Bear Grease - Ep. 76: Whitetail Stories - Holiday Bucks, 33-Point Bucks, and Missed Bucks (Part 2)

Episode Date: October 19, 2022

This episode is stacked with incredible whitetail deer stories including one from Janis Putelis and, Clay Newcomb’s tale of a buck with unbelievable antler development and a heavy dose of drama. We���ve got four stories that end with bucks in the truck, and four that end with broken hearts. We’ll hear again from James Lawrence and Andy Brown, but we’ll also hear some new voices. I doubt you’re going to want to miss this one. 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. I don't even know how to describe him. Everybody says, you know, you get a deer in a lifetime. This deer is a deer in many lifetimes. On this episode of the Bear Grease podcast, we're still telling deer stories.

We'll hear about Janus Putele's first white-tail bo-kill. We'll hear about the biggest buck Andy Brown ever shot at, which happened to be on Thanksgiving Day. and we'll hear why James Lawrence was late for Christmas dinner in 1998. This episode has a touch of a holiday theme. We'll hear about a 188-inch bow kill that happened in the most surprising of circumstances. The most unusual was the story behind the story and the way that two bohunters met. All in all, we've got four men that left happy with bucks riding in their trucks, and four that didn't.

This week, boys, it's a toss-up between heartbreak and satisfaction. And I really doubt you're going to want to miss this one. I'm sitting there and look and here comes this vehicle up the driveway and I don't recognize it and a guy gets out

and he says, you know, introduces himself, I'd like to talk to you about your deer. And boy, I didn't know how to act. My name is Clay Newcomb, and this is the Bear Greece podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant. Search for insight in unlikely places and where we'll tell the story of Americans who live their lives close to the land. Presented by FHF Gear, American-made, purpose-built, hunting and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as the places we explore. It's now the middle of October and the window of the best hunting of the year across this country is upon us.

It's this time when we dream of catching a rut-minded, bad decision-making white-tail buck slipping around the timber in the daylight. The older I get, the more I realize what an ephemeral time this is. October 15th through the end of November is a short time. Roughly we get 45 days a year of really good buck hunting And every year it slips through my fingers like dry dirt Leaving me wanting more and often wishing I'd done things differently It's wild to me how these older age class buck deer are so

Illusive you can have one living in your backyard and never know he's there That's why the white tail is the most sought after big game animal in North America It ain't because he's easy to hunt. It's because he's hard to hunt. But it's attainable. And that's what keeps us coming back. And I believe that the currency of our deer hunting culture is in our stories. Imagine if you hunted and you could tell no one.

For real, think about that. What if you couldn't communicate to another human about the drama, excitement, and difficulty of your hunting? Often people say they hunt to get away from people, which is a true statement. But we don't want to stay away from people forever. We all want to tell our story. And I think we hunt to stay connected to people. We provide for our families with the meat from the deer that we kill. And those that enjoy hunting are often some of our closest friends.

That's why I love these dadgum stories so much. Our first storyteller is none other than the Latvian eagle himself, Janus Putellus of Meat Eater. Janus is extremely hardworking. He's dedicated to the details, and he's a very positive person. I got a lot of respect for old Janus, and he's going to tell us about his first white-tail bo-kill on his family's land in Wisconsin, and it happened later in his life. So this white-tail deer hunting story is about my part. very first white-tailed deer archery buck, which you might find surprising that it was only last

year that I killed my first buck with archery equipment. I just didn't get that many opportunities as a young kid at shooting white-tail bucks with my bow, and I moved out west. It was a 19-year-old, and I didn't really get back into hunting white tails with my bow until just recently, where I've been going back to Wisconsin to hunt my family's property. So this, This story actually starts back in 2021, which is the first year that I went back to hunt the rut for a full week. Unfortunately, that year, the temperatures were extremely warm, like highs in the 70s every single day. I was, you know, wearing the lightest pants, a single base layer shirt, and we just had very, very limited deer movement. I did not figure out the puzzle.

I did not get a shot at a buck. I saw one mature buck on a spot that I called the oak flat. And I've always wanted to hunt the oak flat since I was a kid. I used to hear about the oak flat. So a little more backstory too. I've been hunting this property since I was probably however old you need to be to hunt in Wisconsin, 12, I think. And prior to that, I used to just go and come and sit in blinds with my dad. So a lot of history there.

But again, I had never really put the screws to, this property and really try to figure out. But back in 2021, I did. I set cameras. I started learning the place and the oak flat that sort of just was special to me for other, for nostalgic reasons, turned out to be a very good spot to hunt. And so I decided to hunt there. Unfortunately, my first setup there, I set up sort of upwind of three-quarters of most of the oak flat. And so when a mature buck came in there, the way they liked to, to come in on this oak flap. He came in downwind of me,

and the encounter only lasted a few seconds and I never got a shot off. But I did learn that that's a spot. I did learn like sort of like where at least that buck came in. The next year, fast forward to 2021, I continued to hunt for a whole week in 2021. The weather was hot and there was just simply zero deer movement besides that one mature buck encounter that I had,

which is like the second and a third night, but I hunted eight mornings, seven evenings, and put a lot of time and effort into it. I learned a lot, but I did not come home with an archery buck. So fast forward to 2022, I'd just like to preface it with what happened in 21 because it just feels like it's a continuation almost of one hunt.

I didn't necessarily climb up into the same tree, but I was on the same oak flat that I spent a lot of time in in 2021. but being a person that likes to spend a bunch of time in the woods hunting, it felt really natural. It was just a continuation. So the very first day of my hunt in 2022, it's much different conditions. It's a high of 50 degrees, probably a low right around freezing. There's like a 5 to 10 mile an hour of wind. It's cool.

And it's just a prime day for whitetail buck hunting. It's November 2nd. You know, they should be moving. So I see a few deer, small bucks during the day, a few doze. And I'm self-filming this hunt for an episode of On the Hunt with Yonnas Patelus, which you can see on the Meat Eaters YouTube channel. It's my first time ever self-filming a hunt. And every time I have one of these deer come through, I'm filming them.

But the screen is so small. It's only like a three-inch screen. I can't tell for sure if these deer info. And since like probably my number one job is to make an episode and the number two job is to kill a buck I need to I'm really worried that I'm not getting in-focused deer footage. So 2 PM rolls around and this is bothering me and I'm not getting good footage. I'm like I got to check a previous clip and look closely at the detail and make sure that these deer are in focus. So I start doing that. I go into the playback mode and I'm like watching the most recent deer, the small

little buck that had come by me. He was like a little six point, probably his first year with antlers. And I'm watching the clip of this buck that literally walks almost underneath my stand. And in the clip, I'm watching him, and he's walking through the four to six inches of dried oak leaves that are crossing this oak flat. And as he walks, he's crunching the leaves. And at the same time, I think I hear... in the environment around me. And I'm like, did I hear a deer? And I'm hearing the deer on the camera.

So I pause it and I look around, look over my shoulder, don't see anything. So I go back to watching. And again, I'm just trying to figure out if I'm getting in-focused coverage of these deer. And I'm playing it again, and the same thing happens. I'm watching the deer walk. And I hear,

and I think, man, that is around me somewhere. And then I'm thinking, then it finally kind of hits me. me, I'm like, you should not be doing this right now. It's November 2nd. The rut is on. You need to be hunting, not focusing on this camera and what may or may not be in focus. So as soon as I pause that clip again, I hear. And now I know that there is a deer that is in my vicinity walking in the leaves, and I'm not hearing the camera. Look over my shoulder again. And sure enough, already well within bow range probably 20 yards or less there is a nice 10 point he's like a nice

eight point he's got little micro g4s making him a 10 point and he's coming down the same path that all these other deer had come by and he's actually using the same path that the buck you used back in 2021 although he's traveling at the opposite direction never mind that he's like well within range and i'm trying to sell film and i'm in playback mode so i am scrambling to you to hit buttons and luckily I think there was a higher power that helped me hit the right buttons get back to record mode I hit record just in time I mean he's literally 10 yards away I get him in frame I follow him for maybe five or 10 yards and luckily he stops to take a few nibbles of acorns as he does that I lock off the camera I'm able to grab my bow draw my bow

and he takes a few more steps. I give him the, and I shoot him, and he runs off. Long story, I find him an hour later after I wait, and it was a nice clean shot, and he went down 70 yards away,

but just out of sight. So it happened so fast, I almost didn't have time to get excited. Had I seen him the two minutes prior while I was dinking around the camera, I probably would have gotten just buck fever, been shaking, couldn't draw my bow, but it felt weak.

But as so it happens, he just sort of appeared. And in a moment's notice, I had to get the camera on him, draw the bow, take the shot, and it worked out for me. That's the story of my very first archery buck, which has happened in 2022. I was at the tender age of 43 years old. Adaboy, Janus. If you remember on the last bear grease,

Andy Brown of Western Arkansas told us a story about a big non-typical he killed on Thanksgiving Day on public land. It was the buck with a track as big as a pocket knife story. Except it turns out that the buck he killed didn't have a hoof as big as a pocket knife. Twister, man, real twister. Well, he told me another story about the biggest buck he ever shot at in his life. Here's a public land tale from Andy Brown. Probably the biggest buck deer that I ever shot at was on Thanksgiving Day.

That's been 25 years ago, but my family gets together with my sister and her family, and we did for years Thanksgiving Day back in those days. And we had always had a big deer hunt. And of course, my brother-in-law liked to run dogs. And I do too, but I'm, you know, I'm the guy that I called it the night before. And I said, Doug, I'll be up the creek early. So just turn the dogs loose when I'll be there, you know. And so I went in that morning before daylight and walked up the creek.

And there's a big bottom that lays between what we call in the main mountain there. I had got up on the side of the main mountain where I could watch that bottom. I sat my big old gum tree. And it was one of them cloudy, misty, you know, it wasn't really raining, but it was just like you won't. I mean, I mean, a super morning. Anyway, I was sitting there. And actually the wind for running dogs, it wasn't going to happen where I was at because they'd come up the creek. It was right out of the west, the wind was.

And I sat there in about 9 o'clock probably. Of course, back in those days, I dipped skull. You know, I had me a big old dip skull sitting up there. And I was sitting like a big chief Indian with my legs under me against that tree. And I just raised up and spit. And when I did right here behind me, a deer blew at me. close. And I just turn like that. And this little old doe, she wasn't half, this is on Thanksgiving. Now she wasn't half grown. I mean, it didn't look to me like, although she had a yearling with her,

a nub and buck. But when she wheeled, when she blew, she wheeled in about, I don't know, 40 yards where I was set. And there was just a little old briary finger come off the mountain. And them deer had come off there and I had never seen them. come off into the bottom. They're fixing to be right out in my lap. I've got the wind rather fixing me right out in my lap. Well, I raise up and I spit. When I did, she blows.

When she headed up that ridge, there was a buck deer, without question, a top three in my lifetime that I ever saw right on her nose. He didn't have a clue I was anywhere in the world, is the thing. I mean, he was just dogging her. When she went up that ridge, he was just right on her, And they were, you know, running up that ridge. Well, I just wheel over, and, of course, I'm shooting that 243 featherweight that I had for years and years and years.

I just found me a hole. I knew I was going to have to shoot at him running right there. I just found me a hole out on top that ridge. And when he hit it, I touched it off, and I shot right in front of him. I mean, there's no doubt. I mean, I shot, I guess, too soon. And when I did, he just took two jumps and stopped. Of course, he's in that junk like that.

And about that time, they took off up the mountain. And I'll never free, I never got to see the deer. I don't know how wide he was. I don't have a clue. In fact, all I'm looking at really is his right side. But that deer, he had them 12, 13-inch tines just stacked up on that right side. I mean, just, he was just, it's hard to explain how big that deer was. And he was twice as big as that doe.

I mean, he just dwarfed her. I mean, just it looked like a big dough and a baby fawn is what it looked like. And so up the mountain, they're going, and I'm trying to get on them. I can't get on them. And about that time I look, and here comes a deer running right at me coming off the mountain. And I'm thinking, uh-huh, look you here. He'll be right behind her, you know. And about that time, it just kept a coming, kept a coming.

It run right up there as close as me and you're sitting right there, and it was that nubbing buck. It left that doe. That buck took that dome. But that deer was absolutely huge. Andy loves hunting on Thanksgiving Day. I've always been a little envious of the guys that get to do that. I remember a family I grew up around that had Thanksgiving dinner at their deer camp every year. Man, I could get behind that tradition.

Hint, Misty Newcomb. It's usually an interesting story when you ask a seasoned woodsman about the biggest deer they've ever seen while hunting. And I love this story of Andy's because the mystery of the size of this deer Andy described. Was it a Boone and Crocket typical? Was it a 160? A 150? We'll never know. But coming from Andy, you believe every word of it

because of his capture of the details and how it grabs your attention. What's the biggest buck that you've ever seen in the woods? And I'd like to make a public service announcement. Note that Andy said he used to dip skull, emphasis on used to. Andy's a smart man. Now, I'm not trying to tell anybody.

how to live their life. But I am going to tell you, because I love you, that if you're dipping skull, you probably ought to quit, man. As a matter of fact, for several years of my young, dumb life, I dipped skull too, and I quit, and you can do it too, and you know that you probably should. That preachy little segment was not paid for by the Tobacco Lobby of America,

but was funded by the Voice of Reason in Your Life. This here, Bear Gries podcast, Anyhow, let's get back to our stories. On Blood Trails, the stories don't end when the hunt is over. They just get darker. I've seen something in the road. I instantly thought it was a sleeping bag. And there was a full of blood.

Oh, my God, he doesn't have a hit. Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors, where the terrain is unforgiving, the evidence is scarce, and the truth gets buried under brush and silence. Indications were he should be right there, but he wasn't. This season, we're going deeper. From cold case files to whispered suspicions, from remote mountains to frozen backwards. Each story begins in the wilderness and ends in darkness.

Because out here, there are no witnesses, no cameras, just fragments and the people left behind trying to piece them back together. He's not an honest person. He's incapable of being honest. Somebody somewhere know something. I'm Jordan Sillers. Season 2 of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, I Heart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. The next storyteller you've heard before, too. Mo Shepherd is from northwest Arkansas,

and he's as good of public land mountain deer hunter as they're making these days. Here's Mo's story of the biggest buck he ever encountered while bow hunting. Well, I'm going to tell you a little hunting story. It took place back in, I think, it was like 2001 or 2002. Anyway, it took place in the rugged Ozark Mountains of northwest Arkansas out on public land. The story started the year before. I seen a really large deer across the road, and I hunted some that year, but didn't find much sign. Didn't know if I was even hunting the deer or not.

Then the next year, I saw him again. He was crossing the road in the same place of a nighttime in the dark. and so I made it point to hunt that deer. I hunted him for, I don't know, five or six days on and off through the opening couple of weeks of bow season. And I thought I had it zeroed in where he was at, where he was traveling a little narrow bench and some really rugged, steep ground.

So I made my way down in there that morning, got in there, I had a lock-on stand on a tree in there I was going to hunt out of. It was getting light where you could see the ground, but you still couldn't see much when I got to the tree. I tied my recurve bow and my quivering stuff to my pull-up cord and climbed the tree, got up in the stand, and, well, actually, before I got up in the stand, I could hear leaves crunching. I think maybe when I was fixing the climb up in there, but I didn't know if it was that deer or what was making the noise. When I got up, climbed up in the stand and got fastened in, I could hear the crunching was really close in,

and about the time I looked and I could see a deer coming towards me. He wasn't coming off away from the tree. He was coming right at the tree at this climb. So I just sat real still in my stand. I thought, well, if it's, if it's that deer, you know, maybe he'll get here close. But he was coming right to the tree. And like I said, he was pretty close at the time because I could see him in the darkness. And he stopped, made a few more steps.

And he came right exactly to my bow that I had tied onto that string. And when he got there, I seen how big he was. He was really a big deer. It was still so dark. I couldn't see how many points he had other than he's. just had some pretty big massive horns. And he sniffed with that bow for a few seconds, and I'm sitting up there in my tree just nervous as I'll get out.

And I think, well, it's going to be all right. It's going to be all right. He's just going to mose you on by, and I'm going to be able to pull my bow up and maybe get a shot at him. Well, about that time, then he made out, I guess he scented my bow where I'd handled it that morning or something other. He just whirled and bounded about two or three bounds, and then just stopped and blowed real big,

and then just started walking off. as he started walking off I went to pulling my bow up and I finally got the bow up and he was still out there inside of me but he wasn't in my bow range of me anyway and it was getting light then I could see him pretty good but still couldn't tell other than he was really big one of the biggest deer I guess I'd ever seen then it out in the woods and uh got my bow up there got my quiver got me air out put it on my bow and I was shaking so bad I don't think I could have shot him if he'd come back I might have calmed down you know if he'd came back but uh that deer just walked off, out of sight. And I thought, well, he didn't spook very bad. He didn't spook very bad, you know. This is his travel corridor. I'll get his crack at him sometime during the rest of the season. Well, I hunted the rest of that year for him and hunted some of the next year and never saw that deer again, never saw him cross the road. Don't know if he left plum out there or what happened, but, you know, that's hunting. That hunt really stands out to me. That's why in my memory swell is because I was really anxious to hunt and thought I had this deer figured out.

And apparently I did have him figured out because he came right where he should have that morning. But whether I was a little late getting there or whether he was just early and he was a pretty much nocturnal deer and probably going back to his bedding area. But it just stands out because he was definitely, would probably be the best deer I'd ever taken with my recurved bow to this day. I've never taken one that's that large. and it just stands out my mind is that's the one that got away from me. The one that got away.

I've started compiling a formal list in my deer hunting career of the ones that got away. Sometimes sit down and write out the encounters with mature bucks, and I'm not talking little bucks, mature bucks that were in the strike zone and were killable deer, but you didn't kill them. I wrote out 11 encounters. that if things had gone just slightly different,

I'd have had a big mature buck. And what it did for me was make me grateful for the bucks that I have taken home. This next fella, we all know. Bear, Greece, Hall of Famer James Lawrence is a mountain hunter deluxe. He's humble, and he's one of those guys that never made any press for himself.

But years ago, when I met him, I knew he was special. Here's James telling us, the story of his Christmas hunt. I told you this was a holiday themed episode, but you didn't believe me, did you? Here's James. What about the big one you killed on Christmas Day? Oh, yeah.

Tell me that story. Tell me that. Only the reason I remembered, it's mounted, and it was, you know, killed Christmas Day in 1998. And I was supposed to have been off back to family for Christmas dinner at 2 o'clock. I'd left the truck at the foot of the mountain and just worked my way up the mountain the way the wind was, and then I was going back, hunting back to the west.

I seen at the time, I was running out of time. So I started easing off the mountain, found a good ridge to come off. And for some reason, how, if I'd been trying to slip up on this deer, I could have never done it. Conditions was just right, eased off, and I just stopped.

And when I looked down in the hollet to my left, a steep holley. There was a buck grazing on acres. You know how they'll just walk around and move the leaves and a decent eight point. And I was using that muzzle loader, Thompson Hawking and Fittier caliber. I got a good rest in it. I didn't try to stop him or nothing. I just caught him when he did stop.

I shot, smoke cleared, the deer went down. I started to reload. And when I started to reload on the next ridge, this deer just come up out of his bed and standing. And it was a long range shot for a 50s. the caliber muzzle loader, but I couldn't resist because it was iron sights. Yeah, iron sights, yes. It was a buck I'd been hunting, but I wasn't expecting him where it was at. I knew the deer was in there, and I didn't know how big he was, but I knew he was a good one. I'd seen him a couple of times when I was still hunting. He was just up and maybe one jump.

He's out of sight, and I could see the wreck. I reloaded, had a little trouble putting those number 11 caps on it. It's not like the primers we have now. Anyway, it took me in the a bit to do it and the deer just stood there. But I guess he was watching the smoke from the first shot because I mean just stood up and standing in his bed just stood up. I got a rest and that. How far was it? Pushing 100 yards probably.

Just visualizing it now. Yeah, it was, but it's standing shot and I had a rest and it might have just been my day. But when the smoke cleared, when I shot, the deer just went down in his bed that he just got out of. He didn't run off the buck over. The first buck came down a little bit of thrashing bit. And this deer just went down in his bed. Didn't kick, didn't do nothing. He went down.

And I knew I was already in trouble because it was after 2 o'clock and I was supposed to be for Christmas dinner. And here I am up on the side of a mountain with bucks on the ground. I wasn't real popular when I did get home, but it didn't matter. You know, I get over to that buck and started counting the points. And one, two, three, four, five, six, seven on the right. Seven on the left. I had a 14 point down on the ground on Christmas Day in 1998.

It was a happy Christmas for me. And my mother, even though I was late for Christmas dinner, my mother said that she would love to pay for the deer being mounted if I would use her pastor and did. You've seen a good job. He was taxidermist, but mother mounted the deer for me. James only has three deer mounted. And I know for a fact that two of those mounts came from someone insisting to the point of paying for the mount.

Years ago, when I asked him about the 14 point, the first thing he said was that his mother paid for the mount. It must have meant a lot to him. We're about a third of the way through this podcast and the remaining two stories are robust. They're both complicated and involve some joy and heartache. you're going to enjoy them, but I think we'll also learn something from them. The next storyteller is my friend Andy Thrill Kill, also from Western Arkansas. Andy told me the first part of the story in 2012. And 10 years later, in the spring of 2022, he told me the last part of the story.

When I heard it, I knew I had to get him to tell it. See, I got permission to hunt this private piece. It was a hay lease. We had cows at the time about every evening and we'd go up there to get a bail hay or something. There'd be just a whole bunch of doze. So we knew that there was a bunch of doze and it was a good place to hunt.

So eventually I ended up asking for permission. And so I put quite a bit of time and effort into it. I put a buddy stand up there and it was a really, it was a killer setup because we predominantly get these southwest winds around here. And you could come up from the creek. You could park down where you'd, pull in and you'd walk up across the creek and up into this little pasture. You'd kind of come up

a rise into the lower pasture. I had the buddy stand right at the mouth of that plateau field, and it just set up perfect because you could climb right up and scope it out and see if anything was in there and you could climb up in that buddy stand. Andy hunted the property for a couple of years and killed a nice 135-inch buck in 2011, and he learned that the deer bedded in a pine thicket adjacent to the hayfield and often entered the field between a ridge and a creek funneling the deer down a dim logging road. Anyhow, the piece of properties proved to be like a really good piece of property, and I'd killed that buck in 2011 on that field.

In 2010, I'd killed the very first really what I'd call a big buck. I'd read a book called Mapping Trophy Books by Brad Herndon, and I just, it teaches you how to read topos and that kind of stuff and where to set up based on different topography. And it was like my first introduction to map reading and hunting with a strategy versus just kind of peddling around and looking for sign, basically. Because Herndon's theory is not really, he don't hunt sign. Herndon's kind of like, you know, the signs typically in the bottoms were, it's beautiful

and you want to hunt, but the wind's never consistent. So he was always a big saddle guy. He was always to get on the top where the wind's consistent, because even if the sign's not there, if it's close, eventually they're going to slip through that saddle. And so I adopted that theory. And then I learned about Dan Infault. And I learned about his mountain hunting series

and how he uses thermals and he talks about how they bed based on north and south winds. Man, if that wasn't a revolutionary, because it was like you took Brad Herndon's strategy of just using hunting the saddles and that kind of stuff. Well, then you learned when to hunt those saddles based on the wind.

Because Infault's theories about, okay, if it's a south wind, it'd be better on the north side, or if it's a north wind, it'd be better on the south side. Andy grew up in a hunting family, but it wasn't until he was an adult that he started to study about deer and started becoming successful, and he's become very successful. Lots of Andy's hunting is done on public land, and he's learned how to kill mature bucks. Anyhow, it was during this time that he started getting pictures of a unique, racked young deer. I had actually got pictures of him in 2011.

And you could tell he was only like, I mean, I'm not trying to be like deer expert here, but you could tell he was young deer. You know, I'd say three and a half just because he had a humongous, like I'd say 130-inch rack. He had kickers and he was trashy. But he was young looking. I was like, holy cow, you just don't see that around here. You could see the real potential in it.

And I would have killed him that year if I'd had a chance. No question about it. I just, I don't know that I could have passed him up. Anyhow, thankfully I didn't, and I'm certain that this is the same deer in 2012 because he had grown to like 145 is what I estimate. Closed pushing 150 had like 13 points, like a mainframe 10 with a bunch of kickers. Had a split G3 with the kicker, like a 5, 4 or 5 inch kicker coming off that G2 there, had a split eye guard on one side.

Just a really impressive deer. but his pictures were always at night coming out into that field. And I knew that bottom that was right off to the west of that plateau field, the backside of that, there was a huge thicket of sweet gum, and it had just grown up. It used to be field, and they had let that kind of progressively get overtaken. And it was probably two acres, but it was just thicket. And I knew that's where the deer bedded.

And they would come out of the backside of that into that bottom, which was a wooded bottom along the creek. They would just come out of there and I knew the bucks would bed up in that pine thick and on the hill But all the stuff I'd read from Herndon just had me scared to death to get down in an area that There was a bottom that I knew the wind swirl because I'd tried to hunt it before and it always Bouged up and always ended up swirling What I had figured out by the couple of times I'd went in there and figured I'd blown it was you get in real early on a calm morning 8.39 o'clock you can have a good pretty much no wind but

by eight or nine o'clock. The first swirl of the wind you feel you need to get down and leave. But you can get like an hour or two of decent hunting in a area that doesn't get good wind if it's that morning. Andy decided to make an aggressive move based upon what he'd learned about the short window of time that you get some good wind or no wind in the morning. He was doing it because the buck just wasn't hitting the field in the daytime. And the deer were betting off the property in that pine thing. it. In early November, the conditions became just right for him to make his big move.

It had rained, so it was like perfect. I mean, it was like not super cold, but it was probably 40 degrees, and it had light rain all night coming in November 2nd or something. It was money, so I was just all excited, and I was in that stand before daylight. And so I had my stand just right on that logging road. I was just kind of sitting there thinking probably not going to happen, you know, you always think it ain't going to happen until it happens. And I'm sitting there, it was probably 30 minutes or so after daylight. A little yearland buck walked right down that trail and right underneath me. I was like, okay.

But nonetheless, the rain had just quit. And it's overcast and foggy next to the creek. I mean, it's just a dream scenario, really. But anyhow, I'm sitting there, and sure enough, I look, and there he is coming down the road. And I wasn't sure it was him because all the pictures I had were old flash camera. And so his horns were like black brown like you see normal. I guess just the dark and the wet, they were chocolate. He's just walking down the road and I start like really getting kind of amped up.

I only had my stand about 16 feet up. And when you got a buck of that caliber right below you, it feels like you're about eight foot up. You feel like you'd reach out and grab him or jump on him. And so I get drawn back. It was just a rookie mistake kind of. I mean, not that I was necessarily a rookie, but as far as bow hunting, And I'm really, that's probably my least seasoned weapon as far as what I'm good with. I like my rifle.

I like my muzzle loader. I bow hunt because that's the only thing open at the time. But I like weapons that give me the biggest chance. When he hit that hole, I just shot. And he was walking. And so where what would have been double lunged if one step made a liver. And that's what it happened is zip through him. He bolted over there about 10 yards.

And of course I've learned something else from that is I always kept my quiver off. And twice it's burned me. On that buck also right here, he's standing over there 15 yards, quartering away. And I'm thinking he's fixing to start wobbling. That's what I was hoping for. And then he just tucked his tail, and he started to walk away. And he was going a little bit northeast, and then he kind of made a turn back to the southeast, the direction he came up back towards the pine thicket.

Andy gets down and finds his arrow. He was using a fixed three-blade head, and it's covered in. dark blood, which he knows his liver blood. He knows he needs to wait to track the deer. So he calls in some help and they wait seven hours before they take up the track, which was good. What would you have done in this scenario? I backed out and the guy I was talking about, Alex, I called him because he's my blood tracker because I'm colorblind. I can't blood trail. Can't see red. And so he trailed it and his last blood trail showed a hook going back up, even more so than what I visually saw him.

And so that was our last blood. And at the time I had a friend, he had a dog, he brought that dog up and had a GPS collar on it. He didn't track on a leash. He just put a GPS collar on like a coon dog, and he would let it run. And he said, when it stopped, that's when he found the deer. Got over in the neighbor's pasture, and he looked over it around the pond. And so I called the neighbor, went over there, and when I circled that pond,

I found it looked like intestines, a little piece of the neighbor. testing on the dam of the pond and I was certain that that bucket somehow got in there. I don't know what I was thinking but I donned a wetsuit. A barred a buddy's wet suit and I got out there ended up being like chest deep and I just walked around and it was spring clear. You could see the bottom. He was in the kayak and I was in a wet suit. We were paddling around that pond looking for that deer. We never found it. And I walked all them tickets up down the creeks and I kept looking for years, for years. I mean years I hunted and just would, walked in ravines and think, I'm going to stumble across this thing.

They couldn't find the buck. Andy put in massive amounts of effort, grid searching, he used a tracking dog, he swam a pond in a wetsuit, but like a vapor, the deer vanished. To this day, Andy knows that if he had grunt stopped the deer, he'd have made a good shot. What mistake have you made in the deer woods that you wish you could redo? Anyway, yeah, that was November 2012, and I went through 10 years of just like heartbreak. And just be driving down the road and be thinking, just, just be thinking in my head, that's all it took. Like, it's all that lacked.

That was it. That's what stood between me and killing that deer because if I would have stopped that deer, I would have made a good shot. It was a chip shot. But I can't make five-yard water. I don't even want to try it. Sure I can if I had to, but you're gonna screw up half of them at least probably more than that. So I just that taught me a lesson that day. I do not take a walking shot. I won't do it. So 10 years later, April 22, me and my boy, I think it was the youth turkey hunt and we had decided I took him up to that farm. There was always usually a couple of turkeys that would run around there. And so we went up there, didn't have any luck that morning. And we walked the creek. We got on the creek, just started playing around, picking up rocks and kicking around. Got way off pretty far away from our truck.

And I said, well, let's just cut over this hill right here. I cut across there when I did. That's when I stumbled across the deer that I'd shot in November 2012. And I thought at the time, I saw, ooh, somebody's sick. Somebody's sick over that deer. And it turns out I was sick over that deer for the last 10 years. And sure enough, as I walked up on it, The deer that I had shot in 2012 had a distinct amount of kickers.

He had like a four-inch kicker that came off the G2, the left G2. He had a split G3 on the left antler. Had a hooked eye guard on the right side, and it had remnants of all that. The squirrels had chewed off a significant amount of it, but enough intact that you could tell all of those different characteristics were undeniable. So we grabbed that deer, and I just sat there in awe. And as we were walking out, or my son said, he said, hey, dad, that's the 10-year track.

And I just thought, that's exactly what that is. That was a 10-year track job right there. We've been looking for that deer a long time. The deer ended up being, I pull up my onyx, and I did a straight line from my tree stand to where I found the deer, and it ended up being about 270 yards. And he had went back right approximately where I thought he went back, One of the reasons we never found him is just the fact that the dog had went a different direction,

that it all kind of focused our energy, that direction, because we're thinking he's surely going to find it. And there's no really, it's not his fault that he didn't. There's a million different factors, including it was over 24 hours when he finally came up. You hate to hear a story of a wounded buck getting away. This isn't good. But in telling it, we can learn a bunch of stuff. The moral of the story was don't shoot a walking deer. but grunt stop them.

Secondly, in the excitement of the track job, there were areas that they overlooked when grid searching, but it wasn't for lack of trying. And the partial intestine on the bank of the pond is still a mystery. Perhaps it was the remnants of a hawk kill. Who knows, but it didn't have anything to do with the buck. I think sometimes we're so desperate to find a clue we can make one out of something that isn't.

I know I've done that. And for the record, Andy didn't want to make it sound like he was blaming the dog for not finding the deer. The old pooch did the best he could with a very tough track, and Andy was grateful for his buddy that drove so far to come and help him track. But they did put too much stock in the direction the dog went, which was the total wrong direction. Surprisingly, the rack is in decent shape for it laying on the forest floor for ten days. years. That's the most surprising part of this story to me. And clearly, the buck knew just where to go to bed down beyond the normal travel patterns of humans because nobody had been there in 10 years. Thanks for sharing your heartbreak with us, Andy. And I want to say something about liver shot deer.

I've recovered, I think, 100% of the deer that I've shot in the liver. You need to give them time, just like Andy did. Typically, they're going to be inside of 300 yards. They're not going to leave a ton of blood, but they're going to leave some. So the main thing is, give them time, and you may have to do some grid searching. 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 cut. 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 final story exemplifies a truth as old as time, and it's that there are always two sides to any story. And the perspective of the other side is often hard to understand unless you put yourself in their shoes.

and actually listen. The next storyteller is named Harvey Rainbolt. Originally from North Louisiana, he moved to Northwest Arkansas in 2011. Harvey's going to tell about his hunt for a world-class white tail. But we'll get the rare opportunity to hear the other side of a story

from another hunter that Harvey didn't know existed. Here's Harvey Rainbolt. I grew up in a house that if you didn't kill it, catch it, or grow it, you just about didn't eat. My dad was probably one of the best outdoor sportsmen that I know all around fishing, hunting. He was really amazing, and he taught me a lot. We grew up in a small community that everybody knew each other, and when you do that, sports, hunting, fishing is all competitive. that would translate easily over into our deer camp. And also at deer camp,

we would always have magazines that had these just enormous deer in there. You know, and where I grew up in South Arkansas and North Louisiana, you did not see deer like that. You're sitting there looking at 160, 180, 200-inch deer in these magazines, and you're a kid, and you're like, wow. And it never failed. There would always be somebody that would come by and say, I don't think you could hold it together if one like that walked out.

And that stuck in my head for years. Well, life throws you a curveball. 2010, I leave South Arkansas and I moved to Northwest Arkansas. Now I left pine fields and thickets and moved into an area that had mountains and ridges and oak trees and terrain. I had never hunted, so I was definitely out of my element. So for 2010, I didn't do a whole lot of hunting, found a little bit of public ground, trying to learn how to hunt up here. And then in 2011, I got really lucky and found about a 50-acre plot with a house on it

that had been abandoned for seven years. This is where Harvey's story really begins. In late 2011, he ends up moving into the house and gaining permission to hunt the abandoned 50 acres. And anybody that knows white tails knows that that's a good scenario. And in an odd twist, this property is also where our other hunter enters the story. And the other hunter is me. So I had access to a small piece of property.

And directly to the north of that property was a 50-acre abandoned. farm. And I knew that this place had been abandoned. I knew the people that used to live there and didn't anymore. It was grown up. It was big timber. And it was a tough decision for me. But I knew some of these neighbors used it kind of like it was their own. But I had decided I was not going to hunt that property because I didn't have permission to hunt it. And I killed the biggest deer that I ever killed, and I watched it come off of that property onto the property that I could hunt, and I killed that deer in 2007. And so this 50-acre farm was holding older-age deer, and it had become a sanctuary. When I say it was a hard decision not to hunt the land,

I hope you know what I mean. Nobody lived there. Nobody cared, and I knew it was a killer property, and it would have been easy to justify hunting it, but I didn't. I had actually killed two big deer that I had watched walk off of that place, and it had basically become my own personal buck sanctuary. But what I didn't know was that a deer-killing seasoned hunter named Harvey Rainbolt was now living there. It's early October 2012. Here's Harvey. I remember on October the 8th, it was my dad's birthday who had passed, and I called my mom, and she asked me, she said, you know, have you even been hunting?

I said, no, she said, well, your dad would be really disappointed. And I said, yeah, you're right. So the next day, I get up, and it's beautiful. It was like 10 years ago, almost today. It was the 9th, today's what the 11th. It was a day just like this. It was beautiful. It was a little bit warm, but the trees had done started turning, and I'm like, you know, I ought to go.

I should. The day before, the reason I'd called my mom was the day before I'm on his birthday, I had come down that hill, and I saw a really good buck standing out there in that field. I'm like, man, looking back on it now, probably 130-inch deer. So the next day, long story, I'll go and get my hunting license, hadn't even bought them. So I go to Walmart, and I'm standing there talking to the guy. And of course, up here I have an accent. So immediately he's like, well, where are you from?

And I told him, you know, South Arkansas. And he said, oh, yeah, me too. And we talked about first one thing, another. And he said, look, I want to tell you something. These guys up here don't tell you this. But, you know, back home, you have to hunt those deer. These deer up here, if you see one on a trail today, the odds are he'll be on that trail. He's going to wherever he's going on the same trail, not like they do back home.

I'm like, really? He's like, yeah, they're pretty, pretty reliable. I'm like, okay, well, I go back to the house and I don't really give it too much of a thought. I grab my stuff and I'm going to go sit in this observation stand. Look out. It's beautiful. I'm sitting there looking out across the field. I'm there just a few minutes and a couple of doze and a small buck that I hadn't seen come out.

And they come to me about 30 yards in front of me to a little feeder that I had put out. And I'm like, okay, this is going to be a really good day. I'm glad I came. it was almost like the guy from Walmart knew what he was talking about. I look up after being there for 40 minutes, and I can see a big-bodied deer moving down the hill, and I'll be darned. It's that buck. I'm like, oh, man, this is actually Mike Fisna to happen.

He's heading in the right direction. And to my right, there was a big hickernet tree, solid gold, leaved out, but you could see through it. He came out straight in front. And when he came out into the field, I noticed that he looked postured up like he was angry about something, went over to a locust tree, and literally just started wearing it out in the middle of that field.

Well, instead of coming straight to me and to the feeder and to the doze that were in front of me, he goes to my right. And you could tell that this deer was just staring at something over here to my right. And the next thing I heard was the loudest clash of horns that I've ever heard. but as I looked through those limbs on that tree, I saw more horn and antler flashing and more hide and more white flags flying than I have ever seen. I mean, they were getting after it.

They were not playing. And you could tell that the deer that he had met up with was massive compared to him. I couldn't tell a lot about him. All I could tell is every time they hit, you could just see a big, wide, white. rack just thrashing this deer. I'm like, oh man, I didn't know what to think. I have never seen anything like that, and I still hadn't got a good clear view of him, but I could tell he was huge.

I could tell he was huge, Harvey said. I'd say that'd be a good descriptor. It's important to remember that this is Harvey's very first hunt on the property. That's kind of mind-blowing to me in the wildest part of this story. And what he wouldn't have known as he saw glimpses of the wide white rack buck was that the bow hunter just south of him knew every point and nuance of that deer's rack. But not because he'd ever seen him with his own eyes. He had known the deer since it grew its first discernible rack. He'd named the deer. Everyone in his family knew its name. He knew where the buck lived. He knew when the buck would show up on camera. He'd spent uncountable hours trying to kill the deer. And he knew the buck's unbelievable history of antler development

and that he was me. To this day, if someone told me this story that you're about to hear, I'd probably call them a liar, or at least mistaken. But this is exactly how it happened. I want to introduce you to moose. And to do it, we need to go back to 2008. In the summer of 2008, I got a picture of a young deer that I believe was two and a half years old that had a very unusual rack. He had a big section of palmation on his right antler that it looked like a miniature moose antler. And so I called this deer moose, but it's two and a half years old. And when a deer's that age around here, I mean, whether he's going to live to maturity is really just a gamble. he's going to get hit on the road killed by another hunter.

This is not an area where we're managing for deer at all. But I took note of the deer. Well, that winter, I started getting pictures of the deer, and he was bone skinny. And when I say bone skinny, I mean literally, you can see his hips, you can see his ribs. And what had happened to him was very clear, he had broke his right front foot such that around. his hoof, it was swelled up, probably bigger than a Coke can, and this deer in my mind was undoubtedly going to die. I had a tag in my pocket, and I thought, man, I'm going to put this deer out of his misery, you know, it's a cool little rack, and I'm going to kill this deer. So I tried

with all my might to kill that deer, and I couldn't kill him. Well, the season comes and goes, and I don't think much of it, and I imagine the deer's dead. Well, Well, 2009 rolls around and I put out some cameras on a food plot, some cameras over some feed, and just have a couple of nice deer coming in, nothing major. But in December 2009, I get pictures of a 10-point buck that has a kicker, and the deer looks oddly familiar. And I recognize it to be the deer that I thought was dead and assumed was dead, But this deer, I did a fight by his horn structure, but mainly by the shape of his broken leg.

He had a very distinct broke leg. And this is moose. And I'm shocked because he has turned into a really nice, probably 125-inch 10-point buck that's now three and a half years old. That year, I had killed two deer, and so I did not have any buck tags. So I didn't even go after the deer. But I took note of him, got a lot of pictures of him that winter. 2010 rolls around. And I noticed a trend that I did not get pictures of this buck until after the rut.

And sure enough, just like clockwork, I could almost tell you the day. It was usually around November the 30th. And Moose shows up. And this year, he is a, what I believe, to be a 145-inch 10-point with stickers. The deer is now four and a half years old. And just a beautiful deer. And he still has the distinct broke leg, but he also now has apparently broken his back leg, too.

He has a big, huge knot on his back leg. I take note of the deer, and in my drivins and going around as the hunter does, I see the buck about a mile. away one night on the side of the road underneath the street lights of a road. And I recognize that is moose. And he's a mile away from where I'm getting pictures of him. And I know there's a little farm right back there close to where this deer is at. And I just know that that deer is on the farm. So I go and I write a letter to the landowner. I just looked up the guy. It was before I had

on, well, before Anex was around, I looked up the guy's address, his name. sent him a letter, introduced myself, and told him that I was after a specific deer that I believed was on his property, and I'd like to bow hunt. I just laid it all out for him. I sent it to him, didn't get a response, and so a week later, I end up going to this man's house and going to his door, introducing myself. I'm the guy that sent you the letter, and he agrees to let me hunt his property. And I end up becoming good friends with this family. So late in 2010, I start now have two data points of where this buck is, and I start hunting him down on this other farm a mile away. And I start getting pictures of the deer on that place almost immediately. In Arkansas, we can hunt deer until the end of February. And by now it's January. I'm starting to see this deer on camera fairly regularly. and I know that in low temperature times,

these deer will come out and feed during the daylight in this area if it doesn't get above 32 degrees. So I was targeting these super brutal cold days, and I was even doing all day sits. And I hunt the deer and actually have the deer come into 25 yards one time when he was four and a half years old, 145 inch 10 point, and he sees me up in the tree, he runs off.

I continue to hunt the deer. the rest of the year. And one day, I believe it was January the 7th, I see a deer limping across the field with a group of doze. And I put up my by-nose and I realize it's moose and he's shed his antlers. And moose had an incredibly distinct gate. He limped in the back and he limped in the front. The deer, it was a miracle that he was even alive. It was a miracle he could jump fences. And I think this deer is probably going to die. He won't live to be five and a half. Well, that day in the stand, when I saw him coming across that field,

I literally climbed down from the stand mid-afternoon and went home. My season was over hunting for moose. Fast forward to 2011. And I get a picture of a clean-racked, probably 135-inch 8-point. and it's a big, beautiful deer. And I immediately recognized it, but I did not believe what I was seeing. Because usually as these deer get older,

they get more non-typical, they get bigger. This deer had become extremely typical. It was 100% moose based upon his broke leg in the front, broke leg in the back. And I kid you not, now he had a third break on his other front foot. I don't know how this deer was breaking, legs, but he had broke three different legs. And the deer is now dropped down to a 135-inch deer.

I hunt the deer in 2011 and never see him. I get pictures of this deer in multiple places. I'd now gained access to another place to hunt. Basically, this deer was running about a mile-long corridor, and I was getting pictures of him in several places, but I never could see the deer in the daylight. He was just a master at evading me. So 2011 now comes and goes. The deer is five and a half. Now we enter 2012. On a new property, I was starting to get pictures of these deer in the summer. I kind of found where they were at. And in August, I get a picture on my camera and I call my father-in-law and I said, I think I've got a 200-inch deer on camera, a wild non-typical. And I, I'm talking to him on the phone as I'm looking at the photos like I just got them.

And as I'm looking and see more and more photos of this deer, I recognize the deer. It is moose. And man, I want to tell you right now that if you walked up to me on the street and told me the sequence of antler development on this buck, I would tell you that you were wrong. I would say that's not possible. You're mixing up deer. That's not the same deer. He didn't go from a 145 inch 10 point to a clean 135 inch 8 point to now a potentially 180 inch plus non-typical. I would have said, you are wrong, my friend.

But I'm going to tell you that's exactly what happened. Moose turned into a freak show buck. And the deer is now six and a half years old. I am ecstatic. I'm nervous. This is now the fourth year quest after this deer. I mean, I'm eight up with this deer. And at the time in my career in the outdoor industry, I was focusing on white tails.

I kind of got my start in the outdoor world writing for North American white tail and writing about bohunting deer, which really, like I said before, was, my first love and still is, I mean, a massive part of my life. To say that this deer had kind of engulfed me would be an understatement. Well, I felt like I knew where this deer was living. And on October the 8th, I go into this property and I'm going to hang a stand in a spot that I had never been. And it's just a small little, probably two acre thicket. and I know more than set foot in that thicket, and I jumped Moose.

He was within 15 yards of me, and I watched Moose run to the southeast, which is directly towards where I first got pictures of the deer in the abandoned farm. The only time I ever saw Moose wearing his six-and-a-half-year-old headgear was on October 8th, and he was headed towards the abandoned farm, or at least I thought it was abandoned. Turns out it wasn't anymore. Now we're going to jump back in the stand with Harvey on October 9th, 2012,

on his first hunt on this 50 acres. He's just seen a 130-inch deer and a giant fighting right in front of him. He's in shock. So they're fighting. they would pause for just a second. The deer that are here in front of me at 30 yards are keyed in on them. So I'm in the stand.

I can do whatever I want to. No deer or even looking in my direction. So I'm like, I don't know what to do. I don't normally do anything this early in the hunt, but I need these deer to come to me and they're fighting. So what do I do? Man, I dig in my bag and I pull out a grunt call. I never use a grunt call that early.

I don't have anything to lose. I'm, boy, I hit it. They stopped, and I could see them pause and kind of move in my direction. So I hit it again. When I did, the smaller buck, here he come. I could see him. So I went ahead and got stood up, got ready. They were going to be at like anywhere between 15 to 20 yards.

So I got up, I got ready, and I could see the other deer coming behind him. And again, I mean, I was looking through all that stuff, so I couldn't tell just how big he was, but you could still tell, oh my, this is something like I've never seen. same before. I'll get ready and I'm locked on to where these deer are fissing to come out. I don't even look over to my right anymore. I'm just locked on to this one spot. And the first deer come out and yeah, he was a good deer and any other time I would have shot him. He come out broadside. He looked away from me and towards the doze. It was perfect. There he was. All I'm thinking is that other one is fitting to do the same thing.

Well, I was so buried into it when this deer walked towards the other one. He had his head going away from me and the big deer came out I was already drawn back and he was almost facing dead towards me and I'm at full draw and I had done been holding it for a minute and I have one choice I have to either shoot this deer or I have to let down once something that is fissing to give and he's fission to be gone I know for a fact that's the first and only shot that I have ever taken on a deer that was full frontal like that and all I can think of was that little twist of hair right there at the base, that's my aim of point. That's where it has to be.

So I just buried in there and let it go. When I let it go, the deer rared back like a horse would and twisted and turned to the right and stopped for just a second. And I thought I had missed. Now, the grass was waist, chest high out there, and then I see him walk back the way he came from. And I can see his tail wing every once in a while. See it rings one time.

Oh, dang. I've wondered before where I was at the instant that Moose got shot. At the time, I was running a landscape company, so I was probably working. In the grand scheme of life, killing or not killing a deer isn't a big deal. But on a micro level, and in my world, this was a big deal. Honestly, it was too big of a deal. And my four-year quest had just come to an abrupt stop, and I didn't even know it. So I followed a little bit of blood through all that and got to the edge and I'm starting to see a little bit more blood and I look up there and there's this deer.

About 20, 30 yards inside the wood, butted up against this big moss-cover rock bluff. And just to see him laying there, it was unbelievable. That was the first time I actually got a look and I was almost scared to walk up there. I'm like, man, you know, I've never seen anything like that. So I stayed there for a while, you know, excuse me, talk to dad for a minute, got back to the, back to my truck, just adrenaline will make you sick at your stomach. Testify, it will. So I get back to the truck and I'm just sick.

I'm so happy. It was pandemonium, absolute pandemonium. None of us ever seen a deer like that. And it's still at the moment, it's. It's overwhelming when you do something like that and you answer a lifelong question, you know, and it did. In that moment, it dawned on me, but you just answered your question. Not only did you take it when it mattered, that's a difficult shot to take.

You know, so it was a completion to a whole life of wondering, are you good enough? Can you really come through when it matters? The deer would end up gross scoring 188 and 3 eighths inches with 33 scorable points and many points that were under an inch that didn't count. I think you can hear it in Harvey's voice. He knew what he'd done and how special this deer was. He'd been waiting his whole life for this moment.

Overall, the deer had 33 scoreable points. I don't even know how to describe him. Everybody says, you know, you get a deer in a lifetime. This deer is a deer in many lifetimes. If you took, I guess maybe a mainframe 8 point that was, I'd say 19 to 20 inches wide, gave that rascal some 10 or 12 inch brow tines that forked up at the top,

and then take all of his G2s and put stickers all over the ones on his left side. I think there were five huge stickers that looked like a, more like a turkey foot or something that came off of his G2 on his left side. He was actually a really,

he was skinny. It was, we get him there, we get him cleaned. The deer had three of his legs. They had been broken. One of them had been broken in two separate places. And I don't mean just snapped a little bit.

I'm a massive. I remembered afterwards seeing the deer move towards me through all the limbs and everything else that he had kind of a funny gait. But I thought it was because he was posturing at that other deer and posturing at me for grunting. But it wasn't. This deer was actually, yeah, I don't know how he got along. Yeah, he was tough. He was old.

It was just a massive deer. And after I get him up to the house and we're looking at this and I can't help to think, man, you know, I wonder if anybody else around here knows that anything like this even exists around here. And I had moved up here. I didn't know anybody. I didn't know too many places to go. But every day that I went to work, I passed a place called Mountain Man Pond Shop. There's a really cool pawn shop in Fayetteville, Arkansas called Mountain Man. pond. These guys are my friends down there. And about the, probably the 13th of October, I pull in

the Mountain Man just randomly, and they put pictures up of all the bucks that have been entered into the big buck contest. And I walk in there, and I'm kind of just perusing the leaderboard, and there's not very many deer there yet, because it's early October. Most of the deer hadn't been killed. And I will never forget, ever forget what it felt like. When I came down to that last picture and I see some dude with a giant buck in the back of his truck, and I unmistakably know that it's moose. I mean, here is a picture of moose at Mountain Man Pond, dead. I'm in shock.

I remember I called James Lawrence. I called Misty. I called my father-in-law, Steve Schultz. He ended up called my dad later, too. And I said, it's over. Moose is dead. I go to the guys at Mountain Man and I say, hey, I know you're not supposed to do this,

but I've got to have the phone number of this guy, Harvey Rainbolt, who has killed this deer. I'm sitting up there still on Cloud 9. Of course. I mean, everybody that I can find to tell this deer story to, I'm telling, right? So I'm sitting there and look and here comes this vehicle up the driveway and I don't recognize it and a guy gets out and he says, you know, introduces itself, I'd like to talk to you about your deer.

And boy, I didn't know how to act. I could tell when he came up there that, yep, somebody knew about this deer. I didn't know how he knew, but I knew that this guy knows. So I'm like, boy, I didn't really really know how to talk to him, you know, but he gets out of the vehicle and just, man, one of the nicest guys ever. And he's like, look, you know, I'm friends with the guy down at a mountain man. And I had to really talk to him about getting your number and where your address was and all that. But I wanted to come up here and talk to you. And this man sat down and showed me a history of that deer that will blow your mind. I drive up to Harvey's house and I have my laptop computer with me and I have two years of matching sheds.

I go knock on his door and I say, man, I heard you killed a big deer. Congratulations. I wanted him to know that I wasn't mad at him. I was there to celebrate with him and I was there to add meaning to this deer that he had killed. And I said, man, have you got a minute? and we went to his back porch and sat down, and I opened up my laptop, and I began to tell him the story that started in 2008 with a little two-and-a-half-year-old deer that had a side that looked like a moose antler,

and how I tried to kill that deer, and how the next year he grew to a 125-inch 10-point, then 145-inch 10-point with kickers, and then down to 135-inch deer, and then up to the rack that we're sitting there looking at, which was 188 inches and 3 eighths. And the incredible saga and the amount of time and energy and emotion that I spent hunting that deer.

And I really was happy for Harvey. And it was clear that he was a woodsman and he recognized what he'd done. I ended up giving Harvey both sets of sheds of moose. I just felt like they belonged to him and with that rack. and when I heard his full side of the story and what this deer would mean to him, even in the decades to come,

I recognize that it's just a lesson in life. Like you think things are supposed to go a certain way. And, you know, I had scripted out in my mind how I was going to kill this deer. And I didn't. I don't hold on to deer that tight anymore. Something that is as beyond, and far out of our control as a wild white-tail buck. No man has right to claim it. Nobody deserves

that deer. Harvey didn't deserve it. I sure didn't deserve it, but we just get what we get. And there is, I believe, God's sovereignty is involved in everything that we do. Now, even 10 years later, Harvey and I have become good friends. We've stayed in touch. Harvey, no longer. longer lives in that spot. It's clear that that deer was very, very meaningful to him, even life-changing. And to this day, he and I both celebrate that we both got to hunt for a big buck deer named Moose. And we absolutely love it. I believe one of the greatest things a person can have is passion, but with it comes high highs and low lows. It takes some guts to have passion. You got to be brave. Today we've heard four stories of bucks that got away and four that

didn't. And it'd be hard to say which one's had the most value. All I know is that I'm grateful every day for the wild and woolly place that we live that holds white-tail deer. Whether it be a backyard suburban buck or a wilderness beast, it makes no difference. White-tail country in all its forms is special. As the world becomes increasingly urbanized, I cherish my personal connection to the natural world, and I'm grateful every day that I'm a whitetail hunter. I hope you have a great season. And remember, grunt stop a walking deer, getting to your stand plenty early, Mo Shepard, don't dip skull.

Being late for Christmas dinner is only excusable if you bring home two big bucks like the boss that you are and don't let your heart get too tied up on a big buck because he might just break it. And probably most importantly, celebrate the success of others. If you get your mind right, your neighbor's success is your success too. Thanks so much for listening to Bear Grease. Let me know which story you enjoyed the most in this series and check out Phelpsby. Game Call's new line of grunt calls. I really like the Alpha and Beta Pro calls. They sound great.

I look forward to talking with all the folks on the Render podcast next week. So between now and then, you'll kill a big buck. 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 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 Felps. 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.