Show Notes
Today’s show opens with Arica’s recent hunting expenditures. It’s been a little slow go but on a recent hunt for the first time ever she heard a buck grunting coming through the woods. Heart pounding excitement kicked in as she heard him coming closer through the woods. A doe walked right past her so she’s super excited waiting on this buck to come right through where the doe did. The buck grunting edges closer through the woods and finally comes to light – unfortunately it’s a button buck!! She sat for a while longer when she heard some more rustling coming through the woods, make sure to tune into this episode sponsored by GunBroker.com!
Next up Brayden talks about his recent hunting trip with Phil on a private farm that really just wants them to take some deer off of it. After tree hopping for a while he finally got settled in when not long after he got a text from Phil that a buck was coming across the field. Brayden drug some Tink’s 69 on the way in and Phil’s buck came in right on a line following the trail. Phil let an arrow fly on this buck and got a good blood trail to start with. Unfortunately, it started to dry up as the trail went on, all the way up to a neighboring property. He let it set overnight and after connecting with the land owner next door he continued his search but unfortunately came up empty handed.
Jacob covers a whole week of outdoor stories that he’s had the pleasure to collect here lately. His first story goes in depth of him chasing whitetail during bow season. The absolute perfect scenario comes to fruition with a really nice 8-point working a scrape line directly up to him. He drew back and…you’ll have to tune in to this episode to hear exactly what happened! He also spent some time in North Carolina on a fishing trip at Deep Creek in Great Smoky Mountain National Park. They had some awesome success starting with a nice brown trout and a few smaller ones as well. Fishing clear water creeks, he got some awesome fishing knocked out on this trip with some real trophy fish being reeled in. Circling back to whitetail he goes over his exciting weekend back chasing whitetail during rifle opener.
Closing out Derek dives into his recent hunting expenditures chasing whitetail. He let a really solid buck walk on opening day that he’s hoping he doesn’t regret later in the season. He gives a great description of his hunting spot to set the scene on just how close he let this deer walk for a second time a few days later! After spending some time watching a small forky chasing a doe back and forth a real nice buck makes his appearance. Make sure to tune in to this episode to hear how his hunt turned out!
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Show Transcript
[00:00:00]
All right. Welcome back to another week of Uncensored. Folks. Before we get going into things, we wanna talk about gun Broker a little bit. Yeah. This episode is brought to us by our friends over gum broker.com. Make sure you're checking out their penny auctions. Find an episode of No Low Ballers, our other podcast with Gun Broker where they talk about.
Pro tips for when it's penny auctions. See what cool stuff you can find on there to give your loved ones for this holiday season Oh, it's good for ammo Yeah, like cheap ammo. Yeah That's the pro hack for using it. Apparently get a bunch of Free ammo, and you get a bunch of other stuff too, a bunch of cheap ammo and basically pay for shipping.
Yeah shipping so cool All right. This is a cool episode today guys. We finally have a buck story. I won't say who We've got a cool fishing story in North Carolina. I've been hunting Erica's been hunting and So we're gonna get me and Erica out of the way here and then let the two other guys Go, so why don't [00:01:00] you, why don't you give us an update?
Oh no, okay. I'm not the book story. Go ahead and fast forward through me. Lead not buried. Yes, but okay, so in Indiana we're still in archery, okay? Saturday, coming up we go into gun. Been sitting out went, I don't know, I've probably had about three or four sits by now. Seen some stuff. I feel good about my spot.
Neighbor man goes out when I do in his spot too. And when we're out at the same time, we'll text back and forth. What are you seeing? Cause we're close ish, not close ish, but whatever. Anyways, so he's always I see a 10 pointer over here, and it's about 10 yards, and I'm like, why are you not shooting?
And he's I'm waiting for something bigger, and I'm like, can you just scare it over my way, homie? Please. Okay, anyway, so Saturday we're sitting get out early, spook myself into the stand, we're up there, great, I've calmed down now, because I get super scared walking into the woods.
Was there like, an event that scared [00:02:00] you, or were you just, it's just the nature of it? Yeah. Get up to the tree stand. I'm sitting daylight comes great. Don't see anything. Don't see any, don't see anything like the squirrels aren't even like out much. So that was great. It felt good. It like the temperature had went down a little bit.
I was like, this is going to be good morning, but now it's nine o'clock and there's. I haven't seen anything. And neighbor man is Oh, I've seen two bucks and three does and this other guy over like on his property. He's seen like three does and I'm like, I haven't seen anything. God, I've got like the worst part ever.
And so finally, about nine and 30. I hear grunting. And I've not heard that before. So that's why this it was exciting to me, right? And it's all Oh my God cause okay, this is my third year hunting. The first year I got a button buck. Second year I got a four pointer. So I'm just trying to exceed what I've done before.
So I'm like, Oh my God, this is it. And so I've I stand up and I grab my [00:03:00] bow, like trying to get my binoculars out to look, I cannot find it. I'm like, where is it? It's behind me somewhere. And I, It goes off and on, and it does this for a while, then stops, and I was still like, I cannot get a look at it, it's somewhere over there.
And finally, after I've worked myself up into a frenzy, like I can't find it, oh, also! Rewind about 30 minutes prior to that there had been a doe come through. So I'm like, okay This is the point I've been waiting for like this is how it lines up, right? And still can't find it still can't find it and i'm trying to be still because the doe is still in the area she's coming around to me.
So i'm like, this is great. He's gonna follow her. Okay, great. Guess what? I see It is a button bug. Oh. And I'm like, are you freaking kidding me? Like I thought this was like the thing, right? So that, that's still good. Like I'll watch it. I'm not going to shoot it. His voice was like cracking when he was grunting.
Yeah. And she's just like annoyed, right? Get out of here. Yeah, I love that. But he is just like he gets closer. He's so [00:04:00] swollen up He's foaming and like drooling from the mouth and I've not seen that before and I'm like, oh my god Are you kidding me? So anyways, they're in the area for a while 30 minutes, then I hear like more Sirens.
Okay, then I hear like more wrestling and I look over and there is a spike buck coming through and he's got It's seven inch spikes. It's a weird homie. He comes in and I'm like, oh great, they're gonna fight. Because he's over here still grunting at home, girl. With his little nods. Yeah, he looks like he's been in fights.
His eye, like the one that had been grunting, he's got like a red bloodied eye. And maybe some of his spike has been like bloody, I don't know. But I'm like great, they're gonna fight. He comes in and this is the weirdest thing that happened. Another doe came in also, so for about like an hour and a half they had just been circling and I thought Okay, maybe i'm like hunting over bait, right?
Like i'm just gonna wait for the big one to come in because there's two does and like anyways [00:05:00] that didn't happen but the one thing that I did want to point out is that the smaller button buck was clearly like Rutting, right? Like he's all puffed up. He's drooling. He's grunting, following this. Okay, but the spike buck who I would think was older, he looked smaller in size.
And I don't know if that's because he wasn't just swollen up and he wasn't like in rut. But every time they got close, the spike buck would just go, would back off and lay down. He would go bed, and then like maybe they would get closer again. He would stand up. There was another like Fondo that kind of came up to the spike, and he'd get up and look at her, and then Homeboy, the one like clearly in rut, would come up to him, and he would bed down again.
How good of a look did you get at this button buck? Allegedly the one that was like really running. Could you tell for sure that he's got like buttons or are they possibly broke? Yeah, that's what I [00:06:00] wondered was Were they? Because it sounds like he's the dominant buck. But do you think like both of them broke off?
Could happen? It happens. If they get injuries, If he gets injured in velvet, especially, they could have even just not grown in. The other thing too that like what you said is just because one has bigger antlers, bigger spikes, whatever, doesn't necessarily mean it's the older buck. It's, it sounds like the one that we're calling the button buck in this scenario is the dominant buck.
And he's probably, I'm guessing, older. Yeah, he looked bigger, but I didn't know if that was just because he was like so swollen. Okay, if I shot him, does he count as a button buck? I don't know how Indiana's system works. Indiana DNR, please reach out. Yeah, I think it's three or four inches, right?
I don't know. But if they were, Indiana is three or below. But if it's broke off. It's below three. Below three. That's true. It's antlerless. Yeah. Yeah, antlerless. Okay. That was my story. [00:07:00] So it was exciting. Yeah. I heard the grunt. Like they were around for an hour or so. I had to go to my son's basketball game.
I was late to it because I wasn't about to Blow it up. Yeah, just blow up everything. Why were you late? I was hunting. Yeah. Tim, I'm a provider now. You take the kids to basketball. He loves when I do that. Yeah. He gets it.
Okay. Great. Cool. I'll get my stuff out of the way. So I went hunting with Phil on Friday. Took work off and we were hunting this farm, the private farm that we've got access to. where they just want to get deer shot and so we went out there and I think we got up in the tree at 2 30 or something like that and he set up like on a field edge like corner and then I'm on a easement that kind of runs through the back of the property and connects two fields and We know that they just cruise through those two places.
So there's a high likelihood of us seeing something and [00:08:00] on my front I climbed a tree got up there and realized I had Zero shooting lane. It was the worst. I like looked in my head and I was like, Oh, I'm going to get above that so I'll have a perfect shot down at the scrape. Good. I get up there and I'm standing there for two seconds.
I start rationalizing it and I'm like, you're rationalizing a bad situation. Get down. So I climbed two trees that day. That sucked and it was like 65 so I was like sweating. But. Then, a while goes by, I didn't see anything, but Phil texted me, he's Hey, I got a buck in the field. When we walked in, I did a drag, and so I put some Ting 69 on there, and was dragging it across the field, and like right through where Phil was going to be hunting, basically along that field, and drug it down through there.
It actually broke off the... P Core broke off my boot, so I didn't end up dragging it all the way through the woods and it just ended up sitting on the side of the field, which comes into play and so along the way, one very confused buck, along the way, I don't know if this is like [00:09:00] something to do, but like my P Core broke off, so I just had a bottle of T 69, so like every 25 steps I just hit a little drip, and then there was just two scrapes where I just like, that's how we would do it way back in the day, growing up, before they came out with all the, fancy stuff.
I've had those P cords rip off too. Yeah. Just drop it while we were walking or find scrapes. I ended up hunting with Tucker and saw a better way of using the P cord, but I just basically tied one little basic knot on the loop of my boot. And so it wasn't the P cord that broke. It was just my crappy knot.
No, I've had the thorns and briars and stuff actually rip it apart. Yeah. We didn't have a long way to go. Still broke off, but so he texted me, Hey, I got a buck in this field and he just followed the drag line straight to Phil's tree. And he's I was like big, like shooter buck. And he's not real big.
I still might shoot him. And then sure enough, while later, he's I shot him. So I'm like, okay, cool. He's give it five minutes. Get down, come over to where I'm at. So I did get over there. And he's I've already gone [00:10:00] over and checked. He's there's blood. He's I can't find my arrow.
There's blood. Where I shot him. I'm like, okay, cool. He also shows me on his tree, he only went two sticks up, so he's eight feet up in the tree. His bottom stick slipped out and he fell and sliced the crap out of his hand. There was like blood all over his own tree. Didn't he have a... Falling incident.
He did. Before, yeah. Not far from the spot. Yeah. Accident prone Phil. But it wasn't too bad. So we took our stuff back to the truck and called the Landowner and it's like Phil's brother in law and he's yeah, they've already harvested all this so he's like you can drive your truck back there So I literally just drove my truck all the way across this huge field that we were gonna have to drag it across Get over the blood Like, alright, start tracking.
And I've got a bunch of pictures. A lot of blood. We're tracking a lot of blood here. And when we're looking at it, it feels it looks like it could be lung blood, because it's bubbly. It comes into play in a sec. But, so we're tracking tracking, and we're finding little dots, and then we'll find a [00:11:00] pile, then little dots, and a pile.
And, nothing out of the ordinary. Never found the arrow. And all of a sudden I'm like, man, we're getting close to that property line. And he's okay, hang on. Let me message. Actually the, one of the property owners is a high school buddy of ours. So text them. Yeah, cool. Track, wherever, do whatever you need to do.
Great. Get to the property line. There's a T section of property line. So there's the high school guy. And then there's another man that we do not know. Landowner does not know. And we're out there and called the landowner like we're trying to we tried all the numbers we could on this one property Tried them all and all disconnected couldn't get a hold of them and it's dark, And so we're like we're not gonna go like up to his house or anything like so call landowner Hey, do y'all know this guy's yeah, I think my dad knows him Don't worry about it Just go through there and just, if you get caught in a cam, don't worry about it.
I'll have my dad call him tomorrow, hangs up. Me and Phil look at each other, we're like, [00:12:00] no, not going to be doing that. Turned out it was a good thing we didn't, but so we get to the property line and I'm looking across. I see one like speck of blood basically before the property line and I'm looking across and like nothing like we don't see anything like I don't know You know what happened, but is it like a large field when you know, it's all in the woods Yeah all in the woods and It like it got shot in a field ran into the woods ran across the easement I was hunting and then over to this other property and So we both are just like I mean There's really nothing we can do here we're not gonna go tromping around on this property, so we back out and leave.
I called Tucker in the truck and we were all talking through like how it went down or whatever and he's I'd go back tomorrow and see if he can get a hold of the landowner and that's what Phil ended up doing. Me and Tucker went out and hunted and Phil went out to try to find this buck.
The night, that night before we tracked it like, I think it was like a third, a little over a third of a mile of like consistent blood and The next day when he got a [00:13:00] hold of landowner's I'm gonna come meet you at the property line and show you around. I don't want you messing up my hunting spots.
Well, Phil ended up finding the blood trail and it went straight to this thicket that the landowner said, do not go into that thicket. And so Phil was like, I don't really know what to do here. So I'm gonna I, he went back and started walking the property line to see if it came back across. He said he found a little bit, but it's hard because you don't know, like sometimes they'll, they'll double back.
They'll do all this crazy stuff. And basically wrote it off. There's not like the landowner, that's how end it, because the landowner would not let him into that thicket because he probably knew, that's where they betted and he didn't want y'all messing up. He would call it betting, I would assume.
Yeah. Or maybe he got trail camera pictures of bucks or something back there, but he was like, I'm not, he's hiding something. Whatever, , but he told Phil, you're not allowed in that thicket. And he tracked the blood straight to the thicket. And so he's so he wasn't with y'all when you tracked to the thicket?
The landowner? I wasn't, it was just Phil. So I, me and Tucker were hunting the next morning. Oh. Phil went out. And yeah, [00:14:00] so if he's letting his spots be uninterrupted until rifle season opens this weekend, is that what you said? Saturday in Indiana? Yeah. Yeah. 18th. So I wonder if there's like another chance you could at least go in and.
Try to recover general area, but yeah, if there's no rain, but we started talking about it more in the blood. I've got pictures. It's like a really rich bright red blood. And so it's possible that and he found fresh blood the second day, but it's possible that it's like muscle blood. And he's I don't know that I got a great shot on him.
I think I shot him a little high and a little forward. He's I think I got him in the neck. So if it passed through and got him in the neck, it's possible he makes it, you just don't, you don't know, but yeah, that's where that. Story ends. It's a bummer. I hate that.
I know it's still super Conflicted because he's I mean I shot it. I technically shot a buck. I know I shot it He's I don't know if it died or not Think about that property out there is they want as many deer shot as possible And so it's I can't blame him for wanting to go back [00:15:00] out and hunt like I Haven't heard his official decision, but I would imagine that he's gonna consider that tag unpunched and keep going So me and Tucker went out the next morning That same morning Phil was tracking out there and we went, we got up at 3.
30 and went up to his grandpa's, some public that neighbors his grandpa's and that's the earliest morning I've had so far. 3. 30? You were sitting out there at 3. 30? No, that's what we got up. We had a bit of a drive and got out there with plenty of time, hiked up. He said it was a rough, it was a rough hike.
We got up there and it's all uphill. I set up, he set up um, and About 45 minutes after sunup he texted me like, Hey, don't want a buck headed your way pretty nice buck. And so I'm like, all jacked up. And he saw them and he said that he was like, I can see your orange hat. Over over the ridge.
I know where you're at, and I think they're about 70 yards from you. I look over 70 yards, and there's two giant deadfalls. Huge walls of [00:16:00] trees. And, sure enough, Doe is walking slowly, Buck's walking behind real quiet stealth. It's crunchy, and not hearing a thing. And he's I was watching them, and I couldn't even hear them.
They were real quiet. And the doe gets up to that wall of trees stands there for a while, and then turns right, walks follows along the trees, and then they just continue down the ridge. So they were gonna, they were walking right to me, and just turned right out of my life. That was the end of that hunt, hunted, whatever, and then went and played in an alumni high school baseball game.
Yeah, boy. How'd you do? Fine. The most important factor is did you pull anything? No, I didn't. Yeah, I'm good. That's good. You need to take that Tink's drag to Run around with it. No. Back to your last hunting spot and pull it over the Oh, the dead falls? Oh yeah. He did. I walked with him and he had to drag the whole way and then [00:17:00] he set up a he hung one by my tree, hung one by his tree.
We had it all over the place. Oh, I dropped my grunt tube out of the tree when Phil texted me. Hey, shot a buck or whatever. I'm climbing down and it just fell out of my bag. And I was like, I'll get that when I get down. And I'm like thinking through all this stuff, forgot about it. And Tucker texted me like, hey, they're coming your way.
Hit them with a grunt. And I reached into my bag. And I'm like, And he's do you have your rattly antlers? Left those in the truck. Just do your own grunt. He goes he goes okay, that's all right. I have a bleak can. He's do that. So I was like, So is that a strategy though? If, okay.
When I couldn't hear that guy grunting not here when I could hear him, but I couldn't see him, should I have grunted or would I have just like we just don't know. It just depends. It could work. 50 50. Depends on the situation. The way Tucker explained it to me, which I liked, was if you can see the buck and he's working your way and he's going to be a little bit out of range and you've got some room to work with, like hitting him with a grunt can make [00:18:00] sense during this time of year because they'll come to that.
If they're... out of range and not working your way and you see them to start work another way, you hit them with rattle and see if it's a last ditch effort. And then rattling is obviously going to be plenty loud that if you've not seen anything and it's like a good time of the day, you can try to bring them in that way too.
But he was talking about specifically if you can see the deer, they're very close. That's how he, I really don't know the bleak and strategy. I just bought one and was like, I know this time of year. I feel like bleak hands, honestly, only bleats in general, really only going to do anything to a doe, right?
They're gonna bring in a doe. There was a he was following a doe. So in that situation I was talking I knew I was talking to the doe. Yeah and trying to get the doe to come up But okay. Yeah, I mean you can hit a buck with a challenge grunt I've done it a few times i've called in a couple bucks with challenge grounds but also if you're calling at a deer that's been Getting it, getting beat up all season and then you hit them with a challenge grunt, they can turn [00:19:00] around and just book it right out of the area too, and I've seen that before.
Okay. And then I've occasionally given tending grunts before when I've seen bucks and it'll catch his attention oh there's a buck over there running does, I'm gonna go see what he's doing. Okay. I have a primos it's a grunt and bleat it's... You blow in one end, and it's a grunt, and the other one is a bleat, and I forget which one's which, so I'm like, Wait, we just gonna roll the dice here, and you just, yeah, it's usually the wrong one.
And I'm like, so should I hit it with the grunt after the bleat, or I don't know, maybe I'll just put this down. Yeah, I need to practice my mouth grunt. I've never tried to know how to do it on my own. Do it. Oh, that's pretty bad. All right, those stories are out of the way boys. Who wants to go next?
I can go next. iT's a week long of outdoor stories that have been building up. So November 3rd. Archery season in [00:20:00] Kentucky still, I have an afternoon to get out and I do, it's a south wind. It's not the best wind for the spot that I'm going to, but after bounce around ideas of braiding, I'm going.
I got a chance to go, I'm going. I get out there and I have my little wind checker. The wind, something about the trees, the creek, the hollard. That wind is not doing what it's supposed to be doing. It's still going north, even though it's a South wind. So something was causing it to spiral and come back.
So I got set up in a really good spot over a primary scrape that's been literally beat to crap. It's been there last year when I was out there. So I know it's getting used a lot. Sprayed some tinks in it just freshen it up. And then I set up behind a hay bale that's left out in the field as like a blind so I can stand over it with my bow.
I had plenty of space to draw and everything. 33 yard shot to the scrape. Buck comes in [00:21:00] six o'clock ish somewhere around there. See him coming on the other side of the creek. See him coming behind the trees. No. Backtrack. I'm watching the backfield and I see a spike sprinting through the field.
I'm like, Ooh, somebody scared him. And there's no it's not people just based on where the property, this part of the property, it's not people that scared him. So I'm thinking there's a bigger buck coming. A minute later, here comes this eight point along the tree line, working a couple of scrapes hitting the licking branches.
And that's the point where I'm like, and he's 200 yards off still, but he comes down the tree line, cuts across the creek, hits a rub, and I'm sitting on this scrape like he's got it. He's got to come here. I know he's going to comes up the hill right where he's supposed to stops at that scrape. I pop up from behind my hay bale.
Draw, shoot, my arrow goes behind his butt. What? Behind his butt. And I'm [00:22:00] like, What in the world just happened? That deer turns and looks what was that? Pops off about 15 20 yards, Turns around, standing broadside, Staring in my direction. He turns again, I squat down, I knock another arrow, I get back up just to where my eyes are over the top of the hay bale.
He's standing by his side staring at me, I stay there, freeze, I'm like mid squat by the way. Oh gosh. Holding this squat, he turns, moves off a little bit more, so now he's probably at 40. I'm like, okay, I could, not confident after that shot, but I could potentially make this. Come up a little bit more, he backs off to 60 something and I'm like, no, this is over.
He does this three times coming out of that field to where he finally goes through the tree line. He knew something was off over there, but he never made me. He was blowing, just standing broadside blowing. So anyways, I was confident he [00:23:00] didn't see me. I don't know what happened. I don't know if I released mid draw and it didn't have it because it just blew.
Didn't seem like it flew flat. That's like a nightmare. I feel like I've had that nightmare before. Dude, you just take your shot and it's just No, there's, I looked at the arrow. I went over and saw it, when I went over and got it, it's in the ground just to the broadhead. It's not even that far in the ground.
I don't know what I did. So anyways, oh, I guess I should preface, I had only broadhead tuned to 20 yards, and I don't know if there was some drastic failure after 20, but. Whatever, I miss that deer. He goes on. I go over and get my arrow. There's another buck in the backfield staring me down. He's got one antler.
He's lost the other one. Elliot. Yeah. Unicorn. I just bolt out of there. I was like, I'm going to get out of here before anything else comes in. I'm going to blow the spot up. Because I knew I was coming back the next weekend for rifle season opening. That's the end of that story. Nothing but thinking [00:24:00] about that for the next week of how blue that shot.
He was a good size 8. He was tight and tall. He wasn't real wide, but he was a good deer. That story got him roasted on his birthday card from my wife. Yeah, so Savannah threw a little jab. anD I think cursed me, as we'll see in a minute. So I, so that then this was Friday, Saturday. Hung out with some friends that night.
Sunday morning, Liz and I are getting up early and driving to Western North Carolina for a few days to fish and hike. We're staying at the base of Great Smoky Mountain National Park about five minutes down the road. So we drive up into the park. We are going to fish Deep Creek, which is, a small mountain stream, really clear water, spooky trout.
Pretty deep. No, it's not. There's there's some like 10, 15 foot holes, but nothing crazy. It's Clear Creek, Super Muddy. Yeah. Or Ice Land. So we go up and [00:25:00] we, there's a lower section that they say the fishing gets the most pressure. Or, it's close to the parking lot gets the most pressure.
Hardest fish to catch. I catch one. Catch a rainbow. Then I catch a little brown trout and we're talking like 10, 12 inches, not real big fish in the national park. The fish are fairly small. There's a big one that we can see and we're both of us are casting to in it from opposite sides.
He's in an Eddie, so he's facing downstream and Liz is on that side. I'm over here, I guess my. 40 year old eyes are giving me problems already trying to tie on another fly. And she's Jacob, I thought something was wrong. Like somebody sneaking up behind her. Flip my head over and she's hooked this big trout that we've been eyeballing in the creek.
And so she pulls it out It's 14 inch brown trout. Nice. We we fish we hike up a couple miles and come back down go into town to the fly shop because [00:26:00] Sadly, I was looking for some readers so that I could see the time And we walk in the door To the fly shop and the like, we didn't ask any questions.
Hey, how you doing? Water's low. Fishing's terrible. I don't know where to tell you to go. Oh, okay. You didn't say about that. We just caught some up in D creep. And he's what? Yeah, we caught some. She caught a, a brown trout and Liz was like, how big was it? I was like, 14 inches or so.
This guy's bullshit. He thinks we're just lying, blowing smoke. He's like, where were you? And I, we told him like the exact, like there's a bridge over the creek at this one spot. He's you caught fish there? Yeah, man, we caught four of them. And He's do you fish the Cumberland River?
He's at this point, he's trying to do the math in his head. I'm like, how are these people good enough to go in there and catch these fish when nobody else is catching them? So that was like a little stroke of the ego lizard. I walked out there, chest puffed up. Why did he ask you about that? Because [00:27:00] the Cumberland river was.
He was trying to figure out how did us out of towners know how to fish well enough to come in and fish those pressured fish and catch them when nobody else should be. So that was fun. I've never had that coming out of a fly shop before where I was just like, I'm the best. I am great. If you want me to guide you later, I got you buddy.
What's better than you and we know it. Yeah, that was cool. And then the next day, we didn't know where we were going to go. It was a morning of decision. I was like, let's go to Cherokee. So you go over to the Cherokee reservation. You have to buy a special fishing permit for the reservation.
But then there's this stretch of the Rageman Fork that is fly fishing only, catch and release only, trophy section. 20 to 30 inch fish are Common. Not that every fish that you're going to catch there is 20, 30 inches, but they are a regular occurrence. So we go park really close to this bridge that goes over the creek.
Obviously it's a bridge, so there's a lot of [00:28:00] pressure in that section of the creek. And then So, I'm instantly, you guys have fished with me before, I like these little tiny flies, like little tiny stuff and pride myself on chasing big fish. So what I like to do, so I am like antsy to get after these fish.
So there's another guy fishing on one side of the bridge and we go to the other side and go down about a hundred yards riffle, give him some space and I'm nymphing. I'm doing my little tiny nymphs, not getting anything. I. I'll try something else. Let's go big. So I try on a streamer, throw it across the current, let it swing across the current.
Bam! Get this rainbow trout in. He's probably 15, 16, fat, healthy. These are hatchery fish. I do want to clarify that. They do stock this creek. So I'm like, okay, this is a good fish. This is a really good fish around here. This is a good fish for that river. Swing it through there again a couple more times, catch another fish.
Oh, it's about the same size. Then the next [00:29:00] fish I catch out of this hole, Kite Jaw, fat, colored up, really pretty. This was my favorite fish of the trip. And in a second but there was a bigger fish, but this one was so pretty, so cool. And then, so we go down to this other section and it's big boulders and stuff.
And this water's coming through. You can see the fish cause the water's really clear. And I can see this fish with a gash on its spine. And I cast and it comes over and looks at my fly. I'm like, Oh, I gotcha. But he goes back. He doesn't take it. So I switched flies, pick him out of there. He's, again, just like healthy handful size fish.
But then at this point I'm getting tired. We haven't eaten. It's, you know what I do. It's two o'clock. I haven't eaten. Check if you drank any water or ate at all today. No, there's a fish right here on your side. But this, I'm telling you, dude, this is my favorite kind of fishing because you can see a big fish and now it's a chess matchup.
I'm going to beat you I'm going to get [00:30:00] you. And so I'm like, I'm on level 10 the whole day. So I'm just worn out. I'm like, let's go into town. Let's grab a beer, get something to eat. We go back down to the bridge and the other guy that was fishing with us. He was like, before you all leave, you need to come fish here.
I can see 15, 20, like big fish right in my lane. So he had moved down. So when we walked back, he's let's just cast here for a little bit. I'm getting, I'm using my streamer at first and I'm getting flashes of. A lot of fish and so I'm switching flies like constantly just, okay, five casts with that.
They, I see them missing it and they don't get it and then they stop. So I switched flies and I'd go back at them. I catch a 21 inch rainbow trout that is girthy and fat and it fought like peel and drag off the reel. Like I actually had to fight it for a while. Great fish. This is birthday trip. Like this capped it off is a really good fish.
But like I said, that other one was [00:31:00] cooler. . Just awesome. Like highly recommend this, we gotta do it as a group, like whoever wants to go at some point. Very fun. Not inexpensive. The Cherokee get their worth on that trophy stretch. Yeah. 75 bucks for us both to fish. Really? It was fun.
Sounds worth it. Yeah. It's took the opportunity to catch a fish of a lifetime. And it's pretty. We saw elk right around the corner and there's elk tracks out by the creek and stuff. So the next day we're heading out of town. We stopped by this old river, not old river. It's a river. I have fished multiple times.
I know where the fish are. I've caught plenty of them there and we go catch a couple of there and head back out of town. And then now we're coming into opening arrival weekend, pumped to go out Saturday morning, get up at three 30, get out to the spot. I have to, my brother in law's going with me. I was waiting on him a little bit, then I had a nature break, then we get out, I get out to my tree.[00:32:00]
I have not, I haven't, I get out there and I figure I've never set this saddle set up in the dark. I've all, cause I do so many afternoon hunts. I haven't set this up in the dark. I get my first stick on, no problem, get my second stick on, no problem, third stick on. I go to put my weight on that third stick.
And this thing flies off the tree, like swings off the tree. Luckily, I am anal about lining up my sticks perfectly so that when my feet fell off the bottom of that first step, right to the next step. Oh, nice. And because, if not, I'm swinging into those things and smashing my face, whatever. But, so at this point I'm holding on to this tree and I'm like, what just happened?
I can't see that stick. I don't know if it broke. I don't know what happened. So I get up in the tree, just shook up a little bit, but calm myself down. 745, I see a buck walking across a far tree line, it's 85 yards to this tree line from where I'm at. And I,[00:33:00] I'm like, okay, now it's time, this is, let's get it done early, let's go home.
And he's walking the tree line, he gets to an opening in the tree line, and I see his butt. Dang it, I get my grunt tube out. Grunt, grunt. That's not bad. Whoop! I see him turn his head. And then he steps back through that tree line and comes on a rope around the creek coming again, another buck doing exactly what I need him to do.
He gets to about 40, 45 yards, I would say. And he goes out into the soybeans and he's looking my direction and I can tell he's trying to, where's this deer. I have never shot my rifle out of the saddle. This is my first experiment in the game. And I try to set up on my bridge rope and I am like. My crosshairs are moving a lot, and I'm trying to calm myself, trying to calm my breath.
He starts taking some steps, and I pull off the shot, and [00:34:00] he does not act hit. He acts surprised, but he does not act hit. He steps out into the field a little further towards that tree line, turns around and looks in my direction. Just what the hell was that? And then he just slowly walks himself over to the tree line and goes through that hole that he was originally going to.
Now, when he's stopped, I'm re racking another round, ready to go. By the time that happens, my empty casing falls. Bing. Down through my platform, hits the stick. That's when he turns and goes towards that tree line. I'm not gonna, I'm not taking a bad shot. Just, I don't do the Texas hard shot.
I haven't proven myself yet to be that good of an aim. He walks through. Five minutes later. My brother in law cracks off a shot, he shoots a doe, he goes gets her whatever, he's field dressing her. I go back to the stand because I'm like, you're good, you got this, I'm gonna go back over here. He's field dressing that [00:35:00] doe and a young buck runs into the field and just stands there staring at him.
He has time to go get his rifle, figure out, he's like looking for shells, he finds a bullet, puts it in his rifle, gets up in his truck, gets a good rest on the roof of his truck. Shoots the buck. What? Just standing there watching it. I said this weekend got within almost two arm lengths of a small buck that was just staring at me in a field.
And you were just walking towards it? Walking right towards it. Dude, it's so weird man. Brad did the same thing this weekend too. Really? So odd. Wait, so like when you say small buck was it like a button buck or are you talking like a six pointer? No, he was a six. He was probably a year and a half, six, six pointer, but he was like I wanted a bigger buck, but this situation was so crazy that I felt like I needed to do it.
Like he delivered himself to me. Yeah, he took that buck too. So he gets his [00:36:00] two deer, he gets out, I hunt the rest of the day. I get blown out by a few does later, right before dark. And I leave it dark, and of course my trail cam pops off that there's a buck right in front of where I was, the best. I will be back out there. It looks like Wednesday is going to be the same weather wind situation that I had when that buck came over to that scrape when I was at the hay bale. And I'm going to try to see if there's some kind of magic in that situation and pair it up again. But, please. What?
Please continue. Continue what? Save us. Tell me something good. So we've hit three people with no bugs. Yeah. With no deer. No yeah, none of us have gotten anything. That's true. Friends have. Oh, kicker. Brother in law texted me Sunday morning. Got a third. I'm like, what? Gee. I didn't even know he was gone hunting.
He wasn't. He was driving to church and pegged a nice eight. [00:37:00] On the road with his truck. My cousin this morning texted me. He doesn't hunt. He owns some property. I do a little hunting out there, but he texted me this morning. He's got a nice buck? I'm like, what? You don't hunt? He's yeah, he drives semis.
He's ran into the side of my semi this morning while I was driving my route. Dude. And the deer that he hit looked eerily similar to the deer I shot on Saturday morning. Oh, could you imagine? I have no way to know, but it looks very similar. Oh, man. Derek. How long do I got? As much time as you need. A minute or two?
No, as much time as you need. Okay. As we've covered, rifle season opened here in Kentucky. I've been bowhunting quite a bit since I got back from North Dakota, pretty heavily. Just been seeing some small bucks. Opening morning, Saturday, we go out, we hunt all day. Saw a little bit of movement, nothing crazy though.
Saw one buck, kinda early in the morning, that as soon as he walked away I was like, maybe gonna be really mad I didn't shoot that buck [00:38:00] come the end of the season if I haven't killed anything yet, but let him walk. That's opening morning for me. Yesterday, Sunday, we go back out again, super early. Get up in the stand and everything, and I'll paint a picture real quick of where I'm hunting.
Because this will all come into play here in a minute, but it's a bit of a bowl, if you will. It's like a finger of a field that runs north to south. It's about 40 ish yards wide in the section that I'm in. Towards the top it's wider, but where I'm at it's about 40 ish yards wide of this field.
I'm in the eastern part of the woods and then there's a western part of woods on both sides are sloping up So the field is like a low point and then on the western side the side that I'm not hunting at There's like a dry that runs through there and it's a bit of a steep drop on both sides.
I'm hunting just an old trusty ladder stand that I've killed a lot of deer out of in the years and it's facing into the east. So facing into this hill that's going up on the [00:39:00] side that I'm in. Ladder stand is in a very old Oak tree, very big old Oak tree. And the way that the tree is, it actually hides everything on your left.
Good concealment there. SuNday morning, yesterday morning, this same buck that I let walk, opening morning, comes by, same path of travel and everything, just coming from the opposite direction. He's just running this field edge, right behind me. I see him again, get a better look at him this time, realize he's actually a little smaller than I thought he was.
I'm like, okay, I'm glad that I didn't shoot him yesterday. So he goes off. Then... The rest of the morning, pretty uneventful. And around, I don't know, about 10 o'clock in the morning, I hear something behind me in the woods to the West behind me across this field. I turn over, look over my shoulder.
I see a doe. She's obviously. She's moving quick. And I'm like there's going to be a buck right behind her. 20 seconds later, right behind her. Here comes the buck. It's a short [00:40:00] young little four key. Smaller than this on both sides, just a little guy right behind her. I'm like, all right, cool. So I turned back around facing out looking in the section of woods I'm in.
I hear him again, back there, turn around again, look across the field, see him there in the woods. And then I lose her. She's gone, but I still see the buck. He gets to the top of this draw, stops, he's looking around up there, starts milling around, and I'm like, okay, he's going to stay there for a minute.
I don't know, another 5 10 minutes go by, I turn around again, still see him up there, I'm like, okay, whatever, he's just going to chill out. I'm not really concerned about him. I've got good cover where I'm at. There's still probably 70 yards of distance from us. I really got to answer the call of nature.
I'm like, I'm gonna take care of this. So I stand up in my stand. And, do all that. And as I'm standing up, I'm like, I'm gonna stretch a little bit. So I'm kinda, pop in the back, turn around. I'm just standing on the little platform in the ladder. And I turn around now, and I'm [00:41:00] completely turned around in my ladder stand, facing into the tree.
And now I'm, so I'm looking across this field and kind of peeking around the tree, looking over into the woods. And I'm like, you know what? I'm just going to pull the binoculars up real quick and just glass this little forky buck. Just look at him a little better. So I pulled my binoculars up and I'm looking and I get like a glimpse real quick of his antlers when he turns his head.
I'm like, that's not that forky. That's a bigger buck. I'm like, this dude pulled a Houdini on me somehow. But I still haven't gotten a great look at him yet. And so I just put the binoculars down and I'm just breathing a little bit. I'm like, what's going on here? Pull the binoculars up again.
And this time I see him, he starts walking a little left and starts coming down out of the woods towards the field edge. And I could see him a little better. And I'm like, that's a. He drops down into that dry creek bed, follows it for 10 15 feet, and then he comes up out of the creek bed right next to the cedar tree.
And as soon as he comes out, he's... Daring [00:42:00] directly at me and that's the first time I can see him just wide antlers way outside the ears and I'm like, that's a shooter so Again, like I said, i'm standing on the platform in the ladder stand completely, 180 of the way you're supposed to be Sitting in this thing staring straight into the tree.
I just drop the binoculars on the chest rig Just let them sit there grab my rifle. It's a Marlin 3030 lever action. It's got a hammer you know you run the lever and the lever runs the hammer back, but I've already got one chamber so I just pull the hammer back and Lay the gun down on the right side of the tree and right about the time that I get the gun Rested and at this point I've dropped down a little bit onto my knees and I have my knees in the seat of The ladder stand and I get it down and as soon as I get you know The rifle and the scope on him.
He's walked. He's in the field now, and he's walking to my left He's gone behind the big tree So I'm alright, so I just reposition go to the other side of the tree get the rifle ready and as soon as [00:43:00] he walks On the other side, I've got a perfectly good shot at him. Broadside, quartering two, just a hair, but not much.
And he's not running or anything, he's not chasing a doe, it doesn't look like. But he's just walking slow, so I give him the ol BAH! He just stops, pull the trigger, see him hit, he jumps, runs up into the woods, crosses that creek bed, goes up the hill, and as he's trying to come up out of the creek bed and up the hill, I can see that his back legs are just giving out, and then he just crashes right there.
Chill out for a second, just sit down, breathe a little bit, turn around again. And when he went down, like I saw him go down, but after he hit, I couldn't see where he was. And so I'm like, all right, I'm going to give it a minute or two. Waited a few minutes, started getting all my stuff, climbed down, went over to the field.
We've talked about this before. You all know this, but I'm colorblind. So I'm like I'm like 99 percent sure this deer's dead right over there. I can walk right over to it, but I'm still looking for blood [00:44:00] just to see. I don't see anything. But when when I got to the creek bed though, I actually did start seeing like blood that even I could see.
I'm like, okay, yeah, there's blood here. So I dropped down in the creek bed come up and he had actually tumbled on the other side of a log. So I come up and I wasn't afraid or having any doubts or anything, but like I came up on the other side of the creek bed and for a second I'm like I don't see him laying here.
And I'm like, Oh, and then I catched antler like on this backside of this log and I'm like, okay, there he is. So I walk over and find them. But yeah, he was a nice eight pointer. I've killed a lot of eight pointers but this dude's wide. He's the widest buck I've probably ever shot. Very wide. He's what, like four, five, six inches outside of his ears?
Yeah, I put a tape on him, which I mean, so in Kentucky when you call bucks in, they want to know if the antler spread is 11 inches or more. So you don't need an exact number, but you need to know if it's above 11. So I put a tape on him and outside edge, he was just shy of 20 inches. So yeah. Bangarang.
But [00:45:00] no, so the story about walking up to the deer and being I go up to him, he's there, I'm like alright, cool, bucks down, start figuring out like my game plan, what I'm gonna do, how I'm gonna get the deer out of here. I decide I'm just gonna gut him right where he's laying. And then, get all that weight out of him, cause it's gonna make dragging him...
Down and up out of this dry creek bed a lot easier a little less weight So I'm like, all right, that's what I'm gonna do so I walk back out to the field drop all my gear and I'm just gonna go get my truck and drive the truck right Up to where I'm at and I walk back out in the field and I look and there's this little forky Which honestly might have been the one that I originally saw.
Yeah, he's just standing there in the field Just staring at me and I'm like, I just shot my dad I'm like, okay cool, man. So I just start walking right towards him He's just staring locked on me like trying to figure out what I am walking right towards him stop I'm like what's going on pull my phone out take a picture of him, and that's actually the picture I posted on go wild when I logged you know my hunt for him [00:46:00] yesterday Start walking more towards him, and I'm not kidding I was almost from me to you Jacob before he turns and bolts He's just getting a good look at you cuz he's gonna kill you in the woods next year No, it gets crazy my dad it gets crazier, so I've text Jake Y'all have met Jake, most of y'all have met Jake that I work with at the fire department.
He killed a really nice buck opening morning, and so I text him and I'm telling him, Hey, I got a buck down to you, whatever, and I'm walking, and this is after the little forkeys ran off, I'm walking through this field going back to get my truck while I hear something crashing off to my right.
I stop, look, here comes a doe walking probably 30, 20, 25, 30 yards to my left through the woods and I'm in the field. And then right behind her is a spike buck chasing her and he's just foaming at the mouth running and she's worked up. They are ruttin. And then right behind this little spike is another little forky.
And then I hear something crashing to my left. I look over and it's that little [00:47:00] forky that I'd walked right up to. He comes out of the woods, bounds across the field and joins in on the chase with them. So they're just running, chasing right next to me as I'm walking through this field. But yeah got the truck, drove it over there, got him gutted, got him up in the truck.
Nice. Did you weigh him at all? No. You can do a Euro on him. Yeah, I got him at home, done by Derrick. Done by Derrick. Euros by Derrick. Euros by Derrick. I thought I went, When you talked about peeing not because I was shocked that you peed, But, I thought you were gonna I thought this story was going to be like, I shot him with my pants down because I thought that's where it was going.
So I was like, no, but it just, it worked out that I had to, because at that point I was already standing up and turned around and stand and just ready to go. Whereas if I hadn't had done that, I would have been looking at this deer over my shoulder. I would have had to have figured out how to get turned around in the stand when he was potentially in the field where I wouldn't.
Already have, [00:48:00] I wouldn't have the cover to make the moves that I had at that point. And the weirdness of seeing a classing that thing. Yeah, I watched that Forky behind me for 15, 20 ish minutes with that doe. Off and on, I wasn't staring at them the whole time. Because they were behind me, it was uncomfortable, just to look behind you the whole time.
But every once in a while, I'd turn around and still see him there. And then I'd turn around another time, and I'm looking, and I'm like, oh, there he is again. I'm like, oh, wait, nope, that's not him. I have no idea where this buck came from. In the evening, opening day I say evening, it was sundown, past legal.
I could hear a buck back there doing a lot of tending grunts. And I wonder if it wasn't maybe him just hanging out back there. So what, how are you tracking deer in your color blind? Typically, when you don't see them. I don't. I'm very conservative with my shots. I make shots that I know are gonna drop a deer right there.
And I've let a lot of deer walk probably that other people could have taken shots at just because I [00:49:00] don't want to leave anything to chance. Okay. That's part of it. If I'm hunting with somebody, I've been in that situation. It happened with the black bear in Colorado. We shot, I shot that bear the night before and we've tracked blood.
My buddy tracked blood, and I mean he knows me very well. We've known each other our whole lives. He knows I'm colorblind it's not me trying to get out of anything. He's just like I know you can't see this track my bear Do you typically hunt like a field then cuz it might be I don't know I guess it's hard in the woods Typically to see no so one little life hack that I have and I've I think I've talked about this before Somewhere either on go wild or on the podcast.
I can't remember but I used to carry this around in my pack all the time But now it's just gotten to a point where I just leave it in the truck and I just go get it if I need It but I carry a little spray bottle of hydrogen peroxide Because if you spray that on blood it foams up and turns white. So I can see like the sheen.
And, but I won't, I can't tell if it's blood or if it's just... Like water. So if you ever see Derek out there just [00:50:00] spraying the grass. Yeah, so I'll spray and I'll see it foam up and he's killed someone and he's trying to find out what they are. I'll know that's blood. But yeah, no, I'm just very conservative with my shots.
I take shots that I know are going to work and then I will oftentimes rely very heavily on some, someone else if I do have to blood track. I've hunted my whole life. I've been in situations where I've had to blood track animals. Probably not the way you're supposed to do it, but just with the nature of me being colorblind, I'll rely a lot more on seeing where the animal ran off to and reading the terrain and seeing where stuff's pushed down.
I'll follow that more than I'll follow blood because I can't see the blood. But yeah, I've had years ago, I shot a deer when I was hunting in the evening by myself, shot a deer and it ran off and I, so I'd found a little bit of blood on my own, just on accident and I was like touching it and actually seeing it like on my fingers.
Like I know this is blood and had a buddy come out the next morning and help me track it because I couldn't see it interesting. So if it's low light. Would you be able to [00:51:00] see with the, that blacklight trick? I've used them before and I don't really, they don't, no, not for me. But yeah, it's not fun. There's nothing I dread more than tracking a deer.
I know no one enjoys doing it, but for me, I feel like there's just an extra level of hatred for it. Cause it's I'm trying to see something I cannot physically see. Yeah. Good job, man. Yeah, he's a great dude. So that's, he's, that's in the book. I got another little hunt that I'm doing, a little control hunt and a little arboretum close to here.
I'm gonna try to get a deer out. There have to be a dough. And then if I do any more hunting out at our property, it's just gonna be with the bow. 'cause I'm doing pretty good. What's freezer? What's burrito? Ar an arboretum. . What is that? What did you say? An AR burrito? Yeah. What is it though for? An Arboretum.
Arboretum, yeah. What is it? It's like a privately run forest, like a conservation protection area kind of thing. Arbor. [00:52:00] Arbor. They typically give their open to the public, but they're privately run. Nice. Cool. That's it. Go all team. One on the board. Finally. Finally got one. A lot of missed opportunities out there.
It's that time of year though, man. Things can change in a week. We could all be talking about our bucks. We did say last week that we would have some good stories this week. We delivered. Thank God Derek did something. I haven't even talked about North Dakota if we just wanted stories. We even got to hear about the duck hunt where you wore a blister on your finger from pulling the trigger so much.
Yeah. He was, at your party, he was telling me about it and I was like, how'd it go? He just goes like that and shows me his finger and it's just all blistered up and I was like, what's that from? And he goes, the trigger. Pull the trigger. Pull the trigger. Yeah. Yeah, we'll have to work that in sometime when we don't have buck stories.
Cool. Alright make sure y'all are logging your time for this podcast and your [00:53:00] hunts and sharing stories about deer or even turkeys, if you're one of those people who turkey hunts in the fall. Yep. That for you, Paul. Cool. Alright, thanks for listening, guys. See ya. See ya.
