Bear Grease - Ep. 389: This Country Life - Never Give Up, But Know When to Say When

Episode Date: November 14, 2025

Never give up. Brent's got two good examples on this episode where that old saying was put to the test. It's great advice, but there comes a time when other responsibilities may take precedence. Knowing the difference between the two is just as important. Harness up! It's time for MeatEater's "This Country Life" podcast. Shop This Country Life Merch Connect with Brent and MeatEater MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Youtube Clips Subscribe to the MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube Shop This Country Life Merch Shop Bear Grease MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

First Lights fieldwear collection is made for the work that happens long before opening day and continues when the season ends. Products built for early mornings, full days in real use. Hard wearing where they need to be versatile where it matters. No shortcuts. Just gear designed for the work that earns the season. Built to perform, built to last. Check out.

First Light's new fieldwear gear at firstlight.com. Welcome to this country life. I'm your host, Brent Reeves. From Coon Hunting to Trotlining and Just General Country Living, I want you to stay a while as I share my experiences and life lessons. This Country Life is presented by Case Knives from the Storemore Studio on Meat Eat Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you the best outdoor podcasts that Airways have to offer. All right, friends, grab a chair or drop that tailgate. I've got some stories to share.

Never give up, but no when to say when. Never give up. Great words to live by and they're usually easier to say than to practice. I've got two examples today where never giving up plays out in two different ways. I'm going to tell you about mine, but first I'm going to tell you about this one. Today's story comes from this country life listener Dylan Ray. Dylan teaches world geography and history and history and Dayton, Texas, the home of the Dayton Broncos. Go Broncos. A few years ago, Dylan was

pastoring the youth at his church before he became a teacher, and it was during that time, the following story unfolds. So, in Dylan's words and my voice, here we go. In 2022, I was working at a church as a full-time youth pastor, which nobody enters into for the money. So with a wife and a born at home, deer meat was an essential part of our diet. It still is today, and it's what I've raised my girls on. I picked a weekend out for my dad and my grandpa to join me in the piney woods of East Texas, hunting a strip of public there that I had been going to for years. The week of the trip, my boss, the senior pastor, tells me that that same Sunday, I would be preaching for the first time in the big church on the topic of gratitude.

being grateful in all circumstances. This made me excited but extremely nervous. I had not yet preached in a big church. Talking to 50 teenagers on a Wednesday night seemed like a cakewalk compared to a room of 800 grown folks. So I set off for the woods with my hunting gear and my laptop so I could work on the sermon during our downtime. We would hunt Thursday to Saturday and then come home Sunday

the day that I'd be preaching. The first day and a half was very unproductive on the hunting side of things. Very little deer movement, warm temperatures in late November, and I spent most of the hunt working on my sermon notes in a tree stand. The deer woods provide the best atmosphere for writing sermons, in my opinion. It was a simple message, be grateful in all circumstances, no matter what's going on, find a reason to be thankful. The primary verse to be used as Psalm 118.

This is the day that the Lord has made, and I will rejoice and be glad in it. Now, on the second evening we were there, with about 30 minutes of light left, I paused my sermon writing and focused on searching for the reason I was out there, a deer. Suddenly, I spotted a large-bodied deer walking through the timber. It was most likely a mainframe ten point, but he was missing most of his right side. However, meat was the primary reason for being out there, and this was a large deer, so to me he was a shooter. I gave him a whistle. I made an 80-yard shot with my 270, and it felt good.

When he ran, he did the old nosedive run and went into the thickest line of pine trees and cedars I'd ever seen. And he hit it so hard, I heard him crash deep in the thicket. I climbed down. I called my wife and let my dad know that I got a buck on the ground. ground. Dad and Pawpaw were seeing deer, so I decided that I would do the tracking and gutting on my own. But to my surprise, when I walked up to where he was standing when I shot him, I could not find one speck of blood. I searched a spot where he was standing for maybe 30 minutes. Still, no blood. I got back in my treat several times to replay the shot to make sure where he

was standing when I pulled the trigger. Still, no sign of the. blood. At this point, I'm getting frustrated because I know I should not enter that pine thicket without a decent blood trail. I also know I made a good hit and this deer should be dead somewhere, but I cannot find the blood trail. As it gets darker, I'm getting more upset. I even go to the last place I saw that deer before he went in that thicket, thinking somewhere there has to be some blood on the cedar branches, but still, I find no. nothing. At this point, I realize I have also managed to leave my flashlight and my headlamp back in the truck. So now it's even more concerning as daylight is fading. All I have is my cell phone

and I still cannot find blood. This thicket he went into is so dense when you walk in at that time of day. It's practically dark in there. I knew if I couldn't find blood before dark, my dad, granddad wouldn't be able to help me find this deer with no trail or sign of blood it would be nearly impossible to find him called my wife and i gave her an update and immediately she could tell i was upset i've shot this deer and i'm sure it was a good hit but for some odd reason there's no sign of it rather than feeling sorry for me she listens to my complaints and then ask what are you preaching about on Sunday. The question threw me off.

I didn't even respond. I'm telling her, hey, this is serious. I may not find this deer. This trip is ruined. She responds with, what are you preaching about on Sunday? What is the verse? Confused and annoyed, I said, Psalm 118. Why?

She asked me to recite it. I do. This is the day the Lord has made. She said, no, that's not all. Go on. I will rejoice and be glad in it. She says, I'm going to hang up now. You need to pray and take five minutes and think about being grateful.

Then she hung up on me. Now I'm even more frustrated and some of it is with her. Here I am about to lose a big deer and she's preaching to me. I'm the preacher. I go back to the clearing. I take off all my expectations. a gear, even lay my gun against a tree. And though I am frustrated, I take a deep breath.

And then I pray a prayer and I will never forget. I simply said, Lord, today is the day you've made. I choose to rejoice. I'm thankful for just being out here and the opportunity you just gave me. But I will be sick if I cannot find this deer. So I ask you to help me find him. I believe you can help me find him in that thicket without a blood trail, but even if you don't, I will be grateful today.

Now, with that, I turned back to that thicket. I went right in where I saw him go. And I'm having to crawl to get through the cedar bushes and the brush is so thick. At this point, it's dark in the thicket. So all I have is my cell phone light. And as I'm crawling, I'm coming up on deer trails that go from left to right and here and there and backwards and forwards, still so thick that I have to stay hunched down. I can maneuver through these deer lanes just a little easier.

And I don't know why I would take a left on this trail and then take a right on that trail, but I kept saying those words, Lord, take me to him. Take me to him, Lord. I still ain't found blood even on my hands and knees. I noticed that the ground seems to be going uphill, so I push in that direction. and thinking maybe it will open up and I can get a better vantage point. I kept mouthing those words.

Lord, take me to him. Take me to him. Finally, I get to a point in the thicket where I can stand. I go to push towards my right through these thickets and I come around this big, thick cedar tree and my foot hit something hard and I almost trip. I look down and I'm standing over him. I found that deer 75 yards deep in that,

thick it without a speck of blood. The bullet had lodged in his opposite shoulder, did not leave an exit wound. Hence the lack of blood, but I double lugged him, and it was a fatal shot, just like I knew it was. He was such a big deer. He was able to make it that far. At the moment I saw him, I got emotional, and I literally was shaking. I couldn't speak. All I could say is, this is the day the Lord is made.

rejoice and be glad in it. We got him loaded up and out of there. The next day I traveled home and had more than enough notes prepared for my sermon that Sunday. At the time I went up to speak, I was hardly nervous at all, but rather excited to share just how grateful I was, even in what started to look like a bad circumstance. And according to Dylan Ray, that's just how that happened. Dylan went on to say that he hopes this story encourages us to one, never give up when you were certain you made a good shot and two, be thankful in all circumstances.

It's a blessing we're able to do this. It's a blessing even being out there. We cannot afford to ever lose sight of that. Well said, Dylan, I agree. On blood trails, the stories don't end when the hunt is over. They just get darker. 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 two of Blood Trails premieres April 16th.

Follow now on Apple, Iheart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. And keep him with the theme, our friend Dylan, so eloquently started us on, let me tell you all about the last two weeks I spent bow hunting up in the show me state. Well, they showed me all right. They showed me that they don't care where I work, or that while hunting is kind of my job, killing ain't. I got access to some new property. is it sweet. Zero hunting pressure for quite a while and a working farm growing vittles that

deer love to munch on. This is going to be like shooting deer at a barrel. Now, I ain't that crazy to actually think it's going to be that easy, but I didn't think it was going to be that hard either. I'd gotten the lay of the land pretty squared away from back during turkey season. Even though I didn't walk but maybe 20% of what I'd be hunting, I could see just about all of it from the high ground on the north end of the property. The rest of it, I'd use Aenex to do my scouting and determine elevation and ridges and any questions I had the landowner would answer for him. He also showed me some creek crossings and took me on a property line tour.

From there, I was on my own, which is just how I like. It's all part of the game in the process of figuring out where to go and when to go. I sell cameras are good, and to me, I enjoy using them and why. watching what's happening when I ain't there. But I don't live and die by them, but I think they're a great tool to keep in the toolbox. To me, there's a lot of tools that are in there, just like my regular toolbox.

You can't build or fix everything with just a hammer or just a socket set. And that 10 millimeter socket is always missing anyway. It takes a whole box of tools to get the job done, knowing the land is first and foremost, and everything else is secondary. As much fun as figuring out where to put out a camera, it's just as much fun to me to post up somewhere and watch and see what the deer are doing from a distance. My buddy Jordan Blissitt suggested that after I showed him a screenshot of that farm and asked

him if anything stuck out to him about the property. A friend that knows deer inside and out and how they like to mosey around is another tool that comes in handy, and Jordan is one of those folks. He referenced a couple of places that I thought would be good, and that gave me a boost of confidence that what I was looking at and potentially seeing was what he was seeing too. So I held out the first morning and I didn't go. I waited for that evening and said,

Numero uno had me crawling up in an old lean-up stand that I'd seen in the corner of a field back in the spring. I spied it when I was putting the old Daniel Boone sneakaroo on a goblin turkey. one that is still amongst the living, I might add. I didn't test it that day, but it looked solid enough, and it had been there so long that the top brace of that buddy stand had been consumed by the trunk of that black walnut tree was leaning up against. I brought a set of climbing sticks and a platform,

and had an alternate tree already picked out had that stand been sketchy in any way. I ain't trusting the quality or the length of the rest of my life to convenience or someone else's idea of what's safe and what ain't. So when I put my foot on the bottom rung of that ladder, I gave it a good shake to see what kind of racket I could get out of it. It was like the rock of Gibraltar. I tested each rung all the way up and inspected the expanded metal of the seat for rust and de-fixed, nary a stitch of a loose weld or cracked or weakened frame in any way. I couldn't make it rattle. And with that, I said, settled into using the seed as my foot platform and hooked into the tree using my saddle as my safety harness.

I had a fence row running north, which was straight away from me that separated a pasture on the west side and an alfalfa field on the east. Behind me to the south was a cut cornfield. That old stand was basically at a tea intersection with the top of the tea, a fence line running east and west, separating the three fields. It was connected to the north running fintro I just described separating the pasture from the alfalfa. The big walnut tree had seen a lot of time passed as it stood vigilant watch over the generations of farmers who made their living work in that land.

Easily standing post before June the 17th, 1861, when Union and Confederate troops kicked up some dust during the Battle of Booneville in Cooper County, Missouri, a few miles to the north. The changes in farming technology that occurred just beyond the shade of that magnificent specimen would be hard to explain to the native folks that live there first. In that tree's diary as it logged the passage of time and events that occurred within its sight, I wouldn't even be a footnote. But here it is the main character of mine.

I think about a lot of things like that when I'm sitting in the woods looking for deer and not seeing any. Like, why aren't I seeing any deer? What a stupid song to be stuck in my head. Why is that song in my head? Of all the songs I know, why is that one? I don't even know all the words to playing on repeat. This has got to be some kind of record.

I wish I'd started counting how many times I've heard this song in my head since I got in this tree. Where are the deer? Why am I humming this stupid song? Now I think I hear the theme from Star Wars being played on a trumpet. Wait, that's for real. Who's playing a trumpet? It's faint, but that's exactly what I'm hearing.

The wind was blowing from the farmer's house toward where I was sitting. I guess one of his kids plays in the band. It didn't sound that bad, actually. It was really pretty good, and it wasn't hurting a thing. I'm sure it was a daily event, and I figured if deer can get accustomed to the root of the sounds of machinery and tractors, why not trumpets too? 30 minutes into Star Wars a new hope soundtrack, the deer started showing up. Totally unconcerned with the John Williams masterpiece floating across the alfalfa,

three-dough deer trotted into view as if they were playing baseball, and that trumpet solo was their walk-up music. There was 45 minutes of daylight left in sit number one, and deer started trickling in from every direction, but right in front of it. I watched three doves turn into seven, and then a nice buck walked in with his nose on the ground. Then as he made his way toward one of the first deer that had entered the field,

a bigger buck filtered in with his head low and trotting toward the first buck. They squared up like Obi-Wan and Darth Vader in the center of that alfalfa field and started dukeing it out complete with their own action music. They were 150 yards away and I had the best balcony seat in the theater. Smaller, the two was amid one-thirties eight point. The big buck would have easily made 150, but he was missing the whole right side of his antlers. He was that big, heavy horned five by zero. They had both earned a pass from me.

The deer with a complete set was young and he would be bigger next year. and the buck with half a rack could be tremendously larger. That's what it takes to shoot the big ones, time. It was fun to watch anyway. In five minutes before dark, the music stopped, and the deer were moving off in different directions. The three original doves had jumped the fence within 30 yards where I was pursed in that tree

and angle closer to where I stood with each step. I look back to see that eight point making his way toward the same path, and suddenly my standards came into question. I looked at him hard, and I could see he was a young deer as he amled along, dropping his head every few steps to sniff the ground while never taking his eyes off one dough in particular. I don't want to shoot this deer. I know there are bigger ones here, and I fought the initial temptation to pick up my bow, and I'd just relax to watch whatever was going to take place.

And for another 20 minutes, that buck chased the, that dough all around in front of me. I stayed in the tree almost an hour past dark, giving them time to move off before I made my descent and went back to my friend's house. That would be the highlight of the whole week of bo-hunting. I came home. I got some work done, and I went back a week later, thinking the deer would be moving better. I hunted that same spot and I grunted in a very similar size but older but within 80 yards one morning. I had him on a rope until he saw a dough and a cut corn behind us and took off after her. I posted a camera on a completely different property where there was a ton of fresh

sign and caught good deer coming through late at night. I gambled and I moved to that spot and on the morning of day three of hunting that place nearly all day every day, I had a huge. buck underneath me at five yards, but it was too dark to take a shot. I was at full draw and couldn't see the pins on my sight. I watched his silhouette move away, toting that big rack of horns with him, hoping against hope I'd catch him coming back through another time. But that would be the last time I had a big enough buck to shoot within range. Big ones were pretty well locked down the last two days I was there which made for some long days in the woods

two of those days were on the heels of that big cold front that brought all the wind and the frigid temperatures perfect storm you wait for where big bucks jump up and look for you to stand broadside in front of giving you the perfect shot yeah none of that happened it really never happens but there's always hope that it will and one day it might but probably not not, but you never know. That was my Missouri bow season in a nutshell. All the ups and downs of the hunt itself, and when I reached my limit, I packed up and I headed home with an empty eyes chest, an unpunched tag, and I whooped behind.

In another wonderful chapter of spending time with a community of folks that I love just like family. They are my family. that circle gets a little bigger each and every year. But I didn't give up. I'm just observant enough to know that with my other responsibilities looming, there comes a time when you have to call it quits. Thank y'all so much for listening to all of us and sending in your stories to me and

Reva the diva. She's really not a diva, but nothing rhymes with world's greatest sound engineer. Anyway, we really enjoy reading them and we read everything. every one of them. You can send them to MyTCL story at commedia.com. Until next week, this is Brent Reeve. Signing off.

Y'all be careful. First Lights Fieldwear collection is made for the work that happens long before opening day and continues when the season ends. Products built for early mornings, full days in real use. Hard wearing where they need to be versatile where it matters. No shortcuts. Just gear designed for the work.

work that earns the season. Built to perform, built to last. Check out. First Light's new fieldware gear at firstlight.