Ep. 269: This Country Life - Opportunities

resident of Story County, Iowa. Story County is located in what could.

We didn't see any sign it first until I saw a big pile of bear scat.

was a soal with three cubs. Surprisingly, the mama looked to be less than one hundred pounds. She wasn't big as nothing, and we couldn't believe something so small could make a pile as big as what we saw. My dad started taking pictures, and when they got about eight yards away from us, we realized they had no idea that we were there, and they wanted to be right where we were. Now realizing this, my dad yelled, hey bear, and the mama looked up, saw us and ran back

down the hill. One cup ran past my side on a rock just less than two yards from me, and one ran past my dad, and then the other one just sat there looking at us for a couple of seconds before running back down the hill after his mama. We were both super excited and our hearts were racing because that was both of our first experience with a bear in the wild. After that, we sat with the with the rest of the afternoon and saw five mule

deer and a herd of eighteen elkremore. We watched him, and we could hear the bull bugle, and we just bashed in God's creation. That right there was worth the whole price of admission. The next day, we didn't see anything until we were driving out that night and saw a big black bear in the middle of the road. He ran off up the mountain, so we decided that's where we wanted to be when the sun came up. So on the third day of that hunt, we found a trail that went up that direction and we took off.

It was thick and it was steep, but we were seeing acorns and berries and lots of bear skin. Constantly, encouraged by the sign, we kept going. After two and a half hours, we found ourselves only half a mile from our vehicle, but up one thousand feet in elevation. We came up to a spot that leveled off into a bench about two hundred feet from the top, and

there was a big muddy puddle. We walked up to it and there was bear tracks all around it, and wouldn't you know, more scat and we found the perfect ambush spot on the ledge above the water hole. And right about then we realized we'd forgotten to fill our own water bottles.

Put my crosshairs on the bear and I waited. Finally he turned just enough and I pulled the trigger. My shot rang out, and the bear stood up and tumbled through the muddy water fell down.

just how that happened. That story is right on theme today with what I'm talking about, which is taking an opportunity seeing where it goes. I got a feeling the Marshall that as you get older, the best part of the hunt ain't gonna have anything to do with a bear or who got to shoot it first. It'll be more about the opportunity you had to spend time together,

and y'all did it. Thanks for sharing, buddy. Opportunities come along every day in one form or another, and what we do with them can determine the direction of the moment, the day, or the rest of your life. Some we may never know the circumstances of based on our decisions. A lot is left up to fate or the grand design. And unless you're reading a fictional book like the ones they call Choose your Own Adventure, you'll never know what might have been, what you avoided, or what you gained

in the totality of the circumstances. You can look at the obvious example of say skipping out on going to the movies and watching a scary show. You can say, well, I didn't get scared because I didn't see it, But could you have met a new friend? Ran into an old acquaintance found a five dollar bill. Who knows that you could have had nightmares. It seems to me that if a hurricane and the Gulf can be theoretically caused by the flutter of a butterfly's wing on the other

side of the planet, the possibilities are literally limitless. Now I think back on different times when opportunities and choices arose in my life and how the decisions I made, even the ones that seemed so inconsequential, continue to have a measurable impact on my existence and those around you. Often get asked, what was my favorite part of my law enforcement career. Was it wearing a uniform or when

I worked undercover. It's hard to really say with absolute certainty because each was vastly different, But I always say working undercover and give this analogy for the reason why when I was wearing a uniform and working patrol, I was reacting to the situations that arose.

has a place and to turn crime and buffoonery. But it's hard to quantify how much, because we can only estimate the percentage of crime that's being reduced by the presence of a marked police car in a particular location. The same for speed enforcement. The goal of writing speeding tickets is to get folks to slow down. If you get them to slow down, you automatically reduce accidents and

property damage and injuries and fatalities. But how much is reduced is only an estimation because there's no algorithm you can use to get an exact figure. Crime and accident statistics are all subject to comparisons to the same areas, using past reporting data and averaging out the differences. Not always sounds boring, but I'm going somewhere with this. When I worked undercovering narcotics, I could lay my hands on a tangible and measurable amount of drugs that we'd seize

that would not stay on the streets. I could look and review at the end of the year at what we'd done and say unequivocally that what we'd seized and measured down to the ground was judicated through court and destroyed and it wouldn't hurt nobody. I could see what we'd done as opposed to what analytical probabilities estimated we did.

That to me was the difference between reactive law enforcement waiting for a call to come in versus proactive law enforcement, which was us going out and purposely targeting individuals who

were in the drug trafficking business. We were working hard, in long hours and season opportunities as that came up to do our due diligence of fighting the drug problems in our district, and doing so, we missed time at home, time with our children, friends and families, and it was a heavy cost in the end for all involved, especially the little ones who had no choice but to accept the hand that they'd been dealt. I talk about this only because the pathway we take effects not only us

but everyone around us. It doesn't have to be negative either. I mean the decisions I made good and bad, all led me to where I am today, and the same for you too, and I hope you're in as good a place as I am. Now, let me tell you about the place I was in a couple of weeks ago. I was hound with a friend and was getting to his house late before heading to the stand the next morning, and I was relying solely upon his knowledge of the intel he'd been gathering the weeks prior to my last

minute announcement that I was coming to hunt. His past twenty plus years of hunting there wasn't hurting my chances either. It was after ten o'clock when I got there that night, and my friend Quinton was waiting up for him. We sat in his living room until nearly midnight, going over Moultrie Sale cam picks until we came up with the plan.

The plan was for me to go and climbing a stand where we didn't have a camera, wind direction, his history of encounters, how the land laid forming a great travel corridor, and mainly a gut feeling from Quinton convinced that both of us good enough that that was the spot for.

case I couldn't find it Quickly. I picked out a tree from the from the map we'd studied the night before, sitting in his living room that while I couldn't tell how good it looked from the ground, or if it even offered any concealment or a place to hide and shoot, but it was going to be a starting point for me to find a tree that I could get into. If I didn't immediately find the stand he'd hung earlier

in the year. There wasn't any reflective tape or mark trails that led to the stand, So in my mind, I decided, as I approached the area where it was supposed to be that I just climbed the first tree that I thought the stand would be if I hung it myself. I crossed the corner of that field and I stood thirty yards at the edge of the woods, looking into the darkness of the hardwood timber With the red List headlight. I take comfort in the fact that the deer struggle to see most shades red. I call

that red light my cloaking device. Now I'm reminded every time I say that around my friend Michael Roseman, who makes the headlight. I'm talking about the same light that Steve Vanilla likes so much that he bought seven of them from Michael for his friends and family. I say, my red List light is virtually invisible to deer. Michael laughs and says, they can still see you, dummy.

full of the rope. As I hung my backpack and my bowl, I settled into the seat about forty five minutes before daylight. I'd rather be an hour early than a minute late, and that applies to everything I had three days delegated at the last minute the bow hunt.

not one, just silence. Eventually, the sun started rising in the east and the woods started waking up. Squirrels were jumping from limb to limb. Birds were singing, and I was straining for the first sign of a deer moving in any direction. I was also looking around at the location of that stand, and I swear Quinn hung that

joker in the exact place I would have. Either I was as smart as him, he was as smart as me, or neither one of us knew anything about how deer moved along pinch points through the woods, following the terrain. At seven point thirty, a turkey gobbled like it was spring less than one hundred yards in front of me, and I could hear turkeys jumping all through the woods in front of them. And while I was soaking in all that turkey entertainment, I heard a leaf crunched by

behind me. I glanced over my shoulder, and there walked the door the size of a yearling giraffe, just as relaxed as she could be. I guessed her to be twenty five yards behind me. I couldn't swear to it because I left my range finder sitting on the tailgate of my truck, along with my binos and everything else

I told in my harness. Had I had enough sense to remember, i'd have known it was twenty five yards because I'm not sure if everyone else does this or not, but I memorize every distinctive feature all around me and get the yardage to it. I know some of you saying everyone does that, you idiot, but I'm not sure if they do or not not. Like the way I do I sing it. I used a tune in my head and I put the words to it as yardages. That's a lot easier for me to remember and that

way than it is. Gum tree twenty five yards, bigger, gum tree thirty four yards, pile of leaves twenty one so on. I do it clockwise in order from starting at the twelve o'clock position, which is directly in front of the stand, regardless of the direction that I go three hundred and sixty degrees all the way around it. I don't memorize many, just the ones that naturally catch my attention when I look in that direction, five or

six of them at the most. But I need a range finder to do all that, and I didn't have one. That was an opportunity missed. But I played football long enough to know what ten yards looks like, and imagining ten yard increments laid out in front of me. I guessed the trail I had walked over that was behind me to be two and a half of them. Now, my most favorite math teacher on this spinning orbit that

we called home, Miss Brenda McDougall. You can check my figures, but I think that adds up to twenty five yards. I was confident it was, and a later measurement with the range finder would prove I was spot on at twenty five point one yards, but that would come later. And this was now, And as all of this was playing out inside my cranium, that deer trail the football overlay I imagine intersecting with the trail. The dinosaur of a doe that had just passed behind me stopped and

looked back the way. She came, y'all know what that means? Something else is coming now. I figured it was a yearling deer, and I was half right. It was a deer, but it weren't no yearling. I immediately guessed him to be one hundred and forty plus buck, and I never looked back at his antmers.

covered his vitals. For a moment, I thought about trying to thread the needle, and immediately remember the time I tried that in Kansas on an absolute giant, I hit a limb that I didn't see that sent my arrow into orbit, and that deer on a fast train to Georgia. So I followed him at full draw until he once again walked out from behind all the trees and all the limbs and stopped dead, still, quartering away forty five yards.

to find a cooler place to hunt. We parted ways, having no interaction other than one of us feeling richer for just being there. Be a good deal if all our encounters went that way. With everything, and especially everyone, Thank y'all so much for listening to me here on

this Country Life and Claybow's Baggery shows. There's all kinds of stuff you can listen to today, and if you're hunting something else to add to the rotation, we've got a lot of good stuff here at Meat either from outdoor trivia and the country music and some show enough how to episodes on all the things that we love to do.