A Hunter's Legacy
Step into the world of everyday hunters as we uncover the stories, passion, and drive behind their love for the hunt. A Hunter's Legacy is a podcast that celebrates the heart and soul of hunting through conversations with real, everyday hunters. From their first hunts to their most unforgettable moments in the field, we dive deep into the experiences that connect hunters to the outdoors and their traditions.
Join us as we explore the values, lessons, and motivations that make hunting more than a sport—it’s a legacy. Whether you’re a seasoned hunter, a curious enthusiast, or simply love hearing authentic stories of connection to nature, A Hunter's Legacy has a tale for you. Grab your gear and tune in to hear why hunting is more than just a pastime—it’s a way of life.
A Hunter's Legacy
V3 | The Bonehead Chronicles: A Series of Questionable Choices from the Field
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
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.
Want to be a guest?
Ready to share your hunting legacy? Apply here.
Like what you’re hearing?
Hit subscribe so you don’t miss an episode. New stories drop every week.
Follow A Hunter’s Legacy:
Share the show with a buddy who lives for cold mornings, heavy packs, and quiet woods.
Grab your gear, find a stand and listen as we share another journey. The shape of the hunter's legacy.
SPEAKER_02Not only are they embarrassing, they're super embarrassing for me, but they're also public safety announcements. You know, it's a public safety message. So that everybody uh should practice gun safety and being safe in your stand. So the first one, um, I was uh deer hunting a uh we were out hunting I was deer hunting and I was hunting an old orange grove and I was sitting in the ladder stand, and then I'll never forget it was like at you know before shooting light that this pretty good buck walked right underneath my stand. So I thought it was gonna be a good morning, and I hadn't seen anything for the rest of the for the rest of the morning after that. And it's like 10 o'clock, 10 30, you know, I'm like ready to get down, and I'm sitting on my stand and I'm flipping the safety off, flipping the safety on, flipping the safety off, flipping the safety off. I went to flip that safety off and the gun, that 243 went off, gun went off. You know, wasn't being gun safe. I wasn't being cautious, but it scared the life out of me. And as soon as I shot, they were coming to pick me up. They come flying in there and they jump out of the truck and they're looking at me like, was that you that shot? I'm like, no, no, no, it wasn't me that it was some guy over there. So they jump in the truck and they tear their tires off, and they're, you know, they're hauling ass around the corner looking for somebody that's not even there. I was doing this, I was bored, I was ready to get down, and I have my finger on the trigger, and I've when I went to when I flipped that safety off, when I flipped that safety off, I pulled the trigger and off went the gun. And, you know, I preach gun safety to my boys right now, even when they're carrying their their BB guns around, like, you know, you know, mind where your muzzle's at. You know, we never point a gun, only put your finger on the trigger when you're ready to shoot, those kind of things. So, like, you know, a lot of the times you don't get a second chance when it when there's an accident with a with a gun. Luckily I did. It was probably just, you know, whatever it was, I had the gun pointing in the air, which is you know, shooting a gun off in the air isn't the best idea either. Um, you know, it just made me self-aware that you can, you know, you you always need to be safe. You always need to make sure that you're checking your gun and and and and and you're doing the right thing with that and and not flipping your safety off and flipping your safety on because uh there's a good chance that your gun's gonna go off.
SPEAKER_04Dude, I did something similar to that. So I won't go into the muzzle loader incident, but I had a muzzle loader blow up because I double loaded it. But when I was real young, we were doing a shotgun push, and I remember all the walkers were at the edge and you know, kind of like, oh, pretending to shoot, and kind of like you're flipping the safety back and forth. I was just, you know, like pretending to shoot while my gun wasn't even on safety, and I clicked it and boom, strained there. Everybody jumps. Like, do you mean to do that?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, I know. Yeah, I mean, it's gosh, man. It scares, like, it literally will stick with you, and it scares the life out of you because at that point in time, you're like, it's real. Like, people talk about gun safety and being safe, and it's like, it's real, like it can happen, can happen to whether you're, you know, a seasoned vet or you know, you're you're new to hunting, like it's super important to to practice gun safety. So uh that one was super embarrassing for me, especially looking back at it now. Um, and the other one I have is uh uh I used to work this on this watermelon farm, and uh I used to work for this guy that he he took care of a lot of properties. I worked in the orange groves for him, and uh he always took us he'd take us deer hunting, and it was opening uh like opening day of bow season, and I had just like kind of started hunting in a hunting out of a climber. And uh we're picking our spots and where we're gonna go, and there was this really cool piece of property. This old railroad bed ran through the middle of it. So we had built this big box stand there because it was a great place for deer to cross and you could see uh a long way in either direction. So I'm like, hey, I'm gonna go hunt. I got my climber set up, I'm gonna go hunt, you know, I'm gonna go climb, you know, I'm gonna hunt this climber. Well, he's like, Well, I'm gonna go hunt the box stand. I'm like, well, you don't bow hunt. Why are you going a bunch? Why are you hunting in the box stand? He's like, Because I want to I want to see you climb that tree. What are you talking about, old man? I'll climb that tree. Like, that's no problem. So I I get in there, uh, you know, it's it's still super dark. You know, I'm in there probably, you know, whatever, 45 minutes an hour before daylight. And uh, you know, I get climbing up the tree. I have my bow with me. I don't even know if I had a bow rope. I like to think that I did, but I don't know if I did or not. Didn't have my didn't have my climber tied together, didn't have a safety harness on. You know, yeah, set that point, safety harness is, you know, you were, you know, you're kind of like seeing them on infomercials and things like that. They send you the CD and the and the, you know, like it when you bought your when you bought your stand and whatnot.
SPEAKER_04Oh yeah, nobody wore them.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, nobody wore them. So I get like 15, I don't know, I'm like 15 feet up in that tree. I move the top portion of the climber up, and I go to, you know, put my feet into the bottom, which are kind of in there, while I go to pull the bottom portion of my my the of the climber up. Well, it slips out from underneath my feet. And thank goodness it didn't fall down to the bottom. It fell down just far enough where it was like just like just out of reach. So I'm like this. I don't know how I was holding myself up in this climber for as long as I did. And now I'm doing everything I can. I'm lulling my feet around, I'm like, I'm I'm dipping down in there, I'm stretching my feet out as long as I know, and I just cannot get my foot back in the stirrup to pull it back up. So I still don't know. Like, I I I take a breath and I'm like, I regroup and I'm like, number one, I can't let the old man know that this is like a lot. Well, so I at the time I'm assuming like he is witnessing what he foreshadowed the day before, and like he's gonna tell everybody, everybody's gonna know about this. I'm never gonna hear the end of it. So like I'm doing everything I can to get the bottom of this climber back underneath me, right? So it's like, all right, I'm gonna get it this time. So I dip down as low as I can to get the climber up underneath my foot. I get one side of the climber up, I take a breath, I dip down, I get the other side of the climber up, and I've got it back underneath me. Hike back up into the tree, get set up. I put don't see a deer now. I'm sweating. I'm I'm like profusely sweating, like grossly sweating. At this point, I've probably spooked every deer that was eat with with within, you know, several hundred yards from me that was bedded down there. Don't see anything, get down. You know, uh we meet on the railroad bed. He's like, What'd you see? He's like, You didn't shoot. I'm like, no, I didn't see anything. And I'm just like, I'm like, you know, I'm like, I'm not saying anything. Like, what's going on? So I'm like kind of not saying anything. He's not saying anything. He didn't see it. Like it was still dark enough that he didn't he didn't know what had happened. It was a morning hunt. Yeah, it was a morning hunt. He did say, like, you know, there was a lot of commotion when you first got in there. I was like, yeah, there was a hog there. I spooked the hog up. So like that kind of happened. So he didn't see it, but I was again super embarrassed at the time because I thought it happened. You know, like I'm super embarrassed I'll even let this happen to myself. Um, and and and another thing, like, you know, we've all heard the story, like how important it is to be safe, you know, you know, whether you're in a climber and a ladder stand or whatever it may be. And it's just like, you know, I every climber I have now, I'm looking at them right now, they're tied together. Um, so I'll never and they're tied together enough to where if it does fall out, like there's no chance of it falling to the bottom of the tree. It's gonna be close enough to me to get it. Um, those were those are my two, you know, I've I've got plenty more, but um those are the two that I felt like I could get your listeners a public safety message out there, and and uh two that were just like I still remember to this day and we'll we'll never forget.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, tree stands are dangerous. You gotta be on top of your game. There's yeah, a buddy who was telling me a story how he wasn't maintaining his tree stands, but he was putting a tree stand up, and the one of the cables or both the cables snapped, and it was a hang-on stand that had the footrest. So you have this expanded metal footrest, then you have this bar that came up. Well, the bottom went out from under him. His feet went in underneath that footrest, right on top of his shin, and his face went down. Man, that had to have hurt.
SPEAKER_02Oh no, I yeah, I've I've got stories like that. Same thing. A buddy of mine, luckily he wasn't too high up in the tree. Um, it was one of those kind of like those chain type uh straps that go around the tree while he'd had it in the tree. I don't know if he had, you know, if he'd been in there for seasons before or whatever, but where it met, where it kind of met to the climber and the and the pin went through it, it had rusted out. Well, thank goodness he was only like, you know, I think he was only like you know, a couple feet up the tree. He gets up there, that cable snaps, he goes backwards, and his legs get caught, you know, his legs get caught and he's hemmed up there, but he was he was close enough to the ground. I think he was able to kind of like push himself off and kind of reposition himself. But it is. It can happen to the most seasoned hap hunter, it can happen to an inexperienced hunter. It's like you gotta be safe, you gotta check your equipment. Um, you know, it's something I realize a lot more now with with having kids. And you know, I you know, I I gosh, like I don't care, I I don't even want it, I don't even care to tell you how many times like I've fell falling out of a tree stand and I'm and and I'm getting older now, but I'm kinda like Gumby, like I could bounce back pretty quick, but it's a real thing, and and I've been very lucky to to uh not been injured worse than I have from from falling out of tree stands more than I care to admit.
SPEAKER_04So I got a tree tree stand, an old ladder stand I need to cut out with it. It's on an old silver maple, so they grow real fast. So it grew fast enough where it like engulfed the back end of the ladder stand so it's not going anywhere. And that there's my brother went in there, he's like, you know, there's no strap hanging this tree stand up. I'm like, yeah, it's not going anywhere. But it grows up, and where the ladder sections come together, they aren't bolted. So yeah, every year you have to put a new like log under it to kind of raise the bottom up, otherwise, yeah, it'll just fall out.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Like, yep, no, it's a real thing. Checking, like, you know, when you use those lock-ons, you know, swapping those straps out every year. I mean, you know, and don't stand on it to see if it's safe to stand on. Like, just do yourself a favor, s you know, swap that strap out, you know, get a buddy out there, do the right thing, because you know, falling 20 feet out of a tree is is uh you know, it's not uh doesn't do your body any good.
SPEAKER_04So I don't have kids, so I don't care if I die falling out of a tree. I just don't want to be a vegetable.
SPEAKER_02Well, I want you to continue your podcast, so um don't don't don't do anything like that. So uh that's the last thing I want to hear about anybody.
SPEAKER_04I went through a rough stretch of bad accidents with that muzzle loader blowing up and rolling trucks, and I I wear a harness setting up my my ladder sections now. I you know, the lineman belt, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean that's that's that's what that's what you know, you're right. That's what we should all be doing. I mean, I'm still guilty of it, not even an artist. I mean during Bow season I I I like to hunt out of a my climber just to get into to spots that I want to be in. Um not so much during gun season, but uh it doesn't matter, man. You gotta you gotta be a you gotta be self-aware, you gotta be responsible, and you gotta make sure that like you're checking your equipment because it it can happen to all of us. Doesn't doesn't I don't care how long you've been hunting. It can't happen to me until it happens. Exactly. And that's that's that's what gets you. That's exactly right.
SPEAKER_01Missing the shots that I shouldn't have missed, I guess that might be something I kind of pride myself, I don't shoot. You know, everybody say, Why didn't you shoot? Well, if I don't feel like I got a good clean kill, I don't shoot. So yeah, I've I can say I've I've shot empty at a bird come right out from under my feet and shouldn't be hit with a slang shot, but by golly, you you know. Yeah, still miss. Well, just everybody miss. If you haven't missed, like oh you haven't hunted very long, you know, just whatever it was. I didn't focus. You know, I tell people to try to get started on bird hunting. If you look at take time to look at that bird's eye and actually look him in the eye, you're about sure shoot that bird because you settled down enough to focus that way. My dad was one of the best shots I ever seen in my life. He had such quick flu reflexes, and of course we hunted for for the mate so much that he could kill five birds on a cover rise, and you get fifteen, twenty birds coming up at one time, and you can say you shoot five times and knock five birds down, I'll take my hat off to you because that's almost impossible to do. But he would do it a couple times every season. And killing three, that was pretty off, and you know, just they all come up bang, bang, bang, and there'd be three birds laying, and he could tell you where these roosters are hits. And that's just practice, practice, practice. All that was. He was that good.
SPEAKER_04I I debate this with people. My nephew started trap shooting. When you're on a bird, what are you looking at on the gun? I've never used a bead in my life. That's what I told him. He said, Yeah. I'm like, are you missing these ones that are going left or right?
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_04He's like, Yeah. What are you looking at? He's like, I'm looking at the bead.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_04I told him there's a good video on it. So if you put your hand down like this and put your gun on it, always focus on the bird and you'll be able to kind of just see in the peripheral where your gun's going.
SPEAKER_01It's the the hand-eye coordination. That's why slingshots, if you ever want to get a kid started right, you get them a slingshot and let them shoot at moving targets. And you'll develop because you can't really aim with a slingshot. You've got to get the hand-eye coordination down. So that's why I say when I got started early with that, it was just amazing how good a shot I've been in my life. Now shoot clays very seldom. I ever shoot clay birds, do it for fun somebody or something. But as far as hunting birds, you better ask anybody, they'll tell you I have a real high average. Doves, we have dove fields out here, and doves are really challenging bird to shoot. So yeah, that's that's one of the recognizable shooting. I'll I'll kill a lot of doves and not miss many.
SPEAKER_04I used to miss a lot of birds going left and right, and I'm like getting kind of embarrassed about it. So what do you do? You look at YouTube and uh God, I can't think what the guy's name is. You probably know him. Let me look it up. But he had one video he said, stop looking down the the barrel. And ever since I watched that that video, I hardly ever miss anymore.
SPEAKER_01Friend of mine was a man that built duck calls, one of the most famous duck call builders named Fred Zink. And he still has zinc calls, you may have heard of them for ducks and turkeys. And old Fred was was a best shot I guess ever seen for shooting ducks and geese. And he would explain that you gotta time at how fast that bird's going compared to how far lead you have to have. And then he explained to me, it made a ton of sense to me, that you have a string of shots. So it isn't like one blanket of a string wall shot. The string of shot might be ten foot long time it finally gets to that duck. So you you've got to let the bird fly into that string of shot. So that made a lot of sense to me when he explained it that way to me. So that that helped me shooting them kind of birds.
SPEAKER_04The guy that I saw the video's name is Gil Ash. I don't know who it is. He does a lot of coaching on trap shooting.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Like I say, I I don't trap shoot very seldom, just go out and have s weekend fun of somebody or sporting clays or something. That's pretty fun, but yeah, I just my shoulder can't take it no more. I've shot so much in my life, my shoulder can't take it like it used to, so I don't shoot twenty-five rounds at a time. Uh I just uh shoot when I have to and want to.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, any other embarrassing stories for our listeners.
SPEAKER_01Uh we all came up on the end of a hunt one day and we was all standing around there, yeah, yeah, yeah, what we're gonna do next, you know, and all that. And I looked over and my dog's on point right beside us. I mean, out in the open, right? No no cover at all. We're in the middle of a bean field that had been picked. Somebody said, What's that dog doing? I said, Well, he must be pointing a mouse, you know. But we was all standing there, we was all good shots. My dad was there, another guy named Moon Mullins, he was a good shot. We was all good shots. And I said, Well, I don't know. He must be pointing a mouse, you know, out in the middle of that open field. I made about two more steps, and there must be a 20 quail came up at the same time. Really? Yeah. So they I mean, right between us. It was not three feet from us. He caught us all off guard enough. I shot empty, my dad shot three times, and Paul, he shot three times, never touched a feather. Never touched a feather. Yeah. We just sit there and looked at I shot empty. I just kept shooting at this one bird thinking, he's gotta come down, he's gonna come down. Never touched them. Yeah. Yeah, so that was one. That was a good one. Yeah, we got caught off guard because it was just bare ground, and them birds was colored just enough where you just glance and you didn't see them, of course, you know. But the old dog had them. She knew it was there.
SPEAKER_04I've done that before where you're wrapping up a hunt and the dog just wants to wander in the ditch and they're acting birdie, but you think they're just trying to hunt, and like there's no way there's a bird in there, so you keep walking, and sure enough, yeah, you know, the dog's 50 yards behind you and all of a sudden gets a bird up. You gotta trust your dogs.
SPEAKER_01That's exactly right. My dog goes on point.
SPEAKER_04They usually, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Especially if you're gonna be able to do that.
SPEAKER_04You're not assuming they get a mouse anymore.
SPEAKER_01No, well, you know, that's happened too. But yeah, once they get experience enough, they understand. Uh, they point rabbits at times and stuff like that. Yeah, it's like I say, I love dogs. That's that's the biggest thing that's happened in my life is getting to go behind good squirrel dogs. Good squirrel dogs just last for young kids to go through the woods because it they tree it, and and you can take a kid up there and with little noise and get him rest against a tree with a rifle and for 410 or whatever, you know. And a good squirrel dog's just a blast because it's never ended. It's just real interesting. It keeps the kids active because of uh, you know, fast action and all that. So yeah, if you ever get a chance to do that, that's a lot of fun.
SPEAKER_04Good way to get them to get them started.
SPEAKER_01Oh yeah. You don't, you know, sitting in a blind, they're gonna get bored pretty quick. You go with the dog, you're always moving, you see game, you know, you don't always get a shot, but you get your shots. Especially squirrel hunting. There's a lot of squirrels here. There are in Iowa too. I used to take my dog out there when I take my bird dogs, and we go in the morning with that squirrel dog, and man, we have fun. A lot of squirrels. Yeah. Yeah, and of course they get running through the trees and trying to hit them with a rifle running through the trees. That's that's then you get tested how good a shot you are, you know.
SPEAKER_04So it's it's a lot of fun. Probably don't have to worry about squirrels taking down dogs either.
SPEAKER_01No, no. They they usually don't do too much. Them dogs, they grab it and shake it like a rag and it's over, you know. One of the best hunts I had for about seven or eight years, my buddy had mules, and the mules could jump fences. So they were jumping mules, they call it. So he had the four thousand acres over there where which was a big lot, you know, a big big area back then even. So he had all that area to hunt with the mules and squirrel dogs. He had the mules so well trained that you could stand on the saddle, shoot a shotgun off of them, and they never flinch. The dog would kill the squirrel right off the the mule. The mule would kneel down on his knee, and and the dog would retrieve the squirrel to the mule, and the mule wasn't even scared of the dog, and just hand it right to you in hand, never get off the saddle. Now that that was awesome. And go to the fences and get off that mule, jump that fence, and of course we take lunch and a pack of you know cooler with us and make an all-day ride out of it.
SPEAKER_00I was coming back from Kansas. Uh, I had a good buddy of mine that's been turkey hunting for a while. He was like, Oh, you know, I s posted something or whatever, and it was like, Oh, I've been turkey hunting, you know, I think at that point it was like 19 years. He's like, Oh yeah, how many times did he miss? And I was like, Miss Like None? Like, what are you talking about? Yeah. I was like, No way. You know, he's like, Oh, you're due. Everyone, every real turkey hunter is missed. Like, you know, it's coming. Don't show it. I'm like, oh whatever, dude. Like, I know how to shoot my shotgun. I'm super confident with my shotgun, like no way. I had just shot my Kansas bird and was driving back into Missouri to get my second Missouri tank. Oh man. It got me good. I was pulling into one of these properties that I have permission on. One of my buddies in this Tom was just beautiful, straight on the edge, go out to the back, sneak in on a or sneaking over this hill, and he was uh way closer than we thought he was. Um, basically in our laps. So, you know, like full panic as fast as possible. You know, you'd not expecting the bird to be that close, and then they're like literally on top of you. Um didn't have my head all the way down to my gun. Missed. The bird the Tom just stood there. Uh the week before I was hunting out here and we have a little side by side we take the gravel runs back and forth to the farm. So the panelli was shot. Um showed up to shoot it again, you know, because it didn't run away for whatever reason the first time it's uh gun jammed. I'm chasing this live turkey, you know, with with a jammed gun trying to unclean it. What the heck are you doing? I guess uh slider fight, I was just gonna chase this live turkey and I don't know what the heck I was gonna do with it. But never too good not to miss. Uh lesson learned. I got my turkey missing.
SPEAKER_04Well the real question is, did the guy that tell you that hear the story?
SPEAKER_00Yes, yes, and he has uh you know, I called him. I was like, you know, you got me. You chased me, actually.
SPEAKER_04I would have been totally fine, but we ended up going out the next day and I made my redemption, so it worked out, but damn Benelli riding around the side by side, the barrel nut was loose. Not my fault.
SPEAKER_00It's just a little little mess up, you know? It happens. It happens. Yeah. There's there's so many good embarrassing stories.
SPEAKER_04That's not that embarrassing. Everybody misses.
SPEAKER_00Oh gosh. Hunting my dad is a total tweet sometimes, especially when it's just us together. Um you know, being younger, gosh, there's so many I could think of. Uh I was so small when I first started going out with my dad, it was always us, and I had to like lift all the gates, you know, because I couldn't reach the pedals, so I could not be the driver. And I was so small enough, I'd like take them up like this and like wobble while I got in this tendency of locking myself on the wrong side of the gate. Super embarrassing. Yeah. I grew out of it once I got tall enough to, you know, not have to waddle to carry the gates. Um I remember one of the times we were in there, my dad rolled down the passenger window to like be a smart ass. I'm like, hey, remember what side of the gate you're on, ha ha and as soon as I got on the truck, like his window was still up. He went to like spit like a woogie and spit straight on his window that was rolled up. Oh my gosh, it was the funniest thing. It was like, oh, you just totally pay back on yourself. That's karma right there.
SPEAKER_04That sounds like some as the older I get, the more I realize that's probably something it's more likely to happen to me the older I get.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we're just not quite paying attention to everything you're doing. But there's been a lot of I think there was one time that we were hunting the lease and me and my dad were by ourselves and we hadn't seen nothing all day and we met together on one of the gravel roads going up to the farmhouse and there was you know, some deer up on the edge of the field and we're bow hunting, so there's nothing we could do when my dad was like, Oh, we could sneak up on him. Like it's like starting like the sun's done, we haven't seen nothing all day. Like, we're trying to fill bow tags and get like meat in the freezer, so he's goes first. I don't know how old I was at this time. I was probably I might have been like sixteen, seventeen. Obviously, smaller than my dad, but he's like dead over. He's got like his backpack, and I got like my bow in between us, and we're like, he's like counting off the steps. He's like left foot, right foot, like a cow. You know, like we're all like dead over, like crawling. We made it pretty close to him, but not close enough for you know bow range.
SPEAKER_04You guys were together trying to look like a cow.
SPEAKER_00Yes. It kind of works. It's amazing. You know, if it's just dark enough and they can't really see a figure, if you get kind of close to something they're familiar with, it doesn't really bother 'em. But it was uh amazing. I remember like, what the heck are we doing? Like, this is the most foolish stuff. Because he's had me do a lot of interesting foolish stuff just for his um own humor. I didn't realize so afterwards. I'm like, jerk.
SPEAKER_04Like go in and ask for blinker fluid that kind of stuff.
SPEAKER_00No, not not even that simple. Like oh gosh, I think I was like twelve maybe. I'm at it. I'm at it eleven. We were turkey hunting. And you know, it's like seven a.m. kind of like far shot. I got like one pellet in the bird, so like the town was just running in circles. And I was like, what the heck do I do? And he's I was like, Can I shoot it again? He was like, No. I was like, What?
SPEAKER_04Go tackle it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, he's like, go chase it. And I was like, silly. He's like, No, I'm serious, like you better go out there and get it. Like, this bird is running in circles. I'm out there, running in circles like 15 minutes, you just watch it. He's like, Alright, you can shoot it. I'm like, seriously, man. You just want me to go do that for fun. Like, you know I'm not gonna catch that bird. Like trying to juke out the bird.
SPEAKER_04I don't know why little ra rascals popped into my head when you told me that story. Uh do they chase something, little rascals? But that's instantly what I thought of.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I don't know. It was it was uh an adventure, that's for sure.
SPEAKER_04Too bad cameras weren't a big thing back then, like they are now where you get all this stuff on camera.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I think um we were trying to find them the other day. We have all of my like first hunts on like VHS, and we've been like trying to like find a company that isn't like I don't know, someone we trust versus just sending a VHS and to get some of that stuff back because I think it'd be cool to see how my very first hunts on film.
SPEAKER_04Well, if you do that and you get digital copy copies, there's these AI companies. I played around with it, I couldn't figure it out where you could uh enhance the resolution of videos through AI. Because I tried doing it for these clips because you can't control video quality of our guest, and it it worked. Like the images is pretty impressive how much you can improve resolution on images, but I couldn't figure out the video. There's always people you could hire overseas to do it once you get the digital copy for like 20 bucks.
SPEAKER_06Nope. We were driving an hour down there. My dad would wake up at three, drive an hour down there, we'd climb the tree stand, we'd sit in the cold, we'd climb back down and go home, and every day it'd say, You want to go again? Yeah, I want to go again. Your dad's probably no. Please say no. I can say that without a doubt, I I will never be able to thank my dad enough for for the way he I mean, he didn't know what he was doing, and it was cold and miserable, and he he worked in a manual labor job his whole life, so he's outside in the cold enough already. Last thing he'd probably want to do was spend his weekend driving an hour with a little kid to sit in a tree stand where I've got a sleeping bag and everything else to help keep me warm. And then the first time we actually see a deer, I'm sound asleep, and they're underneath our ladder, they're at five yards from the ladder. And he finally woke me up. I look down, I see him, and I screamed at the top of my lungs, let's blast them, Dad. And they threw their head up and took off. He used he loves telling people that story. It used to drive me nuts when I was a little kid because it embarrassed me. But that's the first time I ever saw a deer in the woods. So that one will never be beat. There's been times where uh New Year's Day this past year, we had a we had a killer hunt. I mean, we all kind of agreed we're just not gonna party tonight. We we had a great feed the next morning. We're like, we're just gonna go out, we're gonna just hammer the keys. Five of us went out, we get there, first big group comes in, they do it perfect. They're at like six yards, and I call the shot, I pull up, and my gun's not loaded. And that happens to every waterfowl hunter a lot, where things are perfect and you pull the gun and you pull the trigger and it goes, you know, click. Um, so everybody's had the ones where they've completely just airballed the group or just fumbled, fumbled and not had their gun loaded, whatever. Uh embarrassing waterfowl stories. I mean, there was me on the side of the road when I was swimming out in my underwear to pick up the goose. It was kind of a one of the buddies took a picture of me coming out of the water holding the goose in my underwear, and that ended up all over the place at work. So that was a good one. Really? Uh but I can't think off the top of my head that I've had too many crazy embarrassing waterfowl stories. Um, like I said, I mean, I've I've had the groups where I've just completely whiffed on something that was right in our face. We were picking up decoys this past winter, and I needed one more bird to mine, like I need to kill one more bird, and we had a deco a duck just come right over top at you know, 15 yards, and I just went 0 for three on her. And it was it was a hen. I don't discriminate shooting hens, and I I whiffed completely. Um, but I don't I mean, embarrassment-wise, I've I don't waterfowl. I haven't had too many embarrassing ones. Knock on wood now. I'm sure I'm gonna have them this year, especially if I head to Texas and uh and run hunts down there, I'll end up embarrassing myself in front of some some customers or something, and that'll be great.
SPEAKER_04You know, really the way you're talking, you got some embarrassing stories now related to waterfowl hunting that are on the tip of your tongue.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, there's some deer hunts that that I've I've done more than my share of embarrassing myself on. Bring it on. Uh one of them, so for the longest time, me nor my dad could shoot a buck. It was just dose. We just hammered the doze, but could never get our hands on a buck. And first time uh buck ran out in the field in front of us. It is like a hundred yards, not anything crazy. I was eight or nine and I shot, and it just stood there looking at me, and I shot again, and it stood there looking at me, and I shot again, and I shot again, and I shot again, and it just was not phased. I went 0 for 5 for it. Um, then he finally took off. My dad threw one at him while he was running and whiff. Um, so that was that was pretty bad to go 0 for 5 on a deer broadside at 100 yards, but I credit that I was I was a little kid. Then the first puck I did shoot. Um I really thought I did the exact same thing. It was in the middle of the field, I shot it, and it started like jogging across the field, and I shot again and again and again and again. Um my gun holds five, and I my motto was to throw at them until I ran out of bullets. I did hit that one four out of the five times, it just never showed it. Um it was a deer that pushed almost 300 pounds on the hoof, so it was eating them pretty good, but it embarrassment-wise, those would be two of my worst. I did uh this was pretty bad, but I I walked in, we were archery hunting, I walked into my stand alone for the first time. I had a set of eyes dart across in front of me. And I didn't like it, I didn't know what it was. I kept walking, I had another set of eyes dart across in front of me. I think I was about to turn 15 when it happened, or I was fifteen, and I didn't like the eyes. I was alone and I was like, no, I'm fine, I'm gonna I'm gonna keep it together because if I gotta call my dad here, I'm never hearing the end of it. I kept walking, and all of a sudden I heard a coyote start yapping that wasn't real far away. And at that point, I I mean, damn near dropped my bow and took off running through the woods. And I called my dad out of breath. I was like, There's there's coyotes, there's and he just started laughing. He's like, dude, you're up a tree now. I was like, Yeah, I mean it's my trees. And he's he just started dogging on me then. He's like, You got scared because you saw a set of eyes that were probably a raccoon or a bunny rabbit. But because you heard a coyote in the distance, you swore. He says, I swore up and down I was being tracked by the coyotes. I don't remember the conversation. I remember my heart rate being up pretty high, being scared. Um, I did shoot a coyote with my bow that day, so I justify that like they really were tracking me. Um but my by far my most embarrassing story comes all the way back to that first deer I ever saw.
SPEAKER_04I don't know if you listen to any other episodes, but I think as my first episode, we were probably a little bit older, but it was cold and rainy, and we were on stand and deer were getting pushed to us, and me and my brother fell asleep on each side of a field driveway, and the deer ran right through us while we were sleeping.
SPEAKER_06That's yeah, that'd be bad, especially if anybody found out.
SPEAKER_04Like I said, that's how we found out because people are in vehicles watching the deer. They're like, why aren't they shooting?
SPEAKER_06Oh, so they Oh yeah. Yeah, that'd be that'd be a hard, hard one to swallow too, because you're gonna hear about it. Still hear about it 20 years later. Oh, that's I still get that. Hey Chase, so you you want to blast them?
SPEAKER_04Sure do.
unknownSure.
SPEAKER_04That's how you know you've been watching a lot of hunting shows.
SPEAKER_06You know, maybe that was it, and it was just excitement and everything else, but it uh yeah, that one that one will haunt me till the day I die, no doubt. Well, it's better than no stories. Yeah. Most of mine though, waterfowl related, most of them are just bad misses, and it's kind of hard to tell a story. But one, it's usually like on a better hunt, and you're kind of picking who's gonna shoot first, and you just bird comes in and does it perfectly and you completely whiff it, and one of your buddies the worst part about it is one of your buddies will pick it up and they'll come up behind you and smoke it, and then she should be like, I gotta pick up your slack for you, don't I? So there's there's those that you get your jabs in and you're gonna hear about for a long time that that are your kind of your buddy one upping you, but most of them haven't been too embarrassing, just just big misses, and there ain't a waterfowler alive that hasn't missed a decoying bird.
SPEAKER_04Same way with pheasants, man. You'll a bird will get up and you're all trying to hit it, and your buddy will miss it, and you take it down, you give them crap.
SPEAKER_06Yep. And then the next bird you do it too, and it's it's all just part of the game. It's why we all laugh about it, it's why we all got stories to tell, and why we all come back and do it again.
SPEAKER_04There you go, man. I'm sure we both have plenty more embarrassing stories coming in the pipeline.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, I'm sure. I I get you on a goose hunt and we'll we'll find something to something something will happen, I'm sure, that'll give you a little embarrassment, but I don't miss it. I don't miss, bro. That's keep saying, I hope you don't, but the first time you do, somebody's gonna hit you. Oh, I miss. I miss.
SPEAKER_05I have a tree stand. Actually, the tree stand that I killed my very first deer in. It's not the same stand, because that wouldn't be unsafe, but the same tree or area. I call that area cold sore. Cold sore? That's the stand, it's called cold sore. Cool stand. So it was 2010. I only worked for a co-op one year right out of college, and then I went to Pioneer, and I remember I was in my orange polo. I don't know why I remember it, but it had you know the co-op name on it. I threw my dream season scent blocker. Like this was like a last-minute deal, and I'm like, I got my scent blocker stuff. I know I didn't shower in or any of that. Just overall pump. I'm just I throw it on. That's the stand I go to if it's like really cold and windy because it's down in this bowl, and I know the right wind. I can get something killed, probably not a big one, but maybe I'll see something come through. I get there like in the middle of the day. I didn't have anything going on that afternoon. I'm like, I'm gonna run out there and just see. It's probably like middle of October. It wasn't quite red. And my dad and grandpa on the other side of this creek, I think it's probably a quarter mile away, but the wind's blowing. I could hear them talking about a tile project that were getting ready to fix, and all of a sudden I just hear this rustling through the woods, like they bumped something out towards me. And I just got in the tree stand. I hadn't got my bag set up yet or nothing. I hear this rustling. I didn't have a bow holder in that tree, and I grabbed my hoit bow. I like to use uh fixed broadheads and I grabbed it, and it's the first time ever hunting in that tree where I hung that bow holder or whatever I had on a stick, and I grabbed it and I pulled it, and that arrow caught a twig and pulled off the knock and goes boop and drops to the ground. And I had my quiver in my bag, you know, so I don't have an extra arrow right there. And I saw it hit the ground and I look up and 10 yards, I'm looking at 170-inch perfect 10. If you could draw 170-inch 10-point, just even on both sides, perfect, staring at me, almost like he knew I couldn't do anything to him, and I'm just like trying to grab for another arrow. I swear it was like a minute. It's probably like 10 seconds, you know. And he just took off, like not sprinting or nothing, just bounding away. I was just shaking and so freaking pissed. I just got out of stand and walked back to my truck. I knew like that was my only chance, like he wasn't coming back. By the time I got home, like when I get stressed, I get a cold sore, herpes of the lip, whatever. I had a cold sore. I was so pissed. We've all been there. I was so pissed though. Oh my god. I can think a couple others. I think I've crapped my pants a couple times and he trusted the wrong fart.
SPEAKER_04Nobody crapped their Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Now that those would be the two big ones, I guess.
SPEAKER_04So man, every hunter's been there. I'm to the point now where when I'm up in the tree, even before strapping in, that bow's coming up, it's getting uh arrow knocked, and it's getting the release strapped on. Yep. Way more important than my safety, I know.
SPEAKER_05But it happens all the time, especially during the rut. Yeah. Be ready. After that, it was a great learning experience because that's the same thing. I was locked on then. That ain't happening again. On that point, I'm trimming all the branches around me, nothing's gonna catch my arrows, like shooting lanes, all that stuff.
SPEAKER_04I bet a similar story has been brought up three or four times by different guests. Mostly they're pulled back and a stick gets put in the cam. Yep.
SPEAKER_05What are you shooting now for a bo? Matthews. That's what I got. I upgraded 23, or maybe it was last year. I don't know why. Because I was like, I'm probably gonna go three or four times. Which one do you have? It has the best one a year or two ago. V3, V3A. Yeah. I went to Shields and I normally don't buy my stuff from Shields. I usually like to go to Sportsman's or Jack's, which is out of business now. And I'm not like I buy that many bows, but I was just like, I'm gonna get a nice bow because I do like to go shoot, just target shoot. And the guy just sold me on it. Like it's a great salesman. Great sales pitch. I wasn't even planning on buying a bow that day. I had a thousand dollars worth of gift cards or whatever that I'd saved up from so many years. I'm like, I need to go use these. Still couldn't buy the whole bow with it. My god, they're expensive. Think of what you can buy for a gun with what it costs to buy a bow. But I also think about back in the day we were buying $300 to $500 bows, and they shot on an arc and whatever, and now I get this thing, and that thing's shooting flat to 40-50 yards. So fast. $1,300 for a bare bow. Oh, and you gotta get the nice follow away knock and the sight and all that. Yeah, I spent some dang money there. You got a pretty nice muzzle order too. Yeah, I got a Remington Ultimate. I got that the first year it came out, so I've had that for a while. I'm on my second one. Are you? I bet I don't have 20 shots. Well, I probably too target I got. The first one I converted to smokeless and it blew up in my hand. Oh. I remember you saying something about that. So blowing up, like explain that was like the barrel.
SPEAKER_04So I imagine I got done hunting the year before, driving two hours home. I'll clean it out the next day. And it just sat there and never got around to cleaning it out, put it away, got ready to sight it in, make sure it's still on the next year. Yeah. And with a smokeless, there's no sabot, so the bolts go in super easy. Yeah. So I never marked my ramrod. Oh. And Austin Tig was there, and this is how bad it was. I'm sitting on the lead sled, and you have to have a funnel to put your powder in. It's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. He pulls the funnel out of the muzzle brake, and it still blows up because it had it double loaded. Whoops. Goes back to I hadn't seen him in a while. You get that camaraderie, you lose focus. Yeah. Yeah. Safety. It'll never happen again, I guarantee it. Yeah. You're just lucky no one got hurt.
SPEAKER_05Look at my thumbnail.
SPEAKER_04Oh yeah, a little bit. And this bone got fractured, and the surgeon was so focused on this, he missed it. So this is in constant pain.
SPEAKER_07Really?
SPEAKER_04Yikes. And by the time I pointed it out, it was too late, it couldn't do anything about it. I can't grab a dumbbell or anything without being in constant pain. Man. Cortisone shots every six weeks. This one is just fine. Wow.
SPEAKER_05That sucks. But anyways. I had a gun blow up too, but it wasn't me that shot it. Trey was going out hunting, wanted me to go. I think I had a test that day in college. They were going out Sailor Bill to go duck hunting. And my gun was already in the boat or truck, whatever he was taking, because he was using some of our stuff. And he's like, hey, could I just use your gun? I'm like, yeah, it's fine, whatever. I hate borrowing things and I hate letting people take things. They could be the most safe person or whatever, but something always goes bad. And whatever ammo he was using, he shot and it didn't go boom. It went like the primer basically shot, you know, ignited a partial ignition of the powder enough to shoot the wad, but it gets stuck down the barrel, and then probably racked it or did something and shot again and just completely disintegrated the barrel. No one got hurt. It's on the wall in Zach's garage. The worst part was that one of my favorite shotgun as a Franky Franchie, however you say it, 912 Vario Max shot three and a half inch. This recent? No, this was back in college age, 2007-8, somewhere in there. The worst part was they didn't make that barrel anymore. So he had to get me a short, it was a 26-inch 26-28-inch barrel. He had to buy me a 22-inch barrel that wasn't camo. So then I had to have the whole gun dipped and all that. He paid for it all. But like I still got the gun. I love that gun, but it never was the same.
SPEAKER_04I got lucky because smokeless muzzle, they had this big tungsten breach plug, just two inches of solid steel. So it blew out sideways instead of back.
SPEAKER_05If it was ultimate muzzle, those things are a big chunk of metal.
SPEAKER_04Oh, this was converted to smokeless. So it was shooting about 40% more velocity than what they come stock. It was shooting a 300-grain bullet, 3,000 feet per second. Which with the setup you buy from the factory is about 2,200 feet per second. Yeah. That's the reason I bought it.
SPEAKER_05I was like 200 yard gun, pretty easy. 300 yard gun. Should be.
SPEAKER_04You haven't craft your pants in a tree stand or anything?
SPEAKER_03Not that yet. I've had I've had to get down. Uh oh, most embarrassing. This is probably an easy one, actually. This is just stupid of me. Got done hunting, go back to my car, put my bow down, take all my gear off, drive 50 minutes home, reach to grab my bow. Shit, I don't have my bow. I left it at the fucking spot where I parked. So I had to drive 50 minutes back out there to go get my bow. Was it still there? Yeah, it was still there.
SPEAKER_04Yep. But that was the way you started the story, I thought you like put it on your hood or your trunk or something.
SPEAKER_03Thankfully, no, and thankfully I didn't run it over. It was right next to my tire. That was probably one of my worst, just my oh shit moments. Um one of my most embarrassing ones. Uh, one of my sticks came out of my tree, and I had to have a buddy come out there and climb up there and put my stick down because if I climbed down, I was gonna fall. Say that again. So I had you know how we're talking about our bow rope getting stuck and that kind of crap? Well, I was lifting my bow up, and somehow, somehow, my the string got wrapped around the stick and pulled that stick off completely. So I had like a Are you kidding me? Yeah, so I had like a gap about this big with no stick there. So I was like, I literally cannot get down. So I had to have a buddy come out there, come to my tree, and literally put that stick back on there for me so I could climb down. That would suck. Dude, it was terrible. Yeah, it was awful. I was really pissed off. At least you had a good buddy close by. Yeah, exactly.