Bear Grease - Ep. 385: Deer Stories - Narcs, Buckin’ Mules, and Fightin’ Bucks

Episode Date: November 5, 2025

In this episode of the Bear Grease Render, host Clay Newcomb leads us through another round of deer stories from a crew of storytellers out of Arkansas and Mississippi. From mule rodeos and monster bucks to missed shots and the making of memories with loved ones, this one’s full of good humor, heart, and classic hunting tales you won’t want to miss. 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. To the deer hunter, the ebbs and flows of nature's calendar become built into our lives. We become fixated on small temperature changes, length of day, the changing visuals as summer shadows shift to the long shadows of autumn. Leaf color. The date is November the 5th, which is undoubtedly one of the top 10 days for encountering a big buck on his feet in the daytime on a

calendar with 355 other options. One of the first big bucks I kill with my bow was on November 5th, and the date will never leave me. We're about to listen to five storytellers, and three are thematic, in that it's a buddy telling a story about his other buddy's mishaps, which is one of my favorite genres. The other two are just top-shelf deer stories with monster bucks hitting the dirt. I really doubt that you're going to want to miss this one. And don't forget to check out season 13 of Stephen Ronella's show Meat Eater on the Meat Eater YouTube channel. And don't forget to get your live tour tickets in the cities that aren't sold out.

It's going to be a great show. I was just fixing to touch the trigger on release and they busted loose. And when they broke loose, the loser come running straight at me. and he run right past me, and he run four steps of me. Well, when I turned back around, the 161-inch deer was standing four steps for me. And I was afraid when I turned the arrow loose that my arrow wasn't going to clear the bow. 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 my friend Matt Taylor. He grew up on a chicken farm, has a master's degree in business. He's an outstanding father, and he's in his late 40s and can probably run a 40-yard dash

in under five seconds. But most importantly, Matt is a lifelong, Deer Hunter, and he's going to tell us the highlight stories of their public land camp that he's been a part of for over 30 years. Yeah, so my name's Matt Taylor, and I've been hunting down in the Wastaw Mountains of Arkansas for really all my life. But some of the stories I'm going to tell are related to a camp that I've been a part of for right at 30 years.

I joined this camp. I was working for a guy and his nephew went to work for us. His name's Russell. And he went to work for us and Russell's about my age. We got to be good friends and started going deer hunting with him and joined his camp. At that time, it was one camper, which was his dad, Ernie. Ernie had an old camper and it was just a family camp. And there would be, I don't know, seven, eight of us sleeping in that old camper.

and we'd wake up in the morning, camper full of smoke from Ernie's cigarettes. And I mean, full of smoke, chain smoking while he's cooking his breakfast. But it was just that kind of camp. Eventually I got my own camper and the camp got a little bigger. I had kids, Russell had kids. We raised our kids together kind of every fall going to deer camp together. And it's a big part of our lives. But Ernie's now in his late 70s.

And Ernie always had a pack of hounds We'd dog hunt during rifle season And Ernie and his One of Russell's boys, Levi, were hunting together And they They had a good dog race going Russell was out there with them They got on a good deer

Ernie cut off the race Him and Levi And he said Bucks kind of stepped out And it was mostly hid behind a tree His head was sticking out And I think he was going to try A neck shooter or something

and he raised up and fired. And he said that deer went to jumping and hopping and flipping and bouncing off the ground. He's never seen a deer act like that before. And he's kind of panicking, you know, he jacked another shell on that old 30-30 and fired again. And when he did, the deer hit the ground. And Ernie, he always cut their throat. He's kind of an old school. You got to bleed him out.

You know, when he kills a deer, he slices their throat, bleed them out. Well, him and Levi get up there and that deer is laying there. of kicking around a little bit and Ernie gets up there, he gets his pocket knife out and slices his deer throat and that's the end of that. Well, Russell comes down there. They're all happy about it. One of the deer's antlers broke off. Ernie said, yeah, when it hit the ground, I guess it broke one of its antlers off.

So they load it up, take it down back to camp, hang it up, and they start skinning it. And Russell's helping them skin it, and they're looking for the bullet wound. And there's no bullet in this deer in its body anywhere. And they skinning and they're looking at over close. I mean, nowhere, not in the neck, not the head, nowhere. And they get to looking. And there's a kind of an indention in the base of the antlers.

And Russell starts kind of putting two and two together here. And he finds an indention, kind of a broken spot in the very base of the antler. He's like, you hit that deer out there. And then he takes the broken off part of the antler and kind of reconnects it. And there's another hole there. His first shot hit the base of that deer's antler and kind of knocked it crazy. And it's flipping and jumping around. He fires another shot, hits it in the antlers again and shot its antler off.

And that's when it, like, stunned it enough to lay down. Two shots to the antlers. Never touched the hair on this deer. The only reason the deer's dead is because he sliced his throat. Like that deer, if he hadn't of it, would have eventually got up and run off and been fine. So he killed a deer without ever hitting it in the body. You know, Ernie's funny. He probably doesn't even still have them antlers.

Antlers never meant nothing to him. Never had a deer mount hanging in his house. Hunt is all his life. You know, just a mountain man, deer killer. But he loved to how to hunt, things like that. but it wasn't that big a deal to him. He didn't like keep the antlers to show them off and tell the story. It's just another deer.

Let's see. Another story, Russell's nephew, Cody, has been hunting with us since he was a baby. I remember Cody being like three, four years old, hanging around the deer camp. And the biggest buck I ever killed, I've got a picture of Cody holding that deer when he was maybe six or eight. well he's a grown man now I guess this was probably five, six years ago I think Cody was roughly 25 years old at the time

he's camping with us and we're having a good camp killed some deer and it's the end of the end of the week and it's time to break camp well I had this you hear of tanneride powder I had bought some from my son and his buddy that went up with us

they're young teenagers, maybe 12, 13 years old. And in the middle of the day, we'd go hunting the morning. And they'd target shoot with like 22s and stuff in the middle of the day, killing time before we'd go hunting the evening and just kind of honing their skill, give them something to do. I'd bought this tanner out. I'd heard of it. People shoot it.

It goes boom. And thought that'd be fun for them. We'll do some of that. So I mixed it up. I guess if I remember out, it's two powders. You mix it up. and then you put it out there, and if you shoot it, it explodes. The more you put out, the bigger the explosion.

Pretty big explosion, yeah. I mean, it's scary. But we'd make some little bags of it, and we'd like hanging on a tree or something. They'd target shoot and see you could shoot it and make it go boom. Well, they did that several times. Well, at the end of the camp, had quite a bit of it left, and I'd already mixed it together,

so it's like carrying around a stick of dynamite, I didn't want it. I'm going to pour it out or something. I didn't know what to do with it. I asked Cody. I said, do you want this? He said, no, I don't want it. I said, well, throw it away, I guess.

He took it. We had a fire that morning. It was cold. And a pretty good fire. And still a good bed of coals in the fire pit. Well, Cody kind of walks around in the edge of camp where we're all packing up. And he barely got, well, let me back up. up. Cody was sporting a brand new hunting vest and I'm real proud of this thing like he'd spent

some money and got him a real nice orange fist had extra pockets on the front what not to carry his powders we're muzzle over hunting he's wearing that thing and we're done hunting he's still wearing he's real proud of it when Cody takes that powder that tanneride powder and walks around the edge of the camper and I don't know where he's going to think he's going to think he's going to dump it out he literally stands over that fire pit and just drops it in thinking, I don't know, that it's going to burn like paper. It was the biggest explosion I've ever heard in my life. Shook the camper, shook the earth under my feet.

Like, I thought, I thought somebody dropped a bomb on us. And it scared everybody in camp. And I look up and Cody comes around the edge of the camper. You know that movie Home Alone where Marv gets shocked? And he's like smoking and, trembling walking around that was cody he comes shaking walking around feeling for where he's going he can't see there's not a hair on his face it's all burn off that new vest he was sporting completely melted all the mudlater pyrtex powders went off in his vest he scorched and he's smoking

i mean smoke coming off of him i desperately wanted to reach for my phone and start videoing, but I was afraid he was really hurt. I couldn't do it. I wish now I had it. Golly, I've never seen anything like it. I don't know how he didn't die from this explosion. I'm assuming it knocked him down.

He's not real sure. It was so dramatic at the time. Like I said, he couldn't see. His eyes were all messed up. We had to give him sunglasses. His eyes were burning. We flushed him out as best we could. and he couldn't drive.

He couldn't do anything. We had to take him off down the mountain. His sister's a nurse, and we took him home, and she looked him over, and I think he ended up going to the ER and getting some treatment and being okay, but he had to regrow the hair on his face

and everything else. It was quite the move to drop a bomb in a fire. So the worst part is that wasn't the end of the self-destruction for Cody the very next year. And we're having a good camp and Russell kills a deer. And well, Cody in the off season had purchased a brand new side by side. He's real proud of that.

Kind of like the vest the year before. You know this nice side by side. So Russell shoots this deer and comes back to camp. He's like, hey, Cody, let's take your side by side down and get this deer. It's a little off this rough road. We can get that side by side of there and get it. And so they load up. And they go down to get this deer, and they get down there, and the deer's still kicking.

And Cody's like, you sure this thing's dead? And Russell said, oh, it's fine. Just grab it. It'll be dead by the time we get it loaded up. Well, Cody reaches around to get the back legs and Russell the front of the deer. They drag it over and start to load it, and this deer just kicks with all its force, all its might, kicks Cody right in the eye with a sharp part of its hood, knocks him plumb down. And he gets up whining, and Russell's like, come on, let's load this deer. And he's like, again, feeling around.

He can't see. There's blood coming out of his eye. I mean, it got him good. And Russell looked up and was like, oh, he really is hurting. So they somehow get this deer loaded up. Of course, Cody can't see again. So Russell has to drive. And they get in the side of the side, and they head back up the mountain to camp.

And they pull in the camp there. and they go to unload the deer and the deer's not there. What happened here? Cody doesn't go back. Russell goes back. The deer's laying in the middle of the road. It flopped out somehow.

And finally he is really dead. Well, he got it back loaded up. Brought the camp. Well, Cody, man, he's suffering. His eyes swollen, bloody, scraped up. And he's left-handed, and it's his left eye. We've got a lot of hunting to do left. He's just all upset.

You know, I can't seize, he can't hunt. So we dig around there. We don't have a first aid kit, but somebody had a roll of electric tape, and we taped up some paper towel or something, fashioned him up an eye patch. So he could at least cover that eye because it hurts so bad.

And he starts practicing shooting right-handed. So he could try it up the next day. And I don't know if he ever did or not. I don't remember, but, man, he had some tough times for a couple years there at kids. Yeah, we've had some wild times at camp, but man, we've had some really great times. And the past couple years in particular for me have been exceptional because my two daughters, who are now 7 and 11, June and Kate, they've been hunting with me.

I start them out at four years old. They go hunting with me. And they just love it. They love deer camping. They love going out in the woods. June's actually shooting age now. She actually killed two deer last year. and we were hunting and just had a special time in the woods.

I bought her a tripod because she can't really hold the muzzle over her up by herself. She's pretty small. And, man, she killed one doe. And the next day, we had a big buck come in on us. And Kate spotted it first. And we're all excited, but it came where the gun wasn't pointed. And there was no way. We're three of us sitting on the ground.

And we're like 20 yards of this buck. And he works is great. He's rubbing a little tree there. I can't believe he doesn't see us. And I can't figure out a way to get June to shoot this deer and point at it. And it's just getting closer. And I finally had to scoop up the muzzleloader and shoot it myself. But it was, I look over in June's got tears in her eyes with excitement.

Like no part of her was disappointed. She's just incredibly excited. Both girls weren't special. And then this year, very similar thing. We're hunting on the opposite side of the mountain, but the same general area. We hiked down about a half mile in before dark,

hunting a good old logging road with some scrapes in it, and we get out there and we shoot a coyote first thing. I can't pass a coyote. I just shoot it when I see him. And we kill that thing, and then 20 minutes later, here comes a big buck. Well, the problem is it was supposed to be June shooting again, but she forgot her tripod and the camper this time.

So I'm the shooter, and this big buck comes by. And we shot it and got it, and it was just incredibly special. This time, it's funny. This time it was Kate that had tears and eyes with just pure excitement and joy. But two of my top five bucks I've ever killed, back-to-back years, with those girls with me was pretty special. And just, you know, we built so many memories with the kids in the woods, you know, whether it's my kids or Russell's kids,

and now Russell's kids having kids, and it's just something we're going to continue and have a family camp and something I wouldn't trade for anything. Those were some good stories, Matt, and I find it interesting that of all the years and all the good deer that you guys have kids, that these are the iconic stories of your camp.

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.

in 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 know something. I'm Jordan Sillers. Season 2 of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, I Heart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Continuing on with this theme and my favorite genre of stories, our next story is from Gary Farmer, who lives deep in the central Ozarks. He's a ferrier, a horse shoeer, a professional auctioneer.

He's a lifelong squirrel dog trainer that has probably killed as many gray squirrels over tree dog as any living human. But he's also a veteran deer hunter that has killed stacks of public land white tails. But when I came to his house one cold evening in late October and asked for his favorite deer story, he told me this one about a beloved member of their camp named Teddy. These guys have all hunted together for decades for like their whole lives, really, and they use mules. And this story involves one of Teddy's good ones, a good mule that is.

Last year, it was all out there deer hunting, and someone wanted to make a drive, and we don't hardly do that. Anyhow, two or three lined up on this ridge, kind of scattered out, and going to make a drive. So I got the worst part of the deal. Well, maybe not the worst part. Teddy ended up getting the worst part, but he rode his mule, around a bench and I went down farther down and I'd never been through there and I've been back in that country on and off all my life and it was straight up and you'd go a little

ways and it's level and then it dropped straight back down and just deep holler anyway we go to this ridge making this drive and I pop out on this ridge you know how it is sometimes in deer season early some days it's fairly warm I had too many clothes on it warm and I just laid back there. I had my cap off and it's hot. I was laying back there a minute before I walked out there and I saw orange coming with his teddy on his mule and he rode down there and I laid there and talked to him a minute. I got up and I said well I'd very get out of here and he moved his foot out of the stirrup and he said get on let's see if she'll ride double and I said nah I'll just walk and all come up and

on. And I said, no, really. I just assumed to walk. He said, are you scared? And when he said that, I just stuck my foot and stirrup, reached over and grabbed back the saddle. And I said, Teddy, this ain't going to work. I said, I can tell by her eye. And he said, get on. I've rolled her a million miles. And when I crawled on her, she went to hogging, went to bucking. She was trying to buck. She couldn't really buck hard with both of us on there, but she was trying. I said, turn her uphill, was turned downhill. And anyway, he turned her uphill, and I had nothing to hold on to but him. And I honestly thought if I was off, she'd quit.

I didn't even try to stay on, just a couple of licks. And she kind of thawed me, and I kind of, I didn't even really try anyway. but oh my gosh she went to bucking then now I'm talking she was rare and I thought she's going to flip over backwards on him swap I thought she was just ran straight up and in this I call a bull lunge just like that just he wrote her I don't know four or five or five or six legs and she threw him and you could see 200 yards down this point and she left out and you left out and you she bucked the entire way. Them saddlebag, those saddlebags were slapping one another.

And he had a, had like a 44 magnum stuck in the scalbert. And about a little over halfway down that point, you couldn't hardly pull this gun out that scalper when he would get done hunting and try to take it out. This gun come out of this scalbert, and I'll guarantee you it went eight foot in the air. And it was just doing like this. It was turned somersault. I mean, I kept my eye on that. And I asked him, I said, you okay?

And, oh, I said, I'm going to go get your gun. So I headed down there, and I picked his gun up. And I said, we'll never see that mule again. Anyhow, in a little bit, something caught my attention, and she was above me coming back around the hill, and he was hobbling up through there towards her. But after I thought about it, She was going back the way he rode her an aunt from camp around.

That's the way he had came. That's why she was made that circle and was going back. Well, he got her caught, and he got back down there, and I said, are you okay? And he said, I've messed my shoulder up. I've ruined my shoulder, and I've broke my ankle. I said, you got a broke ankle? He said, yeah. And I said, my goodness, you want me to try to get a side-by-side

or four-wheelerers down here and get you and he said, oh, I'll be all right. But anyway, he ended up he didn't have a broke ankle, but he had to have surgery on his shoulder. And he'll have trouble with it. It'll never be right. All from asking me to ride double. And I could tell when I went to get on, that mule, just the look, it gave me out of it. I knew. I knew better.

That was a good story, Gary. And as a follow-up, that just happened last year. year and Teddy is in his mid-60s and he did hurt his shoulder but not enough to keep him from going to the log woods every day. Old Teddy is tough and if he had his turn he could probably tell a few good stories on Gary too. But we're going to jump off the theme of ratting out hunting buddies and just hear a straight up good deer hunting story from a man that's well known in many bohunting circles. His name is Richard Fought. He's an accomplished public land bowhunter and this one is about some fighting bucks.

Yeah, I'm Richard Fault from down here in Lone Oak, Arkansas. Man, I'll tell you about this buck I killed off the ground. My nephew, Nathan, he was 12 or 13 years old, and we was headed into a place on one of the WMAs that we hunt here on the river. And it was mid-November, it was actually the youth hunt was going on in Arkansas on some of the WMAs, and that's the reason we was in this, particular one. We were bow hunting and there was not a youth hunt on it. He wanted to bow hunt instead of gun hunt, so that's what we were doing. He was a full moon night, so we were going to hunt midday. Wanted to be in staying midday. So we get to the place we're going to walk in at and I actually had left. I had been in a scout a couple of days earlier and had left a climbing stand. He had under a log back there so I didn't have to tote it in if I wanted to hunt there. We was going to walk mile, mile on a quarter, something like that in. We get about three-tenths of the mile from the truck. Now, Nate, you got a picture Nate.

Nate is, Nate at this time, is four foot tall, and he's 60 pounds, and he's got a climbing stand on his back, and it's hitting his heels about every time he stops. I think it was an old man stand,

that's what it was. And, I mean, he's a little bitty fellow, and he's walking behind me, and he's clickety clacking in. Well, the wind's blowing real hard. So as we're walking in, we get about three-tenths of a mile from the truck,

and I look up, and I see a 150-inch deer. He's 22, 23-inch-wide. I actually killed, had already, killed a 163 inch buck in there just across the road from there that was 23 inches wide so i mean he was he was he was in that caliber of buck not quite as good but really good buck and he was he was coming straight at us and he was about 30 yards off to our left and he he hadn't seen us and i just

eased Nate down on the ground i kneeled down on my knee and i pop my quiver for whatever reason i used to pop my quiver off every time i got ready to shoot or was shooting so i pop my quiver off and i knocked an arrow Well, the buck got up 60 or 70 yards of us, and he kind of veered off. Well, I had seen some big scrapes out there. And I went to put my quiver back on. I thought, man, I said, let me. I told Nate.

I said, you just stay right here. I said, I'm going to slide right out there and see if maybe I can see that buck. Maybe he went to work. Scrape. When was blowing real hard. Wind was in my favor. I thought, this is going to work. You know, it could work out if he's out there.

So I start sneaking out there, and I get 35, 40 yards from Nate. and I see this buck, or a buck, and he's on his knees, and I'm like, why is he, he's on his front knees, and I'm like, what's he doing? Well, about that time, he just gets shoved backwards, and it's two bucks fighting. It's that buck that buck that I had seen, and what turned out to be a 161-inch buck, these two bucks are fighting, so I just, they're 40 yards, 45, so I just draw, and start walking towards them. I don't know how big the buck is that he's fighting. I just know that he's winning the fight.

So at this point, whichever one of these two bucks gives me the shot, I'm going to take. Man, I'll walk 20 yards of these deer, and I mean, they're after it. They're shoving back and forth, back and forth. And I'm at full draw, and the 161-inch deer is shoving the big eight-point that I had seen, or nine, whatever he was. He was an eight or nine, but he was a big, he's a hundred-fifty-inch deer. and when he gets him stopped, when that smaller buck gets him stopped,

I was fixing to turn an arrow loose on the smaller buck. I didn't have a shot at the buck I ended up killing. But I was just fixing a touch to trigger on release, and they busted loose. And when they broke loose, the loser come running straight at me, and he run right past me, and he run four steps of me.

And for whatever, reason, he caught my attention and I turned my head with him. Well, when I turned back around, the 161 inch deer was standing four steps for me. He had chased him. He had, you know, was, I guess, running him off. But he was standing four steps of me. And I was afraid when I turned the arrow loose that my arrow wasn't going to clear the bow. So I think I, I want to say maybe I leaned back when I went to shoot. I shot the deer right in the chest. And the arrow went in about fletching deep and he just stiffened up and he made a big grunt. Well, blood started pumping out the end of my knock. It's shooting out the, I had a light up knock at the time

they'd first come out and it was shooting out the hole in that knock. And he turned and run out there about 10 yards and fell over. Well, I look up and that other buck that had run off is standing 22 or 23 yards from him trying to catch his breath and I don't have an arrow. And it was one of those situations where I could have killed two deer 150 plus that day had I would have not have left my quiver laying on the ground back there with Nathan. And Nathan got to watch the whole thing from being hunkered down behind me back there. That was a unique experience, Richard, one that most of us will never see. And it's incredible that you had your nephew with you, and I'm sure that this put you in the legendary Uncle Column for Life. Great story. Our next story

is from my friend Whalen Belines from the Ozarks. He's a gunsmith, a mule and horse trainer, and a turkey farmer, but also a lifelong deer hunter. This is the story of an encounter with a true mountain monster while he was holding a brand new gun. It was 2002. Most of our hunting, we'd done off the back of a mule. We grew up running dogs, running beagles.

Dad was always a dog man. and when we shut that down, Dad couldn't set, so me and him, we'd just ride and hunt off our mules. That summer, I had bought, it was a Remington 7,600, 30-a-6 with a scope on it. First scope gun I'd ever had. I've always hunted with a Winchester, lever-action 30-30. Every deer I've ever killed has been with that gun. Well, I'd bought this alt-6, and me and dad started to leave the house that morning, and I come packing that gun out and he said son he said you don't need that with us riding i said oh

we'll see an old doe so i can at least get to kill me a doe he said all right well we'd uh we'd been riding public ground is on up and more and we'd been riding for a while and hadn't seen anything and we was riding along and we heard something coming and they was a dole come off the hill i mean just like a streak we knew buck was after. So I just jumped off my mule, didn't tie him up, just dropped the reins, and I run back, we just passed, we was riding the old logging road, and we'd just passed a fort, and I run back down there to the fort and kind of cut over the hill, and when I stopped, I heard the deer coming and looked, and it was a big forking horn. I let him go by me. I kind of

run on over the hill to get where I could see the next banks below me, and the only thing I can figures this deer heard me and thought I was the little buck chasing the dough still because he'd come up the bench right before I got to where I could see over the break. He stopped behind the cedar tree and I had one hole I could see through. And I'd just seen it was the biggest buck I'd ever seen. I throwed up, put the crosshairs right on his shoulder, pulled the trigger, and he took off. Well, dad always taught me, you want to see him fall. So I just took off running and got around where I could see and I stopped and I could still hear him grunting as he was going away from me.

And I thought, well, not good. So I slowed down then and looked for blood, nothing. And I was sick because, like I said, this was the biggest buck I'd ever seen. I didn't know what he was others than it was a really big deer. and that's why I told Dad because he said, well, what was it? And the only thing I had to compare to, I've got an uncle that's killed some, he's killed some good deer, and I'm talking 140 to 150-inch deer. And I said, he's bigger than anything uncle's got on the wall.

That's the only thing I compared to. Of course, everybody laughed. I told my uncle what I'd said. He got a kick out of that. But got home, because I'd shot this gun a couple of times before I went, and it shot good. And I got home, shot it, didn't even touch the paper.

Being the first gun I'd ever had with the scope one, I knew nothing by the scope. Well, the scope mounts ended up being loose. You could turn the scope inside the mounts. There's no telling us where I hit. I'm just glad I didn't crippling. But anyway, so it ended up being, I think, nine days later before I got a chance to go back.

My wife at the time hadn't started hunting much. She had went with me a time or two. So the morning that I was going to be able to go, and I was going to walk back in there. It was a couple mile walk to where I'd seen him. And so I asked her if she wanted to go, and she said, yeah, she'd go with me. So we walked back in there, and it's a pretty good hike and rough country. And we got back in there and just sat down on the ground. Oh, I took my Winchester 3030 with me.

The Alt 6 got put in the corner and sold shortly thereafter. I took my lever gun and we sat down and like everybody I'd been watching hunting videos and I'd never done a lot of calling or anything I had to grunt too and I'd just watched somebody they was talking about doing a sequence like a buck chasing a doe just man man man drag that last one out and so as we sat down I'd done that and we hadn't been there 10 minutes and we were sitting where there were two fingers running off into a deep canyon. It wasn't right where we've seen him. It was within a quarter probably. I just found a good, it was a good oak flat where a couple old logging roads come together. It was a good looking spot. But anyway, we were sitting there and

the best way I can describe it, because he'd come up out of that canyon. He was on the ridge, just a little ways over from us. And he looked like, he reminded me of an old Tom gopher. He'd come up out of there just walking slow and looking. He come probably 50 or 60 yards up that ridge and got behind some brush. I couldn't see a hair on him. I owe it all to my wife because she could see him. If I'd been by myself, I'd have messed up because I was wanting to see him. And I knew it was the same deer.

I mean, the frame he's got, there was no doubt. And he'd come up, and I don't know how long he stood there. It felt like forever. It was several minutes, but I would want to call or moved to where I could see him, and she would say, he's looking at us, or he's looking this way. And I was sitting there, and I was getting pretty shook up because I was wanting to do something. And finally, she said, he's moving. Well, when he moved, I seen him.

And he turned and just started coming, and he was going to be a broadside, maybe 40 yards. and I just, of course, I had the gun that I had complete faith in then, and I started tracking him, and I said to myself, if he'll stop in that hole, I've got him. And he stopped right in that hole, looked up the hill, I pulled the trigger, he never flinched, he never moved, he didn't do anything. I thought I missed him.

Of course, I was about to panic. I jacked another shell in when I did. He just turned and started walking over the hill. And I didn't want to shoot him in the hips, but I was fixing too. And all of a sudden, he just humped up and fell over. I mean, he never, he never acted like he was hit, nothing. And we sat there for a little while. I was having calmed down because it was, I was a little nervous up.

And when we got up and headed down there, he got bigger the closer. we got and we got down there to him and which he's ended up being 173 and some change is what he is he's a mainframe mate forking back tines got ciggers but the most impressive thing is to me he's got mass he's six i don't remember now six something at the bases but he holds it all the way out because he's like four and a half at the tips all these tines are really massive And I was just in shock because, I mean, it's the biggest thing I'd ever seen. He's the biggest body deer I've ever seen, too, around this far as country. And at the time, we always drug stuff out.

We didn't quarter them up and all that. So me and her drug him probably two miles back to the rig. I mean, we'd drag him for ways, and we'd sit and talk. We'd drag for ways, set and talk. At one point, we were sitting there talking, a little buck walked up on us. while we were sitting there talking. And we finally, it took a while, but we finally got him out. And my first stop was my uncle when I had to go over his house to go home.

And I said, hey, come out here and look at this. And he said, you wasn't lying. He said, that's probably the biggest deer I've ever seen come out of this country. And it was quite the deal. I don't hunt them for the horns anyways. I just enjoy hunting and hunting for the meat. But it was quite the adventure for sure. Wayland's buck truly is a giant.

A 170-inch plus mainframe 8-point. It is a monster. And for the record, Wayland's wife was listening in when he told me this story and confirmed that it happened pretty much the way he described. On blood trails, the stories don't end when the hunt is over. They just get darker. I've seen something in the road.

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

In our next story, we're going to turn back to my favorite theme of rats, out hunting buddies, but this time the one being ratted out is Jordan Blissett's dad Bo. Jordan is a good friend of mine and a true big buck killer from Mississippi. He's going to tag team this story with Backwoods University's own Lake Pickle. And they're going to tell this story together. Lake also works for Onex. And if you need a discount code for your next upgrade, use bear grease, lowercase, one word. Here's Jordan and Lake. Rattin' out, Bo Bless it.

So this is one of the most entertaining slash quickest slash successful deer hunting trips I've ever been on in my life. So by the weekend in Illinois in 2016, so Lake Pickle and myself were working at Primos at the time. We had very, very little off time. And it was approaching rut time in the Midwest around the first week of November. and had zero plans of going anywhere, but it looked like we were going to get a three-day weekend. And I told Lake, I was like, hey, man, we got a place in Illinois that we can go hunt.

Do you want to go? And Lake was like, heck yeah, I'm in. And anyway, the backstory behind the farm in Illinois, been hunting there since I was 15. My dad was actually up there at the time. And on the way to Illinois, I prepped Lake for my dad. So this whole ride up there, granted, Jordan and I at the time didn't know each other that well at all. And I'd never met his dad, Beau Blissitt. And this whole ride from Central Mississippi, Illinois, I'm getting this lowdown on Bo Blissitt and his hunting antics.

And Jordan told me, he said, he is arguably one of the most unsuccessful deer hunters I've ever been around, and he will shoot at something every day, but he's not going to hit it. And I'm laughing at his story, but I'm also assuming that he's kind of joking a little bit. Like I didn't think he was being serious. But anyway, we get up there that evening and get ready because we're going to start hunting the next morning. And the first morning, we just have to be kind of go where Beau wants us to go because we hadn't had a chance to look at anything yet. And so he puts me on this big cut cornfield. And I'm like, all right, you know, I can see a lot.

It's rut time. It's Midwest. It's early in the morning. And I hadn't seen much of anything. And it was probably somewhere between 7.30 and 8 a.m. And I look up across the end, there's like a finger ridge shooting out of this cut cornfield. And I see a big buck. I'm talking 150 plus inch deer running across this open cornfield.

And my first instinct is he's chasing a dough. And then I look and the buck stops and he looks behind him and then he takes off running again. I'm like, that buck's not chasing a dough. He's spooked. next thing I know I see a person who is Bo Blissitt walking across this open cornfield and I'm like, what is this man doing? It's not, it's like 8 o'clock in the morning and it's rut time and he just spooked that deer. What's going on? Come to find out, Bo had seen a doe that morning and had emptied his quiver and lost two eras and had one lodged in a tree and was walking back to the

truck. And so that was my that was my introduction to just, Jordan's father. And that was our morning hunt. And I was like, holy smokes. Jordan wasn't lying. But anyway, Jordan, that kind of cartels us into what happened that afternoon. So we find out after that morning hunt that my dad has procured a new farm to hunt. He tells us that he is not interested in hunting at all because it is way too thick, man.

There's briars and brambles. He can't see nothing. and my dad is the type of guy he wants to be able to see. And, you know, as us as hunters, we kind of know deer-like thickets. But it's way too thick for him to hunt. He said, man, y'all can have that place. It ain't no good. Ain't going to see nothing there.

I look at it on on eggs, and I'm like, this farm is sitting in the right spot. And that afternoon, Lake and I decided to go hunt that particular property. Well, this is where the story even gets a little bit better. because Lake and I, it's a little creek bottom, and he's on one end of it, and I'm on the other. Find little pinch points to hunt best we could, first time walking in this property. And not seeing a whole lot, it's getting about prime time, though.

I mean, it's 5-ish o'clock, about 30 more minutes of daylight left, and I can hear Lake on the ridge over across the creek bottom rattle. And we're 400 yards, 300 yards apart, give or take. Man, I was up there giving it like the full-blown. I mean, you got to think I had been able to hunt the Midwest in a while. So, I mean, like, I don't know how hard I was hitting those antlers together, but I was giving it full bore, you know. So when I initially got that text from Jordan that he could hear me raddling,

I was like, yeah, that's what I'm talking about. You know, I'm like, they're hearing me now. And I hear him rattling. I text him, was like, is that you rattling? He's like, yeah. And I was like, well, I heard you. And it wasn't 30 seconds later. I look up to my left across this little CRP.

peep looking field and there's a buck walking kind of towards lake but kind of angling at me as well and uh he's a nice buck mature buck big body deer and immediately i get pretty wound up and the deer's coming he hops the fence about 70 yards from me and i snort wheeze at him and the deer ends up turning and coming directly at me and keep in mind too this first time we've ever hunted this piece of property. So I walked in there and I didn't want to stink up the area, make too much racket, run the deer out. I ended up getting in a tree, like, the only tree I could fit my climbing stand on, and I'm about seven or eight feet in the air. It's as high as I could get. And the deer ends up walking directly within 10 yards of me. And I shoot him, I hit him good, and I'm all fired up,

and I text late. I was like, I just shot one. He was coming until you're rattling. Well, then I find out that Jordan shot this buck and awesome. I'm like, man, that's a lot. I'm like, man, that That's cool. So I get down, we go find the deer, and the funniest part of all of it, other than it was pretty sweet that Jordan had shot a really good buck, you know, and as we get down there, and Jordan called his dad, so Bo gets over there, and he is keyed up because at this time, Jordan has killed this deer, and we'd been up there for less than 24 hours, and with all the seriousness and in his tone, he was like, man, you know, and this is Bo.

talking to Jordan. He said, you know, I've let y'all, you know, I'll let y'all come up here and hunt my new honey hole. You're going to have to vacate this place now. It's my turn to hunt. The place was too thick for him to hunt. He didn't want nothing to do with it. We went in there and we killed us a deer and all of a sudden we get kicked out. And that was the fastest, most entertaining hunt we've had. At some point, we may have to have a rebuttal from Bo Blissitt himself. I know Lake and Jordan pretty well, and sometimes they're hard on people. But I don't blame Bo for kicking them out of his new honeyhole. I mean, just, you know, how it was discovered is kind of irrelevant to the fact that it was discovered as a honeyhole.

But our final story is a little bit different. And you'll find it doesn't have much to do with deer. But it's told by a unique guy by the name of Father Stephen Gadbury. I mean, his first name is not Father, but you'll get what I mean. Okay. Stephen Gadbury, pastor of St. Teresa Catholic Church in Little Rock, Arkansas. So, as I just, I'm pastor of a big church in Little Rock. So always doing ministry, always preaching the gospel. This story today is about one of my best friends, Jesus. But it's a different Jesus. It's a Spanish-speaking Jesus. His name is Jesus. So a couple of Jesus is in my life. So I'm a lucky guy for that.

So Jesus and I, we go back many years. We've hunted for a long time. And the funnest parts of our hunts is the most random human things that happen in the middle. Okay. So we all have these human experiences of, you know, stubbing your toe or hitting your shin on the coffee table or, you know, you know, getting a gnat in your eye or something or sneezing. Silly things that every human does, but for whatever reason are just kind of funny. These natural reactions. So this, one of the trips that we were. went on. One of these adventures was, um, we laugh about sancudos and calambres. So a sancudo is

a mosquito, but I think sancudo sounds like a really cool word in Spanish. So, so we, we still laugh about these sancudos from this trip that we went on. And on the same trip, we still laugh about some calambres. A calambre is a cramp. We all hate both of those things, right? We hate sancudos. We hate mosquitoes and we hate cramps. We hate calabres. Like there's nothing fun about these of those, about mosquitoes or cramps. So this trip we went on, I'll, you know, not to spoil the story or anything, we both got some sweet bucks. So the point's not the animals that we got, but how we got to those animals. It was a new property we had to go and scout it out. And as we're scouting over these ridges and over these saddles, just a couple haulers that we wanted to check out, we find this

creek down at the bottom and we start following it. We're finding an amazing sign, amazing sign. And Jesus and I are talking. We're chit-chat the whole time like, you know, quietly because we were actively hunting at the time, but hey, look, there's some, look at that sign there. There's a scrape there. Look at that rub. There's, you know, path.

They've been coming to the water here. The cross in there. We get it. And we, at this point, like, we're walking through this grass on the side of the creek. It's probably knee high, knee to waste time. And I'm right in front of Jesus, maybe four steps in front of him. He's fallen behind me. And at one point, I stop and I turn around to whisper to him like, hey, I think, I think we have something up here.

I don't know if it's a buck or a doe, but I just saw something. So I turn around and I tell him that. I'm like, hey, we got something up here. And then he's like, okay, let's say, I said, Jesus, four. And I couldn't quit laughing because he just started speaking in tongues or something. He says, what is going? And by this point, like, he can't even look at me. He can't talk, and he's still coughing, doing this.

After probably 20 seconds go by, he catches his breath and, like, can actually talk. And I don't know what's going on. He said, he says, what happened? He said, he said, I sucked a mosquito in my throat. And so just something so silly and so stupid. But he was talking like Daffy Duffie. And so for the rest of that afternoon, we couldn't quit laughing about that. We finally get back to camp.

That night, we're exhausted from going nonstop. Jesus is a big guy. And as we, you know, we get to bed in the bunk room at the camp there. And around 2 a.m. or so, I hear this ruckets next door, or next door, like across the bunk room. So in the bed next over. And I'm thinking, like, oh, my God, Jesus is having a heart attack. And so, like, I jump up, I'm like, Jesus, Jesus, what's going on? And he's not talking to me.

He's just squirming in the bed. And I'm thinking, oh, God, my best friend's dying. And then finally he just, he stops and everything gets calm. And my brain isn't happy because I'm not thinking like, oh, he's okay. Like, I'm thinking, that's it. And then he looks over at me and smiles. And I'm like, what is going on? He said, I got a cramp in my life.

leg and I couldn't and I couldn't talk or do anything. And so the calamits. That was the second thing in that trip. It was the next day that both of us hammed, just some sweet bucks. But to this day, we still laugh about Sankudos and Calamirez, about the mosquitoes and the crabs. And it was from that adventure that Jesus and I took. It's the stories, the memories, the meat, and the antlers that all combine to make deer

hunting so special. All of us here on the Bear Grease feed hope that your neck deep and big bucks this November making memories with friends and family that will last a lifetime and truly encountering nature in a unique way and seeing it in all its glory. I'd say equally important this November, it's worth it to evaluate the opportunity that we have as American hunters and not take any of this access we have for granted. It seems like every week somebody's trying to sell off our public lands or trying to put a road through America's finest remaining wilderness.

I'm proud to be someone who values true wilderness and the protection of public lands. And I'm also proud to be with a company that I think is truly fighting for American public lands and hunters. And say what you will. But I see nobody doing more for American public lands to my friends and colleagues, Ryan Callahan and Steve Rinella. It's just the way I see it. But we cannot thank you enough

for listening to Bear Greece, Brent's This Country Life podcast, and Lakes Backwoods University. Keep the wild places wild because that's where the bears live. First Lights Fieldware collection is made for the work that happens long before opening day and continues when the season, and ends. Products built for early mornings, full days, and real use. Hard wearing where they need to be

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