Bear Grease - Ep. 379: Deer Stories - Spiders, Uncle Ar-ee, and the Buck they Gave Away

Episode Date: October 22, 2025

It’s that time of year again. Deer stories are back! In this episode of the Bear Grease podcast, host Clay Newcomb welcomes storytellers from Alabama, Oklahoma, and Arkansas to share some of their most memorable deer hunting tales. From misunderstood lip reading, classic import cars, and half-dressed hunters wandering through the woods, to unwelcome interactions with some of nature's critters, these stories are sure to keep you entertained. 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 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 field. Worldware gear at firstlight.com. Late October is upon us. The aacrens are falling, the clover's eight inches tall, and the woods are full of scrapes, and it's deer season. These deer stories episodes are some of my favorite.

They feel like when your buddy rolls back up in the camp, and he has that look on his face, and you never know what story is about to come out of his mouth. I guarantee you that all these stories will surprise you. We've got seven storytellers. And they hail from the states of Alabama, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. And I really doubt that you're going to want to miss this one. Some of these are really going to surprise you.

And hey, if you're looking for a unique heirloom deer call, then I think it's the most versatile call on the market. Check out the Phelps Acre & Grunner in Osage Orange. This call was designed by me and Jason Phelps. It's an inhale, exhale, dough bleat, and buck grunner. two calls and one Phelps game calls You know I washed that dude out

And I cleaned it up the best I could You know Of course it had one of those Spar-Tard deals down in it You know in the back there And somehow That blood That blood got down into spartart

And this is no lie For a year after that When it got real hot In that God It smelled like a buck deer That's no, that is no lie And I'm telling you, when we sold it

It smelled it, it smelled like a buck deer What ain't got hot in there? But, oh, but just, you know, you ain't got no sense if you do stuff like that But that's just what we did. You know, we just thrown it up there like we had good sense. My name is Clay Newcomb And this is the Bear Grease podcast

Where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant. Search for insight in 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 explore. Our first story is from the great state of Alabama and involves a variety of wildlife from three different genera of species from the rich biota of the American South.

Our storyteller, who I'll let introduce himself, analyzed the reaction of his hunting partner to all these critters and decided that he should marry her. The story is short with a lot of surprises. Yeah, hey, this is Daniel Williams. I'm a tax thermos up in North Alabama. And when me and my wife were dating, this was about six months before we got married.

I decided to take her down to our hunting club in Selma and take her deer hunting with me. She had never killed a deer and never been deer hunting that many times, but she wanted to go. So we went down and sat on the edge of a big swamp. We actually sat on the ground. The whole thing was grass and water. And we was probably 50 yards from the edge of that water. And while we're sitting there, we haven't been there probably two hours.

My wife starts getting cold and pulls her gloves out, goes to put a gloves on. Well, she starts screaming, hollering, jump it up. I'm like, what are you doing? She'll be quiet. Well, she pulls her glove off. and has this spider between two of her fingers latched onto her hand. I'm talking about the biggest, nastiest spider you've ever seen in your life. I don't know what kind of it was.

It was nasty. And she's grabbing that thing, kills it and everything. I'm like, oh, my gosh, I can't believe that just happened. Well, she checks her gloves, ends up putting her gloves back on, sits back down. And at this point, I'm sitting there, I'm pretty impressed because this girl I'm kind of think about Mary and just got bit by a spider and she still deer hunting. So we're good. About an hour goes by.

It's probably 4.4.30 p. And, well, I hear something, the leaves moving, you know, just that, just that sliding through the leaves. And it's January. So the last thing on my mind is snake. But I look down, and the tail of a snake has just gone up under my wife's leg. And we're sitting by this big cypress tree. I'm sitting there thinking, well, I'm a wife at the time, my girlfriend. I'm sitting there thinking, what do I do?

You know, so I tell her, I said, hey, I said, really. real slowly, just stand up. She said, why? I said, just stand up. Just get my hand and just stand up real slow. Well, she stood up, and there was about an eight or nine inch little snake. It wasn't poisonous. Had crawled up, I guess, out of the ground or something,

and it just crawled right up under her thigh. Well, she sees it. She starts laughing. Well, I flicked the thing on over there by the water, and I'm there again glad she sits back down. We're still hunting. well two things that's never happened to me ever is seeing somebody get bit by a spider like that and a snake crawl up under somebody in January well lo and behold about 30 minutes goes by starting to get dust dark

we hear a gunshot way off in the distance we're probably three or four hundred yards from property line on the other side of the swamp is where the property line is well we hear this gunshot and i told christie i said kind of pay attention i said because a lot of times somebody shoots out here in the swamp you'll push deer back in the swamp we may hear them running. Well, sure enough, it wasn't a few seconds. Here come deer. Well, I hear splashing, here splashing. I start picking up a dough and I'm pointing to Christian. I said, right down through there, look, there's deer coming. We're sitting there watching her with this dough run straight at us, gets within probably 20 yards of us and turns, and we're not going to shoot her. We're in their buck hunting. But she turns,

runs about 10 yards in front of us, and buckles like she just got shot with buckshot on a dog drive. I'm talking about phase plant. Just legs go out from under slides in the leaves i stand up i got my gun up was looking looking through my scope at her and i come walking over there got a fair to her and christie said is it dead and i said yeah and she said i didn't even hear you shoot i was like i didn't shoot i said that guy that gunshot we heard that's this deer so through all this that's happened like she's done be a bit by a spider had a snake crawl up on her, and then had a deer shot come running and die right in front of us, and she thought that I had shot the thing.

You know what I mean? My gun ain't even golf. I said, don't you think you would have hurt my rifle? But, man, we left there. I told her, I said, if you ever go hunting again, I said, like, we're going to have to get married because there ain't too many of you running around here, at least not that I've ever met. That was a good story, Danny, and sounds like you found a partner for life. Our next story is from my friend Brad the Snake Man,

Birchfield of Mountainburg, Arkansas. You've seen him handling snakes on the Bear Grease Render. This story involves some unfortunate lip reading. Here's Brad. This is Brad Birchfield. This is a story maybe more about parenting than it is about deer hunting. But as a child, my dad was always working. and didn't really have time to take me hunting,

so I went with my cousin, and he would take me out. Of course, we were freezing cold and sitting in a blind, or it was very boring and cold. And when my son got old enough to go hunting, I thought I don't want him to have a different experience. I want him to be miserable as I was. So we would not have iPads or games or being a nice blind. We'd be sitting in a stand freezing.

and he was about six at this point, and he wasn't really ready to shoot a big gun. He'd shot 22s and shot guns and stuff, and he just wasn't really sure of himself on a rifle. So he went out with me, and he was all excited, and so we got in the stand late in the afternoon. I think it was probably Thanksgiving Day, and we were sitting there, and, of course, all the way out there, I'm telling him not to step on sticks and to be quiet and don't be moving. and so we get up in the stand and put his head, his earmuffs on, and I'm telling him, you know, we got to wait and, you know, that magic hour right before dusk.

We're sitting there and saw a few doze, and he was getting excited and had to kind of keep him calm down. And then right at dusk, a nice little six point, jumped out of the woods and came out into the field. We were sitting in the corner of a field, and so the deer comes out, and he looks at me, I look at him and I want all your listeners to do this. Say the word be still very clearly and very purposely.

So I turned around to him and he's looking at me and I mouthed the words, be still. And he looked at me and he looked somewhat confused. And so again I reiterated, be still. And he nodded and like he understood. And so I turned around, got back on the scope. deer was standing broadside about 80 yards so i shot it dropped it took my ear protection out took his off and we hugged and said a little prayer and of course we were deep into the outdoor channel shows like ted nougat and uh meat eater of course and uh we high-fived and i told him i said uh

you know the beast is dead long live the beast and we're all excited and kind of started calming down he kind of looked at me and he said why did you tell me to pee slowly and I said, what? And he said, you told me to pee slowly. And I said, what are you talking about? I don't even know what that means. He goes, well, I did. And at that point, I looked in his little coveralls were pretty much soaked from the waist down.

And I said, why? He was, I guess, about six years old. So he was definitely old enough to know better. But I said, why did you pee your pants? And he said, I thought you were, you were, you know, know, getting on me about the stepping on sticks and being quiet and all that. So I just thought maybe you wanted me to pee quietly. And so I did. And so we had a long walk back to the house, about a half mile through the woods. And all the while he's like, would you carry me? And I said,

no, because you're covered in pee. And so that was our big hunting story for that year. That's funny, Brad. You've raised an obedient son. Sounds like some good parenting, but just some unfortunate lip reading. Our next story is from Johnny Johnson from eastern Oklahoma. You may remember him from one of the most compelling episodes of 2025 called Confessions of a Former Outlaw. It was episode 314. Johnny told me a dear story in passing that truly blew my mind.

I'm still fixated on it. And he told it to me by accident, moving past it like it was just an uneventful story. I was looking at an impressive wall of public land antlers, all just sawn off skulls screwed onto the wall of his cabin when I keyed in on one that was clearly the biggest. It was probably a 150-inch 10-point, a true public land monarch, especially for these rock piles, these deer live in down here. And I said, is that the biggest deer that y'all have killed over here, Johnny? And he says, yes, it is, but we gave one away that was as big or as. or probably bigger. And you've got to understand something.

A 150-inch deer here is a once-in-a-lifetime buck. And I said, gave it away. What do you mean? And he proceeded to tell me this story. They're hunting in Arkansas where it's legal to run deer with dogs. And the story starts with the jumped buck. We live in a place where we can hunt with dogs. That's why we're here.

And we all had dogs and we have a good camp. And we took our dogs back on the mountain and put them in a place where we'd been finding a lot of bucks on, big-footed buck. And we got after a buck that was a good one. We jumped the deer back in the south. He went up on the mountain and spent the biggest part of the day trying to lose them dogs. But they were dogs that pretty well stay hooked. They went over the mountain, went over and come back, and then went to the mountain. north. When he crossed the south road, we put three, four more fresh dogs on it.

And that would make him do something. And he made another run and then went to the river and lost the dogs there in the river. Two or three hours later, everybody gave up on them. But Dan and I knew the kind of dog that was on this deer and it wasn't over, hoping that he would come back. That was in morning early. I've seen them go in the river and back up to a bank like with some logs and back their whole body into them logs with just their nose sticking up, not even their horns out. Even a big horn deer like that, he'd have his head laid back. You couldn't even see his horn. Just his nose looked like a cork bobbing in the water. But that deer had done that during that day to lose the type of dogs he lost.

I've seen dogs baying at a hole of water. No deer there. None to be seen. And I'm standing there looking at that water and the deer just blow up right under my feet coming out of their going. It's pretty neat. But the dogs run the deer.

They run at north and then came back to the river and that was it. That was the end of the line. And it was probably a couple of hours. hours had passed. I can't say this 100%, but most of the time that deer will go back the same way he went. He more than likely that's the route he took when he went north. He'd coming back that same way. And that's why we were there watching that field. So if he did come through there, we'd seen. So we just kind of went over there and laid around, loaf around. We were out in the field.

Johnny is in the field with his long-time hunting partner, Dan. But there's also an older man, a neighbor of Johnny's named Leon, sitting in his truck probably a quarter mile away watching the field too. Well, the guy was on the road. The old man. Yeah, the old man was on the road. And I was sitting there and eating a donut. I was.

and I just looked all the way across that field, and the big buck was walking, going back south towards the mountain. He'd come out of the creek and walking right up the edge of the field, and Dan's a crack shot. Good, good of there is. I said, Dan, there is. I was about choked on that donut. So, whatever, a couple of bells I had, he took a round.

I don't know how far it was. 400. Long shot. But from the road where the old man was a lot longer than now. And made a shot. I think that's good. Well, he shot. The old man shot.

And the deer went behind some stuff. To clarify, two shots have been fired at the same buck. Dan shot first. Then the old man shot. Dan's shot was 400 yards with a haybell rest. the old man's shot was much, much further. Johnny and Dan knew without question that Dan had killed the deer. And the deer went behind the brush, and we went around and there he laid.

Nice. I don't know what it scored. Big, big, nice wall hanger of a deer. I mean, as big a deer as maybe y'all have ever killed, is that right? Yeah, probably a big of the thing in here, bigger. Yeah, big. And the old gentleman that shot at him was out there on the road drove his truck in there where we were. And he got out and I said, lay on, that's a heck of a shot you made on that buck.

And he kind of stuttered for a little bit. And he said, you think I hit that? He said, that's done right. You hit it? That's your deer. Pull around here. We'll load that for you. Boy, that's a good.

And that's the best one we've seen this year. Dan was in agreement with me, and he got his deer and everybody's happy. Just to make this crystal clear, Dan killed this once-in-a-lifetime buck, and without even talking about it, Johnny and Dan claimed that the old man had killed it. Now, was Dan, now, you instigated the conversation, though, or you're the one who, y'all didn't talk about this. Uh-uh. Just kind of, like, walked up to the old guy.

Yeah. And Dan thinks he's killed the deer. Yeah. And so Dan was surprised, though, when you said... No. He didn't shock him a bit. He'd seen that happen before. We gave another one the way in that same field to an older gentleman.

They were laying there kicking when they drove up. Dan killed it. He'd seen it happen before, and that's the kind of guy here. He's good. No, most people would have argued with you. Yeah. Wanted to FBI and see which way the bullet and what size of the gun and all that. It wasn't any doubt to us that the old gentleman killed a deer.

And he was in agreement with me when I said it. That's just the way Dan and I are. We like everybody that kill one. Everybody have fun. I'm trying to wrap my mind around giving away one of the biggest, if not the biggest, dear, either of these veteran hunters have ever killed. I asked Johnny a simple question. Why did you do that?

I like the old fellow. I knew him. He was a friend of mine, and he needs to kill a big buck. We've hunted around him for years, and he worked in the log woods. Dan worked for him when he was young, cutting logs in the wood. He was just a friend of ours. How old do you think he was? Oh, late 70s, but not healthy at all.

He was down to this. just hunting from his vehicle he couldn't get out and hunt just drive around and he was watching that field we took him several times a couple times we run deer by him he was sitting in his truck the deer went right by the truck he was just about done hunting had a good one to quit on that was a good one to quit on can you imagine walking up to the biggest deer you've ever killed and given it away without even a fight. This story challenges every thread of deer hunting ambition in my soul. I think I'll be thinking about this one for the rest of my life. These are the kind of hidden stories that make all this so rewarding for me. Thank you for sharing that story, Johnny.

And if you haven't listened to His Bear Grease episode 314, you probably should. I consider it one of the best stories. ever told on this podcast. 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 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 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 storyteller needs no introduction.

It's Andy Brown from Western Arkansas. He's going to tell us about his uncle Harvey and a brand new 1979-Dotson B-210 hatchback car. So just settle in and enjoyed this story. Andy's stories always seemed to end with a good laugh. So I had an uncle by the name of, you know, everybody, his name was Ira Willis, but it was Uncle Ari to me. That's who I called him. But he was a true, he was a true mountain guy, you know.

And when I was a kid, he had a lot of patience with me. Even when we lived out east of town, he would come and, get me and take me coon hunt or take me squirrel hunting. But anyway, he was real good about taking me. And he was the guy that taught me about how to hunt saddles and how to hunt gaps. He was a very patient, patient guy. But anyway, I loved him like a, I loved him like a father. I mean, he was a father figure to me. He was the guy that you could go and it was so fun, it's so much fun, because even when I was, I'd go on my lunch hours lots of time to his house. And Uncle Laura, to get that old two and a half old sage peach can or hunt's peach you know he'd have to cut out

and he before he could you know he was the type of guy that he couldn't talk without chew at his back and he chewed beeching up red man it i don't he chewed them both but at the time but he could get him a chew and i'm talking about he just didn't get a little chew he rich in there and he got him a he got him a double big handful of that you know and he'd get it in his mouth and he sat back and tell stories so that gets us to the story we moved back and when i was when I was out west, I had bought my first new car. And it was a 1979 Dotson B-210 hatchback.

And I was proud of that thing. I didn't know how I was going to pay for it because at that time, that car knew it was $6,600, but I just didn't know how I was going to get that paid for it, you know, back in the day. But anyway, when we come back, we brought the car back with us. And so happened. Oh, Lurie, we got us a deer hunt planned. And we went south of Tampa.

and he knew that were there was a couple of gaps over there. Anyway, we went over there and we took my car. And so got over there, you know, of course, if you left, he wanted to cook your breakfast at the house, which was two eggs, two pieces of sausages and toast. That's what you had in a big cup of coffee that you could just barely stir. I mean, it was a good coffee. But anyway, we got over there and walked up the canyon,

and it was just a big, big branch. bottom, it went all the way to the main mountain. And when you get to the main mountain, there was a low gap back east and a low gap west. So he sent me to the low gap east. We walked right up a hauler right up into the gap and he went up the other way. I walked up there and man, it was a fine morning. When it was kind of out of the south and I'd got over on the north side of the gap. And it was just like one of them mornings that you just die for, you know. and about 8 o'clock right between me and him on the main mountain there's a little notch in there and there was a gobbler turkey come into their goblin come right through that notch

now this is middle of november november 15th gobbling just like it was in spring you just come right in over the top of the heard him gobble over the mountain he come right in on top and gobble real big when he got off on the side and off down just gobbled out of here and that same morning I sat there and of course back in those days we had turkeys and we had lots of turkeys and I was sitting up there I hadn't seen a deer, hadn't seen anything and I heard something and it started getting louder and louder and there was 41 I counted 41 turkeys that come in in one bunch and it was that time of year where they'd all got together there was six

or seven big gobbers in a bunch there was young turkeys there were was, you know, there was hens, but the best I can remember, there was 41 that I counted because they just, they were all over me, you know, just digging the woods up. So anyway, long about 10 o'clock, back north, you could hear this dog coming, just barely hear him. And in a minute, he topped out, crossed the highway, crossed on the next mountain. You come right through what we call Cicero Gap, come right through the gap north of us. And I mean, it was a single dog, and he was, he was, he was, he was, he was, he was, you could tell he was, and he was, he was a, you could tell he was a good dog. And anyway, he'd just come on, just out, wow, out, he'd come right off down, how, how, out, cross the highway, how.

Where I'm sitting in that gap, you can look across west over there, and you can see a big long leg that went right into that gap where Uncle Ari was. Now, Uncle Laurie, he was a shotgun guy, but that particular morning he had taken his third, 30 30. He had a 30 30. He very seldom ever hunted with it, but we were still hunting, so he'd taken it that morning. But anyway, that dog just, ow, ow, ow, ow. And he hit the end of that leg, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow. He gets about halfway up. And so it's pretty exciting, you know. And of course, we didn't have phones. We didn't have radios. We didn't have nothing. But I knew the dog just ow, ow, how, right? It was just hushed. And so I knew I knew he'd killed deer. So I couldn't stand it.

It was about 10.30. I sailed off the hogger, you know. And, of course, I could, I wasn't but 23 years old. So I could run up a pine tree, you know, right over there I went. But I never forget walking up into that gap. And when I walked up into the gap, I could see the deer's horns laying. I seen the deer before I actually seen Uncle Laurie. I got up there, Clay, and that was at that time, I'd never seen a buck deer like that.

I mean, he was a mainframe 12. I mean a bigan. I mean a big buck. I was just a style. I don't know. I was more proud of him. I mean, I was ecstatic over the thing, you know. And Oklahoma Ori was just like another day, you know, but he was tickled to because he had a couple sets of horns at his house.

He had a, he had another mainframe 12 and he had a mainframe 14 that he kept inside his house. And the 14 point, I mean, it wasn't, it was a mainframe 14. And it wasn't kickers, but he was narrow. But the other one was a lot like the one he killed. Anyway, we shook hands and, you know, I was just so happy for him. Anyway, we grabbed the deer and we drag him off down the mountain. And it's a long way. It's probably a quarter, maybe back to the rig.

He didn't want to gut him in the gap, you know, so we drug him off the mountain and we got off down there on the branch. And we got down there. We gutted that dude. and washed him out the best we could. It wasn't a whole lot of water in the branch. We washed him out the best we could. And so we get him, we drag him out down to the,

to the old Dotson. So we've got the buck deer and the dog, and we're at the Dotson. I just opened up the hatch of that, that Dotson. And we just picked that gutted deer up and we just saw him right in the back of that Dotson.

It kind of prompt me Bup where he wouldn't bleed out, you know, in the thing. Like I had good sense. and throw that dog right in on top of him, if you don't. So, anyway, we take off and we come back and we bring him. I lived out at the lake out here on 8 West at the time, and we brought him out. I've got a picture of that deer being him.

It's a Polaroid picture of me and him with that deer hanging from a tree. And we gutted the deer. I'm not gutted, but we skint the deer. And we cut him in half. We halved him. And we called the guy, his name was on the, collar. It was one of the loony boys that lived back over. They were hunting in there south and Nunley back in there on that still house country. And that deer, he was

headed to Costod. You know, I mean, and that's the way they do. They just line out. But anyway, we took that deer, half that deer and that dog, and we went to his house. And, you know, that's what you're supposed to do back then. You know, somebody's dog's running deer, you know, they deserve their portion of it. And he was tickled to death because a lot of people didn't do that. We took him, we took him half the deer and the dog. But the car, you know, I washed that dude out and I cleaned it up the best. I could, you know, of course, it had one those spare tar deals down in it, you know, in the back there. And somehow, that blood, that blood got down into spare tar, and this is no lie. For a year after that, when it got real hot.

God, it smelled like a buck there. That is no lie. And I'm telling you, when we sold it, it smelled it. It smelled like a buck there. What they got on in there? But, oh, but just, you know, you ain't got no sense if you do stuff like that. But that's just what we did. You know, we just throw it up there like we had good sense.

Yeah. That was a great story. As he spoke, I could just see the landscape. I could see those turkeys, the dog, the buck. And you can imagine them cramming that bug. sucking that dog in that little car and giving half of the deer to the owner of the dog. That's some OG stuff, as in original gangster stuff. That was a great story, Andy.

Thank you so much for telling it. Our next story is from a good friend of Andy's and mine. He's a veteran white tail hunter named Mitch Sykes, also from Western Arkansas. This is about one of the best bucks Mitch has ever killed in the strange thing that he did. Well, I'll tell you, this deer right here is another deer that I learned to learn something about. He's one of the better deer I've killed, just a heavy 11 point. But the year before, he was just a real nice 10 point. And believe it or not, he was just about as big the year before, maybe not as heavy.

And he didn't have that kicker out there, but a really good deer. And he was on our place down there where we hunt. And my daughter, that's the one she had her heart set on. and I hunted down there a few times and every time I hunted I saw him and he was just, he was too big to pass but I passed him because I kept thinking she'd get a shot at him

and she never did and ended up you know we go into the next year and I don't know I started putting out of camera probably the 15th October maybe about the first October and he is down there solid at every place where deer scrape

and deer travel he's there and he's a little bigger and I mean she had her heart set on him and she doesn't bohunt so muzzleloading season comes and she was in college she hunted him that first weekend and didn't see him but I was just getting his picture

daytime picture it just wouldn't be where she was at night time I was getting pictures of him I didn't think he was leaving the place he was just at every camera just staying down there had a bunch of doze down there and some other bucks but he was there every day and I think I

maybe a couple of days early in the week. And the last weekend of Musleodin was coming on, and I took off that Friday to hunt, and I didn't want to hunt down there because I knew she was going to get the coming in hunt over the weekend. So I've got a place leased that I cut hay off of. It's about almost three miles down the river. I hadn't been in there.

I've got an old buddy stand that's in a tree that I'm just hoping that the strap's not rotten. It's one of those that's just there. And I thought, I'm going to go down there for a change of scenery. And I think my wife going to work maybe the morning before had seen a good buck crossed the highway right in there going into that part of the kind of into that area. And I thought, well, I'll go down there and see what I see.

You can big old long hay field. It's real narrow, but it's right on the river. And right between the field and the river, there's a bunch of switch canes and some big old hardwoods. So I normally see quite a few deer in there. In that morning, I remember when I got up in my stand, I didn't cut. I didn't cut hay because it had some Johnson grass in it and we got an early frost and I didn't want to put up bad hay anyway that Johnson grass had turned white and sometimes you don't want to do that when it gets stressed like that, feed it to cows. So there was still some pretty tall Johnson grass out in this field that I'd walked in. I'd walk right up the edge of it.

Got up in my stand and when I got up there it was a full moon that morning. And I got settled down and when I looked, I looked down there in the field, I seen something. in the moonlight I could see something white. I could tell it was moving. And I didn't know if it was a skunk's tail or something, but I could tell something was moving. I got my binoculars. And it was a buck.

Beted down, not 50 yards from me in that Johnson grass. Just a, I'm going to say, maybe a two-and-a-half-year-old eight-point real white horn. It's not a big deer at all, but he was bedded down. And I thought, man, how did I ever, how did that deer let me walk in here and not because I had a headlamp on you know um i don't know he just stayed put but when i got up elevated like that i could see him but anyway as it got closer to daylight the deer finally got up and he just walked right straight away from me and right on the edge of that field there's a bunch of big pin oak trees and they dropped pin oak acres and them deer love and pinocacres and a bunch of low laying

branches there's scrapes all up and down the edge of that he kind of walked over there to the edge of that field and went into switch cane and went out of sight. It was right about the break, right about the break of daylight. And anyway, it started getting a little bit lighter, and I just took my binoculars, and I thought, well, I can probably see to the far end with these binoculars, and I just kind of scanned the field. And when I got back behind me, the way I had walked in, I seen a deer standing there under a pin oak tree making a scrape.

And as soon as I seen it, I said, that is a big buck. I mean, that's a big buck. And I was nervous as could be because he was about a hundred and twenty-five yards from me. And that field edge stays that. And I'm not comfortable shooting that far with my muzzleloader. I normally shoot my muzzleloader about once a year at 50 yards, and I'm about an inch high, and I call that good. Yeah. And I remember thinking, I hope he comes closer to me, but I knew he was going to go right down that field edge where all those scrapes were. and he ended up going right down the edge of that

and I had to watch him walk probably about 100 yards until he got to where I could actually shoot at him and he was a little over 100 yards and I just I remembered I just held a little bit higher than I should you know kind of like a real high shoulder shot and when I shot he took off out of there like I had not touched him just perfect just out of sight and I set up there like you normally do I don't know an hour or so

you know, worrying about my shot, replaying it in my mind, and got down and went over there. Actually, when I got out into the field and I could see, I could see him laying out there. And I was real surprised when I got to him, I thought, that is that 11 point. My daughter has been hunting that I've been getting tons and tons of pictures of. Well, I pulled my card that day,

and I had this buck on my place, I think it was like at 3.39 a.m. and I killed him about 7 a.m., three miles, about two and a half miles down the river. So I would have never believed that, but you sat there and think, I mean, a lot of that's hay metas and switch. I mean, it's not hard terrain, but I don't know about just taking off. I mean, me and you could be there in, you know, an hour or less than that. Yeah. But, you know, I was kind of sad for her, but I was excited.

So when you shot that, you didn't think, you had no. I had no idea. You were just shooting a big buck. Yes, yeah. Yeah. Actually. And he was, I actually thought he was, you know, if I had missed him, I would have not thought he was that deer.

I would have thought he was bigger. Yeah. They always look bigger. But I thought he was a really big buck. That is a beautiful deer, man. He is a good deer. You learn so much from stories like this. Sometimes you wonder where a new buck comes from.

And other times you wonder where a buck goes when he never comes back. It's rare someone is on the. the receiving end of both questions. Thank you, Mitch. 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 contests, 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 Ronella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good. turkey noises and getting action. Our next story is from the one and only, Pablo Esquival from Alabama. Episode 323 of Bear Greece, you can listen to his whole life story, which is very interesting.

This dear story involves the shedding of clothes. Hey, hello, so my name is Pablo Esquiviel. I'm from Baylor, Alabama, originally from Costa Rica. And as I progress in my hunting career, you know, I killed that eight-point bug, rather the small bug being the first year ever. I went into a drought. A couple of years went by grinding my way in the woods, man, trying to find another one. And I'm on this piece of public where it was a rifle day's. So as I'm walking down, well, I set up for the morning, didn't see anything, climbed back down and keep scouting, dash hunting, like still hunting my way into it.

finally made it down on this holler, sat down for a little bit, didn't see much. Another, you know, two, three hours went by, and next thing you know, I'm waking up because I was sleeping. So I woke up for a quick nap and I was like, well, I might as well keep on hunting. It's about 1 o'clock in the evening. As I'm still hunting my way into the woods, I thought I seen something moving maybe about 100 yards. Stop, got down on my knees, the briars and everything was a little bit high. And I decided to just hunker down and wait. And I waited.

And of course, in that moment, every noise becomes a deer, every moving leaf, any bush becomes a deer, right? So I'm not having a good time because I'm second guessing myself. And eventually, after a good 45 minutes of standing still, I come to realize that, no, I'm fooling myself. and I have to keep going. So I stood up and took two steps. Boom, a spike jumps up and takes up running. And I was about to cry, man, because I was like, that was the deer that I was looking for.

He runs and he hugs to the right side of a mountain and just goes up. So it broke my heart once again that I made another mistake that I was so close, especially being on this drought. And I sat on a rock like literally. on the only rug that I was pretty much right there on the spot, sat on it, put my rival on the ground, and I was reflecting about like, man, how come I keep making these mistakes? How come I keep failing?

I'm just not good enough for this, right? So as I'm beating on myself right there, I heard something, and I look up. And it's that book that comes down the hill and it stops maybe about 40 yards looking at me while I'm sitting on the rug. The rifle is on the ground. So I'm just like, we're doing like a staring contest looking at each other's like, oh my God, he takes two steps and I picked up the rifle. He takes two more and stops.

And I got a perfect brush shot on him, smoked him with the 30-06. He takes up running, piles up. Man, man, man, man. We're talking about like a pump, dude, you know? Because I was like out of nowhere. He came back out. So I got to him. I remember I took videos and pictures and I was extremely excited,

even though it was only a spike. But once again, I was breaking the eyes on this private, I mean on this piece of public, right? So welcome to him, and then the phone begins. Now I got a dragon. And I forgot that I was doing a stalk hunting. And I'm like three miles away from the truck. And I said, not a big deal.

Man, at the time I had a, I didn't have a saddle like I did now. I had a climber And it was the one made with the steel Instead of aluminum So he was 60 pounds Plus the buck Plus the rifle I started making my way out

And he got hot He got very hot That they And I started stripping down my clothes As I was walking up And I took my jacket up then I took my t-shirt of Then I took my pants off

And I made it on top of the hill And I was literally on my boxers On my underwear and this old man comes up and he was looking at me he's like are you a hind? Are you okay? And I was like man gasping for air panting I was like to kill a buck

He's like what happened with your clothes man And I said well it's too bad And I've been dragging him all the way from that holler So that old man he was kind enough That he helped me dragging all the way to the truck And I didn't have a knife at the time either As usual So, you know, all the goods, everything is still in him.

But I was able to make it. And that was the boxer buck, you know, because I end up walking up with my underwear. Because I was, man, seriously, it was really hard. It was like a life-threatening situation. It might have been not that bad, but I was feeling the need to, like, I had to cool off where I'm going to make it. And I sure did. I sure did make it with him.

That was a good story, Pablo. I always appreciate your appetite for learning and your ability to be self-deprecating. It's hard not to like somebody that's humble. Thank you so much. Our final story is from an old gentleman from Alabama. He's got walls full of big deer and a custom pine coffin sitting on saw horses

ready for when his time comes. There aren't many folks like him. I'll let him introduce himself. I'm Claude Strother from Gastonburg, Alabama. I got an old family home. I've made a hunting camp out of and it's entertained a lot of guests over the years. And I considered the best free hunting lodge in Alabama. And a lady killed a buck last year.

We've been hunting deer here for 30 years. And she was the 134th person. to kill her first buck hunting out of my camp house hunting from my camp out and I just like being around people and I like I like entertaining

my wife and I have entertained some parties up to 200 folks before we just like to entertain and give them a chance to hunt a lot of folks didn't have a place to hunt and didn't know a lot of them didn't know anything about hunting

and I found out I don't think I've ever had a woman miss a shop or a girl. They're just pretty much 100% on, but we've had some great hunts and great times. It just was a house built in 1893. It was a railroad town. And when the railroad came through, houses popped up, and it was in the family, and I ended up with it and just knocked out a couple of walls and made a living area and kitchen and the rest of its bedrooms.

I got, I think, nine beds in here scattered around. It's just kind of the headquarters. I started in 76. That's when I started turkey hunting. I went back and wrote 15 or 20 pages of recap of what I had done up until then. and then since 76, every hunt, deal hunt, turkey hunt, fishing trip, everything is documented, you know, hundreds of pages and ultra fine. And I can go back to you, everybody ever killed a deer on the place.

Every hunt I've been on whether I kill a turkey or not, I write the hunts up. And I go back and read them occasionally, you know, just pick up one. I'm on my fourth book, and it's something I've enjoyed. I don't let many folks anybody read it, because I can talk pretty bad about you in it if you mess up. I can get pretty brutal. Here's a memorable story that involves the men's cologne, Jade East. That's right, Jade East.

And they've asked me to see if I can tell a deal story. I'm going to tell the J.D.E. story first. I had three guys from Florida with me, went up to Oval, and I met my brother-in-law, Lynn Skipper, to go deal hunting. We were four-day, about 30 minutes. Lynn got out of his car, and we got out, and he reached back in the car. and got a bottle of J.D.E.D. East and put it all over him. And we all laughed. Said, what are you doing? He said, if you want to kill a deal, you got to put on J.D. East.

And so we were laughing. You could have us a quarter mile. So all of them put on Jade East. And they went on in the woods, Lynn walked them in and told them where to go. And I sat in the truck waiting. About daylight, a big buck, some dough came right by me. I wasn't going to shoot one. By 8 o'clock, all four of them had shot, and I cranked up my truck and went in the woods and picked them up, and all four of them had killed nice bucks. Lynn had killed a beautiful 17-point,

and it was all because of the Jade East. Lime flavored now. It's just a perfume, a men's perfume you put on a little bit, not pour all over you. You know, it worked. It was just a miracle. Having to catch every buck in the world in rut that day, moving around, you know. It's funny the things that you remember from deer hunting.

All I know is those boys must have been playing the wind. I can't thank you enough for listening to Bear Grease. These stories always speak to my soul. I feel like deer stories carry in some. of them a value system. When you hear a storyteller talk, you can tell what he values by what he emphasizes,

what he remembers, how he interprets the situation. And it always just gets me fired up for deer hunting and just makes me grateful, grateful to be able to hunt such a majestic beast as the white-tailed deer,

America's favorite big-game animal. And what a beautiful, precious, sacred time that it is in October and November when we're hunting them. Brent, Lake and I can't thank you enough for listening to this bear grease feed. Thank you for supporting our partners. Thank you for sharing this podcast with your friends. And I think we've got one more deer stories episode left in us. So keep the wild places wild because that's where the bears and the bucks live.

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. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.