Garrett & Jim Shear 180" P&Y

Yeah, we always think that opening weekend is a good time to get on a deer when they're in their natural patterns and they haven't been pushed by anyone or anything. Garrett & Jim Shear 180" P&Y

It's a time where they still feel safe and they're still running on daylight hours and they haven't moved over to a more nocturnal lifestyle.

Opening weekend is always a good time for any time to set up on a big buck. For me, I have a stand that we put in about two or three years ago. Garrett & Jim Shear 180" P&Y

It's actually just below our house on the farm that we hunt and I was down on that stand and we had a place between an island out on the field that kinda pushes the deer within 40 yards of the stand that we have there so it really makes it for a nice shot.

Garrett & Jim Shear 180" P&Y

I shot it on the Sunday of opening weekend. The night before I saw about 30 deer from the stand, had about 15 of them come within shooting range, passed up 5 pretty nice bucks little baskets. One probably would've scored in the 130s maybe, but they kept looking over their shoulder and I had this kinda natural instinct that they were kind of spooked by something behind them.Garrett & Jim Shear 180" P&Y

But nothing happened Saturday night and the same kind of thing happened. The deer were all in their patterns, the five same bucks came out all at the same sequence. Right behind them came this monster and I had about 5 or 10 seconds with it out in the field before I took the shot, so luckily I didn't have to think about it for too long. But yeah, I made a good clean shot on it, ran about seven yards and found it in a ditch right above Lester's farm. It was a good hunt.

The deer were all in their patterns

Bruce: So having said that, let's pass the phone over to Jim. Folks we're doing it on a remote so Jim's gonna talk. Jim, let's talk about the hunting tradition and why Garrett was able to close the deal on Mr. Magnificent.

Jim: Well as Garrett mentioned, our whole family has hunted ever since I can remember. I know you know my dad well, and he started us off very young, and I have two brothers Gary and Marv that I know you know and we've always been a family that's hunted.

our whole family has hunted ever since I can remember

Marv got us into bowhunting several years ago and my boys Ryan and Garrett started hunting with me when Garrett was actually 8 and Ryan was 10 they went on their first deer drive with us. It was a great story and I ended up shooting, back in those days a nice eight-pointer and over by Butler's, which I know you know that area too, so that was their first experience.

Every fall it's a huge tradition for our family to get together and we start bowhunting in the middle of September and we really bowhunt or gun hunt just about every weekend through December. It's a big part of our family and a highlight for me every fall is when the boys come home and bowhunt. Like this weekend both my boys are here and Marv and his boys are here and we're all bowhunting, so it's a great time.

Okay, all right one of the things that I was reminiscing about this morning with Garrett was my dad was also not only an avid hunter, but he was a hunter safety instructor for many years and he was our hunter safety instructor for all five of us kids.

Every fall it's a huge tradition for our family to get together

My two brothers and both my sisters all went through hunter safety and that was very important to him and I think that's again, kind of tied into why we are. I believe we're good hunters and I think we're honestly safe hunters and stuff like that.

He really taught us a lot. I remember days where he would take all five kids out and we each would have to carry a squirrel.