Bear Grease - Ep. 390: Deer Stories - Dropping Bows and Dropping Bucks

Episode Date: November 19, 2025

For the last Deer Stories episode of 2025, host Clay Newcomb dishes out a mix of stories that’ll keep you leaning in. Expect tree stand chaos, brothers throwing down over a fresh deer, personal-best bucks, and details of a fresh hunt from Bear Grease Hall of Famer James Lawrence. 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. It's mid-November and the whitetail rut is in full swing. You kind of just have to be there to understand, but a buck walking through timber, a glow with fallen leaves is rare. It's a fleeting moment, and it impacts the hunter at a deep level.

I don't want to over-romanticize it, but the experiences that we have in wild places are often significant highlights in our lives. and these stories on this episode celebrate these moments of engagement with wild places and the moments we have with our friends. A lot of these stories are funny. And we're stacking them in like cordwood this fall because the stories just keep getting better.

This is our third deer stories episode. On this episode, a lot of stuff seems to be fallen out of trees. And again, once again, a few people get thrown under the bus. and as always some really big deer get killed but something's really special this week we will hear from one of our living members of the Bear Grease Hall of Fame and I really doubt that you're going to want to miss this one

and very soon first lights black Friday sales will be coming up it's one of the best times of the year to buy gear from any of the meat eater companies and don't forget about the live tour tickets in Birmingham, Nashville, Memphis Dallas and Austin, and if you're hoping to come to Fayetteville, you're out of luck. Fayetteville, Arkansas is sold out.

Thank you all so much for the support. A third brother pulls up, has nothing to do with the shooting, drags the deer over there to his truck, wallers it around, gets it in his truck, shuts the tailgate, and leaves with the stinking deer. And he wasn't even in on the shooting. And these first two brothers is still standing there fighting. My name is Clay Newcomb, and this is the Bear Grease podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant. Search for insight and unlikely places, and where we'll tell the story of Americans who live their lives close to the land.

Presented by FHF Gear, American-made, purpose-built, hunting and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as the places we explore. Our first story is unique because it's being told while the buck that we're talking about is still hanging in a tree within sight of our fire. Just last week I had the privilege of being in camp with my friend Jason Kaler from Telephone, Texas, when he killed a dandy buck on a place that we hunt in Oklahoma. To set the scene, he's hunting at the foot of a big timbered ridge. Above him is thick timber and below him is open range land for cattle. He's kind of like hunting on the edge, open range land and big timber. He's hunting a trail system coming off into the ridge into that open stuff. Jason's going to get us rolling.

Well, you know, we're here in Oklahoma, and it's the perfect rut time. Coming in the rut and it's been hot weather and, you know, just been hopping around saddle hunting. And like I told you when we was easing down the road there, Clay, these trails come and, coming, coming on here I just want to hang by one and I kind of spotted a little red oak tree when we was easing down through there and when I left here today I was like I'm going to go hanging that red oak tree and I'd gotten aggravated this morning I'd climbed up in a set and I've got this little you know I don't know what it is but it's kind of like a fishing reel and your bow stays down on the ground and when you get up in your tree you crank it up

you crank it up there where it goes. Well, it got twisted up and got knotted up, and my bow was hung halfway in the middle, and I couldn't get my bow up, so I ended up having to pull it up. Well, after the hunt this morning, I fought with it, so I decided I'm just going to hang my bow on my back, and I've got this thing that goes over the kems.

It's like a string protector. So I just throwed it over my back, and I get my first step set, and I start climbing my tree, and I'm standing on my third step, and I'm taking my fourth one off and getting it started on the tree and I hear I hear something coming down the ridge it's probably like 250-ish 255 3 o'clock and I've got my third step set and I'm standing on the top of it and I'm hanging my fourth one don't have my platform nothing and I hear I hear a deer walking and I'm like you know I grab a I just hook my step with that, I don't know what that cord's called, but anyways, I just hook my step with that cord and I grab my bow off my back and I take the cover off

of it and I lay it on a limb and the knockin there and there's a yearling comes out from under the fence and she kind of runs out there and she stops down there about 60 yards below my tree, come right out that trail that I'd set up on. And I thought, man, that's a dang yearland. And I said, you know, I've never seen a buck chase a yearling, so I didn't know. Anyways, I just kept sitting there, and then I heard another deer coming. Well, in my mind, I thought, I bet it's another yearling or it's a doe, her mama, you know, coming with her. Well, it stops.

It don't continue on, it don't keep walking. It stops. And I was like, yeah, I bet that it's mama just looking survey in the area. and I almost put my bow back up and went ahead and climbing. I thought, no, I don't want to bugger no deer. I'm just going to stand here as uncomfortable as it is. You know, I don't even have my tether or nothing on. I just got my lineman on my saddle,

and I'm standing on that little rung of the step. And not just a second after I do that, this buck just darts under the fence. Same trail that Yerlin come out of. But he stops about half, between the yearland and the fence, which is I know range finder. My range finders in my bag. I don't have nothing ready, but I always wear my, I've been caught too many times not

having my release on. I always have my release on. So, you know, if you've hunted whitetails long enough, you just kind of have, for like of better words, I call it the wow factor. You know, you see deer and you're like, oh, that's a good deer, oh, that's a nice deer, oh, that's a, you know, whatever. But when he ran under that fence, it happened really fast, but I was like, wow. So I just draw back, and I guess him at 40 yards, and I shoot him.

And it happened so fast that it didn't really have time to sink in. I shoot him, and he turns and he runs, and he hops back up, hops the fence, and runs back up on the hill. And I put my bow. This tree I'm in, I need to saw two limbs to finish climbing to where I want to get. And so I lay my bow on this limb. I lay my bow on that limb and I got so much buck fever I'm shaking. So I just sat down until I felt my saddle all get tight. And when my saddle all got good and tight,

I just wrapped my legs around the tree and bear hugged the tree with my legs and just kind of laid back like I was in the recliner. And I was like, man, what did I just do? It's pretty hard to get me super excited, but that deer got me super excited. what did I just do? I didn't realize how big he was. So I really thought that he was a clean 10. I didn't realize that he was a 5 by 6.

I didn't realize he was a main tram 11 point. I didn't think he was as big as he is. You know, I was thinking I'd probably killed 140-ish type deer. He ended up scoring right now, you know, growth scoring 155 and 6 eighths. But today's been an awesome day. It's been a good day at deer camp. I think tomorrow's going to be better.

Jason says he'd never set in that tree if it wasn't for the mobility of his tree saddle setup. And that red oak probably wasn't much more than 10 inches at the base. Later in the episode, we're going to hear from two other very recent fresh hunts. But I asked Jason if he had any other good deer stories. and like any good hunter, he did. So about 12 years ago, I was hunting a place in southern Oklahoma. I was sitting in my stand one day, and it was a perfect day.

It was high pressure and the weather was cool and had a big deer come in, which ended up being my biggest deer with a boat to date, still 172-inch deer. and he stopped out there at 30 yards. He's actually 32-yard shot. Anyways, I drew my bow back. I walked myself through all my steps, you know, my anchor point and everything, at my age, and as long as I've been bowhunting,

I think I should be over that, but I still have to walk myself through it. And I shoot the deer, and I make a really good shot on him. I can tell it's a double lung shot, and the deer breaks off running, and he runs through a little old, uh persimmon thicket and he stops in a perfect open spot and at this time you know i'm i'm an 80-yard shooter all day long i practice all the time at 80 yards and he stops and i range in him he's

about 72 yards standing in this thicket and i'm like well i'm going to shoot him again and he's just standing there blood's running out of him but he's just standing there so i take i reach over and i get another air out and while I'm getting the air out of my quiver I realize that I'm using both hands to do this and I'm like where's my bow and I look and I have dropped my bow I don't shoot a wristrap and I guess for not having torque and being drawed back I shoot open-handed and I guess when I shot that I just let my bow fall I didn't grip my bow I walked my seat and I walked my seat through the process so good. Luckily the deer died right there. He expired right there where he was standing. But my bow was laying on the ground and I was sitting there looking at it thinking did the limbs explode?

Did a bend to cam? I don't know how it landed because I didn't even know I dropped it. So I had a trail camera set up there and I have a picture of the deer and all of his points, no broke off nothing. I shoot the deer and when I get to him he had seven in of a flyer broke off of the two. And we never did find it. I have the picture seconds before I shot him. And I have pictures of him minutes after I recovered him. And he has it in the pictures from the trail camera,

and he does not have it when I recovered. Never could find it. I have no idea where it was. He dropped his bow out of the stand and didn't even know it. That is a new one on me, Jason. But one thing I've loved. One thing I've learned about this guy that's faux show is that he's killing some big deer with that bow. Our next story is from my friend Dustin Craig.

Dustin's dad, Dale Craig, told one of the best stories ever told on the Bear Grace Deer stories when he told about calling in a big buck with a rolling apple. But this one is a little more personal, and it comes from Dustin, because it involves none other than my father, Gary Belieber-Everner. Newcomb. And if you've never heard us mention it, my dad likes to tinker with gear. As a matter of fact, they called him tinkerbell at the bow shop back when I was a kid. This is Dustin's story. Dustin Craig from Western Arkansas, and this is my dear story. So this started out about two months ago, So a buddy of mine had bought a bunch of hunting gear from Gary Believer Nuckel.

And he was showing me all this stuff. And you can tell Gary really took care of his stuff. And he'd also tell that he liked to tinker with things because everything had extras on it or had been taped up so it'd be quiet and all this. So I got a saddle, and I've never saddle hunted before. And I took this saddle out a couple times and used it just with a hang-on stand. I climbed the tree and just used it in my hang-on stand. Well, I didn't have a platform or any climbing stick, so my buddy told me, he said,

hey, I've got some, you can borrow them. And I said, okay, I'll come by and get them. So I got them. And the morning was real cold and just beautiful morning. And so I got out there and it was breaking daylight when I got to the tree. So I put my first stick up and climbed up it and put my second stick up. And I couldn't go very high in the tree because it forked. I was probably only 10 foot off the ground.

And I get the platform and I go to put it up and I've never put this thing up before, never used it. And I'm looking at it and I say, man, this thing looks wrong. There's something about this. It's not right. So I put the rope around the tree. I can't get it sucked up tight to the tree. It's kind of hanging a little bit. And so I wrap the rope around it again around the tree and around the platform and I get it pulled up pretty tight, but it's still not right. And anyway, I was like, well, I'll make it work. And I climb up in this platform, and it's pretty shaky. And I'm like, oh, I can do, I can make it work. So I'm sitting in the tree in my saddle, standing on this platform.

I'd been there about three hours. It hadn't seen anything yet. And it was getting to be about 9 o'clock in the morning. And all of a sudden I hear the rope on the platform, like start squeaking. And I'd look down. I was like, what is going on? And all of a sudden, snap, the platform falls out of the tree. I fall down.

Of course, the saddle catches me. I run into the tree, about knocked my bow out of the tree. And I'm scrambling around trying to gather myself. And finally, there's a knot on the tree. I can stand up on that knot, get myself pulled up against a tree, and get my lineman's belt out and get it around the tree, and get tied off. And I can step down. down to the platform. And I'm pretty mad at this point. And I grab my bow and I just tie a knot.

I don't even know what kind of knot it was. And I start lowering that bow down. And it gets to the ground. And I turn and look up and here comes a dough and a good A point right behind her. And I'm standing there on my top step, bows on the ground, mad. And so I'm trying to pull my bow back up, and I get it back up to me. And I'm trying to untie this knot that I tied. And I'm looking at the buck, and he comes in 10 yards right behind the tree. And I'm fiddling with this knot. He's walking to the right of me, and it gets pretty thick over there.

So I'm untieing this knot, and I thought, well, I'm going to stop him. Maybe he'll stay there long enough until I'll get this untyed. knot undone and get an arrow knock. So I grunt at him, and he don't even pay me any attention. He's focused on that dough. And I finally get the knot untied, get an arrow knock, have to twist around. By that time, he had stepped just off in the brush. So I get my grunt and I get to grunting on him and grunting.

He doesn't pay me any attention. He goes off. I lose track of him where he goes. It's real thick where he went. Of course, I was upset. And I start looking at this platform. Well, apparently at some point, Gary, Believer Newcomb, had taken the stick off the platform and added a piece to it.

And when he put it back together, he put the platform on upside down. So the button part that you would tie the rope to that goes around the tree was beneath. the platform. That was what was causing it to kick back on me. And that piece that he had added on was a, probably a two-inch flat piece of aluminum. And he had it all taped up, but it was sharp as a knife. And me standing up there, moving around for two, three hours, it had worn through that tape and then got into my rope and worn through the rope and cut the rope and caused me to lose, not get a shot, shot at this good buck, the biggest buck I would have killed with a bow so far. I say all that to say it's not really Gary's fault, but it's mine because you should always

try out your gear, use your gear before you get into the field. That's a big lesson that I learned, and I already knew it, but let's make sure from now on I'm to check my gear. Dustin, I have never fallen out of a tree on account of my dad's tinkering. But it's not entirely surprising that someone did. That was funny. And at some point, we're going to have to get a rebuttal from the believer himself because I figure he's got something to say about it.

But I am sorry that you didn't get that buck. 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 pool of blood. Oh, my God. He doesn't have a hit.

Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors, where the terrain is unforgiving, the evidence is 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 story, though, is from deep in the Ozarks, from a veteran. woodsman and white-tail hunter and squirrel dog man named Gary Farmer. This story highlights the unique characters that we sometimes find ourselves hunting with and all their quirks. There was four or five of those guys. They were brothers and they want me to go deer hunting with

them and we ran dogs. This is back when we ran dogs and anyhow I had a I had a pair of young walker dogs, just young. So I went to these guys, and they all had beagles, and we turned their beagles loose, and we walked them, and they'd walk them around the ridge and all this, and we ran deer, and I can't even remember if we killed one that day or not. But anyhow, they lost, finally lost all their dogs.

Whenever you get after a deer out here on these mountains, they'll go to the river. A lot of times they go to the river. And they all went to the river on them, and they didn't have any more dogs to jump a deer with. And I had these young Walker dogs. Well, they didn't have any faith in my dogs, really. They said, well, Gary, you can take yours around that old brushy ridge over there

and walk them around through there and see if you can flush something out. And I said, I won't have to walk, man. I said, you tell me where you want the tailgate dropped. they'll go find something. So we go over there, I drop my tailgate, those young dogs head around through there, and it wasn't five minutes they went to trailer. And then they jumped.

All these brothers and some of their uncles, they were all ganged up around the trucks, didn't have a bit of faith in my dogs. When those dogs jumped to deer, they went to scattering like quail. Vehicles going everywhere. Well, I, I heard my dogs go take the deer back and go down a gap and head towards the river.

So I jumped in the truck and I went down to drove to the river and got down there. Two of these brothers were there. One of them had missed the deer crossing the bottom. The deer was kind of up under a bluff and there's a gap around the hill, but the deer had missed the gap actually. and he is going around under that bluff on this steep bank. Two brothers standing there shooting at it. I shot at it.

It wads up and it's steep. It just slides all the way nearly down to us. Okay. These two brothers, they get in a fight. I killed it. The other than says I killed it. Well, they get into it. I let them fight for a little bit.

And I said, what about the other than says, me. I said, did it ever dawn on you that I could have killed the deer? I said, I might have killed this deer. And I said, I went up there and I peeled the hair back. And I was using a 22-250. They were using like 30-30 and 30-0.6. I said, be real easy to tell by the bullet holes. I said, you boys have her out. I didn't kill the deer. I said, my bullet's not any. A third brother pulls up down there, runs up there,

has nothing to do with the shooting, drags the deer over there to his truck, wallers it around, gets it in his truck, shuts the tailgate, and leaves with the stinking deer. And he wasn't even in on the shooting. And these first two brothers

are still standing there fighting. It's okay. Yeah, a nice bug. That was funny. Gary has one of those laughs that makes it hard not to laugh along with him when you hear it. And we still don't know what happened to that buck or how the brothers sorted it out. Our next story is unique, and it's close to home for me. It's told by none other than 19-year-old Bear John Newcomb,

and it's about the biggest buck that he has ever killed, which just happened on November 10, 20, 25. Like Jason's first story, this one is fresh. This is a deer story about the biggest buck that I've ever killed, and it is so fresh that the antlers I'm holding to my hands right now still have meat on them. I'm going to give you a little bit of context for this deer. Whenever I was younger, my dad, he would hunt this area, and he hunted three deer that were over 150 in the first couple of them.

years that he hunted it and he killed one of them and after that the the the big deer kind of seemed to tail off until about 10 years later whenever I first started to bow hunt this big buck came on the scene that we called Jody we called him Jody because of a David Allen co-song Jody like a melody and if you listen to the lyrics it's it's pretty much perfect for a big buck we first got a picture of him whenever he was three and a half and you had this giant kicker coming off is G2. And the next year he exploded into probably 150-inch deer. And then whenever he was five and a half, he exploded into just an enormous buck. A mainframe, 11 kickers everywhere. We heard some rumors about him getting killed, but we really don't know what happened to him. But we go a couple

years and the biggest deer that we see are these little basket racked eight points, maybe every now than a three and a half year old deer. And so I start hunting public land pretty hard and kind of fall in love with that. This year we got access to a new section of private land right there in the area that was just this big, thick, overgrown thicket. We had a camera just kind of for the sake of having a camera out there

just to see what was going on. And for the first month of season, we didn't see, we didn't have much on it. And November the 3rd, we get a picture of a 10 point is all we could tell but he was super heavy and so that got that got us excited because all of a sudden we had a you know a nice buck to chase and we we started getting more pictures of him and we realized he's way bigger than we thought the more pictures we get of him we kind of look at him we realize he was probably well my estimate was he was 148 inch deer

and he had the two big kickers coming off of his G2s. So we hunt him hard last week and don't see him, but he comes in at night, and we'd see pictures of him just crossing through this property. I had a deer camp this weekend, and so I wasn't able to hunt him. But the day after the deer camp, there's a big cold front, got down to 23 degrees.

And so that morning I went and I sat a field with the 6'5 Creedmoor. I kept seeing it. there were doze busting out of this property. And this property is just thick as can be. I mean, there's almost no way to hunt it other than just the edges. And so I hunt until about noon. And I had something to go to in town. I come back, get a little bit of a late start out there by about three.

And I set up on the far side of this field. I went over there and I got a really solid rest where I could shoot prone across this field. and got set up to where I felt really good out to 400. And I don't see any deer until about 30 minutes before daylight. And six doves come out, the bottom corner of it. And they start to circle way down to my right until eventually I just lose sight of them and some timber. I keep sitting there, and I kind of hear something back behind me up the mountain. So basically behind me there's timber.

In front of me, there's 400 yards of field. and I'm sitting next to a giant white oak that has a little cedar right at the base and I just thought, you know, a deer could come in from behind there and I could tell it wasn't an acre and could tell it wasn't a squirrel and I actually thought that's probably a deer up there. I just didn't think too much about it. Well, about 10 minutes later, with 20 minutes of shooting light left,

I hear behind me and I could tell those deer were about to come and I was like, well, I'd better get set up just in case when they pop out and so I get my gun and I just get I push myself into this white oak tree as hard as I could and these doves come over the hill you know whenever I first see them they're like 10 yards from me but I didn't see that buck so I put my hat bill over my face and I just sunk into that tree and just tried so hard to imagine I was just a rock and hope that they wouldn't spook and so they come into the edge of this field and they're all eating I mean I mean, literally, probably within five yards of me.

And I was, you know, I was like, dang, that big buck, he's going to come in from behind me over across that field, and I'm over here trying not to spook these doves. And I sit there, sit there, sit there, and eventually my calf, he gets so tired, and it's starting to cramp. And my arms from holding that gun up started to get tired, and my hands were freezing because I didn't have gloves. And I was like, am I about to have to spook these doze because I can't hold this position? And about the time I was thinking that, from up on the mountain I hear, where I heard that noise earlier, I heard, and I was like, holy smokes, this might be it. Up where I heard that grunt is it's kind of skylined. And the sunset was real pretty that day.

And I could just see a deer coming down that. And he stops, and I could see his brow tines, and they kind of were curved outward. And I was like, that looks like him. So I keep waiting. And he comes down the mountain, grunting the whole way. And finally I get a glimpse of his rack in the silhouette, and I could see these two big kickers, and I could see his crab claws out front.

And I realized that this was him. And he is in range. But the issue is I can't get my gun up because there's six doze around me. And then I'm also like, well, crap, I had this gun set up for a 400-yard shot. I'm zoomed all the way in. Turrets set for a 400-yard shot. And I was like, this is about to be a 25-yard shot.

While as just slowly as I can, I move my hand off the pistol grip of that sig. And I pushed the magnification all the way out. And then I was just like, I'm just going to have to aim for his heart, like, real low, five inches low from where I want to hit. Because there's no way I'm going to be able to turn that turret before without those dosing me. He gets 25 yards from me, and I flick that safety, and that buck walks right behind some trees, and right as he's about to go, I move my gun a little, and he stops and looks down at me, and I freeze, and then he goes back to doing what he's doing.

I get my scope up, and I can see his head pop out from behind these trees. And, I mean, there was just no doubt it was him. And this was the biggest buck I'd ever even seen while hunting. and he takes a step out with his left foot. I could see a little sliver of his vitals. I almost pulled the trigger but decide to wait. He takes a step with his right and then steps uphill with his left,

opening up his whole side. And I just put it right above where the white meets the brown and I squeeze the trigger and I hear these doze run from behind me but I don't hear anything up the mountain. And I was just like, oh my gosh, Did that just happen? And I jack another shell in.

And I mean, it's like five minutes till legal shooting light. So I can't see anything. But I just knew I didn't hear a deer running. And so I'd run up there. And whenever I get up there, he's laying on the ground dead. I mean, it was just one of those moments. I mean, anyone who's killed, I mean, not even a big buck, but just like a deer that's really special to him.

Like, it's impossible to describe. But if you know that feeling, you know that feeling. And whenever I walked up to the buck, I mean, thank God for him because I just knew, I mean, just the way that that all worked out, that this was absolutely not in my own efforts. And I put my hands on the deer and just kind of like recognize the moment for what it was. I mean, called my dad, and the first thing he said, I don't know how he could tell, but he just goes, did you get him?

And I said, I got him. And I mean, it's still hard to believe that the deer that I've been used to hunting, the biggest you'll see is maybe 130. This deer net scored or gross scored 154.5. Oh, and here's the craziest part of the story is the big deer we chased four years ago that we called Jody. This deer is undeniably Jody's offspring. Whenever you put the two pictures up side by side, you would almost think it was the same deer. And so we named this one Jody too.

But this was my first truly big buck. and it is still kind of hard for me to believe. That was some good hunting, Bear, John. And what I'm most proud of is that he killed a much, much smaller buck on public land a few days before and was ecstatic about that one and recognized its value almost equal to the big one. I was in Oklahoma hunting when he killed that buck and I drove straight home after his call. There was no way I was going to miss getting to see Bears' buck. buck in the flesh and missed the celebration. When I got home and we saw the buck, I told him,

let's just let the deer hang overnight in the barn and we'll skin it in the morning. You only get so many hours in a lifetime to really enjoy success in these special moments. As much as we seek after these big deer, the times that we actually see them alive on the hoof usually just add up to minutes in a lifetime. And after you kill one, I just kind of wanted to soak it in. And we did. Our next story is pretty unique.

Mayor Newcomb would like to introduce us to his friend Weston Taylor, who is riding high on a good streak of hunting. So I've grown up with Weston. He was one of my first hunting buddies. And I've been going to his deer camp since I was maybe 13 or 14. And we've done a lot of hunting together,

squirrel hunting, deer hunting, even some bear hunting. But for some context, Weston, he drives a 1993 single cab Chevrolet pickup that I think has a hole rusted in the muffler, so it has a little bit of a growl to it. And Weston will drive that thing around in the woods. He hunts mostly public land. His whole life he's not a public land. and you'll hear that thing coming for miles away

and you'll know that Weston's coming back to camp. And, well, yeah, and he used to have a giant eagle, like, sticker or on the rear glass. This giant eagle, so anyway, it was quite the rig. Here is Weston. He's also known as the eagle amongst his friends. Well, I'm Weston Taylor. I've been hunting with my dad since I was about four.

18 years old and killed 19 deer. This year, before deer season, my buddies and I, we were sitting around, Weston being one of them. And, you know, we were talking about, like, you know, I'll probably won't sue anything under two and a half and try and save my tags for the rut. And Weston goes, he goes, you know, I don't think I've ever passed a deer in my life. And we were all just like, what? Like, how do you not pass a deer? the eagle has never purposefully let a single deer walk past him. I wanted to ask him if this is true.

That is correct. That is correct. Yeah, it just never really happened. Growing up, it was just like, I've never seen anybody do it. I never, um, it was never really talked about. And also it's like, where are we hunted? Like if a deer, like, walk past you, it might be the one deer you see all season. So it's kind of like, I mean, take your chances.

I mean, I mean, I did try to pass a deer one time, but it like, it kind of lingered a little too long. And I was like, ah, I don't know, took a shot at it. But, yeah, it's like, every time a deer walks past me, like, it seems like I just kind of black out. And just like sometimes it's just, sometimes there's a dead deer, sometimes they're not. It kind of depends on the situation, you know. I either miss or skin into deer. And it's like, oh, yeah, it's just kind of like, anything that walks in front of me, I get, about us amped up, like any deer I get amped up.

And yeah, that's what I mean. It just kind of like, it feels like I'm just kind of like, whatever happens happens. Like I just kind of like go into primal notice seems like. Purely instinctual. Another interesting fact about Weston is that he's killed more three points than anybody I have ever met in my life. I don't know how he, I mean, like almost every little buck that he shoots has three points, which I've recently.

heard a term for that called a spork. It's not a spike. It's not a fork. It's a spork. Weston has killed an unbelievable amount of sporks. And anyway, Weston is a, he's a great guy. Anyone who meets him really likes him. Good hunter. But he has one of the most unbelievable streaks I've ever heard of in my life of 18 years deer hunting hard, never once passed a deer. I'd like to give a big salute to Weston Taylor, the eagle, for carrying on the tradition of the American meat hunter. Weston's dad is Matt Taylor, who spoke on the last episode about their deer camp.

These guys have a rich history and hunting, and Matt has taught all of his kids to be ethical hunters, and these guys take wild game meat incredibly serious. They live off of it, and they love it. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps Game Calls and 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 Phelps Game Calls.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 my good friend Shane Alman. Shane is an incredible white tail hunter and actually had multiple videos on prime time bucks back in the early 2000s. Shane shot professional archery for years and was sponsored by Matthews for 15 years. He's not an amateur and that's why this story is so good. All right, Shane Amman, Alpine, Arkansas, born and raised in Boone County, just as Clay likes to discuss and talk about just a typical redneck hillbilly that likes to deer hunt, mainly with a bow. But in 2014, I'd come across and got information of a pretty nice deer, had a piece of property I could hunt on,

but the neighbors had been talking about seeing a really good deer, and I had got word of it, and they was talking to me about it. And none of those guys was bow hunters. They're all gun hunters and don't hunt until, you know, mid-November. So I'd got to trying to find or get pictures of the deer. So I started, you know, had cameras out like everybody does. And this is, you know, mid-Septemberish. About, you know, it's probably the second week of October or so,

started getting a few bucks, seeing a few more bucks right on scrapes. And then a really good one did show up. You know, really, really nice nine-pointer five before with a lot of trash on his, on his right side. So anyway, the way I like to hunt, staying on my back, you know, never stays anywhere more than a couple of times. So that's what I was doing the whole time.

You know, I'd get pictures of a deer on a field edge and I'd be looking for any areas where they're starting to scrape or white oaks they're feeding on, trying to get horned in on doze. Knowing it's just clockwork around home, you know, when time muzzleloader season opens, that's right before Halloween. there's always going to be some bucks at home that's breeding those. I mean, that's just bottom line.

I mean, it has been out of way for as long as I can remember. So anyway, I'd been hunting the deer, hadn't seen them, seeing lots of activity. I mean, it had been storming, raining, cold front blew in. It was just perfect north wind. So I had a place in mind I'd been wanting to sit that I thought needed to be north wind. It's at the head of a holl. And this holler where this holler cuts in, right, makes, you know, really good flat on the ridge, comes, rolls around, old grown up field, home place.

Just one of those bucky-looking places and a few scattered white oaks in it and, you know, some persimmons. I mean, just place you ought to see deer messing around. Walked in, standing my back, found a tree. And as I'm standing there looking, you know, I could see, I could see several, you know, big hornbushes. and a few scrapes around here and there. So I'm just going to get in this particular tree. So I got crawled up in it, and I pulled my bow up,

hanged my bow up on my hanger, had everything ready to go, looking around, and there was one little limb coming out in front of me here, and I thought, well, I need to, I'll just snap that off. Well, on the end of my platform, just reach out there, snap that limb off,

and somehow my safety line on my harness, hooked my bow and I didn't really realize it and I turned around, messing around, looking at some other stuff, just getting everything situated. Knocked my bow off the hook, lands on the ground. You know, I was like 15 foot.

Wasn't super high. There's cedar bush there. I mean, I didn't think much about it. I mean, I didn't hit very hard. So I crawled down. I get to my bow, go back up to tree, pull it up, look it over. And then nothing looks out of ordinary.

I mean, nothing, I mean, everything looks fine. I mean, everything looks good. Pull the bow and blah, blah, blah. So I was sitting there thinking about it, you know, and I had three arrows in my quiver, which is mistake number one. You've got a six arrow quiver. You need all three arrows, you know, all your arrows in your quiver. But I'd shot a couple of coyotes like a couple of days before, you know, something like, you know,

and didn't take time to put them back in, which still no excuse. But in my mind, I kept thinking, well, how to shoot my bow at that leaf over there. So just double check it. no that's not good either there's no need doing that that's just a waste you know waste error break error whatever anyhow set there dwelled on that and finally decided it's all right but the other kicker to that is something i've always had with me always carry with me i'd have a little bag that i keep watered up in my fanny pack or in my cargo pockets on my hunting pants or whatever that has an extra knock a field point and a broadhead wrench

So absolutely no problem to check the bow. But anyway, did not. So anyway, continue on. We're like 30 minutes before dark. You know, just the prime time, no deer had filtered through. And then I thought I heard a grunt. And then I kept really fixated over there and watching it. And about that time coming through a broom sage, I could see a doe coming.

coming. She's just kind of skirting along and buck pushing her. Well, as soon as I seen the buck, I mean, no, he's a good one. You know, I got ready, getting ready. And it's the deer I had seen and had pictures of. He comes in pushing that dough and gets 30 yards broadside. Just stops. He's standing there to jacking around at a scrape and paw on the ground. And I mean, this is, yeah, this is it.

So I got drawn, anchored, and I aimed on him. And I went in that shot broke. I mean, there was no doubt in my mind that deer was dead. I mean, there was zero doubts, except when I seen the era go about two foot over him. And, you know, right, what shot way high and to the right. Well, I knew exactly, you know, well, that wasn't, that wasn't me. And that wasn't my bow's fault. That was all because I knocked it off and didn't check it.

So anyway, I, uh, deer run off. You know, they had no idea what happened in the dough. She went the other way. And I thought, well, I'll go ahead and. get down right quick, try not to booger anything else. Got over. Arrow was clean, thank God. I mean, didn't foul shoot him, didn't gut shooting, you know, nothing like that.

So anyhow, I gathered up my stuff and pouted all the way back to the truck and got to my house. So I've always had a place at my house where I could shoot even, you know, after dark. I've got to, had a big outside light in my target. So I could shoot 20 yards pretty easy. I opened the door, flipped the lights on, shot the bow, and yeah, it was like, you know, at 20 yards, like a foot to the right and 18 inches high. Anyway, eventually messed around looking at everything. I could tell my sight, I could see where it had bent. Should have caught it, but anyway, I didn't. To add more insult to the injury, that one of the neighbors kills a big deer.

And he's a hundred, 157-inch deer. I mean, you can't ask for a better, and it's the deer, yeah, I mean, I've got pictures. Yeah, he's a nine-pointer, you know, on the same trash on the right. I mean, just unbelievable, nice, super nice. You can't ask for a better deer for, you know, full-out acorn deer. This ain't no food plots, nothing there. I mean, it's just an all-out mountain acorn deer. And, I mean, yes, one of them.

It's just a freak and a rarity that you see. But anyway. Of all the stories that Shane Almond could have told, I appreciate that he told that one. Shane's as good a white-tail hunter and archery shooter as they make. And he told us about the one that got away when he did something stupid. For our final story, we've saved the best for last. And it's not really that it's the best story, even though it's an incredible story.

It's really more about the unique person telling the story. This is one of the few living Bear Greece Hall of Fame members. my dear friend James Lawrence below his name on the Hall of Fame placard it says Arkansas backwoodsman that's a good description of James and this story is about a buck that he killed just a few days ago this hunt the last two or three years and maybe longer than that I've I've still hunted that area and it seems like all the sign that I was finding still hunting, whether it be scrapes, trails, sign just tracks of seeing deer. It all led to this holly tree.

And that holly tree is probably 70 yards from where my blind's at. But my blind was the traffic of the deer. And I've put up cameras and the traffic of the deer's all coming from that holly tree. This one's about 60 yards from where I've got my blind. this hunt I've had the two good bucks that I was hunting

one of them's just a long time, eight point and the other one's a he's a six by six but the D4s is broke I mean you still got countable point

nice buck but I was in my blind and I picked up this movement just the edge of vision before I can see in the brush I could see movement and see deer.

And this shape that I come up with, I was watching, I finally focused in on it, and it was a deer standing. And he stood, I mean, he's been standing there for a long time. And this don't make any sense for a white-tailed deer in the rut when there's deer over 20 yards from them or 30. And he was standing there broadside. I had the bright idea of maybe grunting with a grunt call. I had a grunt call in my backpack that I've carried for, I don't know, many, many, many years.

To me, it works better, sounds better. But one day I got caught without it in my backpack. I left it in my coat in my backpack. But in it, so I didn't have my backpack. So as soon as I could, after that, I bought a grunt call. All it does it just looked like the one I had, which was a night in hell. Anyway, I thought I was grunt to him because I had seen movement, and I used two calls, too grunt, hurt, you know, just to...

Loud enough, I figured it could hear it, but it's real easy to call too loud or too much. The deer turned a little bit, but it didn't move. I mean, this deer stood there forever. The deer turned, and this other deer was still out here. I mean, I could see them, but, I mean, if they were bucks, I couldn't have took a shot at them because I could just see their legs. And that deer kind of turned and looked straight at me. And when he did, all I've seen was that horns come up and the head and neck.

And I thought, oh, my word. You know, but there's nothing I can do about it. that. He didn't come in. I grinded maybe three times just one note, just dirt. He slipped out on me, I guess I could just see movement and then I didn't see the deer. But the other deer, I didn't see him, just seen them kind of moving when I was sight. So he did notice the factor, pick up the grunt. So I would do just a low grunt, probably 30 minutes apart. Just one note. An hour later, I was grunting just once low,

and here this buck appeared 10 yards away walking. But that buck come to my grunt. I grabbed my rifle, come up, got crosshairs and hair. I torched it off The deer went Bam So I unsiped get out And the deer was trying to get up

So I I put him down And it turned out It was the 12 point That I had pictures of You know so Patted myself on the back Tickled to death

Counted the point Six by Six I looked at the Where did I hit him All I done was Just clipped his back It didn't even bring blood, it just burnt, I guess, the backbone, a knife jar.

There was a matter of just seconds that deer would have got up and runoff. It scared me to death when I actually seen. I thought he was down and I just had to finish him off. The second one was one that killed him. He was fixing to get up and go. But that positively was a grunt call brought him in. The stories we bring back from wild places can't be bought with much. money, they can't be replicated, and they enrich our lives with something intangible, something

primitive, something that only comes from engagement with the wild. It's only in the mind of the hunter that the imagery of the hunt can be replayed. And our words bring it all to life inside of a story when it's expressed into something that's truly magical and can be shared with others. I'm kind of sad that our dear stories episodes are coming to an end this year, but I look forward to making more stories in the future. I cannot thank you enough for listening to Bear Greas, this country life, and the Backwoods University. Keep the wild places wild.

That's where the bears live. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps Game Calls and 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 goblers 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, They're all three great cuts. Check out prime cuts at phelps game calls.com. I think you'll be glad you did.

And you'll find out that the Steve Rinella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action. This is an I-Heart podcast, guaranteed human.