Bear Grease - Ep. 150: Deer Stories - The Unexpected (Part 1)

Episode Date: October 4, 2023

This week on Bear Grease, Clay hears from several diehard whitetail deer hunters. This is one of the most unique collections of deer stories you’ll hear anywhere and just in time for Whitetail Week at MeatEater. Dale Craig - grunting in a mountain buck and sealing the deal with a rolling jumping apple. Travis Ross - his first mountain hunt and an encounter with Charley and Louie Dale Edwards deer dogs. Andy Brown tells a wild story about his dad, how scarce deer were at the time, what a deer could provide for a family. Moe Shepherd - a deer that disappeared after blood trailing it in the snow and an encounter with a panther. Aaron Stanphill - calling in a deer by relieving himself on some dry leaves. Clay Newcomb - killing a deer sitting on a limb in a red oak tree while his daughter played in the dry creek bed below. Luke Alston - connecting his son with a great deer name Moab that he had four years of history with. I really doubt you’re gonna want to miss this one… Connect with Clay and MeatEater Clay on Instagram MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube Shop Bear Grease MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. First Lights fieldware collection is made for the work that happens long before opening day and continues when the season ends. Products built for early mornings, full days and real use. Hard wearing where they need to be versatile where it matters. No shortcuts. Just gear designed for the work that earns the season.

Built to perform, built to last. Check out. First Light's new field. We'd name this dear Moab, mother of all bucks. I don't nickname every day I see, but for some reason or another, that one, he deserved a nickname. I text Ryan, and I just said, he's in the field. If you can get here, I'm just going to sit here and wait. I have a group thread with some friends of mine.

I just sent them a message, and I said, boys, I'm watching Moab, and I'm waiting for Ryan to get here to shoot him if the Lord wills it. My brothers and sisters, we have found ourselves in the beginning days of one of the great festivals of the natural world. For roughly 60 days, the lives of men will overlap a great pageant. A ruddy, grunny, acorn, corn, and clover-eaten pageant. What I'm talking about is whitetail deer hunting. Of those connected to the land, whitetail hunting in the fall is one of the greatest celebrations in North America. On this episode, we're back to the basics telling deer stories. Every storyteller on this episode bleeds a core bear grease frequency.

With some, it's their passion, woodsmanship, ingenuity, or just deep knowledge of deer hunting. In others, it's their nod to tradition, love of family and friends. We're going to hear seven stories, and most of them are going to surprise you. from rolling apples, good mountain horses, Andy Brown's dad's 1956 Chevy, mountain lines, Charlie and Louisdale Edwards deer dogs, and peeing out of tree stands. This episode has stories that I promise you, you are not going to hear anywhere else. And it's whitetail week at Meat Eat Eater and First Light. So check out all of the team's social media feeds for tips, tactics, and deals this week.

And if you're looking for more white-tail content, be sure to check out Meat Eaters YouTube for our series called One Week in November and a series called The Buck Truck. But regardless, you're here now and you're about to hear some incredible stories. And I really doubt that you're going to want to miss this one. And the meanwhile, I'm about to go to the bathroom in my pants. I've got to go so bad. So I'm like, man, I can't hold it anymore. I've got to go to the bathroom. And I was like, hey, this might work.

My name is Clay Newcomb and this is the Bear Grease podcast where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant. Search for insight and unlikely places and where we'll tell the story of Americans who live their lives close to the land. Presented by FHF Gear, American made, purpose built, hunting and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as the places we experience. When you look at the last several hundred years of history of North American wildlife, it's clear that species ebb and flow in their populations. A man's entire life might overlap with a period of low animal numbers. For instance, if you're born in 1915, much of your adult life, the Bob White Quail, would have been plentiful, maybe even seeming unlimited.

But someone born in 1980 would hardly know that a Bob White Quail existed. The first 25 years of my life, turkey numbers boomed, but then dwindled to the point I can hardly find turkeys in the haunts of my youth. It's really heartbreaking. And think of the stories of the bison hunters of the Great Plains, which those animals went from 30 plus million to less than a thousand continental wide. However, the white-tailed deer is another story. It's estimated we have 25 million white tails, and some believe that's a little bit of. even more than pre-European settlement numbers. We're living in the heyday of white-tail deer hunting.

Let me say that again. We're living in the heyday of white-tail deer hunting. Seasons are long, bag limits are liberal, and bucks just seem to be getting bigger everywhere. I was talking to a fellow the other day who said the liberal season structures make it hard to even break the law deer hunting anymore. He said, we can do things today

we could have never done in the decades past. Hunting September, kill six deer a year and shoot those. And the information about deer behavior that the average hunter has access to today is unprecedented. There's actually a really cool documentary that just came out called Wild Tale, America's Wildest Conservation Story, produced by the National Deer Association. Look it up. Pretty sure it's going to be on Amazon soon. But let's get to these stories. and our first storyteller is from the highlands of Western Arkansas.

In his community, he is known as one of the best public land mountain deer hunters around. Dale Craig is a cattle rancher, former ferrier, and he's a cowboy. I went to school with his son Clint Craig, who made a big run and the PBR as a professional bull rider. These guys are the real deal. And he and his hunting partner, Travis Ross, love using horses for deer hunting. It's my pleasure and honor to introduce you to Dale Craig. Well, Clay, this is one of my stories of hunting in public land. And this is Dale Craig.

And I grew up. My dad, he wasn't a hunter, but my mom come from a family that hunted all time. And I spent a lot of time with my mom's brother, which is my uncle, my first cousin. And that's where I learned to hunt. Slipping through the woods, we didn't set. We just snuck around. You know, if you jump up an old buck, nine times out of ten, he'll run out there 50, 75, sometimes 100 yards. He's going to spin around, look back at you and see what scared him.

And then you can shoot him, you know, if it's a buck you're wanting to kill. That's how I grew up hunting. And that takes me to probably one of the neatest hunts that I did. over on the public land was in November of 1998 there was a good buddy of mine he'd been after this buck and a shot at him and missed him so it was probably I didn't go back in there for four or five days yeah we camped on the on the main road and we'd ride our horses into this public area and you know back in them days we were get up four o'clock in the morning Travis saddle horses I'd cook breakfast. We were gung-hole now. I went in there that day and I'd hunted hard all day long.

I hadn't even seen a single deer that day. It got on up. It was 2 o'clock in the afternoon. You know how to get the old sun, get the beating down. You get hot. I was hot and sweaty. I went around this leg started off the mountain there, headed back towards my horse and I got in a bunch of rocks, Big old rock outcropping. I got the smelling. You know how where a buck's been bedding? He just bed today after day, after day. And there was beds everywhere in these rocks.

There was buck crap everywhere. And they'll secrete that oil when they're rubbing their old glands, comes out of their gland. There was just old oil on the leaves all around. And I walked through there, and finally I found where that buck had been coming in to this bedding area. And he just had a trail war going out. It was headed west.

I followed that trail out there, and it just dropped off in a big canyon. At the bottom of that canyon, it tied on to the main part of the mountain. So I just sat down there, and that mountain was steep. I had my feet up against a tree, got my grunt call out. I blew my grunt three or four times, stuck it back in my pocket, and I had this big old apple. I was hungry. I pulled that apple out, and I took a buy of that apple.

I didn't even start chewing on that apple yet. And I heard a brush start crashing on the main part of the mountain. It sounded like a herd of deer coming down through there. And I just kind of froze there for a little bit. And this deer, I'd just see glimpses of it. I mean, it was making a bee line offside of that mountain. It was across a big canyon, big valley across there. You just see glimpses of it every once in a while, and I could see horns.

And I knew it was a good buck when it's, and it ran to the bottom there. And I could just, I couldn't make it out completely if I could see some legs and horns. And, you know how them beach saplings, they get real thick on a, it is a watered haul that come off there. And there was a bunch of those and had yellow leaves on them. That deer was behind a bunch of that stuff. And I thought, well, he'll take a step here in a minute and get out there and open. I can get a shot at him. Well, I had that apple in my left hand.

So I just reached over and I laid that apple down in the leaves And I turned that apple loose To pulling my hand back and that apple took off down the mountain rolling And it made the god-offless sound you ever heard I thought I just started cringing I thought boy I have fouled this hunt up And about that time That buck he just took off running

Towards that sound And that apple It would go five, six foot in the air And then hit the ground and he just kachon kachon off down the side. And that buck thought it was another deer. And he come running up through there. And I'm talking.

His old hair was turned wrong side out. He's all bristled up, had his old tongue run out. And he's a bach, bach, bach, bach coming up through there. He was ready for a fight. And he ran up probably 50 to 70 feet and just through the brakes on. Well, whenever he stopped, there was an old blackjack tree there. It had his head and part of his front shoulder covered up, but I could see horns, I could see his nose, but from about the third rib back, I could see all that.

And I finally, I picked out a little old hole about three or four inches wide through that blackjack brush. I put that crosshair on that, and I squeezed it off. And that deer hit the ground. I mean, he was dead. And that mountain was so steep, he went off of it backwards, just sliding, went all the way of the creek and bottomed out there on the creek. And he wasn't the biggest set of horns on a deer I've ever killed. But for a mountain buck, he was probably a hundred and, I've weighed quite a few deer.

He'd weigh 175 or more. He was a big, big buck. That apple rolling off there, that just, if an apple hadn't rolled off there, he might not run up there in my face and let me kill him, you know. I'd gut them. And I'd never kill the deer that I couldn't. throw on that horse. I mean, I pick them up and put them up on the, throw them up on the saddle, but I couldn't load this deer. So I had to get my horse in a big washout in the creek

and tied him up there and drug that deer down. That old horse, he's gentle. You could pile deer all over him. And I wrestled that deer up in the saddle, tied his front feet to one side of the saddle, his back feet to the gird on the other side and crawled up in the saddle and rode back to camp. I love the live action drama of Dale's Hunt. Just when things seemed like they couldn't get better, a buck responding to a grunt call, that's a good thing. Things got worse real quick with that rolling jumping apple. I laughed when he said that apple was bouncing five feet off the ground. But then when he thought everything was ruined, the deer shockingly responded by running straight towards that apple,

which it clearly thought was a charging buck. That was a good deer story, Dale. Our next storyteller is Dale's good friend Travis Ross. He's a full-time ferrier and would bleed cornbread if you cut him. Travis is going to tell a bit about his history as a deer hunter and when Dale introduced him to a new way of hunting. You're going to hear a few names in this one that anybody that's been listening to Bear Grease for a while might know. I'll give you a hint. Genuine outlaws. Here's Travis.

Well, this is Travis Ross. My dad was a fox and wolf hunter. He run dogs. They run cots. There was a bunch of that in this country back then. Go to field trials, whatever. But we also, you know, we deer hunting. We run deer with dogs. You get on a stand. Everybody gets a designated spot, and some stands is better than others, but you sit there till the dog, run a deer over you. I mean, I love listening to them. I still do to this day. Love, hear a good race. So anyway, I've done that forever and couldn't hard to kill nothing. I mean, it's hard to kill a deer that's coming by you a hundred mile an hour. And when you shot at them, you emptied your gun at them. You know, it's a total different way of hunting.

It's just, you just shoot till you run out of bullets and you either kill it or you didn't. So anyway, I was a rodeo in two at the time and team roping a little bit, riding bulls, had horses. Been working for Dale and his dad Donne, working cattle and whatever, working for them. And anyway, one year there is 1991, Dale said, why don't we go up in the mountains and take our horses in there and go hunting, take a bedrope? spend the night come out the next day. And I'm like, that perk me up. You know, rifle, pony, and me, I'm all in. I'm about that. Let's go. So we do, and we'd take off. We'd leave out about what daylight that morning. We headed up in there, and we rode about four or five miles. We found a spot where we were on camp. We made camp, which we didn't make camp. We just

throw their stuff off her horses and tied them up. We went hunting. Yeah, we headed out hunting. Well, after a little while, it wasn't very long. I heard a 270 go up on the side of the mountain. I knew it was him. I thought, well, cool, we got something. And I'd seen some deer and this and that around. I didn't know what I was doing. There ain't no dogs running.

After I was on up in the afternoon, probably, I was kind of up on the mountain a little ways there. I heard a, oh, up. And I'm listening, I'm like, I know what that is. And directly it got a little closer, a little closer. There's some dogs come over the mountain. And I got to look, and there's just a big long leg come off the mountain. It's coming right to where I'm at.

And I'm like, you know, if they crossed where I think they are, I go back in the dog mode. They're going to run right down here. And I used over in the middle of that leg or that gap that was there. And I looked up, here come this buck, just flying off that mountain, just from them dogs. right after him. Well, I had my 30-30 Winchester, full of bullets like I knew how to do. I went to lever and I had him about 40 yards, and I probably shot five or six times, didn't I?

Yeah. I about emptied it. But the moral of the story is, I couldn't get away from the dog running, and the dogs wound up being Louisdale and Charter Edwards' dogs that were running that deer, and I don't know where they come from. Was that the same year we talked about hanging their collars on the limb? We were back in there later and they had some dogs that come in there and just bedded up with us. That's right. We was going to take their tracking collars and hang them up there and aggravate them. We was going to take their collars off and hang them on top of the mountain and leave it up there. But we didn't do that.

Charlie, that second time, or no Louisdale, told me that he said, I found where y'all been camping. I said I had to walk in there and them dogs was bedded up there eating up scraps y'all left. Yeah, I remember that. He'd been there and got them dogs. I never did tell Louie Dale. If I'd have told Louie Dale about killing a deer in front of his dogs, he probably wouldn't have been mad, but he'd have won a half of that deer. We was all friends. He'd have just been like, I can't believe you killed a deer in front of my dog.

Didn't tell me. We just didn't tell him. Yeah, even though that's my first hunt in the mountains, I hunted every year probably until the past five years. Yeah. I have hunted them mountains and old boots a horse. Boots is really good at hauling deer. And I added up one year, I hauled 32 deer out of the mountains on boots. I mean, you let him up to a deer, dropped the reins on the ground,

grabbed it and throwed it on him. And he'd just kind of turn and look at it and go, and he'd go out of the mountains just the same speed as he went in, which was really slow. That was a good story, Travis Ross. And for those who've been around Bear Greas for a while, you'll remember our genuine Outlaw series that started at episode 52, where we did a profile on Louis Dale and Charlie Edwards. That was one of our most listened to series,

right up there with Daniel Boone and Hulk Collier. Travis's story also introduced us to deer hunting with dogs, which is a long-standing tradition in some parts of the country. Well, actually very few parts of the country. We could have a debate on the pros and cons of running deer with dogs. I'm well aware of the cons. But I believe the traditional use aspects of running dogs is incredibly strong and that the institution has an incalculatable cultural value

in the broad picture of American hunting in the places where it's practiced. I'm an advocate for hunters and traditional use. practices. There are plenty of places where you cannot run dogs. If you don't want to be around running dogs, go to one of those places. I believe in a person's right to hunt the way they see fit within the boundaries of the law and within the big picture conservation agenda of where they're at. I grew up as a bow hunter in an area where everyone ran dogs and I never had any trouble. It's just something we calculated for. I love it. As we'll hear in later episodes, dog hunting is and often an inefficient way to hunt if your goal is to kill deer.

Way more deer are killed over food plots, corn piles, and out of tree stands with bows and arrows. I love the regional diversity of our country, and I love supporting the way that people want to hunt. And for the record, for the record, it's no joke to take the collars off a hunting dog. That's why Dale and Travis made a joke about taking collars off a hunting dog. They knew not to do that, and they didn't. And it was funny. On Blood Trails, the stories don't end when the hunt is over. They just get darker.

I've seen something in the road. I instantly thought it was a sleeping bag. And there was a full of blood. Oh, my God, he doesn't have a head. Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors, where the terrain is unforgiving, the evidence is scarce, and the truth gets buried under brush and silence. where he should be right there, but he wasn't.

This season, we're going deeper, from cold case files to whispered suspicions, from remote mountains to frozen backwoods. Each story begins in the wilderness and ends in darkness. Because out here, there are no witnesses, no cameras, just fragments and the people left behind trying to piece them back together. He's not an honest person. He's incapable of being honest. Somebody somewhere know something.

I'm Jordan Sillers. Season 2 of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, IHeart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Our next storyteller is none other than Andy Brown from Western Arkansas. He's one of the best storytellers that I know. Andy's in his mid-60s and has a long track record with the Bear Grease podcast. He was a guest on the Louis-Dell and Charlie series. and he's told multiple deer and turkey hunting stories to us.

That's part of the reason that I asked him. Remember that, I asked Andy specifically to tell us this story. And it's about his upbringing and particularly about his father. I think this story gives some context from where Andy came from, but really where we came from. And that is important to not forget. In Andy's words, this one is a little raw. And remember, in this story, Andy is 10 years old.

Here's Andy Brown. Telling the story, what I'd like to do, and I'd just like to give you a little history about my dad. My dad's name was Barney, and he was 10th of 11 kids. Born in 1919, if that tells you anything. So, you know, he had a lot of older siblings, you know. He was rough around the edges, you know, but I don't mind telling you this. He was in reform school.

And when he got out of reformed school, he went to prison for four months and 20 days back when he was in his teenage years. And this is kind of funny too. He did that. He broke into Dick Huddleston store at Pine Ridge. Yeah. And went to my uncle, and my uncle, when he went to the sheriff's office, he turned himself in. But yeah, but dad was just, it was a whole different generation. And dad had a lot of faults.

But if he told you something, that's what he meant. He was true to his word. And I think that's important in our life is, I think, telling the truth, it's the most important thing you can do. And dad was that way. But he didn't really care what people thought. But anyway, my dad was not what you would call, I don't know, my dad was a dog man.

He loved his dogs. You know, growing up, that's all I knew. I mean, to deer hunt was to dog hunting and everybody I knew dog hunting. Some of those guys, you know, it wasn't really about the dog race. It was listening to the dogs run, you know. But with dad, deer hunting was, it was more, you know, I think about today how we're so wanting to kill a big deer and a big rack of horns and brag about the horns. It had nothing to do with the way things were they. It was all about to meet.

And I tell this story a lot. But I was, for five years, I grew up, I was the first one on the bus route, and I was the last one off every day. And in five years, we never seen but two deer in those five years that we were, we were on a bus route. And this was country bus route. This wasn't a highway. This was back in the sticks. To be honest with you, I don't think that I saw the first 10 or 11 years of my life. life, I don't know that I saw 10 deer alive or dead. You know, people today can't imagine that

as many deer as we got. I mean, you can leave right here. In 15 minutes, you can see a bunch of deer somewhere, you know, but there wasn't it. So deer hunting was the guys to get together and, you know, back in those days, it was a meat hunt. They wasn't after the horns. The old stories, you can't boil a, you can't boil something out of a set of horns. That's the way the more boys believed that. But anyway, one particular story that it's a little raw, but this is kind of the way it was. We were north of . And daddy turned his dogs loose. They'd go back up there on what we call the new road, and they'd turn them north, and they jumped. And we were trying to, you know, we were trying to shoot the deer in the road. You know, I mean, we manned the roads. And not only

do we man the roads, we man the highways. You know, and this is 1966, you know, 1966, 1966, 1967. And the first time I ever stood on a stand, I had a single shot 22. That's what we hunted. And dad had a Winchester automatic 22. You know, back when you were supposed to wear orange, we wore red. You know, we have a red ball cap on or something red. And lots of times not, but this particular time, Dad, and I know Larry and Reba wouldn't mind me saying this.

And Otisager was a good friend of his. and so me and dad and Otis and his son Larry turned dogs loose up there in north and in those days they had dogs that deer were going to the river I mean that that was the deal they would put them in the river eventually they were going to go to the river but anyway they had made a big rip in their north and run back in there on the creek and kind of lost it down in the creek and we were right north of a place called highland up there dad and I had pulled up there and this is funny too. Dad had a 56 Chevrolet pickup and, of course, it was a gray truck with a red door.

You had a red door on the left side. And the door didn't last. So we had to bail it. You know, you bailing wired it, you know, but anyway, we was up there and dad says, come on, let's go down here in the creek and see we catch the dogs. So about the time we headed off the road there, the dogs just jumped out of the creek and they headed back west. And dad says they're going to Nelson Hoover Curve.

We jump in that old 56 and man, out there we went and I'm telling you, sideways in the road and down there around the grave. If we'd have met somebody, we'd have just run over them was all we'd have done. Here we'd go up the highway going west, just as fast as that old truck had run. It had a three speed on the call, probably a six cylinder, but anyway, we was running just as fast as she'd run. And so we run up there and when we start around the curve, dad goes to to slow him down. He said they're going to cross right here. And about that time, here comes the deer off the bank of the road. And if it gets across the highway, it's gone to the river, you know.

And dad said, hold on. He said, hold on. He slung that thing up in second gear. And we just run that deer down and just run over it like that. Just run over it. And what he did, the hair just boil like you'd busted a pillow, you know, in the front of it. And he looks back and it's getting up. He throws her in reverse. We run back over. Back over. And the hair is just going, you know.

Anyway, dad jumps out of the truck with a 22 and shoots it and it runs off up in the woods. You know, we're on the highway. I mean, we're right. We're on the highway. Of course, in 1966, there's not a lot of traffic on the highway. Anyway, about that time. Here comes about 12 of them July. off the bank of the road out out in the highway and audis and larry pull up and they're

crying together dogs and the cars going by and so we run up the bank and that deer's just laying right inside the woods there and dad grabs it by the leg he said come on back off the bank and there's a big high clay bank there we head back off that here comes the car dad just sits down on that deer right right on the side of the road on the bank you know there he's said so the sneer giving her one of these as the cars go by anyway we'll load that thing and gather the dogs up and now there we went but you know I tell that story that you know that sounds cruel but there wasn't a smidgen of that deer went to waste

and it was it was quite the treat for us you know in those days I don't even know Clay if there was 50 60 deer killed in the county total in those days and to kill a bug deer was just it was unbelievable and and i said all that to say this you know dad he probably didn't kill 20 25 deer in his entire life and he had um my uncle john which was 16 years older than him that was a hunter two he killed three in his entire life so when the guys got together and killed a deer it was a big deal everybody split it there wasn't none of that went to waste in fact dad would he would bring when he would come in a lot of people didn't like the heart and liver well dad did

And we did too. And mother could cook that stuff. She'd fry that liver and make a big pan of gravy. Of course, the gravy was the best part, you know, but God, it was good. She'd take the heart and do the same thing. And then he would take lots of times to make a piece of neck, you know. And she would cut part of the meat off the neck and she'd fry it for us, you know. And then she would take the neck bone and put it in a big old pot of boiling water and throw salt to it and, you know, boil it.

And we'd suck the meat out the bones. the broth and but a whole different world you know when i was thinking about this podcast and what somebody might think about what i just said about running over the deer till we didn't she didn't run over the deer once we run over the deer twice you know and shoot the deer but i think about i think about some of the other podcasts you've done and you know some people being critical a little bit critical about the way people did things in those days but you know really my dad us from a generation that wouldn't have cared what they thought. I mean, he would not have cared. But that's just the way he was. You know, that's the way we grew up. And, you know, thank God down the

road. I had an uncle that took a interest in me and taught me how to steal hunt, you know. That was a good story and a reminder of where we've come from. When I think about a story like this and how much I love it. Clearly, no one, no one, including Andy, is suggesting that we be trying to hit deer with our cars. But the story does a great job of showing just how valuable that deer were to these people, which that value would roll right into Andy's life, which he translated into becoming a master, woodsman, and hunter. And that would roll into his son, My friend Scott Brown, also Master Woodsman and Deer Hunter, and now into Scott's Boys. Thanks for telling us about your dad, Andy.

I think that helps put a lot of this in perspective for us today. Our next storyteller is none other than my old friend Mo Shepherd, another bear grease regular and a master public land deer hunter. He's got a unique story with a mysterious end. I know you're going to enjoy it. Here's Mo. Okay, this deer story took place in the northwest part of Arkansas in the Ozark Mountains.

It was a late-season hunt. At the time, there was a muzzleloader season ran in the latter part of December. I'd already killed a pretty nice buck earlier in the year. And the mass crop was pretty low that year, which made it easier to find deer when its mast is low in the mountains and they really concentrate on where there is some mast. I'd hunted in this particular area earlier in the year and found quite a bit of sign.

I didn't kill a deer in there anything, but I found quite a bit of sign. Anyway, about three days prior to when I was going to hunt, this was about, I think it was in the year 2000, I believe, when it was. And there was a big snow and ice storm hit in northwest Arkansas about the 15th or 16th of December. Anyway, I decided, well, all that stuff on,

It was, like I said, there was six, seven, eight inches of snow and ice on everything. So it had all the ground stuff covered up. So I thought where I wanted to hunt, I had a couple days to hunt. I thought, well, I'm going to go up in the head of this big canyon where I've had success before. And I was in there earlier. And there was a lot of, I don't know what the real name for them was. When I was a kid growing up, they called them sawbriars. A lot of people call them greenbriars.

There was a lot of those up in the trees. There were some old home places in there where I was hunting at. And I knew deer would be feeding on them. them because they couldn't get to anything under the frozen forest floor even if there was acres anything so I decided to go in there and hunt but it was really cold it was in the teens so I didn't even hunt that morning I thought well I'm going there in the afternoon when the sun comes out and it's a little bit warmer so I made my way down in there over this slick terrain and found me a good place and got

set up on the ground there where I could see down into some of these greenbriars and I didn't even go down there where they's at but I knew there was some deer And I thought, well, if there's deer in here, they're going to come around to these and feed. So I got set there, and I'd sit there quite a while. I hadn't seen a thing. And then it was probably hour before dark. I seen some movement, and I seen a deer coming around the hillside. It was coming towards me, but it was still way out of muzzleloader range.

I was just shooting with an old Thompson Center renegade muzzleloader with open sights. And I could see this deer. And then it would vanish in the green bars, but I could see it pretty good when it would move because all that ice and snow was on the ground. Finally, it got in range of me, and I wasn't very smart that day. I didn't take me no binoculars or anything. I was just using my eyes. And finally it got, and it raised its head.

And I could see it was a pretty nice buck, but it was facing towards me. So I thought, well, I'll just be patient and wait. Finally, it got down there probably 60 yards from me or so and kind of turned sideways and raised its head up to eat some green bars, and I draw the bead on it. Shot, when I shot, of course, the smoke bowl. I couldn't see nothing, but I seen the deer run on. it off the same way it came from back around the hillside.

It was about an hour of dark then, so I sat there a little bit, sat there, and I thought, well, I need to go see if I've hit it or not. So I walked around there to where I'd shot, and sure enough, there was a little bit of hair on that ice and snow and a few specks of blood, and I thought, well, I've made a hit on it, so it's going to get dark pretty quick. I got my muzzleloaded. So I started trailing it. I've trailed it around probably 50 or 75 yards, and then I couldn't hardly find any blood,

and you couldn't hardly see where the deer went because that stuff was frozen so hard. Then I realized I didn't even have a light on me. I'd forgot to bring a light or anything with me. And it was cold. I thought, well, it's in the teens here. This deer is not going to spoil if I did get it. I'm going to walk out here and come back early in the morning. So I did.

I went home and slept the best I could myself. I just can't sleep good when I'm thinking about something like that the next morning. But I did get some rest. So I got in there, went back in there the next morning. when I could see good, went right back to where I was set and looked it all over again, and went back out to where I'd found the first blood, didn't see where I'd hit anything. So I thought, well, I should have made a fatal hit on this deer. So I went to where I'd found the last blood, a few specks, and I went to circling,

and I found a few more spots of blood. I tracked it probably another 50 or 75 yards, and I look out there in front of me, and I see coloration on the snow. So I go out there, and there is this blood. everywhere on this snow. I figured the deer laid down there or something other. I mean, there's a lot of blood. Like, I don't see how this deer is not laying right here. There's so much blood on this snow and ice, you know, and I've killed a lot of deer through the years, and when one bleeds that much, it's, I just don't see how it could live. Anyway, but there's no deer

there. And I look all around, I look up the hill, I look down the hill, I can't find no blood other than right there. That blood is just scattered everywhere there. So I I just start circling in there. I start making my circles bigger and bigger. I spend all day in there looking for that deer mostly around the hill and down the hill. I just don't see how this deer got up and got out of here, but it's bound to it because it's not here. So I looked all the rest of that day and finally I just give up. I thought, I ain't going to find it. I don't know how it done it, but it got out, it got up and got away from me. Anyway, I stayed in there almost dark, left back out of there and went home.

Jump forward to little ways. That was in December. The same area, I turkey hung a lot. So it was in the first part of April, whenever turkey season opened. I was in there turkey hunting, but I wasn't down as far as I was when I shot the deer. That didn't even cross my money other than I was thinking, you know, this is where I lost that deer. This is where I lost that deer back in December.

Didn't find it. Well, I'm going around a little narrow bench up higher about two. little short benches probably only 150 yards up the hill and I'm pretty close to where I had lost that deer and I see something white around the hillside there on this same bench I'm walking on I thought what am I seeing I don't know what that is but something's white out there in a tree and I get a little bit closer and I make out looks almost like some bone white I thought what am I seeing up in that tree and it's a big old tree it's a big old gum tree that's growed out of the steep hillside and it kind of leans a little bit but it's not lean very much.

You couldn't walk up it or anything. You'd have to hug it and climb it to get up it. And I walk on out there where I'm seeing that white, and I look up in the tree, and lo and behold, there is a deer's skull and the set of horns. It looks like the deer that I'd shot it. It was like an eight-point. It's a pretty nice mountain deer, eight-point,

and the whole spinal column back to the pelvic area. It was all intact, laying up in a fork on this big gum tree. And I just stood there for a while and I'm thinking, how did that get up there? Then I'm thinking, could that be my deer that I shot that I couldn't find right down below here? And then I'm still thinking, but how in the world did it get up in that tree? And I'm thinking of everything. I thought, well, if that's it, that could explain why I didn't find the deer. But I said, I just can't believe that it got up from all that blood and came up this hill.

But then how did it get up in this tree? You know, I had three thoughts. I thought maybe a great big bobcat drug this carcass or these bones up in this tree or maybe a bear drug it up in this tree or maybe if something that's really rare in this part of Arkansas is maybe a mountain line. I'm not sure how that carcass got up there, but it was way up in this tree. It was probably 15 or 18 feet up in this fork in this tree. I'm skeptical about a lot of things and most people are, but some of the same thing.

something drug that carcass up into that tree. Whether it was drug up in there when it was still full size or if it's a totally different deer, I don't know that. That's just my assumption. I think that's the deer that I shot in December. But to me, that may explain how all that blood was down there and then it just vanished. But in this same drainage, at this time, I hadn't seen one in there. But about three or four years after that, I was bow hunting back in here on the other side of the

which was about a mile away and I was bowhunting in a climber tree stand and Clay Nuka may not believe it but I told him about it anyway. I was sitting at a tree stand and see something moving coming around the hillside and I thought well here comes a deer and then it got within about 35 40 yards of me and then I seen a cat's head come out of some little bushes there I thought good gosh that's a huge bobcat and then it walks on out from the bushes in the wide open, probably 30, 35 yards from me. And it's not a bobcat. It's a cougar or mountain line. It's got a long tail, and it comes walking by me and then vanishes into the bushes. Just as quick as it came out, I saw it for probably eight or ten seconds

walking in front of me. But in hindsight, at the time that I found that carcass while I was turkey hunting. I believe it had to be one of those three things. It had to be either a bear or a big bobcat or possible mountain line. I think drugged that carcass away and stored it up in that tree to eat on the remnants of the bones. Like I said, when it drug it up there, I don't know. But that's my theory on the deer that I lost with my muzzleloader and then found the carcass the following spring during turkey season. I have that skull and the horns off of that deer that's up in that tree. I always have ropes and stuff with me, you know, for pulling up stuff or tying stuff up in a tree. If I get it, I hunt in some rugged terrain.

And I remember, I thought, well, how can I get that out of that tree? So I took some of my rope that I had in my pouch and I tied a rock onto it. And I started throwing it on that rope up at that. And I finally throw it up. And I don't remember if it stuck through the rib cage or what. But it stuck in it enough. I was able to jerk and pull around it. And I pulled that whole thing down out of the forks of that tree.

And I still have that skull and that eight-point rack hanging in my house right now that I retrieved that day during turkey season. And also for a final word on all this, I hope that Gary Believer Newcomb is listening, listens to this story. And that way maybe he'll be a little more believer than what he is right now, that they're out there. Mo, that was a good story. But now it's my turn to tell you what I think. I believe it probably was a mountain lion that stole your buck, but not the one you claimed to have seen. Because tan mountain lines rarely drag their kills up in trees.

Everybody knows that. But I happen to be an expert on a particular type of feline that does. I'm certain. The critter that stole your buck was none other than a black panther. He drug it up in that gum tree. The haters will say it's a lie, but I know the truth. That was a good story, Mo.

Man, what a mystery. What a mystery. On Blood Trails, the stories don't end when the hunt is over. They just get darker. I've seen something in the road. I instantly thought it was a sleeping bed. And there was a pool of blood. Oh, my God, he doesn't have a hit.

Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors. Where the terrain is unforgiving, the evidence is scared. and the truth gets buried under brush and silence. Indications were he should be right there, but he wasn't. This season, we're going deeper. From cold case files to whispered suspicions, from remote mountains to frozen backwoods. Each story begins in the wilderness and ends in darkness.

Because out here, there are no witnesses, no cameras, just fragments and the people left behind trying to piece them back together. He's not an honest person. He's incapable of being honest. Somebody somewhere knows something. I'm Jordan Sillers. Season 2 of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, Iheart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Our next story is a short one from my good buddy, Aaron Stanful. He's an incredible deer hunter who's killed 24 bucks that have scored over the

Pop and Young minimum with his bow. But guess what? when I asked him to tell the story, not one of those bucks came to his mind, but this story did. Here's an unconventional deer story from Aaron Stanful. I'm not sure where to start, but, well, you know, back in those days,

I didn't even start bow hunting seriously until I was 21. Didn't really start really bow hunting until 1997. You know, prior to that, the deer numbers from where I was from, just weren't there. And if they were, I was unaware of them. Just to see a deer out of a tree stand was awesome, a buck would have been a whole other deal. But we didn't care at the time. We were just trying to kill a deer. We were just learning how to archery hunt. And it was a big deal to kill a deer with a bow and arrow. It was October of 2001 public land northwest Arkansas. And we had just a mass crop of

white oak acorns that year the trees were just loaded and uh i had found a ridge that was just full of deer sign i mean there was droppings everywhere and uh it was the first year that i had a climbing tree stand so it made me more mobile but anyway i got up in this huge pine tree and uh i'm sitting there and acres are just falling everywhere i mean it's just raining white oaks and directly i see these two little deer they're feeding up this ridge towards me and uh every time that the acorns would fall, I would notice that these little deer would just, they'd just go over there right where they fell and just start eating them. And they'd eat a couple there, and then they'd fall over here, and then they'd go over there.

Tree to tree. And I thought, man, it's like, well, I wish they'd get in here, and I watched them for over an hour. Nothing. They just kept going back and forth. And the meanwhile, I'm about to go the bathroom in my pants. I've got to go so bad. And back then, I didn't go in a bottle. I didn't go on the ground.

I thought you had to hold it or you would get winded, you know. So I'm like, man, I can't hold it anymore. I've got to go to the bathroom. So I start doing my business here, and I go just a little bit. And when I did, it just went, it was super dry in the leaves. And it just went like that. Well, those deer, they just threw their ears up and just looked over there. And I was like, hey, this might work.

And it immediately went from just going the, bathroom to like calling a deer in by going the bathroom you know so I started going again and they just throw their head up again and they start coming towards me oh yeah I mean like and then just stop you know well they just get closer and closer and closer and I thought no one's gonna believe no one's gonna believe this by the way well I just I did that for like 10 times I mean I had to go finally they get in there like right in front of me, you know. I thought, I cannot believe this just happened. Well, I drew back, and I just smoked that first. Little old sucker, she runs over there. I thought it was a little

dough. It ran over there, died, and the other one just ran off. But here it come back. It just come back. I guess it wanted to check on its buddy, you know, and I shot it too. And I was so proud, I was so excited. I thought no one's going to believe that I lured these deer in by going to bathroom. And I end up, I end up killing a little button buck and I killed a buck in a dough. And we still call that button buck ridge to this day. That's some innovative deer calling, Aaron. About as good as Dale Craig rolling an apple down the hill. I love to celebrate a big buck, but I love celebrating just a good deer hunt. Some of my most memorable stories weren't the big ones. and I think it's important we celebrate them.

That's what my dad, Gary Believer, Newcomb taught me is that any deer is a real trophy. That's the Bear-Greece Way. Our next storyteller is me. This is one of my favorite stories about a red oak, raining acres, on a field edge. It would have been about 2006. My daughter was four years old,

and it was early bow season in Northwest Arkansas. saw and for whatever reason I don't recall the circumstances but Misty was doing something and I had my oldest daughter Willow with me for the afternoon which was very common and I wanted to go deer hunting but also had Willow she's four years old I had been on a place that I'd hunted for a long time a piece of private ground up here in the day before I'd been on that farm and I had just drove through a pasture and there was a big red oak, I bet it's four foot in diameter growing along the bank of a creek. And it was raining red oak acres. And I watched about two hours before dark a group of deer come out of the field and just make a beeline for that red oak. And I took

note of that. And it wasn't the kind of place that you would typically set up to hunt. It just was kind of on the edge of a field out in the wide open. It was a long ways from any cover. and the tree was so big you couldn't put a stand in it. And there was nowhere else to put a stand for that tree. Well, that afternoon came and I just, I said, Willow, let's go deer hunting. And so I loaded up a bunch of snacks and some books, and I knew something about that particular tree that I hadn't told you yet, is that it set right on the cut bank of the creek,

meaning it was the outside bend of this creek. So the front side of this tree is looking out over a big field. I mean, the roots of this tree are hanging out into thin air over this creek, and this creek is eroding the roots. And there's about a four-foot cut bank directly behind the tree. That's point number one. Number two is, is this red oak was growing out along the edge of this field for so long that it had some fairly low-hanging limbs, which is unusual.

You know, a big red oak in the timber is going to have limbs 20 foot up. This tree had a limb unusually low to the ground, which would allow for a young spry man like myself to climb up it. So I take Willow with me out to that tree, and I set her down on the cut bank, cleared out a little spot in the rocks and set her right below right beside that tree and gave her her books and her candy and i shimmied up that tree to a big limb about as big around as a big man's thigh that was about eight feet nine feet off the ground and i sat on the limb of that red oak and i could

look directly below me and just to the back and see Willow and make eye contact with her and talk to her. But to the field, she was totally out of sight, completely out. She could have stood up and the deer coming wouldn't have been able to see her. You know, I tied my bow on a string. I sat her down there and I say, Willow, I'm going to climb up in that tree and wait for a deer. We've got to be quiet. But you read your books. And if you need anything, we can talk. but we just have to talk quiet and you read your books and eat your snacks and we're going to sit here for a while

and made it a big something fun and adventure and man she sat down there and she read her books and played and I would just look down and watch her she's probably 13, 14 feet below me just directly and man I hadn't sat there an hour and I look across the field and I see a doe deer

step out of that field and she looks both ways and kind of meanders around and directly she just comes straight to this red oak. And I draw back my Matthew Z-Max and that deer is about 12 yards away and shoot that deer, just tin ring that dough. She doesn't make it out of the field. Willow hears me shoot. I look down and she's looking up and I'm like, got her. And we go retrieve that deer and go home. that hunt was special to me just because of a unique circumstance and i think that's part of being a hunter and being having a family which so many of us do is you got to make things work and so i accomplished a bunch

that day i didn't neglect my responsibilities as a father took my daughter out into the wild and accomplished a big time goal at the time which was to kill a deer with a bow and era over a red oak rain and acorns. Big day. I love it. I'll never forget looking down from the limb of that red oak at my daughter, tucked in behind the cut bank with her books and snacks and cute little smile. She was laughing, playing, and smiling less than 20 yards from North America's wiliest critter of whiteto.

I love it. Our final story is told by a guy that I've known. most of my life, Luke Alston. He's a veteran hunter in Woodsman, and I know that you're going to enjoy this one. It exemplifies what hunting means to us. And hey, this is a big buck story. Here's Luke. So I've got two step-sons, and I call them my sons because they are, just because that step don't mean nothing to me. They're my boys. Been with both of them hunting. Every hunt we've been on meant something to me. Like, I didn't realize how much it would mean to me for my sons to kill a deer,

just a deer in general, but also kill a buck deer that was really worth, you know, showing off being proud of. Out there at my farm, I had been basically managing the deer being extremely tight on what we shot. And I've kind of, at the point in my hunting career, I specifically target mature bucks. I've not always been that way. This is something that's occurred in the last four or five years, which has been very fulfilling to be able to have years and years of history with a specific buck.

Well, this particular deer, we had four years of game camera pictures of him. Never during the day. I'd seen him during the day one time in three years. And he was right there at our place, which up until probably five years ago, I could count on one hand how many deer I'd seen on our place. like there were no deer. Probably at his highest of score, he's 1-40-ish, which I know around the globe, that might not sound like a big deer,

but in our area and on my farm, he was a giant. And Thanksgiving rolled around. And my oldest son Ryan, he's in physical therapy school, has been tied up with school for years and has not had a lot of opportunity to hunt. When he did get to hunt, it was like, the conditions were always rotten. He just never had that perfect opportunity.

So, I mean, he's immersed in school. It takes a very serious. And so, you know, he wasn't like me and my crew that, you know, we deer hunted and then went to, you know, and then worried about school. That's probably why it took us all so long to graduate. So anyway, he got to come home for Thanksgiving the next morning. We decided he was going to go across the road and hunt a spot.

I was going to go hunt out of a ground blind and sit there and watch, you know, 100 acres of open field right there. I told him when we were on the way there, I said, I am not killing nothing today. I am literally just watching. And if something, if a buck comes out, I will call you or text you, and you can come on over here. But I said, this particular buck, and we had nicknamed him,

if he comes out, I will shoot him because he is the one that we've been after for so long. I will shoot that deer, that's what I thought me. So anyway, he goes his way, I go my way, sitting there in my blind and it's dark. And at first light, there's a couple of does feeding. And hadn't been just a few minutes here come another couple of deer and come out of the woods and start coming over there towards it. Well, then all of a sudden, here he comes. He comes out of the woods right behind them doze.

And the moment he stepped out, I saw it was him, and I, I texted Ryan and I said, we'd named this deer Moab, mother of all bucks, is what we, so anyway, that's what we nicknamed him, which, you know, I'm not one of them that I don't nickname every deer I see, but for some reason or another, that one, he deserved a nickname. The deer comes out, and he's marching right towards those other deer. I text Ryan, and I just said, he's in the field. If you can get here, I'm just going to sit here and wait. we got to understand he is as the crow flies he's half a mile from him but in order for him to get to me

it's double that so i said if you can get here i'm going to hold off so anyway he says i'm on the way and here he come and he he was giving me updates as he was coming well while he's giving me updates i can see back out towards where he's coming from and i mean he is getting it trying to get there quick, but he's behind a hill from the deer. They can't see him. Well, I have a group thread with some friends of mine and some childhood friends of mine, and we probably don't go a single day that we did not connect with, you know, lifting each other up, talking about old times, you know, praying for each other, you know, we are tight. I just sent them a message and I said, boys, I'm watching Moab and I'm waiting for Ryan to get here to shoot him if the Lord wills it.

what was so cool about it is they started responding. I'm watching the deer. He's over here. I'm watching Ryan through the back window of the blind, and I'm texting some of my closest friends, so they're just like sitting in the blind with me. And the deer, he'll run a dough, a circle or two, and then he'll come back to mess around.

Ryan has to come down a fence row, and he has to belly crawl for probably about 100 yards. And I knew he was going to have trouble getting the gate open, I mean, because we're hunting on a cattle farm, you know, there's a old squeaky gate you got to come through. So I crawl out of the blind, crawl over to the gate, open it for him, and then he crawls to me. We crawl in the blind together. And looking back on it now, I wasn't as prepared, didn't have a good shooting stick, didn't even have a really good chair in there, had a, you know, a $3 chair from a dollar general in there. And I get him in the chair.

The deer's still there. He's been out there a while at this point He gets in the chair And I mean he has just ran a mile The biggest deer he's ever laid eyes on Is standing in the field in front of him And he is shook I'm talking shook up

Which I was too I knew what was hopefully about to happen I had done all I could do for him And so he gets He gets in the chair And I have a very special gun in my family That I've told the boys That whichever one of them can get me

My first granddaughter will get We'll get this gun. There's nothing really special about it other than it killed a bunch of deer with it. It's a super shooting gun in it, and it'll shoot a long ways. And Ryan's gun that he was carrying, he was hunting in some pretty low brush and stuff, so he was carrying a specific gun for hunting over there. So I swapped guns with him. He was having trouble getting on the deer.

And it was not a close shot. It was 220 yards. He says, I think I'm on him. And I said, squeeze the trigger. and he shoots and he misses. And the deer just kind of jumped and then just started walking off. I mean, he knew something that had. I mean, he obviously heard something and he knew something had happened,

but it didn't bugger him too bad. And he walked into the clear cut. There was a whole bunch of other deer in the clear cut there. Of course, Ryan, his confidence is just shook. You know, he's upset that he's missed the deer. I'm upset because there's four years. of trying to kill this deer walking away. Anyway, the deer is not, he's not like taking off.

He's going up the side of the hill. And I'm like, just regroup. You're going to get another shot at him. The deer walks up the side of the hill. And my view of him, he's perfectly broadside. And Ryan is like, I cannot get on that deer. He's like, I am too, I am too shook up. I cannot get on the deer.

When I tell you who I'm about to reference, you'll know him well. but I was about to wane paid him. I was about to take the gun away from him, you know, and Andy Brown tells the story of, you know, I'm going to Wayne Pate you, I'm going to take that gun away from you. So he's like, here, I can't do it. So he just hands made the gun. I sit down in that $3 chair.

And, of course, you know, I've got years of experience of shooting deer and all this other stuff, and he does not. So I was pretty quick to improvise how to get stiff. steady on the deer and I mean I got rock solid on him he I mean I even had time to range him he's about 275 yards at this point and uh I had this just overwhelming feeling and I know it was because of some of the texts that I had gotten from my friends about that's awesome you know that I was not shooting the deer that I was waiting for you know like man this is awesome I hope it comes I hope it happens and all this other stuff and I had this is overwhelming feeling that

deer does not mean near as much to me that's what it will mean to him if he gets to kill this thing and I just said I'm not shooting him get back in the seat and I said look at exactly how I'm set up right here now you got to understand this is

all of this is going on live so this encounter has been going on for probably at this point 30 minutes from the time I will seen him come out of the field till where we're at right now. He gets in the chair and he gets pretty solid on him and about that time a dough just turns in front of Moab and heads right back for the field that we had just shot at him in. And that buck totally changed his demeanor. He hooked a bush and then here he comes.

And he follows that dough right back out into the field. Caution went away. He comes right back out of the field. He walked right back out there to where he was at, standing in basically the exact same position he was in. And by that time, Ryan had gotten it together. And he steadied up on him and he said, I'm on him. I said, let him have it. And he shot and down he went. And Clay, we about tore that blind down trying to get out of it. We got out of it and we started over there towards him and walking up to that deer, seeing the look on my son's face and emotion for both of us, just the caliber of the deer and the fact that we killed this deer on a piece of ground that has been in my family for 126 years, I was overcome with emotion of I've had this

overly blessed life. I had the greatest family, the greatest upbringing, you know, was blessed to have this wonderful piece of dirt to be a steward over to experience a once in a lifetime ordeal with my son and it was just unexplainable for I know you have felt it I know you have and I know a lot of my closest friends have felt the exact same thing that that I did that day but it would be really hard to explain to somebody that has not been in that situation you could couldn't have knocked me off the top of that mountain that day. So I've had a lot of time to reflect on that and just realize that it's the smallest of details in hunting

that make them the most important memories that you'll have as far as in the hunting circle of memories. Because it's normally not the hunts that went perfect. You know, the ones that were easier, not the ones that stick out in my mind. it's the ones that either I worked super hard at or just the unexpected happened or some crazy something out of the box happened. And I think that's why I love deer hunting specifically because the white tail of deer is one of the most elusive creatures God ever created.

The protein that we get from them, experiences, memories made with our loved ones and our friends, also to be able to sit here like this with you and connect with these crazy stories that happened to us that otherwise, you know, we could be friends, but we would not be able to connect with people and have a bond. And so that's why I love hunting. As I said in front of Luke in person, as he told this story, when Ryan handed him back the gun, I was a little disappointed. But at the same time, I was screaming in my head for Luke to grab the gun. And then Luke has Moab in his sights, this deer that they've had so much history with. And I was really surprised again when Luke handed the gun back to Ryan. And I was even more amazed when this ancient buck who'd survived all these years

with all this hunting pressure immediately changed directions, changed his demeanor, and came right back. Now that is a good story, Luke. And congrats to Riley. If you have enjoyed these stories, this is just the beginning of an incredible series. I'll close with these words. In the book The Bear by William Faulkner, he describes the family's annual bear hunt as a yearly pageant of the old bear's furious immortality. That's an interesting phrase.

furious immortality, meaning this beast had a drive to survive that was incredible. I think that what we love about white tails is their furious immortality. They're hard to kill, and that's what makes the meat so valuable, the hunt so memorable,

the annual rituals so strong and long-lasting. I love it. I encourage you this year to keep your whitetail traditions alive. And if you don't have any, make some new ones. Thank you so much for listening to Bear Grease. Be sure to check out Meat Eater and First Lights White Tail Week. Myself, along with Mark Kenyon, Tony Peterson, Janice, Putelles,

Casey and Tyler from The Element, and the whole meat eater crew will be sharing whiteto tips and tactics on our social media all week. I cannot wait to talk about these stories on the render next week with the crew. Have a great week. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps game calls in building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called prime cuts. Now, I'm going to tell you, I love mine because it's easy to use.

I'm not going to go, I'm not going to win a turkey calling contest. It's just not going to happen. But when I run this call, I get the sounds that gobblers are looking for. I have a great turkey hunting track record. If you go listen to real turkeys out in the woods, they're not going to win calling contest. right? That's who I listen to. I can make those sounds on my cut. I also hunt

with Phelps's cut and I hunt with Clay's cut because they're all three great cuts. Check out Prime Cuts at Phelpsgamecalls.com. I think you'll be glad you did and you'll find out that the Steve Rinella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers

who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action. This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed human.