V2 | The Bonehead Chronicles: A Series of Questionable Choices from the Field

Every hunter has that one story they wish they could take back. In this episode, we're pulling the most embarrassing moments from the A Hunter's Legacy archives and putting them on full display. No filters, no excuses, just hunters being honest about the dumbest things they've ever done in the field.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:01

Grab your gear, find your stand and listen in as we share another journey. The shape of the hunter's legacy.

SPEAKER_00 0:15

Being the young guy, I knew what my place was, you know, being the pusher primarily and whatnot. But um a lot of times what would happen is it was like, yeah, you push all these spots, we want to sit here. And then it's like, okay, as long as I can sit at this spot when we push this patch of timber or whatever, I'm fine with it. Like I'll walk all day. But then it was getting to the point of, well, you go ahead and just keep walking. It's like, okay. So it's after that, I was like, yeah, I'm kind of I'm kind of done with that. So especially because the one time I did do that, they uh the guy that was supposed to push when we got to the timber, um, he told me to push, so I did, and I'll never forget it. I was on my phone talking to my dad. He was traveling on the road at that time and talking to him about hunting and whatnot, and I'll be darned if I didn't come up on the crest of a hill, turn and look to my left, and there's a 10-point walking across the really across the ridge. I'm not kidding you. I was sitting there on the phone. I didn't even hang up, I just said, Dad gotta go, threw my phone on the ground, took my gun off of safety, pulled up, shot him, and dropped him, picked up my phone, and my dad goes, Are you kidding me? I was like, No, I'll send you a picture.

SPEAKER_04 1:24

Isn't that unreal?

SPEAKER_00 1:26

Yeah, I was just like, Man, all them hours of sitting in a stand bow hunting, you know, not making a noise, and you can't get a deer within a hundred yards of you, and then all of a sudden I'm trouncing through the timber, talking on the phone with a gun in my hand. And he did he know you were there? I had no idea. I told my dad, I said, Hey, gotta go. Like I said, I dropped the phone, shouldered my gun, and he finally saw me as I clicked the safety. But at that point, I had already had the crosshairs on him. I just clicked the safety over and I was ready. If he was 25 yards away, I'd be surprised. He was probably closer than that. Were you just being a little stealthy walking through or I wouldn't say I was stealthy, but I would I would take, you know, 20 steps, stop a little bit, you know, just kind of hear what's going on, you know, because if I heard deer running down the draw, you know, I would kind of walk down that way to try and push him back up, you know, up the draw towards the people and whatnot. But it was absolutely incredible and the last thing I ever expected. But of course, when when he rolled down the hill, he was on the opposite side of the draw that we needed him to be. So then I had to buff him up the hill and down the next one and up the other one. And that was a real fun drag out. That's I shot this guy with uh Botec Realm SR6. That's probably my favorite bow I've ever had. An unfortunate thing happened to that with that bow, but um, I like the technology that Botec has. Um, you know, they make a really good product and they're not charging you through the roof for it, you know. And I don't know. I guess best bang for your buck. I like them a lot, and I like how they feel in my hand, especially that grip that they have is adjustable and whatnot, so you can mess with that until it's comfortable for you. So well, I gotta hear the unfortunate story now. So yeah, so I I shot that deer in 2020. Um and it's funny you say that. Uh I had you you I heard on one of your uh previous podcasts that you're a big fan of uh Thanksgiving time, and that was when I shot him. I shot him the day before Thanksgiving in 2020. And um so get through that season, um, I go to Shields to make sure everything's still tuned up, you know, a couple weeks before the season in 2021, and I go back, go back there and I'm pulling back to make sure everything's in timing. Well, all of a sudden I pull it back and we hear a pop. And the guy kind of I'd let down and the guy kind of looked at me and I was like, Did you hear that? And I said, Yeah. I was like, Wait, what do you think it is? You know, we're looking this thing head to toe, can't find nothing wrong with it. So he goes, Okay, pull it back in, pull it back, and we hear that same pop again. And I was like, Okay, something's up. So then we go back to the front and we hit put it on the little clamp deal, and we're sitting there looking at it, and I just looked up at the top cam and I was like, Oh, I found it. The set screw for the draw length actually ripped through. I was pulling back 30 inches, it ripped from 30 inches all the way down to 26. So I was pulling 26 inches up on top and 30 on the bottom. And that was back when COVID was still a thing and the shipping was really bad. Um, so it was gonna be like three and a half months before I could get a new set of cams for it. So I sat there and the guy looked at me and I looked at him and I was like, well, I kind of don't have a choice if I want to hunt this year, you know. So I sat there and traded that bow in and got a different one. I got the solution SS. And then I used that thing for two years, and then an even worse unfortunate story was as I was hunting one morning with my dad and a friend of mine, and mind you, I'd only had this bow for a year and a half, two years. Um, I shot and missed a missed a deer and got pretty upset, and I wanted to make sure everything was still on, so I'm sitting there shooting this bow, and um I was carry targeting my pickup during bow season just so I can shoot at in between hunts and whatnot. But I'm sitting there shooting. My dad had left. Uh, me and my friend sat a round of arrows, laid our bows down, and then all of a sudden my dad decides to show up out of nowhere, and he ran over my bow. It completely crushed everything. Yeah. So mind you, this is like November 9th. So, like in the prime time of bow hunting, you know, you live for three weeks as a bow hunter. It's November 1st through November 21st, you know. And yeah, on November 9th, my dad ran my bow over. And so I was sitting there, I was like, Well, I guess I'm heading back to Shields and I gotta go get another one. It was I went through a rough time there for a minute during hunting season with hunting equipment. It was it was not good. So funny story about turkey hunting. The first weekend I went out, just set a blind up because the pro the highway project that I was on last year, it happened to be the highway that runs right along our property. So I'm driving by up my hunting property three, four, five times a day. So scouting was pretty easy for me last year, but I just seen some turkeys in the morning and in the evenings kind of in this corner, and just set up a blind there just from what I saw from the road and whatnot. And but the weekend that I actually did go, it was cold and windy. And they were in the timber, and I got frustrated, so I started walking in there and whatnot. I tried to find an area, and then I ended up spooking a couple of them, and so I got so mad that I just packed up my blind, packed up my everything, and just took off for the truck. I'm like, I'm never doing this again. This is stupid. Well, then the next weekend my buddy wanted to go, so took him down there, and my I hadn't set up the blind yet again, so we were having to set it up, and we were walking in and we got back where the blind used to be, and I was like, Well, we could try it here, we could, you know, move in a little further, you know, back to where I flushed out all them turkeys and whatnot. And I'm not as soon as I started talking, all of a sudden uh Tom just gobbled in the roost, and I'm like, Well, we're gonna set it up right here. So I had the decoys, my buddy had the blind. He said, Go set up the decoys, I'll start getting the blind. I was like, okay. So I literally set the hen and then a quarter strut Jake right there, and I'm not kidding you. It wasn't from five yards away that Tom came out of his roost and landed, all it like almost landed on top of me after I set the he landed right next to it, ran up to that Jake, smacked it, and then just took off across the field. Before you even got a chance to shoot him. Yeah, it was oh man, it was so it was so dark. We got there like 45 minutes early. I would say a pretty embarrassing story was is I was probably 18, maybe. I was hunting and I had a six-arrow quiver with me, and this doe walks by, and I was like, okay, I'm gonna shoot it, you know, that way I can sleep in before instead of having to wake up early on my weekends when I didn't have basketball or any or football or anything like that, but um still walks by. I'm not kidding, she's like 15 yards away, and there's a small tree right behind her um that I had ranged, so I knew she was within because I think that if I remember I it was 17 yards and she was just on this side of it towards me. Uh I shot and missed that same deer six times. Six times? Six times. What was the issue? Have no idea. Don't have a clue. Don't know why.

SPEAKER_04 9:26

Did you double check, make sure you're sighted in that when you got home?

SPEAKER_00 9:29

Yep. I I'm pretty sure my dad had a target and we had some arrows in the truck, and I was hitting pretty, you know, at that time I wasn't that great of a shot, but you know, if I hit the if I shot at the target at 40 yards and I just hit it, I was happy, you know, or whatever. And because at that time I hadn't shot a deer yet. I I think I had been bow hunting for eight years and I hadn't shot a deer yet. So I was just getting so excited that I would sit there, I'd release my arrow, and I would drop my bow immediately so I could watch the arrow hit, and it was just always low, always low, always low. I actually Robin Hooded one of my arrows that was stuck in the tree. Bad insult to injury. I couldn't even I lost an arrow there, you know. At least the other ones I could just unscrew the broadhead out of it, but yeah, I actually robin hooded an arrow. I've done it once, and it was because I missed the dough six times.

SPEAKER_04 10:23

She probably walked away with some cramps after laughing so hard.

SPEAKER_00 10:27

I would assume so. Because and the funny part is is she just nonchalantly just kept walking. Like she sat there the whole time. She didn't even move. So you'd hear the smack and she didn't know where it was coming from, and she just would, you know, kind of look around and then she'd go back to grazing. I think she might have taken three steps in that whole process of me shooting six arrows. And mind you, I had my quiver off my bow, so it was hanging in the tree. I would have to reach up, grab it, knock it, pull back, shoot. And she just sat there the whole time. She wasn't very educated, was she? No, absolutely not. I'm gonna guess it was a probably a pretty young doe. Because usually them them mature does they spook at the first sign of a rustled uh tree limb out of nowhere.

SPEAKER_04 11:13

Yeah, the old does are pretty hard to fool.

SPEAKER_00 11:16

That was actually my first bow kill was like a seven-year-old doe. And the guy what the guy that let us hunt on his property just looked at me and he goes, I don't know how you can because he lived on the property and he pretty much knew everything about it and knew the travel patterns and whatnot. And this doe had a a white mark on her shoulder bladed, so he knew it, he recognized it after I shot it. He goes, I don't know how you shot it. He goes, Most guys can't get within 200 yards of this deer. And that was funny too. Yeah, because uh I ended up shooting that deer the next season. I bought my tag the night before, had my tag for like 12 hours, and I was tagged out. But before that, it was like eight years of hunting and never tagged, shot a deer. That was your first year? That was my first year. It took me eight and a half-ish years to get one. And it was that one that he was surprised you killed it? Yeah, because he goes, This is probably the most mature dough on the property.

SPEAKER_04 12:17

Sometimes it's be better to be lucky than good, man.

SPEAKER_00 12:20

You were talking about that on one of the episodes, and I am that 99% luck, 1% skill guy. I would rather be lucky than good. Yeah, it's a lot of times it doesn't work out very well. I would say it's worked out about twelve times to my advantage, as far as bucks go, probably twenty times for bucks and does where I've been successful, but other than that, how many hours have I put in the stand, I probably don't want to know. Yeah, it's kind of a time suck, but it's worth it. A lot of people told me when I was younger I needed to go to church, and I'm not saying church is a bad thing by any means, God fearing man myself, but there was just something about waking up and just watching nature go by when the sun was coming up and whatnot, and just listening to the birds and watching everything happen like this that was my church, you know. So the woods have always been pretty special to me as far as getting into it, but being able to say that aspect and then hopefully here in four or five years, be able to share it with my son would be pretty cool. That would be pretty cool. I know my dad, he's pretty he's pretty pumped to get his grandson out in the woods. He actually bought a blind at the Deer Classic. It was an eight by six. I said, Why do you need one that big? And he goes, so I can take my grandson hunting. I'm like, Cool, I'm glad that you want to take me hunting, but it's fine, Dad. I'll I'll get over it. What kind of blind did he buy? I can't remember what it is. It was one of the vendors area. I don't think it was a redneck one or anything like that. But pretty similar? Yeah, pretty similar. Um, really nice. Um, my dad he has found a couple of gr old gravity wagons that farmers have, and he buys them, and then he just puts in some floor joistes and puts uh OSB on the top of it, and then just puts the ground blind on it, and then um I don't know how he thought about this, but and then he bought a bunch of trailer jacks and put them on the four corners of the uh wagon, and then has a bunch of my dad has a sawmill, so he cut a bunch of logs up and uses it as dunnage, and then he uses them jacks to get that the trailer off the ground and have that thing sit perfectly level instead of you know whatever the lay of the land is. But yeah, he's got like four or five of them like that that he can just pull around and do whatever he needs to do in Worst hunt I was ever on.

SPEAKER_05 14:50

Well, part of it was the worst hunt I was ever on. It started off real well. Shot some ducks, um was going well. We had downed a couple and this was twenty twenty-three, twenty twenty-two maybe. It was a real dry year, there's hardly any water anywhere. We had tucked the boat up on a some public piece and it had dried out, so it was just mud exposed. And we had two birds just fall in the mud and we had no dog with us at the time 'cause Hilton's toe was all messed up and I started walking out and out it's all walking through the water and the mud, it's going fine. And then as soon as the water stops, you have that transition of just the stickiest, like play-do-y, but soupy mud. It's like quick it's like worse than quicksand. And I was stuck up to my crotch. You keep going thinking it's gonna get better, and it just got worse. And I eventually was to the point where both legs were stuck in the mud. It's like the the mud squeezes around your ankles and it's like it grabs you, and I couldn't it seemed like every time I tried to pull up one foot, the other foot would just go deeper. It was like a Chinese finger trap for your legs. It was the worst.

SPEAKER_04 16:04

I'll post them on this this short.

SPEAKER_05 16:06

Yeah, so I was I ended up having to I unload with my stoger and use the butt of the shotgun as a shovel and started to dig around me using my hands and the shotgun to loosen up mud and like throw it off to the side so I could finally get one leg out. But I was stuck for probably an a it probably took me an hour to get out because you take some mud away, you have to throw it really like you have to really throw it because it it was soft enough it would just fill back in. Really? So I had to dig, you think about digging a hole as wide as your legs. I probably had to move four times as much just to be able to get one leg out, and then once I could get one leg out, I could kind of lean it into the open space I made and wiggle the other out. But my weighters are still not the same. I still can't zipper the front of them because the mud's messed up the zipper.

SPEAKER_04 16:55

Was there any point digging yourself out that you contemplated giving up on life and just letting the mud take you?

SPEAKER_05 17:01

Yeah, yeah. Austin was joking about that. I think at one time he asked me if he wanted me to go get us lunch or wanted him to go get us lunch. And yeah, there's there's nothing Austin could do about it either. A rope wouldn't have really helped all that much.

SPEAKER_04 17:16

Unless you were able to pull yourself out with a truck or something.

SPEAKER_05 17:19

Yeah, which there would have been really no leverage or anything to go off of, and he didn't want to get close and get stuck too. Can you imagine?

SPEAKER_04 17:26

He comes out to try and save you and he gets stuck too. And you guys just get mummified in the mud.

SPEAKER_05 17:33

It was terrible. There was definitely it's like, I don't even want to do this anymore. Like I'm so sick of digging mud. Did it just physically exhaust your body? Oh yeah. I was I was beat. I think I went home and slept for like three hours. I was I was done.

SPEAKER_04 17:47

Were you nervous that you weren't gonna get out or you were just kind of pissed off?

SPEAKER_05 17:52

No, it it was all frustration. I wasn't sinking anymore. It's not like it like quicksand where it was kept coming up and coming up. It wasn't like I was gonna go anywhere. It was just I was stuck. Just more pissed off at yourself than anything.

SPEAKER_04 18:05

Well, how would you know? Did you ever end up getting the birds?

SPEAKER_05 18:08

Uh no. Austin picked a different way to walk around and picked both of them up for me.

SPEAKER_04 18:12

And waved at you along the way? Pretty much. Yeah, I remember seeing pictures that looked pretty funny.

SPEAKER_05 18:17

You got any other good ones? Trying to think. Back in high school, actually, might not be in high school, it was early in my deer hunting days. We were doing a push and we had a lot of acres we could hunt, fields connected to fields connected to fields. We'd push little drainages or just walk sections where terraces and fence lines were trying to push deer out. I was trying to cross a fence once and I saw the bar the hot wire, but there was no cattle in the entire field. So I thought, oh, there's no voltage or electricity going through that. So I make it over the barbed wire, and the inside of my thigh touches that and starts zapping me, and then next thing I know the barbed wire is stuck around the crotch of my hunting pants, and I'm like stuck there getting zapped because I can't get loose. Eventually got loose, and there's like a I don't know, softball size hole in the middle of my crotch or my hunting pants, but that thing would just kept zapping me and zapping me. Electric fence and deer hunting does not go well together. And you couldn't get away. No, because it had like got stuck in the the seam there in the crotch, just wouldn't let go. I am into this, I just had to push off. I was in, I don't know, like freshman, junior high, maybe. Okay, I got a question. Did you have red hair before that?

SPEAKER_04 19:25

Oh yeah, yeah. That it wasn't just that. Just say, is that where your red hair came from? That reminded me of a story, not electric fence or whatever, but just kind of a panic situation where I was probably the same age and we're doing something. I think we're getting ready to knock down a silo. And if you have a mouse run across the yard and you're a kid, what do you try doing with it? You're trying to catch it. Yeah, you're trying to smash that sun gun. So I was doing that, and I was chasing him, like, where'd he go? And I look over at my uncle, and they're just laughing. They're like, He's that mouse is going up your leg. Like, no, he's not. Next thing I know, I'm ripping my coveralls as fast as I could. I could feel that sucker crawling up my legs. I never got undressed so fast, but I was trying to stomp on him and lost him, and all of a sudden he's crawling up my coveralls, and it tickled, man. Tickled. I've never tried smashing a mouse with auto shovel since.

SPEAKER_05 20:23

I've had a pheasant fly up and hit me in the chest. Really? Knock me over before. Growing up, my dad had one ditch that would always have pheasants, and I'd go out to his place every other weekend. I'd walk the ditch with my 20 gauge and see if I could get something, and a hen flew up and hit me smack me right in the chest and knock me over.

SPEAKER_04 20:39

How old were you?

SPEAKER_05 20:41

I was probably like 13. You think it had enough force to knock you over or just kind of scared the crap? No, it was more like the startledness. And like you're walking through long grass and it comes up and it's in your face and you're like, whoa, and then your feet get caught because you're in long grass and you just kind of fall backwards. That'd be pretty funny to see. Yeah, that was that was a good one. I don't know. Got surrounded by a I'm not a huge cow person. Cows kind of scare me. They're big. They look mean. They easily look mean. Like they just have pissed off faces when you look at them. Got surrounded by like a herd of cows when we were deer hunting once and I didn't know what to do, so I just kind of stood there and called my uncle. He came down with a pickup and just kinda walked right through him to get me, walked me out. Were they just playing or what? No, I mean it it was just cows in a pasture. Like curious, they come over and they, you know, they kind of surround you 'cause it's what cows do to get a look at you and it's not like they were doing anything, it's just I didn't know what to do 'cause this big animal that's, you know, snorting or wheezing at you.

SPEAKER_04 21:39

When they're probably just playing. Yeah. Well, if you've never really been around 'em, it's kinda hard to know.

SPEAKER_05 21:46

Yeah. Yeah, you never really know if a cow's mean or not until it's almost too late.

SPEAKER_04 21:51

Well, I can tell, but I I grew up on a cattle farm. It's just like a dog, you can kind of learn to judge your body language and their posture and all that stuff. Stuff you can start reading them. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 22:02

Yeah, I suppose so. Have you ever ran into an angry deer before? Trying to think. I don't think so. I've I've never been charged by a deer or anything like that.

SPEAKER_04 22:10

I haven't either, but there's one time, I think I was in high school, where looking back now, it's pretty dumb. Five minutes before dark, I'm gonna do a last ditch effort rattle. Sure enough, I called something and it's probably a two and a half, three-year-old deer, and just started hammering a scrape right under my tree stand, ten yards away, and he was pissed. And he was there for ten minutes, and like, there's no way in hell I'm getting down right now. Because he is looking for a fight, and I think I ended up calling my brother, like, eh, uh, there's this really big buck out here. I don't want to see see me get out of the tree stand. Can you come pick me up? Chances are him attacking me when I got down, probably not gonna happen, but being young at the time, you just never know. You hear stories, then you start thinking about that stuff, walking out to the tree stand when it's dark and get a little nervous.

SPEAKER_05 23:03

Oh, yeah. I mean you you get out far enough away from you know, I'll say civilization, you know, there's just sounds you don't hear. Stuff travels, you just hear everything, and you can't see anything because it's just dark as can be. It can be eerie. And I didn't really think about it at the time, but a couple years ago I was walking in, it was during rut. I was carrying my little scrapper buck decoy in, had it just under my arm there, walking in um first thing in the morning, and I think it was like a full moon or whatever, because I remember I could see the I'm walking along the the hill and up on top of the hill there was a buck and a doe, they're just like skylined looking at me. And I didn't think about it at the time, but it was like, I wonder if you could see that deer, like see the antlers of the deer and thought I was a deer. Like that could have got real sketchy really quick.

SPEAKER_04 23:48

Yeah, yeah, it's if a hunter says they don't get just a little jumpy walking out to a tree stand in pitch black, they're probably lying to you.

SPEAKER_05 23:57

I mean, especially in your like walking out and you start hearing coyotes howl in all directions, and you start the wind starts blowing, making leaves sound like footsteps. They can it's like scary movies type of stuff. Just hear a a branch crack. What was that? Yep.

SPEAKER_04 24:16

Start turning the flashlight around like I know I heard something. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 24:19

Uh yeah, a couple years ago I they had just harvested the cornfield. I was actually walking out to my tree stand when they were making the last like two or three passes harvesting corn, and I shot a doe that evening, and I was field dressing her in the dark and whatnot, and I remember coyotes howling off in the distance, but then all I could hear in the cornfield were footsteps, and I was like, what in the world is going? Because they're everywhere. And I stood up and I shine my flashlight out in the field, and it's like 15 sets of eyeballs looking at me, and it's just raccoons. So say that you were laying out doing what? Field dressing that the dough I shot, and it was pitch blackout. And you I could hear coyotes in the distance, and like I could hear all these footsteps, and it sounded like the cornfield was going crazy because you know that fresh, crunchy corn leaves and whatnot, and they're out there moving around, but they weren't making any noise. Must not have been any wind. Yeah, it was just dead calm. So everything is super loud. I finally stand up and it's like all those raccoons just looking back at my flashlight, and I was like, oh thank God.

SPEAKER_04 25:19

I'm always worried about a mountain line. I know I'll never see a mountain line where I hunt, but I don't want to see a mountain line where I hunt.

SPEAKER_05 25:26

I've never seen one where I've hunted. I know they shot one in Webster County a couple years ago, real big one. They're out coon hunting. That picture floated around Facebook for a while. And then growing up, I think my dad clipped one with his truck going to work, I'm pretty sure. I was young, young at the time, but that's um that's what he always said. Clipped a mountain lion. And then one of my cousins, he was a coon, big coon dog hunter out in the like the Les Hills area, and he had a mountain lion get a hold of like three or four of his dogs one night and ended up killing like three of them. Did he get the mountain lion?

SPEAKER_04 26:01

No. I don't think no. So he had to walk out of there without his dogs, and the mountain lion was still alive?

SPEAKER_05 26:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 26:08

Oh my god. I mean, I think he probably got the dogs is my guess, but but yeah, that reminded me of a story. I don't know the guy. It's kind of a friend of a friend situation, but I think the guy was in western Iowa, I believe, and bow hunting, it's still light out, the sun's not going down yet, and he sees a mountain lion with Cubs. So cubs, daylight, that mountain lion, she's hungry and she's protective.

SPEAKER_05 26:33

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_04 26:34

He got uh shoot every single arrow in his quiver at this mountain lion and missed every single time. Can you imagine? I I can't imagine seeing that. That would be insane. That's the worst case scenario. You don't want to see a mountain lion in the day, and you definitely don't want to see him with cubs, and he missed every single time and had no more arrows. You watch the videos of people treeing them out west and whatnot, and the mountain lion finally running out and running away from everybody. They're probably more scared of us than that we are of them.

SPEAKER_05 27:04

Yeah, I mean, they're just like they're a natural predator. I mean, it's they're very eerie because people don't see them a lot, but they're also like you see the stories of where somebody did die to one, like depends on the day. You see the same thing with bears.

SPEAKER_04 27:18

I mean get 'em backed into a corner or if they have cubs. Like that video of the guy hiking and he's walking backwards, filming this mountain, like trying to attack him because he walked past her and her cubs. I didn't sleep very good that night. Like, man, can you imagine? No gun, and she just you could tell every time he looked away from her eyes, she would try pouncing. Then as soon as you make eye contact, they kind of back off a little bit.

SPEAKER_05 27:44

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 27:45

You don't want to run away from them.

SPEAKER_05 27:46

Oh, not not a mountain lion. They say you want to look as big as you can, make loud noises, like scaring it away, kind of a deal.

SPEAKER_04 27:54

Yeah, their tendency is they're kind of cheap shots when it comes to killing. They want to kill you when you're not looking. Whereas Grizzly Bear, they don't give a damn.

SPEAKER_02 28:05

I I'll tell you a great one that's actually topical and recent. So as most people do, and I hope people try it once, but it's really cool to film your hunts. Um, I started this year. I just got a little Sony uh like Z V1, I think it was. Just a little camera that I've taken with me. Is it is it the Z V E10? Uh it's the one with the zoom lens. It's not the one on the vlog style lens, it's the one with the zoom lens. I think it's the Z V, it may be the Z V E10.

SPEAKER_04 28:32

That's what I'm using as a webcam right now. It's you can zoom it on the camera, or there's a little toggle on the lens that'll zoom in and out.

SPEAKER_02 28:40

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That one. So I was using that one to run um I was using that one as my main camera, and then I've got like a a DGI Osmo um action camera that I'm using as just like a second camera. And I I started it this year and just started kind of fooling around with it. And I pretty much filmed all year and I've I've edited some stuff out. I've got some stuff I want to put together, but I'm actually going through a uh I'm actually trying to finish my master's degree right now. So good for you. Um so sometimes school takes up a little bit, but I want to jump, I'll be done in August. So after August, I can jump back into trying to like edit some more next year and kind of get some stuff just put out. But I I'm not concerned about likes or views, I just do it for me just because I like doing it. But I I was able to have it with me and took it to Oklahoma because we deer had an Oklahoma last year. So I took it to Oklahoma, was able to shoot a doe on camera. First deer I've ever killed on camera, was able to shoot it on camera. So I come back to Alabama and we're still in muzzle loader season in Alabama, and I'm like, I'm gonna go out here and just try to harvest a doe. I need some deer meat, so I'm just gonna go try to shoot a doe. So I have a doe walk by at probably 35 yards, and I'm like centered, I've got this deer centered on camera, like I'm in perfect frame. The deer doesn't even know I'm there. And I pull the trigger and I've made the biggest miss on camera that I have I've I haven't missed a deer this bad in probably 15 years, and I miss this deer so didn't even know I was shot at. It just stared around as I'm looking. And I've on camera, and I actually put it out on YouTube, but I said several expletives as this deer's running off. I'm like, what the and so I'm like, how did I miss that? I'm like perfectly centered right there and just miss on camera. I'm like, what the heck am I doing? Um So that one was pretty fun because this was recent. Yeah, I've got um I remember back a long time ago I was a kid and this just tells you how m how much we've evolved with technology and and tools and tree stands. But a long time ago my dad told me, he said, just climb an oak tree. You can climb an oak tree and sit on a branch up there, and that can be your tree stand. Okay. So I'm probably twelve. And I thought it'd be a great idea to climb this oak tree where I found this deer trill out, and I made it to about twelve foot up the tree and came tumbling, tumbling, I say, my butt out of that oak tree and landed on my butt. And that was the end of me climbing oak trees for a little bit. But no one was around to see it, thankfully. You're just climbing it or the ladder? No, I'm just climbing it's an oak tree. I'm just climbing branches. Trying to do it. Were you thinking Tarzan or something? I guess so. I don't know what was going on, but but uh yeah, that one was that one was great. But I've got my dad's not here to defend himself, but I'll tell this story because this is probably the funniest story that I actually have. One day, like everybody does, you know, we're gonna stop and go hunting. We're gonna stop take a pee first, kind of release the bladder a little bit, and um we're gonna try to get ready to go hunting. Somebody else was like I go take a pee real quick. So he walks over to the edge of the woods and he's taking a pee, and we're at the truck, I'm putting stuff on. And he, you know, I I see him turn around, he's got his pants zipped up, and he's walking back to the truck to grab his orange vest and his gun, and he starts yelling as loud as he can, just yelling. And I'm like, what are you doing? And he's yelling, he's like beating the crotch of his pants. He's like, no, and I'll never forget he unzips his pants and like pulls his pants down in a yellow jacket. B flies out of his pants. Oh yeah, lies out of his pants. And it had stung him right on a very, very sensitive area down there. And once I figured out he was okay, just because I I want to make sure my dad was okay, but once I figured out he was gonna be fine, I've never laughed and cried so hard laughing at him as he was when he zipped a bee up in his pants after he was taking a leak in the woods.

SPEAKER_04 32:26

So you gotta listen to the episode that dropped Monday. There's we each share story with yellow jackets.

SPEAKER_02 32:34

Oh yeah, he was he was torn up for a while. He was able to laugh about it after about an hour, but it was not a fun hour for him. I I couldn't do anything to help him. I'm just laughing. It was great.

SPEAKER_04 32:44

Oh Lord, it was great. At least he got to feel well endowed for a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 32:49

Yeah. Yeah, he did. Absolutely. Man, I still laugh about it. I still gave him heck about that to this day.

SPEAKER_04 32:56

Yeah, it's I lost a trail camera over running from a swarm of yellow jackets. I imagine he was probably peeing on their their nest or something.

SPEAKER_02 33:04

Yeah, I don't know what happened. I I didn't see him, I just heard him start screaming when it happened.

SPEAKER_04 33:09

Did he get trapped in his pants or something?

SPEAKER_02 33:11

Yeah, he did he I'm like underwearing pants, zipped it up, pulled it up, and and yeah, the whole deal. God, they hurt. Oh yeah. Yeah, I've I've unfortunately been popped with them a few times. I I actually got stung with him at work. Um, I was at work as a cop. I'm on duty, and I walked off from the edge of the woods and I stepped in a nest of them and got both legs full of them years ago. But yeah, I I I'm not allergic to them. They just hurt a whole lot.

SPEAKER_04 33:39

Yeah, on the episode that dropped Monday, Seth was thrashing a walking lane and just got swarmed by them, and they got in his rubber boots and he couldn't get them out.

SPEAKER_02 33:51

Oh no.

SPEAKER_04 33:52

I ran into him when I was setting up a trail camera and I was trying to knock down the overgrown grass in front of it, so I'm going forward, backwards, forwards, backwards.

SPEAKER_08 34:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 34:02

And there's a lot of multi-flower rows around. Like, man, that thorn hurt. And all of a sudden I looked down, like, oh shit. I got out of there so fast and forgot to close the door on my camera and got flooded, ruined it. Tried to get my landlord to go back out there and close these, like, I don't think so, dude.

SPEAKER_02 34:20

Yeah, no. Yeah, they are very painful. Luckily, we uh we don't have them often down here, but I mean you'll see them occasionally. A lot of times that we get like hogs will actually dig up nests if you see them in the ground like a yellow jacket nest, you'll find like the honey, the comb laying in the ground where a hog has kind of rooted it up and and dug it up, or armadilla or something like that. So good deal. You'll see like nests destroyed down here.

SPEAKER_04 34:43

Yeah. It's the worst because you don't see them coming. You know, a normal wasp, they come from above you. These ones they come from the ground and they swarm you.

SPEAKER_02 34:52

Oh yeah, and they hurt. They they burn so bad. I know the night I got stung at work, I came home and unzipped my boots, and I actually couldn't get my boots off because my ankles were swollen up. I got so bad on my on my legs. Through your boots or they were just they were it just my legs got yeah, they were above my boots, but it was just because my legs got so bad with them. They were just everywhere.

SPEAKER_04 35:12

And the walt I had was at least this big around from one sting.

SPEAKER_02 35:16

Yeah, yeah, they were bad. And I I was in pain. Luckily I'm not allergic, so I didn't have to, you know, you know, go to the hospital or whatever, but I was just in pain for a day or two, killing me.

SPEAKER_04 35:28

And then it's just a week of solid itch, at least for me, anyways.

SPEAKER_02 35:31

Yeah, oh absolutely, yeah, just 100%.

SPEAKER_01 35:35

I'm probably a hundred yards from the truck, and I called him and I said, I can't do it anymore. Um, so I went up and I was so tired, I got into my truck. The second I closed my eyes, I fell asleep and I got awoken, which I thought was ten minutes later, but an hour and a half later by my buddy. And what time was this? Oh man, it's probably about 10 30 at night at this point. And I was like, Man, he's just down there like 150 yards. So we we go down and um and I was like, You're fresh. I was like, why don't you go?

SPEAKER_04 36:02

So you fell asleep while you waited for him to get there to help drag it out, or well, I I just went up to my truck.

SPEAKER_01 36:08

It was because uh the the temp was falling. That was the other thing. It was actually like really getting really cold. And I got him most of the way. I got him over the creek, but the last bit was uphill and it was nothing but like blowing over trees. So it was it was just really difficult. And um, it was starting to get uh below freezing. So I just went up in the truck to turn the heater on, wait for him to drive uh to drive down and um you know took a little snooze. But I got back to the house a little after midnight, uh, took a couple photos of him on the tailgate. Uh and here's the other thing I hadn't even field dressed him. I field dressed him when I got to the truck. You know, it was cold enough. I'm not worried about it. I've done this enough times. But I had done it enough times that I know if I field dressed him and tried to drag him out like that. Now it it it's uh more of a pain because I do all my own processing and everything. Yeah, I could have dumped another 40 pounds probably doing that, but what a hell. The wood. I don't think I can't think of any one in particular. There is one, uh, and then I'll share one that was on the lake, waterfall hunting. Um I was hunting this spot one time and I if I don't go in the morning, um it it's certain I'm gonna have to go at some point before I get up into my tree stand. And with my guts, I I have to start moving around before that happens. So I'm in one of my hunt spots that like no one ever goes into. And I really have to go. And I'm like, Yeah, all right. And I literally like drop trowel like kind of in the open, right on the edge of a trail. Not like right on the trail, but like it wasn't a trail. But it was just like it was very dark, and I wanted to see if I could see any movement and in uh this clear cut. And I'm just sitting there doing my business, you know, looking at my app, and uh and all of a sudden a light turns on and I hear some commotion. I literally almost got walked into by another hunter that was walking up to smelled something, turned his light on, freaked me out, freaked him out, and uh, we had a good laugh about it.

SPEAKER_08 38:07

Did he see you?

SPEAKER_01 38:09

No, he didn't see me because I was like I was kind of on the edge, but like next to a tree in a bush. So I was like silhouetted, and he was walking in dark. So it was I I'm like sitting there, I'm like, please don't please don't walk up on me, please don't walk on. And and it was very clear he was about to like probably walk straight into me. I I turned on my like light and did this and that. You know, I don't think he expected a red light to turn on, and uh we had a good laugh about it. About 10 30, I'm like finishing the hunt and I'm going back to the entrance, and he's telling the story to his buddy, like, and they're just laughing their asses off. His buddy's like, Is that the guy? And I was like, I put my head down, I was like, Yep, that was me. Another water waterfowl stories. We we didn't even get into uh our bird dog training. Maybe maybe I can come back another time and tell you that story because it it means a lot to me. I got some pretty good bird dogs. First duck hunt in Kentucky, got invited by some guys. Um and I'm kind of trying to show off that which I don't really do, but my dogs are really good. They cripple a bluebell. We're hunting on a lake, but there's a channel, and it's not an environment I'd hunted in yet, or my dogs. And divers, if you don't you know, come out right, they're you're probably not gonna get them with your dog. And so I was pretty confident and I was like, my dog will get it. My dog will get it. And uh my I had my dog 300 yards out in a channel. I have no idea how deep this damn thing is. Um and I'm just watching this duck get further and further away. Like my dog would get really close and they would dive. And I'm over there like over, over, trying to send my dog. And I'm like, my dog can't even pick up a bird. And I was like, I look like a chump right now. And uh about 10 minutes of this goes by, and they actually start getting concerned. They're like, hey, you might want to call your dog back in, man. It's okay. I was like, no, she'll get it. And I was like, No, he's like, Chelsea's like, they don't get divers. And I've never like hunted divers on a big body of water like that, and especially on a like a channel with a current. My dog's a trooper, like she would have literally been out there trying to get that bird until she drowned. So I ended up bringing her back in, yeah. After 15 minutes, I was kind of defeated. And that was actually the one and only time I burnt my dog had never been able to get a bird. Well, it wasn't her fault, you know, it was just the circumstances of it. So that was a little embarrassing because it was like some new friends, and I had like kind of talked talked myself up, and I was trying to get into a new hunting circle. And uh, I think after that they they did not take me seriously at all. But um I think most of the embarrassing stories my buddies tell better than me. Um, but like I told you, I hadn't been hunting like that long, and I started getting into it, started getting a little bit more serious. So a lot of it was on my own. But every now and again, um, I mean, I think all of us have somewhat similar stories.

SPEAKER_07 40:56

I used to hunt with another buddy of mine, which uh I don't really see much anymore. I got I got him into hunting. And I as a matter of fact, I was it was years ago and I had I remember I was using a Keller sight, the Keller pendulum sight on my bow, and I shot a small one, right? And I was embarrassed. I I shot a very small one, and before that, I used to use screwing steps, right? Until they outlawed them. And I would carry my my stand on my back, uh salt to Lone Wolf of Salt 2, and screw in as I go up, you know, and then get in the stand. And then I would use the same holes as an idiot, being dumb as a young kid, you know, young guy. Well, one popped, I fell out, and then he's like I said, we used to use walkie-talkie. He says, Yo, I heard you hit. I've been big boy my whole life. So are you okay? I'm like, yeah, all right, I just can't breathe. So that was, and then the same night I got I finally got up there, I shot a little one. And I listen, man, I am very picky on deer I kill. I don't want to kill button bucks. I don't want to kill young does. I just how I I don't have nothing against it. You got anybody can do whatever they want. But me, I want to take a I just rather have a big mature doe taken for me than a younger deer because she's already done her thing. Does that make sense? You know, so I was very embarrassed and then he made fun of me the whole way home, and then the next day he drew a picture and was busting my balls for two weeks that I killed Bambi and the little deer. That's probably the most embarrassing story I have, you know. I'm a loon wolf, so I I I don't have many. And then em the emu thing was pretty embarrassing. I'm like, dude, what the hell, man?

unknown 42:42

You know.

SPEAKER_04 42:43

Well, I did you listen to the episode. I can't remember if it was this week's or last one, where I think it was Robert Worley, where he shot a small one and his buddy came up and pulled out his handkerchief and wiped the deer's nose off, and Robert's like, What are you doing? He's like, I'm wiping the milk off her nose.

SPEAKER_07 43:00

I think I heard that that night too. He says, Man, that some bitch got milk on her lips still. Damn loop. Because everybody calls me loop. Yeah, it's my last name. I've been called that since I was a little kid. And I I that's funny you say that because think I think somebody said that because my buddy spread the rumor that I'm a baby killer and and all that, and he says uh I got a uh a message or something. Yo, man, I heard you kill one with milk on her lips last night. You know, that's great, you know. We've all been happens to everybody.

SPEAKER_04 43:27

How long did it take you to kill your first ear at the bow?

SPEAKER_07 43:29

It was quite a while because I didn't bait. I just went out in the woods and knew what the hell I was doing. Went out in the woods. My brother, my brother, like I said, got me into hunting and and he was so busy at the time, but I still wanted to hunt. And then I I went out and and uh I sat and I killed a big doe that night. And I'm like, damn, I like this. How many years in was it? Two. I think my second season I killed a doe. And you know what? I I remember shi I'll tell you right now, in thirty years on Honestly, and I'm not no bullshit. Like, I've I and I said this earlier, I've always been good at getting deer in front of me. Could be does, but for some reason I've always been good at reading the sign and getting deer hunting. Even my first year hunting, my first few six or seven times, I've always had deer come by me. You know what I mean? Getting a shot and getting me close enough, you know, 20, 25 yards. I think it was my second season in. And uh I shot a big doe and I was like, yeah, static.

SPEAKER_04 44:31

Jugging always jugging him half a mile down the road. I think I've asked everybody on the podcast, and the average is four or five years.

SPEAKER_07 44:37

Yeah, yeah. But you know, in all honesty, back then, like uh I think I think it was ninety-three four is the first year I started hunting. Like really hunting. Like I used to before that, you know, but seriously got into it. Like there was a ton of deer out. I mean, the numbers of deer that were in South Jersey, like we would go, we would, we would spot because you're not a spotlight in New Jersey. You are not a spotlight as long as you don't have a weapon in your car. Now, Delaware, they can give you a ticket for putting your lights across. They don't know. I mean, it's crazy. But um, you gotta you got a lot of outlaw, and that's why they do that. You know what I mean? During the season, you can if you're blatantly shining your lights in Delaware to see a deer, they can give you a ticket. Back in the 90s, we would shine fields, known fields are deer, and I'll tell you right now, like there used to be a hotel on Route 47 and uh right at the line of Cape Main, Cumberland County, there'd be a hundred deer out there. I mean, but now if I was to shine that field, there might be six, six or eight. I don't know what the hell happened to them, but like we had a huge die-off of deer for some reason in South Jersey in in the late 90s and 2000. I think the state had a lot to do with it because of car insurance. I really, really do. I really do. Because here's a here's a fun fact, you know, sound like Sheldon Cooper now. Fun fact. When I was a correction officer, I took a detail out that released coyotes in New Jersey, one of the first fastest coyotes in South Jersey. And my brother-in-law. Are you saying coyote? My brother-in-law, yes, my brother-in-law did the same thing. He took the took the fishing game guys out one day that week. They released so many coyotes because people were bitching about the deer numbers. And they released there is coyotes eating dogs in Cape May Point. They they jumped the fence and eat people's pets. There's so many coyotes in New Jersey now. It's it's crazy off the hook. And we're having a huge turkey problem now because Jersey was one of probably one of the best turkey states there is, man. There is turkey everywhere for numbers. But you know what? I've seen a huge drop-off in turkeys in the last 10 years because I think of gray robbers, or not gray uh nest robbers, yotes, foxes, nobody traps. Nobody traps. There's no money in it. So that's a big thing, man. You know? So I think Wisconsin. And I don't think there if you come to New Jersey, there isn't places like out west where you can set up like like you guys were saying to kill coyotes in big fields. It's set up like that. It's all wood. There's very little farms left in New Jersey, maybe up in up in the vineland area, Milmay, up that way a little bit, but in South Jersey, very, very little. Very little.

SPEAKER_04 47:33

I think Wisconsin's having wolf issues, and I'm guessing they probably release that same reason. But there's hardly any deer where the wolves are.

SPEAKER_07 47:41

It's a shame, man. It's a shame. It's just, and then they, you know, they they want to make Jersey has made it so expensive to hunt there. Like, I think I paid almost $270 some dollars as a resident hunter to hunt New Jersey and deer last year. And I didn't get my duck stamp, I didn't get my hip number, I didn't get a trap stamp, I didn't get my my fishing license, nothing. $200. I I get all around, all around sportsman covers fall and winter bow, right? So that's $70, $72. And then every buck permit, you gotta buy a buck permit for every single season. Every buck permit is $28. And then you have to buy a permit to hunt permit bow season, that's $28. Then you have to buy a permit to hunt muzzlitter season, that's $28. And a muzzlitter permit, which is $10. Then you have to buy dough permits to hunt doe per dough season, and a buck tag, which is both $28 times two. It's crazy, dude. It's nuts. It's it's off the hook. But you know what? You know, Jersey's super liberal state. They they they want to do away with hunting, but they want to do it in a way where nobody knows the deer are dying off, I guess. I mean, I my guess.

SPEAKER_04 49:04

That's unfortunate.

SPEAKER_07 49:06

But where I hunted that, we we hunted, and I'm sitting there one night, and that's when really one of my first few years of hunting, and we were heavy baiters. And there was a pig farm and the emu farm about a mile through the woods, right? Emu farm. Yeah, he probably know where I'm going. So I'm sitting there, and I'm sitting there, and I'm like, yeah, you know, you're twittering your thumbs. This is back in the 90s, and and here I'm like, what the hell is that? I'm looking through the woods. What is that? What is here comes two emus to my bait pile. That was pretty funny. And I mean my brother used walkie-talkies. I said, yo, you ain't gonna believe this one, dude. And uh, he says, What, what?

SPEAKER_06 49:50

And I said, I have two emus on my bait pile, and he said, shoot them. I said, No, I'm not cheating that damn thing down there.

SPEAKER_04 49:58

They'll probably scare all the deer away.

SPEAKER_07 50:00

I think they're pretty good guard animals. Are they really? Yeah, I don't know much about it. I know they got big eggs, and friggin' eggs are huge.

SPEAKER_04 50:07

I got on uh rabbit down a rabbit hole a couple days ago. I saw an emu chasing some something off the farm. Oh, it was an emu, a coyote was crawling under the fence, and the emu just walked up to us like right on the killed him. So then I got to looking, and they're used as guard animals on farms. Okay. They'll they'll chase coyotes off and stuff like that. They're really protective.

SPEAKER_07 50:37

Wow. I heard donkeys, they use donkeys like that too. I don't know much about like, you know, farmates and stuff like that, but my friend's a vet app, so she always tells me, Oh, they got a donkey. Or they have an em that I've heard that too. Uh the emus, they're protectors, and I'm like, I I remember saying a couple years ago to my daughter, why do they have emus? They eggs? No, they're protectors, but it's funny you say that. That's why. You're right.

SPEAKER_04 51:01

So So are guineas. You wouldn't think guineas would be protectors. They're they're more of the cry baby.

SPEAKER_07 51:08

Guinea hen?

SPEAKER_04 51:09

Huh?

SPEAKER_07 51:09

A guinea hen, you mean? Like the the gray birds, you mean? Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 51:14

Not because they're gonna fight something, because if something if you've ever walked onto a farm with one, they don't shut up because Oh my god. They're trying the alert. If something looks out of place, they'll just screech until Okay.

SPEAKER_07 51:28

I I know I've I know people get them because they eat a ton, a ton of ticks, they say they they eat like their body weight and ticks within a couple days or something like that. So that's a lot. So I have heard that with guinea hens, too.

SPEAKER_03 51:46

So another bow hunt. I uh got up in a tree and uh I don't know what I did. I don't know if my strap wasn't tight enough or whatever, so I got up there and I always you know pre-check everything, make sure I got good draw. I can draw kind of you know my bow without getting crazy. And uh I went to hang it up on the the branch, or not the branch, but the the um bow holder, yeah, the hanger. And uh I just watched this was my my VXR 31. I watched it fall 22 feet to the ground.

SPEAKER_04 52:25

Can't quite get it on there right.

SPEAKER_03 52:27

I d I I think the strap wasn't, and then and when I put the weight of the bow on there, it just kind of slid off, and it was just like slow motion. And this is like right at the start of the hunt. And I'm like, gosh, dog it. My arrow bust, because I you know I had it knocked on there, it's split in half.

SPEAKER_04 52:44

Um so of course I had to break the hopefully it hit arrow down, so arrow broadhead hit the ground first, kind of used a little bit of the string to cushion the blow.

SPEAKER_03 52:56

I was lucky uh it was muddy down there. Really? If it would have been dry, I probably would have I would have I would have broke my bottom cam. So of course I had to chimmy down there, get off, reset on that, come back up, uh, and uh You're gonna try to do that. You're gonna you sat the rest of the hunt after that? Yeah, I pulled the boat back a few times. It didn't blow up. Now if I would have shot it, I don't know what it would have I don't know what would have happened. We would have figured that out. Then uh I was hunting at Fort Hood and uh this was in 2015 probably. Um it's kind of a cool story how it worked out. Uh I did miss the deer, unfortunately, but um I'm in a ground blind, sitting there and it's like it's getting kind of late. I'll probably start getting ready to get going. All of a sudden I see this doe's head just right out my peripheral. And uh she's probably four feet away from the stand. Just come through a little break right next to her because I had this out of ground blind kind of pushed into this edge, you know, brushed in, and uh she had came in and I was like, there's no way I can make this move right now. And she was kind of skittish anyways. Um so finally she gets past me uh and her you know her butts towards me. I finally get to get my bow up. I get the full draw, and uh one thing I forgot to do um and the disadvantage of hunting with a single pin um was check my yardage on my my thing. So I'm at full draw. She's broadside at me, probably about 18, 19 yards. And uh sight was set to 25 yards. Went right over her? Right over the top. From 19 to 25 made that much difference, huh? Yep. And I was like, there's no way. Well, that's also because she she ducked the string like ducked the string so much. And that's that's kind of like you know, we alluded to the pressure, and she may have been shot at before, I don't know. But she ducked the string. I think if she would have ducked it, um, we probably would have got a high, high shoulder, high lung hit. Um but yeah, I was just kind of see some fur go over and I'm like, oh god.

SPEAKER_04 55:28

That's one bad thing about stopping deer to get get the shot. It's like do you almost if they're just walking slow, do you just shoot them as they're going or stop them? Yeah. I mean, that's uh that's a that's a good question. I mean, they can still jump the string, but you're giving yourself an extra half second, probably.

SPEAKER_03 55:48

Yep.

unknown 55:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 55:49

As long as that shoulders forward, I I probably would have took that shot um when she just turned. But she kind of turned in a way that she was quarter to me with her butt kind of still facing me. Um and it was I mean, I probably could have slipped it in behind that shoulder. Uh, but once she had turned, there was kind of a branch and some trees there, and then she came out and just stopped again. Um but she was already on high alert anyways.

SPEAKER_04 56:21

You almost have to aim for the bottom of the heart anymore as they're so jumpy.

SPEAKER_03 56:25

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think uh Mr. Waldell himself um has got a great uh right of, or not a right up, I think it's a video about it, is that he just he sets his pen, comes up just below um the belly and kind of gets underneath that where the the shoulder kind of comes up to the body and uh aims right for that area because you know most of them are gonna duck the screen anyway, so drops down and it's a hard shot every time. I was like, that's a pretty good point. Pretty good point.

SPEAKER_04 56:59

Yep, they jump more often than not.

SPEAKER_03 57:01

Yeah. So but uh I think the most those three uh failures, um I think the big deer, uh that big bladed eight point, he might have been a nine point. That one will probably haunt me for a longer time until I redeem myself.

SPEAKER_04 57:18

Would it have been your biggest deer?

SPEAKER_03 57:20

Oh yeah, oh yeah. To this day, huh? Oh yeah. He was a st he was a stud. Bomber. I I I gotta I I'll try to find the video. I got a video of him. Um if I still have it, I'll I'll I'll email it over to you. Kind of gotta zoom in because uh there was another guy that we kind of hunted on top of each other, and he had him on camera. He shot the bigger one um that run around with him, and he was gonna shoot the one that I had the opportunity on. Uh, but he just was waiting for the big guy to come in, and then um he ended up shooting him uh probably 400 yards away from where I was set up that morning, uh like two days later. And it was a big deer.

SPEAKER_04 58:06

Uh so the the one you messed up on wasn't even the bigger one. No, there was a bigger one. Really? Yeah, oh yeah.

SPEAKER_03 58:14

How how big do you think they were? I think I could look through my messages. I think the deer that he shot probably was uh 130, 140 deer.

SPEAKER_06 58:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 58:24

And uh the one that I messed up on, he he probably was pushing 120, 125.

SPEAKER_04 58:30

Pretty big for the area.

SPEAKER_03 58:32

Yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah, yeah. Yeah. There's some uh most of them, you know, uh he had the mass. He had the he had the height on his main beams. And uh most of the deer uh that were in Georgia here on Fort Benning were, you know, pretty symmetrical eight points. Basic spread of, you know, 14 to 18 inch spreads, and you know average height. Then you get the older ones that had a lot of mass, but still those symmetrical eight points. Uh and then we started getting in an area that we were running into them uh where a lot of them had kickers.

SPEAKER_04 59:17

Which was pretty cool, yeah. Everybody likes the kickers.

SPEAKER_03 59:21

Oh yeah, and there was one we called him uh he was double kickers, he was a real nice mainframe tin. Had a lot of mass, and he had two uh he had two symmetrical kickers on each side of his uh not the main beam, so the G2, I think it is, the next one up. Um he had two symmetrical kickers on there that were probably about that long. There you go. Yeah, he was he was a real nice deer. Uh that's the one actually I saw at about 80 yards. Um stopped him with a grunt and he took off. Yeah, I was like, you asshole.