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
V4 | The Bonehead Chronicles: A Series of Questionable Choices from the Field
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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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SPEAKER_06Well, that's what I killed was uh somebody of mine was going hunting uh around in our area and they had some deer coming this alpha alpha field and I went and bought me a I think it was an old PFE compound. I don't even know if I had it lined in right. I was hitting the target where I wanted to hit and got there, and I think I lined uh zeroed it for 30. And the buck comes out there in front of you, the old bastard rack eight, and he came out there, and I think he was about 40, 38 to 42 yards, didn't have range finders back then, just kind of guesstimated. I held it up a little bit higher than what I normally shot, and I shot kills.
SPEAKER_05But it was a day and a half later after I bought that bow.
SPEAKER_10How do you even have time to sight it in?
SPEAKER_06Uh went home after I went to Walmart and bought me tomorrow's. They probably wasn't the right length, um, because I just bought them and they looked good and they went on my bow and the broadhead didn't touch my hand. I couldn't tell you how how long they was, but didn't know my draw length or nothing. I didn't know we just went hunting. And so, you know, I we used to be sponsored by Expedition Bows and they'd send us bows and all this stuff, and I was like, man, there's a lot more to this bow hunting than than I've ever done in my life. I always went to Walmart and bought me three or four arrows and went hunting. Now you're tuning uh the fletchings and the knock and uh all the stuff and I'm like, man, I just went hunting. I just took a bow and went hunting. And I killed one every year at least. At the very minimum of one. But uh I didn't get into that. And then I started doing little 3D tournaments and stuff, and that got really complicated. I couldn't hardly do that. And they're trying to concentrate on the rain area on the 3D target, and these guys are smoking me, but my backyard I could hit whatever I wanted to hit.
SPEAKER_05When I was younger, it really wasn't nothing embarrassing.
SPEAKER_06Um But a couple years ago I was when a camera comes involved and recording hunt, uh it's hard to get away from stuff. I called this gobbler in from a long ways off. And I love I absolutely love turkey in um and calling turkeys in and watching them dance around decoys and giving them the time and this gobbler'd come in and 15 yards and and I I thought I smoked him and he started running and I shot again and then he landed in some brush. So my camera's still rolling out there, and I get out of the blind and I walk over there, and this turkey's still alive in the brush, somehow. And so I had to I started walking back to my blind to get my gun because I didn't take my gun with me because I thought this bird was dead. So here I am coming back to the blind to get my gun, and I walk by the decoys, and you can see I want to just kick the decoys head off because I'm frustrated. And they all everybody's watched the raw film and seen it, and they knew what I was wanting to do. And so I get the gun, you see me stomp back over there, and I shoot this turkey and uh for the third time. Um so now I'm being made fun of with a guy that 15 yards I had to shoot 33 times. And then I had a I had a broadhead problem. I I didn't know what the problem was. I was missed I missed so many deer that uh three years ago. Um anywhere from twenty to well, thirty to forty, forty-five, and that was with a crossbow, mind you. Uh I'm missing these deer. Um we slowed the video down finally and noticed that about twenty-eight yards I had left with this mechanical broadhead. And uh I switched broadhead and that was dead on. But I I bet I'd miss 15 deer, and I mean some really, really good bucks.
SPEAKER_05Um 150, 150 class numerous times, and I'm being made fun of and when you get seven guys on a hunting team, they they love to harass you.
SPEAKER_10That's not very fun.
SPEAKER_06And then, you know, just just the little stuff we get to see with the other guys even funny moments that we you know, uh I had one guy that he was sitting on his leg turkey hunting, and he went to get up on his knee to shoot or stand up, and he had the we called it the stanky leg. It it wasn't operating until he would fell down and trying to shoot this turkey, and that's part of the the filming world is that it it it creates memories memories and you get to see all the bloopers and uh you know, just I don't have you ever used the POV for taxi cam and um uh so I I I I have another camera on I had one on me in the blind. We used to use those and they quit making them, but uh I'm sitting there and you see me with this turkey coming in on my big camera and I'm pushing this button and it's blinking, I'm thinking it's on pause. So I hit it and it goes solid. Well that is actually paused when it's solid. So when it was blinking, it will only it only blinked for like two minutes and then it shut off. And I'm getting really frustrated and wanting to throw this thing. And everybody's laughing at me watching the film because I would think I'm turning it on, but I was really pausing it. And it was just backwards to me.
SPEAKER_03That would be pretty funny to kind of see your face.
SPEAKER_06Yeah. They get to catch up capture all the funny funny deals or the misses and just just mistakes.
SPEAKER_00Anytime that you kill or you harvest good deer, cause secondly, you'll get that jacket. Now, I don't I'm not gonna say I didn't ever live up to that jacket, but for somebody to come and I I've heard I've had people tell me stories that I've done that I really didn't do that they think they're talking about somebody else and never know they're actually talking to the person they're talking about, and start telling me stories about harvesting all these these uh big deer and oh he wouldn't shot them, you know, spotlighting at night. I shot a couple of deer when I was 15, 16 years old off the car headlights. But I mean, as a country boo ho boy, who didn't, you know. But um just harvesting these deer, you know, I mean, miss because I had a job that I could I could actually hunt all year long. So whenever once boat season started and it came to a rest and muslot started, I would pick and choose my days on what I wanted to hunt, and then when it got close to the rut, I would I would all but quit work. I would use my vacation time and use it all the way around to right before the deer's antlers fell off. And uh you take somebody like that that actually dissects them and puts his time in, he he almost cannot help but harvest good deer. Um piss people off and they got stories to tell in our own ourselves.
SPEAKER_02So for our listeners, if we're a little choppy here, we had some phone issues, we're back at the grind now, so we're back into it. I think when we left off, you were talking about, or I was asking you about your milk, because I'm thirsty, your elk and moose, that's what it was, combining moose and elk for milk. So how'd you get set up on those hunts?
SPEAKER_00Well, I um doing the the alligator lottery hunts now or moose hunting down here, um I I've mounted several different alligator heads. And um I wanted a moose antler, and uh tracked a guy down and he was trying to sell some antlers out of Alaska. And down here, alligator heads are like um, I wouldn't say a dime a dozen, but they're pretty common. We're out of Louisiana or Florida, they're not so common, and they're I mean, they you they're you can kind of intrigue somebody with them. So I started irritating him trying to get a uh a moose antler. I wanted to trade him an alligator head for a moose antler. Well, he didn't want he didn't want an alligator head for a moose antler, he wanted a bottle of whiskey. So I became his friend with a bottle of whiskey, and we just started being friends. You know, there again, me being kind to somebody. Um he was intrigued by a bottle of liquor, but I was intrigued by his moose antlers. And being kind to him, he said he had never really been able to talk with anybody in a lower 48. You know, he's wanted to say they was different people. And I I showed him that we're no different than him. We're we're actually of the same and there's kind people everywhere. You know, you just some people have a different vision of other people until they get to know them and actually kind of get to talking with them. So I find out that I can go up there and do a DIY hunt for moose. And um he gives me the ins or outs. I go up and talk with him, go do some ride around in a boat, and I I got up there on a Sunday and uh I went and got all my stuff from Walmart and I took off and went camping. And I went up the very first time with myself by myself and just went up and went camping. And I now so about three days into this camping trip, I shoot a 2,000-pound animal. Now what the crap am I gonna do with it? So I ended up getting back down to the village and I was about 70 miles away from the village. And uh I get to talking to him and uh him and a couple of guys come up with me and help me pack him out. We had to pack him all the way back out the boat, and I was about 400 yards away from the boat, which is a big mistake. You don't you don't want to shoot one that far away from the boat.
SPEAKER_02Have you had any bad experiences in terms of running innocent predators out there?
SPEAKER_00Uh no, not not necessarily. Not nothing you couldn't ward off. But I've had had bad bad experiences running into natives. Um Tell me more. Uh they can they can show their butt. They don't like white people. Um they can what? They can show their butt. They can really show out. They don't like white people.
SPEAKER_02Um in Alaska, huh?
SPEAKER_00If you think it's a uh it's, you know, uh kind of black and white got problems down here, you ain't never seen natives against a white person because, you know, in the 50s, 40s, and 50s of that era, they claimed that Russians come over and they um done horrible things to their ancestors. Uh and you'll that's where you'll see the mixed breeds, you'll you'll see uh half native, half-whites up there. And no matter if you're from the United States, you're still you're white, and the Russians were white, so you still get that same bad jacket. And they're bad drunks, and you don't want to cross one of them paths when they're drunk. And and I tell you, they're drunk. Whenever they get a bottle, they're gonna, it don't matter if it's a half gallon of vodka, they're gonna drink it right there on the spot, every bit of it, till it's gone.
SPEAKER_02All or nothing, full throttle, as soon as they're gonna go.
SPEAKER_00One beer it turns into twelve. Well, they don't even, they wouldn't even I mean, they would probably they would drink a beer because it had alcohol in it, but they would just soon uh turn rubbing alcohol up and drink it before they'd drink a beer. There you go again, talking, talking to uh residents. I met an old man up there and uh ran into him several times in the mornings at store, you know, the only little store in that area. And um he started, I started, you know, picking for information, you know, and he he told me, he said, there's a state park down there. He said, and you want to go and get down and behind that state park? He said, Them elk, they they take refuge on that state park, and then they come back off of that state park at night and they'll come up. And they'll come up in them flats. And so I went down one evening after me and him, he he took me, rode me down a road and showed me where to go in and try to get around behind it between the state road and the uh the state park there. And so I went in and I'm mapping myself on my on my map, and this was before Hun X and everything had come out and got big. So I'm I'm going in and I'm sitting on this stump, and uh I've seen a few animals that I really didn't know what was. Uh and it was porcupines, stuff like that. And um I was sitting there eating oatmeal pie and looking on my map, had a coke between my legs and a banana half eaten on my stump I'm sitting on. And I look up and it's a cow stepping up out of this gorge. And she come up, another one come up, another one come up, and uh I harvested him right there. But the problem was whenever I pulled a trigger on it, he fell back down into that gorge. So um other side of the gorge was uh was the state park. So it was still in a neutral zone, but it was so treacherous, you know, you couldn't get down in there. Well, I went back, found the old man, talked to him, and he got his grandsons to come in there and help me pack it out. Is this one year of El Continent?
SPEAKER_03That's right.
SPEAKER_00One year, one week. Ever going to go back? I probably would. I just moved on to something else. That was another one of them the wife asks, what do you want to do now? You know, you went and killed a that bull was uh five by six, three eighteen. He was he was a really good bull. How big was he? Uh 318 inch. That's a pretty good one, man. He was a great one, especially for a first timer. And I tell you I I I give I give the uh the props to the old man because I still stay in contact with him.
SPEAKER_02But well, let's just start wrapping this up. So Roy Roy's having some issues with his phone. So before we lose you again, fill us in on a couple of your most embarrassing hunting stories.
SPEAKER_00So I harvested uh harvested a really good deer, made a low shot on him, and um I tracked him, had a dog come in and track him, and uh he wasn't as he wasn't as wounded as I thought he was. And um me and him got me and him got an altercation. He ended up stabbing me in the face, gored me all up in my face and top of my head. And uh Say that again. The deer tore me up. I was gonna jump on him and cut his throat. And uh he he poked me right up underneath my eyeball, punctured my face, uh, gored me in the top of my head. He he put a whooping on me, but I got his I got his throat cut and he ran about a hundred yards after that and laid down and he he expired.
SPEAKER_02Um That's not embarrassing, man. That sounds sounds like makes you sound like a bad mother trucker.
SPEAKER_00Well, the opening morning of uh it was the open morning of uh the muzzle loader started from the bucks only to the muzzle loader, and uh a lot of your down south guys, we call them coon asses. They come up, they got white rubber boots on, and they're not gonna sit down after daylight, and they're gonna walk and they're gonna shoot and anything and everything. And I told that guy that came in and tracked him with me. He said, Well, he'll be here in the morning. I said, Yeah, no, everybody else will be too. And he told me, he said, Well, what you gonna do? I said, I'm gonna cut his throat. And that didn't go well.
SPEAKER_04We posted a video up on Facebook. It did nothing on TikTok, it did nothing on YouTube, it did nothing on Instagram. We posted a video up of my uncle getting trying to get into an eye wound suit in Missouri, and he's in the stand and he's getting trapped. Like he's trying to get this thing on, and he's getting trapped. What? An eye womb suit. Have you ever seen an eye womb suit? Is it like the full body suit? It's a full body, it's like almost like a sleeping bag, but it has arms. So imagine like a sleeping bag made love to a Snuggie. I've seen the heater body suit. So this is this is called eye wound, and they're full camo. But like I said, you you have the freedom of your arms, you can stand up in it, but the feet look like a sleeping bag, you know, it zips up and all that stuff. Well, he's trying to get in to the bottom side of his eye wound suit. And he's getting kind of trapped. He's he's not he's sitting down in a tree stand, you know, he's trying to do this minimal movement. Well, my cousin Kai, uh, who is his son, is videoing him. And this video that was absolutely of nothing. Like, I didn't even think it was that funny of, you know, whatever, but this one video hits 10, no, 18 million views on Facebook. It's been seen all the way around the world. We were getting comments from so many different countries from Vietnam to to you name it, Japan, like all kinds of comments, and I'm just like, what is important in this video that that is driving it so much? But people were getting their own kind of uh perspective, like, oh, it looked, I thought it was an alien, I thought it was a butterfly, or I I'm like sitting here like, what the heck? Like, how did you get that from that? Well, this video drives us 20,000 followers. I mean, it was one video, just so many people started climbing on, and then we turned around a year later, posted a video of uh a young boy uh who shot his first buck deer with his dad, and it got I think it got 12 million views.
SPEAKER_02So because people are hating on you for killing deer.
SPEAKER_04Well, we got a few. We got a few. Um they weren't hating on they were hating on the boy because he was crying and he was upset. I'm in the woods. I was probably 18, 19 years old. And uh forgot the teepee man.
SPEAKER_05Oh boy, here we go.
SPEAKER_04Yep, forgot the teepee. And uh I had ate a honey bun on my way to the woods that morning. And that's your kryptonite? That I guess. I I don't know. I don't know what in the world I was thinking. Um but yeah, I got out there and in the dark I grabbed the wrong kind of leaves. Yep, I had poison ivy on bad.
SPEAKER_02Oh my god. That sounds awful.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it was horrible. Yeah, it was horrible. Uh that I'm now I make sure there's TP in the bag. For sure. Always.
SPEAKER_02Man, that got probably got all the way up your undercarriage, didn't it?
SPEAKER_04Oh, dude, it was horrible. It was bad. Yeah. Yeah, that one was uh a lot of people would probably relate that to crabs. Like it was valuable. I don't know what crabs feel like, man. I don't either. But Jesus, if it's anything like that, man, it sucks, dude. Holy crap.
SPEAKER_02Man, you'd probably just sit with your back on the floor of the shower with your legs straight up, like just ice cold water, man.
SPEAKER_04Just spread eagle down there, just be like, uh. Yeah, it was horrible. Um and the part that was even more embarrassing was the fact that uh I had to get help to install uh to put in uh the Caliban lotion. So people knew about it. Just like it was a me thing, and I just could hide it. It was like, you know, someone else had to know. Um you couldn't reach all the delicate areas. No, no, not by myself. I was I mean, I could reach them, but it just no.
SPEAKER_02Man, if that was me instead of telling people, I'd grab a paint stick, lather that stuff on the end, and uh hear that.
SPEAKER_04Or a paintbrush or something. I had a little bit of help and uh yeah, yeah, it was uh so now like I said, I make sure TP's in the bag at all times. Um I will say that I also had uh uh an experience with uh what I claim to be an Indian ghost. Oh boy, let's hear it. All right. This I'm gonna tell you this one, and then I'm gonna have to go because my daughter is ready to go to bed and I have to drive home. So me and my cousin um were hunting a property that he had gotten permission on, and we're sitting at the bottom of the trees. We this was we were I don't know, I was probably 20, 21, 22 years old. Um sitting at the bottom of the tree and I started falling asleep and I heard what sounded like somebody go like right in my ear.
SPEAKER_10And I thought it was my cousin, so I wake up and I jump and I'm looking around.
SPEAKER_04Nobody there. Nobody's home. I I was like, what the heck, man? Like that was like I heard that plain of day. Well, my cousin walks over and he's just like, hey man, he goes, uh He goes, I had the weirdest thing happen to me. He goes, I was laying, he said, I I was sitting at the bottom of my tree, he said, and I fell asleep, he said, and and I heard uh you hollering for me. He said, Were you hollering for me? And I was like, No, I never said anything, dude. Like we're we're a good 600 yards apart from each other. And I was like, dude, I never hollered anything. He's like, dude, I heard you loud as clear yelling, you know, like yelling. And I was like, no, dude, I wasn't saying nothing. And he's like, Well, I came over. He's like, when we, you know, I was gonna ask you, he said, I just remembered that I heard the hollering. And I was like, Well, let me tell you about my stuff. Well time to find out where we were hunting was a Indian old Indian burial ground. Oh no kidding. We ended up stumbling upon the uh old tombstones from way back when. Uh lot of lot of and old mining too. Didn't know that as well. There was a lot of old mining and stuff there. So we just kind of taught that down in the book as one of the creepiest hunts that we've ever been on and let it roll. But I still to this day think some but some something from the from the afterlife was talking to me on that hunt.
SPEAKER_02Way too ironic, isn't it?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it was it was weird. Like when he came up and said something, I was like, okay, that changes the game. Like that maybe it wasn't just in my head, like it's something else happened.
SPEAKER_07I finally got a uh a puffy jacket for taking out West this year.
SPEAKER_02This is my puffy jacket.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, like uh I don't know, like the I guess I wouldn't call 'em like a white tail hunting, but they're I don't know. It's just a super they're not super heavy duty. They're super light and packable, which is why guys take them out west hunting. But they they compress down super, super tiny, but they're they're pretty warm just by the the sheer um puffiness or loft of it. I guess they're down filled.
SPEAKER_02I know what you're talking about. Sidka has a bunch of that stuff.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, last year when I went out there, last couple years I had a I had a uh Costco puffy jacket that was I didn't I didn't realize till I got out there and I was hunting with some buddies and uh I was asking them, I was like, have every any of you ever guys ever seen a uh a puffy jacket with a zipper on the left side? This seems pretty weird to me. And they're like, oh, that's because it's a women's jacket at Dork. Really? Here I'd been wearing a a women's XJxer large jacket for a few years and it took me a while, but what color was it? It was it was like a camel-ish color. It was like olive, olive green, and it's just like, uh, I don't know. It works. It was it's pretty nice for like 25 bucks. It did the job. Is that why you bought a new jacket? Yeah, yeah. Actually, my wife bought me one for my birthday. Maybe she thought I looked dumb out there in this women's jacket.
SPEAKER_02Felt bad for you.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, right. Not last year, the year before. This isn't really a wild adventure, but it's kind of a funny, funny story, sort of a adventure, but uh so we were camped, it was me and two other buddies, and uh we were camped pretty low in like a valley um and had trail going down the middle of this valley. And uh so there was three of us and we each had our own tents, and we were probably I don't know. You each had your own tent?
SPEAKER_02What like a little teepee or what?
SPEAKER_07Yeah, so I've got a I've got a two-man teepee. Um, and then the other guys had like um I don't know what you'd call it, like a self um like a structural tent, you know, just your standard tent basically. But uh Yeah, so we were all probably I don't know, ten feet apart or whatever, spaced in between us. And uh at night or no, in the morning, one of the other guys they said, like, holy shit, did you hear uh did you hear all the coyotes howling last night? And I'm like, what are you talking about? He's like, Yeah, there was coyotes howling, like I don't know, they f they sounded like they were like twenty feet from the tent. They were so close, how could you not hear them? And I sleep like a rock, and I've known this forever. But they're like, Oh my god, how did how did you possibly sleep through that? I I stayed up for like two hours last night listening to these coyotes, there was like a whole entire pack of coyotes howling. Sounded like they were right outside the tent. And I I was like, I clue. But he's asleep. Yeah, I wonder you'll fall asleep. I I apparently I must have been sleeping already by the time they started. But uh You sure they weren't wolves? I don't think so. They said that they were I mean, them guys coyote hunt too, so they were they were pretty sure that they were coyotes. But yeah, when I first started before I had a thermal, um, me and a couple buddies, we were going at night um just on a full moon, sitting in fence lines, you know, with a full moon on snow covered ground, and we shot a bunch of them like that, but man, that was tough. That was a lot of freezing your ass off at night, waiting for waiting for something to come out and looking into a lot of shadows, thinking you see something. And but we were using uh we were using mouth calls then, and and then we kind of got into oh no no no, we were we were using mouth calls, but there was a couple times that we had owls swoop down at us. Really? Yeah, and they would they would come right past your head when you you weren't you couldn't see them coming or anything, all of a sudden you just hear a and they go right past your head. Well, that screwed the crap out of me. Oh my god, it it terrified me. I was like, if they clamp onto your head and take your eye out or something, that'd be a pretty shit pretty shitty way to lose an eye, I guess, from an owl.
SPEAKER_02Is that kind of when you stopped hunting like that or what?
SPEAKER_07Yeah, I was like, screw this, I'm gonna get a nice caller and put it out there 50 yards or something. It probably sounds a lot better than I can call, anyways.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I guess you probably don't see them swooping at the call.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, well, not true. I've I had an owl one time come down and uh I had my call sitting on a s on top of a snowbank, and an owl came down and plowed into my call. I think I had a I had one of them like a fur tail really going on the call, and he came flying out of the gut out of the sky like a frickin' you know attack helicopter or something, and just he hit my call and plowed it underneath the snow, and then he must have figured out that it wasn't real, and he took off flying, but I had to walk out there and pull my call out of the snow because he had pounded it down into the snow and you could barely even hear it anymore. Really? Yeah. And then uh I think a couple years ago, a a buddy of mine that I hunt with, he had one of them motion fur tails going on the back of his, and an owl came and it stole his decoy off the back of his call and took off with it. Really? Yeah. I've never heard of that. And and we thought we thought for sure if we would the owl took off flying, and we could see which way he went, and we thought if we just walked in that direction, like eventually he would just drop it after he figured out that it wasn't a squirrel or rabbit or something. And we walked like a few hundred yards across this field and we couldn't ever find the thing.
SPEAKER_02Well, was it pitch black?
SPEAKER_07Yeah, it was dark out, but we had flashlights and stuff because we were like, well, I think we had finished calling after that, and we're like, well, we're gonna go look for this look for his decoy, see if that owl dropped it, and I don't know if we ever dropped it. We never found it.
SPEAKER_02I'd like to try calling in raccoons in the middle of the day with an e-caller.
SPEAKER_07When I was real little, I think it was even before before I could even hunt, but I was my dad would drop me off of the tree, and uh so he put me up in a tree stand, and then he walked to the other side of the woods, and and he told me be you know, he'd always tell me before he left, he's like, on the way out to the woods, he's like, pee, pee when we leave the truck. Once you once you leave the truck, you can't pee. And then we'd get out to the stand and he'd say, like, I'll just remember you can't get down, you gotta stay up there, don't get down until I come back to get you. And so I was like, Okay, sounds good. Well, of course, like an hour or two later, as a little kid, probably five, six something years old, I had to pee. And I was like, Oh my god, he told me I can't get down, and I sat there and like tried and tried and tried not to pee, and eventually I just pissed my pants. Really? Yeah, and I as a little kid, I I wasn't even smart enough to just be like, why don't I just pee out of the tree onto the ground? And I was like, I don't know why. I decided like, no, it's the way to do it is just pee your pants.
SPEAKER_02I can't believe he was putting you in your own tree stand at that age and walking across the timber.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, I mean it was probably I don't know, I don't think I'd put my son in a tree stand by himself at that age. No harness? No, I had a harness, yeah. He'd he would, yeah, a lot of the time I would climb up and then he'd he'd follow along behind me and make sure I was harnessed in, and then he'd climb down and head off to his tree. And and maybe, I don't know, maybe he was closer than I thought, but it seemed like it it seemed to me that he was like forever away, but he was he could have been only hundred, two hundred yards away. He could have been watching me the whole time, and I didn't even know it. Struggling, trying to make a decision to I get down. Yeah. And then I remember he he came up to the tree when he came back to get me, and I usually he would climb up the tree and help me get unharnessed or unhook me and help me climb down. And and I remember when he got there, I told him, because I peed, I remember it went right down the tree too, and I told him, I said, You don't don't climb up here. You you don't want to climb up here. I I'll get down myself, and I had to explain to him what happened. I said, I I peed my pants, and he's like, Why would you do that? I said, Well, you you told me that I couldn't get out of the tree. Well, I didn't mean not to not to get out of the tree if you had to pee. I just meant like, don't get out of the tree and go wandering around the woods by yourself, so I gotta look for you. So I guess that was probably one of them. And then uh another one was in Colorado, where my dad shot a bull, and and I was kind of the cameraman because I had shot a bull the the year before, and so he was like the first first guy to get a shot that year, so I was the cameraman, so we had the the uh you know digital camera, and uh we had heard a bull, we had heard a bugle, like I don't know, for some reason the camera got kind of passed around back and forth between us, and because we had thought that there was a bull behind us or whatever, and so if I was gonna shoot, and then he was gonna shoot, and we'd pass the camera back and forth, and then I got the camera given to me, and um, oh, so then we could see the bull coming coming down the hill towards us, and it it came down like as soon as I saw it, I hit the red button to turn the camera on, and the bull came down and walked right in front of him. He he cow called it into like 10-15 yards and got the whole thing on video, and I'm looking around the tree, and I got this whole sweet video, and the it runs a hundred yards down the hill and crashes down the hill, and he looks at me and he's like, Oh my god, that's that's awesome!
SPEAKER_01You got that whole thing on video, didn't you? And I was like, Oh yeah, I it's perfect, I got everything.
SPEAKER_07And then he's like, Well, it it kind of crashed into some brush, and we thought that it went down, but we didn't want to go pushing in there right away looking for it. He's like, Well, let's give it a while. Um, he wasn't exactly sure where he hit it. He thought it was a good shot, but he's like, Let's look at the video. Maybe you can see in the video where he hit it. I was like, Yeah, that's a good idea. Let me just replay it here. And I bring it up and I'm looking for it, like searching through the different videos on there. And I had to tell him, like, I was heartbroken. I was like, um, I think the camera must have been you must have hit the red button before you handed it to me, and then you handed the camera to me, and I hit the red button, and I stopped the recording, so I didn't get any of it. So it was like would have been the coolest video to have a over-the-shoulder elk shot right in front of you, and I missed the whole thing.
SPEAKER_02Happens to everybody that films, I'm sure.
SPEAKER_07Oh, I'm sure, yeah. I'm sure every every you know serious hunter filmer out there's probably got a a ridiculously stupid story like that where they screwed something up.
SPEAKER_02At least you got the elk.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, yeah. It ended up being, you know, it crashed in the brush and we found it like a hundred yards away. But hopefully it wasn't too bad. I could tell he was a little bit disappointed after because I I kind of talked it up.
SPEAKER_01I was like, Yeah, it's a great video.
SPEAKER_07It's like right over your shoulder and got the whole thing in there, and I got him coming in and crashing down the hill. And I just had nothing to show for it. Bummer, man. Yeah, it would have been it would have been a sweet video.
SPEAKER_09So last year, I'll I'll tell this one on me. So last year I got I just got a new farm to hunt. Um, I decided I was gonna go hang some cameras on it. The landowner just closed on it. He said, Hey, we close, you can go in there and you know get some cameras, get some stands up. And so I decided to try this new little breakfast spot we had in town, and got these little mini homemade mini donut things, and they they tasted pretty good, but man, when I got out to the timber, it was it was not good. I after hanging cameras that day, I ended up coming home with no underwear and both socks were missing out of my rubber boots. What'd they put in these donuts, man? I have no idea. I don't know if they put X Lacks in them or what the deal was, but so needless to say, I scented up my brand new farm and came home with a lot less articles of clothing. Sometimes you just gotta risk it for the biscuit man. But and and and it was worth the risk because on that farm we actually had a hundred and eighty-some inch four-year-old show up, and we ended up putting putting the farm on lockdown. Essentially, like, we're not going in there and hunting him, we're basically just gonna keep cameras up and running, keep tabs on him all season long, keep tabs on him, you know, all through up until we could find his sheds. And uh so we did. We basically stayed out of there and kept tabs on him. He's still alive. For some reason, I did not find his sheds. That's I mean, this this story's incredible. I've been doc I've I've documented it. I started documenting last year when I started getting him on camera. And uh then all the work that went into keeping him alive and trying to find his sheds and not finding his sheds, and now we're leading into this season. We've laid an eyeball on him once. He is he's act absolutely gigantic. Um he's we we ended up naming him Mel for one, because he showed up on October 29th, so that was the day Mel Johnson killed the new world record in 1965. So, and he also has a frame like Mel Johnson's typical record. So that's why we came up with the name Mel on him. And uh yeah, man, it's gonna be exciting. Like, that's that's the one deer I'm hunting this year. Like, I don't care if I hunt a single any other deer anywhere else, that's the only deer I'm really hunting.
SPEAKER_02So is this a property you picked up because you saw this buck, or you just happened to show up on your property?
SPEAKER_09He just happened to show up. Um I this farm's in a good area, but I didn't really I didn't really know, you know, know he was there or anything like that. I just know it grows some good deer in that area, and and uh I actually didn't even know he was there at first. You know, I went in and and hung those cameras and uh hung a couple sets when I was in there and immediately started getting uh big, I would say probably low 70s, uh 14-pointer on camera. He was like eight on one side, six on the other, good mass. I mean, just really, really nice deer. And a couple days, I mean, instantly when I started getting pictures of that deer, he showed up and he's daylighting and he's doing it like every day. And I'm like, okay, I want to get in there now, but I'm like, it's hot, it's down in the bottom, the winds aren't gonna be steady. Like, I don't I don't trust the swirling winds down that bottom. So a couple days later, we had a cold front coming, and uh the wind was supposed to be pretty steady out of the west at like 25 miles an hour. So I went in there after him and I should have killed him that first sit, but um he didn't quite do what he did pretty much every day. Like he would I knew where he was bedding, I knew he was slipping through the corn into this corner, and normally he would make make the scrape in the corner at the camera and then come back into the timber in this little narrow strip of timber between these two fields, and he just kind of kept just working back around in this corner, just kind of back and forth. I don't know, I it was really weird, like he never knew I was there, never smelled me or anything, but he just was checking more things out than normal, and he was rubbing on trees, and it was just really odd, just really odd behavior from what I'd been seeing him doing on the cameras. Um so I had him in bow range at like 30, 36, 37 yards for about 45 minutes, couldn't get an arrow into him just because he wouldn't turn broadside. Um but then right after that was when I started getting getting the pictures of Mel, and then that's when we put the farm on lockdown, and I mean we weren't even going in there after you know another a different 170-inch deer. We just we did not want to do anything to booger that deer off there because it's a small farm, there's a lot of pressure around, and man, he just did his thing there, and we put up more and more cameras. I think I ended up having a camera like every six or seven acres, maybe even a little less, and he just started popping up everywhere on camera and started daylighting. I mean, it was just crazy how much history we had made with this deer in two to three months. And it's almost to the part now where we know so much about him and have had so much history with him in such a short amount of time, like it's just crazy. Like it's almost it's um he's almost like a family member at this point. Like, I I've never had this much documentation with a deer in my life. So you couldn't find his sheds last year. Dude, I looked all over, so I had him on I had him on camera um all the way up until February, I don't know, six, seventh, eight, something like that. And then I had to take off for Nashville for NWTF convention. And we were supposed to get a lot of snow, and it was supposed to be really cold, and I still had a lot of good food, so I'm I wasn't worried. And we took off, and about three days later, everything's dead from the cold. We had like 10 inches of snow, and I'm I just wrote it out. I'm like, man, I'm not gonna go have dad, you know, go in there and replace batteries or anything like that. We know he's hanging out here. We're gonna find him down in there somewhere. And the majority of this farm is corn, there's not a lot of timber on it, and uh I have no idea where he dropped them. He disappeared after that. Basically, that cold snap was it, and we found pretty much every other deer that we had on camera in there. We found the sheds of them, never found his. I covered 90% of the corn, I would say. I mean, it was it was where we were on foot walking down rows. We were had the ranger going down rows. I mean, it it was to the point where I got a mapping app on my phone, like you know, uh a tracker application map on my phone that I could use as GPS and I could actually set the width of the ranger and stuff like that. So I knew I if I was overlapping or missing spots out in the corn. And uh, we never found a man.
SPEAKER_03I don't know what happened to him. That's when you think about it, it's like looking for a damn needle in the haystack.
SPEAKER_09It is, especially when you gotta see a corn.
SPEAKER_02They could have been that they could have dropped them right when they're crossing a river, it could be up in a cedar tree somewhere. I mean, you think about uh it covers what, one square foot and an acres of 43,000 square feet.
SPEAKER_10Yeah.
SPEAKER_02They could I mean they could literally be anywhere. I mean, how often uh maybe on some of the small properties it's different, but how often do you find a match that compared to a single?
SPEAKER_03I mean, it's probably you know, a match is probably maybe one match for every 15 singles.
SPEAKER_08Uh let's see.
SPEAKER_02Every every guest.
SPEAKER_08I got one in particular, and it it's very it it's very embarrassing because it happened last year, actually. Um I had or yes, last year. I I'm telling you, I've got that new bow. Well, I've never had the stabilizer that has an offset to it. Never had that. I've always had just a straight stabilizer on my bow. Got it out. Out of the case, me and a buddy went to this particular piece just to shoot a doe. It was like the first week of season. He's like, Hey, let's go get a doe on film. Let's have some fun. You know, it's finally hunting season. Let's do it. I'm like, awesome. I got this brand new bow, brand new arrows. I'm ready to rip one. You know, we get up there, and here come, I don't know, six or seven deer, and uh had him at like 20 yards and pull back and he goes, Oh man, you smoked her. And I just had like this my my face was probably beat red. And I said, I didn't I didn't hit her. He goes, Dude, you smoked her. I heard it. I said, look in that tree right there. He goes, How did you shoot the tree? I said, I have no I was dumbfounded, had no idea what happened. And I started looking around and that offset was touching my bowstring. And it literally like made a bald spot in my in my string where I had put it in the case that the offset had came down and was touching my string. And I'm not used to that. So I just got up there and you know, didn't look at anything, put my you know, quiver on, put my arrow, you know, knocked. I never looked at the offset. The offset was touching my bowstring.
SPEAKER_02You're talking about the rear stabilizer. Yeah. Yeah, I just started using one of those. I'll have to keep an eye open for that.
SPEAKER_08Yes, please do, because you can you can ruin a hunt real quick. And a string, let me just tell you. Did you end up replacing the string? Yeah, absolutely. I didn't want no nothing re-pull back and that thing explode on me or something. It literally left a bald spot in the stream. Could have been a lot worse. Could have been a big buck or it could have been, but like my buddy that was filming me that particular day is the guy that gives me a hard time a lot and brings it up a lot because he had it on video and everything. So like every time we talk about you know, bow hunting, he's like, Oh yeah, when Brett shot that big tree, you know, he's always bringing it up and making it even worse than it already is.
SPEAKER_02Well, he should have had better eyes on where their arrow hit than you.
SPEAKER_08Uh he he he was he was actually uh just looking at the uh you know the screen on the the cancorder and making sure the deer was in focus. And he said when he when I shot he wasn't really even looking up at the deer, he was looking at that little screen. He goes, I could have swore you smoked it, it took off running through the corn, standing corn. I'm like, no, my arrow's 12 foot off the ground.
SPEAKER_02Did you know right away?
SPEAKER_08Yes, I saw I knew something wasn't right. I did because I have lighted knocks, so it was just like right into the, you know, it shot six foot to the left. I mean, I put it right where it needed. I've shot a lot of deer with the bow, and I've never had anything like that happen before. And I knew almost immediately that something was wrong. I could almost feel it when I shot like the vibration off of it or something.
SPEAKER_02Were you always using a rear stabilizer or first time?
SPEAKER_08No, that was my first time ever having anything like that. I usually just run a straight stabilizer. I've never had like that two-piece with the I call it an offset, but rear stabilizer or whatever. Was it just not tight or something? I guess not. Uh like I said, it's my first time ever having something like that. Inexperienced, I guess. I don't know. Very embarrassing because I consider myself a diehard bow on her. I bet that won't happen again. Absolutely not. I took the rear stabilizer off. It's just a straight piece now. Oh, is it? It's completely off now. I took it off there. I'm never putting it back on there again. How long a stabilizer do you run on the front? I don't even know exactly the the length on that. I would say, I don't know, 10 inches or so, something like that. So just long enough where it's can be kind of hard to get in the bow case or something. Yes. And that particular with that rear on there, you know, but you almost have to like push it down to get the bow flat because I have I use a soft case uh most of the time. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02I don't I have a rear stabilizer. I don't know if I have it set up right or not.
SPEAKER_08Oh, I gotcha. Yeah, it's definitely something that I don't really want to mess with anymore, to be honest with you. Just like broadheads, man.