Bear Grease - Ep. 77: Bear Grease [Render] - Bucks, Wild Hogs, Losing Fingers, and Three-Wheeler Wrecks

Episode Date: October 26, 2022

On this episode Clay hosts a group of longtime friends from his hometown - Andy and Scott Brown, Steve Phillips, Randy Stepp, Cauy House and Gary "Believer" Newcomb.  This is a humdinger of a conversation about wild hogs, deer hunting, three-wheeler wrecks, wrestling deer and an eclectic assortment of wild stories - one involving Andy losing a finger.  Scott tells about the time they killed two giant hogs and big buck on the same hunt. Clay tells about stalking a group of wild hogs on his hands and knees, Andy tells about a wild three-wheeler wreck and about losing his finger in a treestand accident related to his ring. Gary tells about hitting a deer on his fourwheeler and barely escaping death. Finally, Scott tells a story about Clay chasing a perfectly healthy deer down a snow covered mountain. If you're looking for a good time - this is your podcast.  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 in real use. Hard wearing where they need to be versatile where it matters. No shortcuts. Just gear designed for the work that earns the season.

Built to perform, built to last. Check out. First Light's new field. Worldware Gear at firstlight.com. 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. Well, man, this is a monumental bearish render for me right here.

I got lots of people here that usually we have a group that's all the same. But during hunting season, I usually do something a little different. This is one of those different ones, all right? So the only regular is Gary Believer-Nookum. Does anybody here know why his nickname is Believer? Absolutely. Tell him, Scott. He believes.

using the Black Panther. That's right. Hey, Steve, Meteeter made a hat that's like a best-selling hat. Like, people wear this hat all over the country and it says, Believer, and it has a black panther

walking across a log with a moon behind it. That's awesome. And it says on the Meteor website, inspired by Gary Newcomb. It's a Gary Newcomb special. Yeah, so good to see you, then. So everybody else, every one of you have been on the Bear Gries podcast before.

but never on a render. I don't think any of you ever been on a render. So to my left, my good buddy, Scott Brown. I talk about you all the time, Scott. Do you hear murmurs of it? Every once in a while. Yeah, every once in a while. I hear you mention me.

So, Scott, you're just a couple years older than me. We didn't really know each other that well in high school. I knew of you. The first time that I consciously remember Scott, meeting Scott, was outside the Walmart, and we met up, just like outside the Walmart, it was dark,

and you said, Clay, I'm hunting a buck, that if I kill it, everybody's going to know about it. I didn't take much of a deer back then. No, and then you killed like a hundred and fifty-six-inch buck

on public land with your bow. Yeah. And everybody knew about it. And I was like, what this man says he does. But no, Scott and I, Scott went to the University of,

Arkansas in Fayetteville. I moved to Fayetteville when you were like a senior in college. Yeah, that's about right. And so I was a whatever you are when you start freshman, I guess, and we worked together at Walmart. That's right. And man, Andy, that's where I felt like I got to know you because me and Scott talked nonstop about deer hunting, about Black Panther just jumped in my lap. And no, I learned. learned a ton about deer hunting from Scott Brown, no doubt. Good to have you, Scott. Glad to be here. You were on the first Bear Greece podcast, too. Yes, I was. Telling the story about the guy walking in with a bobcat picture, thinking it was a mountain line.

Thinking it was a mountain line, yeah. Yeah, that was perfect. That was. To your left is my long time, like, since like grade school, buddy. Yep. Randy, long-legged step. Good to be here. Yeah, man. So Randy's claimed to fame in the Bear Greece world. is that he told the story of the buck falling in the mine shaft. Just think, Randy, if that hadn't happened to you, where would you be in life, man? You know, I can butterfly effect, take that back to you, Clay. I got my first job in high school because you quit.

And I took your job specifically. I went in and applied and said, I don't even, I'm lost. I guess I quit and didn't get the memo. You were pushing carts and you told me at school, hey, I'm quitting that job. It's like, oh, I think I want that job. So I went to apply and said, hey, I heard Clay's quitting. I want this job and they gave it to me.

Really? And I still worked there 25 years later. So if it weren't for you, then maybe none of that happens and that deer doesn't fall in my chef. Well, okay. I didn't realize that you did that. Yeah, I pushed carts. Yeah. I had two stints at Walmart.

I guess everybody in Arkansas does. You guys just stuck with it. Scott works at Walmart. Randy works at Walmart. Absolutely. Man, I was thinking Randy and I, believe it or not, went to Boy State together. That's right. And if you know what Boy State is, I don't know if that's good or bad.

I don't know if I'm proud of that or not proud of that. But me and Randy. And room together there too, which is strange because usually they try to pair you up with some. I guess they figured we couldn't be paired with anybody else. I guess not. Good to see you, Randy. Good to see you too. So Randy's left, skipping over dad.

Steve Phillips. Steve, as long as I can remember being alive, I remember Steve Phillips being around somewhere. We went to church with the Phillips and I went to school with your kids. you were on the second bear grease podcast, mouth calling. That's right. Yeah, man. Give us your best mouth call, whether it's an owl or a crow. Can you do it on the spot?

There you go. That's good. I want to hear about your hog. Oh, the hog story? At some point. Let me introduce. Oh, yeah. Get this guy to my left.

Yeah. Steve's left is Andy Brown. And Andy, man, I told you this when you were on the podcast the other day. You're world famous, man. After the Louis Del and Charlie Edwards, who would have thought that knowing Louis Del and Charlie would get you so much credit in this world? Not surprising. Not surprising at all.

So Andy is Scott's dad. This is an eclectic group of hunters. And then also not in the not with a headset on is Coy House, Steve Phillips, grandson. And I want to talk to Coy after a while, too. Tell us about that hog. Well, you know, it has a lot to do with my grandson here at Koi House. You know where I live up behind the old bowling alley. I found some hog sign in there the other day.

And so Koi decided to put one of his spy cameras up. And so he did. And all of a sudden we're at Friday night ball game, and here comes a big old boy at 845 in there. And he shows me the picture, and I said, well, we're going to get a chance to shoot that thing. So we don't get another picture of that until this morning. And we're laying there asleep, and his grandma's got to go to work at 7 o'clock. Six o'clock, the door knocks, and he opens the door, and he said, hey, Paul, that hog's up there right now.

And I said, Coy, let us go back to bed. We'll get him another morning and let us sleep. I didn't want to get up. And he just shut the door and walked out. And I thought, well, he's going back to bed in just a minute. He opens my door, and he shoves his lab pup in my room. He said, watch the dog. And so he left, and I told his grandma, I said, he ain't going to kill that hole.

I said, the wind's going to blow down there, and he's going to smell him and run off. In about 10 minutes, I heard, I heard a shot. And she said, do you hear that? And I said, yeah, well, my cell phone goes off. And he says, I just smoked him. And I said, well, come on back to house. Let's drink some coffee and, you know, let it get daylight. Yeah.

He ate his flashlight on him, you know. On private land, you can shoot hogs anywhere, anytime, anything goes. So we go up there and he said he run off in a thicket down below. I heard him crash. Well, we get in side by side and right up on top of the hill. And I've bush hogged a big area around there, you know, for deer, got deer stands and everything. And he's laying dead right out in the middle of the open. So I just get the tractor and go out there and hook on to him and raise him up and bring him back to the house.

About 250, 275 pounds. Did he have some pretty good teeth? Yeah, I had some good tusks on him. Yeah. He's about half as the biggest one you killed in Howard County. About half as big as that one I got in Howard County. That's exactly right. Oh, he killed a monk.

A monk. I told O'Annie and Tony Hooper, they were there. I called him on the radio when I shot that hog. I was walking, and I jumped him out of his bed, and I shot him. I called him on a radio. They said, was that you shot? And I said, yeah, I've killed a little old hog. I said, I'm going to need y'all's help to help me drag him out.

Well, here they come over there, and we walked off down to the woods, and I was kind of back when they got up there. there in about 50 yards of it where they said little hog nothing we barely drug him up in the back of the truck he probably was 500 pounds really oh yeah we took that thing to camp hung that dude up i mean it's a big and Tony and steves out there skinning that hog and i'm you ask the boys i'm a little weak stomach i mean i can i can look at it but if but if i smell it i'm gone i mean you on a hog it don't matter it don't matter it don't matter it don't matter if it's a deer or a hog.

There's nothing worse than a gut shot deer, in my opinion, with a full of acres. I mean, it's awful. But anyway, we hang that dude up. And they're skinning that thing. And that dude, he's got a little old kind of a growth pocket on it. Where was that? It's on his neck.

It's on his neck. We pulled that armor plate down. Old Tony wretch up, and he hit that thing when it did. It just squirted stuff all up in his mouth, up on his cheek. It looked like dirt-dobber mud all up through there. I had me a complete runaway out there. I mean, oh, stink. Oh, you can't even believe how bad that thing.

But that was a, you had the head mounted on that dude. Yeah. Yeah, he's in my closet. I had him mounting. Good place. Yeah. Big hog. Yeah, a big hog.

You know, and we're trying to get Andy supposed to be bringing a paper towel to wipe Tony's face, and we're telling him, don't open your mouth. And he's running backwards, you know, about to fall down trying to throw up. And finally we get that. And Tony said he could smell that on his upper lip for about a week. Oh, wow. It's awful. Rough.

Man, there's been some pretty good hog encounters. You shot one time five hogs in the same day? Yeah. Tell that story. Well, Clay was in high school, and I found a bunch of hogs. I put Clay on the only deer I could find in the area where we hunt. So I went into an area that I called hog bottom. I knew the area, but this first time hogs had been in it.

And I knew there was deer. I knew there were hawks. And so as I was going in, there was a cane break all the way across this bottom. And all of a sudden, little pigs started coming out, you know, 100-pounders. And I started, whack, whack, whack. So I had five or six areas. every time I'd shoot one, they'd squeal, and they would run across the creek up on a little rise on a flat. So all of a sudden, about the third hog, fourth hog, I hear a roar, a sound.

You know, I talked about that clicking buck. Well, I'm telling you, this is a sound that I think you've got to be a real serious hog hunter to have ever heard it. it was like a lion in Africa. I mean, it was a roar. You've probably heard it had in you, Scott. Anyway, this sucker's coming off the mountain, and he doesn't like it that I'm shooting his little pigs. He's hearing, he's hearing, he's here and squealing and running off,

and he's off out of here, you know, just inside of here and somewhere. So two or three days later, I talked to two big hog hunters, one from Oklahoma, one from Arkansas. And I said, what was that hog doing? He said, he's got two purposes, to breed and protect. And he was coming to get you. You know, he was coming off that mountain to get you. So I got a tree behind me about this big that I see I can climb. I'm right there, a creek, you know, about 10 feet wide, but real shallow.

And then up a bank. So he comes down and he crosses that creek. And when he crosses that creek, he fills up the whole creek. I mean, this sucker looked like a freight train. And so he jumps up and gets on one of these hog trails, and he comes right straight to me on a hog trail. And I'm sitting there at full drawl. And I'm thinking if he comes to the edge of the creek, which was 10 feet away, you know, I'm going to shoot him. Well, he comes, and he's coming right to me.

He probably doesn't really see you. He hadn't seen me. You know, they're pretty blind, I think. I don't see. But I can see him, and that's all I needed. So when he got to the edge of the creek, I just touched off my release and hit him right square in the head. You couldn't shoot him anywhere else.

His head was so big. He was coming towards you. Yeah, his head was so big you couldn't see. It looked like legs with a head. And so I shot him in my era, is an aluminum era, and it broke, and I could see it spinning off, and I saw him turn. Anyway, I had four or five dead pigs over here and this guy. And no areas left.

That didn't hurt him. I mean, that didn't phase him. For years, I thought one day I'm going to kill a hog down there that's got a big wasp broadhead stuck in between its forehead, but we never did. But the next week I took Clay in there, and that's a story I probably told on this where he went in and killed a pig, a hog. And then all the little bitty pigs came in, and he had like 30 little pigs, 20 little pigs running around. I shot a, I was 16.

No, I wasn't 16. I was 15 because I couldn't drive yet. And I walked into Hogbottom just where he had had all his pigs. And I hadn't been in there 10 minutes. I mean, I could no more hear the gravel popping of dad leaving me there. And I see a pig coming, just trotting down the bottom. and the first one gets past me. It's full-grown hog,

and I'm just sitting there going, holy cow, I just saw a hog. I hadn't seen hogs before. It was the first time I'd encountered wild hogs. And not two minutes later, here comes another one, coming down the trail, lone black adult hog.

And I just draw back and it gets out there, take a good shot, just ten ring this hog. Dad's been gone ten minutes. and it's, you know, it's probably four in the afternoon, getting dark at 7.30. And so the hog runs off. Well, directly, a minute after that pig comes by, here comes 26.

I'm not kidding. I counted every one of them. They were chutes. They were of all different sizes. They were like 60-pounders down to little bitty. just hardly weaned piglets. And they just paraded by me following the two pigs I'd just seen. And for some reason, I wasn't used to the wild hog world back then.

And I just, it was kind of like deer hunting. I felt like, I mean, I don't know that I consciously thought about regulations, but now I would have just kept slinging errors at them. And that's what he had done. But for some reason, I didn't shoot any more hogs, though I could have. Anyway, they all run off in 30 minutes, passes and I decided I'm going to trail this hog that I've shot and I start trailing this hog and I blood trail her I don't know 100 yards and all of those shoots were gathered up around

my dead hog it was a big sow and uh and they wouldn't leave her and finally I got tired of watching them and I crawled up on my hands and knees to see how close I could get to them grunting, I was grunting like a pig and I'm serious, I got within five yards the whole mass of them and then, wha! Scared them off and they all scattered. But they were, I'm not sure

that they weren't pretty fresh, turned out. Back in those days, people were turning hogs. Now, they were black and wild as they could be. But, you know, guys were catching, that was back when guys were catching hogs, wherever, and bringing them and turning them loose.

and anyway, that was my hog story right after that. Tell about the two you killed down on the lake. Scott and Tim come in. We've had a bow camp for, what, 20 years probably. They show up one evening at the cap, and they've got a whole pickup bed full of hogs and a big eight-point buck deer that covered, it filled a whole bed of the truck up.

But tell them that story about those two big hogs. That's cool. Yeah, that's one of the most memorable hunts I've ever been on. So Tim Clark, he's friends with all of us here. We all know Tim. We were at Bo Camp one week, and Tim said, man, we got to go find some deer. We just hadn't found what we were looking for all week long. And so we let out, and we go over to a couple different ridges.

We walk in on this first ridge, and we actually run into, we actually run into a few hogs that day on the side of a, just kind of a hickory cedar thicket ridge. But we weren't hog hunting. We were trying to find some bucks on. You know, it's Halloween week. We're thinking, you know, we're looking for big bucks on. And we kind of started back, kind of, well, it's hard to explain it, but we're kind of headed back south of where we'd originally started and pulled in on a little old ridge or an old dim logging road kind of, you could still make reminence of this old logging road outside this ridge. And when we found it, there was probably every, you know, 50 yards down that road was a fresh scrape. Just a, I mean, it's just kind of what we were looking for,

and we found some white oak acres that were in there, and there wasn't white oak acres just everywhere that year. And so you could tell the deer were really in this area pretty strong, good buck sign and all that. And when we saw that, we thought, I wonder if the ridge on south of here is like this one. I wonder if it made white oak acres. So we kind of went over the top of the ridge,

crossed the holler, pulled back up on on the next. ridge over there and walked in on the side of just a kind of a mixture between white oak and red oaks on the side of this ridge pulled in on the side of that and there's just acorns everywhere on the side of this ridge i mean we just you know what it's like when you just kind of just walk into a place and you know instantly when you walk in this is a spot and it wasn't just white oaks it's red oaks the leaves were just turned over and there where the deer had been there was fresh buck sign uh just everything that you need the recipe, all the ingredients were there.

So you could tell there was some hog sign in there too. But we were more concerned about the buck sign, you know. And so we kind of marked a couple of trees, and we decided that we'd give it a couple of days to air out because we'd been stomping around in there pretty good. And I'm weird about that. Like if I'm in a place, like, I want to leave it alone for a day or two, kind of let things calm back down and go back in fresh.

And so a couple of days later, we went back in there. And the way it was, Tim dropped me off on the ridge I was on, and then he went on over and pulled up over the top of the ridge to where he was hunting. So anyway, I get, and we got, this is back. Well, we had cell phones. I'm fairly positive, but, you know, the cell service just was non-existent over there. And so we had these two-way radios. And so I told Tim, I said, man, let's hunt until 11 or 12 o'clock.

I said if you shoot something, we were close enough in proximity that if he owled me, I could hear him owl, and I could do the same, and he'd hear me. I said, if I shoot something, I'll owl you, that'll be the signal to turn the radio on, and you do the same. He says, all right, it sounds like a plan. So,

anyway, I climb up a tree and sat there that morning. It'd been pretty quiet. It's probably 9 o'clock in the morning. I hadn't seen, other than squirrels, I hadn't seen anything. And anyway, about 9 o'clock, I get to hearing something over the top of the ridge. I'm kind of over on the north break of this ridge.

Well, I can hear something over the south break of the ridge. Just making some noise over there, and I didn't know for sure what it was. And I just kept tuned in there. And just a little bit, I looked at the top of the ridge, crested, just, I'm talking Volkswagen of a hall. A monster. I mean, this thing walks over. top the ridge. I can't believe it. I'm like, my goodness, that's the, that's the biggest hog I've

ever laid eyes on. I mean, a monster. And as fate would have it, he just comes right over the top of the ridge, walks right down there, right into the game trail that I'm set up on, turns west, and here he comes. And it's 22 yards out there straight in front of me to this game trail. I thought, man, if he gets that game trail, I'm just going to shoot him right there. And I really, again, premises by saying I wasn't there on a hog gun, you know? I'm really sitting on some smoking hot bucks on, you know, and so I'm trying

to stay disciplined here, but this hog is the biggest one I've ever seen in my life, you know? So he left with no choice. Yeah. So he's coming down this trail and he walks out there at 22 yards, and I didn't even have to stop him. He just stopped on his own like it was meant to be,

and I'm at full draw by then, and I just bury one up behind the shoulder. I mean, it just buries up to the fletching he lets out a little squill and just takes off kind of running back up the ridge kind of going south west of me and he takes about he runs about 40 yards and just crashes over kicks about three times and it's over and i can see him you know i'm i can see him on the ground from my tree you know and man i'm pumped up i've never killed one that big you know normally what you kills them 80 to 120 pounders you know yeah and i'm

I mean, I was just pumped. So I get another arrow knocked up. I hang my bow up. I turn around there and I give it the, you know, and in just a minute, I turn my radio on and just a minute Tim comes on a radio and he says, how about it, Scott? I said, yeah, you got me?

He's like, yeah. And I just go into this big, Tim, son, I just shot the biggest hog that ever live down here. He's like, are you serious? I was like, oh, my gosh, you can't believe how big this hog is. He's like, man, that's awesome. He said, man, I just had a lone doe walk by me. And I said, well, man, I'll get off here.

I said, get ready. There'll be a buck long if she's by herself, you know. So I turn off my radio and I stick it back in my backpack. And I just settle in. I just sit up there. You know, I'm going to sit till 11. I was going to go ahead and set the morning, you know. So anyway, about 30 minutes go by.

And the only way I know how to explain it is to the, east of me, it sounded like wind coming over the ridge. Just this roar of noise, like leaves and wind. Like it was just crazy, just a roar coming. And I thought, what in the world is going on? And I got to watch it out there east, and the woods became alive with hogs. There was, there was... It's like a tidal wave. Yeah, there was 20 hogs, at least, in a group, and they're all just scouring the side of this ridge for these acres. And they're all just in the feeding mode. And they're just making more noise than you can imagine.

So I got to look at those, and I thought shooting that first dog was pretty fun, being funner to shoot another one, you know. So I look out there and I pick one out. There's a little old light gray hog, and I've always described it. He was almost like a reverse havelina, where a havelina is black with a white stripe.

This one was like a really light gray with a black stripe Almost the same way I have Alina would be striped I'm really creative Scott I like that So it's pretty cool I thought you know that's a cool looking pick So I'm just gonna I just zero You had to just pick one There were so many of them you just had to be like

Pick the one you want And so this hog just keeps coming And they're working their way They're just coming to me In a few minutes I'm gonna have 20 hogs All within Bow Range of me just a few minutes And so I picked out this little gray hog And he just keeps coming

And I would say he was a I don't think you'd wait 100 pounds, probably 80 to 100 pounds. And this little hog gets right in behind me, and I'm just about to draw my bow, and all of a sudden these hogs just go to scattering, like what you described when you jumped up and hollered at those hogs and they scattered out. These hogs just all of a sudden just kind of start scattering and running, and right through the middle of them comes a hog that's a quarter bigger than the one I've already shot. And the one you shot was the biggest one in the world.

The one I shot was the biggest one in the county. Hey, Scott, are you glad you didn't decide to get on the ground and grunt like a hog and try to scare him off? I'm glad I wasn't on my hands and knees trying to sneak up on them out there. So I see this hog. He just comes charging in, like just charging in. And these other hogs you can tell, like give him a wide berth, you know. and when he comes to a stop trotting out there he's 15 yards underneath my tree and he sticks his nose in the leaves and goes to pick up acres well by then man i'm at full draw again and i'm so high in this tree i'm in 15 yards it was almost it felt almost like i was shooting straight down at him you know

and when i touch the release my arrow just 12 rings this thing and the top of the shoulder on its right side and it Barry's up almost to the fletching. I mean, just stuck him. Perfect. When I shot him, he takes about two jumps, kind of uphill, and then just whips around, and he is double mad. And he's just, he's just kind of spinning circles, looking, looking, looking, looking. He's just like he's looking for whatever.

Whatever just bit him. Whatever just bid him. Yeah. And I'm sitting there looking, I shot, I used to shoot white, three white, white fletchings on my arrows because you could see them in flights much better. I'm looking at these three white fletchings against this black hog body that is in a 12-ring spot on this hog, and he acts like he's not even shot. And I remember thinking, well, I can't shoot one better than that.

Yeah. I mean, but I'm digging for another arrow, you know. I'm reaching around there, and I'm trying to grab another arrow out of my quiver, and I get one, and he's still just kind of standing there. And he let, I just about, I got an arrow knocked, and I'm in the process of trying to get my release on the string. And he finally decides he better get, get gone. So he takes off just charging up this ridge,

just running straight uphill as you can. I'm talking a steep ridge. Just trotting up this ridge, like there's nothing wrong with him whatsoever. And I'm watching his hog just run off out of my life forever, it looks like. You know what I mean? Like I'm just like, I can't believe it. And he's just a dead stride about 20, 30 yards from him. He's just at a dead trot.

And all of a sudden, it was just like you pulled the power cord on him, and he was dead instantly. He just comes to a sliding halt up there and never wiggled again. It was all she wrote. So, of course, you know, I'm about ready to jump out of the tree. I'm so excited, you know. So I grabbed my radio. I'm digging it out. You owlhood again.

I turn around, oh, you know, I'm excited. And about that time, Tim comes on the radio. I was like, how about it, Scott? I was like, and I start in. Tim, you're not going to believe what just happened. Son, I just shot an absolute tank of a hog, bigger than the first one I shot. And I go on it, I go on for two or three minutes on the radio without taking a breath hardly, you know. So anyway, I finally get done telling my whole story on the radio.

And I take my thumb off the button. And Tim goes, man, that's awesome. I just shot a big buck. And I'm like, and I thought I heard what I heard, you know, and I was like, come back. Did you just say you shot a big buck? He's like, 10-4, I just shot a big buck over here. And, of course, I'm like, man, this is the most awesome day. You know what I mean?

Like, we can't believe it, you know. So, lock to cut the story down, Tim just, he's not sure. He's pretty sure he made a good hit. But you know how you are. When you don't see the arrow hit the deer, you've all got this doubt in your mind and the longer you set the more you doubt it and all this other stuff so Tim come and got me later and I said man if you're worried about your hit let's we've got plenty of work to do let's get these hogs out and we'll go and get yours

it'll give it some time you know so anyway long story short he had hit that deer perfect he ran maybe 75 yards he just didn't see him go down you know those hogs and that buck filled up the back of the truck. Filled up a 17-foot tracker boat, I can tell you too. Made the boat. Yeah. We had, and that bucks, it was a dandy. I mean, like right at Popin Young Class, 8 point. Nice.

Just a really nice buck at the time. I want to say, that was for sure probably, the biggest buck at the time, Tim had ever killed with a bow. I mean, it was a good deer. That was a good day of hunting. But it was an awesome day of hunting. It started out as a deer hunt, turned into a hog hunt, but ended as a deer hunt.

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 knows something. I'm Jordan Sillers. Season 2 of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, Iheart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Randy, this would be a good time to clear up the roar in your story that we never got to. So Randy told the story on the first Whitale Stories podcast about a buckfall in a mine shaft. Yes.

And you talked about a roar. which now we're talking about hog roars, bear roars, but it was the buck. It was a buck roar. And I had never really heard one before. I'd heard them grunt and I've heard all kinds of stuff, deer blow at you. But when he made that noise,

it made the hair on my neck stand up. It woke me up. I was like, oh my gosh, what was that? But at the time, I still didn't know it was a buck because I didn't think they could make that noise. But, you know, once all that transpires, Like it had to be that buck and talking with Scott about it. You know, he explained a buck roar and all that kind of stuff.

And I've heard them like on YouTube videos and stuff. It's like, that's exactly what it is. And I think on that podcast or maybe the next one, he was brought up on one of the stories, a buck roar and they played it. And I was like, oh, yeah, that's exactly what it was. Did you like how Phil, the meat eater sound guy, put an actual like lion roar over here?

Yeah, yeah. I didn't have time to tell Phil, hey, you didn't have to do that. But because the way I think he heard the story was that like a bear roared. So it was like, bruh. Well, to trim the story down, what I left out was, you know, I mentioned how out of shape I was. But I contemplated just sitting on the ground. I was so tired. But when I sat down above that trail, I look right beside me and there was a big old pile of bear scat.

And I thought, okay, I'm not sitting. Oh, so you had reason to think there was a bear in there. Because there was a bear sign, and when I climbed up in the tree as it started getting daylight, down below me, I could see something really dark. And I first was like, that's not a bear. It moved by now. I was like, is it a hole of the bears? You know, and come to find out, it was the opening of that Mineshaft. I just didn't know what it was.

So, you know, as it's getting daylight, I'm looking down there and I'm trying to figure out what that is. How far was the Mineshaft from you? probably about 30 yards. Okay, so it wasn't that far. It wasn't that far, but the way it's cut, I mean, it was so steep. You could tell something was there, but you couldn't tell what it was. Scott sent me a picture today of the buck in the mine shaft. I'm going to put that on my Instagram at some point.

Awesome. Yeah. I posted the actual buck on my Instagram after the thing came out just so anybody looked at it could see how big. Because he was a good-sized buck. I mean, it's the biggest buck. I've ever killed and then add some water on him. We can count that water weight, right?

Sure. Lifting him up out of the hole. He was heavy. Yeah. Now, Andy, were you with your grandson when he killed the big, I mean, I know you weren't sitting with him, but the big deer, there was a big deer killed two days ago. Yes. Scott's son.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. That was a heck of a deer. Big deer. Yeah. Good. How big was it, Scott?

This is your son. Was it Blake? Yep. My son Blake. It's his biggest buck ever. He's ever killed. The deer's going to be right out of 130 inch 8 point. Yeah. Public land deer. Public land deer. Yep. Good deer. All you're looking for on public land over there where we were hunting for sure. Heck, yeah. He calls me up Friday night and he says, Paul, you're hunting tomorrow? And I said, yeah. And he said, you care if I go with you? And I said, well, no, I don't care if you go. He said, where are we going? I said, I don't know. We're going to go down south. I said, we'll dump you out there somewhere, you know. Anyway, we go down. Of course, when he shows up, and I got to say this, of course, I'm a stickler about this. I said, be at my house at 4.30, and he was at my house at 4.30.

So that was a plus, and then he gets out. It's a good start. But then things kind of went downhill a little bit. He said, well, y'all going to hunt all day. And I said, well, I don't know. He said, well, you know, if you're going to hunt all day, I'm going to take my own rig because I need to come in. And I said, so there's already stipulations on this other. right.

So we give him, you can imagine this, what we did to him going down that morning. We kind of rode him pretty hard. And anyway, went down and it put him in the tree. And Kevin, Spurgeon, he was hunting with us. And so we dumped, we dumped, took Blake down to the tree and put him up, or died and put him up the tree, but showed him the tree. And I went and dumped Kevin off. And I went, and we were going to hunt until 11 o'clock.

And, uh, to explain. why you chose that spot? Well, the reason we chose that spot was Cole had about spent a month ago probably, first weekend of both seasons. It was the 8th of October. Was it?

Anyway, he had hunted that stand and he had three bucks coming on him that morning including this deer and just wore him out at 12 yards and, you know, when the buck come in, Cole says there's no way this deer can get away from me. I'm

I'm going to kill him. You know, he said there was a time or two that he could have shot him through a little bit of stuff. And he said, why would I want to do that? He's going to give me a broadside shot at 12 yards. And he said about that time, that deer kind of turned. And one of them bucks, he run at one of those bucks and a buck run off. And he chased him up the ridge and walked out of his life. Never even got a shot at him.

And so Cole kept telling us, somebody needs to go hunt this deer. He said, he's a bruiser. He's a big buck. He said, in fact, he said, probably the biggest. this buck I would have ever killed if I would have killed him. And so anyway, so Kevin and I, before Blake had called, we were going to go hunt, and I was going to hunt that stand, and Kevin was going to go and his. And so I told Blake, you really owes me a bunch now that I put him in my stand. But anyway, there was no ground shrinkage on that one.

And I called cold, and I said, well, you didn't have the big guy on him because, I mean, he was a big buck deer. I mean, 11 something inch times. It's 11 and a quarter G2. 25 inch main beams. I mean, that's good main beams on any beer, you know. Yeah. Big buck deer. But he would, so when I went to pick Kevin up,

Kevin was nonchalant, of course, I didn't have any service where I was at. And everybody, Scott and Blake and Kevin had been talking. And anyway, I went to throwing my stuff in the back of the truck. And Kevin says, well, we need to make some room. And I said, what are you talking about? I said, did Blake kill that big buck? He said he sure did. And so we take off and go over there.

It's noon. But then when I come over the hill, old Blake's up, get me the fistpug, you know. He calls his dad and Scott says he couldn't even get it out. Dad, Dad, I just killed the biggest buck of my life, you know. He was some kind of tore up. But you know what? That's what's all about. That's, and we talk about this all the time.

And it's not about you. really I get as much and Scott had we had this conversation this week and it's like Gary talking about taking you down where the deer were that's the way we operate you know it's not about me going to the best spot it's about I think anybody that's ever hunted with me would say I'm going to give you the best spot I'm not I'm not greedy when it comes to that I can vouch for that because I'm by no means the greatest hunter. I hunted with you in high school, Clay, when I think neither one of us were killing deer.

You moved up with them and started killing deer, and then Scott moves back to me. Now that's when I hook up with them and I start killing deer, but I've been to camp with these guys, and it is in our form. You guys have it mapped out. Y'all have probably 20 stands based on the wind, and you sat around the camp the night before

and figure out who's going where, and it's a whole strategy. I mean, it's very productive. Well, I'd rather see some, you know, I mean, I get as much thrill out of somebody else getting a thrill. I'm not a loner when it comes to deer hunting or turkey hunting. I like companionship. I like people to gig, and I hope we get into some of the gigging on some of Steve's stuff. I've been waiting for it to happen.

I already said, no, you're just sitting over there acting like a. There's some highlight reels with them, but I'll tell you, it's all about companionship. and you know Scott Steve grew up with my kids and treated them like his own and he's he's walked thousands of miles behind me over the years I mean great friendship even before that we played little league of baseball together that's how far we go back that's a lot that's a lot of years and but I think hunting is about making somebody happy you know it's not it's not about me especially anymore yeah I mean it's I like to kill buck deer as much as anybody, but Blake, when that boy killed that deer,

that's what it's really all about. It's kind of like when Ronella lets you shoot the moose. You know, that shows you kind of made me think a whole lot of him. And I think Gary pointed that out in one of the podcasts about that shows you what kind of guy he is when he lets you shoot the moose that he's always wanted to shoot. So, but, uh, so we give, we give Blake a hard time. time. We told him that, you know, by looking at it, I thought he ought to give it

at least another year. He shouldn't have shot it. Yeah. You know, it'd probably been a whole lot bigger, a little thing, you know, but it was truly, when you kill a buck like that, it's a whole different, they're a whole different category than a two and a half or three and a half year old deer. Yeah. They're just, they're just big.

Yeah. I was excited to see it. Scott messaged me the other day. Yeah. I sent it. in fact dad and Kevin had not even come out to Blake yet when I sent you the picture of it yeah yeah yeah I was working I wasn't even hunting Blake of course Blake calls me I pick up the phone I see it's him when he calls me from the woods I know something's happened you know yeah so I pick up the phone and I can't even

understand what he's saying he says something like you know just dad I just shot the house bug I've ever you know i mean i can't even understand him and i was like are you sure you made a good hit like let's slow down for a second are you sure he made a good hit he's like oh i've already seen him he's already he's on the ground you know i mean he'd already found him and everything you know and anyway i said well you got a picture well no i was like blake take a picture of him you know like give me give me something to go off of i'm living my life through you today yeah yeah so he uh he takes a picture of it sends it i think the first picture I sent to you

was just a deer laying on the ground. Yeah, and you could tell it was big, but you couldn't really tell that much about it. You were one of the first

three people, I think I sent that picture to you. Oh, Blake Brown just gets down and reloads and gives him another down there. He's not going to go

anybody, he's dead, you know? I'm going to let that one get up. Hey, he just give him another to the shoulder

laying there. That was funny. Steve, you've been hunting with Andy, you, now, 20 plus years.

Yeah. Yeah. I've been up with the ante-time. And in fact, since 19-87. How old were you? Were you about Blake's age when you killed that big buck down off on the back side of the mountain? And I came to you.

And you said, how are we going to get that buck out of here? And I shoulder-packed him just like you were talking about. That would actually. Yeah. I'm not sure how old I was because Cole killed one on the same morning, if you'll remember. You was about 21 or 22. I wouldn't say Cole was 10. Yeah, 11.

And if Cole was 10, I'd have been 20 when that happened. We were down the bottom, and I went off down, off the middle mountain down to him, down the bottom. Scott had killed a big old bug, and he said, man, how are we going to get this buck out of here? And I said, I'll show you how we're going to get him out here. And I just threaded him down and tied it together. And I just bent down, and he helped me. And I got him on my back. And I said, now you carry the gun.

And I'm talking it straight up. And I said, I'm going to take my time. And he'll tell you, I went right up that mountain, grabbing tree to tree and carried his buck out of the mountain floor. Nice. You know what I was thinking the whole time? That was the best plan we'd come up with all. We'd stayed in tents the night before up there, what we call the Parker Place.

Oh, yeah. And we were all, I mean, it was cold. We was all laying there, and they're sleeping bags, and all of a sudden we heard out there, they were much, you know, out there. You know, you got to get a little closer. And I'm not kidding you. There was an armadillo.

We didn't know it was armadillo. he thought it was a black panther. It comes between the tents, did it? It rubbed the tent. And I mean, we just been there with the hairs stood up. If you remember, you know, Arbidillas can't see very well. And he was running by, and he just square centers and ice chest. And he all think the panthers trying to get new stuff.

You go out there and go, you go out there and see. And Steve goes, he goes, he goes. He goes, an Arbidale's wondering, I wasn't here last night. Where that ice could have gone, brother? Oh, that's funny. One of the greatest stories, though, about Steve is what night. We's been hunting that on the lake, and it was me and Scott and Tim, and we didn't get out to way after dark. And you got to load the boat and get everything going, and we're coming up the highway.

And all of a sudden, we get service. and Steve has called Scott 10 times. He's called me a half a dozen times. There's voicemail after voicemail. There's miss calls. There's text messages. See, they just left me over the ones. I mean, what can I say?

But anyway, Steve shot a buck and he's needs to help finding it. He's a man, there's a ton of blood. So here we are. It's 930. 9 30, 10 o'clock. It's well after dark already. Yeah, I mean, it's, anyway, Scott tell the story that I'll get in there here to a minute.

Well, when I listen to the voicemail, Steve, he says, Scott, hey, he said, I'm over here at Aaron Stan. It's a stand location we have over here. I'm over here at Aaron Stan. He said, I've just shot a big buck over here. He said, I mean a bigin. He said, I've got good blood, but I've lost it. I've lost the blood.

Can y'all bring the dog over here? And it just so happened that year we had a dog in camp that could trail blood trail. And so I hang up the phone. I'm done with a voicemail. I look over at Dad and I said, well, boys are nights just begun. It's one of those, let me just put this. It's one of those Andy Brown says we're going on a wildcat venture. And him and I, in the hunting years we've hunted together, we have been on a many wildcat venture.

Wildcat, I'm doing you. Wildcat. That's what we know. We called a wildcat venture. He said, well, boys, we're going on a wild kid. That means we may be out all night looking at him. Midnight. Yeah.

So we get to camp. We load the dog. We drive up there and stand, Steve. He's pacing the hole in the ground. He says, boys, he said, I've got great blood. I mean great blood. And he said, but it just goes off down a little, kind of a little holler, and you come up out of the holler, it just quits.

and of course we're thinking well maybe maybe he just made a turn or you know how they can do his gun says Steve said well did you hit him good Steve said man I had it right behind the shoulder when I shot and I said well well heck if he's bleeding that good shot behind his shoulder he can't go far you know so we walked down there and Steve takes us out to where this deer standing when he shot him and he's not he is not over-exaggerated the blood trail it It is a fantastic blood trail. One of those you can see. I believe you, Steve.

He just poured out. I mean, you can see it in the flashlight way up in front of you. You know, I mean, just a great blood trail. And I remember, I'd look at Steve, I said, Steve, this deer ain't going on where. Yeah. Blading like this. And Steve says, well, Scott, I'm telling you. He just goes up here and he quits.

Of course, we got this dog with us. And, of course, it's on the blood. We don't need the dog yet because you can see the blood plenty well enough. but this dog's trying to pull his collar off. He's wanting to get going, you know. Tim has him on a leash. And we go down there and just like Steve said, Ross's a little holler just quits, no more blood.

And we all just kind of assumed he turned downhill. You know, deer shot good generally doesn't. You're going to go downhill. There's exceptions to every rule because I've seen him go uphill. We all probably have. But we just felt like this deer probably turned downhill. So the dog was feeling the same way. The dog turned downhill.

We just assumed that the dog was right. And off down the mountain we go. You know, even though the dog, you feel like it's on the deer, you're still wanting a spot of blood for affirmation. Right. You know, and we're all kind of trying to just find a spot of blood. We don't find anything. We finally get down in the bottom of this ridge.

It goes down and hits kind of a cane bottom. And when we got down in that bottom, the dog kind of turned east up the bottom there. And when he did, I just looked down on the ground and there was a spot of blood. And I said, all right, we're for sure on him. I mean, there's blood right here. And about the time I said that, the dog just turns and goes right back up the ridge we just came off. Just a little bit further east from where we came off.

He goes right back up. And I remember us all looking at each other going, this, that ain't good. Like, he doesn't need a turn uphill. You know what I mean? We just felt like if the deer was hurt bad, he wouldn't have turned uphill that steep of a hill. And the dog just keeps going up the hill, keeps going up the hill. And Tim, you know, he's got flashlights. And a minute, he's out of side up there.

And we're kind of just standing down there at the bottom where this bucket turned up or we thought he turned up. And we're sitting there talking. And I just walked out there about 10 or 15 yards from, I'll tell you what I was doing. We got off down there. It was just buck scrape under every bush down. And I thought, boys, we found the hot spot right here, you know. And so I'm walking around down there, just kind of looking survey. and the buck sign,

and about that time, I find some blood north, not up going up the ridge, but actually away from the ridge north. I said, guys, there's blood right here. I don't think that dog's on the right deer. And anyway,

I think the dog realized it too. He got up there a little ways and just kind of was done with it. And what it was, he got on a perfectly healthy deer in the process of all this. So Tim comes back down the ridge with this dog,

and we walk out there, and get him on this blood that I'd found, and it's back on again. The dog's on him again, and here we go across this cane bottom. Well, it's only about 50 or 60 yards out there until it hits creek, a big creek, like a swimming hole kind of creek.

You know what I mean? Deep creek. And we go out there, and this cane bottom just goes out there, and when it hits the creek bank, it's on the channel side of this creek, meaning it's just a bluff off to the water. probably a three and a half foot, four foot drop off into a big hole of water that runs back west,

100 yards back west. And we said, well, it crossed the creek right here. And so you can't cross right there. It's way, it's over your head deep. So we thought, well, we'll go down creek. We'll cross at a shoal. We do that. We come back up straight across from where some of us,

stayed to where last blood was so we knew where to try to pick up the blood on the opposite side of the creek we get down there no blood trail none whatsoever we we scour the bank we exhaust all efforts trying the dog's not interested you can just tell something happened well common sense will tell you well maybe the deer's in the creek so we start looking we're shining creek we're walking up down to Creek Bank. And anyway, Steve gets away from it. He gets down there down creek probably, down creek, downstream, about 75 yards or so. And Steve goes, hey, Scott, come here.

What is this over here? So I walked down there and Steve standing on the bank goes, what's that right over there? And I shine my light. We've got pretty good lights. I'm shining on this stuff. There's just a something, like a, to me, it almost looked like just a piece of wood. floating or like under the surface maybe just just barely sticking out the surface this creek kind of on the other bank over there I said well I don't know Steve

he'd you think that's him I was like I don't know anyway Tim comes over there we say Tim is that what do you think that is oh Tim he looks it over and says boys that's him and I need no more than said that and Steve is running down the creek Should we let Steve take it from here? Back to the shoal, Steve goes, leaves me and Tim standing there. And they got the light on him. Yeah, we're holding a light on him. Dad, we tell Dad, we say, Dad, deer's going to be west of you.

So, Dad, he works his way down the bank until he gets over there. Dad confirms it. He looks down in there and goes, yep, boys, there's our deer. That's him. And anyway, Steve, he's down there and he's crossed the creek. Steve's built this deer up, you know. He's a big buck. He's just, that biggest buck he's ever shot with his bow.

I mean, he's told us all the stuff. And he was. And dad's looking at the, dad's looking at this buck, you know. He can seem good. We can't see him. Dad's looking straight down at him almost. And it's four foot drop off. Off the bluff.

Off the bluff into this whole water that's over your head deep. So dad's just kind of standing there looking at him, you know. And Steve says, and do you see him? He said, now Steve, he said, now, I could be wrong but I don't think that things got but spike on one side

oh yeah messing with me I knew better now I ain't gonna tell you what he's in yeah yeah yeah yeah and he was running through the break day thing it wasn't Christian

I said so Steve finally gets around over there he just bales off in that creek I mean he just he just hops that deep in the water right there. And it's cold.

Oh, yeah. I mean, it's bad cold. You know, it's 30 degrees and it's nearly midnight. I just bail off in there, too. And when I do, it's deeper than I thought. I'm up about 10 and I get my breath, you know, and I'm right there with that buck, and I look up in there and I said,

how are we going to get him out here? Well, I take my belt off. I take my belt off. I take my belt off. It's true, but he's five. I take my belt off And I wrap him around that deer's horns And I hand him the end of the belt

The end of the belt And while he's pulling, I'm shoving And we shove this buck out on the bank up there Well, I, you know, I had to climb out of there Four foot up You know, and I get up And by the time I get up there, Andy, he's looking him over. Stephen up, where'd shoot that thing?

And he's looking. I said, I think, I was aiming right behind his shoulder. Well, there ain't no hole behind his shoulder, okay? And I've had the best hit I ever had. I'm going to tell you boys right now, if you want to kill one dead like that, just shoot him in the Fomara artery. He's right by the end.

He did, shoot him in the back of the thigh. One of them. But I had got both of them. And double Femoral order. Double. No, why isn't in that old blood? Well, he said, well, we're going to drag him 300 yards out of here. Oh, Zezer.

I ain't even taking him out here. I said, what are you mean? I said, Steve, that's a big's book here, I'm killing your life. I ain't taking him out. He said, I'll never hear the end of Scott Brown. He said he will never let me live this now. And the reason that is, let me just clarify something right quick, okay? That's not the first one I shot like that.

That was part two or part three. I don't remember. No, that's part two. Part two, okay. The first one I did like that down there on a hunting deal, we had another Wildcat venture about midnight down there, and we had drove down that afternoon, and Wayne Pate and I had saw the biggest buck I'd ever seen in Howard County.

I'm not joking. Huge. Probably a 160-inch buck. Had a drop time. We rushed back to camp, get stands. I come back and I put it in the oak tree that the deer was feeding under with a dough. That sounds reasonable. Exactly.

Right there. Right there. Put it in the tree. In the tree. Yeah. And I'm grunting there right at dark, and all of a sudden I hear crash, poom, pop coming up the hill to me, you know. I think, oh boy, here is. Of course, my left leg was quivering, you know.

I hadn't bow-hunted near as much as these guys, okay? I just started bo-hunting. And you know how that shakes get with your left leg? It wouldn't settle down. Well, finally it got settled down while I look, and here come a nice eight point. Well, I just draw back and shoot him, and sure enough, I didn't hit where I was supposed to. I hit him back there like that. Well, we finally got him.

Oh, but he shot him. I broke that. I broke that. And we got him. Well, we get back to camp. and Scott he puts in on me. Now Steve, why in the world? Well, he got a target and he set a target up back there.

Well, I was just stacking them airs in there at 20 and 30 yards with a target. Well, let's hold on a minute. Come on now. Yeah, he's left a whole lot out of this one. I put the target at about 12 yards because that's how far the deer was. And I said, Steve, try to miss that target as bad as you miss that deer. That's tough to do. You're trying to diagnose what it was happening.

Yeah, he's diagnosed. He cut both tendons on the back hinders. quarters of that thing. And telling us he shot it, broke his back right on top of the back. I don't know how he did that. And I told him I hit a limb. So now he's out here showing him trying to tell me what I'm doing wrong. And he said, I just can't figure yourself.

And so now back to part two, I shot this buck. And that happened again. That's the second deer I'd killed since that happened. Yeah. We get back to camp and he's sitting around. He said, I got to figure out. I think I know what you're doing. I said, well, I'd like you to tell me what I'm doing, because that ain't where I'm aiming is where that is going.

Wrong end. He said, because he's giving me this. He said, now, in your mind, when the deer comes up, he said, you need to anchor the same spot. You need to visualize. If you're leaning out, you're up 30 foot in a tree. Don't just stick your bow down, lean out. And I've got all this going through my mind. You know, I'm thinking all this thing, Scott, I picture him as the bow guy, you know.

Yeah. So I'm doing all these things, but I'm not hitting the deer where I plan to. He's figured it out. He says, I know what you're doing? I said, well, what is it? He said, when you hit that release, you're jerking your head up to see where there's going. That's exactly what I was doing. I'm jerking instead of just letting my air do it.

The very next deer I killed. I have not shot another deer like that. I have killed deer now. Knock on wood. So you diagnosed him, shot. He diagnosed me. Diagnosed him. But to watch him, y'all just had to be here if this was live TV.

To watch him describe to me how it was doing it, you know, during your head read. It is hilarious. Bug-eyed. Yeah, funny. But, you know, where would hunting be if you didn't have Wildcat Ventures? That's right. I mean, I have more fun. Oh, man.

We have more fun doing crazy stuff than, you know, it's not about, like Andy said, it's not about killing the deer or, you know, turkey hunting. I've called this boy right here. I've called all his turkeys but one up. And the one I didn't call up for him, his grandmother was in the hospital having a heart cath and fixing to go back. And he's calling me on the phone telling me about this turkey and he don't know where to go get to kill it. And I'm on the phone with him and tell him how to say it. While he's in the woods.

While he's in the woods. And I'm whispering to him and he goes up and kills the turkey. That's not. That's good. You know, Gary was talking about the other night about the clicking deer. there looking. One night was hunting over on the lake

and Steve was hunting a little notch and I was hunting what, it's just a long ridge that I hunt over there. Anyway, I was up my big old pine tree and I was high and, I'd been there all evening

and starting to get dark. And so I started taking my stuff off to get down. And all of a sudden I heard a deer go to blowing right off down the leg from me. And And anyway, I thought wind was coming right up the leg to me.

It wasn't wind in a minute. And about that time I could hear a deer coming just in a run, just running right up, but not really running hard, but just thump-ty-thump-ty-thump, come right under me and stopped. I was up. I was really too high because I had a little bit of canopy under me. And I was sitting there admiring that deer. In fact, I was going to, it didn't really matter to me whether there's a buck or no. I was going to shoot it.

if you know and about that time i just heard this deer coming through thump to thump just coming right up the ridge that dude gets right out there i'm talking about just just right there now it's late and that dude goes just like that really yeah and of course my hat was standing about that oh man i never heard one do that before i mean just that clicking you know. And when I seen him, he walked out and he had his tail up, had his nose on the ground, and I could see horns, and I just pulled in the middle of him and just laid him bavit. Well, I heard it hit him. So I shunny down. And I get down there, of course, I've hit him back. I hit him too far back.

Had guts on the air. So I just stuck that dude in the ground. I just walked out, quite a way he's in there. So I went back and Stephen shot one, and that's another story. Scott Nibble to come over there to try to help us find. Steve's in the rhino when you when the coyote cowpe can run 33 miles an hour can't run 34 but he can run 33 miles I can confirm that we know that but anyway they come over we looked for steves did fight of Steve so we went in there and back in those days we used to get stuff called blue star it was blue star blood illuminator spray yep and we took that with us on ever hunt and I don't know how many hunts that saved us because that deer, we went back to where it was, the deer had good blood going downhill. When he turned uphill, when he turned up, it just quit.

And Scott said, of course, we had a ball. He got to shake it up a little tablet you put in there. You sprayed it. I remember when you sprayed it and then you used light. Yeah, you turn all your lights off. And you turn all your lights off. And, of course, he sprayed like that. And what had happened, we'd have never, he'd just turn, he'd done 90.

Turned double back. And he went right off. I'm telling you. just the steepest, just straight down. Write down a little old hauler. And anyway, we tracked him off down there to the creek. Tracked him across the creek. And he got up there.

And when he crossed the creek, we didn't go far out there until he had laid down. Found it where he'd laid. But when he got up, he kind of walked on in towards the ridge. And we kind of lost him anyway. Finally, we did it again. he had turned down an old road that run right along the edge of the ridge.

And he went, I don't know what, what you say, 100 yards down there? Probably. He'd went all the way to the water and turned around and come back. He was actually laying faceness. And I mean, he hadn't been dead long. He was still. And we just rolled him up. We gutted him, rolled him back in the lake, tied him to a stump.

And the next morning we drove in, put a boat into the lake and drove in there with a boat and come and got him. But that was another. wildcat venture, but we found him. But that blue star was good stuff. He was a big eight point. Clicking. But Scott asked me.

How big is? I don't know. He's legal. I couldn't tell you if he's a 170 or a basket eight. But he's a bit, you know, when he went to clicking, I'm a shooting. I've got to ask you guys. So of all stories that you've heard on these two podcasts, and I'll say, I've had incredible feedback on these two podcasts.

You know, it's kind of hard to rate feedback for me because I hear a lot of stuff from different people. And we do so much variety between like doing Frontiersmen or highlighting somebody for, you know, dry ground mountain line hunting in Arizona, like this style of podcast that we just did, this collection of stories. I had people just loved it. I got really a lot of great feedback. And I'm always shocked.

Anytime I ask someone, I'll say, what was your favorite story? Just a random friend. They surprise me every time. Because in my mind, I'm thinking, oh, it's for sure going to be this. And they'll tell me this other story. But, Randy, what was your favorite story you heard? Can't pick your own. I'm not kissing up to you.

Your story was many people's favorite. The Mineshaft Buck. You need. And you told it well, too. What's awesome about that story? Then I'll move on to your question here is that, again, I grew up in a house with my dad worked for the Forest Service for 37 years. He didn't want to go in the woods on his days off. He knew all the deer, all the turkey and all that was, but he had no interest in going on his day off.

So I didn't grow up that way. So it wasn't until my 30s, really, that I really start hunting. And it was working with Scott and talking to him. Andy and Steve, um, learning about wind and food and, you know, where to get. And it's, I mean, it was instant. I mean, I picked up a bow. Scott told me how to shoot a bow. I was seeing bucks.

You keep your head down on the peep site? My first season bow, honey. Steve taught you that. I'm seeing mature bucks, which is just unheard of, but, you know, just couldn't quite get it all put together. Um, so that hunt worked out well because, I was able to on the spot assist the situation, figure out what the plan was,

where to get and all that kind of stuff. So I wrote some notes from the podcast last week. You're taking notes. I did. I did my homework on this. You get some bonus points with me if you take notes on a veryish podcast. So James Lawrence said something about the number 11 caps from the muzzleloader. And I have a disdain for those things.

like I hate them bad the very next year or the year after I killed that mine shaft buck I scouted a new air and I did it on my own this time this is the first time I'm going on public land I'm scouting out an area for myself I find the spot

I'm on the other side of that mountain so deer cannot fall in a hole no holes on that side I just I planned it out and you know I'm like this is gonna this is gonna be good I see a buck that rivals that buck or maybe bigger and don't tell these guys about it he's leaving uh he's leaving uh he's leaving

he knows where you're at steve see probably knows exactly where i'm at but uh he's leaving and i got one shot and it was probably a little too far and i miss but when the smoke cleared that dude had ran all the way up underneath my stand and i'd learned the lesson the year before start reloading as soon as soon as you shoot start reloading so i'm reloading and i can't get that number 11 cap. You know, I think I dropped one, and then I'm trying to get the other one, and I'm trying to hold it together, because this buck is like, I'm kind of pulling a little ridge, but he is right, if I had a bow, I'd kill him.

I mean, he was right there, and as soon as I'm starting to get that in, he's gone and never got the second shot off because I couldn't get that number 11. So I can relate to that story there. I can also relate to Janice's story, because he's 43, and he just killed us. first buck with a bow yeah i'm 42 so there's hope for me there's hope i've killed plenty of doze you know out of a stand with the bow but i've yet i've yet to kill a good buck or a buck with uh with a bow so um i thought that was pretty awesome because hey you you've actually teed me up to do something i meant to do at the very beginning everybody and their brother everybody and their brother has told me

that yonis got the date wrong does y'all any of y'all catch that huh did not Oh, like 10,000 people message me. Janus, he got his years wrong, and he said that he killed the buck in 2022 in November, 22. Oh. And it's only October 22 right now. So anyway. Okay. For the record, everyone, thank you for letting me know that Janus got the date wrong.

We'll ever get a dear story. It deserves some embellishment, Clay. Yeah. Yeah. He was telling, it was a combination of like two years. kind of going back and forth and he told the story from the perspective of it being 2021 and 2022. Gotcha.

And so, anyway. So as great of a hunter as he is to know that he still got things he's checking off the box, gives everybody hope, you know, that you're going to be able to do it. But not to kiss up or anything. Oh, you have three stories. But my favorite, and I listened to it twice, and I've played it for people, was your story with Harvey.

Mm-hmm. The way you told that story. and the way it went back and forth. And I love the dichotomy of, you have all the data. He gets in the tree the first time, you know, and that's just the way it works. So I've actually quit putting corn and hanging cameras and all that because it'll just make you sick. I had a buck. I named him Tebow, just like you named him Moose.

He had 15 points on him. This is the first year I'm really bow hunting and weak corn. I had so many big bucks on this. piece of property I was getting hunt and that one came in and it I had one evening where I had been in the stand I had bucks around me I just couldn't quite get a shot off because I did they didn't quite come in my shooting lanes and I just the awesome night of hunting and it got dark and I'm close to a train track so as soon as Steve's taking note over here was train track and property like he's he's gonna figure me out here but the train goes through so I use that as a

the cover sound to climb out of the stand at dark, and as soon as I get down, there's T-bow. And my bow is hanging from the string, and, like, there's no way I'm going to get it all together. And, of course, he's with two other bucks since, I think it was an early hunting season that year, so you could still get on those summer bucks, and they were gone.

And then I heard a story later, somebody described that buck to a T and killed it. Oh, right. And couldn't find it. Oh, that's even worse. He has not been found, never saw him again. Next year, same thing. Big buck on there.

He's probably a 12 point. Got him on camera, getting on a corner like, okay, I'm going to get this buck. And then Scott sends me a picture. We keep bringing up Tim Clark a lot, but Tim had somebody that showed him this deer that hit with their car on the highway. Oh, wow. And it was just the deer's head cut off on the head. Just getting knocked off by like flies.

And I'm like, that's my book. So it's like, you know. You know, you just. can't you just can't the best thing and i wish i had said it real clearly on the moose story is it really was pretty cool that a hunter that knew what he was doing even though it was his first hunt on that property and put an awesome shot on it oh i mean so many deer just like what you said get hit by a car or just disappear and you just lose track of them i was so grateful i really was that that big deer that I was able to track it down and it was killed by a hunter.

That's a good way for an old buck to die. Absolutely. Is it the hands of a seasoned hunter? Or a young hunter, just a legal hunting experience for somebody. Absolutely. And to hear him, you know, however me, was that 10 years later, get emotional about it just means that, man, that worked out the way it's supposed to. Yeah.

You know, I can confirm the night, the, the, evening that moose was shot you called me and you said hey man i got some news for you and i was like oh yeah and i remember exactly what you said you said you said moose is dead and when you said that i thought holy cow you finally got him and before i could even think that you went yeah a guy on the neighboring property killed him and i remember being sick for you like i was just sitting there thinking because you'd sent me pictures that deer for four years in a row and told me all this stuff and I can remember thinking how sick you must have been but I remember you telling me that you weren't as upset about it you were just glad it was over I remember you're saying

I'm just glad it's over yeah like there was a sense of relief that you didn't have to spend another minute yes trying to figure out where to shoot that deer or whatever it consumed you for about four-year. That's a good point that I kind of, that's become so normal to me, that feeling, it was almost relief that that deer was killed. And then 10 years later, and I can kind of talk about this now, I had another big deer in the same area that I was hunting, exact same scenario. And I almost dreaded it.

And it was a big deer, too. I mean, a big deer, like 170-inch type deer. Yeah, I remember you showing. And I had shot at the deer the year before when it was like a 150 musloader misfired. Deer was at 35 yards. I mean, just dead. I mean, this deer's walking up. I've got a muzzloter in my hand.

I'm like about to text the taxidermist, you know. And I shoot that musloader and it just fizzles. The deer lives. The next year, the deer is a, I mean, no doubt, 170-inch deer. and I'm certain that deer is dead too. Really? But when all that was going down 10 years later, another big buck there,

I was almost like, I don't want to do this again. Yeah. I've got one out that I've been hunting for, this will be the fourth year, but you wait, like Randy was saying, about the cameras,

you look and you look and you look and you don't get him, you don't get him, you think something's happened to him, and you wonder and you wonder and wonder and wonder and all of a sudden you get this picture. Oh, wow. And he's showing me a picture. That was him last year.

But this one here is the same deer. Let me find him here. And it's scrolling through his photos here. This is the way it goes. I was just there a while ago. I had him. But I had him the day before season two years ago. had a daylight picture of him.

And unbelievable. That's the way it goes. Anyway, y'all go ahead and talk and I'll show it to you in a minute. But anyway, if you just had, you just don't know. And this year he's not showed up like he was last year. He didn't show up to late. Got him two different times. Right here he is.

Wow. Or last. Giant 8. He's just an 8. He's a giant. I'd say that G2 right there is 15 inches long. Yeah. I mean, it's huge.

Monster. But, you know, we've talked about that. Scott and I don't really know where he stays, you know? Yeah. He shows up that two or three years ago we had him a lot at night. But those guys don't get that big but being stupid. They know how to survive. I was just about to ask the believer

What his favorite story was When he took a bride of brownie Of all the stories Which one stood out to you Not your favorite It's hard People ask me about my favorite There's all these stories are different

Like Andy His second story he told Wasn't even the story That was going to be on the podcast I just liked it So it's hard to compare Like Andy telling about his little story Of mid, you know

Shorter in Time story to a big 30-minute story that we told. So favorite stories the wrong way to say it. What story stood out to you, Dad? Well, I just listened to the last, you know, I listened to both of them, but when I'm thinking of the second podcast, where Andy told he is,

and your buck wasn't in that, I was really impressed with thrill kills. You know, I mean, he dispensed some information that, of course, the way I hunt, I couldn't, I couldn't do that. I mean, you know, it just takes too much time and patience. But you could tell that guy knows what the heck he's doing. I'm telling you, he is a stinking hunter.

That was in my notes, Clay. You know, I liked the way about Andy. And I saw Andy today, and I bragged on his story. But yeah, he did a great job. You know, I like the way he told the story. I like everything about that story. But I like the knowledge that was behind how he hunts. you know, he took two guys, put their stories to get, you know, how to hunt and then applied it.

Yeah. And so, you know, you're trying to learn how to hunt and you go out on your own, monkey around, or you can pick up a book or get with guys like Scott and Andy or Clay. And, you know, learned every. But he, he put two really great hunters together, how they did it, put it together and made it work. He gave some good, that Brad Herndon, he talked about how Andy's takeaway was, Herndon says all the signs down low, but hunt up high in the gaps and saddles in mountain country, hilly country, even if there's not sign the gaps, the deer going to end up up there.

That was good. And then the other guy was talking about thermals. Yeah, wind and thermals. Yeah. You know, he was able to put it all together. Your story was probably the most intriguing, but I appreciated it through. kill story a bunch. I love a surprise ending, man.

I'm a sucker for a surprise ending. Finding a buck 10 years later. I thought that was pretty good. Yeah. It's unfortunate. I don't like not finding a deer. I mean, I'm not, you know, I've passed on a whole lot of deer, you know, just because, you know, I don't like not finding one, but it just happens.

And, you know, liver shot deer is not going to go. go three, four hundred yards. But sometimes it's pretty difficult. Yeah. It's kind of difficult to find them when they just stop bleeding. Steve, any of them stand out to you? Yeah, I was going to tell the truth there. Man, you've been hunting a lot longer with a bow than I have,

but if you need me to teach you that shot where you can get a lot of blood and get them. Do what now? I'll teach you that shot that I've got. Yeah. You need to know how to do that. Yeah. You too, Randy. The femoral arteries?

We've been shooting them in a wrong spot. Yeah, you're shooting in the wrong spot, man. We get them, we just have to chase them, you know. But I like that, you know, I like that number second podcast. And what I liked about it, you had four stories where they didn't get bucks and four stories where they did get bucks. And what I got about all that, like Andy's story, I really liked that story, that we all of Hunter, hunters have been there. I don't know of a one of us that hadn't lost a buck or, you know, had these kind of

shots, you know, or whatever, you know, and for him to find that sheds, you know, my son-in-law, he a few years back, he didn't hunt much, but he killed a 168-inch buck and made a good shot on it, but couldn't find it. And it took him a week going back out and hunting and going back. out and hunting it until he took his wife, my daughter. He found it. He saw some crows and buzzards and went up on top of a mountain, and he found that buck, and it's mounted in his house right now.

The coyotes had already eat it, eat the hide off of it, but he got the deer, he got the horns. So that just shows you, you know, if you kill something big like that, the persistency to stay after it to try to find it. But I know we've all been there. We've all been in that situation. So it was really interesting in that podcast. Coyotes ran up there at 33 miles an hour, Scott.

Yeah, they probably did. Not a mile power over that. Or no, can't stop real quick. With that thing, you know, you're just run right over. Yeah. I'm going to tell you a real funny Andy story. Of course, Andy and Scott, Andy's a couple years older than Scott,

but I've been around Andy ever since he was a little boy. Anyway, worked with his dad for several years. and Gary and anyway we were we were camp down at uh fault or spring schoolhouse down south 246 and uh back in those days we was hunting with j c macville and then larry and all that bunch and there was a whole bunch and there was a whole bunch don trees and but anyway we're going to make a deer drive one day and j c instead of having a stance he said well now somebody needs to get out and swag you know down there and then somebody down there at the dead end on the road and somebody down on the creek anyway so he said uh he said to gary he said to him

and Andy, Andy was about probably 10, maybe. Andy Thrillkill. Andy Thrillkill. He said, why don't you take Andy and y'all go down there and get on the creek? And where you had to park to go to the creek is a long ways. And I had just bought me, I'll tell you how long ago it was, probably 1986. So Andy would have probably been 10 or 11 at that time. I had a brand new 1985 Suzuki 3.

Three-wheelers. Three-wheeler. Not a four-wheeler. No, it's a three-wheeler. I mean, had the gun scabbard on it in the racks. I mean, it was a hot dog. I said, Gary, I said, instead of y'all having to walk all the way down there, I said, why don't you take that three-wheeler?

He said, you don't care? Well, he ain't ever rode a three-wheel in his life. I said, no, just hop on that, too. So they off on it. Andy gets behind him. They got their guns laid out, and we take off down this, this warehouse. Road and they're in front. And me and Doug Blair,

one of James' good buddies, is right behind them in his suburban. Anyway, Gary's going down to there and he gets to looking over his left shoulder, you know? Well, it gets to getting over in the ditch like that. Well, instead of him leaning this way, you know, you've got to lean opposite on those to get them to turn. He gives her this right here, and when he did

that thing bit, it is it slammed into the bank of the road and it was just three-wheeler Gary Andy three-wheeler Gary Andy going right down the bar ditch and that three-wheeler's just all over them down through there well when the dust settle I jump out

and I run to Andy and warehouse were lucky cut the road ditches pretty deep there and I grabbed in and said you okay he said yeah where's dad I look back up the road And all you can see is with the knees back to his boots out of the pine thicket. Out of the warehouse, we went up there and a good one. Oh, my God.

And this is like the day and their season. I'm saying, Gary, you okay? We wound up hauling him to the hospital. He broke five ribs. Oh, no. It's spent the whole week laid up into bed. But I mean, so anyway, about Tuesday, I go in there to check on Gary. This is Saturday.

And Gary says, Andy, have you seen my shotgun? My shotgun? And I said, last time I seen it, Gary, I laid it up on the bank of the road there where we had to wreck. He said, well, I ain't got it. I drive all the way back down there, you know, it's 35 miles or 40. And there that shotgun is laying right where I left it, hang it. And that's before all the gated rows. People, but that shotgun had never been moved in three days.

Nobody had been through there, I guess. But he never put a scratch on old 80, but it sure messed his daddy up. Wow. Wow. That's wild. 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 bed. And there was a full of blood. Oh, my God, he doesn't have a head. Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors. Where the terrain is unforgiving, the evidence is scarce, and the truth gets buried under brush and silence. Indications were he should be right there, but he wasn't. This season, we're going deeper. From cold case files to whispered suspicions, from remote mountains to frozen backwoods.

Each story begins in the wilderness and ends in darkness. Because out here, there are no witnesses, no cameras, just fragments and the people left behind trying to piece them back together. He's not an honest person. He's incapable of being honest. Somebody somewhere knows something. I'm Jordan Sillers. Season two of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, Iheart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Randy.

I know you wanted Scott to tell a story for it. He didn't get you one in, but I'm done for him to tell one of his buck stories if you have time for it. Which one? He knows which one it is. Oh, yeah. Let me tell you my favorite story, though, out of the last episode. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, we're, we've been going an hour and a half, so we're going to wind her down a little bit.

But my next question was going to be you. What was your favorite one? So listen to all of them for different, all of us has our favorite for different reasons. But I like Mo Shepard's story the best. And the reason I do, because I've never met Mo Shepard, but I feel like I know the guy,

just through you and through the magazine and now through Bear Grease and all that. I feel like I, you know, I've met the guy before and I never have. But I think it's interesting because Mo is a comment. I mean, the guy's killed some big bucks. He's, I mean, he's the real deal, in my opinion. Just listening to the guy talk, you can tell he.

Yeah, he's the real deal. And he could have picked any story to tell, any story to tell, but it's the one he didn't get that he told. And this guy's killed some state class, I mean, for the state of Arkansas, as good as they get bucks. and he tells a story of a deer that he didn't get. And I sat there, when I listened to his story, I thought, you know, isn't that true? When I sit and think about deer stories to tell, most of the time, it's the one that I almost got but didn't get.

Something went wrong. Something went south. You said earlier, I had the taxidermist on speed dial, fixed to call him, and then it just falls apart underneath you. Yeah. And then I thought what was interesting about Mo. He'd seen that deer a couple of times prior to the encounter he had where he could have killed him. But from that point on, he never saw him again. It was like, that was it. End of story. You get one chance and you never hear or see the deer ever again. And isn't that true? I mean, that's so, I think about all the big bucks I never got. I never saw him but one time. That was it. It wasn't like I had more than one chance. or anything, it was a one-time deal, didn't make it happen, and now you live with that for the rest of your life. I mean, there's a pain in that,

but that's the stories worth telling most of the time. Yeah. What not to do or what went wrong or whatever. You learn a whole lot more from those hunts than you do the ones where you actually shoot something. Yeah. I feel like. Yeah.

Hey, I've got a story. I don't want to put you on the spot, Andy, if you don't want to tell it. would you tell us what happened to your finger? Well, it was October of 2000, no, that's not right, it was October of 1997, I think.

A friend of mine, that's when we first, I just got into bow hunting. Scott, in fact, Scott was bo-hunting before I was. But anyway, he had found some deer sign over on board camp creek and uh i'm going to have to beep it out again yeah you can't give your spots away over on the creek over over over east of town there's a hundred board camp creek but anyway we had uh went over there one evening and uh got up a tree stand and that's back

and i had a shot a high country sniper bow at the time shot about 210 and had them aluminum errors that you had to have somebody carrying for you if you had more than three or four you know the old big errors but anyway I sat in there and a stand and and back in those days uh I was fighting me and God was fighting and this is this is kind of a neat story but it's it is a it's a good story um I said Lord if you just let me shoot a deer today I promise you I'll be in church in the morning okay and so son's going to down. It's like a risky deal.

Well, yeah, I hear a little little snip, snap, and I look, and here comes this yearling, coming to my stand. And it comes in behind me, and of course, I still do a lot of things wrong in a tree stand, but he saw me in it, it run out the top

of the ridge, run over there, broadside, and I said, you know what, I'm not going to let you get away from me and mount me slinging air at you. And anyway, I cut, I shot under it, and he'd run out the ridge, and I thought, well, that's it, and in a minute, I looked over there and here comes that's deer back.

And so the deer comes back to my era, sniffs the era, and comes right into the tree stand and I shoot the deer. Okay. I mean, got a picture of it with my farm bureau with my ring on. Okay. So we get over to my friend's house. We skin the deer. He said, you know, we ought to go back over and hunt that buck in the morning.

He's got the woods tore up. And so I did. I went with him. We get over there, the wind's blowing. We get up into the saddle. There's deer in my stand when we get there. Deer's blowing out going everywhere. And so at that time, I was hunting a portable tree stand with a screw-in steps.

And anyway, I had a fanny pack at the time. And so I crawled up in the tree, and I'm sitting there in the tree thinking I really don't need be here. I need to be doing, I need to be a church. You had a deal. Had a deal. And so, uh, the guy with Arkansas Democrat had come out the week before with a story about tree stand accidents. And I was sitting there smoking all that over. And at the time I just, I wore a belt. The boys have since got me a hardest to put over. I just wore a belt around me. But anyway, I was sitting there in about, about nine o'clock, I thought, I'm going to get down. and just go look and see if I can find some more sign.

So I dropped my bow out of my stand, put all myself in my fanny pack, and I've got it around in front of me. So I start down the stand, and when I get down to the bottom step, I'd set the stand kind of on the upside of the saddle, and I'd set my first step pretty high. So when I got down to the last step,

when I put my left foot down to get the ground, I couldn't reach it. I was tiptoeing. Well, I still had my hand up on the third step, so I thought, well, I'll just hop off. So how high are you off the ground? Foot, maybe. A foot off the ground.

And you got your left hand on a... On a screw-in step. On a screw-in step. And my... This one here. And I just stepped off this one on my left foot trying to get to the ground. Okay.

And so when I hopped off, it was just like you'd hit me with a ballpin hammer in the funny bone. And I knew I had really messed up something that happened. I just grabbed my hand and I run about 30 yards up the ridge. And I thought I had broke my finger. When I open up my hand, my bone is still attached with a nail and all my finger is ball. up in the palm of my hand, all the meat. And my ring is caught my ring. My ring is hanging from a tendon.

And so I shut my hand back like that right quick. And I thought, that can't be right. And of course, I don't know, bone white is white. But it was so dramatic, it didn't even bleed. It wasn't even hardly bleeding. It just looked like you could have took my finger and just put it right back over the bone. So anyway, I went back to the tree and got my bow down and took a shirt off and wrapped

my hand up and hollered at Wayne and he come down there and he said, what'd you do kill another tear? And I said, no, I've hurt myself. And anyway, I showed it to him. And of course, I had my face pain on, you know, and brought me into the ER room. And AJ Cole, my preacher at that time, met me at the ER. Tina had called him. and he come in, of course, he had no sympathy for me whatsoever,

so everybody shouldn't have. He said, look here, son, where should have been this morning, you know? He called you out. Yeah, call me out. But anyway, they sent the doctor in, and he told me, he said, you know, there might be a chance they could put it back, but you'd always have a stiff finger. And I said, no, you just take that dude off.

And so they did. And so that's the reason I walk around with three fingers. And I said, all this to say this. If you tell God, you're going to do something. You better keep you word. Lesson learned because as soon as it happened, I had no idea. I mean, I had, there was no question in my mind. What did he let just happen to me?

So that's the story. Andy Brown, spitting tobacco and leaving your finger in the woods. Leaving my, no, I took my finger with me because I thought they could just slide that dude right back on there. Well, I was up there too. I was up there too. Did you see it, Steve? Yeah, I came in the emergency room there. They had him back there and I went in.

And it's just like you skinned a coon's tail. It's just like Coonsdale. And I went over and looked at it. And he thought they were going to be able to put it back on, so it on. And that doctor was there. So the bone was fine. The bones. Oh, the bones intact and still had the fingernail attached to it.

Yeah, the bone was. It just skinned all the meat right off and is in his hand. And he said, no. And so I stood there with him when he took that off. And he got like a big old pair of dog toenail clippers. ship that dude off. Wow. Yeah.

Well, that, so did he do. You know, the silicone rings are a big deal these days. And, Andy, I think about you all the time because I usually wear a wedding ring. I actually don't have it on tonight because I took it off last night and set it by my computer and just forgot to put it on this morning. But I'm going to get a silicone ring. Well, to lose a finger, that's a good one to lose. But, you know, there's a purpose for that, dude. I say this jocally, but there's a lot of truth of this.

You don't take change in that hand. If you do, it all falls through. So Andy, it's his ring finger on the right hand. And there's not a morning that goes by in the world that I don't drop the soap on that head right there. I have to pick that up in time or do every morning. So there is a purpose for that figure. And he'll tell you, too, that for years he'd say, my finger's itching. It's not there.

Is that true? It it inches. He'd feel it. I can still do this, and it's just like you've got a stiff finger. It's just like you've got to think. Wow. Yeah. That's wild.

That's really interesting. And that's what a story, man. Yeah. Yeah, I think there's a scripture that says better to not make a vow to God than to make one and not keep it. Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah. Well, that's good, man. I wasn't looking for a spiritual lesson, but we got one.

That'll work for me. Well, hey, we've been going for a while now. Thank you guys so much for coming. being part of this. We didn't even get to talk to Coy. Hey, give that headset to Coy for just a second. Sorry, Coy. I always have big plans.

So this is Coy House. Steve's grandson. I went to school with Coy's dad and Coy's mom. Coy. You killed that big hog the other day. You don't have to tell me this whole story again, but... Yeah, that was this morning. I did.

I did. It was this morning. Now, what do you do in these days? Well, I was going to... college got hurt it's a long deal had five concussions neck injury over at walshton baptist and so now i'm back here and i'm running my own uh forestry mulching land clearing all that kind of stuff doing all that and so enjoying that and then um Friday nights I do the radio here so for the football team you announced for the football team I do I do okay

so I enjoy that cool now how old are you coy I'm 19 19 19 years old you and you're You're a big hunter killed a bunch of turkeys. Oh, yes. And you were telling my dad about a big buck you let slip through your fingers this year. I did. And I will tell, if you don't mind, I'll tell a little quick story. Sure. So in that same spot last year, first buck I killed with a bow.

First buck, it would be a year ago this coming weekend. Come in from college, all the guys were down there at camp, Howard County. I didn't have time to run down there. I called Pablo. I said, where do you think I should go in there? the morning. I said, I don't even know where to go. He said, go up there and get in that gap. I'm not going to name where. Some of the guys in here know exactly where it's at. So he said, go up there and get in that gap. You've been up there before? You know, there's deer sign.

So I got up there. And, you know, there's an old stand in the tree up there. Climbing it, get set in. It's breaking light. It's cold. Good, perfect morning. Had just like a one or two mile an hour north wind. Well, I had seen some buck sign in the road walking in. So I got up there, dug in. I ain't seen a deer. It's like 39 o'clock. I ain't seen a deer. And I said, you know, I started well.

This is pitiful. You know, you kind of get upset at yourself. I said, I'm just going grunt. And I'm one of those people, Paul will probably tell you because he's hunted close to me. You can hear me. I like to get vocal sometimes. And sometimes I like to know, hey, if there's a big buck in the area,

I want to know. He's going to know him here. Yeah, he's going to know I'm here. It's just how I am sometimes. So I let out the biggest is on the ground. And I sit in there about two, three minutes. And I see this tree just going crazy.

And I say, well, that's just a squirrel jumping back and forth. Well, it keeps doing it. And so I get down and literally I have my harness on. I stretch my harness, which, you know, probably wouldn't say. All the way down, I grab a hole and I look down. And it's just, I mean, good size bug, 125 inch. Buck, 8. And he's shaking, I mean, just tree right here, just shaking it.

And I said, oh, my gosh, you know, about that time, I get really wound up bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. Like it's a, like your grandpa. Oh, yeah, hyperventilating, like, I just, turkey hunting's bad too. So anyways, so I grunt at him again. But that time he turns and he comes straight to me. And he's just blah, blah, blah, blah. And I said, oh. He's grotting back at you.

Oh, yeah, big time, big time. Well, he stops and he starts making a scrape about $50. guards out there right behind so i can't get a good shot and i said oh my gosh you know by the time i'm getting answer it's it's going on or i'm getting answer well i grunt again and i snort wees at him all about he was mad all the stops man he's got everything he was mad i'm waiting for this to be a 200 inch deer i know hey well he tries to go around me and get wind of me and i i was grunting and he was he was still going behind me he was going to win me and i let out a big grunt and he turned and come right back down to the hill in front of me.

And he went down there about 45 yards. I arranged him. I thought he's going to come up to him anymore, so I'd get a good shot. Well, he stops and he starts making a scrape. I said, man, I guess I'm going to shoot this buck. About that time, I don't know if any of the other guys in here have ever seen it or not. That buck snortweezed is one of the coolest things I've ever seen. It's like they hunch up, and then they let out that.

Well, he starts making the scrape. Long story short, I pull back 45 yards. I shoot him and actually hits his shoulder and goes up and hits his spine. And so he just drops right there like a ton of bricks. And that's the first buck I killed with a bow. Right on, that's a great story. That's awesome. Wow, he gave you the whole gamut of vocalizations.

You brown boys. You gave it right back to him. You brown boys are running second to this kid. Easy now. Easy. But hey, the first person I did get a phone call, this man right here, and I called him five times because he wouldn't answer. And if you know anything,

I like to call until I get an answer because I'm pumped up and tell you my story. Yeah. That's a lot of going. What a great story. That's good. I've got to tell this story, Clay. Okay.

There's one more. This is the longest beggary stringer ever. That's great. You may not want to put this in. for your own, you don't want to shame yourself or whatever, but there's a story. Everybody needs it. Yeah, everybody needs to know about this. You know, Clay.

Just give the semi-condensed version. All right. Well, you know, everybody, Clay started out shooting compound bows, all the stuff, and he decided that wasn't challenging enough at some point in his life. And so he went shooting a piece of wood with a string tied to it, trad archery, all that. And that wasn't, that's too technologically advanced. And so this year he started shooting homemade broadheads out of rock and other stuff. And so Clay going deep human on us.

He's going backwards. You know what I mean? Like where everybody else is like acceptant of technology, Clay is fighting against technology. Good for him. And he's going backwards. But what a lot of people don't know is Clay was doing that a long time ago. Because before Folsom points and Spears and all that, you had to just. catch it with your bare hands and eat it.

Right? I mean, that's the most primitive thing you can do is just go catch it with your bare hands, right? Well, I've seen him in action, or at least I've seen him attempt it in action. And, no, seriously, though, Clay and I went to college together up in Northwest Arkansas, and the weather up there is a lot different than it is here. It's only 100, what, probably 30 miles. Yeah. But it's like you're in a whole other part of the country.

The elevation is a little higher, but we get a lot of snow up there, northwest darkening. More than here. Absolutely. So I was out of college. You were married. You're probably still in college, I'm guessing. You and Misty were, I think you're in Prairie Grove at the time. And Clay, we get about a six-inch snow, Northwest Arkansas.

Clay calls, he says, hey, man, let's go hunting. Let's go to this management area that's kind of outside of town here, and let's go get to stand you think we can kill some deer up there and i said man i think we can i think we can hunt the edge of these this management area had these planted food plots green as they'd be you know just gorgeous places i thought i'd be we go up there and hunt those food plots one of us gets shot of a deer clay's like man i got a buddy named josh barger wants to go with us you don't care if he goes i's like heck no more of the merrier and better chances of shooting something so clay has this old jeep the jeep jerky that jeep jerky that old jeep charie ninety one think of

thing finally burnt to the ground or something, didn't it caught fire or something? No, no, no. It wasn't that one? Not that one. Okay. It did catch on fire one time, but it didn't burn it the ground. I drove it years after that. Yeah, burn it, half burnt to the ground. So anyway, we load up and we go to this management area, and really, it seems like I remember right, when we're driving through that thing, we're putting the first tracks on the ground in that thing. I don't think anybody had driven through it. I mean, nobody had been out. It's January, probably, late January, And it is cold. I remember it being like,

I want to say it was in the teens when we got up there. And so you and Josh had this idea, they were going to go hunt the edge of these food plots? And in places where are you going to get? And I said, you know, I know this game trail that I hunt during the fall that is headed to one of these food plots. I think I'll just hunt that.

And when I tell you, it's right on the side of the road, it is literally 50 yards from the main road, but you can't see it. You can't see where the spot is. It's real steep off the side of the road there. So on the way in there, Clay just dumps me out. And him and Josh, they go on. So I get up in a tree and the evening goes along.

And I'm not seeing anything. Well, right at dark, I look down this trail and here comes a whole bunch of doze and earlings. And that's just what I'm looking for. I mean, I'm just looking for some meat, you know. So here comes, I pick out this lead dough. She comes down the trail. Just like I imagined it was going to happen. I come to full drawl.

Doe walks out there. maybe 20 yards, probably not even 20 yards. I shoot, and when I shoot, I don't know what happens. I don't know. I couldn't tell you what happens. I know I had every bit of clothes I owned on. I know I was just overdressed because it's cold. I don't know if my string hit my sleeve or what,

but I shot this deer about four or five inches further back than what I wanted. I deliver shot or I thought I did. That's what the arrow looked like to me when I shot her. Well, she just wheels out of there and runs back down the trail the way she came in. Steve doesn't have his headset on any more. He's going to go. You got to stand up for your grandpa. You've got to say, see, I told you.

Steve could have gave you some lessons on how to hit that here in the back. Yeah, I was shooting in the wrong spot. So anyway, what my eyes saw was that I shot the deer a little too far back, I thought. So I sat till dark and I get down and I walk out there. My arrow looks great. and there's lots of blood. Of course, it's snow on the ground. So you can just, you know what I mean?

You don't have to look for it. It's just on the snow. You can see it real good. So I walk back out to the road and I wait around and it's a while before Josh and Clay come by. And when they pull up, they have seen,

if memory serves me correct, y'all together saw like 50 deer between the two of you. Well, and plus what I saw. I saw 33 deer from the stand that day. And then Josh saw, like in the teens, I want to say, and I saw five, I think. Yeah. So all together, it was over 50 deer we saw from the stand one evening.

And they're going on and on about it. And I said, boys, I've only seen five, but I did shoot one. Me and Josh didn't kill one. Nope. They didn't shoot one, but they'd seen a bunch. I said, oh, I've shot one. Clay's like, you did? And I said, I don't know that I hit her all that great.

I'm not real sure. Here's my arrow. We looked at the arrow. Clay's like, man, arrow looks good. You know, we're all, we're feeling like maybe it's, better than I thought. So it'd been a couple hours probably since I'd shot her. And so we elect to go down and just kind of get on the blood and see what the blood looks like, how good the blood trail. So we get down there in the snow. And we walk down through

there. And we don't walk very far. I want to say we walk about 40 yards maybe, 50. And it's dark. It's real dark. We've all got, I don't think we had headlamps back then. We just had these old, you know, the best flashlight you could buy that would fit in your pocket. You know what Like it wasn't real great flashlights, but we're going out there. And we shine up the trail there where this blood trail is going, and there's a set of eyes sitting there looking at us in the dark. And Clay goes, there she is right there. She ain't dead.

And I'm like, man, dang it. No, she's not. What do you want to do? We sit there for a minute, Clay goes, I tell you what we're going to do. And I said, what are we going to do? he goes, we're just going to take off and just jump on that dude. And I said, really? And Clay's like, yeah, man, let's just, let's just bullrush her.

She was right there, guys. And I'm like, we're going to let the steer get away. I'm like, man, I don't know about all that. I've never done this before, you know. And I said, Clay, man, whatever you think. He's like, man, on the count of three. let's just go jump on her and I said

all right so we won two three it and we take off Clay's in the lead Josh right behind him and me right behind Josh and we're running through the snow in the middle of the night

I mean it's not the middle of night it's probably 9.30 p.m. We're running out through there. It's dark we're crashing off down through there and the deer just runs off I mean, just, you know, like the deer's like, you idiots, you know, and just takes off and runs off the end of this ridge and Clay and Josh right after it. I mean, like dogs on a rabbit.

And I realized right quick that this was a bad plan. And so I just pulled up there and let them go. And I'm watching them guys run out of sight down this ridge. in the light. All you can see is just like lights bouncing off down through there and the light. We were about to catch it, man. And I was sitting there looking at that,

and I just looked over at my left, and there's my deer laying down. They're trying to hear about there. So anyway, I yelled at it. Of course, they're in the heated race, man. They don't even hear me. So they finally, they realize, they ain't got enough stamina to run this deer down.

And they're out of sight. Oh, Scott. He got away, man. Sorry, dude. They're down the boat on this ridge. I said, Clay. And he's like, yeah. And I said, man, the deer's right here.

So anyway, they turned around. Sure not. She didn't go. Yeah, it was a great. It was a great shot. Yeah, the shot was better than what I thought it was. And anyway, she didn't go anywhere. I mean, she was dead within 30 seconds of me shooting her, I'm sure.

Hey, you got to cut a lot of this out. It's all that clay catching animals. You know, he caught that turkey that time. He's chasing a live deer, not even shot. Well, we're riding four-wheelers, and I got this high-performance deal, and Clay's driving it, about as fast as it'll go. And I topped the hill on a little old slow four-wheeler and looked down, and the full-wheelers looked like it'd been in a wreck.

I was in front of dad riding his real fast, Yamaha 350 Banshee. Yeah, yeah. And we got the Netshives and brother-in-law, we're having a big time. And all the slow four-wheelers are in the back. Me and brother-in-law, we're running slow. I top the hill and there's my clay baby down there with fenders laying in the road, man. I'm thinking he could be dead, you know. So I rush down there, jump off.

I'll get to looking for him. And he's about 20 yards away in a creek with a dough. with this pocket knife out. And boy, he's got that sucker. He finally cuts her throat. And we water up, put her on the back of the four-wheeler, and take her to a buddy mine's house and drop it off. But it's pretty shocking.

There's a little more story to this. No, I was riding. I really don't know how fast I was going. I was going fast. I mean, I want, I sit. 50 miles an hour, maybe I wasn't going that fast, fast. And I never saw the deer. I just felt something just slam into me.

And the four-wheeler, and this is what's fortunate about it, is that she didn't get caught up. Like I didn't hit her in the front. If I'd hit her in the front and she'd have got underneath me, I'd probably probably have probably done like Andy and Gary. But the four-wheeler, it felt like it just scooted over two feet. it just bam hit me and it just and I just skid on the brakes and I turned around and there's this dough flopping around in the road and there's fenders laying all over and the only thing I knew to do was

killer was go after and so we did hey what was what was really strange about that is probably a month before that I was on the same banshee and I was running as hard as you can run out of a trail at least maybe more. And a deer jumps out right smack dab in front of my stinking foiler. And it looked like a cardboard box here. And it comes out and my right tire hits it. And it slings me like this. My tire, my wheel into the tire.

I'm running down the road. Your knee into the front tire. Yeah, I'm just about off. And, you know, I'm saying, okay, this is my first big wreck. I'm going to lay down and roll. Maybe you're up this one. And all of a sudden. Going 70 miles an hour.

I'm just going to lay down and roll in the ground. I said, Lord, if you get me out of this. I'll go to church. Not, no, real. But anyway, all of a sudden, this thing just hops back and drops into a soft ditch, slows down, everything's cool. The guy I'm riding with finally catches up. and, you know, we came home.

Two weeks later? Which is a month later? Which is wild that you didn't just have a... Just cost you a pair of pants and a pair of underwear. Yeah, it burned a hole in my jeans. I wasn't all about that. Anyway. That happened all right together.

Yeah, all these, you know, all these... The deers are riding. We get two deer there in probably a month. Well, we've had lots of surprise endings on this one. These were good additions. Thank you guys so much. Really appreciate it. Enjoyed it.

Yes, absolutely. And all the stories that you guys and other people told were really, really great. And I meant what I said. I think these stories, we take it for granted because it's what we do all the time. I mean, that's what these stories are really deeply meaningful to us as humans. That's what I was trying to say in these things. even deer stories, even funny stories. They're significant.

And yeah, so appreciate it, guys. Glad to be here. Thanks for having us. Yeah, man. Keep the wild places wild. Keep the wild place as wild. That's it. First Lights fieldware collection is made for the work that happens long before opening day

and continues when the season ends. Products built for early mornings, full days in real use. wearing where they need to be versatile where it matters. No shortcuts. Just gear designed for the work that earns the season. Built to perform, built to last. Check out. First Light's new fieldwear gear at firstlight.com. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.