My name is Clay Nukleman.

This is a production of the Bear Grease podcast called The Bear Grease Render, where we render down, dive deeper, and look behind the scenes of the actual bear Grease podcast, presented by f h F Gear, American Maid, purpose built hunting and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as the place.

As we explore, it's awkward, it's awkward.

It's like, this is great everything.

And then Josh mash Maren walking behind looking at the worst.

Part at all is that he's got a fanny pack on.

So we're talking about the viral Moultrie trail camera image that I put up last week of Bear.

He wasn't trying to be cute.

They were just walking over on my hunting land.

No, it's true, it's true.

And Bear's leading a mule with a grown man in the saddle like he's leading.

A kid like a pony ride, like a pony ride.

And then behind him is our friend Josh, who was just with him and you know, just walking behind him, and he kind of like.

Looks at the camera.

He's wearing a fanny pack, and then you think it's over, and then like three seconds later, here.

Comes our squirrel dog coming through.

Yeah, the video has exceeded my expectations and it's impact on the planet.

Welcome to the Bear Grease render we man.

I'm really excited about everybody that's here.

We have we have many special guests.

I will start with Lacy Pickle.

Lacey was invited all the way from Mississippi.

Really she's the only one that's supposed to be here, but uh, Lacy Pickle, wife of Lake Pickle of Backwoods University.

Great to have you guys, Thanks for having me.

Josh Landbridge, filmmaker, Bear John Newkeom, he's got a huge story.

And then Forrest Cheeter, my old buddy Forest Teeter Man.

Yeah, Forrest has got It's like show and tell a little bit.

Did y'all bring anything to.

Go to the truck?

Lake brought that mustache?

Lake Lake?

I gotta give you.

I gotta give a little introduction to Forrest.

So Forrest is, uh, we've been buddies for pretty long time.

Lives here in Arkansas.

But you're you are pilot in the Navy, that's right, which has always been very confusing to me and to my young children.

Force is in the navy.

Oh yeah, boats, No, he's a pilot, not flies.

But you're on uh just on a leave, a short leave in Arkansas.

You're stationed where.

In Hawaii right now?

And what do you do in the Navy?

I fly the C twenty six metro Liner as of right now, which is a is a twin engine turboprop kind of transport plane.

We do a little bit of radar stuff too, so kind of a jack of all trades in that plane.

Anyway, So you're a pilot, that's right.

Man.

To be a pilot in the military, you gotta be like, yeah, I.

Think I found a loophole.

I don't know, I don't know.

Now, you were on the render one time before, like maybe three years ago, I think twice four there's number three, okay three, So and last time you were here, you were flying like a sixty million dollar plane, like a five hundred million dollar plane.

Are you serious?

Yeah?

Oh yeah, yeah.

Wow.

Now that's where I got confused, because you said metro Liner.

That's the San Antonio.

Yes, they call it the San Antonio sewer Pipe and a lot of other things.

They're yeah, not too friendly.

This is not a well liked plane.

No, but the five hundred million dollars plane that year you flew.

Yes for four years.

That was in Oklahoma station there for four years playing that plane.

What did that plane do?

So?

It was a communications relay aircraft.

We had a five mile long antenna that we would string out at the back of that thing, go take off, fly over the ocean, and communicate with submarines.

And basically, if we wanted to launch some nukes on somebody, they'd say, hey, launch those nukes.

They'd send that message us.

We'd transmit that message through that wire to the submarines and say launch those nukes.

Hopefully it's not that easy.

Yeah, it's why wouldn't you just call them on the phone.

That's what I said, the same thing, And they said, you're gonna put us out of a job if you do that.

So I said, okay, I'll keep my mouth shut.

I'm trying to figure out which I asked me to be here for.

I can't compete.

Yeah, So, like, what have you been doing.

I don't fly a five hundred million dollars planeymore.

And I've never seen a five mile long antenna.

Yeah.

Yeah, Slake would like to have that on his garment to track and.

I can call some buddies get one lost for a flight.

Yeah, you told me.

Can you tell me you could give like an abbrevio?

The other day?

I asked for us.

I said, man, that you flying a plane like that.

You're in charge of a whole crew of people.

It's not like one guy flying a five hundred million dollar plane like You're in charge of a crew, right am I, Right, yep, that's right.

And you said, in all your airtime, one time you had a pretty big scare.

I mean, can you just, like, in like a minute, tell me kind of what happened?

Sure.

Yeah.

We were flying over by Charleston about twenty thousand feet and had some guys in the back just call up basically over the intercom and say, hey, we got smoke smell back here.

Told my flight engineer to go drop down in the kind of lower compartment of the plane.

He dropped down in there is full of smoke.

About that time, we started smelling it started coming up into the cockpit.

And the scary part about it is you really don't know what it is, so you have to assume the worst and then execute like it's the worst.

And so just ended up getting on our auction masks and asking for vectors to Charleston there and brought it down safely, thankfully.

But you know, when you don't know what it is, then you for all, you know the wings burning off, you.

Know, so you you emergency landed the plane in like eight minutes.

Yes, so you you're you're flying like, have no intentions of landing.

Correct.

Yeah, you could have been over Bermuda.

Sure, you could have been over the ocean.

Yeah, that's exactly right.

But you smelled smoke.

Something is bad.

Wrong, that's right in this plane smelling smoke, I mean, something is bad.

Absolutely.

You should never be smelling smelling smoke for sure.

And so and so, y'all just you called, uh called the guys at Charleston.

You must have had them on speed dial.

Yeah, just tune them up real quick, and then said, hey, hey boy, gonna call in quick.

Did you figure out what it was?

So yet it was just one of our communication cabinets that that plane being communication aircraft, just had racks and racks and racks and racks of uh of communications equipment and one of those just a can plug in there was not operating properly, kind of shorted out and just smoke checked itself and so again in fifteen hundred hours of being on that plane, that's the only time anything like that happened.

But you know, total crew effort.

When that kind of stuff happens, everybody has like a role to play so far and away, not just me up there doing stuff, but flight engineer, all the other guys too, So you know, it's all it takes to get Well, that's a lot.

Of trust that they put in.

I mean, we all put in any pilot that would get on a plane then.

But in an old red nick Yeah, okay, show and tell though we got it.

We got a lot of work to do here today, show us this we got we got all wrapped up here.

Okay, tell me about that buck.

So this buck, this is from when I lived in Oklahoma.

I'm gonna give you all the short version here because I'd go on and on.

But basically, in twenty twenty I found out I was going to be stationed in Oklahoma City.

I was stationed in Corpus CHRISTI for flight school at the time.

Found out I was gonna be stationed in Oklahoma City, started looking at property.

Found a forty acre piece down there that was reasonably priced land was a.

Little more expensive or a little more affordable back.

Then rather and Dad went and looked at it, said it laid out real nice, and I just bought it without ever having been there.

And so when he went there and we closed on it, just.

Virtually he went out there, put a feeder out, put a camera out, and really only one deer showed up with any regularity going into deer SE's in that year.

And it was this deer right here, and he was probably a one hundred and twenty inch three and a half year old deer eight point at the time, but had this real characteristic kind of drooping left main beam.

And havn't been in flight school the last two years, I hadn't had a lot of opportunity to hunt.

And I was like, man, I'm gonna go up there opening weekend a musloader and hunt that deer if he keeps showing up.

So I drove up there from Corpus Christy and wouldn't show it.

Right before dark here he came and that we had done nothing this property that was literally just sitting in the woods out there by the feeder, and man, he came in just before dark and got kind of in some thick stuff.

I tried to force a shot and ended up smoking a tree, and.

Off you ran.

Didn't cut a hair on him.

He's three and a half.

When he was three and a half, that's right.

So fast forward the next year.

I've moved up to Oklahoma by that time and won the first year to show up in the summer, started running cameras again.

He had grown into probably one hundred and forty inch nine point, which again a deer I would have been tickled to death to kill.

I mean far and away and man, he just was never super regular in the daylight.

He'd show up in the morning, sometimes coming back to bed, passed through my place.

I'm talking like the first fifteen minutes of daylight, and then other than that wouldn't see him and would start showing up a little more regularly in the late season, getting into December, and I had an encounter with him one time that second year Windsworld never saw him again.

He ran off.

So twenty twenty.

Two he blew up into He would have been five and a half at this time, and now he's six.

Yep, so he's six here.

So twenty twenty two he was five and a half and he was a probably one hundred and fifty inch year at the time, nine point mainframe nine still with but some trash now and more of the same man show up in the morning's kind of early season, and the problem was I just didn't have any way to hunt this property in the morning.

It was pretty much an exclusively evening sit type place.

You would just blow all the deer out getting into the access was not good for the morning.

And didn't have any encounters with him that year.

Now go in twenty twenty two to twenty twenty three, Clas.

I don't know if you remember this conversation, but you and I talked ad nauseum about this buck over the course of these years, trying to be like how do.

You do it?

Like what what do you do differently?

And you said, man, what you need is a blind, and like a scent tight blind that you can get in there and spend some time in maybe get a little more aggressive.

And I said, man, that's gey right.

Looked at how much those blinds were and I said, oh my gosh, I cannot afford that.

And so I talked to my dad and he was like, well, let's build one.

So sure enough, and I had a food plot built on the place the first year round.

Now so had a blind that my dad and I went in there and built and just made it as scent tide as we could make it, you know, just totally sealed up the corners and gaskets on the windows, everything.

I mean, very much a redneck type deal, but it was what we had done.

The idea was, well, I'm going to spend the night in the blind, so I'm gonna catch him come back, because that was the only time that he would ever really daylight with regularity was coming back in the morning.

So going into twenty twenty three, I spent waiting on the right weather, of course, but would spend four or five nights over the course of that early season in that blind and nothing, man, I mean, just it's like he knew, Like these deer always do, you know, It's just like they know.

And finally, going into kind of late November I believe it was the rifle season, spent the night in the blind again, and then thirty minutes before daylight, I wake up and I look outside in its big bright moon, and there he was, I mean twenty yards away, even without buy nos, without looking to the riflescope or anything.

I could just see him there and I was like, man, I hope he sticks around.

And about ten minutes before legal Light just walked off.

It's just like, well that's you know, I'm sure that's won't come back to bite me.

So after that, I had to deploy.

Like I was telling you all earlier, it is about month long deployments for me at the time, kind of non standard.

I'd be gone for a month and home for about three weeks, and I was on deployment getting into December.

It is about mid December, and he just started daylight in the evening, just showing up those last five minutes of legal Light.

And my dad is of course on all my cameras and stuff, and I said, Dad, it's going to be us, or it's going to be the neighbors.

And I wanted to be us, you know, And so I told him going there and get him.

Dad went and sat first evening sit.

He went in there and killed him in the evening in the evening evening.

Yeah, so built the blind killed him in the morning, ends up shooting him in the evening.

So but for his dad is a.

Really veteran hunter, killed it killed a lot of big deer, but I thought that was pretty cool.

Yeah, he hunted that deer that long.

He gets deployed and then has the call in Dad.

I blame the US now, for the record, I was number.

Three on the list.

If Dad couldn't have made it, Yep, it was going to be well, Clay Man, I'm sorry, man, I'm I'm over here fighting a war.

I take care of his buck.

There was a short list of guys that I that I was going to send in on them because I was like, it's just hard to watch him just walk around like that, you know, and and know that you could do something.

Obviously I couldn't do anything about it at the time, but you were one sixty something, one sixty and four eights.

I think what we can?

Man, I bet you were going insane.

See in those pictures.

It was it was.

It was so horrible.

But that's cool, you know.

The decision to send that in there was was not a hard one.

That he'd obviously put me in positioned to do it many times over in my life and.

So geesh, man, that's cool.

That's a good, cool story.

Yeah.

Sorry, I said that was going to be short.

That wasn't short at all.

A good stories entertaining well, uh to change the topic to small fish of the Gulf.

Lay a segue.

Man So Lake on Backwoods University his podcast that's on this this feed.

He he had a real home run that was.

Yeah, like investigative journalism.

True investigative journalism that became really relevant.

So you did a podcast on min Hayden, which none of us knew we were interested in.

I didn't even know what men haten.

At first.

I was just like, you're gonna have to tell me what this is.

Yah, I've not even heard of it before.

And then yeah, so my my mother, who listens to everything I put out, she called me and she was like like, I don't even know what a min Hayden or a Pokey is, but now I care about it.

Uh.

Well, so the if you haven't listened to the episodes, you can, but get just like a I mean like a minute thirty or you know thirty, just a short story.

But I want to get to where your podcast and your name came up.

Right.

Yeah, Uh so men Hayden fishing and min Hayden is a small like it's like a bait fish pretty much.

I mean you if you've fished any on the Gulf, you've probably seen them.

And if you didn't, you've probably seen it and just didn't know you've seen it.

I mean, they're very common, and they've been a commercially harvested fish since like the late eighteen hundreds, and they're used for cosmetics.

They used for human supplements like fish ol pills that comes from mannhaden, dog food, all kinds of stuff.

Where it comes in now is basically this practice has been outlawed almost everywhere in the coastal waters of the United States, with exceptions of Virginia.

I think that's right.

And then along the Gulf coast, so Mississippi has some manhaden fishing.

Their laws are a little bit more strict than Louisianas are Texas.

Along the eastern coast of Texas has manhaden fishing, but they have very strict boundaries.

Louisiana has the most kind of I mean it's not free for all, but as far as manheten liberations goes, they have the most liberalized regulations.

I mean they can go almost anywhere.

So up until two years ago, these commercial fishing vessels, which if you've seen, we have videos of them.

I mean it's a large operation.

They have spotder planes in the sky.

They have a huge vessel, and then they have two small two to three to four smaller vessels.

You could, yeah, Forrest.

If this navy thing go on, you can fly.

One of these small Yeah.

But they but uh, they go after these fish and it gets the you want me to hit on the controversy of it, or that's good.

So these fish they stay in mostly shallow.

Starts getting boring and just kind of bumping.

Pull your mic out just a little bit, uh, Forrest, put yours a little closer, little yes, kind of like a orchestra master.

Uh.

So they go in and they met these fish.

But the men Hayden, they school up and they stay shallow.

So the problems come in is twofold one.

When they go after these schools of fish, they have to go I mean sometimes I mean like water that's shallower than ten feet, I mean very very shallow.

Huge ship, huge ships with very long drafting nets.

So when they go in net these huge schools of fish, they're tearing up the bottom of the ocean or the ocean, you know, the water bottom right there too is the controversy with recreational fishermen.

There's viral videos.

People probably seen them.

Uh, they allegedly went in on some people that were fishing tarping.

Tarping ended up in the net.

You know, they'll if you if you're fishing.

You know, again, they're targeted as forage fish.

So a lot of times folks are catching red fish and tarping because they're feeding on these schools of men haden.

Those folks come in and net you know, those men hayden while you're fishing is done, you know.

And so this has been something that has been ongoing for years.

The controversy is picked up and it's.

A huge, huge bycatch.

That's what's controversial is that like you can't even kill a tarpin.

I mean, am I right?

You can't kill a tarpin.

There's Yeah, these guys are like killing tons of tarp.

The one that got the most the probably the most press is the red fish because he's you know, that's like the big game fish in Louisiana.

If people go catch bull reds.

And the first time in thirty years, Louisiana had to change their limits.

They had to change the slight limits of what you can keep and then used to anglers could keep it was two red fish over twenty seven inches, then it was one over twenty seven inches.

Now if it's over twenty seven inches, you can't keep it at all because that's your breeding size redfish.

Well, typically when they're netting, those men Hayden the redfish that are getting netted and killed or all over twenty seven inches.

Yeah, so in.

That bycatch study that the TRCP did, there was twenty two thousand breeding sized redfish that got killed in twenty twenty four.

Yeah.

Wow.

And so you did this podcast and it was really good, it was really cool.

It was he interviewed a lot of different people and it was, you know, kind of like he's like the Heraldo rivera of the bear grease.

Speed for those of you over forty five.

But so there's the but in the what was the Like it just happened that the podcast came out right before a big decision was made in Louisiana and they brought up the podcast in the.

In the in the Wildlife Commission meeting.

And I would I would love to say that I timed it that way on purpose.

I did not.

I saw the article from TRCP come out, I was very interested in it, so I went and chased down this episode.

I interviewed Chris Mcaluso, who works for TRCP, and then I interviewed a couple of different charter fishing guides and the guy was like, when's this gonna come out?

And I said, well, probably be, you know, last week, and you know last week in November I.

Think it was.

And the week after it came out, they had a Wildlife Commission meeting in Louisiana about changing the regulations for man Hayden fishing and the episode came up.

In the meeting.

They called out the show by name.

One of the commissioners, one of the guys that had the boat called out the show and said he'd listened to it because he was trying He was a he was Louisiana guy, obviously, but he lived more inland, so the coastal stuff he was trying to learn, Yeah, which.

I said, he learned a lot.

And he said the podcast was really good.

Yeah, it was flattering, man, it was cool to hear.

What do you think, Lacy?

I mean, it was great feedback.

And obviously proud of him for doing so well with the podcast, but.

He's he's awfully proud that you're proud.

If Lacey's proud of me, then I'm good.

There you go.

That was good.

Well, that's that's pretty cool.

Yeah, and y'all been, uh, y'all coming back from Okay just to now switch to invasive birds, y'all been hunting pheasants?

Invasive?

I mean, am I wrong?

So you're well, you're right on.

Ironically, I don't.

The next Backwoods University that comes out is on pheasants, and I'm focus on how they're the most beloved non native wildlife in the country, and the biologist that I interviewed, he goes, I really want to hone in on that there's a difference between non native and invasive.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's like the pheasants didn't like just take over on their own, and we've kind of like made them feel comfortable.

George Washington tried to introduce them in the seventeen hundreds.

Wow.

Wow, spoiler alert, spoiler alert.

Did he try to introduce anything else?

I don't know.

That's a good question.

Bear like, could he smell a rat?

I smell a rat?

You know what mule people say.

George Washington was the first one that ever brought mules over.

He brought in Jack's from Spain and was using those fancy marrors from France.

Makes us feel real good and real American.

I think you need to double check, you, old fat man.

I don't think anybody that has anything that's kind of like a little like non mainstream, like mules and pheasants.

George Washing Washington brought him in.

I mean, it's like him for anything.

George Washington brought brown trout from Germany.

Right after he chopped down that cherry tree, he said, you know what pheasants idea.

I've been kind of trying to figure that out in Hawaii too, because Hawaii's funny.

I see tons and tons of non natives, some invasives.

I'm trying to navigate that landscape myself right now because like one of the first days I kind of went up in the mountains skill hunting.

Up there an owl like flew up and sat on a log, and I was like, there's just no way that evolved here, like the same way of all somewhere else.

And I look it up and it's like the Hawaiian owl.

But I'm like, but it can't be.

I was like, I don't know it's just I disbelieve me.

So they call it the Hawaiian owls, the pueo, which is awesome, by the way, awesome bird.

But they were brought over like five hundred years ago on ships, so there's like this window where it's like they've been here long enough, like you've earned your keep or whatever, so you're not the invasive So that must fall into like that non native thing.

But they call it the Hawaiian owl.

So there's a few different species that are kind of like that that every time I have to check them, like, so.

Were you like really really here or just like kind of a here a few hundred years ago?

You know, there's nuance.

Man.

I talked to a guy is the most it was controversial for me.

I was talking to him about pheasants and because you know, wild turkeys, y'all know how I feel about wild turkey.

Originally, like their historic range, they were only in thirty five or that may be right, thirty something of the states in the United States.

Now they're in all forty nine.

And I had a guy tell me he's like, you know, putting turkeys in all of the you know, all of the forty nine states was a big conservation flop because we took I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa whoa.

Washington birds on the Pacific coast.

The point he was trying to make is we put all our conservation focus on turkeys, and there's other like there's native birds like grouse that are struggling and we don't know.

That was the point he was trying to make.

But I say, hey, man, turkeys, turkeys are cool.

He outpickled you, he did, he did, He got out pickled.

He cornered me.

Yeah, okay, Josh, you narrate what's what's happening here.

I've gotta I'm gonna bring something back into the shot, but you need to talk to them.

Stand by, stand by.

Clay Newcombe has a very special, very special thing to share here that probably most of us have never touched.

Last time he did this, he brought in like a forty foot Remember.

It's folks, I can tell wow, whoa, oh, I know what that is?

That right there is a beautiful Alaskan wolf hide.

So I have a look at that.

I actually have three, but I just got these back from the tax dermists, and uh, these are Alexander Archipelago Canis lupus.

That's so it's a George Washington.

Bring those Jack.

Washington put these on the islands in southeast Alaska.

Oh, these are these are the wolves that we trapped with David Bennetts in Southeast Alaska on the on the Meat Eater film.

Isn't that incredible?

That's big, big When when Clay holds that up, I mean it's a full it's it's a armspan, my finger and the tip of the nose and I can barely tail off the ground.

Wow, you know I'm six three, So no, I was really proud of those.

The guard hairs on that wolf is over five inches long.

Holy, that's cool.

That would make a beautiful fly.

That is keep your hand.

Yeah, so wolves, Bear, why don't you show us what you brought?

This is your neck right, Well, we've got this, So this is what I.

Okay, Bear's got a about sixty five inch seven point rack that fits.

Well.

I killed this like three days before I killed the big one.

So he killed that on public land in his last, last last time or last render.

We talked about Bear's bear deer camp, which has like twenty five people, and we coined Bear coined the term we are the hunting pressure, and.

We we did, in fact execute on that because we got this and uh foky and uh and and a dough.

And a and a very small dough in the smaller end.

Killed by my son.

I'm calling him out, Sam laughing, because when I came in I saw those there.

I thought Bear was going to do one of these.

So this was the first buck I ever killed.

That's the one who killed two days before.

I got just as proud of that one as I am.

I guarantee you that one was harder to kill.

Oh yeah, I mean I hunted this one maybe five or six hunts that one.

I walked two miles like a week in a row, and eventually this dude rant by.

Yeah.

But anyway, Bear had sitting with him a guy who had never hunted.

So like witnessing this deer getting killed, the small public land deer was a guy never hunted, am I right?

Yeah?

Yeah, yeah, so that was a cool deer.

But then this has in his hand one hundred and fifty five and four eights inch buck.

Yep, there he is.

So this is the buck that was on the Deer Stories episode that you heard Bear talk about.

Yeah, when I told the story, I had the deer.

Yeah, just like this.

You know, this episode was pretty cool because we told three and I don't think we've ever done this before.

We had three stories that were fresh.

James Lawrence's story was a buck that he just killed just the other day, yep.

And Bear's story was a buck that he'd just killed.

And then Jason Taylor's story that we started off with one fifty five that he killed, well, I was at camp with him, you know, So that was pretty cool that they were a lot of times we're telling like old stories, you know.

But uh, but it was pretty cool that these were all just like fresh.

And what what nobody knows is that I killed a deer lacy on the day he killed that one.

Really nobody.

You didn't know that, did you?

I did not.

Yep.

It was overshadowed by that one.

I didn't even tell anybody.

Would y'all like to congratulations?

It was a nice buck?

Oh?

Thanks guys.

No, I was in Oklahoma.

I was.

I was in Oklahoma.

We'd been there for four days, had Isaac Neil with me, who was filming, and uh, we had a great hunt but hadn't seen any big deer, but just felt like it was going to happen any day.

I mean we were.

We were seeing a lot of deer, even though the place we're hunting had changed dramatically because they bulldozed a bunch of it for cattle and h and Anyway, this at three point fifteen on October the tenth, a deer comes by and I'm like, that's him.

Shoot him.

Get out of the tree.

Basically, I mean the deer falls within sight.

We get to the truck and it's starting to get dark.

Just by the time we got we I hunted for a couple more hours.

I was gonna shoot the dough.

Could have shot a dough bear by the way, but it didn't because I thought maybe buck was following it.

I had the big dough come in and I could tell there was deer behind, and so I was waiting because I had two buck tags.

I was like, man, I'd be bummed out if I shot that dough and it had a big, bigger buck behind it.

Anyway, get to the truck and my phone rings and it's like right at primetime and it's Bear.

And Bear doesn't call his dad that often, just a chit chat, and I knew that he was hunting that buck, and so I just picked up the phone and I said, did you kill him?

And he said, I killed him.

Dad.

He was in that whisper yell, like that whisper yell voice.

And I was driving Isaac Neil's truck in the driver's seat.

Did you hear me?

I started banging the steering wheel like uncontrollably, just going.

And Isaac actually put his hand on my shoulder and said, don't, don't, don't, don't hurt my truck.

Clay was going to break the steering wheel, he said, the steering little was doing like this.

I was like, sorry, man, and I put Bear on speakerphone and we talked.

But uh, so we just threw the deer in the back of the truck.

We couldn't bring the deer back to Arkansas because of CWD stuff, and we were gonna process it and debone it, and I was like, we don't have time.

We got to get back, and so we I dropped it off at a processor that we just drove up.

Found a processor had a walking cooler, you know, and so we just like yeah, So the deer completely overshadowed the deer that I killed.

I mean, it was almost that big but but cool awesome deer Yeah, well okay Deer Stories episode.

Was there anything else we were supposed to talk about?

I don't think so.

I don't think so, Blake, was there anything, Lacy?

Anything else?

Non deal because once we start talking about Deer Stories, were like off to the races.

Lacey shot good on her peasant hunt.

That's when I heard, yeah, it's the only other thing I think to add, she shot really well?

So how many?

So tell me, like you you were using your dog?

Oh yeah?

Is he pointing or flushing?

He's flushing, so he.

He just has to stay close enough that if the bird gets.

Up, that's the Yeah, that's the desired outcome.

I tell folks.

I mean, because I tell folks, I'm like, I have a.

As a dog.

But he's a Mississippi resident and normally this is his average when we go Pheazan hunting.

He normally takes him about a day to get tuned in and then a trip.

If I'm up there for a week or more, he's gonna have at least one usually one maybe two of like uh oh.

And this trip he didn't have a single mess up until the last evening, and all of a sudden I see like three roosters get up eighty yards away.

Well some of them were hens, three of them a roosters, and knocks got.

A little far out there, and I was like, okay, so that's what a mess up would be.

He got too far out.

But you didn't see him get that far.

No, Well, I was trying to film her and walk behind her, and I normally would notice him getting nitting that far out, but I did not, and I was not happy about that.

But I was like, well, that's your one mess up for the trip.

And then he was fine.

But she shot really well.

I made you kill three three Yeah, okay, now you're a duck counter two though.

Yeah, now I am.

After this past one, I could say that I am.

Yeah, so you're a wing shooter.

I suppose to old wing shooter.

That's it.

That's what they call me, called.

Her the old wing shooter.

That's I could.

I can get behind that.

I mean, we may want to change the old to something more, you know, softer.

I'll let you work on it.

Let me know about just the wing shooter.

Okay, that's it, the wing shooter.

I would quick story about the first duck she shot is this late season and this group of like a twelve pack of Mallards just falls out of the sky like they just had to land where we were.

And I tell her to shoot and she pulls up boom boom, shoots twice.

Two ducks fall.

I send knocks out and I'm like yes, and she comes back.

She's like, is that okay?

And I'm like what okay?

And she goes, I shot too?

Is it?

Can I do that?

And I was like, yeah, the limited mallard is four.

She goes, we'll finding on that.

Out of shot three got shooting.

That's funny, that's good shooting though.

Yeah, she's good.

I heard a story this week about somebody and I can't I can't say their name, but.

They they shot.

I can't tell the story never mind.

It was about shooting one one over the limit, like but they but it was an accident and there's a younger person and there was they kind of got excited.

But I can't tell that story.

No, I don't know what made me think I could.

I got one more thing to add before we go to Deer, because it's worth since I'm sitting in his chair.

I got a Brent Reeve, I got I have to shout out Brent Reeves.

Okay, so driving up here, I had a vehicle failure in Arkansas.

I mean my trucks loaded down with stuff.

I'm supposed to be in South Dakota because the first week I was up there was for.

An on next thing.

And anyway, I'm I'm in a bind, right, So I have to get limped my truck to a dealership and trying to figure out I got to get a rental all that stuff and sorted, and I'm like, Brent lives close to here.

I called Brent, told him what was going on.

It wasn't fifteen minutes here come a pair of overalls coming across that parking lot.

Has that right?

Oh yeah, he broke down right in his town and he.

Come picked me up, loaded me up, took me to the car rental place.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's what we were joking.

It's like someone ought to que up that Tracy Lawrence song.

What's what?

What song is that?

To find out who your friends are?

Song?

Oh?

Okay, okay, I got it.

Did you get your truck back?

I got We have to when we leave here, we have to go through Little Rock, through that dealership.

You gotta stay the night there.

Oh no, no, O don't know.

We'll we'll we'll make it home.

It'll just be late, but you can get you can pick it up at night.

Okay, yeah, awesome.

Yeah, Well, good job, Brent, Good job a man.

Brent saves the day.

He did, he did.

He picked me up and gave me some moose sausage he did.

Yeah.

Wow, just a heck of a guy.

Also, wow, moot sauce.

Did you save me any of that?

Yeah?

He said, you try to save me some mm hmmm, look how I went anyway?

Deer stories?

Uh, Forrest?

What what story stood out to you?

Oh?

The Gary Nukeman, you know, just imparting chaos into the deer hunting universe with no bad intentions whatsoever.

Just be like surprised you about my dad?

No, I don't think, I don't think so.

That was just so funny man.

Well I said it in the in the in the in the voiceover.

But they called my dad back in the day tinker Bell because he liked the tinker with stuff so much.

His his bows stands.

Again another life, Dad would have been like a product designer.

He was designing tree stands and having him custom factabricated back in the earlyies and late eighties.

I've we've got some of the prototypes of the of the stand.

He had one stand that he called the contraption, and it.

Was a whole lot of confidence.

It was made of aluminum and it was like just specked out to just the nth degree with what he wanted, had a big seat.

It was collapsible, and so imagine a stand built with one inch aluminum.

And he took a he drill, took a drill and drilled out hundreds of holes in the contraption to less to make it way less.

And that stand is still usable to this day.

I've got some I've got some sticks that he's given me that are just have an unbelievable amount of old drill And I'm just like, is this even still?

Yeah, Like I'm not gonna just bend on me when I stepped.

On as the recipient of many Gary Nucomb hand me downs, and I mean, in all honesty, things I've just stolen from him when he's not looking.

Yes, yeah, there's a lot of jury rigging in there.

I feel like he missed like the saddle hunting generation he would have thrived because it's all like get some stuff.

No, I used the eater and all that he missed his window there.

Yeah, he and and he you know, he's not hunting really much anymore.

Part and part of the that the it's a little bit of a bummer to me.

I wish Dad would have not declared.

That he wasn't hunting anymore.

But he kind of made a declaration like, Hey, I'm not really hunting anymore.

And so that's why he sold some of his stuff.

That's why uh uh Dustin Cray had one of his old stands because he sold some of it.

I mean, Dustin showed us that that that it was a it was a platform for a saddle, and that that platform was just bolted on their completely upside down.

I mean, and Dustin didn't know any better because he's not experienced with the saddle.

But he's like, he's like, man, this thing is just not working.

Dustin's a really good deer hunter too.

Yeah, if he said it was a nice buck, it was he guided.

Out west, too, didn't he.

I think?

So yeah, he did some guidance.

OK.

So Dustin's I got to say that.

I said it in the vo, but I'll say it again.

One of the best deer stories that we've ever had told.

In my opinion, like if I were one day, we're going to do a compilation of the best deer stories, because we've done them in long enough that we probably have forty or fifty deer stories.

And it's not if you've ever been the recipient of Me or Josh calling you asking you for a deer story.

We're not just calling everybody in the world.

We're trying to find like really specific style stories in they're harder than you think.

People that have hunted their whole lives sometimes maybe don't have I mean, I've only got a couple of story words maybe that would fit what I'm looking for.

And but but Dale Craig, Dustin's dad is a I mean just has stacks.

He's one of these guys that just has stacks.

Of horns, just like out in the barn that just you know, I mean, he appreciates them.

But but there he's just an old mountain hunter hunting public land.

And he told the story three years ago of seeing a buck.

He's way out in the mountains, sees a buck on a he he is on a steep hillside looking across a big holler over to a deer over here.

He grunts by grunts at this deer, and he had just taken a bite of an apple, so he had the apple in his right hand.

Grunt Collins left, and he'd like he had apple in his mouth when he saw the deer.

He sets the apple down on the ground so that he can put his grunt call and grab his gun.

And when he sets the apple down.

He's getting his gun up and he and he hears the apple start to roll, and he said, the apple just starts kind of slow, and he just cringes, just like, oh, you know, the steer's just like right there, and he said that apple started rolling and it just started getting.

Higher and higher.

He said it was bouthing four feet off the ground and he just thinks it's over.

Well, it was the perfect decoy because that buck heard a grunt and then he hears what he thinks is a deer running and the big buck, it was a big mountain buck comes just storming in there with his hair all bristled up, just coming in for a fight, and just runs up right in his face and you know.

Fifty sixty yards, Yeah, he kills the deer.

That's dustin Craig's dad.

Okay, so.

But anyway, Yeah, that was a great story.

That was a great story.

Blake which one stood out to you?

Man, there was two of them that because Lacy and I listened to it together.

I'm not going to steal yours, so I'll go with the other one, the recent one with with your buddy when he was trying to get Yeah.

Yeah, that's just I mean, it's one of those things.

It's like the Apple story you're telling just a second ago.

It would have been a good story regardless because it's a great deer, but you throw in the fact that you know he's like, oh my gosh, and he's not even hooked to the tree yet, he's still hung from his lineman drope and having to make it go together.

I mean, that's just I really enjoyed that because it's it's relatable.

I can't relate to a deer quite that big, but just something where you have to make do because stuff's happening and you're not ready yet, Like that's.

A I would What wasn't portrayed in that story is how hard it was to do what he did.

I think one and forty guys probably would have killed that deer.

I mean, because he had his boat on his back, he had his release on his hand, which I never put my release on before I get in a tree.

Really no, I just don't.

I mean, just don't try.

Yeah, I always do.

So yeah, okay, well maybe okay one and twenty have killed it, y'all two would but no, But he didn't have his bow on a rope, which I always have my bow on a rope.

He had it strung over, and he told why he didn't have it on the rope.

But then the.

Deer pops out and he's.

You know, when you're judging yard, it is just by just your eye you are, you know, it makes a difference, even just a few yards.

Yeah, so he guessed at forty yards and just ten rings.

That was the most one of the most impressive parts to me, because, yeah, that it's happening fast, and it's so when you're in I'm assuming he's in the woods, you know, I don't know how dense the timber was, but it's so easy.

I mean, that just shows that he's been doing it a while.

He guessed it that good.

Yeah.

Oh yeah, he's a he's a he's a he's a good hunter, real good hunter.

That was a good one, Lacy, which one did you like?

The guy that hunted with the family and the brothers and he took his dog with him.

It's just there was so much chaos, so perfectly, and most good stories have a little bit of chaos, and his was just full of it.

Yeah.

Yeah, it was so funny.

Gary Farmer, that's that story cracked me up because he was like, just tell me where you want to drop the tailgate?

Yea cracked me just the scene of like the two brothers are fighting, a third brother pulls up.

When we heard it, Lacey goes, it sounds like something that would happen in a Andy Griffith episode.

Yeah, yeah, it was a Darling family or something.

You know.

It's just perfect.

That was the vibe.

Vibe.

I thought it was funny that h Gary's laugh.

Oh yeah, he's gotta gotta He's got like a really contagious laugh.

When he laughed, you just can't help but laugh with him.

Uh yeah, that was good.

Now.

So Gary Farmer is the one who told.

The story last episode about the mule bucking him Teddy the lines off the mule, you know, and he so you know, it's so interesting you go to these guys houses.

And I didn't know Gary that well, but I mean just to just killed more deer than I've probably seen.

Uh.

And those are the two stories he tells me, you know, and and and maybe I prided him for, you know, like do you have anything funny?

But also was like, just tell me your favorite deer story.

Those are those are two he told me.

Some other ones, but those were those were two that he told.

And yeah, a lot of the guys, a lot of the guys around here had dog hunting stories.

You can't up in the Ozarks, you can't dog hunt anymore.

Down in the Washtalls you still can.

But uh, that was a good one.

That was a good one, Maar.

What was your favorite one?

Probably the Gary Nucomb story.

Yeah, I think that I told you right before.

That's something almost identical has happened to me borrowing Paul Paul's stuff.

The first time I ever used a saddle was some of his stuff.

And I don't remember exactly what happened, but I get way up the tree and platform falls out from under me, just like you.

Know, probably for me sold.

Yeah, it was probably was an upside down platform that but anyway, I like that one just I mean it it just kind of speaks to the the chaos that can happen while you're out there in the deer woods.

The unpredictability, the.

Fact that it lasted two full hours and then just like out of the blue, just dropped on them.

Was I mean, I mean, they're like right as a deer was coming.

Was just it was unbelievable.

Yeah, I thought that was a good story.

It scares your death when them stand moves.

Yeah, whenever you're in the saddle and it just like as it's settling in, you know that drop.

Oh gosh last week twice.

I mean I've been sitting there for a long time and my my tether just kind of re situated, went too far one way or the other, and.

Just dropped you.

I mean probably that far and your heart drops out of your chest.

I can't imagine a platform actually falling out from underneath you.

You, Yeah, you'd have to clean thank you're about you're about to die.

Do you have that moment when you're like fully entrusting your life to your tether, Like after you've unhooked your like linemen at the very top and you go all right, it's clipped and here we go.

You're like, I'm alive, all right, I'm always going from the airline pilot.

I used my saddle for the first time week before last, and I have to be honest and say I left my alignment on.

Just yeah.

I was like my dad still to this day he does send me like I'm not taking that thing off.

I was like, okay, well.

School, I do something that I don't.

I think everybody ought to do it.

I after the lineman, after you get your tether on, and forgive us for those of you who don't saddle hunt.

But when you have your tether on, and you know right when you take your I undo my lineman and hook it back onto itself and make.

A long loop like another tether like so if your.

Tether failed, you wouldn't fall to the ground.

You would be dangling five ft.

But it's never gotten the way never got you understand what it's a backup.

You'd never go climb some big or as I understand mountain climbing.

You you have you know, duplicit as safe what do they call it?

Uh, there's a.

Black backup of redundancy.

You have a lot of redundancy.

It makes me feel good.

I've never thought about doing that.

Yeah, and it can hurt you.

If it's too tight, you lose some.

But if you get it long enough where it's drooping long enough, you can have your full range of motion and it's just clip back in, you know.

So it's a few more cord you know, ropes hanging around get tangled up in.

But it sure makes me feel good.

Yeah, yeah, sure you can't.

I mean, I had to talking about saddle stuff.

I had to film a guy in uh, North Dakota last week, my buddy Ben Bredigan and uh I have this thing about hunting and stands that I didn't hang myself, you know, just because you know what's there.

And anyhow, I go to the top of this stick ladder and I do have my lineman's on some good but the very top of the ladder, and he had a lock on him there and I was since I was filming, I was just hanging my saddle above it, and so i'd be above him, you know.

But I don't know what happened with that top ratchet strap for that ladder and it didn't go anywhere.

But talking about your heart stop and it had just enough sension and when I grabbed it, it gave about an inch and I was like.

Ben got up to the standing, He's like, what happened?

Like this strap?

What you were like?

Yeah, exactly.

He killed a deer that morning, so it worked out.

Yeah, I killed the nice dear.

Yeah.

North Dakota.

He uh yeah, North Dakota.

He had a rifle tag and was prepared to shoot all distances that yeah.

I mean, I mean he's seven PRC and I saw him shoot with it before its good And then that time of year, he rattles.

We rattled three times that morning and every time a buck came in the third time it was a big mature buck, and he shot that dear at twenty yards.

Wow came and we come out of a thicket, so we didn't see it, I mean, but he he rattles and then turned around to hang his antlers up.

So he's facing me, you know, because he's hanging the antlers up, and.

I'm like, Ben, Ben, Ben, Ben, They're.

Just walking right towards us.

And by the time he was like fifty yards when I saw him.

But by the time Ben slips the rifle off and gets to us, I mean, he was literally twenty yards.

I mean, that's an exciting hunt man.

It was cool.

It was cool.

Hey, I've got to tell one story about a tree stand incident and it's associated with Gary Knukman because it was when I was a young man and I was using his stands.

It really wasn't his fault, but I kind of blame him.

I mean, I mean, it really wasn't his fault, but I was using.

A loggy loggy by.

You tree stand by.

You remember that loggy by you used to be like the El Primo climbing stand and they they had so imagine the old like a PI style uh or you know, just like regular style like climber, but it had a big metal band and on the back of the metal it was a little rubber piece that gripped the tree.

And uh.

I remember I went hunting and when I left it was real cold and the tops of the mountains were kind of in the clouds.

And when I got to the top of the mountain I was going to there was frosting ice all over the.

North sides of the trees.

It was like a big front had come.

Through, so all the trees had half of them covered in like a half inch of ice, and I was like, man, this is gonna be good.

And I took that climber and I was going to a spot Dad had found and he'd told me where to go, and there was a good bucking there, good bucking there.

And put the climber on the tree and like it never occurred to me, this is a bad idea.

It was like half of the tree is covered in a lot of maybe a quarter inch of ice, a lot of ice.

I start climbing up in that rubber strap.

When it would get on the ice wouldn't grip very good and it would kind of bounce around a little bit.

But I went straight to the top of this big, big pine tree, you know, one of these pines that didn't have a limb for you know, thirty foot I mean I was well over twenty feet up in this tree.

And when I when I get turned around to sit, I take my weight off of the bottom platform.

And this is where it is Gary's fault is there was no string attached to the flat top platform, to the bottom platform.

And when I took my weight off in that loggy bayou, yeah, it had just a seat that just like strung, you know, and when I took my weight off of that, that thing just went and just went straight to the ground.

I mean twenty plus feed up.

And I'm just sitting here just like this.

With my feet that way.

In the in the in the base of that thing is all the way down on the ground.

And uh, and there's ice all over the back of this tree.

And I just sat there for a minute.

I'm just like, it's before cell phones and have a cell phone or anything, you know, And it's in the evening, so it's you know, gonna get dark here in a couple of hours, and I'm just like, dang, what am I going to do?

And I eventually I figured out a way to get turned around, and I would I would hug that tree with my legs like this and.

Just and I would have my arms right here and just with.

All the coarse strength I could muster, I would just like lean forward and put the pressure off of that thing and it would just like and then I would put and hold all of my legs and I went all the way down that tree, gripping it with my legs and just pulling up and getting you know, just going like four inches.

At a time.

And I made it to the bottom of the tree.

And now this is what I also give credit to Gary Nukem for I got the bottom platform and I went straight back up that tree and hunt until dark I did.

No, I don't like Gary Nrkan for that.

I think every nineties and two thousands climber story that I've heard has to do with with it not.

Being tied to the bottom.

Yeah.

Everyone, everyone, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's probably like everybody, everybody that's like my age or older would have been like seeing that one coming, like it's losing the bottom of that platform.

I bought a climber the summer from from Klay's father in law, and that was the first thing I checked before I left the house.

I hope this thing's got a rope on it.

It's got a string?

Yep, yep, Josh, which one stood out to you?

You know, I really liked this story about the brothers, but I have to say I got to be there when James Lawrence told his story, And anytime you get to interview a live member of the Baggeries Hall of Fame, you got to count yourself lucky.

And just spending time with James Lawrence as always a treat you know, such a such a great guy.

I mean just not you know, Clay has said it a number of times, but getting to spend time with him there and seeing his his walls with all his antlers and on the bottom side of his porch with all the antlers hanging out there.

He really is as good of a mountain buck hunter as there's been.

And h he's not he's not, he's humble.

He just does it because he loves it.

And so just hearing him talking about hunting that deer this year, you could just see the twinkle in his eye.

He's a he's an old man now, but you can just see the twinkle in his eye light up when he when he talked about that buck coming in and just lifting his antlers up, and yeah, he was.

He was just absolutely tickled to kill that butt.

It was a big one too, yep, yeap, mainframe twelve point yep.

Yeah, man, I was glad to see him get that deer.

He's been, uh, he's been needing a big one.

He kills, I mean, he kills pretty good ones every year.

It's been a while since he killed a really nice deer.

Yeah, uh uh.

Yeah, well I say that now I'm remembering when he killed two years ago.

You know what, maybe he didn't deserve that.

You see his walls, there's no shortage there.

He's still on top.

He can remember.

He can remember everyone up there.

Do the I mean, just you point out a little bitty rack and they'll be like, man, I killed that on Sugarloaf Mountain.

I've got one of his racks on my wall right there.

He One day I walked in there and I said, James, I said, this may be a little a funny ask, but I knew exactly how it was going to go.

But I just said, can I have one of your deer heads?

I want to take it and put in my office.

He said, pick up whatever one you want.

He would have given me the biggest one.

He actually he when I picked that one, he said, why don't you take that one?

And he pointed to the biggest one.

He said, you can take that one, and I said, nah, I said, I don't want to take your big one.

I said, I just want like a classic, you know, washtall mountain buck.

And so that one has been like nine inch brow ties at eight point over there for us.

You see it man up there coming off the angle Yeah.

Yeah, that's that's a James Lawrence buck.

That's a hammer, just just just a buck.

You just saw the horns off of, you know.

But yeah, yeah, that was cool.

Yeah.

So there's that's a picture of James Lacy.

That's James Lawrence in the seventies.

How old is he now?

He's late seventies.

Yeah, he's pushing eighty.

I think, yeah, seventy eight probably.

Probably he's about he's the same age as my dad.

I think dad's seventy seven.

Yeah, I think I think James is probably seventy seven.

Yep.

But yeah, well, what else do we need to talk about?

The Meatied Alive Tour?

There's still some tickets.

Yeah, Birmingham, Nowville, Memphis, No, no tickets Intville, Dallas, Texas, Austin, Texas.

Christmas Tour gonna be big, gonna.

Be big, Gonna go to One Lake.

Yeah, we'll go to the Memphis one Nice yep, nice forest.

You got Hawaii?

Inspire me up a Hawaii date.

I'll be there.

Why don't you just fly your big.

And you might be onto something there?

Now, you could be swiped credit colored on the gas.

Dallas Airport, be there?

How fast could you be from Waii to doubt that Dallas.

Uh in the previous plane probably eight hours.

Holy wow, that's a long way.

It's a long first time I flew to Waii in that big plane and that was the first time I'd ever done any like even like partially transoceanic anything.

And like we cross over California and I'm like looking out there, I'm like, man, the ocean is big.

It really is big.

I've been to the ocean, but you hadn't seen it from like that perspective, right, And like two hours later, I'm like, the ocean is big.

Man.

Like we just keep going.

I'm like, it's unbelievable how vast it is.

Like you just go and go and go and go going, you know, six hundred knots, five hundred and fifty knots just going.

How fast is that miles per hour?

Six fifty five fifty would probably be about six fifty.

Six hundred fifty miles an hour and you're traveling for hours, Yeah, from the.

Coast, Like from the coast to Hawaii at like airliners beach is probably like four four and a half.

If you're thinking it's thirty six hundred miles from the coast Man.

It is so far, it's crazy.

Wow, it's like traveling in the United States.

Yeah, the little plane on playing now is just like Inner Island stuff like it couldn't make it to the mainland.

It didn't have the legs to make it to the mainland if it wanted to.

Have you ever flown around the world.

No, no, I'm not.

I've been.

Like I said, Hawaii went to Bermuda, not land of Bermuda.

It is funny when you mentioned Bermuda.

I literally the only other time I had like a smoke scared in the plane was like over Bermuda in the middle of the night.

I would almost fell victim to it.

I was like, you're kidding me, was like, you can't be serious.

Quicksand Bermuda Triangle yep, and the Lockedness Monster.

Those were the big ones.

Four.

I mean, Bigfoot has kind of been he.

Stood the test of time.

But you know, you don't hear much about the Bermuda Triangle, quicksand and the Lockedness Monster.

Yea terrifying.

What are kids even afraid of today?

WiFi going down?

We had a whole section on.

I remember learning about the Bermuda Triangle.

I was in third grade, went home and talked to my mom about it's like, what are we going to do about someone's got to put something's going on?

Yeah, what did she say?

She's probably I don't know.

I wish I could remember.

I fel like that was.

History books though, I'm telling you that that was like the first as like this is it's out there, so you know it's in third grade.

I remember it like vividly.

I don't know why.

The Bermuda Triangle scary stuff.

Oh, man, and killer sharks were pretty big back in our day.

Jaws, the movie Jaws.

Yeah, I'm still scared of that stuff.

Man.

The beach is right on my back door and I'll go through about right here.

Quite a bit of shark activity in Hawaii.

Yeah.

We just had a guy I live so I live on Kawhi and we just had a guy get bit.

Surfing like two weeks ago there.

He lived, thankfully, but man, it happens, it happens out there.

Wow.

Yeah, Well, speaking of the movie Jaws reminded me of it.

The bear that that killed the guy here in Arkansas is still on the loose.

I mean we so we we talked about it in depth a month ago.

That you know, there were two two bear kills, two human fatalities from black bears in Arkansas, first time since eighteen ninety two.

I think they said that a bear had killed a person and that two of them happened in the same month, and I was I was just by happenstance able to be involved in the in the investigation and then the killing of the bear that we thought was the one that did it.

And then when the DNA tests came back.

We hadn't talked about this on the podcast.

When the DNA test came back, so there was DNA on the man that was killed bear DNA And then you know, we killed a bear that they sent to the crime lab and it wasn't the same bear.

So that bear is still.

Out there, which is pretty wild.

Somebody made reference to the movie Jaws.

Is there is there a planned I mean, is there anything they can do?

No?

Not really, because they basically they had surveillance of multiple multiple cell cameras overbait and traps at Sam's Throne since that day, since October the second, and they the only bear, the only black bear that showed back up at the site of the kill was the bear.

That was killed and it looked like the one and it fit that.

Yeah.

Yeah, so it was really interesting to hear it.

Seeing the response of the public to that just just absolutely ridiculous ignorance.

I mean, it just kind of blows your mind.

I mean the amount of people that were like, ah, you should have tranquilized the bear, sent the DNA in, then decided if you were going to kill it.

Well, you also can learn, like you look at that example in the response and you start to understand how misinformation can spread so quickly because people in those comments like can't believe that you know, y'all are killing bears like this out of season and you're like, it's they killed it during season and didn't you say, like the quota hadn't even been met yet.

Yeah, so it's like.

They didn't harm and it shouldn't matter if it was.

It was like totally within the purview of the AGFC to be like it's yeah, they're bear to manage, well for them to i mean, for them to tranquilize the bear DNA test to prosecute.

There were many people that said the bear should have been tranquilized and the GPS collar put on it and then once we got the DNA test back, we tracked the bear down with the caller and then you know, kill it if it's the one that did it.

So I like the intelligent, seemingly intelligent people said these things.

And I.

Usually don't go on the defensive on social media, but I did defend the game and fish and the Newton County Sheriff's Office Glenn Wheeler, my friend who who was heavily involved in the the deal because there was a human fatality in it.

And I mean they did.

The They did what every agency in the country should do.

If they wouldn't have done it, is that they pulled every possible stop to kill the bear that did it, and they did what was right.

They put out a bunch of traps.

They tried to catch it in a in like a tube trap, and then a snare trap, a bucket snare.

Had those all over that place, and.

Three days after the body was discovered, so the man was actually killed a couple of days before the law enforcement showed up and found him, so the bear had potentially not been there for three days.

It was all discovered.

They put out traps and cameras and UH and the own and a bear shows up three days after that, on October the fifth, and that's when we got the call said bring dogs, And from that day on, not a single bear came to Samsung.

So, I mean, I guess it's possible a bear showed up but wasn't on camera, but highly unlikely with all the bait and different stuff.

I mean, I don't know what else they would have done.

I mean, I mean they would be the bear.

Yeah, well, I mean that.

I mean, I can't draw up anything better for them to do than what they did.

No, I'd bet my whole paycheck that would have been just I mean, like a reasonable person would say, yeah, that's probably him.

Yeah it was.

It was a It was a i'm gonna say juvenile.

I mean it was.

A subadult male a weigh one hundred and seventy five pounds, so I mean it was close to it.

I mean, it was was in a cub, but it was like a two year old, two year old bear that was killed.

And from the photos we knew that it was a young juvenile male.

And so the bear that we killed did all of us were like, man, he's bigger than we thought, Like that should have been Misty queued in onto that about how human bias like we see sometimes what we want to see.

Because when I told her on the phone on the way home, I said, the bear was a little bigger than we thought.

She was like, really, it's a little bigger.

All you guys that look.

At bear pictures like every day of your life for the last thirty years throughout twenty years since it has been trail cameras.

And she didn't say much about it.

But I was just like, oh, it's a bear.

It was him.

I was like, I bet my pickup truck that is him.

That it is an older truck.

But we all knew it was the bear.

Sure, and and dad given it wasn't the bear.

But it's interesting to think right now there's a man killing bear out there that.

Is well, you remember, speaking of the social media outrage and stuff, there was that guy a few years ago that killed that like he's a hiker or jogger, killed that forty pound mountain lion with his bare hands when it attacked him, and people are on there on the internet were just like, that's a small one.

I over that.

It almost exploded when I saw people talking about that.

I'm like, have you ever like tried to hold a house cat that didn't want to help.

It's just all you can do, Yeah, all you can do to hold on to it.

That was a credibility lost on the Internet from that day.

If you imagine trying to make that argument.

He killed that line with his bare hands.

Yeah, but it was it was a small mountain.

Yeah, that was Yeah, that was the day I lost faith in the Internet.

I think he lasted longer than me.

Oh my goodness.

Yeah.

Well hey, thanks everybody for coming, Forrest, thanks for coming.

Man, good to be here, Lacey, thank you.

So much for glad I can make it.

Yes, yes, glad you could like.

Good job on keepecast to stir in the pot.

Brother having fun doing it.

He does do that our own, our very own.

That's Roaldo Pickle Rivera Mayor pick up that buck one more time.

He picked up the small one.

Uh shoot, man, I want to get a rep com made of that deer so I can put it in my office.

Yeah, man, you don't think they would let you have the real thing.

Well, he's not like James Lawrence yet.

Problem is Yeah, Clay called that a one forty five.

His problem, man, try off my game.

I'm a I'm a I am an official boone Crockett scorer.

There was a time in my life when I would have put myself up against anyone, anyone about looking at the rack and guessing a score because I scored a lot of deer.

The last ten years, I have not scored a lot of deer.

I'm an inactive boone Crocket scorer and so uh.

But the good news is is that my judgment is calibrated low.

Yeah, if you're going to be off, he was better than that's a one sixty five.

Because everybody's credibility.

I mean, I talked to one of my good buddies this week and he said, Clay, people all over the internet talk about past in one forties, and he said, there is not There are a few people on planet Earth that would pass, truly pass the one forty.

Now I stand by that, even Midwest guys.

I know the deer.

I've been in the camps of the deer that you passed.

There were one forty and you killed the one thirty.

I mean like a one forty is a giant.

Yeah, very few people.

Now, there are people, grant, there are guys that absolutely are not me below one percent would you say you think that's your.

Totally forests, totally, totally.

Yeah, that's a little bit of a rant.

Yeah, No, I like it get fired up.

But I think I think most people are like, man, I passed one hundred and twenty five inch deer.

This, No you didn't.

There's just no way you.

Passed one hundred and fifteen inch.

I told Clay we're gonna get him some flash cards that he can review.

And like I said, and nobody's stealed that idea out there.

Actually there's someone's gonna steal my idea.

Forrest sent me a picture of a deer that his brother killed.

And I hate it when people do that because I don't want to be the guy that says, oh, that's a one sixty and then it's not.

I'm usually the one that puts their feet on the ground.

I'm like, yeah, I bet that's one hundred and thirty inch deer.

What did I say one thirty five?

I think so.

I think we were in the one thirty start.

I felt mad.

I think I sent him another picture.

I gave him like a chance of redemption.

I said it was like one thirty seven.

I was like, I was like, oh, that's a cute brother.

He saw the picture.

You would see it.

I'll never forget Mary Believer Nukem taking the knees right out from under me one time.

I don't think, Dad, I love you so much.

I'd say this to your face.

When I killed that deer right on the wall that scored one hundred and sixty nine inches, I remember I brought it to him and he just looked at it and he went first time he'd ever seen it.

I brought it the rack just like that down to the management area where we're hunting at deer Camp.

I killed it on the eighteenth and we went to deer Camp the next week.

So brought sald Off Horns, pulled him out of the truck.

I remember where we were standing in its dark.

I could take you to the spot, and he goes, where does it?

I mean, where does it get its inches?

It didn't go wow, that's increased, he said.

I mean, it was like he was like, it doesn't look one sixty You sure just trying to.

Take you down, if you know, I mean.

You know.

And I was trying not to do that with Bear because I was the one that was like, man, that's that's an incredible deer.

Bear, I bet it scores one forty five.

That's what I told Clay when I looked at the pictures, I said, I think it's on hundred forty five.

Well before we before I killed them the pictures, I guess one forty eight.

Yeah.

Well, these tighter rack deer just don't have the quite the wow factor.

Yeah, but that deer had on that right side.

It's got twenty two inch main beams four inch G one nine and a half inch G through two, ten inch G four, seven inch or three, and then a seven inch G four.

I mean, that's a lot of inches when you start adding it up, but it's only fifteen inches.

Why what do you think, Lacy?

I think that is an excellent dear.

That's proud of you to take you.

Yeah, I agree, all right.

One day, Gary Believer Newcomb will have to defend himself.

But in the meantime we'll just call him out.

No.

I credit so much of the.

Tenacity that I see in my young son Bear here bleeding right down through the bloodlines, starting to Lewin Nukem.

Who was you didn't want to go bird hunting with lew and Nukem?

He walked into the ground with no lunch break.

You know you would you.

Looking at me?

Yeah, it's like with light.

He's looking at me because of me.

You are you the one who's wanted to go.

Like the last day she pheasant hunted.

We got after she looked at me.

I was talking about going to another spot.

She goes, I need food, well.

And you should.

You should fight for your rights, you should stand up for you need an advocate.

No, I've got it, you know.

Uh well, thanks everybody for coming.

Appreciate it.

Keep the wild places wild because that's where the bears live and those big bucks live