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
64: Hunting The Same Dates On The Same Properties For Decades With Nelson Chandler (Georgia)
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Nelson Chandler has been hunting the ridges and valleys of northwest Georgia since 1974, when he was ten years old and his dad handed him a single shot sixteen gauge with buckshot and said let's figure this out. Neither of them knew what they were doing, but Nelson missed a buck that first morning and has been chasing deer every season since. Fifty years without missing an opening day. He went from hunting off the school bus every afternoon after class, to working twenty-six years as a Walker County sheriff's deputy, to now finishing out his career at the county road department and planning his retirement around hunting season.
Nelson hunts a mix of leased ground, permission farms, and family property in the ridge and valley country just south of Chattanooga. He has been bow hunting Illinois for whitetails since 2004, killed a 138-inch buck in 1986 that still ranks in the county, and came within ten steps of what he describes as the biggest deer he has ever seen anywhere, only to watch a limb deflect his arrow in Illinois in 2020. He talks about the rut happening on the same dates on the same properties year after year, why he does not trust anybody who says temperature shifts the rut, and why finding a place to hunt is the single biggest threat facing hunters today.
He is also getting his grandkids into it, mailing out permission letters every offseason, and hitting the weight room fifty years into a lifting habit he started in 1978. A Hunter's Legacy is built for stories like Nelson's, fifty years of Georgia whitetail hunting from a man who has never stopped putting in the work.
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I pulled my bow up, hung my bow up, put my release on, kind of still breathing hard, and I looked and this real nice butt walked right within ten yards. And was just standing there. I started to get my bow off the hanger. When I got my bow off the hanger, it brushed the limb and made a little bit of a noise, and he came full alert. So I just kind of froze and I just stood there for about 30 to 40 seconds. And he just turned perfect. I drawed back and just drilled in.
SPEAKER_04Grab your gear, find your stand and listen in as we share another journey. The shape of the hunter's legacy.
SPEAKER_00Welcome back to another episode of a Hunter's Legacy Podcast, the only hunting podcast that ditches the pros for the average Joes. We like to give the everyday hunters a chance to get in front of the mic and the camera and share their stories. So if you are interested or know of somebody that would be a good fit to hop on for an episode and kind of share their hunting jury, look us up, and we'll kind of see where things go. This week we're back in the south in Georgia. What's going on? We got Nelson. Hey, how are you doing? Good to have you on. Good to have you on. Glad to get somebody with some podcast experience. I know you said it was only one podcast, but we'll take it.
SPEAKER_01Okay. That was several years ago. Well, three or four years ago, but I guess it counts.
SPEAKER_00Does it make you nervous? Yeah, a little bit.
SPEAKER_03Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_00You ever do any FaceTime? Very little. Very little. I'd like to think of it just kind of like a phone conversation. It's not structured or anything. So I usually like to just have the guests share a little bit about themselves to start, and we can kind of roll into some fun stories.
SPEAKER_01Okay. Well, I I grew up in northwest Georgia, right? Pretty much where I am now. 64 years old. Started deer hunting in 1974 when I was 10. My dad, we didn't really have any deer. My dad owned a small farm and we didn't know anything about deer, and he had heard they had a season opening in Georgia. And he said, Do you want to go deer hunting? I said, Let's try it out. We didn't know what we were doing or anything. And uh he got me a 16 gauge shotgun with buckshot, a single shot. I forget what he had. And we went up on my dad's farm and got set up, found a good spot the day before, what we thought was a good spot. We didn't know what to look for really, and got set up the next morning, and I'm less than 30 minutes, maybe 15 minutes. We're just sitting there, he's kind of off to the side from me. And uh this buck comes walking up the mountain, just I thought it was the biggest buck I'd ever seen in my life, but I have no idea. I was 10 years old and excited. I don't know what it was, but I shot, of course, I missed it. And we got down and started tracking it, didn't find anything. So after that, I was just hooked on it. I couldn't get enough. I started deer hunting repeatedly, and my dad was working a lot, didn't have time to take me much back then. And a friend of his, probably the real good deer hunter, he didn't kill what he killed, he just deer hunted in the 70s. That's the way it was. He invited me to go with him, and he actually asked permission on my dad's farm. Of course, I came along with a package, I guess, 10-year-old kid. And he put me in several places, and within probably around Thanksgiving or shortly after, I killed a doe with that shotgun. And then I was just on fire ever since. So that's how it got started.
SPEAKER_00That's how I got started.
SPEAKER_01I got started.
SPEAKER_00It's nice to hear everybody's hunting story. I'm gonna back you up a little bit. I want to hear a little bit about what you did outside of hunting to get get to where you are now.
SPEAKER_01Uh well, see, when I graduated high school, which was 1982, I went to work at the co-op, farmers co-op in Lafayette, a town that I grew up here in, and drove a fertilized truck and worked in farming industry. Worked there for about six, seven years. Then I went to a bluebird industry building school buses on the assembly line for three years. Then I went to a law enforcement academy for got certified as a police officer, and I worked with the Walker County Sheriff's Office from 1991 till 2017, 26 years. And yeah, when you called 911, I was one of them who you got. I transferred, I'm still with Walker County, I transferred from the Sheriff's Office to the Walker County Road Department, which I'm still there now until this is my last year. I retired in December of this year.
SPEAKER_00So it's been a ride. That's why I asked. I did some searching on you. I appreciate your service, but there's a lot of people that have been in the military or law enforcement. I d I want to check to see one guy I interviewed, he was down in Georgia. I'll have to look him up to see where he's at. But he was military, he wasn't he wasn't law enforcement, but a guy I interviewed from Alabama, Josh Grace, he would have been one of the earlier episodes. He was in law enforcement. I want to say there's probably one or two more, so we get a lot of law enforcement and military. It's it's fun.
SPEAKER_01My goal was to just stay there and retire. And then after 26 years, it just got a little overwhelming. The shift rotating, the working holidays, Christmas Day. I have a grown son and two grandkids, and I just wanted a a regular shift, which I haven't. I work four days a week now, so that's not too bad. It gives me more time to hunt.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, especially as you get older and grandkids too. I've seen my dad with the grandkids. It's a little bit different animal than raising your own kids, right? It's different. Yeah, it's different. I don't know if it's the expectations or what. You've been in Georgia your whole life, huh?
SPEAKER_01Yes, sir. Been in Northwest Georgia, Walker County, and Chatuga County. I live in Walker, but I spend just about as much of my life in Chatuga, the neighboring county, as I do in Walker. But like I say, we owned a we still do. I own a family farm, me and my sister and my brother. And we've been in the family, I think, since my dad bought it in the 1940s, I guess. And we've we've had it ever since. Of course, they're gone on now, but we we have the property there. It's just a small farm, about 80 acres.
SPEAKER_00Well, you're talking to the right guy. I grew up on a farm too. Still farm a little bit.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00It's probably a little bit different down where you're at. Yeah, where are you located in the Right Smack in the center of Iowa.
SPEAKER_01Iowa. Okay. I've been to Iowa. I deer hunted in Iowa in 2007 and eight in Guthrie Center, Iowa. That is very, very underrated part of Iowa. Really? Okay. A friend of mine works for uh McKee Foods, uh Little Debbie's, and he's been with Little Debbie for 50 years, I guess. Not 50 years, 40 something years, and uh he does, he buys and does business for Little Debbie, does it all in the Midwest, so he was able to get property for us to hunt on, and I would just go along with him. He didn't want to go by himself, so I went too. Was it was it pretty good in Guthrie Center? I saw a lot of deer in Guthrie Center. He killed a nice buck in Guthrie Center. I did not, and we were aiming to go back, and we just never made it. I think I've gone twice and I saw a lot of deer. It was a good bow hunt, but I didn't kill one. I think it was in 2007 and eight, somewhere right in there.
SPEAKER_00You know how every state kind of has their publicized area that everybody wants to go to and everybody knows about. Well, Iowa has those. Then every state kind of has these hidden gems where really good deer hunting, you get a nice little pocket, you can kill just as big a deer there as anywhere. That's Guthrie Center.
SPEAKER_01That's Guthrie Center, yeah. In Georgia, it's everything is focused more like the Piedmont region, the middle Georgia, because you got South Georgia, which is more coastal, and then Middle Georgia is where all the agriculture is. I'm in the northwest side. We call it mountains, but if you ever go to northeast Georgia, that's where the real mountains are. I'm in the ridge and valley area, the northwest. Not far from Chattanooga, Tennessee.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's the best man, I need to I want to get a map behind me of the U.S. and where all the people I've interviewed for because I kind of listen, okay, this person's from here, here, here. I bet there's a couple I've interviewed within a couple of hours of you. So there's a guy by the name of Will Green, Cortland, Alabama. And he's just out to Tennessee and it's uh kind of in that farm country area. But yeah, I I need to get a map of everybody I've interviewed. There'll be a point where I have reach out to you and like, hey, this person lives here and they do this, and I do a lot of connecting of people.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, the longer you go on, you it's bound to happen. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Well, I mean, it's different doing it this way, whereas, you know, most of the hunting podcasts are interviewing, I won't say big shots or celebrities, but you know, they already know each other. Whereas these are a bunch of people that I've interviewed interviewed a couple of people that were living really close and didn't know each other.
SPEAKER_01Right. This is just people that love to love to deer, turkey hunt, loved outdoors.
SPEAKER_00Yep. So let's go back to your younger years. So you shot at something real young. You said you're 10. Is that kind of the first time you were going out? Or were you kind of going out and following somebody along?
SPEAKER_01That was the first time I actually went out deer hunting. Like I say, I was 10 years old. Of course, there wasn't any social media, wasn't any um, you know, YouTube, no TV shows about it. What we saw, we just read in a magazine, or that's not what or just word of mouth. So when he said they were deer, I thought, well, he said, let's go hunt them. My dad did. And it wound up, he he didn't really become a big hunter. He just wanted to get outdoors. He was a big outdoorsman, but he turned me on to that. And once that happened, I don't know. I've I've hunted every year since, and not me, I don't think I've missed, I've not missed an opening day of Georgia season since then. Now I didn't pick up bow hunting until it's probably gonna be when I was a junior in high school. So it'd be around 1980, and I started bow hunting. The friend of mine, I stand here from McKee Foods, I met him, and he's probably the best bow hunter I've ever met. And um he he got me to uh interested in it and show me what I was doing and what to not do and and what sign to look for and how to set up on feed trees, and and then I I really started enjoying bow hunting, and that's wound up going to Iowa with him, and then I've been to Illinois 30 or 30 times, I guess, and in Illinois killed some good deer in Illinois with a bow in um I can't think of the county, Clinton County? Maybe Illinois? I think it is.
SPEAKER_00I'm not sure. The more I interview people, the more I enjoy this because I'm trying to think of the other I don't know if it was another guy from Georgia that goes up to Ill Illinois all the time. John Paget or something like that.
SPEAKER_01We started I started going to Illinois with him in 2004, and we didn't I think I might have missed one year. EHD had a real bad hit in I in Illinois in 2012, I believe. And we went up there and it was just like a desert with nothing going on. And I don't think I went back in 13 and then I started back in 2014, and the property got sold in 2020. So I haven't been back anywhere. I haven't been in the Midwest since 2020. Pretty much hunted in Georgia, Tennessee and Georgia since then.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Let's go back to some of your younger years. So how old were you when you shot that doe? Uh I was ten. The next six, eight years till you're kinda out of school. Were you able to get out a lot?
SPEAKER_01I rode the bus to school, so when the bus I got off the school bus, probably about 3 30, which now this is Georgia time, and that would give me about two and a half hours before dark. So I'd get off the school bus, grab a bite to eat real quick, be in my hunting clothes, and all I had to do was walk out the back door. And we were I was in the woods. Also, we had permission from just about everybody around us. I could walk in any direction, so I was very fortunate to be raised there because I could walk in any direction I wanted to at any time in uh and deer hunt. And there was one farm, it was a big farm, and I mean a big farm. And everybody said there's no way to get permission on that farm to hunt. And my dad said, Well, all we got to do is ask. Maybe they haven't asked. And he kind of knew of them, so we went to his house and uh knocked on the door and he answered the door. We talked to him. My my dad said, uh, my son was really likes to deer hunt, and he wanted to know if we could hunt mainly him, if he could hunt your property. And he said, Hold on just a minute, and he went back in the house for a few minutes. We didn't know what he was doing. He came out with a 30-30 rifle and a box of shells. And he said somebody had gave that rifle to him and shells. He had no use for it, and if I wanted to use it, I was welcome to it. So he gave not only gave us permission to hunt, but he gave us a rifle and shells to hunt with. So Is this somebody you knew before? My dad knew the family and knew of them. He had worked, done some work for them over the years. They were always real strict on who they led on the property.
SPEAKER_00I mentioned I grew up on a farm. The farm kids will always have an advantage. One, they're more likely to have the ground, and two, they're more likely to get permission from the neighbors too, than somebody from town.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that was back then almost almost everybody gave permission in those days, uh, except for a few that were real particular. And then once I started, my dad gave a few guys permission before I started deer hunting, and then once I started deer hunting, you know, he'd always tell them they'd have to see me to go, and I wouldn't I would never let them. It's pretty competitive, isn't it? Now it's I I've had properties, uh, I mean, up until 10 years ago, I had like 12 different small farms, and when I say farm, some of them would even farm, they're just strips of woods or something that people own, and they get developed and sold off, and I've probably lost at least 12 or 13 different good places to hunt over the last 10, 15 years. I will start and start hunting more properties, and I'll get enough property to replace them. That's pretty much my hunting, is I do our farm, and I have one small farm that I lease, and then I have three permission farms, and that's about it for right now, plus the WMAs we have, which I do hunt public lands some, but not a tremendous amount.
SPEAKER_00When you talk about what you own, what you lease versus the permission pieces, what's the mindset on how do I word this? Hunt quality or not having to worry about other hunters? I don't know, maybe you have good enough relationship on these permission pieces where you know you're the only one that has permission, but there's a lot of times if you get permission, somebody else does as well.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. As far as I know, I I've hunted two of these permission farms for at least probably going on eight, ten years now, and I have never seen another person at all. And one of them's about 60 acres in size, and the other one's about 30 acres or so. I just don't see anybody. I mean, I don't I don't think they're there because I don't see any evidence of them there. So it's a real benefit to me. I mean, a lot of people hunt. I have a lot of friends that hunt only public land, and I do some, but still I like the small permission farms. That's that's where I like to do most of my deer hunting and turkey hunting. I turkey hunt too, but mostly my deer hunting is there. And I got the property that I leased. I don't know how to word this, but each place I have, like the property that I lease is is better during the rut. It's more of a November 10th, 11th, 12th, mid-November type property. You're going to kill a buck or see a lot of deer. And then another piece of property I have is more of an early season property. And then our farm, we have 30, 35 acres of corn on it, and it's more of a later season piece of property. You leave the corn standing for food plot? The farmer leaves me about he leaves me the edges, and I have a little small corner lot that he leaves in one little small field. He leaves about three acres standing. Plus there's no snow down there so the deer can eat all winter. Very little snow. Uh, we had one last January, but it was very little. We get one every once in a while, not every year.
SPEAKER_00Well, you're talking about these pieces being small and one's good during the rut, one's good early season. So walk us through the terrain and the landscape of where you're hunting at.
SPEAKER_01Okay, I'll start with the the property that I lease. It's uh got a real steep ridge, it's a mix of hardwoods, hardwood ridge, and then it's got about thirty acres of grown-up fields. The property owner just bush hogs it about once or twice a year, and it grows back up. Deer love it because they got still good cover they can move through, and it's easier to hunt because you can climb pretty high up overlooking all that cutovers and stuff. And it's got a big creek that runs right down the middle of it, which is hard to get across. So I have had stands on the other side of it, and couldn't, if a big flood comes, I couldn't get the stands out for the winter. They had to stay all winter and I couldn't get them to spring because the water was up so bad. And the other property, it's a bow hunting only piece of property, and it's it's hardwood ridge. It's got white oak, red oaks, shumard oaks, chestnut oaks, just a mix of hardwoods with a power line, not too far from it. And it's a good piece of property, and it's more of an early season property. However, though, I did kill a deer back in there. It's not necessarily that it's not good in the late season. Maybe I just don't hunt it as much in the late season as I do where the corn is. And then I got another small little piece of property. It's also just rolling ridges and hard woods. And then our farm is on I got about 40 acres of flatland, which is corn, and the rest of it's on the side of a mountain. And the neighbors also have corn on theirs, which that's gonna expand the corn owner up to about probably a hundred acres, I guess, if you include all of those. Maybe not that much, but it's they're they're good pieces of property. I'd hate to lose any of them.
SPEAKER_00You're a mix of hills slash mountains and flat areas. Yes. Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Like I say, we're in what we call the ridge and valley area of northwest Georgia. It's very hot summers. Like now it's extremely hot. Our deer season opens in September here, so the early season is very warm. It's hot. And but I have killed a lot of deer in September in the heat. That's coming up pretty soon, isn't it? Oh yeah. This is July the what 13th, so we're looking just a little over two months away. You got everything ready to roll? Ready to roll. Something about July 4th just flips the switch to where I'm ready to get in the mode of shooting my bow and and getting some cameras out and seeing what we got left over from last year and see if we can make it happen another year.
SPEAKER_00It's so this is my second summer doing the podcast, and I had to look back and see, but there's a lot of people, a lot of no shows this time of year. A lot of no shows. They got other things on their mind. They're not too worried about deer hunting, but it'll pick back up.
SPEAKER_01Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's coming quick.
SPEAKER_00So what were some of your favorite hunts as a child?
SPEAKER_01Believe it or not, the very first hunt I told you about was when I missed the buck. That was kind of just the most excit we didn't we walked out with no deer, but I've never been so excited about anything. And then let's see. I did kill a nice buck in December 1986, I guess, so I was not a child anymore, but that was a real nice buck. Played basketball in a three on three league at the local rec center, and we was playing every other night or so. We'd gotten in a tournament and it was early December, and we'd played hard and late that night, and we had lost, and we were playing. For the championship and we lost. And I come home and lay down. I couldn't sleep very well. Tired and alarm clock went off time to go deer hunting the next morning. And I just thought, man, I don't know about this. So I got up and went anyway. The wind was blowing. It was very cold, cloudy and dark, dreary. And I went to a spot I had picked out for a good rut hunt. And of course it was a gun hunt. And uh I hunted off the ground up against a cedar tree. And uh oh about nine o'clock, the wind was just howling. And I know it's different than Iowa because I've been in Iowa when, but it's still it was strong for Georgia. This buck chased a doe about 80 yards out in front of me, and I shot and he dropped and got up, ran up about a fifty yards and fell over. That was an exciting hunt for me.
SPEAKER_00Let's dive into this a little bit more. Okay, so you're busy basketball and stuff like that. Those cool, wet mornings where you crawl out of bed and it's quiet in the house and you can just hear like the wind slamming the windows. Yeah, those are the ones where you gotta push yourself out. But you were out there, kind of forced yourself to go out. Was it foggy at all?
SPEAKER_01It wasn't foggy. It was I know it was real cold. I think it had rained the day before, and it was almost a freezing rain. It was just above freezing. But the wind was blowing and it was really dark day. I mean, it was dark. I was just so tired and from playing basketball all week. And I went anyway. It just shows you you need to go. The season back then the season ended in Georgia the first week of December, and it opened back up after Christmas for a week. But just like the last few days of the season. How long were you sitting out there before you saw some action? Probably I see I got there about six in the morning, three hours. That's the first deer I saw, saw nothing all morning. Till he a doe come running out, stopped, and he came running up right behind her. That's pretty much it. I mean, it doesn't sound exciting, but to me in 1986, I think the Bucks scored 138, is just under 100. Really? 138 and 38s. Wait, 138 and 38. 1986, huh? 1986. I entered it into Georgia. Georgia has county by county rankings, I guess you call it. And I entered it and it was like number six or seven in this area for several years. It's been knocked on down to barely in the top twenty now. But at the time it was it was crazy.
SPEAKER_00So you're still top 20 in the county? Yeah, in the county. Isn't it amazing? So 86, what's that, 40 years already? How ingrained in your memory? Like how much can you visualize every detail of that hunt?
SPEAKER_01I know every detail about that hunt, how I got up, how I felt, uh, how I almost didn't go. And then I realized I was well, it's I only got like two days of the season left. I need to go. And I just kind of forced my way anyway. And I had a good spot already picked out. And my intentions was to go. I mean, you know, it was deer season, I was going. I hunted like when I got out of school, like I say, I watched the school bus. It was every day. It wasn't a go Monday and miss Tuesday and go Thursday. It was Monday through Saturday. Monday through Friday off the bus. And then Saturday I went Saturday morning and Saturday evening. The only day we didn't hunt was on Sunday. And uh we went to church Sunday morning and Sunday night. Then it picked right back on Monday. And when I got out of high school and got a job, I mean the job kind of revolved around that because it was a farming job, agriculture, so I could take a lot of time off in November and December, and October, October, November, December. When I left there and went to uh Bluebird, where I worked four days a week, I was off every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. And then I went to the sheriff's office. I worked two on, two off, two 12 hours on and two off days, so I had time then. And where I am now is four days a week as well. I work Tuesday through Friday. And so it's just been on my lifestyle. I think about it, 365 to some degree.
SPEAKER_00I killed my first nice one in 2006, and I was looking through old pictures, cleaning up Facebook's cracking down there, suspending me for trying to sell thermal. So I'm like, I gotta clean up some stuff. The first wall hanger I got, I was probably 18, would have been 2006 or 7, 2007, 20 years, and I can remember every single detail of that hunt. And I think you know, every hunter is kind of the same way, so that's kind of what I'm trying to do is pull out some of those stories.
SPEAKER_01In 2006, since you mentioned that, my friend Jason, like I said, the best bow hunter I've ever known. We went to Illinois in 2006, and I can tell you the date, it was November the 9th, 2006. We have it in Illinois, it's a strip of woods with a creek running through it. It's about a 60-acre piece of property, but it's probably hundreds and hundreds of acres surrounded by corn on that one little strip of woods. So I hunted what's called a point. I'd hunted it probably two years in a row, and I went back and hunted it that evening. We got there on a, I think it was a Thursday. I remember it was a Thursday. We got there Thursday and a hunted Thursday evening, and I saw two really nice bucks out in the cornfield. And then we went back Friday morning, saw hardly anything. And then Friday evening we went in at 3 o'clock, and the weather was horrible. There's another weather. It was hot. It was 70 degrees in Illinois, November the 10th. Not what we expected, and a thunderstorm was coming. It was lightning. It just had settled lightning a little bit, and it was just really dark. I said to him, I said, Do you want to just wake this one out? Because we're gonna get soaked. And he's thought about it a minute, and I said, Well, we're here. We're just gonna go back and set it a motel. We might as well go. So we walked on in, I climbed the summit, put a summit climbing tree stand on a hackberry tree. I climbed about 20 feet up, and I was sweating, breathing hard. I pulled my bow up, hung my bow up, put my release on, kind of still breathing hard, and I looked and this real nice butt walked right right to me within 10 yards. And was just standing there. And I started to get my bow off the hanger. When I got my bow off the hanger, it brushed the limb and made a little bit of a noise, and he came full alert. So I just kind of froze and I just stood there for about 30 to 40 seconds, and he just turned perfect. I drawed back and just drilled him, and he ran, I don't know, 40 yards and just fell over. And as soon as I did, I saw him, and I didn't really wait long. I jumped, climbed down, and the bottom fell out. I mean, it came a flood like you couldn't believe. It was horrible, horrible rain. So we got him out and got him took to a friend of ours' house and got him gutted out and uh loaded up, but it was that's a that was a memorable hunt right there. I'll never forget that one. And every year that I've gone back, that uh hackberry tree has grown in size over the years. You can't climb it anymore. But I've climbed every tree around it for ever since 2005, all the way up to 2020. I made a point every time we went up there to hunt that hunt that area, general area right there every time. And every time I saw a lot of deer, or either walked out killing one, one of the two. So it was like a prime spot. Hated to lose it, we lost it, and uh it's just property like that you don't get back, you know.
SPEAKER_00So how long do you think you were up in the stand before he came back?
SPEAKER_01No longer than twenty minutes, fifteen, twenty minutes. Just long enough to climb up, put my release on, take a few breaths because I was so hot, and wondering I'm fixing to have to get down because the flood's coming, and there he was. Oh, it was raining. It was just starting to. As soon as I shot him and he ran off and fell over, it started raining. I mean, I I think you could even look up 2006 weather in Illinois at that time, and it was like one of the flooding situations going on. It was bad. Bad.
SPEAKER_00I laugh because every hunter has been in this situation. A lot of times it doesn't work out. A lot of times they'll sneak by you before you even have your release on.
SPEAKER_01Mm-hmm. Right. That has happened uh in Georgia one opening day. Well, it wasn't like that, it was the opposite. I'd hunted on a real good feed tree, acorns everywhere, and deer were just hammering it. And I was highly disappointed. I hadn't saw any deer hardly that morning. I thought, what is wrong? So I was gonna get down a little early and I lowered my bow. And as soon as my bow hit the ground, a buck and a couple of does come walking out, and as a small buck. But I'm trying to get my bow pulled back up because I was gonna take one of the does and it didn't happen. I didn't I fight a waited, I suppose I was gonna get down about 10 or 11, and I got down was early 9 30 because I was seeing n I don't know how it works, but it's always when you least expect it, it seems like. If you want to hear about 2020, the heartbreak deer up there. Of course I do. It's it was awful. I don't even want to tell it, but it was November 2020. You remember that was the COVID year. So everything was closed down pretty much. That was the back end of COVID, right? It was on the back end of COVID. Uh-huh. Everything was just getting back open and it was just bad stuff. And also the election, if you remember that. We got to Illinois. I went to that same area where I killed the deer in 2006. This is 2020. It was uh Saturday morning, I believe. November 10th, 11th, I climbed the tree there once again with a summit climbing tree stand. It wasn't the hackberry, but it's within sight of it. Jason, a friend of mine that owned that was hunting on the property across from me, sent me a text message probably about two hours after daylight saying that there was a lot of deer in the fields. Deer was moving well, but he hadn't seen any in the woods. He said, but they went into the woods where I was at. So I'm just looking, sitting there looking. And I went ahead and stood up. I've probably been standing for five or ten minutes. I heard something over my left shoulder, and I looked, and the biggest buck I've ever seen in my life, period. From the Iowa trips, and I've also been to Kansas and told you about that. Iowa, Kansas, Illinois, Kentucky, all those states, this was this deer was absolutely up there. It's like a world-class deer. I'm not kidding you. He was a jot. And he's eight steps from my tree to my left. There was a small tree, about that big around, that had his vitals blocked, and all I could see was his head, his stomach area, and his rear end kind of quartering to me. He was just standing there looking. So I just thought, I'm just gonna wait. I kept waiting, and I tried to turn around to see if I could find a shot somewhere. I said, All I needs to do is take two steps. After about, it seemed like eternity, I don't know how long it was, but he turns and starts walking away from me. All I had was his rear end to me. And I mean, I just had a sickening feeling that things was turning bad. And uh he turns sideways, gives me a shot about 30 yards, and once again there's a limb in the way I had to kind of kneel down, and I said to myself, I'm gonna poke, I can squeeze one through though. I can squeeze one right in there. I shot and of course I hit the limb, deflected off. He trotted off a little ways and looked back and blowed and just trotted off. I sat there a little bit longer and uh lowered my bow to the ground not long after that. We went back, got something to eat. Went back that evening, hardly saw any deer. Went back the next morning, hardly saw any deer, loaded up and headed back to Georgia. It was so bad that I didn't even use that bow anymore. I sold the bow. As soon as I got back, I was done. I said, I am done bow hunting. That's disaster. Of course, a couple of weeks later I had another bow and was back shooting again. But that just absolutely devastated me to watch him. I mean, it worked so hard and so long to get that kind of opportunity and to get him within ten steps of where I'm sitting and not able to get a decent shot off. I just it was just heartbreaking, you know. But I've never seen one that big again. If you had to guesstimate how big do you think he was? I'm not good at scoring deer at all, but it I've I don't know. He was just huge. He was a big basic typical 10-pointer. Long tines and extremely wide, white antlers, big white antlers, and he was just a massive deer. Made your one 140 look pretty small. Yes. Uh yeah. The 140 looked 130s, 140 looked real small. I I don't know. I mean, like I say, I'm not good at scoring deer or anything, but he he was just a giant deer. That same year, see, we got back, that was in early November, got back to Georgia, picked up the rifle, going for a gun hunt on my leased property. And uh, well, no, I wasn't going there. I was going to another spot in one of my permission farms. It was again a bad day, weather was real foggy, couldn't see anything. I drove to my permission farm, couldn't see anything for the fog, hardly getting there, changed my mind, turned around and went to the lease property because I figured it would be better, that I could see a little better where it was, how it was how it was designed. Got there, went to my tree to climb a tree. It was so foggy I couldn't even see the tree. So I decided to just move to across the creek to another spot and just sit down on the ground and see if the fog would live. This is unbelievable. But now the disaster that happened in Illinois, this is right after that. I go there, sit down on my rifle, put my uh gloves on, and within 30 minutes, a real nice eight-pointer walks just right by me, kind of right over my left shoulder. And I just stopped and looked, I was just kind of dumbfounded for a minute. And he just took a couple of steps and I shot him, he dropped right there. He's a hundred and three-inch eight-pointer. Real tall, typical eight-pointer. And that was like it was like I say, it was real hot weather then. You know, it was Georgia hot weather. So he just, and that's what I say. People say you need to go when the weather's right. If you wait for the weather, I I do like the weather right, but if you wait, sometimes you're just missing your opportunity, I believe. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. You know, you miss a hundred percent of the shots you don't make. Yeah, and if you're not there, and I'm not talking about overhunting an area or you know, stinking it up or pressuring a deer, but if you got places to go, I got places to go for the rut that I go annually every year for the rut. And I don't hunt them unless it's during November or early December. I just don't go in there. But I have other places that I'll hunt if it's 70 degrees, 80 degrees, or whatever the time of the year it is, I'm going, you know. And during those times, the places that I go just for the rut, I don't care what the weather is, if it's on those dates, like I got one place I go November 10th, 11th, 12th, and 13th. I've killed a deer there pretty good bucks almost consistently every year on those dates, one of those dates. And I'll go regardless of the weather. It may have a rainy spell or a cold spell or a heat wave, but during those dates I'm in those places.
SPEAKER_00Well, don't you know that the weather shifts to rut around weeks at a time? It's it's the same days every year, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01Same days every year. I know I know that during hot weather, I have seen less deer, you know what I mean? Less deer movement. They're still breeding, still rutting. But if it's during the rut, I want to be there. I don't care if it's raining, what the weather is, if it's possible. Now I'm in my 60s now, so it's getting a little harder. But as long as I can keep going, I'm going, you know. Now I've got grandkids like we talked about earlier. My son, he killed some deer. I forgot about that. He went on several hunts. That was a memorable hunt, memorable hunt with him.
SPEAKER_00Can we just I want to talk about this rut a little bit? So people think if the last week of October's like 20 degrees and the first week of November is like 70s for seven days, that the rud's gonna shift forward. No, like I've taken the week off at the end of November because it's cold, and there's more big bucks moving when it's 70 degrees. So so it was a couple years ago, dreweries were like this is gonna be the best pre-rud ever. It's gonna be cold, get down to like 20, so I took a week off work, it was dead. The next weekend it was 70, it's just bananas, how many deer were moving. Really? Yeah. It didn't have any effect.
SPEAKER_01I'll argue that till the day I die. I don't think it does. Well, come to think about it, when I just now that I'm thinking, you know, I killed a lot of deer when it's in the 70s. If it was during the rut time, a lot of deer. And I'm like you, I don't I don't know that it does. I think it might be that we just enjoy it more when it's nice and cold and perfect weather. Do you know what I'm saying there?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, the deer are obviously gonna move better when it's cold. The does are gonna move more, and you'll see more bucks. But if you think the rut's gonna stop when it's 70 degrees, you're out of your mind.
SPEAKER_01No, they're gonna they're gonna rut if it's 70 or 80 degrees. Look at Florida. You know, they're rutting there. They're rutting here. Um temperature changes. If it's that time of the year, it's it's gonna happen. And, you know, I don't I enjoy hunting into the early season even. Just over food sources, you know, I enjoy that too, and I I enjoy the late season as well.
SPEAKER_00We'll get we'll get back to your son after this rut conversation, but a couple things I want to ask about the rut. One, are you in an area where you might have an odd season rut or close to it? We pretty much have the same every year.
SPEAKER_01Like the early November? It's November 10th through mid. This is we have a rut that's strange here. Georgia's all up and down the place. That's why I asked. Yeah. Where I'm at, this is even more crazy. The my leased farm, the farm that I lease, November 10th through the 15th, 16th, is just jam up rut time. And then when you go about 20 miles away from that where my farm is, I have better rut in late November and into December than I do in early November. And that's only 20 miles apart.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, there's a strip that goes right along the north side of Georgia and over to South Carolina, where it's a hundred miles wide across a couple states. That looks like it's peacrust December. The rest of the state is most of the state's November, and then you get down to Southeast, it's October. Southwest it's gonna be December and January a little bit. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Of course, you know, Alabama is uh more uh December and January.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, they got three different months. Florida, I think,'s got all seven seven months.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00They got August, September, October, and then there's a pocket of January, then it goes back up to October, and you got November, and you got December, and Feb yeah, seven months of rotten Florida.
SPEAKER_01That's crazy, ain't it? Yeah. That's crazy. But it's I I like I say, I'm a big believer in annual patterns, like the certain days on a certain piece of property I want to be there. Because I've hunted them so many years. November 10th, 11th, 12th, 13th on one piece of property, now I leave it and go to another one, catch the other dates, and that's that's the way I usually hunt the rut, just by history of what has happened there in the past.
SPEAKER_00How many different patterns do you think deer have? Mm. What are you asking like? So my theory is they have several patterns. They're gonna have their day to day, they're gonna wake up, go browse, do this, whatever. Then they're gonna have like their seasonal patterns. So they might live here, they might live here, they might live here. They're also gonna have I don't know, uh an annual pattern. Where they're going to show up to the same property if they bounce around give or take a couple days within a couple days every year. Right.
SPEAKER_01That's what I try to key in on during the rut is those specific dates, because I keep a journal of when I kill if I kill a deer or if I see a deer, a nice butt on a certain day at a certain place, I'll keep a journal and I'll return to that piece of property on that date a year later. And not every time, but a whole lot of times it's real close to being on the same date and same time. General area.
SPEAKER_00And I didn't so they got the daily, I think I said seasonal annually. But I've noticed late season, I don't have a lot of options, so I'll sit in the same blind every day. And it's like two a river bottom and the 40 acres of woods I hunt. Like one day they'll all the deer, like 50, 60 deer, I'll come out of the woods I hunt. The next day the whole herd will come from the river bottom. And it's like there's gotta be some sort of pattern of the herd beds down here. They bed down three quarters of a mile over here, and then the next day they're over here. So there's patterns to it. I I haven't been able to put my thumb on that one.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I don't know. Like the late season, or I hunt in the late season, some sometimes they come out from the west side, and other times it's completely on the opposite side of the area.
SPEAKER_00The wind has a lot to do with what's like what side of the field they come out to eat, but like the pattern I'm talking about, like they're crossing a road, going half a mile through the open section to get to the food plot. Like, why wouldn't they just stay in the woods there? But the next day they will stay in the woods. So I just don't know what they're doing. I don't have an answer. I don't I don't know. They don't bed in the same bed every night, I can tell you that.
SPEAKER_01Now, now people tell me find the beds. I I don't even look for bed, I look for a black bedding areas, I guess. You know, general bedding areas, but here in Georgia, in the mountains, in northwest Georgia mountains where I'm at, and even the small woodlots, they bed different places constantly. I'll see beds and then I won't see any there for a while, and it might be completely on the other side of the property. So I d I don't have a rhyme or reason why they do that.
SPEAKER_00They'll come back to the same bed, but it might be a pattern one day here, the next day here, the next day here. Yeah. Uh-huh. So you said you're before we got going on the rut, I want to make sure I was covering everything. You mentioned your son had some pretty good stories.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, he hunted. He's not been a big hunter like I have like I am. He hunted with me several times when he was a teenager. Um I guess probably twelve, thirteen years old even. He killed a few deer. He ain't killed any real, what you say, really nice bucks, but he killed quite a few deer. He uh went off to college and uh was gone, but of course we still have real close contact with him and his wife, my daughter-in-law, and then they've got uh two two kids. I got a grandson and a granddaughter, and they have just started showing interest in deer hunting, so I took my grandson lice this previous season, and he saw deer both times we went, and then I took my granddaughter two times as well, and she saw deer both times we went. No, I'm wrong. Took my granddaughter, she saw deer both times we went, and my grandson saw deer one of the two. He didn't see a single deer on one of those days. Hopefully the second one, second time out. Yeah. So I'm looking forward to uh this year, hopefully that we'll get to put in some more time with. And you know, I don't they're seven years old and eight years old, so I don't know that I don't know what their age is for deer hunting, but they're gonna they're gonna be with me some. You got some nice setups to take them with? Yeah, I got some I got some ground blinds and some uh shooting houses specifically for them. I don't hunt them much unless I'm I'm gonna take them. That's what I've got them for. It's for them. So and maybe get them started and we'll go from there. How are they when you take them out? Do they argue who who goes with? They're great. No. I took him first because he's the oldest, so that settled who got to go first. And then she went and she's left-handed. She's given me a little trouble. Bought him a little bow uh this past year. Just a kid's bow. And he's been shooting it like like crazy every time he comes up here to see me. And I've got her one for a birthday, but you can't find a left-handed uh kid's bow. I've looked to look and they're all out of stock or they don't make them. So I don't know if she's gonna learn to shoot a bow right-handed, even though she's a left-handed person, or how that works. Which bows are you looking at? Well, for him, I was gonna get him the bear royale. The bear royale? Royale. And she's still a little bit too young to handle anything like that, yeah, or too small to handle anything like that.
SPEAKER_00Have you heard of Mission? I have. So I'll look 'em up, but that there'd be a bow that you'd be able you can go from like fourteen pounds all the way up to like seventy on the same bow.
SPEAKER_01Really? On the mission? What what is it called? The mission.
SPEAKER_00Oh, they just changed the names. I think the Menace XR. I don't know how the price compares to the bear. But uh thought I saw that they had left in the hand right. You'd have to look into it, but yeah, it goes from ten pounds to fifty pounds. Okay. And seventeen inches to twenty-eight inches draw length. Right. Okay. So do they have a left-handed? I thought I read somewhere. I don't want to like dive into it too much here, but when I was Googling it said they did.
SPEAKER_01She's a little young yet, but I was going ahead and get one for the future. Most of them that I have found that have left-handed is either sold out or or it says out of stock or unavailable.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, at least if you got, you know, like the mission or something like that, you know that they'd be able to have it for hopefully 10 years because you can keep making it longer and adding more pounds.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and it's a true hunting bow, you know. I want to be able to get them both both started in it. And I have them a rifle apiece when they want a gun hunt. I've already got those ready for them. What'd you get them for rifles? I've got a Remington 308 for my grandson. I've had it for years. It was my rifle. And I've changed over to a 300 wind mag, and I'm gonna let him have the 308. And then I went to a wild turkey banquet with the friend of mine in Tennessee, and they had door prizes, and I won a 6.5 Savage. I know nothing about it. I just know that I won. And they was winning that night all kinds of prizes. I wasn't winning anything, and because I didn't buy as many tickets as a lot of people. And uh the grand prize, they had the drawing for the grand prize, and it was that Savage rifle. 6.5 Creedmore? Yes. You should look 'em up. All I know is I paid nothing but ten dollars for it, and I won it.
SPEAKER_00I don't know how to describe it. It's it's kind of like a cult where if you're inside the cult it's the greatest thing ever. But if you're outside it's like Okay. What what are what are you seeing? Like, you think it's that great? It's I mean people who have 'em swear by 'em. People who don't have 'em, like, why the heck you shooting that?
SPEAKER_01Well no, I'd got it when I want it. I did shoot it. And the reason I got it for her is because it well I'm gonna give it to her is because I had almost no kick to it. Yep, they're good for that, aren't they? Well that would be good for her. So but my my rifle is a Tika uh 300 windbag, which it's just devastating. I bought it in 2017. Tika T3. Mm-hmm. It's awesome, yeah. I love mine. It's it's a it's amazing. Probably the best rifle I've ever owned. It's I've shot I couldn't tell you how many deer with it, and none of them move. It's just over. So underrated. Yeah. A Winchester ammo deer season, 150 grain bullets. It's just unbelievable.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I got a 243 and the action on them was just silky smooth.
SPEAKER_01Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_00It was laying here.
SPEAKER_01I think I've moved it in there, but it's it's a real real nice. It's got the stainless steel barrel, which I wasn't fond of to start with, but I like it. I don't know why. It just shined when I first looked at it. Well, it shines, but you you can't tell it. When if a deer gets that close, it's over. If you can see that shine.
SPEAKER_00I'd hope so. Not based off your history though. Yeah, yeah. So you do anything else other than deer hunting down there?
SPEAKER_01Well, turkey hunting the spring. Turkey hunt quite a bit. It was turkey hunting probably since 1978-79. That's a big thing here in Georgia. Um, 'cause I was turkey hunting when it wasn't a big thing. I probably only knew a handful of people that was turkey hunting back in the late 70s and early 80s. And then turkey hunt. Uh I was into weight training, bodybuilding, real heavy for a while, and got arthritis in my hands, and I still work out a lot, but not heavy like I did for years. And I like uh I like all sports, watch all sports, watch the Braze, my favorite baseball team.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, people don't understand the power of working out, like how much it adds to your life and makes you feel that much younger.
SPEAKER_01Oh yeah. And this morning I try to uh walk a lot too, and this morning we got up and walked try to walk, you know, three miles maybe twice a week and then weight train three times a week. But back in the early two thousands and through the 2008, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, I was I was in the weight room Monday through Friday and sometimes even more. Probably too much, I guess. It's addicting. It's addicting, yeah. I still enjoy it. I can't wait. People say I dread going. I can't wait to get there. I mean, like it's one hour of time that I have just completely, you know, without interruption pretty much.
SPEAKER_00Well, it's not the I mean it's all about mindset, right? Like nobody likes working, like it pushing iron around. It's the feeling you get afterwards.
SPEAKER_01I enjoy it while I'm there. Once I start, I'm I'm good to go. And then the feeling afterwards, you feel good. You know, you eat you eat right or better. And just something I enjoy doing. So I deer hunt, turkey hunt, weight train, love sports. There any sort of like upland or waterfowl hunting where you're at? No, there probably are. I have that's just not my thing. I've I've never duck hunted or anything like that. It doesn't interest me at all. I don't know why, but it doesn't. Uh it's a lot of small game. I mean, we've squirrel hunted and rabbit hunted and coon hunting. We used to do coon hunting quite a bit in the winter. A friend of mine had some dogs. I enjoyed that a lot. And trapping, I used to trap. Uh I'm going to start back trapping. Like I said, this is I retire at the end of this year, so it's gonna free up a whole new world for me. So I'm going to go back to trapping. Is there a lot of clubs where you're at? A lot of what? Hunting clubs? Not really. There's some, yeah. There's a lot of lease to land by certain people, and then but as far as just clubs, just hunting clubs, uh not that I know of. I don't get out with them much. I don't I was taught I hunt with a very few people. Uh about three close friends of mine. And other than that, I I either go by myself or I'm with them. I don't hunt in a club or or anything like that. Nothing against it. I just it's just not for me. A lot of people say I can't wait to get around hunting camp and socialize with people. I'm not a not a hunting camp kind of guy.
SPEAKER_00I hear you. If it's a small hunting camp with three or four people, I'm all in, but I've been to Kentucky.
SPEAKER_01We hunt in a I guess a group of us went to Kentucky and they pretty much wanted to stay at the camp all the time. I was pretty much the only one that deer hunted. I deer hunted hard and they hunted a couple hours in the morning and was always there. They was always there when I left in the morning, and they was there when I came in. Drinking coffee and beer? Yeah. Uh-huh. And just sitting around. That's just not for me. So the reason is to deer hunt.
SPEAKER_00Well, before we we can start wrapping this up, but I I'd ended up seeing I don't know what you're wanting to spend, but I found one of those mission bow bows left-handed. They're 400 bucks brand new. You could probably find used ones on eBay. It's not really bad. But then the old one is mission craze. You might be able to find one. They got left hand and right hand, and they go from like 17 inches to 26 inches and 10, 12 pounds to 50 pound draw weight. Okay.
SPEAKER_01Alright. I'll check into it. Like I say, I've just got her a kind of a kid's bow right now just to see if she's going to enjoy it before I spend a lot of money on one and let her get a little older. And could go the crossbow route. I don't really want to start them on a crossbow, but uh nothing against it. I just don't really want to start them. I've never shot one. I just let them follow in my footstep.
SPEAKER_00Something about just spending time out there practicing, getting stuff dialed in.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, they're they're kind of missing the point of uh just being able to grab it and go, which I think would be nice, but I enjoy the whole process, the summer scouting, the summer shooting, trail cameras, tree stand prep, ground blind prep, getting familiar with all the weapons and time. I enjoy all that that leads up to the actually opening day.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, some I mean everybody has their own way of doing things. I I like to uh put the effort in and just kind of make sure I'm prepared. It's not so much just grabbing it off the shelf and going. It's more rewarding when you have to put in the work.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, as soon as deer season's over, I'm I'm walking postseason scouting. I'm scouting looking for stuff I might have missed, and I'm trying to always try to find a new piece of property. Always. Knocking on doors, sending letters. I mailed out a bunch of letters requesting permission on different farms. Probably get mailed out about 50 letters. I got about ten responses back. Did you really? Mm-hmm. Most of them no.
SPEAKER_00Hey, I think the going rate's about one in twenty or one in thirty.
SPEAKER_01I did get one, and it's one of the properties I have now to this day, you know, so and it's a good one.
SPEAKER_00I I would guess it's probably about one in twenty five people yes, you'll get permission. It's tough.
SPEAKER_01And um it's getting harder all the time. I think that's the biggest threat to hunting in general is finding a place to go. You think that for sure is one of the biggest challenges people have as hunters? I think so. Mm-hmm. I think it's the finding a place to go hunting is the biggest challenge we're facing right now. It's become a problem lately, but with a lot of hard work and effort, I'm able to to continue on. There may be a time coming where I have to rely strictly on public land. And I do some anyway, but it's not the mainstay right now.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's not an easy time to be a hunter, is it?
SPEAKER_01It's not easy, mm-mm, but it's sure is enjoyable. I'm like you, I like the whole process, you know. Uh I like the working out the the workouts I do are kind of geared toward hunting.
SPEAKER_00How much older do you th so all the years you've been lifting, how much older do you think you'd feel if you didn't lift all those years?
SPEAKER_01Oh, I don't know. I've been lifting I actually but I've been lifting weights since 1978. So what is that, 88, 98, 08, 18? That's fifty years, forty something years.
SPEAKER_00I mean, I've been going at it twenty-two, twenty-four years. See, I'm I'm thirty-seven already. So, I mean, I imagine I mean I feel like I'm 30, and I'd probably feel my age if I hadn't been working out all these years.
SPEAKER_01Plus being in a patrol car which I was in for twenty-six years. You're just sitting there all day. Had to do something. And uh that's why I just motivated me to keep keep going, you know.
SPEAKER_00Well, you gotta be tougher than the people you're trying to tackle. That's true. You don't want to get beat up out on the street.
SPEAKER_01There's a lot of a lot of computer work in policing now. You're just sitting there typing it all day, so.
SPEAKER_00Well, you ready to start wrapping this up or you got anything else? About it. I really enjoyed it. No, I did too. So I don't know if you've caught this on any previous episodes, but I have rap five rapid fire questions. We kind of do the same ones every week. Then we'll let you share a few of your most embarrassing hunting stories. So for the rapid fire, you don't have to go into too much detail. Just rip it off and we'll go from there. So the best hunting gear purchase you've ever made. The best hunting gear purchase I've ever made? Yep. Uh scentlock clothing. Scentlock clothing? Mm-hmm. What about the worst or most gimmicky hunting gear purchase? Gimmicky hunting.
SPEAKER_01Probably sell cameras. I'm gonna ask why. I just don't need them. Nothing against them. I just I don't need them.
SPEAKER_00They have definitely changed the game, and I don't know if it's in a good way either.
SPEAKER_01I don't know either. I'm not saying I haven't used them and I won't use them. I might. I I don't even rely on cameras. The cameras for me are just to let me have an idea of what is there. Because I have killed so many deer where I have cameras all in the woods. Not a single picture. Most of the deer I kill, I don't have a picture of. So buying a lot of cell cameras the way that I hunt would be kinda not my way of doing things. I don't know if that's a gimmicky thing though or not, because they do work.
SPEAKER_00Oh yeah, they do. Hunting isn't the same without them or with them. Okay. What about hunting luck versus skill percent? What what's your breakdown percent of each?
SPEAKER_01Probably skills about 70%, maybe 80, and 20 to 30% luck.
SPEAKER_00Perfect. Most controversial hunting hot take. Uh the use of drones, I guess. Oh my gosh, don't get me started. Some people might have drones as the answer for this next one. Most underrated hunting tactic.
SPEAKER_01Most underrated hunting tactic. Underrated. Man, I can't think of one. Underrating. You're keeping secrets from us, aren't you? Yeah. Beneficial. Underrated hunting tactic. Probably hunting from the ground. I think we hunt from the trees a little too much. I've killed a lot of deer off of the ground. I'm not gonna say it because it'll upset everybody. The most uh uh saddle hunting probably.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah. Haven't got into it, but I can see how it works in areas.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Some people love it. I can see how it would work great, but I've had no problems with uh summit climbing tree stands or any climbing tree stand.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, they'd be tough for I hone just because Yeah, you're different in Iowa. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01There's a lot of big branches. Yeah. Yeah. When I was in Illinois, I had trouble, you know, finding certain places I wanted to get. We used a lot of lock ons there though.
SPEAKER_00Yep. All right. Well let's wrap this baby up with some of your most embarrassing hunting stories.
SPEAKER_01Uh I really probably just I got down one time out of the tree stand and walked a few feet over and set my rifle down against the tree, propped it up, went back to do something I can't remember oh yeah. I walked down on the opposite end of the property, just left the rifle right there, just walked down the hill a little ways to take a trail camera that I had set up with me, take it out of the woods. Well, I took the trail camera, got it back up, and I had the tree stand on my back, camera, and I couldn't find my rifle. Oh really? It everywhere, man. Yeah. Everywhere. It blended, I mean, everywhere. I found it finally, but I had to retract back to the actual tree I climbed, sit down there and relive every moment till I could find that rifle. And I found it propped up against the st it was so blended in there you couldn't see it at all. How relieved were were you when you found it? Relieved. I was so embarrassed that I'm gonna have to walk I'm gonna have to walk out of here, drive home, and get somebody to come help me hunt this rifle. And how embarrassing is that gonna be that I can't find the rifle. I've left it laying and propped up against a tree.
SPEAKER_00I'm sure somebody else has done that too.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it it was it was bothering me that I couldn't find it. You got anything else? Just the usual misses and stuff. I've missed deer at point blank range. Had my arrow fall off completely off of the rest back before we had containing rest, and um had that happen. Oh, I dropped my bow. Uh was in Illinois, uh, had a hanger, my bow hangs on, hung it there, it was dark. I was fidgeting around getting something out of my backpack, putting on my release in the dark. I thought I heard something, and I reached to get my bow and I kept filling around and it wasn't there. Nothing. And I shined the flashlight and it was laying on the ground. You didn't even hear it? I just I thought I heard something, but I was busy fiddling around, and then I looked and it was laying on the ground, and I went down the tree like it was a person, like I had to revive it. Like I mean, I was getting down the tree in a hurry, dove over it, and it was okay. It landed in a big pile of leaves, and I put an arrow in it, pulled it back several times, and everything, and went back and I hung it back up and hunted with it that morning. But in the back of my mind, I was a little bit I went over it and over and over it. And when we got back to the truck, I set up a target and shot it three or four times, and it was fine. But it it shook me up pretty good.
SPEAKER_00I've had situations like that that didn't end so well. I I didn't pull it back in the tree stand, but when I got home, I opened up the shop light and shot at a target, and I got halfway back and she exploded on me. Oh, it did explode? Mm-hmm. It was something you couldn't see, that was something wrong with it. I probably I was young, I probably didn't take the time to look at it, but hit something just right, apparently.
SPEAKER_01I've been hunting for however many years that is, what, fifty years? 50 plus years. So I'm sure there's a lot more embarrassing things happening. I'm still trying to think what's the most over underrated piece of equipment.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, the leaving your rifle behind and having to track that down, that is pretty embarrassing.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it was. It was gonna be embarrassing for me to tell people, where's your rifle? Right by the stand, somewhere.
SPEAKER_00I normally don't like to share my stories, but we used to do party hunting and we'd be in vehicles driving around sections looking for deer, and every once in a while you'd have to turn around and go to the other end. Well, my uncle, he had a brand new vinyl and a plastic hard case in the back of his truck and his tailgate was down, and we pulled up and he just sweat and like, oh my god, I can't find my gun. He he's driving around looking everywhere for it. Well, my dad had found it and put it in and was just letting him look for it. Two thousand dollar gun.
SPEAKER_01Did they they found it?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. But they didn't tell him right away. Uh-huh. They made him look around. That's that's cruel.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Especially when it could have been a situation where somebody like you knew you just couldn't find yours. He was probably worried somebody picked it up and stole it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Mm-hmm. I knew or I knew it was there. I just thought, how in the world am I gonna find this? I pretty much just went back and traced every step I took the best I could. And then when I saw it, finally, it was a while that it was just there. But I had the I went in Tennessee, it was West Tennessee, we were bow hunting, and it's around the edge of a cotton field, and uh we saw a big deer out there that evening, the evening before, and we was going back that next evening to that spot, and uh I got let out right there off of uh side by side. I had my bow, my backpack, my release, and I got to the stand and I didn't have any arrows. No quiver, no nothing, no arrows. So no cell phone. So it was just shot. I walked back to the road and was picked up at dark.
SPEAKER_00I don't know if I've done the no arrows, I've done the no release for sure.
SPEAKER_01I've done the no release and I carry an extra one now. I do too. It's stacked the same in my backpack. So in case that ever happens, I have an extra one.
SPEAKER_00All right. It's been a lot of fun. Thanks for having me.