Bear Grease - Ep. 75: Bear Grease [Render] - Deer Biologist, Randy Meeker & El Caminos

Episode Date: October 12, 2022

On this episode of the Render it's all about big bucks.  We have Arkansas Deer Program Coordinator, Randy Meeker, as our guest as we talk white-tailed deer. We also have Rusty and Rusten Johnson of United Outdoors, Moe Shepherd and Brent Reaves all here to talk about deer hunting. We're recapping the recent "Whitetail Stories" podcast from last week! We talk about the release of Phelps Game Calls new line of deer calls! Connect with Clay and MeatEater Clay on Instagram MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and 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. My name is Clay Newcomb, and this is a production of the Bear Grease podcast called the Bear Grease Render, where we render down, dive deeper, and look behind the scenes of the actual Bear Grease podcast. Presented by FHF Gear, American Made, Purpose Built, Hunting and Fishing Gear that's designed to be as rugged as the places we explore. Hold on.

Brent, tell me what you've got on your chain, all parts of it. That's called a watch fob. A watch fob. I got a pocket watch on the long portion. Tucked into the top pouchery overalls. Yep. And then there's a watch fob there for decoration, and that is a sterling silver coon.

I just noticed that for the first time today. Where did you get that? That was the Father's Day present. Really? Mm-hmm. Where could a man acquire a sterling raccoon fob? The fob come out of Austin, Texas, but the pocket watch come from London, England.

Really? Pretty classy. If you wasn't so young, you'd seen more of them. All the old-timers used to wear them in their overalls, have the chain on the watch and had something other. Oh, really? So that's a thing. A lot of them would have stuff, you know.

Something on the end of it. You could probably order that through night light. Mike, this right here is, I can't remember. Remember, you know, all this, this watch is made in England, and it's hard to find a watch of it. Well, I'm going to put a little video of your raccoon on my Instagram. So, hey, welcome to the Bear Grease Render podcast. My, oh, my, do we have a great show today?

We've got a not-so-normal group of people. We usually have a. On any level. No offense. What do you mean by that? Don't take offense at that, guys. Include yourself in on that. Well, I do. I do. No, so we've got one guest to them. I'm going to always introduce our guests at the end. Okay. So we have one guest here who is, this is first time. Usually the group of guys that are here and woman, my wife is usually on the podcast. We kind of have my dad, Gary Newcomb, my wife, Misty, Josh Spillmaker, Brent Reeves. And then the sixth person kind of comes in and out as a special guest. A lot of times.

it's Isaac Neal. But today is way different. Me and Brent are the only regulars. Now, you guys are almost regulars. And I'll introduce that. But to my left, Brent Reeves, good to see you, Brent. Hey, buddy. Beards looking nice and trimmed.

Looks like you got a little haircut. Yesterday. Okay. Yesterday, I went and got my hair pools, what my grandmother would say when she went to the beauty parlor. But I go to a barbershop, a sure enough barbershop. I'm glad you clarified that. Yeah.

To your left, Rusty Johnson. my old buddy Rusty. You've been on the render one time and then you've been on the Bear Grease podcast at least once because you're a whitetail secret keeper. I do have secrets. You're the ultimate white-tale secret keeper.

He don't even tell his son about it. Special guests who I've not named yet, we did a whole podcast on whitetail secrets and basically explored how and why people keep secrets and how we distribute those secrets. and how relationally as humans, there's some deep, like, psychological DNA stuff

about who we tell stuff to. And so Rusty, he was one of our feature guests on the White Tailed Secrets podcast. So we can get back to that. But we're going to crack some of those secrets today. Okay. For sure. I doubt it.

Good luck, he said. I doubt it. So to your left is Rustin Johnson. Rusty's son. Yeah. And man, good to see you, bro. It's good to see you too. I get some intel on some of those secrets, but I don't think all of them.

Really? He tells you everything he knows. He doesn't keep anything from you. Look at Rusty's face when he says it. He's got a funny expression right now. I'd say maybe most, but no, the secrets are real. The whitetail secrets are real. They're for real.

I would tend to agree. I get a lot of pictures from people on my phone and big bucks. and my first question is hey where's that at and it's crickets there's no more answer i mean i can ask another question and it's just it's just like it's like that text killed them it's crickets it's crickets well i i got to brag on rustin rusting have you graduated from law school yet i finally graduated really oh let's sue somebody no let's do it no so man that's a big deal oh yeah Russon is a white-tail guru killer.

I love it. And a lawyer. Not quite, yeah. I'm taking the bar exam in February. I haven't about taking it yet. I was supposed to take it back in July, but I got COVID and kind of stunted my studying. So I just put a deferment in and taking it in February. So we can't sue anyone yet.

We can't see anyone yet. It's October, though. I'm hoping that you can just defend Mo Shepherd when they finally come after him. Yeah, maybe. I might need a good lawyer. I hope you are a good one. No, that's quite an accomplishment, man. How old are you?

25. 25. Married, two kids. That's right. Rutt and Huntley, if that tells you anything about me. My kids. Incredible. Yeah.

Incredible. You know, I took a little bit of persecution from a few people who remain unnamed when we named our children, which were I've got a son named Bear, daughter named River, Willow. But I like it. Hunt, say their names again. So I had my daughter first. Her name is Huntley. Huntley.

Huntley. Yeah. And, you know, that's just, that's good. But I remember on our hunt in December, I was excited to tell y'all, and y'all came down with fire. I said, I'm naming my son, Bow Hunter. And y'all were like, oh, no, people are going to make fun of it. Like two names like, Bo. No, one straight up, just Bo Hunter, first name. Bow Hunter.

And, yeah, everyone at the camp was like, oh, that's crazy. So I backtrack just a little bit, and it's rut now, R-U-T. so we got Rusty Rustin and Rutte I'll be darned My son's name is Drake Hunter You're yeah That's when I was guiding Was a full-time guy

Yeah And I mean I know him as Hunter And I thought my name was Go Get Wood till I was like 14 Mine still is that So Rustin Your wife's all on board with With these names

Oh yeah that was a first date conversation Yeah first date Yeah I said I'm a hunter and she said, oh, yeah, that's cool. I said, no, you don't realize. Yeah, I'm a deer hunter. Right on. That's good stuff.

Great. Yeah. Well, skipping our guests who will introduce at the end, Mo Shepard. Hello, Clay. Good to see you, man. Great to see you, too. You're an old regular on here. Yeah.

You know what's going on. When you can't find anybody else, you call me, so. That's right. That's right. Yeah. Well, I guess I'll call Mo. No. To Mo's right is,

Ralph Meeker of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission. And now you are the, what's your title? You're the deer biologist? The state deer program coordinator. State deer program coordinator. Man, we're honored to have you today, man. I got a question for Ralph right off the bat. Well, let the man introduce himself.

Hurry up. It's burning. I'm happy to be here. Fire away. Yeah, yeah. So you grew up in Arkansas your whole life? Yes. Yeah, I'm from Sebastian County.

born and raised in greenwood uh of course went off college and uh got to live several places around a state and uh uh i think i'm up to 52 counties now where i've harvested a deer is that right 52 out of 75 cars i'll be darned yeah i just love hunting everywhere i mean this state is so diverse um i was telling somebody the other day that you know there are very few states that you can hunt uh deer white tail deer turkeys uh bear elk and alligator all you know all in the same state and yeah the habitats that we have and the people the communities I just I just love traveling the state and hunting different places all right editor cut all that out we can't tell all these people to come to Arkansas

we're supposed to tell them how hard it is right I'm kidding you man I'm kidding it's a great place I mean it's amazing when when I go to different meetings and meet different deer biologists and talk to them You know, of course they're all proud of their state, but at the end of the day, you know, they're like, man, I'm coming to Arkansas to duck hunt, you know, is there someplace like deer hunt while I'm there, you know? So, you know, dick down, they're wanting to come to Arkansas hunt deer. Yeah. So how long have you been with the agency? I'll have been with the gaming fish 20 years in March. Okay.

Yeah. How long have you been the deer program coordinator? I have actually been in the deer program 10 years, a little over 10 years. I've been the deer program coordinator for about five now. Five years. Yeah. Okay. Well, I want to get a, I guess I'm afraid if I start asking you questions, we're going to bypass a bunch of stuff.

I've got 100 questions I want to ask you about Arkansas deer. Who else now? Yeah, exactly. You're still not letting Brad. Ask you your question first. This is going to solve the mystery. Okay. three episodes in a row I've heard on meat eater,

Steve and everybody talking about the correct way to spell white-tailed. Is it white-tailed, white-d-dashed-tailed, white-tailed? White-tailed, white-tails? I want to hear it from the guy from Arkansas. When you write a report, it is white-dash-tailed. That's the way it's a great way to do it. That is the correct spelling of white-tailed, dear. Mark it on the calendar.

Really? Yes. So from a grammar perspective, there would be two adjectives that would describe the deer so there would be a dash. That's right. White-tailed deer. Double adjectives. And it's only- Are those adjectives?

I used to be an editor. It wasn't very good. That's very good. And it's only capitalized if you use it at the beginning of the sentence. So if you're using the middle of sentence, it's lowercase W. Okay. Man, problem solved. there you go well

I guess colloquially we've we've turned the term white tail into like a single word even with like North American white tail the magazine it spelled as one word but the great thing about it is is when you say white tail everyone knows what you're talking about

no matter how you spell it or how many hyphins you put in it it's it's universally known I can hear the dash in there when you say it now white you're an outdoorsman you know what it is is when they say white-tailed. But is it white-tailed-ed-ed-ed-ed-ed? Yes, ED.

So not white-tailed deer. White-tailed deer. White-tailed deer. That adds out like another syllable. It's going to link them in the stories. That's why they did the hyphen and the ed. Those hillbillies can't say that very good. White-tailed deer stories.

I got a lot of edits to make because I wrote a law review article with white-tail, just one word. Oh, really? I got an A on it. Really? Yeah. They didn't call you out for it? No. Well, your third child could be called white-tailed Johnson.

There you go. That's a fruit. Probably not. Probably not. That might not work. That might not work. So I said, so on the beginning of this white-tailed deer stories, white-tailed deer stories podcast that we just did, I had this collection storytellers.

And you guys all heard the intro where I made the statement that the white-tailed deer hunting culture of North America is really unparalleled in the world in terms of hunting culture. Do you guys agree with that? Ralph, would you agree with that? Absolutely. You know that the white-tailed deer is actually the state animal of nine different states. Okay. I mean, that's including Arkansas.

Including Arkansas. That's exactly right. I mean, people take great pride in the white-tailed deer. It's the number one sought after big-game species in the world. Yeah, yeah. And there's nothing, when you talk about worldwide stuff, us being from America, sometimes we don't have insight into exactly how things are done in other places. Obviously, we're not experts on it.

But, you know, in Africa, for instance, there's a lot of hunting that goes on there, but it seems to be much more general. Like they're after a suite of species. And certainly they hunt specific animals in Europe and the red, the red deer and all kind of stuff. But white-tail deer, I feel like, is the wide geographic distribution

of the white tail in North America coupled with liberal hunting seasons, big populations. We don't realize how good we have it. For real. Yeah. Even in the midst of us really valuing deer. Like everybody in this room,

a lot of people listen to this, really value deer. But when I, I do have a lot of friends that don't live in the United States. And when they hear that I hunt deer on my seven acres that I own in my backyard is just mind-boggling. And it's super common. I mean, you know, it's, it really is an incredible thing. And I said something else that we're in the heyday of whitetail deer hunting.

Ralph, do you think that's a correct statement? Yeah, absolutely. You know, we estimate or state farm estimates that we hit about 22,000 deer each year in Arkansas alone. It wasn't until the mid to late 1970s that 22,000 deer were harvested statewide. And we're hitting that many on the highways alone. Just in Arkansas. Just in Arkansas. Just in Arkansas.

22,000 deer in Arkansas. Wow. Harvest being that lower, lower, like he said, in the mid-70s or before. I mean, it's phenomenal in the last, you know, hundred years where we have come from in deer populations and deer management. Why is that? Like, walk me through just kind of at a high level, walk someone through from about, you know,

the market hunting days of the late 1800s to 2022, when we've got deer numbers like we have, like just give us kind of like a high level overview of the extirpation, the reintroduction, And you can use Arkansas, but, you know, you can talk about the broader picture, too. Yeah, so, you know, in the light 1800s, up into the early 1900s, you know, unregulated marking hunting was almost the end to a lot of our species, not just whitetail deer. You know, black bear, turkeys, you know, the passenger pigeon, all of these animals. Black Panthers.

Black Panthers, that's right. There's still a few of them. Yeah, that'll be another episode. But, you know, with Theodore Roosevelt, the Boone and Crockett Club, you know, early conservationists really brought forth the idea that if we don't take care of it, we're fixing to lose it. And so with the passing of, you know, several excise tax, you know, the Dingle Johnson Act, the Pittman Robertson Act, the creation of the Department of Interior, state parks, then, you know, soon after followed a lot of, State agencies like the gaming fish in 1915, you know, we started developing these game refuges, you know, places set aside both both federal and state. And they really started these restocking efforts.

And, you know, in the 1920s and 30s that we estimated that we had fewer than 500 deer statewide. Wow. And so, you know, going back and doing some research, there's a great book called Arkansas Wildlife, and it goes into a lot of these restocking efforts. But, you know, the gaming fish, they were asking people who had deer as pets. They wanted to buy them. We started importing deer from Wisconsin, North Carolina, Texas, you know, and, you know, started stocking these game refuges. And then one of the deer, and then we had these game farms where we actually raised deer and pins that were captured.

And then they were, you know, once the fauns were born, we would stock those. And then we'd catch deer out of traps in different places like Fels. Thaw, White Rock, Northern Franklin County, Black Mountain Game Refuge. And so they started moving deer around and populating these areas. And in 1938, we actually started recording, creating mandatory reporting for deer harvest. And in that year, we harvested 203 deer statewide. And so from, you know, the early, you know, 1930s up until really, really the 1990s, Dohar was pretty restricted.

And it was for, you know, the sole purposes of growing our deer population. You know, in the late 19, mid, I would say mid 1990s, a lot of places we realized, hey, that we better get a hold of this because the deer population is growing fast. And so then we went from growing deer populations to really managing populations, molding them into what we what we wanted. And this concept, you know, in Texas, Mississippi had been done for several years at this point. So we really adopted the quality deer management ideology where we start looking at balancing buck-to-dough ratios and managing cross-age classes and protecting younger bucks to get.

Because, you know, up until the three-point rule, about 68% of the bucks that we harvested were a year and a half and younger. Now we routinely rank in the top five in the nation. and the percentage of our three and a half year old bucks that are harvested. Is that right? So we have done a 180. So about 96 or so, 95, three point rule? No, well, the three point rule was in 98.

Was it 98? 98, yeah. And so now, you know, in 2016, you know, the bomb got dropped on us and we found CWD. And so now we're having to rethink some of the things that we have really promoted in the past in order to combat, you know, the spread. of CWD. So, you know, and I tell folks, you know, CWD is, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, is a bad thing. But disease management has always been part of the equation. It's just going to be a bigger part of that equation now so that we ensure that, you know,

we have deer populations, you know, for, for many generations to come. Yeah. That's a good overview. On blood trails, the stories don't end when the hunt is over. They just get darker. something in the road, I instantly thought it was a sleeping bed, and there was a full of blood. Oh my God, he doesn't have a hit. Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors, where the terrain is unforgiving,

the evidence is scarce, and the truth gets buried under brush and silence. Indications were he should be right there, but he wasn't. This season, we're going deeper, from cold case files to whispered suspicions, from remote mountains, to frozen backwoods. Each story begins in the wilderness and ends in darkness. Because out here, there are no witnesses,

no cameras, just fragments and the people left behind trying to piece them back together. He's not an honest person. He's incapable of being honest. Somebody somewhere knows something. I'm Jordan Sillers.

Season 2 of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, eye heart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. when you hear the 1930s and deer harvest being 200 deer in the state what's the deer harvest today in the state we're we're averaging around 200,000 we've these last few years have been kind of a roller coaster ride in 2020 that was the largest record that was the the our largest harvest on record at almost 217,000

wow so that's a mathematician over here my lawyer from 200 to 200 000 Is that a thousandfold increase or a hundredfold would be 20,000? Yeah, a thousand times. What I'm thinking about, though, is that this wasn't that long ago. Oh, no. I mean, like, my grandfather was born in 1919, and he would have been, you know, a teenager and a grown man during a time period when there just weren't that many deer. Yeah, my dad was born in 1910, and he talked about when he got back from.

World War II that there wasn't no deer to be found. Yeah. That, you know, that if you saw deer track out in the mountains where I grew up and where he grew up and lived his old life and everything, that people had almost come to look to see the deer track because there just wasn't any deer around. Yeah. Isn't that story wild? Everybody tells that same story because it's true. See a deer track.

You'd tell your neighbor. You'd call you. You'd tell people. And your neighbor would go and tell somebody else. And they, where's that track at? We'd like to see a deer track. I've never seen one. And what surprises me about most of them.

those stories is they'd track that sucker down and kill it. They were wanting food. Yeah. But it wasn't that long ago. And so you can see that in the span of a human's life, like, a lot can change. Absolutely. Which is really encouraging, but it also puts you on kind of red alert, you know, with some of the stuff that's going on. I mean, primarily CWD and some of these other diseases that, you know, when.

you know our kids and when when uh rut is an old man uh should the earth per even be here which i don't think it will be um but will there be deer here i mean you know nothing's nothing stays the same yeah it's always moving but hopefully we can you know i mean that's why we're exactly right i mean it i mean we we are enjoying really the golden age of white tail i mean i i I had the fortune enough to speak to a guy on a telephone just a couple years ago. And he was a founding member of a deer camp in Bradley County. And he was telling the other gentleman, he was the oldest man in his camp. And he was telling them about when we stock deer in a game refuge that was right there on the county line, right next to their deer camp.

And he had called me. And, you know, I did some research after talking with him, and I called him back. I said, you know, I think you're right. But he said he remembers them opening the boxes. They had caught these deer in Wisconsin and opening the boxes and those deer jumping out. I think he said there was nine of them. And he said there wasn't one hair on those deer. Really?

They had shipped them by train down here. And he said he remembers when they first stocked that. And I think it was 1946. Wow. But, you know, just to be able to speak to some. somebody that experienced history like that to be able to tell the other members of his camp, hey, you know, and now they're harvesting a hundred deer a year in that deer camp or whatever it is. And it's like, you know, maybe they started from those first nine deer.

And that's pretty, pretty neat. That is. It really is. It really is. Who else had a question for Ralph, a specific question? Did you say you had a specific question, Mo? No, I was just going to say, when you guys are real mouthy and tell us to him. When he was talking about the game refuge and stuff, my dad took me when I was just a young kid

and showed me some of the old boundary post and stuff of the Black Mountain refuge and all that. And he said, you know, we would drive over here just and sit here when it wasn't even deer season and see if we might see a deer, you know. Yeah. And, you know, a lot of deer camps, and I actually started deer hunting on White Rock. That's where our deer camp was when I first started deer hunting. And a lot of deer camps across the state, they were essentially. established right next to these game refuges. When they opened up, they would allow people to camp there on the refuge or adjacent to it,

and that's where they hunted. Yeah, that was what my dad talked about. He said when they allowed it to hunt, and that's where everybody went and hunted. When they first opened them up, even though the deer were dispersed in other areas, the biggest concentration of deer was in those refuges. I mean, that's part of the game is, I mean, where it says no hunting. That's where you go, that's where you go, that's where you go, the deer know where to go. Exactly right.

Is that the biggest, the biggest challenge now is it CWD, the stuff that you're, that you're, y'all are dealing with as far as the, I would say that's one of a few different challenges. CWD is definitely a big challenge. Number one is because, you know, we're still learning.

Sure. I mean, on the, the grand scheme of things, I mean, CWD is a fairly new disease. You know, it wasn't really identified until,

since the 80s. They, And they think that it started in Colorado in the 60s where they first discovered it. When they go back and look at all the documentation of deer, they were exhibiting the same kind of issues. But the preon itself wasn't described until the early 80s. And so the management of the disease on a grand scale of things is very, very new. So we're still learning.

Where do you fit on the scale? Like so if a one is, this is a hoax, an attempt, is in the next 20 years there will be zero white till deer on the landscape where do you stand with the severity severity of the risk that c wd poses on a national scale to deer i'd say a five and i don't like to be i don't like to be the middle ground but um you know if there is a silver lining with c wd is that as long as you're not moving infected material whether it be live or dead animals. On the landscape, it does move rather slowly. So, you know, there is a possibility to get out ahead of it and where you get out ahead of it and you implement these management

strategies, there's a potential that you could slow it there. There may be places in the state where we're beyond that point. Yeah. You know, ground zero, Newton County, that may be kind of tough. Now, we might be able to reduce the prevalence rate, but as far as slow the spread from that area we may not be able to do that now so newton county that that's a that's a good i've got a question about that that is where we first found c wd it's where years ago i mean 70 years ago they introduced elk in there in the early 80s and we've wasn't in the early 80s they put the elk in however so we actually go there was a there was elk before then in the 40s and all in there there were several elk that were stocked in the 40s by the force service in northern franklin

the county and those disappeared and we don't know what happened now that those mountain folks may ate them but you know we don't know what oh ate them mo ate them i didn't but i think some of my ancestors did but uh you're right i mean we the the elk that were in the buffalo national river valley there um those were stocked in the mid or early to mid 1980s and it's i know there's no maybe no way to prove it but probably c wd came with them it's a possibility it's possible but At that point, you know, when those animals removed, nobody knew what CWD was. Yeah, they couldn't have even measured it.

No. I mean, they wouldn't have known. And, you know, in all honesty, we have been testing elk here in Arkansas since the late 1990s, whether they found dead, whether harvested. And, you know, we would, if we had it in the elk first, we probably would have detected it earlier on. Oh, I see. Okay. So you're, okay.

So maybe it wasn't elk. So it's a good possibility that it wasn't from elk. We've had deer shipped in from all over places, you know, illegally. You know, we, we, it's really scary. Like I said, we talked a lot of deer biologists across the nation. And in Wisconsin, their deer biolage, they put a map up of their hot zone. And then they show all the zip codes of where people come from all over the nation to hunt in that hot zone. And it's very scary knowing that those people are bringing deer,

back. So we could have been, you know, it could have originally come from a carcass. Sure. We don't, we don't know that. And really at this point, it's, I mean, it really doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Okay. This is my question, though, is that deer populations in that hot zone in Arkansas are going down a lot, though. They, they are. And we don't know, we can't pinpoint exactly what that is. Uh, we don't know if that's because, uh, and of course, we, uh, we, we support that those. observations with our harvest numbers. And we don't know if people are, you know, not hunting there as much.

We have a CWD research project going on it right now where we've, we're putting GPS collars on deer and we're tracking them. We're looking at mortality rates. We're looking at reproduction rates. And so, you know, it could be that, you know, the prevalence rate of CWD in Newton County has gotten to a point where it may be impacting. We don't know that for sure until our research projects. Could that be a good thing where it dips so low that it,

and I don't know the disease terminology, but where the population gets so low that the disease is weakened in some way and then when they come back they don't have it as much? Well, and so that goes back to one of our management strategies where we remove the three-point rule. And so right now research suggests that a buck harvest that's across all age classes actually can slow the spread of CWD because when you have a lot of older age classes

or age class bucks in the population, you know what happens when a year and a half old is there. He's gone. He's going to disperse. Right. And so if you can reduce that tension, that need for dispersal, maybe animals that potentially have it

won't go as far. We need to send Rusty over there to kill some forked horns like he usually does, right? Yeah. I'll be more than glad to get a little. And harvest being the only way. Unlimited tags.

The only way to manage it is through harvesting, right? That's exactly right. I mean, there's no known cure. There's no shot. There's no feed. Harvest is our only way right now that we can manage. And that's why having hunters is so important. I mean, if we stop hunting, we're really in trouble.

I saw a guy on YouTube one time. I'll send you the link. It may help you, Ralph. This guy. This guy, he was dead serious. He had some kind of mineral lick or something that he was confident. It was making his deer immune to CWD. We need to get a crop dust.

I'll forward you that. I'll forward you that one. I bet you I have seen it. It wasn't a guy from Arkansas, but I watched it. I was just like, wow. Yeah. It was something, I can't even remember. But, wow.

It's probably got a castor oil in it. You remember you get to pour it on? the spoon and you put it out. Caste roll. Caste or everything. Yeah. Yeah. Well, no, man, I is CWD.

We've, everybody in the deer community has talked a lot about CWD. So that's not necessarily what all I want to get into today, but, uh, but you ask what other, you know, our other problem is, and one of them is hunter recruitment, you know, there, there are fewer and fewer youngsters now that are, that are hunting. There's a lot of competition for their time, you know, a lot of athletics, you know, extracurricular activities. And so, you know, and when I was growing up hunting, I mean, when deer season happened, the world stopped.

Right. For nine days, that's all you did. And we didn't muzzle hunt or archery hunt when I was a kid. We were modern gun hunters. But for nine days, that was it. You know, that's what you did. There used to be a time when you played baseball in the summer. now they do it year-round.

I know folks that take kids every weekend to baseball games. Same thing with basketball. Used to be a sudden much, but now they have all these other sports and camps and youth leagues and stuff that play nearly year-round basketball and stuff. The Friday before opening day and the Monday after opening weekend, a lot of schools were closed. Yeah.

Now, I graduated high school in 1984 in the first day of Deer Season. or that Monday, even if it opened on a Saturday, school was out. That's right. Same was where I was at at Mountainburg. And that was a lot of incentive, yeah. Deer days. Man, I always hated it. My school did not have deer days, but all the smaller school, and we were a small school,

but for the area, we were a bigger school. If you hunted before you got caught the bus or before you went to school, however you got to school, if you killed a deer that morning, you was late. If you brought in your hunting license where you had tagged deer, It was an excuse. Oh, sweet. Absolutely. Wow.

Hey, I remember multiple times. My dad's not here today, but this is a good story about my dad. I remember multiple times being in school, and we had a pay phone in the school. And my dad worked at the bank. It was before cell phones, you know. And I would just, it would be a fall day. It would be cool outside, and we would have gone outside, you know, at lunch or something. and I was just like, man, I'd call my dad and say, hey, dad, will you call and check me out of school?

I want to go deer hunting. Call him on a pay phone. And he'd call the office, and 20 minutes later, the intercom would come on. Can we have Clay Newcomb? Can we have Clay Newcomb, please come to the office? I just kind of go, I don't know what's going on. I'll see you guys later. I'm in trouble again.

And one of my good friends, his dad said that when he was a kid, he would load on a bus with shotgun. And his dog. My brother. And they would go to school and he'd lean his shotgun in the corner and the dog would sit outside. And then after school, they would hunt the fence rows for quail all the way. All the way home. And he said, that's what he did, you know, during quail season. That's what he did every day.

And they let you get on the bus with a shotgun. I'll be darned. My older brother can tell the same story. Really? Taking a gun on the bus. An A5. Yeah. That's wild.

They kept it on the school bus. The school bus driver was his football coach. They kept it on the bus locked up. And when he got on the bus in the evening, he got off at a friend's house, and they went shooting wood ducks. Wow. I think I've told this story before. If we're talking about guns at school, if I told the one about the principal coming out. Yeah.

Old story. Yeah. Yeah. I had a, I brought a gun that my dad bought for me to school one day. And the principal calls me aside, and he goes, hey, Clay, I heard you got a gun in your truck. And I was like, yeah. And he's like, I want to see it. I went in trouble.

We walked out, we walked out to the parking lot, and he wanted to see it, like, just because it was a cool gun. At a different day. Yeah, we all had guns in our trucks. Yeah. All of us. In the back glass. Yep. Had the old racks stuck in the back glass, and that's where they stayed.

Sure did. Well, so this podcast that we just came out with, this White Tailed Deer Stories podcast, there's going to be two. There's going to be two full episodes dedicated to White Tell Deer Stories. Mo's going to be on the second one. He tells the story. I, when I hear James Lawrence, Andy Brown,

and my dad tell a story, it's like, I could just listen to those guys talk. I tried to imply inside of the podcast how, to me, those just aren't stories, but they're like, really personal to me in different ways.

Just like that's the sound of my world, you know. And the, I kind of got into, these deer stories are so cool because they do, I mean, we all like deer stories because we're deer hunters and we want to hear the details of what happened. But stories carry so much more than that. And that's what I tried to show and tell in some way is that person to person, human communication is so valuable. Yes.

I mean, it's so valuable. And I think the reason that I liked white-tail deer hunting as a kid was because of the way I saw my dad and the men that he hunted with, the way they handled it, the way they talked about it. It's like, all this stuff's going on in my life, but boy, that's really important because the way they talked about it and the excitement in their voice and the detail that they went in. because I'd hear those same men tell a story about something else,

and it wasn't nearly as passionate. You see what I'm saying? I mean, just there's these default messages that are coming to you as a kid. It had value, yeah. Yeah. The value you had in it. And it's like you could tell those. I've heard Gary tell that story before.

And I heard him tell it again, and I was as glued to it then as I was the first time because I had value in that. and telling that story to a guy that, you know, somebody else that just played golf, you know, or just played baseball or something that he ain't, he's not going to connect as quick because he's not going to put as much value in what he's hearing as, as you are telling it. Well, I can tell you, too, from, you know, being a kid, you're exactly right. I mean, those stories were valuable, but sitting around a campfire at nighttime with your grandpa and his buddies and your uncle and your dad.

and their buddies. Yeah. I mean, as a, as a nine-year-old or a 10-year-old, you felt like you were an equal. Sure. And they were telling stories and you're eating deer chili, you know, and, you know, staying up past what your normal bedtime was. And, I mean, it was a, I mean, just hanging on every word that those guys were saying, the stories that they were telling.

That was, it was just phenomenal. Yeah. Yeah. My dad and all my uncles were all hunters and a lot of times they'd get together. And when I was just a kid and be talking about their hunts from that year. the year before the upcoming hunts and you was just glued to it you know even when i wasn't allowed to go hunting yet when i was just a young kid i can remember that you know it's mo were any of those guys real good storytellers i mean would you would you have would you have characterized them as that

yes i would uh i've got i say i've got i had two uncles and my dad they're all passed away all my family has passed away with my uncles and my everybody but uh the three of them that hunted a lot together they all could tell a pretty good story i mean it it got you glued to it like he was talking about your dads and brent was talking about listening to that story of your dads uh you didn't matter how many times you heard it you was stuck to it you just sit there and you listened and you listened and yeah yeah on every word you know and tried to pick out what was going to happen next even though you knew what was going to happen next because you already heard the story but it's still you was just intent on wanting to listen to it so yeah yeah what was uh so the stories

that were told and i want to hear some of you guys stories here in a minute of the stories that we're told on that podcast rusty which one stood out to you uh the mine shaft really yeah i mean that's just extraordinary i mean that is well that that was a wild story yeah i mean yeah i don't know if i've heard anything close to that yeah yeah i mean hoisting that thing up out of that mine shaft yeah and it just only had a little bit of water in the bottom of it yeah i mean it could have been full of water yeah yeah yeah yeah it's definitely how about hunting where the my yeah you're all missing the whole thing here yeah yeah Hunting where there's holes in the ground.

Hunting where there's not marked. Yeah. You don't want to go there to a coon hunting the whole lot. Actually, hunting where there is a mine shaft is blowing my mind. Yeah. Yeah. And it certainly wasn't marked. There wasn't a road to it.

There's just out in that part of the world, there's just mine shafts, random places. And yeah, I thought Randy did a good job of telling that story, too. he uh yeah he just i like the way he i like the way he told it and i and i like one of my favorite parts was the very end when he said and i went back with my kids and that mine chap was full of water and there's a fish in it yeah i thought i thought that was funny but um yeah no but that was good rusty what you said and there was a lot in that too if you went he was telling that story about he called he called he called and was it and scott god god god god god Andy's son and my good friend, Scott Brown.

Yeah, called Scott. And he's like, yeah, man, I'm bringing your powder. I'm coming to you. That was the whole thing to me. That whole thing getting that buck out of that was he called somebody. He cared about it. He cared about him. Who left work, I'm pretty sure.

Yeah. To go out there and help him. Man, that's camaraderie right there. I dig it. But the moral of that story is don't ever go hunting without telling somebody where you're going. Yeah, sure. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. One time in the Ozarks on public land, I remember I was turkey hunting. It was talking about a hole in the ground and telling somebody where you're at. I was turkey hunting by myself, public land, and I was hiking up this real steep ridge, and I stopped to take a break and was leaning on my shotgun, just breathing hard. And I looked down by my foot, and there was a hole about as big as a softball in the ground. It was kind of odd because there were no rocks around it. It was just leaf litter

And there was just a hole And it didn't look like it was angled like an armadillo hole There was no debris pile Like where something had been digging Just a hole And I was like, huh, that's weird I took the butt of my shotgun and pop Just kind of tapped on it

And that That thing just collapsed What? And opened up into a hole About as big as a beach ball And it was so deep that you could drop a rock down and it would be like ding ding ding

no way yeah it was a sinkhole and you know you'd have a hard time falling in it just because I mean as big as a beach ball you'd have to just like

put your hands in the air and just jumped in it but I was like holy smokes I guess only one of my legs would probably fit in it well something like that to come get you out it was in the Ozarks where we have this limestone shell and a lot of stuff and the rocks dissolved. Like there's big,

there are big sink holes in the Ozarks. That's just what it was. I'm telling all you all. Yeah, it was weird. There's game and flat ground for the love of humanity. Get out of the hills. Get out of it. You're going to get killed.

Russell, what was your story? I'll tell you what, bouncing off of that, as a youth, my dad, I mean, he's a crazy deer hunter, and he didn't take up no slack with me as like an eight-year-old or whatever. So we'd walk in at, you know, 3.30 a.m. two hours before daylight.

And then on the way back to the truck, I'd be like, there's a drop off right by the trail that we walked in. He's like, oh yeah, shouldn't have fell into it. I'm glad I didn't. Yeah.

Because, I mean, we were going on some steep stuff. I was like, golly. It's a secret. I couldn't see anything in the dark, though. Better follow it close behind him. Favorite story? He heard. Oh, it was a mind chef.

Mind chat for sure. Mind chat, okay. And then I really like my favorite part was they didn't want to damage the antlers. Yeah. They're like, let's rethink how we're getting them out of here. Yeah. That's valuable.

Brent, which one stood out as you? That one, obviously, I mean, that's a one in a mid. Oh, you can't say the same one they did. But, okay, new rule, can't say the same one the other guy here. Terry. Terry the Yankee. That was a good story. Tony. Tony.

Tony. Tony. Tony. Tony, Tony, the English. You can't remember his name. Tony was good. No. You like Tony's story.

And he told a good story. Yeah. And the beans? Yeah. and you know he's he said everything that happened he never thought it would happen he'd already he'd already cursed he said yeah he's all everything going wrong he's got he's got we're going to talk to him about going to that wedding during deer season for the love of humanity who his friend absolutely was not his friend

no he wasn't very close friend or he wouldn't ever done that for real so but then you know he didn't get to go opening day and then everything that he he he he he he he prove the old point that you can't kill them at the house. Regardless, if you've got an opportunity to go, saddle up and get out there. And then just when he thought things where there's no way that deer's going to come from there, there's no way that deer's going to keep coming. There's no way that deer's going to be 10 feet, p, pow. No way he's even going to see a deer because he ran in there and got all sweaty.

He's all sweat. He had already rode it off. I mean, he basically just wrote it off. And those are the funest times when you get one, you really weren't expecting. Yeah. Mo, which story stood out to you? Mine that I liked the best was Andy Browns about the deer, you know, and finding the tracks and then hunting and killing that big deer.

And then at the end of the story he talks about, he said, but that wasn't the deer that I was asking. You know, but that whole story, this way he told it was really good. I can associate with that because he hunts a lot of the same, not the same area, but the same type of terrain with the mountain saddles and all that that I do. and I could just see everything that he was talking about. Man, when Andy and Scott and some of those other guys that they hunt with tell stories, man, sometimes somebody can belabor something so much,

you're just like, come on, get to the point. Sometimes people tell a story, and you just want it to keep going, and you're sad when it ends. Yeah. And a lot of that has to do with context. Like if you pull up on the side of the road and talking to somebody while your car's running, you know, you kind of got to understand

this is not the time to give like the extended version of this story. But in the right moment, in the right context, a good long story, especially from someone you deeply respect, is just what you order. And man, Andy, I love, and I actually had to cut down some of his story. So you didn't really hear the full version

with all the pauses and different things. is just because the format we had to tighten it up a little bit. But, man, he tells a detailed story. I mean, it starts off with the scouting trip. And, I mean, he just kind of went in to everything. But what you learned from that kind of stuff is you learned a lot about how to scout, what to look for, when to move on, when to keep going, how his season laid out. I mean, if you listen to it, just like, okay, Wednesday, going to kill this deer,

you're missing the point. But there was, I was telling Misty, even him talking about a cotton mouth that he wished he'd have killed. And he's a great storyteller. And a great hunter. I like what Moe said while ago. He left the story

with that big track that was not the deer that he killed. So it sticks in your mind. And I've been wondering ever since, I wonder how big that was. Yeah. That track. Yeah.

That big track. I mean, I'm wanting to go and see, you know. It was a dope. Hey, I'm going to, by the time this comes out, I will have already posted, but I'm going to post a picture of the deer that he killed. It was a 19 point, just a wild kind of freaking. He said it was 21 way he came out. Yeah, yeah, that's right, 21 points.

Yeah, you can't count very good. Heck of a deer. And it wasn't the biggest deer Andy's ever killed either. He said he thought it was the second biggest is what he said on that, wasn't it? Well, if he said that, I don't remember that exactly. I thought that's what he said. You should really listen to these things, Clay. They're pretty.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure he said this was the second. I'm pretty sure this was my second biggest buck. He for sure said that he never killed one like it before. Yeah, but then only he said, I've killed a bigger deer too. And he said, I've come to thinking, I think this is probably the second biggest deer. Either that or your dad's story one, because I get them confused. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Talk about it. So my favorite story, I think, has to be James Lawrence, even though Andy, Dad, and James kind of all were right there. And then as far as the excitement of the story, the Mineshaft story, I loved that one.

It's just kind of a shocking ending, you know. But James Lawrence, I mean, mainly because he's just my hero and he, you know, James is not a big storyteller. Like, if you're sitting around a room like this, like he's not going to talk. Like, he's the guy that's just kind of sitting back waiting to be spoken.

to but when he talks he knows what he's talking about and uh oh i i i kind of i just like i just liked uh james really got fired up about that deer which you can kind of i mean because he was actually afraid the deer was going to run him over is what he was trying to say you know because he had those hawks on the deer was coming and he never used hawks on his body again because it spooked him and you know i mean he's a veteran hunter and if he tells him me he was spooked in the woods he wasn't being dramatic he really got spooked he thought that deer was going to run him over yeah my favorite part of it was when he said that on toward the end of his story there he told he said he said you know he shot the deer and all that and then he i forget

how he quoted but he said and i realized that that that deer was coming to me he was going he wanted to take care of me because he thought that was you know taking over his area yeah yeah yeah uh ralph which one stood out to you man the the mine shaft to me was just one of those I was just like, that's the craziest thing I've ever heard. And I've loaded a lot of deer so I can only imagine two guys pulling that thing out of that mine chat. But as a biologist, the clicker deer, deer to me was interesting because I'm thinking the whole time, I'm thinking, I'm wondering that guy. I'm wonder if that deer's grunners broke. Why was he clicking?

I was wondering what was going on there too. Tell us what. Do you have any insight of that? I have no idea. That's why I'm thinking the whole time. I'm thinking, I wonder if his grunters broke. I bet your hunter's bro. I've actually heard that.

Hey, before we go today, I've actually seen these. I've actually seen those little things. He talked about the little wheel thing you turn. Yeah. Have you ever seen those, Ralph? Yeah, but I-click and call. I really thought it was to imitate, you know, rucks,

you know, the rucks. You know, the rucks. But the click, I was like, that thing's grunters got to be broken. I've actually heard that one time in the wild. What did it sound like? Just like a, like a,

like a single, like a grunt is a series of, distinct clicks. No. No, I'm saying a grunt is a series of clicks. Yeah. Yeah. If you could just do like one note.

Pop your tongue with it. Yep, that's it. I've heard it one time in the wild. It was in Arkansas. It was a hollow being. And that's the only time I've ever heard it. Huh. I guess this is one of his deer secrets because he never told me this.

I'm not a clicking, but. Okay. Well, so when I first, it was three bucks, and when I first heard the bucks coming, it was like a loud, just a, I mean, I'm like, whoa, what is that? Like a roar. Yeah, I was like on a little island, and it was in the middle of a cut cornfield. Well, I've seen the dough coming, and this buck was behind her, or, yeah, he was right behind her,

and they come out there in front of me, and they stopped, and there's another buck run up there, and then another little six point run up, and they were just kind of circling her. She was out there, and that six point got over really close, and that biggest buck started, too, tut,

really? Yeah, and he looked over at him, and he just charged him and hit him in the side and just rolled him. Wow. Yes.

So this story is confirmation of what Gary Newcomb said. Have you ever seen a Black Panther? No, I have not. How about I would be a woodpecker? It tastes like who else. That is, for real, that's good. But I've been hunting all my life, and that's the first time and the only time I've ever heard it.

But I have heard it. And I mean, it was loud and distinct. Well, he said them old timers he talked to that said that that's what it was. They said that dominant buck was, he was the dominant buck making that noise. Yep. Yeah. It was the big one that was doing it. Yeah.

That's interesting. Yeah. Yeah, I've never, I've never heard one click like that. Yep. But I can always learn. It's so wild. Deer vocalizations are so. elusive i mean i i've hunted my whole life killed quite a few deer been in the woods a lot in the fall

and i mean it's like did i hear a buck deer grunt last year i i don't even know if i did i mean like it's not really yeah i don't know i just don't you don't you don't hear him all the time do you guys hear him oh yeah y'all just don't ever kill them y'all just let them go i especially especially in the midwest they're really vocal out there but i mean i hear it every year here in Arkansas. Yeah. Yeah. If it's a rut and I don't see a buck and he's not grunting, then I'm like, what's going on?

Yeah. Yeah. I hear a lot, I hear a lot of grunt of grunt. I've heard a lot of different vocalizations, but the clicking one to me is kind of new. Yeah. Now, I don't hear a lot of fighting, like clashing of antlers. No, they'll tickle them, but they just don't get after it like I do in Midwest. Right.

That's right. Well, hey, I meant to do this at the beginning, but I got to do it now. So Phelps game calls just came out with a full. new series of grunt tubes. It also, they've got multiple styles of grunt tubes. That one's a clicker. Yeah, they got a clicking call. Jason felt, yeah, let me know.

So Rusty Johnson, the other thing that he has is secret grunt calls. He's clicking on it. He's trying to click it. These calls are, there's an alpha pro, which is a smaller call with a tube on it. And then there's the beta, beta pro with, it's acrylic, they're freeze-proof. If you fill it full of saliva blowing on the thing, it's not going to freeze. What I like about them is that you can blow them super soft. Sometimes when you blow on a call, you got a,

before it goes, and you'll end up, you can blow it just as soft. I mean, sometimes a deer will be right up under your stand, and you can just barely hear him. sometimes he's out there 60, 70 yards, and you can hear him, blah, blah, you know, they, a deer has a pretty big range of volume. And so, man, if he's, if you just want a soft grunt, to me, that's what makes a good grunt call. And they won't top out when you just blow on them. Sometimes the reed sticks on one when you, if a deer's out there at 120 yards and the wind's howling

and you're just trying to throw a Hail Mary and just hit it hard, sometimes the reed will flatten out and it won't blow. but these Phelps calls are for the real deal and they are they were launched on October the 11th so this here podcast comes out on October the 12th so you can buy these at

the Meteor.com Phelps.com so they've got they've got a couple of tubes the alpha and the beta that have the tube on them which man I I like you can get some good inflection with that flexible tube. It sounds good.

Yeah. But if you don't, if you want a smaller call and you don't want the tube, they make, they call this the Omega Hybrid, which is like an acrylic call, kind of almost the size of like a goose call, no tube.

And it's a, it doesn't have the tube. Rusty likes the tube. I think the tube's the ticket. Yeah. But anyway, those are for sale. Phelps game calls.

They've also got a dough bleed and a fawn, a fond call full line of deer calls. Fawn, that's what I like. That's what Brent likes to kill. That's what he wants to get in. Oh, yeah. That's a Brent call. That's it.

I look like that'd be a bear attracted. Yeah, I'd use that as a predator call. Now, I told on this podcast, no, it wasn't on this podcast. Do y'all remember the story of my son, my son Bear, he's got a cool name, when he was, couldn't have been more than a year and a half old, 18 months or something. I took him to hang a tree stand with me and it was in like late summer took him carried him in carried my sticks and my tree stand and before season we're just going to hang a stand I start hanging the ladders and get way up in the tree so I'm like 20

foot up in the tree and bear gets scared down on the ground because I'm not down there with him and he's scared and he starts crying just straight up just crying and I'm trying to hang this tree stand so I can't go down to him so I'm just like hey buddy it's okay it's okay I'm whispering he just gets crying all the more he cries for I don't know a couple of minutes and directly I hear the woods just come and just crash crash I mean I hear something running in it's real thick woods and a doe deer comes busting in and skids to a stop I mean I I remember it being like six or eight feet from him. Maybe it was 15 feet.

But this doe deer, it was real thick, and she just ran to what she believed was a fawn and distress, skid to a stop, seize him, and then, you know, disappears. And Bear quit crying and looked up at me, and he said, he knew what a deer was.

He said, deer. It was just like he said, you're not going to believe this, dad? I was down there on the ground and a deer ran up to me. She thought it was a deer and it was a baby bear. Yeah. Deer calls. Brent needs to get a spotted phone pocket watch deal to go with that coon. That'll be for Sunday.

Yeah. Ralph, I told you, I asked you when you came, I said, bring your best deer story. So we want to hear it if you got it. Man, I've got a lot of great deer stories. But one of my favorites was actually, I was living in Lone Oak. and I put in for a permit, a musselauter permit draw on Holland Bottoms WMA, right outside of cabot. And my brother-in-law, who is from eastern Arkansas, he put in for us well, and he drew one. And I've always wanted to hunt out of a canoe.

And so I went to a place there in Ozark, bought a used canoe, so proud of that thing. And I was like, I'm going to float this canoe in, Holland Bottoms, just permit hunt. I'm going to kill a deer. and so the Friday before the permit hunt I go out there the ditches are dry the bios are dry there was hardly any water in place and I was so brokenhearted and the mosquitoes were eating my eyes out and I told my brother and I said we're not going to be able to hunt the mosquitoes are so bad he said no I'm from east arc so I can do this and I at that time I worked on a fish farm so I was pretty used to mosquitoes yeah there weren't thermocels though oh no

there were no thermocels that's and this is this is Thermocels won't touch them. And I was like, this is it. I can't believe I just bought the canoe. And so we went out Saturday morning, hunting that morning, about 9 o'clock.

My brother-in-law, he tapped out. He said, I can't handle this. I said, I told you it's bad. So we're walking out with our muzzlers between our tails, between the legs, and these two girls, two ladies, in black sweats and rubber boots.

They're walking out with what I thought were, were howitzers over their shoulder. A big 54 caliber muzzleloaders, big old octagon barrels, and my brother-in-law, and he goes, they're more from me than I am. And so we were kind of, kind of whipped, and I said, well, I don't, I'm not going to hunt this evening. So Sunday rolled around the next day, and a storm blew in. And it was a cold front, just dumped like two inches of rain. And so I called my brother-in-law, I said, hey, let's go back out there.

Let's just look, see what happened. And mosquitoes were gone. There was water and everything. And a lot of the hunters left. And this was a five-day permit. So we walked in there with our boots. We had hip boots on. We found this ridge, I don't know, probably about three-quarters of a mile in.

We'd walked down this road that was flooded. And it was just like a tunnel. It was just beautiful. Just everything was calm. I could swear up and down. There was snowflakes every once in a while. And this was in October. And so we walked in there.

And I had my stand. with me and I said Clay we're going we're going to hunt this this afternoon I said this is perfect and I mean I was just riding on cloud nine and so I hung my stand and I said you meet me back here at the truck at two o'clock we're going to get the canoe we're going to ride in here I'll hunt this end of the ridge and you hunt the other end so I had met there was a boat missing on my on my deer stand it was just a lock on stand I said well I'm going to go back find a boat for that you meet me here we'll go hunting so I go back and uh i was like told my wife i said i load up canoe i said i got to find a boat and i'm

i'm going to meet clay so we get down there and two o'clock rolls around and he's not there two 30 rolls around he's not there i'm like ah i got to go so i get in the canoe and i take off get out there hang my stand at three oh three o'clock straight up i'm sitting in my dear stand and it starts to mist and i got my muzzleloader land across my lap and so i had this old army poncho and i just laid it And when I'm deer hunting, I like to chew tobacco. That's just what I like to do. And so I just put one in my mouth. About two minutes later, I hear this walking in the, I can hear water splashing.

I was like, what is that? And so I kind of look, and this deer comes up out of the water. I could tell he was a buck. And he wasn't a huge buck. He's two and a half-year-old buck. And he walks up, and he just lays down about 40 yards from me. It just lays down. And I'm thinking, man, this is the coolest thing ever.

And so every time I'd try to spit that, that deer would look at me. And I had to win in my favorite. I was good. At some point, I'm thinking, I'm not swallowing. Well, at 3.30, I hear some more water coming, you know, just rustling around. I thought, man, there's more deer. And I look back there, and it's my brother-in-law.

And he had to have hit boots to get in there. And he walks up there. So I got the deer about 40, 45 yards laying down in front of me. And my brother-in-law has a lawn. chair and he's like 75 yards to my right and he he's he never sees me in the tree even though i'm wearing orange and i'm sitting there watching him open this lounge chair he takes a leak and he gets deer year and out and this deer's laying there and there's some some coral berry about i don't know knee high and this deer would peek his head up over and i'm watching this deer watch my brother-in-law

who's not 75 yards from him this whole time for two hours, my brother'd get up and he'd cough. And I'm thinking, Clay, what are you doing? And so I'm watching this deer, and then so often that deer would jerk his head and he would look at me. Oh, man, he had both of you right there. He had both of us. But it really, I mean, watching his reaction to Clay really, I mean, opened my eyes to how, you know, you could be in the woods and deer's laying down.

He's watching him. And as long as you don't, he don't smell you, you know, or it's no. quick reaction or anything he may not jump yeah and so I'm sitting here watching the deer and I'm learning you I'm having a heck of a time other than not being able to spit you're bad at your brother-in-law it just happens to be named clay which is nothing against clay yeah no clay but uh and I love clay we've had a lot of we've had a lot of different uh adventures together but I'm like what in the world are you doing you know and so um at 505 this so this deer had laid down between beside two trees there was a bigger tree and a smaller tree

right next to it and all i could really see was the front part of his chest and his neck when he stick his head out to look at clay now were you wanting to shoot this deer well so you know when i first when he first got there i thought man it's early in the hunt i'm not even going to shoot this deer who knows what else is going to come up here so as it got darker and darker and my brother-in-law started making more and more noise i'm thinking if i'm going to shoot one i better do it now because there was water all around us the you know the chances of finding him with a muzzleloader in the dark through the water is pretty low. I thought, if I'm going to do it, I'm going to do it now.

And so because a lot of my buddies had told me I was crazy for buying that canoe, for hunting in Holland bombs with canoe. And so I wanted some vindication, you know. And so that deer, and so finally he reaches back to lick himself, and I pulled that poncho off, that muzzleloader, put a cap on it. And I just waited about 10 more seconds, and he kind of turned his head, and I pulled a musloader up. And my brother-in-law made a sound, and that deer stuck his neck out.

and I shot him right in the neck and just, I mean, his head, it's a wonder he didn't break his jawbone. His head hit so hard, you know. And then I could hear, through smoke, I could hear my brother lost a couple of expletives. He didn't know you was saying. Oh, that's good. And so when the smoke clears, I could see him picking himself up off the ground because he had fallen back out of his chair. He scared him so bad. And so I yelled over.

I said, Clay. And he's like, and then he yelled a couple more. Explosives. And so I got down, I said, hey, you ain't going to believe this. So I explained to him what happened this whole time. And I said, hey, come help me pull this deer out. And he said, you didn't shoot no deer. You just do that to scare me.

I said, oh, no, I did. It's laying around here. And so he walked up there to it. And he said a couple more expletives. You know, I can't believe this. So we pulled that deer up to the canoe. And I've got a picture of him, that deer and me in that canoe floating out in that tunnel of trees on that water.

And that was probably one of the greatest deer hunts that I've ever had. Because I told those boys at work that I was coming back with a deer. And they was like, ah, you're lying, you're lying. And so when they've seen that deer, they're like, I can't believe that. Oh, that's awesome. Oh, that's a great story. And I've got those antlers in a picture in my office at work. I mean, that's got to be one of them.

You need to text me a picture of that photo. Yeah. If you would. Yeah. I'd like to see that. Yeah. That'd be cool. Yeah.

It was just one of those that it went from super high to get the hunt on that, that permit hunt and knowing what caliber deer there to a super low with the mosquitoes and no water and buying a canoe not getting floated back to a super high again. I mean, it was just a roller coaster ride of a hunt. Oh, that's cool. That's a good one, man. That is a good one. 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. All right, so now it's time that we do the Bear Grease Swap Shop. Here we go. yep so did y'all know that we uh we we have our listeners send stuff in to bear grease at the meteor dot com stuff that they want to sell and uh and but they have to have their

instagram handle their facebook handle to be able to to sell it and uh we you know we we we we pick and choose what we put on here but uh but here we go all right we've got this uh we've got a listing from a man by the name of Buck Lester with an Instagram handle of buck dot Lester and he has, this is what he says. He said, hey, I heard on the podcast that one of you mentioned hoping to have a 1982 transam. He said, well, I don't have a transam,

but I do have the next best thing. A 1987 L. Camino with a 305 small block in a four-barrel carb, my first vehicle and a heck of a rig. He has a picture of it here. Four-barbar, you can really get lost. Nice looking El Camino, man.

And he says it does need, it says 149,000 miles, four stock rims, four Crager rims, power locks and windows, has some large, dense and rust, but it runs and drives, needs some tires, $5,000. All right? So you can contact Buck Leicester at buck dot Lester on Instagram. That's pretty legit, man. You haul out some deer and that. They'd be talking about you. That's the best it was. That could be like the bare grease machine.

That's like having a mullet. That's a business in the front and party in the back. Incredible. Okay. So this next one is actually a pretty functional one. This guy says, Howdy, he said, calling all fellow Sasquatches,

which Rustin might qualify. How tall are you, Rustin? Six three. Six three. What size shoe do you wear? 13. Okay. Calling all fellow Sasquatches,

I got me a pair of Loa Tibbet hunting boots. size 15. They're a little too small for me. No telling how tall this guy is, as they fit more like a 14, used for about a season and a half, $250 or best offer. So his Instagram handle is big underscore Sasky

underscore man. You're going to spell Saskie. B-I-G-S-K-Y-U-N. Nice looking pair of Loa boots. I would imagine those are four. five hundred dollars boots been worn just a couple times okay well clay i just looked at my at my shoe it's a fourteen you wear a fourteen that's right so man he might be marketing directly to you you need some real good boots i bet break out the pocket book okay and here we have our last burglary swap shop entry

for the day we've got a i'm going to read what this man says or well for sale a 13 foot boston whaler boat with a 30 horsepower yamaa outboard and an easy loader trailer he's asking $5,500, all right? This Boston whaler is ready to help any PNW outdoorsman. What's that mean? Pacific Northwest. Okay, gotcha.

Good job, Rusty. P&W outdoorsman on their hunting and fishing adventures is perfect for duck hunting on the coast, trolling Socky at Baker Lake or Bruce. Oh man, he's giving away fishing spots. Getting to the secluded upland bird spots on the Columbia or the snake. He's a salesman, too. Right where Russie said.

This guy's a salesman. Or any of the inland lakes. I recently got the boat dialed in, but I'm building my house and could use the extra cash. I like, sometimes a good salesman will tell you a little bit more information than you need to know to try to rope you in to trust him. Are you with me? And this man said, you know, I need a little cash to build my house. I like it. Details.

Recently repacked the trailer hubs with grease and installed new trailer lights. The motor is a two-stroke and runs well, new steering, new throttle cables, new battery, 35-pound thrust electric trolling motor included. build out a one-inch marine-grade plywood built out of one-inch one-inch marine-grade plywood. It was stained and sealed. The price also includes a five-gallon gas tanks and a fish finder. Holy good.

And fire extinguishers, flares, a horn, three rod holders, telescoping paddle. Man, contact Cameron Stone. I can see Rustin. Oh, wow. Cameron put his email address. Cameron, you don't want to do that. that brother, but we're going to put it because he gave it to us.

Hey, I can see. You can email Cameron. If you're serious, we're at. Where can you email it? Cameron.s. Don't s. Dot stone 1994 at gmail.com. I can see resting right now, power sliding with them four, number size, 14s.

Or 15s, they fit like a 14. The size 15 boots. And the El Camino hooked up to this Boston way. Oh, man. Sliding. I might get all three before this podcast drop. You know what kind of street cred you'd have loading that thing in buy me to go? Oh, my goodness.

Roll up in a long pond. Oh, wow. This is like a package deal. Now, it comes with a five-gallon gas tank. Is that full or empty? Because that'll affect the value. That is a good question.

You'll have to email Cameron. I need some boxing gloves if you're going to buy me than that. Yeah. But if you pull up the Al Camino with that thing, nobody going to mess with it. That's great. Preston don't want it. and medium reasons to buy it for a new Doss boat episode.

Yeah, yeah, pull the Al Camino across the country. I'd like to take that out of the El Camino. How about that? Strap a bear on top. There you go. Put a winch in the back. Then we pull them up in the back a lot of easier. Buy that El Camino and put that boat behind it.

Shoo. Mollet machine. Man. Yeah. Grow mullet. Ralph, I got a question before we get out of here. Shoot. Forever.

And I've seen a study that was published out of, I think it was South Carolina Department of Natural Resources did a study on the effects of coon hunting bothering deer or deer hunters If you got an opinion on that if you get as far as what the I do so growing up Coon hunting was my number one sport Even above deer hunting there you go We coon hunted six nights a week and the only reason that we didn't count on Sunday night was we had school Monday morning Right which we coon hunted rest of weeks it really didn't matter so I didn't figure that out But we coon hunted all the time.

And, you know, there were a lot of nights that we would walk in on a treeed coon and our lights would hit deer. And we'd walk right past them and it never bothered them. I think what happens is when you get a dog that does chase deer or you hunt in a location, you know, maybe four or five times in a week, then you may, you know, be creating some disturbance on those deer. But you've got to remember, you know, deer. or primary, I mean, their primarily was considered crepuscular.

So they move early morning and late evening. That's their primary times to move. Now, they'll eat all day long. But, you know, at nighttime, they have better vision. And so they don't probably get as much disturbance at that time of that night. So it probably doesn't bother them. I think what bothers them is just like deer leases. When somebody hunts a deer stand, they ride down.

that foiler in there seven days a week, that deer patterns that person. They know when they're there and when they leave. And so as opposed to coon hunters, you may walk into one place one time and a night, and you may not be back there forever. You know, I just don't think that, you know, just one, you know, by happenstance encounter with some hunters

and a coon dog, that deer's going to change its movements or its patterns based on. that. Now if those dogs get after that deer then yeah, there may be some change but you know, I read that, have you read that seen that study? I have. There was even, it was like there was one car, it was an enclosed

place and they had these collared deer in there. There's like thousands of acres and they had this collared deer and they, the one deer that was actually chased by the coon dog that struck him and run him before daylight the next morning that deer made his way back and was within

just a few feet of where he was bedded. And that's telemetry data that he got off. He came back and laid back down where that dog had jumped him. And I've seen it forever. You know, I've cooed on a lot. My buddy. He'll be right there on a tree and looking around. Hey, there's a deer being there.

My buddy Ford Van Fawson, who works for First Light, conservation director for First Light. He once brought up that study to me. And he said, yeah, you knew that was funded by the Coon Hunters of America, didn't you? They had those biologists in their back pocket. He was joking. I thought it was a good joke, though. Yeah.

It's probably funnier when he said it. Definitely. Hey, thank you all for coming. Ralph, thanks for coming up, man. Thanks for what you're doing with all your work inside of Arkansas deer hunting. Yeah, man. And we know you guys are working hard. I appreciate being here.

Yeah. Man, now that I know you're a coon hunter, you're going to have to come back. Yeah. You have to come back to be on the Render podcast. Shrapping, man. If you can kill it and eat it, I'm all about it. There you go. Good.

Johnson boys, great to have y'all. Y'all got some big bucks tied up somewhere, don't you? We do have them found. Busted, you're busted. You're trapped. You got them tied up. Why don't you tell us about that? We got them found.

There you go. Clay, you won't believe it, but I was inadvertently after a 200-inch deer on opening week. No way. I didn't know it yet, though. Really? Yeah. So I got some intel from... You're not going to tell me what state, though.

Yeah. Arkansas. Oh. We just scored it. Northwest Arkansas. Oh, the guy killed it. It's the one that got killed. No way.

You were hunting over by him. Well, technically I was hunting the same area. I won't say where, but I had a guy that gives me some intel, feeds me some intel, and he sent me a picture of it like two days before it was killed. And I was like, okay, I'm getting ready. I'm amped up. I'm about to put cameras out. And then I get a picture because I know the guy that killed it.

And he sent me a picture. He said, will y'all score this? I said, oh, it's that buck. I'll be darned. So it was legit. 202. 202 and 3 8. Killed with a bow.

Crossbow. Crossbow. Here's one that just got killed off a public land in Arkansas, Wattenso, WMA, outside of Haysen. Oh, yeah. That's a beautiful deer. Wow, look at that G2 with the, it's a three-prong G2.

Look at that. It looks like a G2. Did I see that right? That's a dandy. People always ask me, you know, where do I go kill big bucks? That's a dandy. You can kill them anywhere, as long as you.

you can put some age on them. Yeah. I mean, our entire state has genetic potential. It's all about if you want big bucks, you've got to pass them when they're little bucks. That's just, I mean, really. That's what you got to do.

100%. Good stuff. So y'all are on some deer. Yeah, there's that big deer. Well, thank you all. Mo. Good to see you, man. Thanks for coming.

I know you'll have a big buck story here soon. I hope. All right, guys. See you next time. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated. with Jason Phelps at Phelps game calls in building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called

Prime Cuts. Now I'm going to tell you, I love mine because it's easy to use. I'm not going to go, I'm not going to win a turkey calling contest. It's just not going to happen. But when I run this call, I get the sounds that gobblers are looking for. I have a great turkey hunting track record.

If you go listen to real turkeys out in the woods, they're not going to win calling contests, right? That's who I listen to. I can make those sounds on my cut. I also hunt with Phelps's cut and I hunt with Clay's cut because they're all three great cuts.

Check out Prime Cuts at Phelpsgamecalls.com. I think you'll be glad you did and you'll find out that the Steve Ronella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human.