Bear Grease - Ep. 256: Deer Stories - Coyotes, Missed Shots, and Gar Holes

Episode Date: October 2, 2024

In this episode of the Bear Grease podcast, we celebrate MeatEater’s Whitetail Week with another collection of deer stories from Tennessee, Missouri, Arkansas, and Mississippi. Listen along as contributors Mitch Sikes, Keith Polk, Bob Wilson, Gerald Brewer, Henry Susong, and Moe Shepherd share memorable moments searching for the crown jewel of the North American woods—the Whitetail Deer. If you have comments on the show, send us a note to [e-mail] Connect with Clay and MeatEater Clay on Instagram MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Youtube Clips MeatEater Podcast Network on 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. Worldware gear at firstlight.com. That coyote actually saved me because that deer was, he was really close to a clear cut that's just nearly impenetrable. And, you know, I know that in another hour so I would have gotten down and I would have spooked that deer.

And hit where he was hit, chances are wouldn't have bled a lot. And if he'd have got in that thicket, I may have never found him. But that coyote actually, I say it's a coyote. It was God. Just put him right back there in my lap. The time to hunt white-tailed deer is officially upon us. We all know this time as the fall. That name, that noun, the fall, is so familiar to us,

we might have lost sight of how poetic and simple that descriptor actually is. In scientific terms, the fall is the season when the northern hemisphere rotates towards the North Pole, making the days shorter, the weather cooler, and the shadows longer. At some point a human walked outside and saw a leaf drop. They saw it fall and they said, let's call this the fall. But to a deer hunter, the fall is so much more complex. This episode is a little bit different. We've got an eclectic cast of storytellers.

Some are longer stories, some are short. But I hope you can sit back and enjoy each one as they come from gar holes to cold snaps to scopes being off to deer falling out of the backs of trucks. It's fall time, folks, and that's a good enough reason to celebrate. I really doubt that you're going to want to miss this Deer Stories episode. And this is Meat Eater's Whitetail Week,

where you can buy more and save more at firstlight.com. Firstlight has the best lighttail gear on the market, and this week you can save on it. And don't forget about those new Phelps deer calls, the Akron Pro, which is an inhale, exhale, grunt, bleat. Let's get to our stories. He said he'd push it down and very gently step across it just like a man. See, he's just a boy, and I thought. Well, yeah, okay.

But you can look at the rack, you can tell the boys tell us true. My name is Clay Newcomb, and this is the bare 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 h f hf gear american made purpose built hunting and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as the places we explore man do i ever love these deer stories episodes but last week is going to be hard to top between Lake's Daddy Doyle story and Mitch's Bear and Buck Fiasco, and then Med Palmer's story about the Mississippi River

and how meaningful and tragic that one was, the bar just keeps getting higher. And I'll tell you one thing when it comes to storytelling is that you never want to tell your story after the best story has already been told. But you also might hear a story, and you can kind of show up and have the best story after you've already heard the players in the field, if you know what I mean.

Starting us off this week is my friend from Western Arkansas, Mitch Sykes. He told the story in the last episode. This is a public land hunt that I call the hide-and-seek book. This was in 2009, I believe. And my favorite time of year, and I have more success with quality deer, the first muzzleloading season than any other time. and because of work, I had to leave opening day of muslin season, and I was out of town.

I was out of state for nearly the whole week. And Andy Brown, he was texting me pictures, and they were hunting at the WMA and having a lot of success. And, of course, I'm out of town, not getting to hunt, just sick. And I got back to Arkansas. Season opened on a Saturday and it ended on Sunday, and I got back Thursday night. So Friday morning I got up early,

and I hadn't got to scout or do anything down at the WMA, so I just took my climbing stand, and I knew a few areas down there, and I knew the deer were moving. So my goal for Saturday was not to hunt. I was just going to try to find a place to hunt that weekend. And Clay, I went to every spot I knew in the WMA, and I don't know it very well,

but I went to some spots that historically I had some success or seen deer, and I just couldn't find anything that made me want to hang a stand. And I never will forget. But the last place I thought I was going to have time to go, I carried my stand in there, came back to the truck, nothing. And I was about to think, I'm just going to hunt around the house tomorrow. But when I walked back into the road where my truck was parked and I threw my stand over

in the truck, I just looked down the road. I was kind of parked in a straight stretch. Three or four deer were in the road up there and they left the road. And it was right before dark. I mean like 20 minutes before dark, dark, dark. And I got to thinking, well, maybe there's some acorns up there falling. I hadn't found acorns. I hadn't found any buck sign.

I hadn't found anything. So I walked back down the road there. They were about 100 yards from my truck where they were at. And when I got there, I could tell there was white oak acres in the road. There was deer crossing the road. A lot of deer activity right there. And just south of the road right there, there was a little knob that it wasn't 100 yards to the top of it, but it was just like a cow's face.

It was straight up steep. As I kind of started walking up that knob, I kept thinking, well, is it ever going to flatten out? What's it going to look like on top when I get up there? and I finally got to the top of it, and there was an old log road run right out the top of that little ridge. And there was scrapes like you dream about, just as big as a hood of a truck,

several scrapes in that old log road. And to this day, the biggest rub that I've ever seen, there was a tree about as big as my leg that was rubbed pretty good up there. And I had went ahead and took my climber, and I said, this is where I need to be. So I kind of backed off on the north edge of it where I could see out the top and back down the south side.

And I hung my stand on a white oak tree, I went ahead and climbed up it and limbed it out and just left it there, the base of the tree. And next morning I got in there to hunt. It was probably as foggy as any morning I've ever hunted in my life. First time I'd ever been up there was the night before. I didn't tack it in. I thought, I could find this. I got there an hour before daylight.

Wanting to be in my stand an hour before daylight. And I got up there in the fog. Didn't get turned around, but I could not find my stand. And, of course, my little headlight, it would go three foot in front of you, And it wouldn't even reach the ground. It was so foggy. I walked around that top of that ridge. Buy those scrapes.

Buy that rub a dozen times. And of course, I'm just soaking wet, aggravated, knowing that I've just messed that spot up. Finally find my tree stand. Get up in it, and I'm just sick. I thought, I'm not going to see anything. I mean, everything's going to smell me. And when I got up there, it wasn't real pretty woods.

It was a lot of little short, dwarfy post oaks and briary, and I couldn't see good. I mean, I couldn't really see much past 30 yards in any direction. But I knew it was in a good spot. And boy, just shortly after daylight, I heard something coming from the west, right out the top of the ridge. And when I first seen it, I could tell it was a butt, but I didn't know if it was one I wanted to shoot.

He had horns that just, from the side, he didn't look like he had any main beams. But he kind of got right there in front of me, and he turned and looked at me. He just, his horns come right back together. But a really nice, real tall, tall, tin, chocolate horned, just an eight-point. but a good deer, one I'm going to shoot.

And it was just, like I say, it was just brushy, and I couldn't get a good shot. And finally, I got him stopped, and the deer was not far. 35, 40 yards, through a little bit of brush. I guess maybe more than I thought. And I shot, and I thought I was right on him. I wasn't nervous. And when I shot, of course, smoke filled the air. I never saw that deer run off.

I never heard him run off. I thought I had killed him dead right there. So I reload my gun. I waited about 30 minutes probably, and I got down. And I went over there. I have no idea what happened. Just like I was shooting a blank. There was no blood.

There was no hair. I couldn't even tell where the deer had tore up the ground. I don't know what happened, but I missed the deer. And anyway, I was kind of discouraged. So I just went back and got in the tree. I'm back up there. And I never forget. It was about 9.30.

I hear the same thing coming from the west, right out the top of the ridge there. And it sounds like a, it's just without ceasing, just as far as I could hear until it got right there, just crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch. I can't explain to you. how thick the woods were right there. But I remember, I saw that horizontal movement. You know how you can see just that movement of something walking? And it probably stopped 25, 30 yards from me.

Fixing to come out where I could, had a few places to see, it just stopped. And I remembered that I had seen like a leg or the body of something. And it wasn't a coyote. I knew it was a deer. And it just stopped. And of course, I got turned around there and got ready, you know, take a few more steps where I could see what it was and possibly shoot. And I'm going to try to be conservative when I tell you that I sat there, I would say 15 minutes.

So long that I started questioning what I had seen, I'm like, could that have been a coyote that smelled? Because I knew I had been all over. I mean, I had walked all over where that deer was at before daylight trying to find my stand. You know, was it a hawk? Sometimes you'll see a bird, a big hawk or something, that movement. But I'm like, no, I heard that deer walk in there. But there's no way a deer is still standing there 15 or 20 minutes and not move to muscle. About that time I kind of heard something back to my right, and I looked and there was a butt and buck, not 30 yards from me.

I mean, I was thinking, that must be the deer that I saw walk in here. How did he get down the mountain 30 yards without me seeing him? And I got thinking, well, I was so keyed on that area right there where I saw that deer stop. He might have just made a little circle and been quiet. I didn't know what had happened, but I still, something made me think there was a deer there. And at Butt and Buck, he was feeding on acres, and he come right in there right about the base of my tree. And when he did, I saw him throw his head up, and he was looking right where I had been looking. And he kind of, he didn't blow and stomped.

He kind of stomped his foot a time or two, but he didn't blow. He just went right back to feeding. When he did, I heard a twig or something snap right there. So, of course, I kind of got ready again. And when that deer stepped out, he is about 24 inches wide. He is a really nice buck. But that deer had been that whole time, and I know what it was, he smelled me. because before daylight I had been all over that.

And I think he probably, he smelled me. I don't know that he knew that I was still there, but I do believe that that deer had been there for close to 20 minutes without moving a muscle. And ended up when that button buck was right underneath me. I guess he felt comfortable, and he just walked right down there in my face. And I shot him with a muzzleloader. He's one of the better deer I've ever killed.

Only deer I've ever weighed with the guts in it, it weighed 194 pounds. Witnessing the patience of that buck, and then outlasting him without getting busted was something special. I think big deer do this a lot, but we usually never know it because the deer spooks or just disappears, and maybe we never even know it was there. They don't get old by being dumb, they say. It was a good story, Mitch. So good, we actually may come back to you at the end for another story.

Our next story is told by me and Lake Pickles friend Keith Polk. Keith is one of Lake's turkey hunting mentors and a longtime friend of his. I've just met Keith in the last couple of years. Lake's Daddy Doyle story is going to be hard to top Keith, but it's worth a shot. Here's Keith. This story took place in the fall of 92 down in Prentice, Mississippi, which is about an hour south of Jackson down in the Piney Woods. That's where I was raised and where I learned to hunt,

and my appreciation for the outdoors began. And that particular year, my good friend Brad Schivers and I, we hunted a lot together. We had started bow hunting. And this was a two-week primitive weapon season in the first two weeks of December that Mississippi has, still has, actually. And Brad would be bow-hunting this particular evening and was looking for a place to see some deer. And so I sent him across the creek through some hardwoods to a food plot that we seldom hunted. but was often frequented by, you know, a couple, three, four doze. And so the cool thing about it was the west side of the food plot.

There's this little scope of hardwoods that protrude out into a large broom sage field. And these hardwoods, it's some huge cherry bark oak and white oak timber. So I just, I had suggested that Brad, you know, just go get nestled up in the roots of one of those big trees, get where he could draw his bow and settle in. Well, that evening I go to pick him up, and it's obvious that he has seen something or done something. I couldn't tell, but, man, he was excited, and so he proceeds to tell me that just before dark, he hears some rustling in the leaves, and he kind of rolls off the tree and looks behind him, and he gets to watch this big, mature rack buck, you know, make a scrape and a rub.

He's actually rubbing a sapling and pawing at the ground and scraping right there. This is something we hadn't ever seen. We'd only seen it on a truth video. And we were pretty fired up. And I basically interrogated Brad, where'd the deer come from, where'd the deer go, how long did he stay? And we figured that he had came and went from this big broom sage field, which I had totally overlooked.

And so I felt like, I told Brad, I felt like I had a really good chance to kill that deer, now that we knew where he was come and go. And so we're right before Christmas. a week or so past, we're outside of the primitive weapon season now, we're back into firearm season. And I had gotten an amyker deer thief climbing stand. And this would be my first hunt with it, and I'm sure I'd put it up in the yard and tested it out. But after toting that heavy rascal all the way through those hardwoods and getting on the edge of the broom sage field with it, I find me a nice little water oak tree and get it on and proceed to climb.

up, well, I didn't take into account the taper of the tree, and my top portion of my climber is angled down. You know, it's sloped down pretty severe. So rather than doing what I know I should have done and climb back down and readjusted the tree, I decided I would just readjust it in the tree. So I do, and I loosen the wing nut and take it off and pull the bolt out and slide the bar and it's quite a complicated process to do up in the heights of a water oak. But I pulled it off, or so I thought. I get my bolt in there, and everything's readjusted. And I go to put the wing nut on, and I thought I had started it.

And so I just took my finger and was going to thump that wing nut to spin it on. And when I thumped it, I watched in horror as it plummeted to the forest floor, and it was just like watching it in slow motion. And I didn't take my eyes off of it. Like I knew exactly where it fell in those leaves. I said, man, I've got to get that nut. So I hold the bolt in my left hand and start down the tree. And I'm trying to be as quiet as possible

because I've just got super, super high expectations for this hunt. I just felt really confident. So I get down, readjust the tree. I did find the wing nut, get it back on, climb back up, get in the tree. grab my pull-up rope, start to pull my rifle up, and it's not coming up. And I'm like, what's going on? I look down, and there is this tiny, young holly, like a yopan holly, bush at the base of my tree.

And my pull-up rope had looped around that tree, and I tugged and pulled, and I just, there nothing in me wanted to go back down the tree a second time, but that's exactly what I had to do. So I go down the tree. untangle my pull-up rope, get that situated, climb back up the tree for the second time, and finally get my gun in my hands. And I almost left. Before I climbed back up the second time, I really had to have a hard conversation with myself to make myself stay. But I did, and I just figured if nothing else, I'd get a little recon on the spot

and may have to refine, you know, where I'm sitting for the next hunt. Because I surely didn't think I would have any success that evening. Well, time clicked on and right before dark, something catches my eye. I turn and I look. And instantly I see a deer. I see a rack. I shoulder my rifle, wait for a clear shot, and then squeeze a trigger. And it all happened in under, well under a minute.

I mean, it happened fast. The deer turns runs, and he runs out in back in the sage field, and I see him crash, and I can't believe what just happened. I'm stoked. My first big buck, and he's on the ground, and I really don't know how big he is. No trail cameras back then or anything like that. Never previously seen him. The Brad had, but I had not.

We believe it to be the same deer, but I climbed down, slip out there in the broom sage, and, man, there he is. And I have killed a giant. And this is giant as a relative description because this deer's all of probably 115, 120 inches, a typical 10-point deer. And man, I am stoked just beyond my mind. I'm fired up. So I'd run.

I run back out of the woods. Get on my three-wheeler, head back to the house. I get to the house. And my brother is in the yard. And it's not quite dark yet. My brother's in the yard talking to a family friend's named Robbie. Robbie had come to see my parents and Robbie was not a hunter

and but Robbie was you know he knew my brother and I when I get out of the truck I've not said a word to my brother we just lock eyes and he said you did it didn't you? And I said I did he said how big is he? I said he's a monster and man we start we just get

giddy you know and fired up so we end up heading back down the creek and Robbie's in between us I guess if like into a kid napping because I don't think he went in his own wheel. We just pushed him in the truck. We were so fired up. But we head to the creek and my little Ford Ranger, my brother's driving,

cross the creek bridge, run through the logging roads, just flying through the logging roads. And we get to the field edge and go out there. And man, I just remember how proud my brother was. I can remember it like it was yesterday. We even got Robbie in on dragging the deer back into the truck. and we load the deer up. So there's no social media, obviously, in 92.

But there was a shell station, and that was our gas station and Prentice, and that was our social media. Man, everybody, typically, especially on a Friday and Saturday night, everybody ended up at the shell station around 6.30 or 7 o'clock, and especially if you'd killed something, man. That was just a gathering place. And so tailgates down, the buck's laying there in the back, and here we go back through the woods, flying back out to the house.

Well, on the way out, there's this big, I call them possum grape vines, but it's just a vine, probably not quite an inch in diameter, but it stretches from the right side of the road, from up high, it comes down, makes a loop, and it stretches to the left side of the road. It's just odd how it grew that way, but it makes this loop. And you have to slow down. We had to slow down in the truck because you could bust the window out. It just hangs right there.

So I remember my brother driving, and he drove right up there, and he slowed down real fast, and he touched it, and it scraped over the hood, over the windshield, over the cab. And then, boom, it fell in the bed of the truck. As soon as it went over the cab, and in the bed of the truck, my brother just casts it, man, we're flying back out of the woods. Well, before we get to the Creek Bridge, we're just reminiscing, and I look back. I just want to look at my Big Buck one more time, and he's not there. and I freak out. I'm like, the buck's gone. My brother locks the truck up and literally just bails out

and takes off running down the road. I jump in the driver's seat, throw it in reverse, and here I go driving in reverse down this wood road all the way back, you know, trying to catch up my brother. And I get to him and my brother is standing over that buck. That vine had went right over the hood of the truck, dropped down into the bed,

and that loop just hooked right at the base of his antlers and slid him ever so gently out of the back of the truck. I mean, you couldn't have made it up. But my brother, being the big brother that he is, when I get out of the truck, he's shaking his head, and he says, man, he's all busted up, and he wasn't. He was just having fun with me, but we load him up, and we get him to town.

And, man, I just, it was just a moment I'll never forget. And can remember going back in that store, were probably for the better part of the year. They kept a big cork bulletin board there. And they're on that bulletin board, 35 millimeter picture, you know, of me and that 10-point book. And it's just, that's a memory and that's a hunt that I'll never forget. I mean, it just, it's always right there fresh on my mind. 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 then, that 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. 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. You may want to shut that tailgate next time, Keith. That story just kind of oozed with the passion and zeal of the early years of a hunter's life. And I don't think Keith has lost that fire at all. But I do think it morphs into a more mature state of enjoying the hunt. That's perhaps even better than that youthful zeal. That was a great story. Keith, way better than Lake Story. But now, we're going to jump into a medley of three short stories.

Sometimes the short ones are the best. They're the stories that a guy just kind of tells off the cuff, you know. It doesn't have to have some big backstory. And to start us off on the short stories, you may remember Henry Sousan from last year. Henry's 82 years old and a veteran mountain bow hunter in East Tennessee. he and his son's white-tail room would rival any in America, period. These boys kill some big deer, and they do it all with bows. And I have never met a man that has more passion about white-tail bow hunting than Henry Sousong.

So after he told his story from last year about killing this big mountain buck, I asked him, I said, Hey, do you have any more stories? And this is the one he told me. Well, yeah, I guess I do. I was going to tell you about my son. When he was young, he was hunting an area near here, and he said, Dad, I've been trying to kill a 10 point with a bow. He's not a big one.

He's just maybe a 2-year-old 10-point. He said, but he's almost human-like. He said, he's coming to a rye field that somebody's got sold down along the river here. And he said, it's amazing. He said, you're going to laugh. He walks up to that three, he's got the three wire barbed wire fence around his little rye He said, I may think it had the back in there and they just sewed a crevacrop, but he said this little 10 point will come up there. He don't try to jump the fence.

He puts his horns in the fence and pushes it down with his horns and steps through it like a man. You know how kids are. I thought, okay, I didn't say anything. So he hunted down there for, I don't know, two or three weeks. And he could never get a shot at it. He said the 10 point across the roads come a different direction. You couldn't pin him down, you know, to get a shot at him with the bow. So he goes down and killed it with a rifle and comes back,

and I'll show it to you in a minute I got to hang out here. You wouldn't believe, I was skeptical to start with, but you wouldn't believe the wire on the bottom of that deer's rack where he'd crossed that fence. I believe he'd done it. I don't know what reason. Maybe he couldn't jump. I don't know.

But the rack is almost wore half and two. from where he put his hands or put his horns on that fence and pushed it down. He said he'd push it down and very gently step across it just like a man. You see, he's just a boy and I thought. Well, yeah, okay. But it's, you can look at the rack, you can tell the boys tell us true. Yeah. That's the absolute truth.

He crossed the fence like a man. I like the way he said that. and I saw the rack myself. It looked like the buck had been hung in a barbed wire fence and wore the main beams down in one particular spot where the G3s touched the rack. It was wild. Our next story is from another old-timer

by the name of Gerald Brewer, a good friend of mine from Western Arkansas. This is just a solid, kind of funny story about when Gerald mentored a kid in hunting. I wish Gerald would have cackled in laughter like he did the first time he told me this when the recorder wasn't going. So just you can kind of imagine it. Here is a very special man by the name of Gerald Brewer. Two years ago, when I was much younger, and this young man I'm speaking of, he probably 12.

His dad did not hunt, so he asked me one time if I'd take him out and teach him how to hunt because that's what he wanted to do, you know. And I'm sure, I'll do that. We go turkey hunting, and anyway, this one time it was during the black powder or muzzleloading season. Well, so we'd hunted all day and hadn't seen anything to shoot, and so we'd started back home. It was late in the afternoon and teaching him being a mentor to him. Well, we had taken the caps off our mouseloters, as the law said, and unloaded it. And we had laid them in the back of my jeep. in a safe area.

About the time we'd get it out of the National Forest area, we'd come to a field or a pasture, and about 50, 60 yards from the road, there stood the biggest buck I had ever seen. He's right on the fence line, on the inside, in the pasture, and we looked at him and looked at him, and he was sort of looking in the brush across the fence. when we sat there for quite a while watching it

and it would move its head and everything you know I had heard rumors in the area that the game of fish had been putting out decoys trying to catch people from violating the law the more I looked at it and I said I've never seen a deer that big in this part of the world so that has to be a decoy and I told him I said let's go I said that's a decoy

so we drove on so it was days later maybe in two weeks or so. We heard rumors that this young man had killed a big buck not too far from that, probably within three or four hundred yards of this area on a nice forest. They had a food plot, and he had killed this big, big buck in that food plot. And in fact, he had brought it to town short and around. He didn't even realize that it was how big it was, you know. He just knew he had killed a buck. And so anyway, I thought about that. That thing was real, you know. So this young man the same way, you know, he said, you hear about that big of him? You know, because I wouldn't let him

shoot. I didn't want to teach him wrong, you know, because it wouldn't look too good on my part, you know. So anyway, that's my dear story. It's a good thing y'all didn't shoot that buck, Gerald. That was funny. Again, the first time Gerald told me he cackled like a schoolgirl. And the thing that's really funny about it, if you know Gerald, is that he's a law-abiding man and wouldn't have shot that buck if he didn't think it was a decoy. And I saw the buck that they're talking about at the taxidermy shop that was killed in that food plot, and it was every inch of 160 inches, a true monster. The next story is a short one again by a new friend of ours named Bob Wilson out of Dixon, Missouri. Here's Bob.

Yes, I'm Bob Wilson and I live in Marries County in Dixon, Missouri. And I'll tell you a story about one of my old friends, Vic. He's quite an archer. He'd won several state championships, but you'd have to know Vic. If you've ever watched Andy Griffith show and Barney Five, that was Vic. I mean, they were like identical. But my brother and I were going up to hunt. Vic said, hey, can I go with you?

I said, yeah, you're welcome to go. So we went over to one of those food plots and started down through there. Well, I didn't know where to put Vic. And it was about a half a mile down that food plot close to a half a mile, and it made a 90 degree. And we stopped there, and Vic said, where do you think I should go? I said, I think there's a really good spot right down there, Vic, which I'd never seen it before, never been there. And so he said, okay, I'll see you guys later. He goes down, and my brother and I turned to the right.

We went down and got in a couple stands that we thought deer would be through. We sat there all morning and never saw a thing. So we came back and when we got to that 90 where Vic had went, my brother Dennis said, well, looks like somebody's drugged something up through here. And I said, well, it does. So anyway, we followed the trail back to the truck. Got up there and there set Vic and he had an eight point buck. And he said, boy, you really put me in a good spot.

And I said, I told you that was a good place to go. So he was pretty proud of me for putting him in that spot. They gar-hold and plain and simple. Has that ever happened to you where you sent somebody to a spot that you really didn't think it was going to turn out but it did? Or have you been gar-hold? That was a good one, Bob. Our next story is a good one. And it's told by none other than the Mississippi biologist Med Palmer.

Yep. The same med from the last. episode. And what I've heard over and over since he came on the podcast is that Med is a legendary with the capital L Mississippi turkey hunter and woodsman. So when Med talks, the feller better listen. Here's Medd, and this story revolves around a gun. My name is Med Palmer, Pokerpah County, Mississippi. I work for the Mississippi Department wildlife business in parks. In the year of 2022, which I'd been real busy during deer season for work, and I generally start doing most of my deer hunting around Christmas.

That's when the ruts going on, on end of January. And this particular year, I hadn't got to hunt much at all. And around January, the 11th, I decided I was going to go hunting that morning. And I knew the deer was rutting pretty good. And we had a buck on our place that my nephew had pictures of that was an older. a buck, horns is messed up pretty bad. And I told all the kids, I said, y'all see this buck, show them all the picture.

I said, y'all shoot him because he needs to go. He's five and a half years old, and I said he's never going to be anything else, you know. And they hadn't killed a lot of deer, so they tickled to death to shoot him, you know, naturally. And, well, rocked on, and nobody had seen him. And that particular morning I was sitting in a stand, and I don't know, it was probably about 9 o'clock. About 100 yards, this deer comes out. out. And I said, you know, 100 yards, chip shot. I said, I'll shoot him, go get the truck, you know, be done with it. Well, he walks out, laying broadside. I propped up on the sandbag,

and I put the crosshairs on him. I pulled the trigger. He hits the ground. So I start getting my stuff together to get out, and I look, and he had disappeared. I'm shooting a 300 weatherby, and I'm thinking, he shouldn't be disappeared. And I said, I don't know what's done happening. So I get out, lay my stuff in a stand, and get down there, and down at the end of the lane, I see a buck comes across, going back about 200 yards from me then. And I was standing where the deer had failed, so he runs, ended up. I found blood going out in the other way the deer had went and trailed it back around, and that was the deer that come across.

I said, well, that deer hadn't even hurt. But my son had a blood dog, so I call him to he brings him down there. We put the blood dog on it. We tracked that deer probably a mile and a half. He never even laid up. And a couple days later, we actually got a picture of the deer. I had grazed that deer high right above the shoulder. Just enough to paralyzing for a minute, I reckon.

I mean, he was fine. I had bought this gun in scope probably 27 years ago. And it's a Savorsky scope. And I sighted that gun in 27 years ago, and I have never had to move it ever. And I check it before the season like everybody does. and about twice through the middle of the season, just to make sure. And I thought that day that deer got away, I went, when I was on him, and my gun must be off.

So I go to the house. When I get home that day, I shoot it, and it was off. It had never been off in 27 years, and I hadn't bumped it, hadn't done anything. So I cited it back in. Well, the next morning I had an opportunity to go, and the weather condition was perfect. It was drizzly rain, and you know how bucks love to move on drizzly rain. I go the same stand And I'm sitting there that morning

And see a couple doze that morning And one of them had that way about her But it wasn't any other bucks with her And I thought she acts like she's starting to come in When she come across the lane And a little while later I'm sure it's the same dough Come back to the same place

And there was a stretch of open woods And I could see her and she just stood there And I thought that dough Is standing there I believe her the buck won't have come out But he don't want to come across this lane And to go back, when I realized my gun was off, I know this is going to sound crazy. But that night, after I cited that gun in, I was thinking, I said, my gun was off for some kind of reason.

I said, I hadn't been off, and I hadn't bumped or anything. I said, by going to the morning, I'm going to kill a good book. My mind was just telling me, I know it sounds crazy. And walking in that morning, I thought, I'm going to kill the best book I ever killed in my life because my gun was off. And the good Lord let me miss that deer to let me know my gun was off. I just knew. I just had that feeling.

I said, it happened for a reason because I'm a panatic with my gun about bumping a scope and make sure it sighted in. And I kept watching that doe, and I said, he's here. I said, he's right here somewhere. Because them old bucks, they just do not like to come out and open it. I mean, everybody at deer hunt knows it. And that doe wanted him to come, and I knew. So I just went on to move the sandbag to that side,

got ready and she started going through those woods down there about 400 yards and I said he comes out I'm going to be on my game and that went on for about 20 minutes you know my mind was telling me well you may be wrong and about that time he steps out and I'm on my gun I already got safety on me so by now he's halfway across the I could see horns with my naked eye he was 450 yard and he stopped for just a second I get on him and I pull the trigger and he falls right there and the ducal. And the ducal. And the just stands there. She comes up to the buck and starts walking around him until I started going to him, and then she seen me at Blue and Run. But he was a really good deer. He was typical. He wasn't but 18 and a half, but he had real long points. I'm guessing probably 150, you know, around here.

That's a really good deer. That was a good story, Med. And I appreciate you seeing God's hand involved in your life. Those interactions are as real as a man's faith allows for him to perceive them. 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 hit. 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. 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 backwards. 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. Now what we're going to do is go back to Mitch Sykes from Arkansas. Mitch is an incredible hunter, and he's got a short story here involving a coyote. Here's Mitch.

I'm going to say it was probably an I never would forget that morning. I think it was Halloween day, but the leaves had changed, and it was one of those cloudy mornings to where the woods were just orange. I mean, it was just beautiful. And I had gotten in there early

and right at daylight. From the south, I just heard a deer coming. And you know how it is when you hear a buck walking during the rut? It's like a teenage boy dragging his feet. I mean, it just was, he never stopped. It was just, it seemed like I hear him coming for 100 yards.

And I got ready, and he was about 30 yards from me going north. And when he went through my openings, of course, I was trying to get him to stop, you know, with my mouth. I could not. I mean, just too loud, and he would not stop. And I don't condone it, but I ended up shooting that deer walking at 30-something yards. And, you know, I tried to lead him. You know, I tried to hold the way he was walking to compensate for that. And I thought I hit him pretty good.

I knew I hit him a little bit back, but I thought I had hit him real good. It was right at daylight. He broke and ran and went down real steep draw, and up on the ridge, and kind of stopped, and everything kind of got quiet, but I didn't hear him crash, and I was kind of concerned. And I thought, well, it's early. It's a good time of year. I'm just going to sit here. I sat there, and I think it was about the best I can recall.

Probably two hours went by quite a while, maybe two and a half hours. It might have been up around 9.30. and I heard something coming from the north, and I looked and here come a coyote. And it came, it didn't get real close to me, but it probably got 40 yards from me, and it crossed that ravine and went over east of me up on that hardwood ridge, kind of where my deer had went. And I remember thinking, he didn't find that deer or spook that deer. I was thinking the deer was dead.

And he kind of got out of sight, but I could still hear him over there on the woods. And all of a sudden I heard the brush busting, and off come a deer, here come a really good buck. From the same direction the buck that I had shot had went, here come a really good buck coming right to me. He crossed that ravine and come right up there on the ridge with me, and I just pulled back. And when I shot him, and he's the only deer I've ever shot with my bow,

and I shot him right in the shoulder. And he fell just like he'd shot him with a 30-0-06. I mean, he just fell over dead. He was kicking, of course, but, I mean, he fell right there. And when he did, back about the last, last rib, maybe behind the last rib in the flank. I saw a hole. It all came together right then.

That was the buck that I had shot two and a half hours earlier. And you know how normally a coyote screws your hunt up? That coyote actually saved me because that deer was, he was really close to a clear cut that's just nearly impenetrable. And, you know, I know that in another hour so I would have gotten down and I would have spooked that deer. and hit where he was hit, chances are, wouldn't have bled a lot. And if he'd got in that thicket, I may have never found him.

But that coyote actually, I say it's a coyote, it was God, just put him right back there in my lap. I was excited, and I was glad the way it all played out, and I just kept on sitting there. And about, I don't really know if it was an hour or something like that later, I heard some deer back south of me. And I was looking down there, and I could see it looked like three or four doze milling around. kind of working their way towards me.

And I just kind of turned on that side of the tree, and I was looking back to the south. And I heard something coming from the north again. Not making a lot of noise, but I heard something up there. And I remember my initial thought was, I bet that's that coyote coming back here. And when I turned and looked over my shoulder, probably one of the biggest bucks I've ever seen in my life

was coming right to me. The way that country was, that was a leg on the west end of a mountain. And it didn't matter if you were turkey hunting, if you were squirrel hunting, if you were ever in that area, and you went to walk off, the terrain just funneled you right there. That's why I hunted there. And that buck was coming right down that leg right to me.

I mean going to come right to me. And I figured he was going to see the deer that I had shot, and I thought he's going to stop, and I'm going to get an easy shot at him. And he got probably within about 20 yards of me coming head on, and he just stopped. And I was hoping he would see. the deer laying right there in front of him. But I guess he caught a glimpse of the doves back behind me because they were kind of milling around but all of a sudden, I don't know you've seen him do it, when a buck will put his

head on the ground and start that trotting like prancing, he just pretty fast, you know, and grunting ever breath. But if he had another two or three seconds, he was a really big bug. He was 140, 150 inch deer. He was a really good deer. out of my life forever, but he went down there, and I listened to him and watched him chase those doze for another five or ten minutes. You could hear him grunting, and just never did come back through.

That's an anomaly when a coyote helps you rather than hurts you. I like it, Mitch, and I'm seeing a theme of predators interrupting your deer hunts between that coyote and that bear. Our final storyteller for the whole year of our Deer Stories episodes is none other than Mo Shepherd from the Ozarks of Arkansas. Mo is a diehard public land hunter who's hunted about as tough a white-tail ground as there is his entire life. Low deer numbers, lots of hunters with rugged, vast, wooded terrain.

Every time Mo tells the story, I learned something. Here's him talking about two separate hunts that have a similar theme. I want to see if you can pick it out. This was approximately eight or nine years ago. We're out on public land in those ark mountains. And the deer, I was after, I found he signed late in the year prior to when I harvested the deer. And I don't think I ever really hunted. I just, I was doing some scouting late in the year.

So when it rolled around the next fall, I knew he was a really good mature deer because there was some really huge rubs in there and stuff that I found. So I started bow hunting a little bit for him when the weather was right, when I thought I might find him there. And I sat in a stand two or three different days on and off when the, The conditions were right. Saw a couple smaller bucks, but I didn't see any large bucks. And then muzzle order season came about.

Same scenario. I went in there and stand hunted a little bit. I didn't even see any bucks, but I saw some doze. And it rolls around the end of November. Deer season opened that year, and it was pretty warm. I do remember that. I didn't even hunt in there with my rifle the first couple days of season. It was about after a week, they predicted a cold front to be moving in.

Like I said, it had been pretty warm. Well, it really dropped. Overnight it dropped probably 40 degrees or so from the day before. It was in the upper 20s. Anyway, that morning when I got up, and I told my wife, I said, I'm going to go after that big deer that I hunted early in the season, but I'm not going to go where I've been hunting. I said up in the head of that canyon, I said there's some steep terrain,

some bluffy terrain, some little narrow shelf benches. I said, I'm going to, the wind's blowing right out of the northwest, and I can go and drop off in there and make my way from the bedding area back towards where that sign is. And I said he'll either be looking for doze or he'll be bedded up in there and either way I might get a chance at him. So I started off that away and didn't see a deer.

I hunted for about an hour and a half to slow, slipping along. I was on one little shelf and watching the shelf blow me on this really steep inclined terrain. Like I said, and there was some blows in there. I'd got the spot and I thought, boy, this looks good. I think I'll just stand here for a while and I leaned up against a tree because that wind was blowing. It was cold.

So I didn't want to set much. And I seen movement on the bench below. me, I think he was heading back to bed up. I think he'd been out looking for doves on around that mountainside in there. And I didn't think I was going to get a shot at him because he was moving along pretty good. I grunted at him with my voice. He was probably maybe 100 yards down in that next little shelf down there. And it didn't even face it, it was loud. So I grunted pretty loud with my voice. And I don't know if he heard or what, but he slowed down. He was just real fast, stiff-legged walk. And he slowed down. And when he finally stopped, he was behind some

stuff. You know, all I could see was just bits and pieces of him. But I got all ready. I thought, well, if he takes off again, maybe I can get him. Well, when he took off again, he made four or five fast steps, and then he just stopped. And I could see his, pretty much all of his shoulder, but I couldn't see much of his neck or the rest of his body, but I thought, I've got an opening there, and I was leaned up against that tree. I had a pretty good rest. And I put my crosshairs on him of my rifle I was hunting with that day and squeeze the trigger off. And when the recoil finished, I looked down there. I dropped the gun down. I looked that way. He was was laying on the ground. I dropped him right in his tracks there. He was a big mature deer.

He was just under 20 inches wide, a big mainframe, eight point, big body deer, and I just looked up to Skyloth. Thank you, good Lord. I said, this was a fun hunt. I said, been after this deer all year, and I think he spent most of his time prowling up a night, and he'd probably been out all night, and it was cold, and he was on his feet, and probably looking for doze, but I really think he was heading back to that ground where I thought he bedded up in that head of that canyon in there. and anyway I was really proud of that deer so the second story is from the next year but it's kind of a different scenario

I'd hunted this deer a little bit that year and even the year before a little bit but I'd never seen him just by sign and stuff this was down lower down in the mountain and there was a lot of big flat benches in there where I was hunting in and I hunted with my bow maybe three days in there and saw some bucks but not the one I thought was making the big sign

anyway it kind of muzzle order see season. And all I could hunt was the first two days, which was a Saturday and a Sunday, and then I was going to try to hunt the last two days. I didn't, couldn't take off work. Usually I take off when I want to, but I didn't end. But anyway, on Thursday night, I was watching the news and stuff on the TV. And they were talking about, said, sometime Friday during the day, there was a big cold front moving in. Same way, it had been pretty warm. That was in, you know, 20-something of October. I told my wife again, I said, I'm going to go to work this morning. If that cold front hits, I'm taking all my stuff with me. I'm going to go in there and, and,

and get in my stand, I've got in there where I've been hunting that buck and see if he might come out this afternoon. Well, sure enough, that cold front hit during the day and the temperature fell from in the 60s to in the 20s. And cold north wind blowing, and I actually left work a little bit early. And I made my way in there and got up into my stand, took lots of clothes, because I was gonna need it if I was gonna set.

It seemed like I got up in my stand about three and a half, four hours, four dark, and I got in my stand, and I sat, and I sat, and I got cold, because that wind blowing on me, I'd stand up a few times and shuffle around when I looked and make sure I didn't see anything inside of me and just kind of warm up. I remember it was getting late. The sun had already went down because it'd cleared off.

The clouds had moved out when that front moved in and thought, man, I don't know if I can sit here this much longer or not because I'm pretty cold. And about that time, I heard a stick or something to the break. I looked and I seen the dough coming around this little benches. It was in there where there's a lot of thick brush. There was some white oak trees there, and that's, I guess, the reason a lot of sign was there. The deer had been feeding on those white oaks, too. anyway in a matter of 15 or 20 minutes after the sun went down there was like seven or eight different deer coming in there and every one of them docks

I thought where's the buck at you know and most of them got on by me just working their way through those white oaks and I was kind of watching them and I'd look back the way they'd come from a time or two and I thought something might come up the hill or something that they're in there and then I heard the leaves really rustling it was getting pretty late then pretty dark but it was still shooting light and I remember thinking where's that noise coming from and I thought he was behind me so I was I kind of turned to my stand, looked up behind me, and couldn't see anything. So I looked back to my left where the doze, only two or three of them were still inside of me. And I looked hard on my right, and right on the break of the bench there, I seen the dough coming pretty fast. She was fast-legged it, I call it. And she had her tail stuck straight out, and I thought, there's something chasing her. And so I got turned in my stand that away, and sure enough, she come right below me down through there, and right behind her was this big old buck.

And he had his nose down on the ground, and he wasn't doing nothing but just following her. She'd come out through there in front of me probably wasn't 40 yards, but it's real thick in there. She stopped and he stopped. And I couldn't see either one of them. It was getting late enough. I couldn't make them out. And about that time she took off again and he took off. And then they stopped again when they stopped that time.

She was in open, but he was behind the tree, but I could see his head and horns and neck was sticking out. And I once started to try to him in the neck, and I thought, no, I'm this open-side muzzleloaded. I better not try it. And this luck would have it. He all of a sudden made about two steps. and stopped right there in the wide open. I put the bead right against the crease of his shoulder and pulled the trigger and old muzzleload of bull smoke.

And when the smoke cleared, he was laying right there on the ground. I could still see him, but it was pretty dark. And I was just tickled to death. I didn't notice how big he was. I just knew he was a good mature deer. I got down, climbed down on my tree after I watched him a bit. He didn't move or anything other than just finishing their life. And I got down and walked up to him,

and he wasn't as wide as the deer I'd killed the year before with my rifle. But he was about 17 inches wide, but he was real heavy, and his horns sweeped out and around and curled back in towards each other in the front. And he was just a big eight point. But he was a big mature deer, and I think the only reason I got that deer was that cold front, changing from warm weather to cold weather, and they just stay on their feet longer. I think he got up before dark and went looking for doze, and got on that one and followed her right around to where I was sitting there waiting on them.

So I slip hunted, as I call it, on the first deer. The second deer, I sat in stands pretty much every day. day hunting for him, but you just got to stay after it. A lot of times to kill those big deer, especially out on public land. That's some good hunting Moe. Did you know that Moe's family homesteaded in the Ozarks in the mid-1800s, and Moe was raised on what's officially known as Shepard Mountain named after his kin? I think that's special. And the theme of those two deer hunts was hunting on an extreme cold front, the front end of an extreme cold front. If you could hunt Anytime, I think that's what you'd want to hunt.

I'll tell you, this has been a fun episode for me, and I hope you've enjoyed it as much as I have. These real stories are the lifeblood of our American hunting culture, and we all know that the white tail is king of American hunting, period. It's true. I can't thank you enough for listening to Bear Greece and Brent's This Country Life podcast. Remember it's Whitetail Week at Meat Eat Eater and First Light, where when you buy more, you save more,

with discounts up to $200 on some purchases, free shipping on orders over $150. First Light has the best lineup of whitetail gear on the market. Check it out at firstlight.com. I look forward to talking about these deer stories with the folks on the render next week. Keep the wild places wild. First Lights fieldwear 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 in 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 fieldwear gear at firstlight.com. This is an I-Heart podcast.

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