblem. 00:59:55 Speaker 4: I mean, he was just gonna go for that. 00:59:57 Speaker 2: So read signals and he comes back up the vegas. So he's like, he's like and he starts walking towards me, and he's cussing red dog cussing. He's like, that's so, I mean, I got I got this is my land too, and I got permission. But he's coming at me. He don't know who I'm sitting there and I'm he's getting closer and closer and closer because I'm on a woodline right He's coming, He's coming, He's coming. He said, I'm going a whip his ass. And when he said, I said, uh, hey, buddy, you gonna have to go through me first. And that's someone with God, I mean like he it scared the out Oh my god. It was still kind of hazy, dark, you know. And he I thought he's gonna have I thought I gave him a heart attack. And he was like, uh, who's in there? And I was like, Uh, the brother of the dude you were just dog cussing is in here. You're welcome to tell me what you're gonna do to him, man, but you're gonna have to go through me first before you do. He would, ma'am, I don't need this right now, and started crying, went to cry. 01:00:57 Speaker 1: Ended up sitting there with Day and they were calling to argu talk about Jesus and all of it. 01:01:01 Speaker 2: Dude, to talk about how great of a human I am. I said, He said, I oh need this right now. Man. I got permission here, And I didn't mean a mission. I didn't know what she brother, man. I didn't mean the mission. 01:01:13 Speaker 4: But I was like, oh my god, thought he was about to get his ass. 01:01:15 Speaker 2: Well, we both had shotgun, so I don't know how that would have gone. I thought about that. I had plenty of time to think while he was walking towards me. Yeah, kind of get my thoughts straight. So I said, man, I said, man, just sit down, dude, like, let's just chill and see if he shoots this bird. Man. My wife left me and I smell liquor, and finally I was just like, dude, just it's all good, man, don't it's don't worry about it, you know. And I never we never saw that guy again either, I guess. But where was that wesay? 01:01:49 Speaker 1: I ended up having getting a shot hunted that turkey all year long, shot at it at fifty five yards, missed it. But that turkey taught me how to turkey hunt. 01:01:56 Speaker 3: Like that. 01:01:57 Speaker 1: That turkey taught me a lot about turkey hunting. 01:01:59 Speaker 4: We still ain't took you never killed a turkey. 01:02:01 Speaker 3: Oh it's happening. 01:02:02 Speaker 4: It's happening, dude. I've I went, I've been on a bunch. I'll give you a perfect example. I'm I'm snake bit or something. Dude. 01:02:12 Speaker 2: I went with we got you. I went with Duck last year. Y'all know Duck, right, Yeah, he's a great, great and. 01:02:18 Speaker 4: He was like, dude, I'm already tagged out. He was like, come with me. I got a bird that flies down to the same spot every single morning, and dude. 01:02:25 Speaker 2: He did have a bunch of birds last year by. 01:02:26 Speaker 4: The out there close to his house. Dude, we sit down at daylight ninety yards and he's working him, and he's working him, and then he just spooks and he's the other way. And that's every turkey, and we we're behind a truck, like there is no way that he saw. I just every turkey on I've ever been on, we have been working a bird and they spook and that's and then we go walking around looking for other birds and that's it. And then I'm like, this sucks. 01:02:54 Speaker 2: Due. 01:02:55 Speaker 4: I've never never I've never been on a good turkey. I've never killed a turkey in my life. I didn't up and. 01:03:01 Speaker 1: Give us, give us, give us two or three days in the spring. 01:03:05 Speaker 4: Just let's just go ahead and do it. 01:03:06 Speaker 3: Let's mark it off. 01:03:07 Speaker 1: Give us two or three days, and we can put you on. We can put you on it I don't want to say too much because like turk gun is just like deer hunt man. You can't you can't make the bird fight down in front of you, can't make the birds. 01:03:15 Speaker 2: Have to go right. Honestly, hardy have to line up. 01:03:18 Speaker 4: I've heard that it's just there. I mean, it's a full spectrum of hunts, Like you can sneak on a bird, you can be there at daylight and it flies, and land yards in front of you. Yeah, there's just everything in between. 01:03:29 Speaker 2: But it's a lot like as you hunt more and more and more, you start realizing that if you if you hit it right, you can that's the You don't have to go all the time. You can just hit it in the right, in your good buck right. It's like your odds are way better if you hit and and a lot of that has to do with how much foliage is on trees, what what the temperatures. 01:03:52 Speaker 1: Doing, if the sun's coming up and give the water the. 01:03:56 Speaker 2: Dew off the It's a lot of it's just like kind of becoming a woodsman, you kind of start to not to say that we know everything. 01:04:06 Speaker 4: The more time you spend out there, the more I mean it sounds hippie dippy. But the more in touch with it you get there. 01:04:12 Speaker 1: And it's more. It's more interactive than deer hunting. It really is, because like you're literally communicating with an animal, trying to make that animal think you are an actually reversed. 01:04:23 Speaker 2: What actually happens is a bird gobbles and the hens go to him. But what you're trying to. 01:04:27 Speaker 3: Do is, yeah, manipulate mother nature a little bit. 01:04:30 Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, for sure to do dude. I got a question. Why do deer rut in the true sense of the word better in certain places and don't in other places? Do you think that it's because of whenever they brought all these deer down from all these different places, that it's in their DNA, because not even I know that. The story is the question as old as time is, why is these deer rutting in two counties? Ever, they don't rut for two months later? But why I hunted? I went on a hunt in Illinois last year a buddy of mine who let us drive up. Me and hunter drove up to his farm and hunted an afternoon in the morning and came back and that morning that. 01:05:06 Speaker 2: Morning we know that farm by why do you all know that's fun, dude. We know everything. I know everything if it involves deer within two hundred and fifty miles of this spot, we know, I said, Illinois. He said, I think I know that spot. 01:05:20 Speaker 4: And then you've named the town, which is like a thousand people in the town. 01:05:24 Speaker 3: Look at a bunch of greats to it ridiculous. 01:05:28 Speaker 4: Okay, well then you'll but you'll at least know what I'm talking about. 01:05:31 Speaker 2: I go down. 01:05:31 Speaker 3: You know exactly what you're talking about. 01:05:33 Speaker 2: I already know what you're talking about. 01:05:34 Speaker 4: Well, you probably hunted the same damn Stad millennium soft side. 01:05:38 Speaker 1: And I probably killed that eight point before you got there in a funnel, dude, right next to the levee. 01:05:42 Speaker 3: Yeah, a little boot transition, you're like. 01:05:45 Speaker 2: All right in front. 01:05:46 Speaker 4: And Jesus anyway, dude, God, but what like I sat? The one morning I sat was the most eventful rut experience I've ever had in my life. I didn't I didn't see a stud, but I saw a bunch of like one hundred inch deer running around and grunting. And I truly have never seen that in Mississippi, and I rarely have seen it here. I've seen it more here. But why do those deer rut like Hollywood rut, you know what I mean, like as opposed to in Mississippi where they just you don't, dude, I've never I've never grun it up like a stud in Mississippi. I've never seen a deer like mounted dough. I've never seen bucks fight. I know they do. You rarely see one come out and work a scrape like it's just weird. 01:06:29 Speaker 2: No you're not. 01:06:31 Speaker 4: The rut is so stale and just different down there. Why why do you think that is behavior? 01:06:36 Speaker 1: I think I'll take it. I'll take it first and you can add on to it. I think it's I think it's a number of things. I don't think there's like one necessarily. Here's the answer to that. One thing that we've been talking about is we've got a buddy, you know, Singleton, his farm. His farm is the first one in Tennessee to rut every first it's Halloween. 01:06:57 Speaker 2: Okay, you hang on. Now we have a group text and it's like it's just the dear Boys text and it's like Luke, Jonathan Randy, so what but what what it unintentionally did was go south to south Yeah yeah, yeah, So you got Jonathan Luke Randy and then we're way down here, yeah yeah, yeah, And so everybody's posting their stuff and like and I think raising there and maybe I can't remember who I was in there. 01:07:23 Speaker 3: Jamis Mississippi. 01:07:24 Speaker 2: Jameis Mississippi. 01:07:25 Speaker 4: I mean yeah, yeah. 01:07:27 Speaker 2: Stuff doesn't even come in like that's me. Yeah. So while we're talking about rut stuff, bro stuff easy, he don't even like he don't even have an ashtack. He don't even start until Christmas. It seems like, so if. 01:07:42 Speaker 4: The weather's right, if there's not a snap, but here's January third or fourth, that's that don't that's what reads. 01:07:48 Speaker 1: But here's the reasons that I believe that that that is a possibility or that's what's going on, is because I feel like where we live in Tennessee, northern Mississippi, we have a we're getting a hodge podge of deer. I think we're getting the Northern strain, we're getting the Southern strain, we're getting the Midwest train. And these deer work their way into this area and have over the however many years, and and you're seeing some of that, you're seeing some of the Midwest rut you're seeing some of the southern rut, you're seeing some of the northern rut in different areas of the like of that from November, late October to early January. Man, because there's different strains of deer that are in in this area, if that makes sense too. I believe one more thing too. I believe you know how when you're hunting Illinois, it's mainly it's mainly ag and they've got finger pockets of timber. Yeah, that concentrates the deer. 01:08:42 Speaker 4: That makes a lot of sense. So use you see, you you're literally. 01:08:46 Speaker 1: You're forced to because you can't hunt jungle. 01:08:49 Speaker 4: Bro it's a hardwood jungle. 01:08:51 Speaker 3: It's all betting. 01:08:52 Speaker 1: The same where we hunt in southern in Southern Tennessee, Western Tennessee, it is everything is betting. You're hunting a sliver of food plot and then in and then you're hunting hardwoods. The thousands of acres of it which these deer in the Midwest are concentrated to these fingers November and and out there is just there's the I mean, the quantity of deer is more. 01:09:13 Speaker 2: I believe. 01:09:14 Speaker 1: I just believe there's more. Well, you're you're you're seeing more because you're in that you got to I don't. 01:09:18 Speaker 2: Believe I think there are more deer in Mississippi, but you just they're so thick and you can't see it. Yeah, I mean, if you go out west again, this is I feel like I'm like a granddaddy hunter over here. But when you even when you go out west and you hunt milder during the rut, you see you can see the rut happen, right. You can see those kind of starting to come in. You can see bucks tickling, which is like, you know, just kind of putting their horns. So I mean, explain that, all right, tickling the horns? Man, come on. So my point is that when you're okay. Prime example once again is my spot right this, Because I live on it, I can literally gauge what's happening out my back window in real time, in real time. So that's different from having a lease somewhere where you just kind of bump down there every two weeks or every three weeks. You can't. 01:10:13 Speaker 4: You just literally can't if you're not in there every day. 01:10:17 Speaker 2: Problem example is the deer I shot, right, I started seeing deer tickling horns two weeks. But here's this is the ironic thing when I started seeing deer bumping a little bit, Jonathan's had already seen a deer mount Yeah, so like and knowing over the years that ours is coming right two weeks behind what his do, I was like, Okay, I let a cold front go through. The second cold front lined up perfect with the two week window. I saw you the night before and I was like, I'm gonnao do more thing and he came out. But but all that was a culmination of basically just intel that I had from living on the little Yeah. So I think it is happening. I think there are You are correct on that. A lot of the time that doesn't happen in Mississippi until January because man, deer don't like to move in hot weather. Bro, they just am not saying they want. You can absolutely feel dear but that and going about this forever. But don't a lot of the moon phase the moon phase then if you have a bright spotlight moon, a lot of that's going on it non too. 01:11:29 Speaker 1: Yeah, And there's scientific stuff that's probably way more accurate than what we're saying. We're gonna photo and the way the sun, how much sunlight's getting into experience. 01:11:40 Speaker 3: That's all scientific stuff. 01:11:42 Speaker 4: It's just a it was It's just seemed like a behavior thing for me. But I think the biggest one is that it's there's there's so much untouched, especially where I hunt swamp, and just so much area you don't get to that you just don't see your your margin up, seeing it actually go down is so much slim unless you're covered up with deer, and we're just not like covered up. 01:12:04 Speaker 1: Yeah, And a lot of that activity is going on at night anyway. Yeah, like they're they're running through the night. And and again it goes to another point, is what it goes to what we were saying earlier is you got to be there when the hot doe's there. If you're there and that hot doze around that the hot do if the hot doors on the next ridge, that guy's having the hunt of a lifetime when you're being like, there ain't no deer with the miles. 01:12:23 Speaker 2: I played four thousand dollars worth of corner. 01:12:25 Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, all right, we gotta talk about music, all right, Yeah, we could do this. 01:12:38 Speaker 2: We'll have to have you back on. 01:12:40 Speaker 4: Oh it's fine, dude, I can sit here for five especially just it being right right in the prime, right. 01:12:48 Speaker 2: Now, the prime. 01:12:51 Speaker 1: Let's get into your record, man. You put out The mocking Bird and the Crow, which in itself is is such a cool way to go about a record and doing it, especially coming from your background half country, half rock. Let us into your Let us into your brain on that project a little bit, man, Like, where where that kind of that idea came from. 01:13:15 Speaker 3: What's what spawned it? 01:13:17 Speaker 1: If it you know your past and how you were raised and what where that rock influence comes from, Where the country influence comes from. Give us a little insight into. 01:13:25 Speaker 4: That, dude, Well to speak to that that last part. I grew up. My dad put rock and roll on me at like the young, as young as I can remember, I mean truly, like my one of my first memories ever was my dad and he had a cassette tape and he said, uh, he put it in and he was like, check this out. This is a band called Pearl. 01:13:43 Speaker 2: Jam and our dad was ripping pearl Yeah. 01:13:46 Speaker 4: I mean, dude, I was young. It was like nineteen ninety four. Yeah, and uh I think, yeah, I mean I was like four years old, but I remember this and he put it in. It was like something from a movie and Alive was the first song that played on it, dude, And I just I remember being like that is bad ass. And so I loved rock and roll growing up, and I like, I had like an obsession with rock and roll. 01:14:10 Speaker 2: It was the ten, the ten where they were slapping man. Yeah, that was a great record, dude. 01:14:16 Speaker 4: So I dude, when I was like nine, ten years old, I was like the MTV era, Like I was, I discovered, you know, just through that like Lincoln Park and and dude, Nickelback unapologetically Nickelback Treed and all that stuff, and I was, I was obsessed with it. And I actually I didn't listen to country growing up until like Paisley came along and like Eric Church, like early Eric Church and like even Darius, like really those like really Paisley and Eric Church because I really liked Paisley songwriting, and I just Eric Church was the first guy in a very long time that was like appealed to good old boy, the tough old boy. 01:14:53 Speaker 2: Yeah. 01:14:53 Speaker 4: Yeah, and so but but growing up I listened to I only listened to rock and a little bit hip hop and all that stuff too. But I didn't listen to a lot of country. But I grew up country, you know what I mean? Like probably you know, I grew up small towns just like y'all. 01:15:08 Speaker 2: You're literally just saying exactly what we Yeah, I mean the same thing. 01:15:12 Speaker 4: So after my last record, A Rock came out, like right after A Rock, I wrote Red and that was a country song. And then like the same week, almost maybe the day after, I wrote Jack And they were so completely different, right, and but I had them both on hold, and then you know, I loved them, loved them both, yeah, equally, And then it, dude, I wrote a rock song and then I'd write a country song and it just it's I looked down and I had like five and five. Then you get like the you know, management and like my producer and stuff, and I was like, man, we should do like a half and half. So dude, I finished the whole record and I didn't had not written Mockingbird and the Crow yet. Wow, that was the last song I wrote for the record. Really, And how cool was that? I dude? So I was I was riding down the river one day and y'all, I know, y'all being country people have seen this a thousand times, but there was a crow flying over the river and there was a mockingbird on its ass, just like and you see that all the time. And I wrote for some reason, I just I wrote that down, like the Mockingbird and the Crow, and I just wrote it down on my phone. And then I was out on the road on tour and I had Jordan Schmidt and Brett Tyler out with me and I was playing them some of the rock stuff on that was going to be on the record, and they were like, we got to write a rock song. I was like, I'm done. The record's done. And we went to bed and I woke up the next day and Jordan had and Brett had gotten up like two hours early. They got me, dude, they were done. You weren't done, and they were like, we built we Jordan built this track up today. And I was like, I don't. I don't need to write anything else, like I think the record's done. And then I literally opened up my idea of my ideas, and the Mockingbird and the Crow was like the last thing that I'd written down, and I was like, I actually think I have the perfect song to go right in the middle of this record. 01:17:03 Speaker 2: So that was the track. The track. 01:17:05 Speaker 4: The track was the rock side, oh wow. And so we wrote the Crow first, and so I explained the idea to him and it was all like happened in real time. I was like, damn, this is perfectly capsure like the record and you know, the country and all that. And so we wrote the Crow first and then we wrote the Mockingbird and we just Jordan put them together and that like capped off the record. It was the last song to make the record. 01:17:30 Speaker 2: Yeah, my jam is radio. So I text you about it and I can't I can't cut. I can't quit that song, dude. I just just the the polar opposite and the way that it But it's still mega melt. Even your rock stuff is mega melodic. Like listening you know what I'm trying to say, that makes sense. Yeah, sure, it's it's it's not it's not so rock that it's like, Okay, he's just doing this to be different. It still has like a country yeah. 01:18:07 Speaker 4: Shine to it. Yeah, I mean because that's I found that, Like that's how all of us, but that's how I learned to write songs, and like it's just fun. I'd work a lot with David Garcia and like digging into the rock and roll parts and stuff and making the music sonically very rock and roll, but I don't know how to write that you know type of lyrics, so it's still over a shiny country lyrics melody, and it's gonna always be like that, you know, yeah. 01:18:33 Speaker 1: Which turned out to be a great representation of of you, man, and and your work and how you do things and and kind of the lifestyle a. 01:18:43 Speaker 2: Lot of sense. 01:18:44 Speaker 4: Yeah, I do think like everybody has you know, their like, I hope that I still get to put out tons of records after this, but that's that's gonna always be the one that if if people I hope you know that if people have never heard of me, and somebody has to be like, go listen to this and it will perfectly explain you know, who he is, because it really is. I think that I will forever change, but that this record will be the one that, like, well, it will always define who I am or like, just as an artist. 01:19:16 Speaker 2: Do you feel I was out on the road with Luke this past year, and honestly, it was it was mega hard. It was hard for me, man, and it was hard for me because I love I'm a home guy, Like are you a home guy, or do you enjoy the road? 01:19:32 Speaker 4: I'm a home guy. 01:19:33 Speaker 2: You're a home guy. Yeah, see, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Yeah, well, actually you know ten times more than what I'm talking about. I only did it for one year. 01:19:40 Speaker 4: Dude, it it is. It's been a very very taxing o man, and I haven't like spoken to it a lot. And this is kind of getting into what I went through a couple of months ago. 01:19:54 Speaker 1: No, hey, look, you speak about what you want, you don't speak about what you did, what you know? 01:19:58 Speaker 4: No, no, no, no, I just I had a a couple months ago. 01:20:03 Speaker 2: They kind of felt like baiting and I didn't mean to know, I do. 01:20:06 Speaker 4: Trust me, this is I'm completely okay with talking about all this. A couple months ago, it was coming up on the the one year anniversary of the bus wreck, and I had had I had just gotten like through like the summer grind or whatever, and I'd taken a break from drinking, which was I think I had a lot to do with it because I wasn't necessarily what you'd say, like medicating, you know what I mean. I didn't really know that I was even doing that, but I had taken a couple months off and then dude, out of nowhere, twice in one week, I had like I had a panic attack for the first time, and I didn't It wasn't induced by anything, really, I just had one. And one was on the golf course and one was like my course, Yeah, I dude, I like was there walking off the tea box and I just had this like it felt like somebody just like punched me right in the chest. Just I was fine, and then I immediately thought that I was having a heart attack. And I didn't know. I mean, I thought, I just it felt real and like my heart was my heart rate went through the roof and it was like palpitating and I kept losing my breath and I've learned that it was pan attack, but anyway, and then I had another one like a week later, and that's the only two that I've had. But I but I credited a lot of that too, the wreck and the trauma that came from that and everything around all that and like not processing it the right way and because the wreck happened, and then by the time I got to where I could like move around and like all my injuries and stuff got better. I mean, like three weeks later after the wreck, I got married, and then the week after that was CMA week and then we just we've went from the CMA Awards to the airport, flew to Thailand for a honeymoon, got back. It was the holidays, and then after that I went back on the road. So I never really like had time to process all that. So I think a lot of it was that. But I also I went to on site, which I'm sure you guys have probably heard of, and it was amazing, and I did a three day intensive like trauma therapy thing where I was eighteen hours of therapy and over the course of three days. 01:22:13 Speaker 2: And is this right after the records just recently? Is this the canceling of the show's thing? 01:22:19 Speaker 4: This was right after the canceling the shows? Okay, gotcha, this was why I canceled the shows. I haven't been very I haven't, but you know, I haven't told a lot of people, but I just haven't had a platform to really tell people. And I'm not the kind of got a video myself and talk about So anyway, and I got in there and I started talking about it, and I I just through talking about stuff. I was like, and you know, I don't. 01:22:43 Speaker 2: I don't love. 01:22:45 Speaker 4: Being on the road all year and playing eighty ninety shows a year, and I kind of that ball started rolling and I started talking about it and about how much it's affected me and my mental health, and everybody is different because you know, eyes that are like road dogs and born for it. I just I got into this artist thing so reluctantly or just so like through a back door. I didn't move here with stars in my eyes. And so it's and then once I started, it was like I couldn't stop because I was having success and like it just strike while the iron's hot. I kept saying that, you know what I mean, and it finally, dude, I just got burnt. And so I'm still gonna play shows, but I'm just not going to play as many in the future, and it's gonna be a little more systematic, I guess, is what you call it. But yeah, So to answer your question, I'm a I'm a home guy, and I've learned that I'm always gonna play shows and I love playing shows, but it got to a point where it was too much for me, and I think that that was just as much a cause of my anxiety and it was the trauma from the listening man. 01:23:52 Speaker 2: Good for you for figuring out your journey and and and recognizing, you know, as a grown man with a family now well but you know you're married, and and and good for you for recognizing what it makes your heart beat, you know what I mean, And what's the priority is? And not that the music. We obviously know you love music. We obviously know you love playing. But it's good to come into your I mean, honestly, adulthood. I mean to me, I didn't start really becoming a grown ass man until I hit about thirty. And because music is so young, right, and you have to and when you're pouring yourself into this thing, whether it's writer, artist or whatever, you just don't have much time to grow up. And so when you start coming into that later and you're doing it in front of millions of people, it's like, I can't imagine. I say this all the time about being out with Luke, that like, the super nice hotels are just as lonely as the rough ones, maybe even lonelier. And man, I'm watching my kids grow up through FaceTime and and then look, man, it was fun being out with Luke, and I get that there's a lot of pros to it, but man, you were responsible for your own mental health and coming from where we're from, that doesn't get talked about. Well, you don't know what it is, and you're if you try to try to do something about it, that's wrong. 01:25:17 Speaker 1: Yeah, you don't understand anxiety until you deal with it and then and get put in a position where it backs you into a corner to where you don't know what the hell is happening. And then and then somebody tells you, oh, well you're dealing with anxiety. You're you're you're having an anxiety attack or a panic attack or depression. 01:25:33 Speaker 4: Or whatever it is. 01:25:34 Speaker 1: But dude, I applaud you and commend you for it because it happened to me too. 01:25:39 Speaker 2: Man. 01:25:40 Speaker 1: Right before I got married, my dad was in the hospital. We were just or no, we were married, but we were gonna have a baby. I thought I was down in thirty eight. I mean like like, yeah, we were at. 01:25:49 Speaker 2: Three hours go to the beach house, and this kid's going It was serious. 01:25:53 Speaker 1: But good on you for recognizing what is happening and being being open and a man enough to talk about it and deal with it, because that is the steps to beating it. Well, not only that, but it also helps other people who. 01:26:07 Speaker 4: Are dealing with That's the biggest thing is. 01:26:10 Speaker 2: I was gonna ask you that, what do you feel like if someone is like you've been, you are going through this right now, You're processing and going through this. If somebody's dealing with the same kind of anxiety and trying to process either some of an event that happened or maybe just a spot in life that they're in, what are some key things you think you could advise is helping get through that stuff? 01:26:34 Speaker 4: Get help, like my go to a therapist before you go to a doctor. Really, I think so, because the goal is to not get rid of it, because the honest truth is few people completely overcome it. You need to recognize that you have it, and you need to make it not as big of a deal then you think it is. Because anxiety, what I've learned, is an emotion, just like happiness, jealousy, anger, gratefulness. It's just an emotion, and just like every emotion, it passes. And if you if you can speak for the anxiety instead of from the anxiety, if you can recognize it from almost like outside looking in as opposed to embodying it and saying like I'm an I'm an instead of saying I'm an anxious person. To say like I have anxiety is a big difference. And if you can realize it and treat it like a friend and treat it like a passing thing that you have to tell yourself that it's it's gonna it's good because I've had it bad since I've gotten help. But the thing is the two bad, like really bad panic attacks that I had that week, I didn't know how to handle it, so it's spiraled out of control. Now when I feel it happening, I can just take a second and say it's going to pass. And there's so much too. Saying it's gonna pass. It does so much for you. Like by the time you you're at the end of that thought process, it's already gone. It's hard to exist. Yeah, yeah, you have to acknowledge it. You cannot fight it because it's impossible to fight it. Uh, or it's only gonna get worse, so you just have to. You gotta roll with it, dude. 01:28:18 Speaker 1: I didn't know how after I after I had my my big one, my episode, I. 01:28:23 Speaker 3: Thought I was crazy. 01:28:24 Speaker 2: Bro. 01:28:25 Speaker 3: I thought I literally asked George. 01:28:26 Speaker 1: Jordan was sitting with me the whole time, and I was like, am I like, is this like straight jacket stuff? 01:28:30 Speaker 4: Like? 01:28:30 Speaker 3: Am I gonna get? 01:28:31 Speaker 4: Seriously? I thought I was, especially the second time. 01:28:34 Speaker 1: And but but after talking about it and talking to her about it and tell him Dan, and Dan was literally going through the same thing I was going He was just dealing with it way better than I was. But but talking to people about it, it is a way more occurring thing for people then you than you think it is. It's not a personal it is personal, but you're not alone in it, man, Nope. 01:28:55 Speaker 4: And I just think, you know, the more people are opening up out it, the more and more people are going to be open about it. And uh, We're just we're in a time, in a season and the world where there's a lot a lot of people have an anxiety for a lot of different reasons. And I just think the more you have a community because you can't go through it alone, that doesn't make them weak. 01:29:18 Speaker 2: It's not a signal of a week, I don't think. And that's that's a conception I feel at all. You know, people were nervous about to talk about it, but. 01:29:26 Speaker 4: That's a stigma, dude, that's a that's a that's completely it's not real. I mean it. You can't help it, dude. When I had it on that golf course, I was not worried about anything. I was not thinking about it. Of course subconsciously happened, and so that's enough to be like, I mean it, dude, it just it just happens to people. People, And I've had so many people come out of the woodwork that I've known for years to be like, hey, you're not alone. I've actually struggled with this for a long time. 01:29:50 Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean that's a life changing occurrence. Yeah, that's a lot that that. 01:29:53 Speaker 1: After that, you view. 01:29:54 Speaker 3: Things a little different, man. 01:29:56 Speaker 2: Yeah. 01:29:57 Speaker 4: So yeah, thanks for talking about that. Yeah. Absolutely, yeah. 01:29:59 Speaker 3: I think you had me to drag you through it. 01:30:01 Speaker 2: But that's a strong word. 01:30:03 Speaker 3: But good on you, good on all that, man. 01:30:04 Speaker 2: I'm proud. Thank you, honestly, man, Thanks thanks for coming by. 01:30:08 Speaker 1: I got a couple of things, got I got a couple more things as a as a songwriter. This is this is a question that we know he's got eight minutes. 01:30:16 Speaker 2: You're good. 01:30:17 Speaker 1: What is what's the best country song written that that you think. 01:30:20 Speaker 4: There is of all time, of all time. 01:30:21 Speaker 2: Oh god, I had. 01:30:22 Speaker 3: To put it on you. Do you have a favorite? 01:30:26 Speaker 1: No, dude, this is so hard because you're saying your songwriter, you're you're a lyricist. 01:30:32 Speaker 4: I mean, everybody wants to say he stopped loving her today. I don't think. 01:30:36 Speaker 1: I mean, I think so, dude. That is you can go with that saying you can go with that. Sorry to drop that bomber on you. 01:30:50 Speaker 4: That's that. That's I think one of them. This is a very unpopular one, but I think in the let's if we bagged it to the last twenty five years. I dude, I think that Humble in Kind is one of the greatest shout out the songs of all time. I swear. I know that's a very unpopular answer. 01:31:10 Speaker 2: That's a good one. That's a good answer. 01:31:12 Speaker 4: I just there's something about that song that encompasses so much to me. I don't even have kids yet, but greatest of all time always maybe? Uh yeah, those are all great. I had I just had to ask you because he hasn't heard today. It's probably number one, though, that's not Let's stick with home on Kome that'll be We're gonna make a playlist. 01:31:28 Speaker 2: So that'll be cool. Okay, all the people we have with Okay, cool, I like, I like your intry being humbling. 01:31:33 Speaker 4: Come all right, cool, I just gotta drop this bomb on you. 01:31:38 Speaker 2: I'm sure that was important, that thing you had to say. Well, it's that part of the show for the one. 01:31:46 Speaker 1: All right, So we do this thing called the One that Got Away segment. 01:31:49 Speaker 2: Of the show. Didn't know. 01:31:50 Speaker 3: It could be a fish. It could be a. 01:31:53 Speaker 1: Cut a song, you know, getting cut and not making the record. It could be a deer that you shot and got up and walked away because you actually shot him in the horn. Uh. What what comes to mind when when we say, hey, man, Hardy, what's uh, what's the one that got away? 01:32:08 Speaker 2: For you? 01:32:10 Speaker 4: I think mine's Mine's a deer I have. It's a deer story. 01:32:14 Speaker 2: I love it great. 01:32:16 Speaker 4: My dad and I were, uh, you can hunt over corn in Misissippi, and let's just say some time ago, maybe before I don't know if it was legal. We had we had we had cut over, we had cut over these the pines that were behind our pond, and it had grown up thick, but but not thick enough where you couldn't see a deer walking through it, and we were filling up our feeders. One time. We all we would always take a gun, always take a gun when we were filling up feeders, because you never know. And we made a loop around this cutover and got back up to the shed and we were getting ready to load up or park the caboto, whatever we had at the time, and we look at the cutover. We just drove around and there was the widest, most giant buck at probably a hundred yards that I have ever seen in my life. 01:33:02 Speaker 3: That's when you see him too. 01:33:03 Speaker 4: Yeah, and me and my dad we we didn't spook him, but we we we got him up, you know what I mean. And we sat there without a gun and we just watched this deer just eased through this. We didn't even have a gun in the truck. We didn't even have one in the deer camp. And me and my dad just sat there and watched this buck slow walk through a no, just a ten acre cutover, just slow, and it was at one hundred, one hundred and fifty yards and he was it was everything. He had probably had a I swear to god, he had like twenty eight inside. And he will see full giant giant deer and we just watched him. 01:33:37 Speaker 2: Did you ever see him? 01:33:38 Speaker 4: You never, never on a camera. Never, nobody ever killed him. 01:33:41 Speaker 2: Their ghost. 01:33:42 Speaker 1: The biggest, biggest there we've ever had kind of the same thing on our property in West Tennessee is we got a picture of I mean, dude, he was he had to be one eighty one day. 01:33:53 Speaker 4: You get one picture. 01:33:54 Speaker 1: We never saw him on the hoof middle of the nine. 01:33:56 Speaker 2: Yeah, never got dude. 01:33:57 Speaker 4: I know a guy that killed a buck and this ain't even that outlandish, uh, but I know a guy that killed a buck in Mississippi, or know about a guy that killed a buck. It was like seven or seventeen miles from where a guy was. A guy was hunting him and. 01:34:18 Speaker 2: He killed him. 01:34:19 Speaker 4: That far away it was I think it was only seven but it's still I mean, I just think about, like my giant that I'm hunting is at our deer camp and our other three hundred acre property that the this buck is only on sixty acres. We only hunt sixty. That's always the case though, right, Like you have some giant and then we don't have anything on the really good problem saying yeah, but that's that is seven miles that would be like if I was hunting a stand at the other place, which seems like so far away, man, and I would kill and I would see my buck from the other spot walking. 01:34:52 Speaker 2: Man, it happened. 01:34:53 Speaker 1: You know the you know the huff buck that that uh, the kid the songwriter from Nashville. Oh yeah, yeah, they had a deer. They had pictures that year, eight miles from where Just Dustin shot him. Just goes to show that here. 01:35:09 Speaker 4: I sure. 01:35:11 Speaker 1: Hey, man, I know we went over. We're just we're just gonna keep it extended this time, dude, we gotta do it again. 01:35:17 Speaker 4: At some point we could sit here and talk forever. 01:35:19 Speaker 1: Hey, thanks for being open, thanks for being home, Thanks for being home only kind, thanks for being homely kind. Hey, thank y'all for hanging out with us today in God's Country. 01:35:28 Speaker 3: And we'll see you next time.

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