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Speaker 1: Welcome to this Country Life. I’m your host, Brent Reeves from coon hunting to trotlining and just in general country living. I want you to stay a while as I share my experiences in life lessons. This Country Life is presented by Case Knives from the store More Studio on Meat Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you the best outdoor podcast that airways have to offer. All right, friends, grab a chair or drop that tailgate. I’ve got some stores to share a valuable lesson that only costs a buck. Lessons can be learned in every situation if you’re paying attention. Today’s episode is one of those, and it revolves around the annual pursuit of white tail deer. More folks chase deer than any other creature in the woods, and I’ve seen some some sketchy stuff go on when a person’s judgment gets clouded by these magnificent critters. The teacher and the student were separated by only a handful of years, that in that span person can become wise far beyond a measured amount of time. We’ve got a lot to talk about, so let’s get to it. Forty one years is a long time. Forty one years from the memory of a specific hunt and forty one years in prison are both a tad shy of fifteen thousand days. But one seems like yesterday, and the other, I assume would be like a literal lifetime. Time, as they say, is relative to the subject matter. But I remember this hunt like it was yesterday in the grandest detail, for what I lost instead of what I got. But what I got would eventually be bigger than what I was after I was sitting within sight of our camp’s eastern boundary, a surveyed white painted landline adorning trees that separated the Timber company land within our claim and the clearcut of a different timber concern. The stand I was roosted in during the first week of gunn deer season in Arkansas was built by my brother Tim and his brother in law, Joe Bryant. It consisted of short tubeerforees used as rungs that were nailed between the gap of two young white oak trees that stood a few feet apart fifteen feet above the planet Earth. Up that series of steps was constructed a small platform that was two feet wide and about three feet long and floored with enough tube before is to make a good seat you could comfortably sit and down or your legs like you were sitting on the tailgate of a truck, or use either tree as a backrest and face either east or west. I bought on the trail that went right past it, that was leading out of or into the neighboring clearcut. It was all determined by the direction the deer were walking. It was a quarter of a mile walk east from the big army tent that we were sleeping in to the stand, and to get there you’d have to walk the very trail you hoped the deer would be using. Once you got there. A cold front had the wind coming out of the north that morning that was perfect for getting deer up on their feet, and that westward running trail for deer coming out of their beds from that big thicket across the property line would have me sitting in the perfect spot to catch them coming toward me before they ever had a chance to smell me. Breakfast that morning was coffee, lightbread, bacon and eggs, and we cooked it in a vist queen wrapped kitchen that was just big enough to hold a cold and stove, a lantern and the ice chest containing all the victials. If you try to do the math on that light bread description, it’s just untoasted white bread from the loaf. I was in my fifties when I learned not everyone calls it that. I’ve learned a lot of things in my fifties. Sadly none of them have been how to make myself invisible. That would come in real handy during turkey season. It was cold that morning, with a good frost, and I had climbed onto my perch way before the appointed time for the sun to rise. The two trees the stam was built in stood side beside, laying the east and west. I sat down, and I leaned against the tree to the west and faced the opposite direction from which I came. With an unobstructed view from that little oak flat, I was sitting in to the edge of a thicket on the other side of the property line, eighty yards away. As down creeped into Arkansas, I could see to my left, which was north, and to my right being south, and everything in between through the open wood. An occasional glance would have to suffice for covering the way I had walked in. But knowing how much those deer like bedding in that thicket made me direct my full attention in that direction. I had gotten as cold as I was going to be all day, which for me is right after the sun comes up. The occasional rigor would rattle me as I sat quartered away from the wind when I heard the old familiar sound of leaves crunching under deer feet louder and louder. It became getting closer and closer, and I had no reason in my mind for not being able to see it. As plain as the day that was dawned before me. I could see the well beaten trail leading out of that thicket that could have doubled as a cattle trail across a pasture. Where was this dad gum deer? And then, from somewhere in the recesses of my misfiring synapses, the thought occurred to me to look back the way I came there, thirty yards away and getting closer. Was a little spike walking toward the thicket, stepping in the tracks I just made thirty minutes ago, his nose dipping down almost to the dirt every few steps. I immediately began to warm up as I followed the young buck as He traced my path to the stand, stopping right beside me where I was sitting and where I stepped off the trail and climbed the tree. The wind was blowing straight to him, but since he hadn’t run off, I assumed it was blowing over the top of him. Why he hadn’t boogered over smelling where I had walked was the math problem I was currently working on in my head. He stuck his nose down and got another whiff and jerked his head up, looking in the direction of the thicket. I swiveled, watching between him and the trail that lay before him. When I saw a dough in a yearly and pop out of that big brier patch and head toward where he stood and I sat. She wasn’t running, but she she wasn’t just strolling either. Her yearling was big, but he still had a few spots that you could see, and alternated between picking up acrons and trying to nurse. She ignored the tempts of him trying to nurse, except for the occasional kick to Junior’s head. They spoke the universal mom language of I’m busy. You got to find your own self. Some deed she stopped twenty yards away, and that little buck hadn’t twitched from his location until she did. Being the opportunitist he apparently was, old, Spike ignored the tax deduction that though had tagging along with her, and took it upon himself to let Romance bloom. It was quite rude. The Spike was bobbing and weaving like a cutting horse, trying to keep her in one spot for a slow dance, and wound up having this behind to the thicket she and Junior just came out of. She’d already taken a couple of poly time jabs that Spike went from. Out of that same thicket, Spike was no longer looking toward a big nine points shot out of there like he was late for work. He carvered the sixty yards like a missile and was Spike’s full attention directed toward Mama. The big buck gave Spike nine reasons to get out of dodge right in his back pockets, Yauza, The world being round is the only way Spike could ever make it back to those woods. He left there so fast that if it’s flat, he’d drawn off the edge before he could have slowed down the stop but that wasn’t the end of the action by any meanings. Well, it was playing to see for everyone that these two had a history there mutually agreed upon amorous field. Congress used the whole dah floor from the ticket table to the band. Junior and I just passed the time focused on other things like ian akerons and trying not to stare, And all of a sudden I remembered I was there to shoot a deer. The band must have taken a break, because when the dancing stopped, Mama and Junior used on down the trail, and the nine point just stood there catching his wind. When I decided to let it all out of him, he was more than a quartering to me when I settled the crosshairs on where I wanted, and while he watched his mane squeeze disappear down the road, I gave the trigger a squeeze and send him one hundred and fifty grains of getting my freezer, all of which he told it with him at a slightly more timid rate than the spike had left with He was heading north and was swallowed up by the thickness of the overseas of pine woods between the oak flat where I was sitting in the State highway before the echo of that rifle had stopped bouncing around in the woods. I know I hit him. I couldn’t have missed from that distance. He was rolling low and hugging the ground when I last saw him, and I walked over. I found some blood after a short dish. Now it wasn’t poor now, but it wasn’t dripping neither. He was headed toward the highway with me in hot pursuit when I hit a seemingly impenetrable thicket a double back and headed to the camp to get my truck and some help. Tim and Joe had heard me shooting were waiting for me when I got there. I was telling them the story. I told him where I had lost him in the thicket near the highway and that we needed to go get him from there. As I was explaining to them where he was, we heard a rifle shot exactly where I was pointing. We all paused and looked at one another, and Joe said, somebody just shot your deer. From that point, the fictationous band that was playing Belly Rubbie music for the Star Crossed Ungerlet’s cueued up the traveling music, and I jumped in my truck and Tim and Joe foun I pulled out of the highway half a mile down the road, and I could see three folks standing on the side of the road exactly where I figured my deer would have crossed. A sigh of relief at that particular point of my life. The deer that only moments ago I had shot and tracted that thicket is the biggest buck I had ever shot in my life. I had already picked a spot out for him on my wall. I don’t know why those folks shot. I assumed they must have give them the old coup de grass. But whatever reason could there have been, I pulled up and there stood what could only be described as an amalgamation of bens. Now, this eclectic crew of misfits gathered together could have only been the result of some monumental egregiousness of human mouth feastings. They could have rented themselves out to haunt a house. First impression showed that they were missing teeth, a limb, and personal hygiene, and what theycked in cleanliness and tasteful of appearance they made up for with tier one trashiness. And they were all standing over my buck. One was holding the lever action rifle. Was he still kicking when y’all shot him? I said that to no one in particular, but aimed at it to whomever was going to be the spokesman for the group kicking. He wasn’t kicking. He was standing there on the edge of the woods when I shot him. That’s Timber Company land. Anybody can hunt there. Hmm. Well, now he was right about that, even though it was counted as ours by gentlemen’s agreements from the camps all around us. This was still before releasing land started. We had no legal right to tell anyone that they couldn’t hunt there. But I said it don’t matter. I shot him fifteen minutes before you did. That’s my deer now. I fitting loaded him in my truck. The greasiest of the lot slowly looked up at me and said that, dear is ours. I could see this playing out in a couple different ways, both of which would have me celebrating my nineteenth birthday in the state penitentiary or Reeves cemetery. What a terrible way to spend a birthday, and yet that’s exactly where I was intending on going at that moment in my life over a deer, as they say in the dramatic movie scripts, the plot thickened. I am not a coward, but I have been scared before, seeing the totality of a situation. But as I stood there looking at my buck, me on one side, and the mangiest trio of ne’er do wells I’ve ever seen, including up to right now, I didn’t have sense enough to even be cautious. Words were exchanged, and in a matter of moments things began to get a little sporty, and my brother walked up with Joe Wright beside it. All right, that’s three on three, somebody ring the bell and let’s get this Donny Brook started. I got a deer to skin. Tim asked me what happened, and I told him and Joe about the conversation the three amigos and I had just finished. Tim introduced himself to these vagabonds, and I looked at him sideways when he did. Now, Joe referenced the story that that fellow had told me, and he said, you shot this deer when he was standing over there and pointed to the edge of the woods. Yeah, shot him. Right behind the shoulder. That’s where it went in, and he pointed right where I had shot him. Joe rolled the deer over. On the opposite side was an exit woe filled with dirt. Joe looked at the dirt, and the woman then looked at the misgrant that was holding the rifle and said, now you didn’t you shot that deer laying right there on the ground. That’s how all the dirt got in there. Well, that was it for me. It’s time to rumble. I’ve already picked out who I was gonna punch first. The man with the rifle was fixing the get one on his go to sleep button. It’d be hard to see who to shoe with both his eyes shut and his nose mashed flat, But my plan was to continue waiting on him while Tim and Joe settled on the other two, one of which was sporting a freshly bandaged nub above his right wrist where his boxing gloves should have been. Now, which everyone got him was gonna have an incredible reach advantage. Then my brother said, Brent, shut your mouth and go back to the truck. Y’all get this deer and get out of here. Don’t let me catch you back here again. He said that with a sternless unlike I’d ever heard him use. They didn’t say a word, and I didn’t care what he said. I find to knock this dude out. And Tim looked over me and said now, and I knew he meant for me to do what he said, not what I was intended. I turned around and I walked back to that truck, mad as a mashed cat, and I turned to see Lefty. I’m just guessing they called him Lefty. I asked what I’d have called him, but he was now holding the rifle while the other two drunk the deer to their rattle trap of a car. There went my deer. Now here came my brother. I didn’t want to talk to him. But as I started to pull off the shoulder and go back to camp, my right front wheel dropped into a hole and I got stuck. I had to stop him now and ask him to pull me out. I wanted to punch him, and now he was laughing at me for being stuck, on top of just giving my deer away. I felt like Tom Cheney in the classic Questern True Grit when little Maddie Ross shot him with her late father’s big forty four caliber Coult Dragoon revolver. He said, everything happened to me and now I’m shot by a child. Well I feel you, Tom, but you only got shot your brother didn’t give your biggest deer away. Tim and Joe pulled me out and we all went back to the camp. I was steaming, but it started to cool off a degree or two by the time we all found our spots at the fire. We talked about the right and the wrong things to do, and how the right thing is hardly ever the easiest to do or to see. My feeling of loss was over those horns, and for years afterwards I felt somewhat ashamed of being willing to fight someone over something that’s insignificant as a set of deer antlers. Now, had I been trying to feed my family with that deer, Tim would have been the first one to get out and start swinging. Maybe that’s what those folks motivation was. I don’t know. If I had to say, I’d guess their interest was the same as mine. A trophy that only they and the Good Lord know that And in the grand scheme of things, what does it matter? It didn’t then and it doesn’t now now. What does matter is being magnanimous and display an integrity, And my brother gave me a lesson in both that day, one that I haven’t forgotten. Anytime we tell that story, we always find the humor and poking fund at that crusty tree over by foods. But in my mind, I remember the day that my brother made me stop think about the situation you find yourself in, realizing that what’s really a stink. Actions have repercussions that can affect your life forever. Like like a rock dropped in a steel pond, the ripples go in every direction and touch everything within the banks, each of them in one way or another. Be hard to look back now, over forty years later, knowing I could have walked away from a potentially bad situation and didn’t. Thanks Tim, But sometimes I still want to punch you. Thank you so much for listening to this country life of mine. Bear grease in a backwoods university. Drop us a review if you have a chance, and send those stories into my tcl story at the meat Eater dot com. If it’s a hunting story, try to make it as relevant to the time we’re in I’ve got some good Turkey stories waiting, but it’ll be a few months before we tell them my signature case. Many trappers back in stock and they tell me they’re starting to make a run out the door once again. I want one. You might want to check in on them before they’re gone again. Christmas ain’t that far away. The same thing with the tickets for the Meat Eater Dip down here in the Motherland this December. That’s going to be a fun time and I’m really looking forward to it. Hey, if you like crime stories, check out the new Blood trails Pot podcast with my partner Jordan Sellers. That’s dropping on October the thirtieth. Man, it’s gonna be good. That’s it for me, And until next week. This is Brent Reeves signing off. Y’all be careful
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