00:00:05
Speaker 1: It’s mid November and the white tail rud is in full swing. You kind of just have to be there to understand. But a buck walking through timber a glow with fallen leaves is rare. It’s a fleeting moment and it impacts the hunter at a deep level. I don’t want to over romanticize it, but the experiences that we have in wild places are often significant highlights in our lives, and these stories on this episode celebrate these moments of engagement with wild places and the moments we have with our friends. A lot of these stories are funny, and we’re stacking them in like Cordwood this fall because the stories just keep getting better. This is our third Deer Stories episode. On this episode, a lot of stuff seems to be falling out of trees, and again, once again, a few people get thrown under the bus, and as always, some really big deer get killed. But something’s really special.
00:01:02
Speaker 2: This week we will hear.
00:01:03
Speaker 1: From one of our living members of the Bear Grease Hall of Fame, and I really doubt that you’re gonna want to miss this one. And very soon First Lights Black Friday sales will be coming up. It’s one of the best times of the year to buy gear from any of the meat eater companies. And don’t forget about the live tour tickets in Birmingham, Nashville, Memphis, Dallas, and Austin. And if you’re hoping to come to Fedville, you’re out of luck. Fedbele Arkansas has sold out. Thank you all so much for the support.
00:01:36
Speaker 3: A third brother pulls up, has nothing to do with the shooting, drags the deer over there to his truck, waller’s it around, gets it in his truck, shuts the tailgate and leaves with the stinking deer. And he wasn’t even in on the shooting. And these first two brothers are still standing. Their fighting took it.
00:02:07
Speaker 1: My name is Klay Nukem and this is the Bear Grease Podcast, where we’ll explore things forgotten but relevant, search for insight and unlikely places, and where we’ll tell the story of Americans who lived their.
00:02:21
Speaker 2: Lives close to the land.
00:02:23
Speaker 1: Presented by FHF Gear, American made, purpose built hunting and fishing gear that’s designed to be as rugged as the place as we explore. Our first story is unique because it’s being told while the buck that we’re talking about is still hanging in a tree within sight of our fire. Just last week, I had the privilege of being in camp with my friend Jason Kaylor from Telephone, Texas when he killed a dandy buck on a place that we hunt in Oklahoma. To set the scene, he’s hunting at the foot of a big timbered ridge. Above him is thick timber and below him is open range land for cattle. He’s kind of like hunting on the edge open rangeland and big timber. He’s hunting a trail system coming off into the ridge into that open stuff. Jason’s gonna get us rolling.
00:03:23
Speaker 4: Well, you know, we’re here in Oklahoma and it’s the it’s perfect rout time and coming in the root, and it’s been hot weather, and you know, just been hopping around saddle hunting, and like I told you, when we was easing down the road, there clays, these trails coming coming on here. I just want to hang by one. And I kind of spotted a little red oak tree when we was easing down through there.
00:03:48
Speaker 5: And when I left.
00:03:50
Speaker 4: Here today, I was like, I’m gonna go hang in that red oak tree. And I’d gotten aggravated this morning. I’d climbed up in a set, and I got this little you know, I don’t know what it is, but it’s kind of like a fishing reel, and your boat stays down on the ground and when you get up in your tree, you crank it up. You crank it up there where it goes. Well, it got twisted up and got knotted up, and my bowl was hung halfway in the middle, and I couldn’t get my bow up, so I ended up having to pull it up. Well after the hunt this morning, I fought with it. So I decided I’m just going to hang my bow on my back, and I’ve got this thing that goes over the cams.
00:04:29
Speaker 5: It’s like a string protector.
00:04:31
Speaker 4: So I just throwed it over my back and I get my steps, my first step set, and I start climbing my tree and I’m standing on my third step and I’m taking my fourth one off and getting it started on the tree and I hear I hear something coming down the ridge.
00:04:49
Speaker 5: It’s probably like two fifty two fifty five three o’clock.
00:04:54
Speaker 4: And I’ve got my third step set and I’m standing on the top of it and I’m hanging my fourth one. Don’t have my platform nothing, and I hear I hear a deer walking, and I’m like, you know, I grabbed my bowl and I just hooked my step with that. I don’t know what that cord is called, but anyways, I just hooked my step of that cord and I grabbed my bow off my back and I take the cover off of it and I lay it on the limb and a knocking air and there’s a there’s a yearling comes out from on the fence and she kind of runs out there and she stops down there about sixty yards below my tree, come right out that trail that I’d set up on, and I thought, man, I said, dang Ireland. I said, ain’t you know, I’ve never seen a buck chase Yerland, so I didn’t know. Anyways, I just kept sitting there and then I heard another deer coming. Well, in my mind, I thought, I bet it’s another yearling or it’s a dough her mama, you know, coming with her. Well, it stops it, don’t it don’t continue on it don’t keep it stops And I was like, yeah, I bet that’s it. Mama, just looking survey in the area. And I almost put my bow back up and went ahead climbing. I thought, no, I don’t want a bugger, no deer. I’m just gonna stand here as uncomfortable as it is. You know, I don’t even have my teather or nothing on that. It’s got my lineman on my saddle, and I’m standing on that little roong of the step. And not just a second after I do that, this buck just darts under the fence, same trail that yearling come out of. But he stops about halfway between the yearling and the fence, which is I know, rangefinding or range finders in my bag. I don’t have nothing ready, but I always wear my I’ve been caught too many times not having my release on.
00:06:47
Speaker 5: I always have my release on.
00:06:49
Speaker 4: So you know, if you’ve hunted white tails long enough, you just kind of have, for lack of matter words, I call it the while factor.
00:06:57
Speaker 5: You know.
00:06:57
Speaker 4: You you see there and you’re like, oh, that’s a good deal, Oh that’s a nice dear, Oh that’s a you know whatever. But when he ran under that fence, it happened really fast. But I was like wow, So I just draw back and I guess him at forty yards and I shoot him. And it happened so fast. That it didn’t really have time to sink in. I shoot him, and he turns and he runs and he hops back up, hops the fence and runs back up on the hill.
00:07:26
Speaker 5: And I put my bow this tree. I’m in.
00:07:29
Speaker 4: I need to saw two limbs to finish climbing to where I want to get, And so I laid my bow on this limb. I laid my bow on that limb, and I got so much buck favor I’m shaking. So I just sat down until I felt my saddle all get tight. And when my saddle all got good and tight, I just wrapped my legs around the tree and bare hugged the tree with my legs and just kind of laid back.
00:07:53
Speaker 5: Like I was in a recliner. And I was like, man, what I just do?
00:07:57
Speaker 4: It’s pretty hard to get me super excited, but that deer got me super excited.
00:08:02
Speaker 5: What did I just do?
00:08:03
Speaker 4: I didn’t realize how big I how big he was, so I really thought that he was a clean ten. I didn’t realize that he was a five by six. I didn’t realize he was a main trame eleven point. I didn’t think he was as big as he is. You know, I was I was thinking I’d probably killed one hundred and forty ish type deer. He ended up scoring right now, you know, growth scoring one point fifty five and six eighths. But today’s been a today’s been an awesome day. It’s been a been a good.
00:08:37
Speaker 5: Day at dear camp. I think tomorrow is gonna be better.
00:08:40
Speaker 1: Jason says he’d never set in that trie if it wasn’t for the mobility of his tree saddle set up, and that redoak probably wasn’t much more than ten inches at the base. Later in the episode, We’re gonna hear from two other very recent fresh hunts. But I asked Jason if he had any other good deer stories, and like any good hunter, he did so.
00:09:07
Speaker 4: About twelve years ago, I was hunting a place in southern Oklahoma. I was setting in my stand one day and it was a perfect day. It was high pressure and the weather was cool, and had a big deer come in, which ended up being my biggest deer with a boat to date, still one hundred and seventy two inch deer, and he stopped out there at thirty yards. He’s actually thirty two yard shot. Anyways, I drew my bow back I walked myself through my hall, my steps, you know, my anchor point and everything at my age, and as long as I’ve been bow hunting, I think I should be over that, but I still have to walk myself through it. And I shoot the deer and I make a really good shot on him. I can tell it’s a double lung shot. And the deer breaks off running and he runs through a little old persimmon thicket.
00:10:05
Speaker 5: And he stops in a perfect open spot.
00:10:07
Speaker 4: And at this time, you know, I’m an eighty yard shooter all day long. I practice all the time at eighty yards. And he stops and I rangeing him and he’s about seventy two yards standing in this thicket, and I’m like, well, I’m gonna shoot him again, and he’s just standing there, blood running out of him, but he’s just standing there. So I I reach over and I get another air out.
00:10:31
Speaker 5: And while I’m getting the.
00:10:32
Speaker 4: Area out of my quiver, I realize that I’m using both hands to do this, and I’m like, where’s my boat?
00:10:41
Speaker 5: And I look and I have dropped my bow.
00:10:43
Speaker 4: I don’t shoot a wrist strap, and I guess for not having torque and being drawn back, I shoot open handed, and I guess when I shot that, I just let my bowl fall. I didn’t grip my bowl. I walked myself off through the process. So good Luckily the deer died right there. He expired out there where he was standing. But my bow was laying on the ground and I was sitting there looking at it, thinking did the limbs explode?
00:11:12
Speaker 5: Did a bend to kim?
00:11:14
Speaker 4: I don’t know how it landed because I didn’t even know I dropped it. So I had a trail camera set up there, and I have a picture of the deer and all of his points, no broke off, nothing. I shoot the deer and when I get to him, he had seven inches of a flyer broke off of a two and we never did find it. I have the picture seconds before I shot him, and I have pictures of him minutes after I recovered him, and he has it in the pictures from the trail camera, and he does not have it when I recover it. Never could find it, have no idea where it was.
00:11:53
Speaker 1: He dropped his bow out of the stand and didn’t even know it. That is a new one on me, Jason. But one thing I’ve learned about this guy. That’s faux show is that he’s killing some big deer with that bow. Our next story is from my friend Dustin Craig. Dustin’s dad, Dale Craig told one of the best stories ever told on the Beargrease deer stories when he told about calling in a big buck with a rolling apple. But this one is a little more personal and it comes from Dustin because it involves none other than my father, Gary Believer Nukem. And if you’ve never heard us mention it, my dad likes to tinker with gear. As a matter of fact, they called him tinker Bell at the bow shop back when I was a kid. This is Dustin’s story.
00:12:47
Speaker 6: Dustin Craig from Western Arkansas, and this is my deer story. So this started out about two months ago. A buddy of mine and bought a bunch of hunting gear from from Gary Believer Nukelem. And he was showing me all this stuff, and you could tell Gary really took care of his stuff. And he’d also tell that he liked to tinker with things because everything had extras on it or had been taped up so it’d be quiet and all this. So I got a saddle and I’ve never saddle hunted before. And I took this saddle out a couple of times and used it just with a with a hang on stand. I’d climbed the tree and just use it my hang on stand. Well, I didn’t have a platform or any climbing stack, so my buddy told me, he said, hey, I’ve got some you can you can borrow. And I said, okay, I’ll come by and get them. So I got them, and uh, the morning was real cold and uh, just beautiful morning and uh so I got out there and it was it was breaking daylight when I got to the tree. So I put put my first stick up and climbed up it. Then put my second stick up, and I couldn’t go very high in the tree because it forked. I was probably only ten foot off the ground. And I get the platform and I go to put it up, and I’ve never put this thing up before, never used it. And I’m looking at it, and I say, man, this thing looks wrong. There’s something about this. It’s not right. So I put the rope around the tree. It I can’t get it sucked up tight to the tree. It’s kind of hanging a little bit. And so I wrapped the rope around it again, around the tree and around the platform, and I can get it pulled up pretty tight, but it’s still not right. And anyway, I was like, oh, I’ll make it work. And I climb up in this platform and it’s pretty shaky, and I’m like, oh, I can I can do I can. I can make it work. So I’m setting in the tree in my saddle, standing on this platform. I’d been there about three hours. It hadn’t seen anything yet, and it was getting to be about nine o’clock in the morning. And all of a sudden, I hear the rope on the platform like start squeaking, and I looked down. I was like, what is going on? And all of a sudden snap the platform falls out of the tree. I fall down. Of course, the saddle catches me. I run into the tree about knock my bow out of the tree, and I’m scrambling around trying to gather myself. Had finally there’s a knot on the tree. I can stand up on that knot, get myself pulled up against the tree, and get my lineman’s belt out and get it around the tree and get tied off, and I can step down to the platform, and I’m pretty pretty mad at this point, and I grabbed my bow and I just tied not. I don’t even know what kind of knought it was. And I start lowering that bow down and it gets to the ground and I turn and look up and here comes a dough and a good eight point right behind her. And I’m standing there on my top step, bows on the ground, mad and so I’m trying to pull my bow back up and I get it back up to me, and I’m trying to untie this knot that I tied, and I’m looking at the buck and he comes in ten yards right behind the tree, and I’m fiddling with this knot if he’s walking to the right of me, and it gets pretty thick over there. So I’m untying this knot and I thought, well, I’m going to stop him. Maybe he’ll stay there long enough till I’ll get this nott and done and get an aero knot. So I grun at him and he don’t even pay me any attention. He’s focused on that dough. And I finally get the knot untied, get an arrow knot have to twist around. By that time, he had stepped just off in the brush. So I get my grint and I get the grunting on him, and grunting and grunting. He doesn’t pay me any attention and he goes off. I’d lose track of him where he goes. It’s real thick where he went, And of course I was upset. I start looking at this platform. Well, apparently at some point, Gary believe Nukem, I had taken the stick off the platform and added a piece to it, And when he put it back together, he put the platform on upside down, so the button part that you would tie your tie the rope to that goes around the tree was beneath the platform. That was what was causing it to kick back on me. And that piece that he had added on was a was a prout, a two inch flat piece of aluminum, and he had it all taped up, but it was sharp as a knife, and me standing up there moving around for two three hours, it had worn through that tape and then got into my rope and worn through the rope and cut the rope and caused me to lose not get a shot at this good buck, the biggest buck I would have killed with the bow so far. So I’d say all that to say, it’s not really Gary’s fault, but it’s mine, because you know, you should always try out your gear, use your gear before you get into the field. And that’s a big lesson that I learned, and I already knew it, but let’s make sure from now on, I’m gonna check my gear, Dustin.
00:18:46
Speaker 1: I have never fallen out of a tree on account of my dad’s tinkering, but it’s not entirely surprising that someone did. That was funny, and at some point we’re gonna have to get a rebuttal from the believer himself, because I figure he’s got something to say about it. But I am sorry that you didn’t get that buck. Our next story, though, is from Deeping the Ozarks, from a veteran woodsman and whitetail hunter and squirrel dog man named Gary Farmer. This story highlights the unique characters that we sometimes find ourselves hunting with and all their quirks.
00:19:25
Speaker 3: There was four, four or five of those guys. There were brothers, and they want me to go deer hunting with them, and we ran dogs. This is back when we ran ran dogs. And anyhow, I had a pair of young walker dogs, just young. So I went with these guys and they all had they had beagles, and we turned their beagles loose and we walked them. And they had walked them around the ridge and all this, and we ran deer and I can’t even remember we killed one that day or not, but anyhow, they lost finally lost all their dogs. Whenever you get after a deer out here on these mountains, they’ll go to the river. A lot of times they go to the river. And they all went to the river on them and they didn’t have any more dogs to jump a deer with. And I had these young walker dogs. Well, they didn’t have any faith in my dogs, really, but they said, well, Gary, you can take yours around that old brushy ridge over there and walk them around through there and see if you can flush something out. And I said, I won’t have to walk, man, I said, you tell me where you want the tailgate dropped. They’ll go find something. So we go over there. I dropped my tailgate. Now those young dogs had round through there, and it wasn’t five minutes. They went to trailer and then they jumped all these brothers and some of their uncles. They were all ganged up around the trucks. Didn’t have a bit of faith in my dogs. When those dogs jumped the deer, they went to scattering like quail vehicles going everywhere. Well, I heard my dogs go take the deer back and go down a gap head towards the river. So I jumped in the truck and I went down to drove to the river and got down there. Two of these brothers were there. One of them had missed the deer crossing the bottom. The deer was kind of up under a bluff, and there’s a gap around the hill. But the deer had missed the gap, actually, and he’s going around under that bluff on this steep bank. Two brothers standing there shooting at it. I shot at it. It wads up and it’s steep. It just slides all the way nearly down to us. Okay, these two brothers they get in a fight. I killed it, the other than he says, I killed it. Well, they get into it. I let them fight for a little bit, and I said, what about me? I said, did ever dawn on you that I could have killed the deer? I said, I might have killed this deer, And I said, I went up there and I peeled the hair back, and I was using the twenty two two fifty they were using like thirty thirty and thirty ought six. I said, be real easy to tell by the bullet hole.
00:22:29
Speaker 5: I said, you.
00:22:30
Speaker 2: Was have her out.
00:22:31
Speaker 3: I didn’t kill the deer, I said, my bullet’s not any A third brother pulls up down there, runs up there, has nothing to do with the shooting, drags the deer over there to his truck, wallers it around, gets it in his truck, shuts the tailgate, and leaves with the stinking deer. And he wasn’t even in on the shooting. And these first two brothers are still standing their fighting.
00:23:03
Speaker 5: Yeah, nice bug. That was funny.
00:23:11
Speaker 1: Gary has one of those laughs that makes it hard not to laugh along with him when you hear it. And we still don’t know what happened to that buck or how the brothers sorted it out. Our next story is unique and it’s close to home for me. It’s told by none other the nineteen year old baron John knukemb And it’s about the biggest buck that he has ever killed, which just happened on November tenth, twenty twenty five. Like Jason’s first story. This one is fresh.
00:23:44
Speaker 7: This is a dear story about the biggest buck that I have ever killed, and it is so fresh that the antlers I’m holding my hands right now still have meat on them. I’m going to give you a little bit of context for this year. Whenever I was younger, my dad he would hunt this area and he hunted three deer that were over one fifty in the first couple of years that he hunted it, and he killed one of them. And after that the big deer kind of seemed to tail off until about ten years later, whenever I first started to bowhunt, this big buck came on the scene that we called Jody.
00:24:24
Speaker 2: We called him Jody because of a David allen Coe song.
00:24:27
Speaker 7: Jody like a melody, and if you listen to the lyrics, it’s pretty much perfect for a big buck. We first got a picture of him whenever he was three and a half and he had this giant kicker coming off as G two. And the next year he exploded into a probably one hundred and fifty inch year and then whenever he was five and a half he exploded into a just an enormous buck, a mainframe eleven kickers everywhere. We heard some rumors about him getting killed, but we really don’t know what happened to him. But we go a couple of years, the biggest deer that we see are these little basket racked eight points, maybe every now and then a three and a half year old deer, And so I started hunting public land pretty hard and kind of fall in love with that. This year, we got access to a new section of private land right there in the area that was just this big, thick, overgrown thicket. We had a camera just kind of for the sake of having a camera out there, just to see what was going on, and for the first month of season, we didn’t see we didn’t have much on it. And November third, we get a picture of a ten point is all we could tell. But he was super heavy, and so that got us excited because all of a sudden we had, you know, a nice buck to chase, and we started getting more pictures of him and we realized he’s way bigger than we thought. The more pictures we get of him, we kind of look at him, we realized he was probably well I asked him it was. He was one hundred and forty eight inch dear and he had the two big kickers coming off of his G twos. So we hunt him hard last week and don’t see him, but he comes in at night and we’d see pictures of him just crossing through this property. I had a deer camp this weekend, and so I wasn’t able to hunt him. But the day after the deer camp, there’s a big cold front got down to twenty three degrees, and so that morning I went and I sat a field with the six y five creed more. I kept seeing it. There were doze busting out of this property. And this property is just thick as can be. I mean, there’s almost no way to hunt it other than just the edges. And so I hunt till about noon, and I had something to go do in town. I come back, get a little bit of a late start out there by about three, and I set up on the far side of this field. I went over there and I got a really solid rest where I could shoot prone across this field and God set up to where I felt really good to four hundred and I don’t see any deer until about thirty minutes before daylight, and six doves come out the bottom corner of it, and they start to circle way down to my right until eventually I just lose sight of them and some timber. I keep sitting there and I kind of hear something back behind me up the mountain. So basically behind me there’s timber. In front of me, there’s four hundred yards of field, and I’m sitting next to a giant.
00:27:32
Speaker 2: White oak that has a little cedar right at the base.
00:27:35
Speaker 7: And I just thought, you know, a deer could come in from behind there, and I could tell it wasn’t an acre, and could tell it wasn’t a squirrel, and I actually thought, that’s probably a deer up there.
00:27:43
Speaker 2: I just didn’t think too much about it.
00:27:46
Speaker 7: Well, about ten minutes later, with twenty minutes of shooting light left, I hear behind me and I could tell those deer were about to come, and I was like, well, i’d better get set up just in case when they pop out. And so I get my gun and I just get I push myself into this wide up tree as hard as I could, and these does come over the hill, you know, whenever I first see him, they’re like ten yards from me.
00:28:15
Speaker 2: But I didn’t see that buck.
00:28:16
Speaker 7: So I put my hat bill over my face, and I just sunk into that tree and just tried so hard to imagine I was just a rock.
00:28:24
Speaker 2: And hope that they wouldn’t spook.
00:28:27
Speaker 7: And so they come into the edge of this field and they’re all eating, I mean literally probably within five yards of me, and I was, you know, I was like, dang, that big buck. He’s gonna come in from behind me over across that field. And I’m over here trying not to spook these does. And I sit there, sit there, sit there, and eventually my calve he gets so tired, and it’s starting to cramp, and my arms from holding that gun up started to get tired, and my hands were freezing because I didn’t have gloves, and I was like, am I about to have to spook these does? Because I can’t hold this position? And about the time I was thinking that, from up on the mountain, I hear where I heard that noise earlier here, and I.
00:29:12
Speaker 2: Was like, holy spokes, this might be it.
00:29:15
Speaker 7: Up where I heard that grunt is it’s kind of skylined, and the sunset was real pretty that day, and I could just see a deer coming down that and he stops and I can see his brow ties and they’re kind of were curved outward, and I was like, that looks like that looks like him. So I keep waiting, and he comes down the mountain, grunting the whole way, and finally I get a glimpse of his rack in the silhouette and I could see these two big kickers, and I could see his crab claws out front, and I realized that this was him and he is in range. But the issue is I can’t get my gun up because there’s six dos around me. And then I’m also like, well, crap, I had this gun set up for a four hundred yard shot. I’m zoomed all the way in turrets set for a four hundred yard shot, and I was like, this is about to be a twenty five yard shot.
00:30:09
Speaker 2: While as just slowly.
00:30:11
Speaker 7: As I can, I move my hand off the pistol grip with that sig and I pushed the magnification all the way out, and then I was just like, I’m just gonna have to aim for his heart, like real low, five inches low from where I want to hit, because there’s no way I’m gonna be able to turn that turret before without those dose. Seeing he gets twenty five yards from me, and I flick that safety and that buck walks right behind some trees and right he’s about to go, I move my gun a little, and he stops and looks down at me, and I freeze, and then he goes back to doing what he’s doing. I get my scope up and I can see his head pop out from behind these trees, and I mean, there was just no doubt it was him. And this is the biggest buck I’d ever even seen while hunting. And he takes a step out with his left foot. I could see a little sliver of his vitals. I almost pulled the trigger, but decide to wait. He takes a step with his right and then steps uphill with his left, opening up his whole side, and I just put it right above where the white meets the brown, and I squeezed the trigger and I hear these does run from behind me, but I don’t hear anything up the mountain, and I was just like, oh my gosh, did that just happen? And I jack another shell in, and I mean, it’s like five minutes to legal shooting light, so I can’t see anything, but I just knew I didn’t hear a deer running and so I’d run up there and whenever I get up there, he’s laying on the ground dead. I mean, it was just it was just one of those moments. I mean, anyone who’s killed, I mean, not even a big buck, but just like a deer that’s really special to him, Like there’s it’s it’s it’s impossible to describe, but if you know that feeling, you know that feeling. And whenever I walked up to the buck, I mean, I thank God for because I just knew, I mean just the way that that all worked out, that this was absolutely not on my own efforts, and I put my hands on the deer and just kind of like recognize the moment for what it was.
00:32:15
Speaker 2: I mean, called my dad and the first thing he said, I don’t know how he could tell, but.
00:32:19
Speaker 7: He just goes, did you get him? And I said, I got him? And I mean, it’s still hard to believe. The deer that I’ve been used to hunting, the biggest you’ll see is maybe one thirty this year net scored or gross scored.
00:32:34
Speaker 2: One fifty four and a half.
00:32:36
Speaker 7: Oh and here’s the craziest part of the story is the big deer we chased four years ago that we called Jody. This year is undeniably Jody’s offspring. Whenever you put the two pictures up side by side, you would almost think it was the same, dear, and so we named this one Jody two. But this was my first truly big buck, and it is still kind of hard for me to.
00:33:02
Speaker 1: Believe that was some good hunting bear John. And what I’m most proud of is that he killed a much, much smaller buck on public land a few days before and was ecstatic about that one and recognize its value almost equal to the big one. I was in Oklahoma hunting when he killed that buck, and I drove straight home after his call. There was no way I was gonna miss getting to see Bear’s buck in the flesh and miss the celebration. When I got home and we saw the buck, I told him, let’s just let the deer hang overnight in the barn and we’ll skin it in the morning. You only get so many hours in a lifetime to really enjoy success in these special moments. As much as we seek after these big deer, the times that we actually see them alive on the hoof usually just add up to minutes in the lifetime, and after you kill one, I just kind of wanted to soak it in and we did. Our next story is pretty unique. Bar Neukom would like to introduce us to his friend Weston Taylor, who is riding high on a good streak of hunting.
00:34:18
Speaker 2: So I’ve grown up with Weston.
00:34:20
Speaker 7: He was one of my first hunt buddies, and I’ve been going to his deer camp since I was maybe thirteen or fourteen, and We’ve done a lot of hunting together, squirrel hunting, deer hunting, even some bear hunting.
00:34:34
Speaker 2: But for some.
00:34:35
Speaker 7: Context, Weston he drives a nineteen ninety three single cab Chevrolet pickup that I think has a hole rusted in the muffler, so it has a little.
00:34:46
Speaker 2: Bit of a growl to it.
00:34:48
Speaker 7: And Weston will drive that thing around in the woods.
00:34:51
Speaker 2: He hunts mostly public land.
00:34:53
Speaker 5: His whole life.
00:34:53
Speaker 7: He’s under public land, and you’ll hear that thing coming for miles away and you’ll know that Weston’s coming back to camp.
00:35:00
Speaker 8: Well.
00:35:00
Speaker 7: Yeah, and he used to have a giant eagle like sticker or on the on the rear glass, this giant eagle.
00:35:08
Speaker 2: So anyway, it was quite the rig.
00:35:11
Speaker 1: Here is Weston. He’s also known as the Eagle amongst his friends.
00:35:18
Speaker 9: Well, I’m Weston Taylor. I’ve been hunting with my dad since I was about four eighteen years old and killed nineteen year.
00:35:32
Speaker 7: This year before deer season, my buddies and I we were sitting around, Weston being one of them, and you know, we were talking about like, you know, I’ll probably won’t shoot anything under two and a half and.
00:35:43
Speaker 2: Try and save my tags for the rut, and.
00:35:46
Speaker 7: Weston goes, he goes, you know, I don’t think I’ve ever passed a deer in my life, and we were all just like, what, like, how do you not pass a deer?
00:36:01
Speaker 1: So the Eagle has never purposefully let a single deer walk past him. I wanted to ask him if this is true, that.
00:36:10
Speaker 9: Is correct, that is correct. Yeah, it just never really happened growing up. It’s just like I never seen anybody do it.
00:36:16
Speaker 5: I never.
00:36:19
Speaker 9: It was never really talked about. And also it’s like where are we hunted, Like if the deer like walk past, you might be the one dear you see all season. So it’s kind of like, I mean, take your chances, and I mean I mean I did try to pass the deer one time, but it like it kind of lingered a little too long and I was like, ah, I don’t know, took a shot at it. But yeah, it’s like every time a deer pot walks past me, like it seems like I just kind of black out and just like sometimes it’s just sometimes there’s a dead deer, sometimes they’re not. It kind of depends on the situation, you know, either miss or skin into deer, and it’s like, oh uh, yeah, it’s just kind of like anything that walks in front of me, I get about us amped up, Like any deer, I get amped up.
00:37:04
Speaker 5: And yeah, that’s what I mean.
00:37:06
Speaker 9: It is kind of like feels like I’m just kind of like whatever happens happens, Like I just kind of go into problem lotis seems like but.
00:37:13
Speaker 2: Purely instinctual.
00:37:19
Speaker 7: Another interesting fact about Weston is that he’s killed more three points than anybody I have ever met in my life. I don’t know how he I mean, like almost every little buck that he shoots has three points, which I’ve recently heard a term for that called a spork. It’s not a spike, it’s not a fork, it’s a spork. Weston has killed an unbelievable amount of sparks. And anyway, Weston is a He’s a great guy. Anyone who meets him really likes him. Good hunter, but he has one of the most unbelievable streaks I’ve ever heard of in my life of eighteen years deer hunting hard, never once past the deer.
00:38:01
Speaker 1: I’d like to give a big salute to Weston Taylor the Eagle for carrying on the tradition of the American meat hunter. Weston’s dad is Matt Taylor, who spoke on the last episode about their deer camp. These guys have a rich history and hunting, and Matt has taught all of his kids to be ethical hunters.
00:38:22
Speaker 2: And these guys.
00:38:23
Speaker 1: Take wild game meat incredibly serious. They live off of it, and they love it. Our next story is from my good friend Shane Auman. Shane is an incredible whitetail hunter and actually had multiple videos on Primetime Bucks back in the early two thousands. Shane shot professional archery for years and was sponsored by Matthews for fifteen years. He’s not an amateur, and that’s why this story is so good, all.
00:38:58
Speaker 10: Right, Shane, I’m Alpine, Arkansas, born and raised in Boone County, just as Clay likes to discuss and talk about this typical redneck hillbilly that likes to deer hunt, mainly with a bow. But in twenty fourteen, I’d come across and got information of a pretty nice deer, had a piece of property I could hunt on. But the neighbors had been talking about seeing a really good deer and I had got word of it, and they’s talking to me about it, and they none of those are none of those guys as bow hunters. They are all gun hunters and don’t hunt till you know, mid November. So I’d got to trying to find or get pictures of the deer. So I started, you know, had cameras out like everybody does. And this is you know, mid Septembers about you know, it’s probably the second week of October or so started getting a few, seeing a few more bucks right on scrapes, and then a really good one did show up, you know, really really nice nine pointer five before with a lot of trash on.
00:40:00
Speaker 5: He’s on his right side.
00:40:02
Speaker 10: So anyway, the way I like to hunt, goat standing on my back, you know, never stays anywhere more than a couple of times. So that’s what I was doing the whole the whole time. You know, I’d get pictures of a deer on a field edge, and I’d be looking for any areas where they’re starting to scrape for white oaks they’s feeding on, trying to get horned in on doughs, knowing it’s just clockwork around home. You know, time muzzloder season opens, that’s right before Halloween. There’s always going to be some bucks at home, just breeding dose.
00:40:33
Speaker 5: I mean, that’s just bottom line. I mean it has been that way for as long as I can remember.
00:40:39
Speaker 10: So anyway, i’d i’d been hunting the deer, hadn’t seen him, seeing lots of activity. I mean, it had been storming, raining, coal front blew in. It was just perfect north wind. So I had a I had a place in mind I’d been wanting to sit that I thought needed to be north wind.
00:40:58
Speaker 5: And it’s at the head of a holler.
00:41:00
Speaker 10: And this this holler where this holler cuts in right makes you know, really good flat on the ridge comes rolls around old growed up field home place, just one of those bucky looking places and a few scattered white oaks in it, and you know, some precimmons. I mean, just just place you ought to see deer messing around, walked in, stand on my back, found a tree and as I’m standing there looking I could see I could see several you know, big horn bushes and a few scrapes around here and there. So oh yeah, I’m just going to get in this particular tree. So I got crawled up in it. I pulled my bow up, hang my bow up on my hangar, had everything ready to go, looking around, and there was one little limb come out in front of me here, and I thought, well, I need to I’ll just snap that off. Well, I on the end of my platform, just reach out there, snap that limb off. And somehow my safety line on my harness hooked my bow and I didn’t really realize it, and I turned around messing around looking at some other stuff, just getting everything situated.
00:42:05
Speaker 5: Knocked my bow off.
00:42:06
Speaker 10: The hook lands on the ground, you knowin I was like fifteen foot wasn’t super high this cedar bush there.
00:42:12
Speaker 5: I mean no, I didn’t think much about it.
00:42:14
Speaker 10: I mean I didn’t hit very hard. So I crawled down. I get to my bow, go back up the tree, pull it up. Look it over and then nothing looks out ordinary. I mean nothing, I mean, everything looks fine.
00:42:26
Speaker 2: I mean I.
00:42:26
Speaker 5: Everything looks good.
00:42:28
Speaker 2: Pulled the bow and blah blah blah.
00:42:30
Speaker 10: So I sitting there thinking about it, you know, and I had I had three arrows in my quiver, which is mistake number one. You’ve got a six arrow quiver. You need all three arrow you know, all your arrows in your quiver. But I shot a couple of coyoats like a couple of days before, you know, something like you know, and didn’t didn’t take time to put them.
00:42:48
Speaker 5: Back in, which still no excuse.
00:42:51
Speaker 10: But in my mind I kept thinking, well, how to shoot my bow at that leaf over there, so just double checking.
00:42:57
Speaker 5: No, that’s not good either, there’s no need doing that. That’s just a.
00:43:00
Speaker 10: Waste, you know, waste air, brake era or whatever. Anyhow, sat there dwelled on that, finally decided it’s all right. But the other kicker to that is something I’ve always had with me, always.
00:43:12
Speaker 5: Carry with me.
00:43:13
Speaker 10: I’d have a little bag that I keep watered up in my fanny pack or in my cargo pockets, on my hunting pants or whatever that has an extra knock a field point and a broad head wrench, so absolutely no problem to check the bow.
00:43:29
Speaker 5: But anyway did not.
00:43:32
Speaker 10: So anyway, continue on. We’re like thirty minutes before dark everything, you know, just the prime time. No deer had filtered through. And then I thought I heard a grunt. Well then I kept really fixated over and watching it, and about that time, coming through old broom sage, I see it a dou will coming and she is just kind of skirting along and buck pushing her. Well, as soon as I seen the buck, I mean, no, he’s a good one, you know, I got ready, getting ready. Then it’s the deer I had seen and had pictures of. He comes in pushing that dough and gets thirty yards broadside just stops. He’s standing there, jacking around in a scrape and paw on the ground and mean this this is yeah, this is it. So I got drawed anchored, and I aimed on him, and I went and that shot broke. I mean there was no doubt in my mind that deer was dead. I mean there was zeroed outs except when I seen the era go about two foot over him and to you know, right went shot way high into the right. Well, I knew exactly you know, well that wasn’t that wasn’t me, and that wasn’t my bow’s fault.
00:44:43
Speaker 5: That was all because I knocked it off and didn’t check it. So anyway, I deer run off.
00:44:49
Speaker 10: You know, he had no idea what happened in the dough. She’s went the other way, And I thought, well, I’ll go ahead and get down right quick, try not to booger anything else, and got over aarraw was clean, thank god, I mean didn’t didn’t foul shooting him, didn’t gut shoot him, know, nothing like that. So anyhow, he gathered up my stuff and pouted all the way back to the.
00:45:10
Speaker 5: Truck and got to my house.
00:45:13
Speaker 10: So I’ve I’ve always had a place at my house where I could shoot, even you know, after dark. I’ve got to had a big outside light in my target so I could shoot twenty yards pretty easy. So I’ve opened the door, flipped the lights on, shot the bow, and yeah, it was like you know, at twenty yards, like a foot to the right and eighteen inches high. Anyway, eventually messed around looking at everything I could tell my sight.
00:45:41
Speaker 5: I could see where it had bent. Should have caught it, but anyway, I didn’t.
00:45:46
Speaker 10: To add more insult to the injury that one of the neighbors kills a big deer and he’s one hundred and fifty seven inch deer. I mean, you can’t ask for a better and it’s the deer. Yeah, I mean, I’ve got picture here. He is a nyeu pointer, you know, on the same trash on the right. I mean, just unbelievable, nice, super nice. Can’t ask for a better deer for you know, full out acron deer. This ain’t no food plots, nothing there. I mean, it’s just an all out mountain acron deer. And I mean it’s one of them. It’s just a freak and a rarity that you see.
00:46:17
Speaker 1: But anyway, of all the stories that Shane Aumand could have told, I appreciate that he told that one. Shane’s as good a white tail hunter and archery shooter as they make, and he told us about the one that got away when he did something stupid. For our final story, we’ve saved the best for last. And it’s not really that it’s the best story, even though it’s an incredible story. It’s really more about the unique person telling the story. This is one of the few living Bear Grease Hall of Fame members my dear friend James Lawrence. Below his name on the Hall of Fame placa, it says Arkansas backwoodsman. That’s a good description of James. And this story is about a buck that he killed just a few days ago.
00:47:12
Speaker 8: This hunt. The last two or three years, and maybe longer than that, I’ve still hunted that area. And it seems like all the sign that I was finding still hunting, whether it be scrapes, trails, signed just tracks for seeing deer, it all led to this holly tree. And that holly tree is probably seventy yards from where my blind’s at. But my blind was the traffic of the deer, and I’ve put up cameras and the traffic of the deer is all coming from that holly tree. This one’s about sixty yards from where I’ve got my blind. This hunt, I’ve had two good bucks that I’ve hunting. When of them’s a just a long time eight point and the other one’s it’s a six or six. But uh, the t fours has broke. I mean you still got cauntible point, nice boat. But I was in my blind and I picked up this movement just the edge of vision be where I see in the brush. I could see movement and see deer and the shape that I come up with, I mean was watching. I finally focused in on it and it was a deer standing and he stood. I mean, he’s been standing there for a long time. And this don’t make any sense for a white tailed deer, deer in the rut, when there’s deer over twenty yards from him or thirty and him’s standing in their broadside. I had the bright idea of maybe a grunting with a grunt call. Had a grunt call in my backpack that I’ve carried for I don’t know, many many many years. Uh it’s to me, it works better, sounds better. But one day I got caught without it out of my backpack. I lift it in my coat and my backpack, but at in it, so I didn’t have my backpack. So as soon as I could after that, I bought a grunt call. All it does it just looked like the one I had, which was a nighting hail. Anyway, I thought I would grunt to him because I seen movement, and I used two calls to grunt hurt, you know, just not enough. I figured to could hear it it’s really to call too loud or too much. The deer turned a little bit, but it didn’t move. I mean this this deer stood there forever. The deer turned, and this other deer was still out here. I mean I could see them, but I mean, if they were bucks, I and it took a shot at them because I could just see their legs, and that deer kind of turned and went out and looked straight at me. And when he did, all I seen was that horns come out and the head and neck, and I thought, oh my word, you know, but there’s nothing I could do about it. He didn’t come in. I grinded maybe three times, just one note. This drunk, he slipped out on me. I guess I could just see movement. And then I didn’t see the deer, but the other deer, I didn’t see them, just see them kind of moveing went out of sight. So he did notice the factor pick up the grunt. So I would do just a low grunt, probably thirty minutes apart, just one note hurt. An hour later, I was drinking just once low, and here this buck appeared ten yards away walking. But that buck come to my grunt. I grabbed my rifle come up, got cross hairs and hair. I towardst it off. The deer went bawn, so I unse uped it out and the deer was trying to get up. So I put him down. And it turned out it was the twelve point that I had pictures of, you.
00:51:30
Speaker 4: Know, So.
00:51:32
Speaker 8: Patted myself on the back tickle to death, counted the point six by six. I looked at the where did I hit him? All I done was just clipped to his back. It didn’t even bring blood, It just burnt, I guess the backbone, and I jar There was a matter of just seconds that deer would have got up and run off. Scared me to death. When I actually seen I thought he was down and I just had to finish him off. The second one, the one that killed him, he was fixing to get up and go, But that positively was a grunt call brought him in.
00:52:17
Speaker 1: The stories we bring back from wild places can’t be bought with money, They can’t be replicated, and they enrich our lives with something intangible, something primitive, something that only comes from engagement with the wild. It’s only in the mind of the hunter that the imagery of the hunt can be replayed, and our words bring it all to life inside of a story, when it’s expressed into something that’s truly magical and can be shared with others. I’m kind of sad that our Dear Stories episodes are coming to an end this year, but I look forward to making more stories in the future. I cannot thank you enough for listening to Bear Grease this country life in the Backwoods University. Keep the wild places wild because that’s where the bears live.
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