The MeatEater

Hosts Randall Williams, Seth Morris, and Cory Calkins catch up with our friend Jordan Sillars about his new podcast, Blood Trails, play another round of Fake News, interview hunter Lauren Dolcater about a unique request she made to First Lite customer service, and share some old photos in Throwback Thursday.

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This week, Brent's sharing some listener-submitted stories he's enjoyed: an unexpected encounter with an angry buck, a country-boy skillset coming in handy, and a young boy's "first" deer. It’s listener appreciation day on MeatEater’s “This Country Life” podcast.

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I propped my bow against a water oak and unbuckled my pack, letting it drop to the ground. I wasn’t worried about spooking deer anymore. The first and only shooter buck I’d seen in nearly two weeks had just rocketed to the next county.

The sun beamed overhead, and I wriggled my water bottle free from the side of my pack. I dropped to the ground and leaned my back against the pack. If I were a smoker, I probably would’ve lit one up about that time. I was parched, hungry, and dejected. Blindly, I reached into the bottom of my backpack to rummage for the Perfect Bar I’d stowed in there a few days prior. I washed the crumbled, dry bits down with lukewarm water and chewed on the bitter reality that I’d just blown what would have been a chip shot at a good buck.

That morning, I’d helped my cousin track a buck, and I was riding the coattails of his success, hoping to punch a tag myself. I was still-hunting through a creek bottom when I heard a deer trotting through a patch of switch cane not twenty yards ahead of me. I froze, and instead of tucking into some cover or at least dropping to a knee, I immediately drew my bow and waited for him to pass through an opening.

I could see his rack bobbing through the cane. He wasn’t big, but he was big enough, and I would have been more than happy to wrap my tag around him. Instead of passing through that opening, which would have given me a shot at ten yards, he turned down the path and made a beeline toward me. I didn’t even have time to consider a frontal shot. He got one look at me and bolted.

Those encounters seem to happen (at least to me) more often than not. In my play-by-play replay, I can dissect my failures with surgical precision and even offer best solutions. But that’s part of deer hunting, especially if you have the sick desire to put yourself through the torture of bowhunting from the ground. A lot can, and does, go wrong. For some reason, those failures keep me, and a lot of other hunters, coming back.

That same season, I managed to find a group of does during the pre-rut. I kept tabs on them, and when things really started to fire up over the next couple weeks, I hung a set over a community scrape at the intersection of a few trails. I watched several small bucks work that scrape and harass the does in that area. One evening, I finally got a glimpse of a shooter buck.

He was out of bow range and chasing a doe. When she finally started coming down the trail, there were only a few minutes left of legal shooting light. By the time he came grunting down the trail, I couldn’t see my pins.

I had to sit for another half hour in the tree before I could escape without bumping them. I tried not to make any movement. My heart was racing. It was so calm I could hear him munching on acorns. Every time he’d grunt, my legs would shake. Eventually, they worked off into the dark, and I quietly made my way out. I returned to that spot the next morning, but it was like all the action dried up. I didn’t see a single deer, and I never saw that buck again.

By that point, it was January, and I had yet to fill a buck tag. I had to switch it up, so my dad and I decided to rifle hunt together the following weekend. I packed a bag and headed north. Deer typically rut the week after Christmas or the first week of January in that part of Mississippi.

Rather than post up in a few historical stands, we decided to find the freshest sign and hunt from the ground. It was eerily quiet for peak rut, and just before we decided to pack it in. I heard footsteps in the leaves. I could see a deer feeding downhill from me, but I couldn’t tell if it was a buck or a doe.

When I finally caught a glimpse of antler, I couldn’t help but think of the buck I watched the week prior. That buck dwarfed this one. But that thought was fleeting. My dad and I get a few opportunities to hunt together each year, and I thought it would be fun to drag a small buck out that day. I shouldered the rifle and kept my eye on that buck as I found him in the scope. I squeezed the trigger, and I listened for his crash as he bounded off. He didn’t make it forty yards.

Before starting our drag back to the truck, dad and I just hung out, snapped a few pictures, and recapped our morning. We weren’t in a hurry. Had I killed that other buck, I probably would’ve passed on this one. In fact, dad and I probably wouldn’t have hunted together that day. I still wanted to fill my other buck tags, but I also just wanted to enjoy that hunt.

I don’t think I even kept the rack from that deer, but it felt great to punch a tag after struggling for most of the season. It was a good reminder that deer hunting is just tough sometimes. Other than witnessing a well-placed shot, immediate gratification just doesn’t exist in the deer woods. I appreciated that hunt (and that deer) more than I might have if I hadn’t struggled that season. So, those tough hunts, whiffs, and blown opportunities? They’re part of what makes it so rewarding when you finally catch a break, and they keep you coming back.

I’ve always been a hunter with ADD. This made hunting from a stand nearly impossible, as I’d constantly fidget, twitch, and shift around like a puppy in a dog crate, until I’d inevitably give up and go for a walk to see what I could find in the woods.

This would drive my hunting buddies crazy, who insisted I was blowing out the area and scaring the hell out of all the game. They, like many other hunters out there, believed that the only way to be successful was to sit either in a likely spot and wait for an animal to walk by their stand or to glass the edges of open meadows and timber lines and then make a stalk, all while staying out of the trees themselves.

Many hunters believe that finding success in thick timber is impossible. They believe that in the woods, the animals have the upper hand and that stepping on sticks, snapping through brush, and shuffling through dry leaves is just going to spook every animal you’re hunting.

However, as I eventually learned on my attention-deficit excursions, when you know how to move and how and where to hunt in thick timber, you have a great chance at bagging the deer, elk, or bear you’re after without them even knowing you’re there.

One of the biggest mistakes hunters make when they’re walking through the timber is going through willy-nilly. They head into the forest with no strategy and no plan of attack, and then they wonder why they didn’t see anything. To be successful in thick timber still-hunting, you have to plan your approach, think about every step you’re going to take, and then stick to it even when it doesn’t seem productive. In short, it requires a lot of planning, focus, dedication, and flat-out faith to be a good big timber still-hunter.

The first and most important thing you need to do is find timber that will be productive. This could be a small woodlot in otherwise open terrain that offers the only cover for whitetail, or a high, pine-choked mountain ridge that’s in the perfect spot for bedding and/or migrating elk.

The best way to find these areas is with a lot of thorough scouting with a map or mapping app at first, followed by preseason and even midseason walk-arounds. Look for tracks, glass them from a distance, and do everything you can to make sure that the animals you’re after are in the timber before you make your approach.

Once you’ve scouted out a good patch of timber, you’re going to want to pick both a good starting point on the upwind side so you can make your approach undetected, as well as an end point where you can exit the woods. This latter point is extremely important as you’re going to be moving extremely slowly and want to be able to hunt it thoroughly, so don’t bite off a bigger chunk than you can chew. Using a map or mapping app, try to break up the timber you’re hunting into smaller one- to two-mile chunks in what you believe will be the most productive areas.

As previously mentioned, the key to success in big timber still hunting is moving slowly. You don’t want to jerk your head around or make quick adjustments as you duck and weave around the brush and trees. In addition, you also don’t want to step on any sticks or break off any twigs or branches as you move. The best way to do this is to plan out your steps before taking them.

When you move into the woods, take a quick look at the ground and note any clear areas where you can place your feed without obstacles, such as sticks or thick patches of leaves that may hinder your progress. Memorize where they are and then take two or three steps into these spots at a time, keeping your head up and scanning the trees as you move. After you take your steps, glance down and pick out three more spots, and repeat the process, stopping, looking, and moving as slowly as possible towards where you plan to exit the timber.

When you’re still hunting in thick timber, you want to stick to cover. You don’t want to skyline yourself or be caught out in the open, where you’ll stick out like a sore thumb to whatever you are hunting. The easiest and most obvious way to do this in timber is to stick close to the trees.

One of the biggest reasons that a lot of hunters don’t like hunting in thick timber is that it makes it hard to see animals. The thing is, though, trees also make it hard for animals to see you. Vertical trunks and thick clumps of branches are fantastic for helping to break up your outline, and with the right camouflage pattern and strategy, you’ll be able to move through timber without anything knowing you’re there.

As you poke your way through the timber, try to always keep at least one tree directly in front of you to help block you from any game you may be approaching, and when you move, stay as close to the trees around you as you can.

The key here is to never let yourself be caught in the open, so that any eyes that do spot you will attribute the movement to branches blowing in the wind. On the occasions when you do have to move through an open area, try to use the shadows of the trees to your advantage. Slow down and move through the shade, continuing to step carefully and keep your head up, so that you can spot something before it spots you.

Moving and hunting in thick timber is an entirely different world from hunting in a stand. The animals aren’t coming towards or standing right in front of you (or not usually anyway), and often it takes more than just looking around the woods for you to find them. To be successful still hunting in thick timber, you must use all your senses and be able to pick out a target in a mass of trees.

When you’re looking for game in thick timber, you’re not looking for a deer, elk, bear, moose, etc., but rather a piece of one. The oddly straight line of a back, the shining white color of an antler, the flick of an ear or tail, or the curve of a leg. These are the things you should be looking for rather than the whole animal itself.

As you move through the woods, turn your head slowly and pick the timber apart. Look for something that seems out of place or for a slight, barely discernible movement, and then try to shape that thing into the animal you’re hunting. It’s important to note that you don’t want to be just randomly shooting at shapes, but looking and scrutinizing each gap in the trees to be sure of your target before you pull the trigger.

As you move through the trees, you can rely on your other senses as well. Move slowly and then stop, listen, and smell the air. If you’re being quiet and stealthy enough, you’ll be able to pick up on the sound of hooves shuffling through the leaves or twigs breaking as an animal passes through.

With the wind in your face, you’ll also sometimes be able to detect the warm bovine smell of ungulates like elk and deer or even the wet dog smell of a bear. While things like this may not lead you to an animal directly, they can at least let you know that something is about to happen so that you can slow down and prepare for the shot.

Still hunting in thick timber is one of those old-world hunting methods like tracking or using traditional weapons, that can reconnect you with the soul of hunting. In modern times, so much of the hunting world is geared towards hunters being outsiders in an alien world. We sit in comfortable stands, use trail-cams and mapping apps, and basically do everything we can to get a leg up on the animals we pursue. While there’s nothing wrong with this, sometimes it’s nice to get back to basics.

Still hunting in thick timber seems to strip everything else away, reverting you back to the bare bones of being a predator in search of prey. It’s a fantastic way to reconnect with the natural cycles of the wild and make the most of taking a walk in the woods.

Steven Rinella talks with Jeremy Romero of the National Wildlife Federation about yet another attack on our public lands by Sen. Mike Lee's latest Border Lands Conservation Act. 

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This week on the show I’m conducting a comprehensive review of the many different approaches to killing mature bucks in November that expert hunters have shared with me over the course of Wired to Hunt’s 17-year history.

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In this Spike Camp episode, Rich, Scott, and Watkins discuss what all training Rich has had Watkins do to get ready for his first trip out west.

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It’s a mystery that’s haunted Wisconsin’s hunting community for nearly 50 years. On September 16, 1977, 18-year-old Bob Christian left home to spend the night at a friend’s house before the opening day of bow season. That night, his future looked bright. He’d just been accepted to the University of Wisconsin as a computer science major, and his friendly, easygoing personality endeared him to family and friends alike. But something happened on that drive, and to this day, no one knows what. His car was later found stripped on a remote dirt road near his childhood hunting grounds, and nearly five decades later, Bob’s whereabouts remain unknown. Join host Jordan Sillars as he unravels a tangle of clues that spans small-town secrets, mysterious headlights, a convent break-in, the Ringling Brothers Circus—and even a possible connection to the infamous John Wayne Gacy. Through the eyes of hunters, family, and detectives, this is a story of friendships frozen in time and forests that keep their secrets.

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Wildlife officers in Colorado had to get creative when they were called in to rescue a young bull moose trapped in a canal.

The daring operation went down in Estes Park, a resort town northwest of Denver. It’s unclear how the moose managed to get stuck in the fast-moving current, but a spokesperson for Colorado Parks and Wildlife says the animal was exhausted by the time they pulled it from the drink.

CPW officers, along with officials with the Bureau of Reclamation, used ropes and straps to secure the moose’s head above water before tranquilizing it to keep it calm. They then used a crane and a saddle around its torso to slowly lift it to shore.

Officials set the moose down gently, tucking its legs underneath it, and removed the straps and ropes. A spokesperson said it took the animal a long time to recover due to fatigue, but it eventually stood up and shook itself off.

The moose only suffered minor injuries from the ordeal, though experts say it may struggle to explain the experience to its friends.

This isn’t the only moose to find itself in a precarious predicament this fall.

One moose got stuck in a well in Maine.

It was discovered by a landowner who was unaware of an old well on his new property—until he heard the trapped moose. Wildlife biologists and wardens responded and sedated the moose, and they were able to extract it with heavy straps and an excavator. The entire process took several hours. Eventually, once the sedation wore off, the moose took off running.

Another calf wanted to hang with the cool kids at the skatepark, but got in a little over his head in the bowl.

Wildlife officials teamed up with the local police department to sedate and transport the calf moose to a safer location. Experts say he was a skater moose, but they said see ya later moose.

Lastly, yet another moose calf found itself trapped in a fence.

Both of its front hooves were stuck between the wooden slats, but a couple Good Samaritans used an axe to widen the gaps and set the moose free. Oddly, the moose didn’t run away immediately. It stood looking at its saviors for several minutes before turning around and trotting back through the neighborhood.

Despite their awkward, gangly appearance, moose are fast, powerful, and sometimes dangerous animals. They don’t often find themselves in situations they can’t handle, but when they do, wildlife officers and regular citizens alike are usually happy to help them get back to the wild.

Ryan Callaghan ventures into the Wyoming backcountry armed with archery elk and rifle mule deer tags. Between the hunting pressure and a threatening weather forecast, Cal and his trusty llama pack string need to stay mobile to uncover his own honey hole in search of Mr. Big. Presented by RAM