May 5, 2021 • 49 mins
James Lawrence is a master public land whitetail hunter and his favorite tactic is called "still hunting." In this episode of Bear Grease, you'll hear James' family story and about the buck that altered the trajectory of his life. The story has many twists, turns, and some family drama. For many years, James has been an influential figure in Clay Newcomb's life and he explores why relationships are so valuable. You'll be entertained by a great story, learn some techniques for hunting, and you'll be challenged to build stronger relationships.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
H how they made to live and how they got by,
I don't know, and I can't imagine. I try not
to complain about anything because they they had all the
right in the world. And I never heard him or
my grandmother negative on anything is positive, had a lot
(00:21):
of respect for him. On this episode of the Bear
Grease Podcast, I want to introduce you to my friend
and mentor, James Lawrence. James is seventy two years old
and he's a master whitetail hunter for the region he lives.
James's life and hunting career was heavily influenced by one
of the first deary ever killed in nineteen sixty two.
(00:43):
It was a giant buck, and previous to him killing
the buck, he'd found three years of matching sheds. The
story has many layers and some significant twists and turns.
James's life has been a significant inspiration to me, and
it has impacted me on many levels. I want to
explore how and why some relationships deeply impact our lives.
(01:08):
You're gonna enjoy a great white tell story, You're gonna
learn how to still hunt, but I'm also gonna explore
how relationships helped form our own identity. But before we start,
I want to ask you a question. Who are the
influential people in your life? And why? My name is
(01:37):
Clay Nukelem and this is the Bear Grease Podcast, where
we'll explore things forgotten but relevant, search for insight and
unlikely places, and where we'll tell the story of Americans
who lived their lives close to the land. James Lawrence's
(02:02):
family homesteaded in a small rural community in the Washingtal
Mountains of western Arkansas in the mid eighteen hundreds. They
weren't wealthy people, but common people, typical of the demographic
of those migrating into the Arkansas Highlands. Most of these
newcomers came by the way of the Appalachians and were
(02:25):
of Scotch Irish descent. In the mid eighteen hundreds, up
to fifty percent of the migrants that were coming into
the Ozarks came from Middle Tennessee. But James's family came
directly out of Kentucky into the Washingtals, which is a
range of mountains south of the Ozarks. To this day,
(02:45):
the culture of all these regions are almost mirror reflections
of each other. All the history of James's family is
held simply in what can be remembered by those still alive.
If they'd been wealthy, are famous, perhaps some documentable history
would have deemed their story worthy of remembrance. Today, weathered
(03:08):
headstones of granite with the name Lawrence are their only
literary hat tip. This is it right here. That's my folks,
and that's my grandparents. Um, what was your what was
your grandmother's name? Edna, Edna Goldie. I feel like in
(03:32):
order to understand the context of this story, we gotta
go way back. We're in a cemetery in western Arkansas,
the Lawrence Family Cemetery. What do you know about your
family history back in here? Well, the Lawrence has come
here from the East Kentucky. My dad was James Lawrence,
(03:53):
My granddad was James Dan Lawrence, and I'm James Edward Larnch. Now,
your grandma was a dear uter though, Oh yeah, Now
was that unusual for a woman to be a pretty
serious deer hunter or a real serious deer hunter like
she was? Was that unusual or was that comp a
little of both? A couple of her her sisters were
(04:17):
serious hunters, you know. And did they hunt because they
loved it? Or were they hunting for meat. It was
strictly for meat. You told me that your grandmother taught
you had a shock poucher deer, her and her brother.
Shock pouching is when you remove the lower leg bone
from the four legs of a deer, leaving the dew claws.
(04:40):
Then you criss cross the legs, tying them together and
effectively make backpack straps out of a deer so that
you can carry the deer out of the woods on
your back. Actually made a video of this that's on
the meat eater dot com called shock pouching that you
can see the whole thing that James taught me how
to do. Do you have any idea where that came from?
(05:05):
Just that's how they carried her out. Did they do it?
Just about every year? That's why they when you find
them and when they come out with him, that's the
whey they would beg they'd have it. They put off
tied in the nut and they'd carried them out physically.
You know what's pretty interesting to think about. To think
about the eighteen thirties seems like so long ago, But
if you think about it like this, you're seventy two.
(05:30):
You knew people that were. Your grandmother was born in
nineteen o nine, so she would have you know, her
grandparents would have been people that would have been here
in the eighteen thirties. So you think about like your
life was influenced by people whose lives were directly influenced
(05:52):
by people that had no technology, no cars, no phones,
like totally almost like primitive like. And so when you
think about it like that, like you're two steps away
from I mean, it's like in the scale of human
history for how long we've been here, that's like a blip.
(06:16):
I grew up in the same part of Arkansas as James,
but I didn't meet him until he was sixty two
years old and I was around thirty. His reputation preceded him,
and I was told he was one of the best
mountain deer hunters around. I got his address, drove to
his house, and knocked on his door cold turkey. I
introduced myself to a warm, humble, and rugged man who
(06:40):
opened the door. I received immediate credibility because of the
man who told me about him, a mutual friend of ours.
James's response was predictable of the mountain people. If he's
a friend of yours, then you're a friend of mine,
I told him I was writing an article about deer
hunting in the mountains of Arkansas. Our hunting culture has
(07:01):
gradually moved to being dominated by deer feeders and sacks
of corn. I'm not necessarily against feeding deer. I do
it myself some, but it has undisputably degraded the level
of knowledge about deer and deer hunting in the modern era.
I wanted to talk to an expert who hunted deer
in the mountains on public land. Something immediately told me
(07:24):
I had found one. His face was worn with deep
wrinkles that had clearly greeted the sun daily for decades.
I'd learned that he used to be a smoker, but
had quit for health reason some years ago. In his
early thirties, James was a game warden, but resigned after
(07:44):
a series of incidents, one of which involved him ticketing
a government official for a game violation, but he was
then later told to rescind the citation in a back
room meeting with a supervisor. The injustice was too much
for a man ray eased in the mountains who never
heard of silver spoons or the advantages of political hierarchy.
(08:06):
James made his living as a carpenter, stonemason, and cattle farmer.
He once built an entire complex of buildings in the
nineteen seventies. It was a mountain retreat center, and the
job called for four hundred tons of native stonework. James
spent years gathering the rocks by hand and doing the work.
In my mind, James is representative of the Mountain people,
(08:28):
hard working, humble, independent, leery of outsiders, but quick to
befriend you if friendship is offered. He doesn't seem to
lose a grudge too quickly, but to his friends he's
deeply loyal and sacrificial. On that first meeting with James
in two thousand and ten, I looked at a wall
(08:51):
of white tailed deer racks. The horns were screwed to
the sheet rock wall in his garage, and they were
all cut from the skull plate in the same way
I'd learned that his uncle showed him how to cut
the skull plates, so they set flat on the wall,
displaying the rack at a very particular and natural angle.
His uncle taught him to tan the hide and put
(09:11):
it back on the skull plate. Bucks that had been
off the hoof for fifty years still had their original hair.
They ranged in size from basket rack bucks to mature,
top notch white tales. For the region. One rack stood
out from the rest, and the yellowed horns looked old.
The hair on the skull plate was faded. Surely this
(09:32):
deer had a story. I walked to the rack and
touched its rough burrs, and I asked him about the deer.
I was amazed at the story that he began to
tell me. But before you hear the story directly from James,
you've got to understand the context. In the nineteen fifties
and sixties, deer numbers in Arkansas were low, and for
(09:52):
an even deeper look into the context, on December eighteenth,
nineteen oh seven, President Teddy Roosevelt created the Washington nash
No Forest, and prior to that the region had been
logged at a landscape level, meaning almost everything was cut.
With the trees went the wildlife in most of the
other big game, including bears, but don't get me started
(10:14):
on that. With the new management of the Forest Service,
by the nineteen fifties, the forests were recovering, but the
primary method of deer hunting the low density population was
with dogs. Using the dogs was a traditional and effective
method for rousing deer out of their layers, but very
few hunters at the time knew how to hunt deer
(10:34):
on their natural patterns. So when you hear this story,
I think you'll agree that it was an incredible feat,
especially for a young boy. When I was with my
uncle out here on weekend when we lived in town
at the time. All the weekends out here, Uh, he'd
(10:56):
give me a twenty two rifle, and ammunition was cheap.
And when I was out here, I was out wondering
the fields, and all of it was family owned. Right
here where we're sitting, the first sheds was probably a
hundred and fifty yards from where we're sitting, across the Costa,
(11:18):
the head waters of the Costa, and there they were
just together, touching each other, just laid right on top
of each other. They do on top each other. And
I couldn't I couldn't pick them up and run over
here and show them quick enough. And you would have been, uh,
you'd have been eleven years old. These first sheds you
found right here would have been in like nineteen fifty nine,
(11:41):
probably three years of sheds and then the bucks of
fifty nine, sixties, sixty one, and sixty two. You killed
the deer, so you found this, these sheds just right there.
You pointed out to me a cedar tree that they
were laying by, And that was during a time when
there there weren't deering these mountains. During that time, James's
(12:03):
family would go off to deer camp, but James rarely went.
He'd stay home and wander around alone on his home place,
shooting squirrels and rabbits with his twenty two. These early
solo hunts would set a track for his future hunting,
but it also brings up the question why I wasn't
he included in these family outings. I was one of
(12:25):
the only ones that was out drashing through the woods
and through the fields and the thickets for the rabbits
and squirrels. I was jumping deer. You know. I couldn't
explain it to them because they I was jumping deer
all the time, and they were going off dog hunting
and they're occasionally killing deer, and the family wouldn't seeing it.
They wouldn't follow me around, and I would try to
(12:47):
tell him what I've seen, and I know it's hard
to believe. They were off, scattered out hunting and they're
not seeing anything. They come in and I've got these stories.
Well they wasn't interesting in my stories. I mean it really,
here's the here's the bigger question. Why weren't you hunting
with them? They I went with my granddad and sat
on a stand freeze to death. We'd build a little
(13:08):
bitty fire if we're just stay warm. And he was
waiting on the dogs to run a deer by us.
Why would it accuse us when there's standards everywhere. We
would occasionally see deer, but I could stay home and
I could just walk down the fence rows and I
could see dere So you started really learning from a
young age how to hunt these deer. Well, it was
(13:28):
just from being out. So you saw him. I saw him.
I saw him twice. So you came back and told
your family, I saw a big buck, and I know
I had excitement. I was excited all over. After James
found the first set of sheds the next fall, he
(13:49):
actually saw the buck hard horn. He shared the sighting
with his family, but you can guess the response that
he got a little kid claiming to have seen a
giant buck. He was dismissed, you know. I mean it's
hard to visualize that thing when I was a kid
seeing the buck of that, yeah, standing a broadside, nothing
(14:10):
between me and at me. With the twenty two, I
couldn't go any further. I had to come tell somebody,
which was my uncle. And I don't know I would
have got excited if eleven year old kids come up
and told me what they've just seen in excitement. Uh,
it just didn't seem to They kind of dismissed you. Well,
(14:30):
it just feels it hurt my feeling. But I had proof,
you know. So that second year, so you find these sheds,
and just to give people a context, that first year sheds,
I think I scored it in the high one forties,
(14:51):
one fifties. I mean, so this is not a small deer,
especially for the late nineteen fifties and the Washtaw Mountains.
I mean, this is like a major your dear, So
you come back with the sheds the second year, you're
you're you, How did you find the second set of
sheds the same way I had my twenty two and
it was right over here. I was stumbling around, I
(15:13):
was squirrel hunting up the road, and I was going
up that dark I called it dark hollow. There's a
holler where the road and makes a sharp bend, and
I'd go up that hollar on rocks basically where I
could slip up. And you're at the squirrel barking, and
and I was on my way back come around and basically, oh,
all but inside of where we're sitting right now, coming down.
(15:35):
So you pick up the second year sheds of this buck. Yeah,
the third year. Tell me how you found those horns?
Same way? How was that stumbling? Where was where was that?
They were separate? They were on up the head of Costa.
The Costa Tot is a fast flowing eighty nine mile
(15:56):
long river in western Arkansas that flows out of the
Southern Wash. It toss its headwaters basically start on the
Lawrence family homestead. The word costatat is a Native American
word that roughly translates into skull crusher. It's known for
its rapids further down the river. Hey, in the third
(16:17):
set of sheds, I scored that deer, given it the
same spread credit as the actual deer in that dear
gross scored over a hundred seventy. I mean so this
is in the in the now, we're into the early
nineteen sixties, and so I mean, this is a this
is a gross one seventy plus typical. And you have
(16:38):
found third years. She has. And I want to say
something like people in the Midwest today, in farm country,
they'll have history with deer. You know, they'll find two
or three years the sheds of a buck down here.
In the nineteen fifties and sixties, that was unheard of.
It was now the fall of nineteen sixty two. James
(16:59):
was now thirteen years old, and he'd collected three years
a giant sheds of a buck almost within sight of
his house. He'd been dismissed by many of the hunters
and his family, but things were about to change. And
so tell me, tell me about that day. Wow, a
typical deer season day. I'd been roaming around jumping deer,
(17:25):
as was typical. James stayed home and hunted while his
family went off to deer camp. He had a stand
at a deer crossing that he'd often go and sit
most of the day. By stand, he didn't mean a
tree stand. It was a stump that he set on.
Family loaded up and was going. I was out of
(17:45):
school that day. Family went over and they let me
stay home because of I've been telling them what I'm saying.
You know, they were off hunting, and that was what
I did. I went up and said on that stand
because it was basically acrossing for year. And this was
with my new thirty thirty marline. I said to lunch
time and I was at top of the hill eating
(18:07):
lunch at our house where we lived, looking down on
the field and I seen a dough down in the
field while I was taking a breaking. I hadn't seen
anything at that time. It was a big deal to
see it. Dear. Yeah, I had my sandwich, walked back
down the road. I got caught and it was a
It was a local person asking me if I've seen
(18:29):
any dogs or picked up any dogs, or hurt any
dogs or whatever. Standing there talking to him. They were
gonna pick up and I looked across the foot of
the truck out in that field while we were talking,
I could visualize and I could see horns up above
safe grass. This is you're looking across the hood at
(18:50):
this vi here exactly while talking to him, I was
looking at for that dough. I didn't tell him about
the dough. I didn't fasten any information anyway. I didn't
say anything to them, but I kind of wanted them
to go on, and they did. I went on around
like I always do, get in that stand setting up
there in that little cap. I get up there and
sitting down, and I started thinking about that there did
(19:13):
I don't really see. I get up and slipped down
and had a fence to cross to get in that field.
I slipped down there and a dog jumped up. Man,
it got me excited. And the dog went out in
the middle of the field and I've seen a movement
and here was here was a ship buck just come
(19:34):
up out of that sage grass and looked at me.
He was in it bed. He stood up out of
the grass and he was standing up, raring up to
get up. When I shot the first time, and you
hit him the first time. I hit him the first time,
but you jacked another shellacked another shell, hit him again, disappeared,
(19:54):
he went down. What did you feel like when you
walked up to that buck? I'd I don't know how
to describe it. I still remember the excitement, but you
know it was I didn't know what to do. James
set and admired the shed buck for a while, but
ended up going home to wait on the return of
his family from deer hunting. Taking to consideration that this
(20:17):
was the biggest buck anybody in the family would have
ever seen, and if James could forecast in the future,
he'd see that it would likely be the biggest buck
he'd ever kill in his life. You'd think he'd get
a good response. And I, you know, we talked about
it before. I didn't get the response that I was.
You know, they walked up on it, the deer was
(20:39):
laying there, they feel dressed a deer, and we drug
it out. And you know, I've got pictures of when
I was a kid holding my dad's deer. Don't There
wasn't no picture taking. There wasn't know, so they didn't
celebrate with you. There wasn't a celebration. My uncle took
the horns, like I showed you different ones that he
took it, cut the horns off and put the skin
(21:01):
back around it and put it on a board it
And that would have been the biggest deer that any
of these guys had ever seen. Obviously, you know, my
dad killed several deer, but they wouldn't nothing, because James,
you've been hunting right in here since nineteen or late
nineteen fifties, so that's over sixty years, and this is
(21:23):
the biggest buck that you've killed this day. And you've
probably killed over a hundred white tails since then. Well
over that. Yeah, what I meant to say was that
he's killed over a hundred mature mountain bucks on public
land without bait, most without trail cameras, in the majority
of them from the ground while still hunting. James would
(21:47):
become a master at hunting the mountains of Arkansas. He
hunted out of tree stands, but he loved to still
hunt the buck. I I scored it this deer, James.
This is what I love about you is that you
never had that deer scored you. You never even cared
what it scored. And then I think in two thousand
(22:10):
and ten, I saw the deer and I said, hey,
we gotta score that deer, and you were like, yeah,
let's see what it scored. And I scored that dear,
GROWTH scored it right at a hundred sixty inches. The
buck was starting to go downhill. The prior year he
grows scored a hundred and seventy inches. I can't express
what an incredible feat this would be to kill a
(22:33):
hundred and sixty inch deer at any time by anybody,
but even more so in nineteen sixty two by a
thirteen year old boy. I asked James how killing the
buck affected the trajectory of his hunting. Two times before that,
I went to the dog camp the deer deer season
(22:55):
for the It was a camp house. It was a
relative old home place. How was still standing? That was
the camp My granddad's brother. He was always off still hunting.
Twice he invited me to go. My uncle invited me
to go with him, and he started showing me we
didn't the amazing part of him when a't odd ball
(23:18):
in the family, just kind of done things different than
the rest of the boys did. They had hunting dogs
and he didn't have any. He didn't go to set
on the deer stand like the rest of them. He
would go off a different direction. But the thing that
really I tried all my life to do, he started
hunting when he took the first step off the road,
(23:40):
and when he get inside of the road, he didn't
quit hunting. He when he stepped back in the road
is when he quit hunting. M when he stepped in
the woods. He was hunting. Even in the first time
we left across the road from the cabin over the
house where the deer camp was at with all the
barking dogs and the people and excitement and stuff. And
we started hunting the minute we stepped off the road
(24:02):
across from cabin. And he taught you how to track there.
And the man could track a deer, just go through
the woods and find a track and could stay on it,
and and where every time I went like mud, this
is like Lee rock piles, right, he's tracking deer, and
he's tracking deer. And most of the time I had
to step in the same tracks that he stepped as
(24:24):
he slipped through in it. You know, sometimes Clay, we
wouldn't go thirty yards, and I swear it was thirty minutes.
And in other times we would travel a little bit faster.
But I know the first time we went, we was
almost back inside of the hunting party when we jumped
the deer and we've been on him for a while,
(24:44):
and he was, I don't like, just amazed me. So
I took two different times we did that, and I
took quite he he showed me, but he didn't really
show me. I just picked up on what we were
doing in the way he was doing it. And so
there was something appealing to you about your uncle what
was his name, Raymond an Ashcraft, Raymond Nashcraft in the
(25:06):
way the way he hunted in James, to this day,
that's the way you prefer to hunt. And you'd call
it still hunting. That's all that I mean, that's what
they called it then, and that's all I know how
to call it. It was still that. Some people call
it slip hunting. And I don't have the patience that
(25:26):
I used to. But years ago, I'd spend a day
and I wouldn't go nowhere. I mean, you know, I
had dear I thought pinpointed in the area they was in,
and just amazed me how a little travel I'd be doing.
But you know, a few steps or a tree, uh,
And it's amazing how many deer would get up and
(25:49):
start slipping out away from you that you pick up
or Yeah. I got more specific with James about the
details of the style of still hunting that he d
on a good November morning when you were still hunting
like you would have done all those years. What kind
of area were you going to? Why would you be
(26:10):
going to that area? And then what would you do
when you got there? When I'd go into the woods,
unless something calming that I had to be back out,
if this was a day that was set aside for
me that I didn't have to come back, I left
that truck intention to coming back at dark. When I
leave the woods the year before, I know that I
had left deer in that area, so I didn't do
(26:32):
any pre scouting. I just could go back into the
area where I know that I left good Bucks the
year before. I had already learned some trails, some saddles,
some gaps. The area is on the mountain that I
would finding more signs, so I would go into it
that way, I didn't disturb anything, and I would hunt
from the time I've left the road going into the
(26:55):
woods to the mountain. Basically in our mountains run east
and west, most of our winds coming out of the south,
so I always I could calculate which direction I wanted
to hunt on the mountains. And uh, I think that
helped more than anything than scouting, because the scout and
I'd always disturbed deer. This deer hadn't been disturbed this
(27:16):
area that I hunt. I know there's nobody been in there.
That's a big key right there, as you intentionally we're
going in on undisturbed still, honey, it didn't help me
anybody going in and trying to locate stuff. I would
go in on something that's already familiar with from the
year before, and I skipped around. I mean I covered
quite a bit of ground. But I'd pick out an
(27:37):
area to go into without any monet that you know,
the wind, and you would go in with the wind
at your face or across wind. And then would you
pick a certain kind of day? Did you need wet
leaves so he could move quiet? Or could you go
when it was dry? I didn't. I'd go when I could.
It didn't matter. I didn't wait on a particular day.
If it's dry, just took you a little longer. There's
(27:59):
still on end. But in our reality, I didn't move
any faster. I don't move any faster. And wet ground
and I don't dry. If you're setting up in the
tree stand and you hear a deer coming, if you'll
walk like a there, you can walk up on a deer.
A deer will walk and stop and walk and stop.
And if you do the same thing, you can do
the same thing to deer. So you you would just
(28:21):
you'd start hunting as soon as you left the road
and tracks, just I really, would you just move just slow?
Like how far would you travel in a given period
of time. That's a hard question to answer, because sometimes
I may not be a hundred yards from where I
was at an hour ago, okay, or hardly there, I
mean fifty yards even I guess you'd be encouraged by
seeing signing, like seeing rubs or seeing seeing a little sign.
(28:44):
And squirrels will happy, bird will happy. You know, if
there's something moving out here, you're a squirrel barking down here,
and no one is not barking at you. You know,
I've sat there many, many, many times in the squirrel
be barking at a coon or something else, thinking it
was a deer. Sometimes it's a deer. I could spend
half a day and not go for yards. What would
(29:04):
you do? Would you lean up against the tree? Would
you like find landmarks? And you'd say, I'm gonna try
to get to there, and then so I did never
do that, Okay, no landmarks. I mean, I know what
you're saying, but I would head to the landmark, but
I wouldn't know if I'm gonna go this direction over
that holler, I'd take my time getting to it. And
if I dropped down and then coming over the next
(29:25):
ridge or a sale, that's when I'd spend a lot
of time EA's and up and covering all the ground
on the next area ahead of me. How how do
you usually see deer? Like? What did they do? And James?
Are they moving? Are they bedded down? Anything from a
twitch for an air as a tail, any kind of movement,
just lock in on it and and not move. You know,
(29:47):
what about your shots? Are you having to take a
lot of moving shots? Just of all those deer on
your wall, what would you say would be the most
common shot? Just he's standing out there broadside, you shoot him. Well,
you can't really do that and still hunting. You kind
of have to take the shot when you get it walking.
I mean, if you can catch one standing, of course
(30:08):
you want to brought that shot. Oh no, they probably
wouldn't standing. They'd moving moving, not not not running, and
when they're traveling even you know, if you got behind
the buck, I mean between the doe and the buck
trailing the dough bucks coming through there, but his head
on the ground and he's already trailing. When you got
(30:30):
to plan ahead and pull out. And so you've been
looking for a gap, you'd you'd you'd kind of try
to predict where he was gonna be, and you'd be there.
What kind of what was your go to rifle? Started
out with the thirty thirty Marlin for many many, many
many years, and later years, uh got a three o
eight with a scope on it. And all you're stopping
(30:51):
around out there, James, I know you would, like you
you would, you would just learn where you would see
a buck of all this turn where would you see bucks?
Was there? Trend most of them were close to two
thirds of the way up the mountain, and a lot
of these mountains have a little we call them saddles,
a little gaps, and most of the time they'd be
(31:12):
on the upper side of those gaps, looking down on
the gaps, or I mean they're covering their back to
You wouldn't stay on top of the mountain, you'd be
on the side. I'm not hunted a whole lot on
top really just over the turn, either on the north
or on the south. For many years, I wouldn't not
on the south. It's strictly the north. Really we went
into camping one day or sin of camping with me
(31:34):
any like the south side. We hunted the south side,
and it's the big Bucks is on the south side too.
If you could give me one key for still hunting
these mountains, what would it be. Patience is ninety nine
percent of it. And you know, of course the wind
in your face, James, I, I do you think that
(31:59):
you have h or a hunter has a sixth sense,
like a like a sensing of a deer being somewhere?
I do, yeah, I do. How does that feel to you?
That's a hard one to describe it. I mean, do
you feel like you know, you feel like he's here?
If where is he? You know, and maybe there's no
(32:20):
real reason to know, you just you know, you just
sense that he's here. Where is it? You don't move
your head, you move your eyes, you don't move your body.
You know that, dear, you're right on top of it,
and that many times you're right and most of the
time he busts you. But I mean, you'll finally give
up and make a move and the deer it would
(32:41):
be basically in plain sight. Now that's that's when your
go heart goes to something, when you get and you
know he's there. And many times Clay they are. You know. Yeah,
it's just like you know they are, you feel that
they are. They are. But that was excite part of hunting.
It's not the kill. That's it's out smart and no buck,
(33:04):
there's one on one out there when you're still here
now sitting in a tree. I love that po hunting
um our gunning, but the excitement that I got growing up.
But still, let's see, I think that you built your
whole white tail world going off where nobody else wants
to go, doing it alone. For the most part, you
(33:26):
had a few close hunting buddies, you took your wife
sometimes with you, but you learned how to be a
master woodsman for these mountains. And that's that is what
I always from the day I met you, James, was
I valued your humility. I've I valued your your skill
(33:48):
and craft and the way you dedicated yourself to know
these mountains and know these deer the way you do.
And you just learned how to be successful in a
re the difficult place. Scott Brown and I grew up
together and share an appreciation for hunting these mountain bucks
(34:10):
in our region. He has a good story that puts
James Is hunting into context. My dad grew up with
a dad who believed the only way you you could
hunt a deer was to run dogs. You know. They
were passionate dog hunters, and that was just the you know,
(34:31):
to them, the only way to hunt a deer. And
so there was this thought that you didn't turn the
dogs out until the frost melted off. So you get
them in the morning, make some coffee, you'd sit around,
lets the sun come up, get the frost melted off.
Then you load all your dogs up. Everybody go get
on where they felt a deer was going to come
running by, you know, And there was some art to
(34:51):
that and anyway they sit around there. This would have
been probably in sixty seven sixty eight. They're sitting around
deer camping, and my grandpa's as well, we're gonna go
get in this gap. There was a certain gap there
on the mountain. Nor these deer like if they headed south,
they were going to go through this low gap in
the mountain and so they leave out. They walk out
into this big low gap, real pretty When you get
(35:11):
up there, my grandpa says, come here, I want to
show you something. You look at. My grandpa goes, look
at that right there, and and there's a tree stand
just basically a platform built on it in a tree
with some big old nail spikes, spikes, railroad tied spikes,
just just you know, hammered into this tree and this stand.
You know. He said it was probably twelve or fifteen
(35:32):
feet off the ground. You know, it's pretty high. Back then, well,
that had never even seen a tree stand. Was the
first one he'd ever seen in his life. My grandpa
looks at that and he says, would you believe that
somebody would do something like that? No, I I can't believe.
So you just just unheard of during that time for
people to hunt out of tree stands. Yeah, And it
was the first time my dad ever realized that you
could actually still hunt a deer. You know, he was
(35:53):
raised that wasn't an option. It was kind of eye
opening to him that you could, you know, you just
set in that tree and hill a deer walk by,
you know, and it sounded like an insurmountable task, you know,
to set that stand, just waiting on a deer to
happen by. So anyway, my grandpa just kept on about
it because I just can't believe anybody is sitting something
like that. He's just stupid, just setting a stand when
(36:13):
you could, you know, turn a dog's loose on something,
you know, I mean, just a totally different frame of mind.
And Dad, Dad kind of said something, well, whose is it.
My grandpa said, well, it's that Lawrence boy, and Dad,
so who's that? And so anyway, he got a My
grandpa kind of elaborated about James Lawrence back in the
late sixties and said, nobody in this part of the world,
at least, you know, in southwest Arkansas was even doing
(36:35):
anything like that, you know, so he's way ahead of
his time. But yeah, James was doing he was hunting
low saddles and mountains and the stuff that I grew
up thirty years later, thirty years later, and I understood
that that's what you had to do, you know, that's
what you did hunt deer. Well that wasn't It wasn't
that way, you know, people, people didn't really start understanding.
There was kind of this revival, well not a revival,
(36:57):
but a new understanding of how to deer hunt came
in the seven or mass distribution of knowledge about deer
hunting in the seventies eighties, and then in the nineties
with outdoor television and just increase of outdoor media. But
a lot of these guys were kind of pioneers for
how to pattern deer do all this. You like to hunt,
(37:22):
you like to hunt off horseback too, though, I like
to hunt horseback, and I like to get as far
away from rhodes and chicken houses, dogs, you know, and
get as far back as I can. So you would
lead the horse in with the saddle paniard, which is
basically you'd have a riding saddle and then you'd put
a paniard over and carry all your stuff in. I mean,
(37:43):
when you were camping, we started out from army duffel bags,
tying them, balancing them on a saddle. You know, worked
your way up to that, and then that was wonderful.
You know, go from backpacking in having that horse carry everything,
and then you'd get to camp and unloaded, then you
could ride the horse. We'll see you you taught me
(38:04):
how to do that. That's the way. That's my favorite
way to hunt. I missed that so much. There were
one time you told me you stayed nine days back
in there by yourself. That's that's the longest I've ever stayed.
Um And I just want to say that, like out west,
like there's this big, vast country and you know, people
(38:27):
go back in on these long hunts. Around here, there
was very few people that we're getting back in that
deep and staying that long. I mean, you didn't know
anybody around here doing that, did you? Nobody did, so
I just I kind of put that into context. You know.
It's like for for around here, that was like extreme
(38:47):
whitetail honey, and would be to this day. I miss it. Well,
you know, James, you massively inspired me. And I mean
since we've been good friends for a long time now,
I mean I model a whole lot of what I
do after you, you know, And it's my favorite way
(39:11):
to hunt. And I'm not very good at it. I'm
not as good at as you are. Oh Man. Mike
Schultz is one of the leaders in our church and
he's also a master woodworker. He has also someone whose
life has significantly impacted mine on many levels. I want
(39:32):
to discuss with him why and how relationships affect us.
Mike Schultz, I'm trying to understand why relationships are so
unique and why some relationships impact us in certain ways.
And it's interesting that you're the one sitting here, Mike,
(39:54):
because as you know, you're you're a man that I
would consider someone who's been deeply influential in my life
in many ways. I also have seen you be real
intentional with the mentors and relationships in your life. Why
does some relationships impact us, Well, that's a good question.
(40:17):
I think relationships are how we gain an understanding of
who we are. Relationships can fulfill things inside of us
that we're looking for. Ultimately, I think humans are designed
to be relational. That's the starting point. We need each other.
I found that in my own life some relationships I
(40:38):
knew or divine. Um, I knew it very early on
inside of the relationship that there was a connection that
would be deep and that would be really heart joining
and heartfelt, and that they would be long term. And
to me that those are the ones that I know
are divine, those are the ones that I know that
are orchestrated. I was side of myself their relationships that well,
(41:03):
the Bible talks about iron sharpening iron, where each person
is growing, each person is gaining understanding, each person is
developing as a human being. Mike, I've heard you talk
about how the different relationships that you've had in your
life have helped form personal identity for you. Can you
expand on that? Yeah, I think the best way I
(41:25):
can talk about that is just through one example that
comes to mind, a relationship with people that I've had
on learning new skills and watching someone who had a
very high skill level in a particular area. And the
area that I'm going to talk about is a friend
of mine that was a very very fine woodworker, cabinet maker.
I came to him and asked him if he would
(41:48):
begin to mentor me or teach me in that area.
He was very generous, and I watched him cut handcut
dovetails for for drawers, and I was impressed by the
skill of his hands. And when I first saw it,
I thought this is impossible to do. Seeing his hands
and watching him and with his encouragement, it took me
(42:09):
into a whole another level and I discovered something about
myself that I could do things beyond what I thought
were possible. And you know what, he didn't just teach
you with skill, because I think somebody could just say, well,
he just taught you how to do something. You could
have watched it on YouTube. I don't think so. Like
he he did teach you a skill, but he expanded you.
So there was like a technology that came into you
(42:32):
about this high level of skill that you didn't know
it was possible. And to stretch yourself and to grow
that wouldn't have came from a YouTube video. That's exactly right, Clay.
And it was through relationship too. It was through his encouragement.
That's that was the That was the word that I
keyed in on, Mike. I've seen you prioritize relationships inside
of your life. Why do you do that? It's very
(42:54):
easy to have a lot of friends for somebody like you,
it is Mike, maybe uh uh. I think the important
thing inside of relationship is that relationships can grow us,
or they can stunt us, or they can slow us
down in our our development as a as a person.
(43:15):
And it's important to know which relationships are the ones
that are are nourishing us personally. I want relationships, the
deep ones are important to me that those ones where
I become a better human being. Yeah, the uniqueness of
who we are as an individual is deeply formed by
the relationships that we form that nourish us. And there
(43:37):
are aspects of who we are that actually come from
different relationships that we have. We need a multitude of
people around us for us to discover really the multifascined
nature of really who we are. I think about my life,
I very clearly see that my life is a unique
combination of all the people I've been close to and
(44:01):
I have let in. And I believe that's part of
the divine nature of life. Uh. Is that that understanding
that I need others that I cannot be an island
unto myself. James built much of his life around deer hunting.
(44:23):
He loved the fall and wild places so much he
decided he'd work hard for ten months of the year
and hunt the other two. How maybe it was nine
and three. The wild thing is is that for somebody
so passionate, he never shared with many people about his success.
Maybe he even kept it hidden just a little bit,
or at least by modern standards, hidden. People in the
(44:45):
community knew about James hunting, but he wasn't one to
brag on his accomplishments. I think it probably goes back
to the initial response he got from the first deer
he ever killed. Sharing things that are valuable to us
make us vulnerable. James would learn to set his own standards,
and he'd celebrate his accomplishments with a few close friends.
(45:06):
He was never bitter, but it made him humble about
his deer hunting. And trust me, he's the guy you
want around if you have a successful hunt. He's all
about celebrating the success of others. I don't know that
I've ever had a hunting buddy that convinced me with
more certainty that they'd rather me have success than them.
(45:27):
So you're hunting really shaped shaped your life in a
lot of ways. I mean, you built your life kind
of around deer hunt. May be sad, but true. He
said something to me one time, he said, I'd lose
a crop for a good deer hunt. Yeah. Yeah, I've
used that since then, because you know what, I've built
my life sort of in the same way we we
(45:50):
like you have grown up out here in the mountains,
your whole life. To you, this is just normal life.
But it's a pretty incredible privilege to be a backwoodsman
in twenty two money. I can't imagine anything else really,
and this is my life. I mean, that's uh. I
was lucky enough this this property I'm own, um factually
(46:10):
come up with, uh shy sixty acres of the old
homestead place where I grew up. I didn't dream of
the situation growing up. I never thought about losing my family,
my granddad and my uncle's special It's pretty pretty unique
for this day and age. I'm blessed to be here,
you know, to be able to do that. What I've
(46:37):
always noted about James, even from our first meeting, was
this humility in the midst of notable accomplishments. He's never
left his humble roots. James became a master woodsman in
whitetail hunter and rarely got more than ten miles from
where he was born and raised. He's lived an incredible
life of adventure in back country hunting that I say
(47:00):
would rival any hunter that I've ever met. He didn't
have to travel to exotic hunting destinations to experience the
incredible bounty, both internal and external, that wild places offer.
James's dedication to woodsmen craft and the specific style of
hunting is inspiring and challenging to me personally. His humility
(47:24):
is a standard to which I evaluate my own life.
His story also causes me to reflect on the early encounters,
both positive and negative, that I had in hunting that
steer me to this day, and this makes me want
to be a positive voice in the story of the
young hunters of my life. Relationships build the framework of
(47:45):
our lives and affect its trajectory. James is one on
a short list of people that have altered the shape
of my life in a significant way. And sometimes it's
hard for me to even understand why. The unique shape
that is our personal identity is a combination of the
(48:05):
influential relationships in our life. I just can't get away
from this idea. Yeah, we're hunters that love wild places,
wild meat, and adventure, but I believe the thing that
we're after that's of extreme value is the human relationships
that we build throughout our life. And what we're passionate
about connects us to people. It's like a bridge that
(48:27):
connects us. So for us, hunting is that connector so
then hunting becomes something really special. The cool thing is
is that we get to choose who were impacted by
so choose wisely, no matter how technologically advanced hunting gets.
I hope we never lose what James has shown me
(48:48):
is still very much alive in North American hunting, a
lifestyle dedicated to craft, a pursuit of true woodsmanship for
the region, and the nurturing of an ageless and adventure
a spirit that does not lose its seal. Hey, long
live the beast, long live the hunt, and long live
(49:09):
our timeless friendships. M
H how they made to live and how they got by,
I don't know, and I can't imagine. I try not
to complain about anything because they they had all the
right in the world. And I never heard him or
my grandmother negative on anything is positive, had a lot
(00:21):
of respect for him. On this episode of the Bear
Grease Podcast, I want to introduce you to my friend
and mentor, James Lawrence. James is seventy two years old
and he's a master whitetail hunter for the region he lives.
James's life and hunting career was heavily influenced by one
of the first deary ever killed in nineteen sixty two.
(00:43):
It was a giant buck, and previous to him killing
the buck, he'd found three years of matching sheds. The
story has many layers and some significant twists and turns.
James's life has been a significant inspiration to me, and
it has impacted me on many levels. I want to
explore how and why some relationships deeply impact our lives.
(01:08):
You're gonna enjoy a great white tell story, You're gonna
learn how to still hunt, but I'm also gonna explore
how relationships helped form our own identity. But before we start,
I want to ask you a question. Who are the
influential people in your life? And why? My name is
(01:37):
Clay Nukelem and this is the Bear Grease Podcast, where
we'll explore things forgotten but relevant, search for insight and
unlikely places, and where we'll tell the story of Americans
who lived their lives close to the land. James Lawrence's
(02:02):
family homesteaded in a small rural community in the Washingtal
Mountains of western Arkansas in the mid eighteen hundreds. They
weren't wealthy people, but common people, typical of the demographic
of those migrating into the Arkansas Highlands. Most of these
newcomers came by the way of the Appalachians and were
(02:25):
of Scotch Irish descent. In the mid eighteen hundreds, up
to fifty percent of the migrants that were coming into
the Ozarks came from Middle Tennessee. But James's family came
directly out of Kentucky into the Washingtals, which is a
range of mountains south of the Ozarks. To this day,
(02:45):
the culture of all these regions are almost mirror reflections
of each other. All the history of James's family is
held simply in what can be remembered by those still alive.
If they'd been wealthy, are famous, perhaps some documentable history
would have deemed their story worthy of remembrance. Today, weathered
(03:08):
headstones of granite with the name Lawrence are their only
literary hat tip. This is it right here. That's my folks,
and that's my grandparents. Um, what was your what was
your grandmother's name? Edna, Edna Goldie. I feel like in
(03:32):
order to understand the context of this story, we gotta
go way back. We're in a cemetery in western Arkansas,
the Lawrence Family Cemetery. What do you know about your
family history back in here? Well, the Lawrence has come
here from the East Kentucky. My dad was James Lawrence,
(03:53):
My granddad was James Dan Lawrence, and I'm James Edward Larnch. Now,
your grandma was a dear uter though, Oh yeah, Now
was that unusual for a woman to be a pretty
serious deer hunter or a real serious deer hunter like
she was? Was that unusual or was that comp a
little of both? A couple of her her sisters were
(04:17):
serious hunters, you know. And did they hunt because they
loved it? Or were they hunting for meat. It was
strictly for meat. You told me that your grandmother taught
you had a shock poucher deer, her and her brother.
Shock pouching is when you remove the lower leg bone
from the four legs of a deer, leaving the dew claws.
(04:40):
Then you criss cross the legs, tying them together and
effectively make backpack straps out of a deer so that
you can carry the deer out of the woods on
your back. Actually made a video of this that's on
the meat eater dot com called shock pouching that you
can see the whole thing that James taught me how
to do. Do you have any idea where that came from?
(05:05):
Just that's how they carried her out. Did they do it?
Just about every year? That's why they when you find
them and when they come out with him, that's the
whey they would beg they'd have it. They put off
tied in the nut and they'd carried them out physically.
You know what's pretty interesting to think about. To think
about the eighteen thirties seems like so long ago, But
if you think about it like this, you're seventy two.
(05:30):
You knew people that were. Your grandmother was born in
nineteen o nine, so she would have you know, her
grandparents would have been people that would have been here
in the eighteen thirties. So you think about like your
life was influenced by people whose lives were directly influenced
(05:52):
by people that had no technology, no cars, no phones,
like totally almost like primitive like. And so when you
think about it like that, like you're two steps away
from I mean, it's like in the scale of human
history for how long we've been here, that's like a blip.
(06:16):
I grew up in the same part of Arkansas as James,
but I didn't meet him until he was sixty two
years old and I was around thirty. His reputation preceded him,
and I was told he was one of the best
mountain deer hunters around. I got his address, drove to
his house, and knocked on his door cold turkey. I
introduced myself to a warm, humble, and rugged man who
(06:40):
opened the door. I received immediate credibility because of the
man who told me about him, a mutual friend of ours.
James's response was predictable of the mountain people. If he's
a friend of yours, then you're a friend of mine,
I told him I was writing an article about deer
hunting in the mountains of Arkansas. Our hunting culture has
(07:01):
gradually moved to being dominated by deer feeders and sacks
of corn. I'm not necessarily against feeding deer. I do
it myself some, but it has undisputably degraded the level
of knowledge about deer and deer hunting in the modern era.
I wanted to talk to an expert who hunted deer
in the mountains on public land. Something immediately told me
(07:24):
I had found one. His face was worn with deep
wrinkles that had clearly greeted the sun daily for decades.
I'd learned that he used to be a smoker, but
had quit for health reason some years ago. In his
early thirties, James was a game warden, but resigned after
(07:44):
a series of incidents, one of which involved him ticketing
a government official for a game violation, but he was
then later told to rescind the citation in a back
room meeting with a supervisor. The injustice was too much
for a man ray eased in the mountains who never
heard of silver spoons or the advantages of political hierarchy.
(08:06):
James made his living as a carpenter, stonemason, and cattle farmer.
He once built an entire complex of buildings in the
nineteen seventies. It was a mountain retreat center, and the
job called for four hundred tons of native stonework. James
spent years gathering the rocks by hand and doing the work.
In my mind, James is representative of the Mountain people,
(08:28):
hard working, humble, independent, leery of outsiders, but quick to
befriend you if friendship is offered. He doesn't seem to
lose a grudge too quickly, but to his friends he's
deeply loyal and sacrificial. On that first meeting with James
in two thousand and ten, I looked at a wall
(08:51):
of white tailed deer racks. The horns were screwed to
the sheet rock wall in his garage, and they were
all cut from the skull plate in the same way
I'd learned that his uncle showed him how to cut
the skull plates, so they set flat on the wall,
displaying the rack at a very particular and natural angle.
His uncle taught him to tan the hide and put
(09:11):
it back on the skull plate. Bucks that had been
off the hoof for fifty years still had their original hair.
They ranged in size from basket rack bucks to mature,
top notch white tales. For the region. One rack stood
out from the rest, and the yellowed horns looked old.
The hair on the skull plate was faded. Surely this
(09:32):
deer had a story. I walked to the rack and
touched its rough burrs, and I asked him about the deer.
I was amazed at the story that he began to
tell me. But before you hear the story directly from James,
you've got to understand the context. In the nineteen fifties
and sixties, deer numbers in Arkansas were low, and for
(09:52):
an even deeper look into the context, on December eighteenth,
nineteen oh seven, President Teddy Roosevelt created the Washington nash
No Forest, and prior to that the region had been
logged at a landscape level, meaning almost everything was cut.
With the trees went the wildlife in most of the
other big game, including bears, but don't get me started
(10:14):
on that. With the new management of the Forest Service,
by the nineteen fifties, the forests were recovering, but the
primary method of deer hunting the low density population was
with dogs. Using the dogs was a traditional and effective
method for rousing deer out of their layers, but very
few hunters at the time knew how to hunt deer
(10:34):
on their natural patterns. So when you hear this story,
I think you'll agree that it was an incredible feat,
especially for a young boy. When I was with my
uncle out here on weekend when we lived in town
at the time. All the weekends out here, Uh, he'd
(10:56):
give me a twenty two rifle, and ammunition was cheap.
And when I was out here, I was out wondering
the fields, and all of it was family owned. Right
here where we're sitting, the first sheds was probably a
hundred and fifty yards from where we're sitting, across the Costa,
(11:18):
the head waters of the Costa, and there they were
just together, touching each other, just laid right on top
of each other. They do on top each other. And
I couldn't I couldn't pick them up and run over
here and show them quick enough. And you would have been, uh,
you'd have been eleven years old. These first sheds you
found right here would have been in like nineteen fifty nine,
(11:41):
probably three years of sheds and then the bucks of
fifty nine, sixties, sixty one, and sixty two. You killed
the deer, so you found this, these sheds just right there.
You pointed out to me a cedar tree that they
were laying by, And that was during a time when
there there weren't deering these mountains. During that time, James's
(12:03):
family would go off to deer camp, but James rarely went.
He'd stay home and wander around alone on his home place,
shooting squirrels and rabbits with his twenty two. These early
solo hunts would set a track for his future hunting,
but it also brings up the question why I wasn't
he included in these family outings. I was one of
(12:25):
the only ones that was out drashing through the woods
and through the fields and the thickets for the rabbits
and squirrels. I was jumping deer. You know. I couldn't
explain it to them because they I was jumping deer
all the time, and they were going off dog hunting
and they're occasionally killing deer, and the family wouldn't seeing it.
They wouldn't follow me around, and I would try to
(12:47):
tell him what I've seen, and I know it's hard
to believe. They were off, scattered out hunting and they're
not seeing anything. They come in and I've got these stories.
Well they wasn't interesting in my stories. I mean it really,
here's the here's the bigger question. Why weren't you hunting
with them? They I went with my granddad and sat
on a stand freeze to death. We'd build a little
(13:08):
bitty fire if we're just stay warm. And he was
waiting on the dogs to run a deer by us.
Why would it accuse us when there's standards everywhere. We
would occasionally see deer, but I could stay home and
I could just walk down the fence rows and I
could see dere So you started really learning from a
young age how to hunt these deer. Well, it was
(13:28):
just from being out. So you saw him. I saw him.
I saw him twice. So you came back and told
your family, I saw a big buck, and I know
I had excitement. I was excited all over. After James
found the first set of sheds the next fall, he
(13:49):
actually saw the buck hard horn. He shared the sighting
with his family, but you can guess the response that
he got a little kid claiming to have seen a
giant buck. He was dismissed, you know. I mean it's
hard to visualize that thing when I was a kid
seeing the buck of that, yeah, standing a broadside, nothing
(14:10):
between me and at me. With the twenty two, I
couldn't go any further. I had to come tell somebody,
which was my uncle. And I don't know I would
have got excited if eleven year old kids come up
and told me what they've just seen in excitement. Uh,
it just didn't seem to They kind of dismissed you. Well,
(14:30):
it just feels it hurt my feeling. But I had proof,
you know. So that second year, so you find these sheds,
and just to give people a context, that first year sheds,
I think I scored it in the high one forties,
(14:51):
one fifties. I mean, so this is not a small deer,
especially for the late nineteen fifties and the Washtaw Mountains.
I mean, this is like a major your dear, So
you come back with the sheds the second year, you're
you're you, How did you find the second set of
sheds the same way I had my twenty two and
it was right over here. I was stumbling around, I
(15:13):
was squirrel hunting up the road, and I was going
up that dark I called it dark hollow. There's a
holler where the road and makes a sharp bend, and
I'd go up that hollar on rocks basically where I
could slip up. And you're at the squirrel barking, and
and I was on my way back come around and basically, oh,
all but inside of where we're sitting right now, coming down.
(15:35):
So you pick up the second year sheds of this buck. Yeah,
the third year. Tell me how you found those horns?
Same way? How was that stumbling? Where was where was that?
They were separate? They were on up the head of Costa.
The Costa Tot is a fast flowing eighty nine mile
(15:56):
long river in western Arkansas that flows out of the
Southern Wash. It toss its headwaters basically start on the
Lawrence family homestead. The word costatat is a Native American
word that roughly translates into skull crusher. It's known for
its rapids further down the river. Hey, in the third
(16:17):
set of sheds, I scored that deer, given it the
same spread credit as the actual deer in that dear
gross scored over a hundred seventy. I mean so this
is in the in the now, we're into the early
nineteen sixties, and so I mean, this is a this
is a gross one seventy plus typical. And you have
(16:38):
found third years. She has. And I want to say
something like people in the Midwest today, in farm country,
they'll have history with deer. You know, they'll find two
or three years the sheds of a buck down here.
In the nineteen fifties and sixties, that was unheard of.
It was now the fall of nineteen sixty two. James
(16:59):
was now thirteen years old, and he'd collected three years
a giant sheds of a buck almost within sight of
his house. He'd been dismissed by many of the hunters
and his family, but things were about to change. And
so tell me, tell me about that day. Wow, a
typical deer season day. I'd been roaming around jumping deer,
(17:25):
as was typical. James stayed home and hunted while his
family went off to deer camp. He had a stand
at a deer crossing that he'd often go and sit
most of the day. By stand, he didn't mean a
tree stand. It was a stump that he set on.
Family loaded up and was going. I was out of
(17:45):
school that day. Family went over and they let me
stay home because of I've been telling them what I'm saying.
You know, they were off hunting, and that was what
I did. I went up and said on that stand
because it was basically acrossing for year. And this was
with my new thirty thirty marline. I said to lunch
time and I was at top of the hill eating
(18:07):
lunch at our house where we lived, looking down on
the field and I seen a dough down in the
field while I was taking a breaking. I hadn't seen
anything at that time. It was a big deal to
see it. Dear. Yeah, I had my sandwich, walked back
down the road. I got caught and it was a
It was a local person asking me if I've seen
(18:29):
any dogs or picked up any dogs, or hurt any
dogs or whatever. Standing there talking to him. They were
gonna pick up and I looked across the foot of
the truck out in that field while we were talking,
I could visualize and I could see horns up above
safe grass. This is you're looking across the hood at
(18:50):
this vi here exactly while talking to him, I was
looking at for that dough. I didn't tell him about
the dough. I didn't fasten any information anyway. I didn't
say anything to them, but I kind of wanted them
to go on, and they did. I went on around
like I always do, get in that stand setting up
there in that little cap. I get up there and
sitting down, and I started thinking about that there did
(19:13):
I don't really see. I get up and slipped down
and had a fence to cross to get in that field.
I slipped down there and a dog jumped up. Man,
it got me excited. And the dog went out in
the middle of the field and I've seen a movement
and here was here was a ship buck just come
(19:34):
up out of that sage grass and looked at me.
He was in it bed. He stood up out of
the grass and he was standing up, raring up to
get up. When I shot the first time, and you
hit him the first time. I hit him the first time,
but you jacked another shellacked another shell, hit him again, disappeared,
(19:54):
he went down. What did you feel like when you
walked up to that buck? I'd I don't know how
to describe it. I still remember the excitement, but you
know it was I didn't know what to do. James
set and admired the shed buck for a while, but
ended up going home to wait on the return of
his family from deer hunting. Taking to consideration that this
(20:17):
was the biggest buck anybody in the family would have
ever seen, and if James could forecast in the future,
he'd see that it would likely be the biggest buck
he'd ever kill in his life. You'd think he'd get
a good response. And I, you know, we talked about
it before. I didn't get the response that I was.
You know, they walked up on it, the deer was
(20:39):
laying there, they feel dressed a deer, and we drug
it out. And you know, I've got pictures of when
I was a kid holding my dad's deer. Don't There
wasn't no picture taking. There wasn't know, so they didn't
celebrate with you. There wasn't a celebration. My uncle took
the horns, like I showed you different ones that he
took it, cut the horns off and put the skin
(21:01):
back around it and put it on a board it
And that would have been the biggest deer that any
of these guys had ever seen. Obviously, you know, my
dad killed several deer, but they wouldn't nothing, because James,
you've been hunting right in here since nineteen or late
nineteen fifties, so that's over sixty years, and this is
(21:23):
the biggest buck that you've killed this day. And you've
probably killed over a hundred white tails since then. Well
over that. Yeah, what I meant to say was that
he's killed over a hundred mature mountain bucks on public
land without bait, most without trail cameras, in the majority
of them from the ground while still hunting. James would
(21:47):
become a master at hunting the mountains of Arkansas. He
hunted out of tree stands, but he loved to still
hunt the buck. I I scored it this deer, James.
This is what I love about you is that you
never had that deer scored you. You never even cared
what it scored. And then I think in two thousand
(22:10):
and ten, I saw the deer and I said, hey,
we gotta score that deer, and you were like, yeah,
let's see what it scored. And I scored that dear,
GROWTH scored it right at a hundred sixty inches. The
buck was starting to go downhill. The prior year he
grows scored a hundred and seventy inches. I can't express
what an incredible feat this would be to kill a
(22:33):
hundred and sixty inch deer at any time by anybody,
but even more so in nineteen sixty two by a
thirteen year old boy. I asked James how killing the
buck affected the trajectory of his hunting. Two times before that,
I went to the dog camp the deer deer season
(22:55):
for the It was a camp house. It was a
relative old home place. How was still standing? That was
the camp My granddad's brother. He was always off still hunting.
Twice he invited me to go. My uncle invited me
to go with him, and he started showing me we
didn't the amazing part of him when a't odd ball
(23:18):
in the family, just kind of done things different than
the rest of the boys did. They had hunting dogs
and he didn't have any. He didn't go to set
on the deer stand like the rest of them. He
would go off a different direction. But the thing that
really I tried all my life to do, he started
hunting when he took the first step off the road,
(23:40):
and when he get inside of the road, he didn't
quit hunting. He when he stepped back in the road
is when he quit hunting. M when he stepped in
the woods. He was hunting. Even in the first time
we left across the road from the cabin over the
house where the deer camp was at with all the
barking dogs and the people and excitement and stuff. And
we started hunting the minute we stepped off the road
(24:02):
across from cabin. And he taught you how to track there.
And the man could track a deer, just go through
the woods and find a track and could stay on it,
and and where every time I went like mud, this
is like Lee rock piles, right, he's tracking deer, and
he's tracking deer. And most of the time I had
to step in the same tracks that he stepped as
(24:24):
he slipped through in it. You know, sometimes Clay, we
wouldn't go thirty yards, and I swear it was thirty minutes.
And in other times we would travel a little bit faster.
But I know the first time we went, we was
almost back inside of the hunting party when we jumped
the deer and we've been on him for a while,
(24:44):
and he was, I don't like, just amazed me. So
I took two different times we did that, and I
took quite he he showed me, but he didn't really
show me. I just picked up on what we were
doing in the way he was doing it. And so
there was something appealing to you about your uncle what
was his name, Raymond an Ashcraft, Raymond Nashcraft in the
(25:06):
way the way he hunted in James, to this day,
that's the way you prefer to hunt. And you'd call
it still hunting. That's all that I mean, that's what
they called it then, and that's all I know how
to call it. It was still that. Some people call
it slip hunting. And I don't have the patience that
(25:26):
I used to. But years ago, I'd spend a day
and I wouldn't go nowhere. I mean, you know, I
had dear I thought pinpointed in the area they was in,
and just amazed me how a little travel I'd be doing.
But you know, a few steps or a tree, uh,
And it's amazing how many deer would get up and
(25:49):
start slipping out away from you that you pick up
or Yeah. I got more specific with James about the
details of the style of still hunting that he d
on a good November morning when you were still hunting
like you would have done all those years. What kind
of area were you going to? Why would you be
(26:10):
going to that area? And then what would you do
when you got there? When I'd go into the woods,
unless something calming that I had to be back out,
if this was a day that was set aside for
me that I didn't have to come back, I left
that truck intention to coming back at dark. When I
leave the woods the year before, I know that I
had left deer in that area, so I didn't do
(26:32):
any pre scouting. I just could go back into the
area where I know that I left good Bucks the
year before. I had already learned some trails, some saddles,
some gaps. The area is on the mountain that I
would finding more signs, so I would go into it
that way, I didn't disturb anything, and I would hunt
from the time I've left the road going into the
(26:55):
woods to the mountain. Basically in our mountains run east
and west, most of our winds coming out of the south,
so I always I could calculate which direction I wanted
to hunt on the mountains. And uh, I think that
helped more than anything than scouting, because the scout and
I'd always disturbed deer. This deer hadn't been disturbed this
(27:16):
area that I hunt. I know there's nobody been in there.
That's a big key right there, as you intentionally we're
going in on undisturbed still, honey, it didn't help me
anybody going in and trying to locate stuff. I would
go in on something that's already familiar with from the
year before, and I skipped around. I mean I covered
quite a bit of ground. But I'd pick out an
(27:37):
area to go into without any monet that you know,
the wind, and you would go in with the wind
at your face or across wind. And then would you
pick a certain kind of day? Did you need wet
leaves so he could move quiet? Or could you go
when it was dry? I didn't. I'd go when I could.
It didn't matter. I didn't wait on a particular day.
If it's dry, just took you a little longer. There's
(27:59):
still on end. But in our reality, I didn't move
any faster. I don't move any faster. And wet ground
and I don't dry. If you're setting up in the
tree stand and you hear a deer coming, if you'll
walk like a there, you can walk up on a deer.
A deer will walk and stop and walk and stop.
And if you do the same thing, you can do
the same thing to deer. So you you would just
(28:21):
you'd start hunting as soon as you left the road
and tracks, just I really, would you just move just slow?
Like how far would you travel in a given period
of time. That's a hard question to answer, because sometimes
I may not be a hundred yards from where I
was at an hour ago, okay, or hardly there, I
mean fifty yards even I guess you'd be encouraged by
seeing signing, like seeing rubs or seeing seeing a little sign.
(28:44):
And squirrels will happy, bird will happy. You know, if
there's something moving out here, you're a squirrel barking down here,
and no one is not barking at you. You know,
I've sat there many, many, many times in the squirrel
be barking at a coon or something else, thinking it
was a deer. Sometimes it's a deer. I could spend
half a day and not go for yards. What would
(29:04):
you do? Would you lean up against the tree? Would
you like find landmarks? And you'd say, I'm gonna try
to get to there, and then so I did never
do that, Okay, no landmarks. I mean, I know what
you're saying, but I would head to the landmark, but
I wouldn't know if I'm gonna go this direction over
that holler, I'd take my time getting to it. And
if I dropped down and then coming over the next
(29:25):
ridge or a sale, that's when I'd spend a lot
of time EA's and up and covering all the ground
on the next area ahead of me. How how do
you usually see deer? Like? What did they do? And James?
Are they moving? Are they bedded down? Anything from a
twitch for an air as a tail, any kind of movement,
just lock in on it and and not move. You know,
(29:47):
what about your shots? Are you having to take a
lot of moving shots? Just of all those deer on
your wall, what would you say would be the most
common shot? Just he's standing out there broadside, you shoot him. Well,
you can't really do that and still hunting. You kind
of have to take the shot when you get it walking.
I mean, if you can catch one standing, of course
(30:08):
you want to brought that shot. Oh no, they probably
wouldn't standing. They'd moving moving, not not not running, and
when they're traveling even you know, if you got behind
the buck, I mean between the doe and the buck
trailing the dough bucks coming through there, but his head
on the ground and he's already trailing. When you got
(30:30):
to plan ahead and pull out. And so you've been
looking for a gap, you'd you'd you'd kind of try
to predict where he was gonna be, and you'd be there.
What kind of what was your go to rifle? Started
out with the thirty thirty Marlin for many many, many
many years, and later years, uh got a three o
eight with a scope on it. And all you're stopping
(30:51):
around out there, James, I know you would, like you
you would, you would just learn where you would see
a buck of all this turn where would you see bucks?
Was there? Trend most of them were close to two
thirds of the way up the mountain, and a lot
of these mountains have a little we call them saddles,
a little gaps, and most of the time they'd be
(31:12):
on the upper side of those gaps, looking down on
the gaps, or I mean they're covering their back to
You wouldn't stay on top of the mountain, you'd be
on the side. I'm not hunted a whole lot on
top really just over the turn, either on the north
or on the south. For many years, I wouldn't not
on the south. It's strictly the north. Really we went
into camping one day or sin of camping with me
(31:34):
any like the south side. We hunted the south side,
and it's the big Bucks is on the south side too.
If you could give me one key for still hunting
these mountains, what would it be. Patience is ninety nine
percent of it. And you know, of course the wind
in your face, James, I, I do you think that
(31:59):
you have h or a hunter has a sixth sense,
like a like a sensing of a deer being somewhere?
I do, yeah, I do. How does that feel to you?
That's a hard one to describe it. I mean, do
you feel like you know, you feel like he's here?
If where is he? You know, and maybe there's no
(32:20):
real reason to know, you just you know, you just
sense that he's here. Where is it? You don't move
your head, you move your eyes, you don't move your body.
You know that, dear, you're right on top of it,
and that many times you're right and most of the
time he busts you. But I mean, you'll finally give
up and make a move and the deer it would
(32:41):
be basically in plain sight. Now that's that's when your
go heart goes to something, when you get and you
know he's there. And many times Clay they are. You know. Yeah,
it's just like you know they are, you feel that
they are. They are. But that was excite part of hunting.
It's not the kill. That's it's out smart and no buck,
(33:04):
there's one on one out there when you're still here
now sitting in a tree. I love that po hunting
um our gunning, but the excitement that I got growing up.
But still, let's see, I think that you built your
whole white tail world going off where nobody else wants
to go, doing it alone. For the most part, you
(33:26):
had a few close hunting buddies, you took your wife
sometimes with you, but you learned how to be a
master woodsman for these mountains. And that's that is what
I always from the day I met you, James, was
I valued your humility. I've I valued your your skill
(33:48):
and craft and the way you dedicated yourself to know
these mountains and know these deer the way you do.
And you just learned how to be successful in a
re the difficult place. Scott Brown and I grew up
together and share an appreciation for hunting these mountain bucks
(34:10):
in our region. He has a good story that puts
James Is hunting into context. My dad grew up with
a dad who believed the only way you you could
hunt a deer was to run dogs. You know. They
were passionate dog hunters, and that was just the you know,
(34:31):
to them, the only way to hunt a deer. And
so there was this thought that you didn't turn the
dogs out until the frost melted off. So you get
them in the morning, make some coffee, you'd sit around,
lets the sun come up, get the frost melted off.
Then you load all your dogs up. Everybody go get
on where they felt a deer was going to come
running by, you know, And there was some art to
(34:51):
that and anyway they sit around there. This would have
been probably in sixty seven sixty eight. They're sitting around
deer camping, and my grandpa's as well, we're gonna go
get in this gap. There was a certain gap there
on the mountain. Nor these deer like if they headed south,
they were going to go through this low gap in
the mountain and so they leave out. They walk out
into this big low gap, real pretty When you get
(35:11):
up there, my grandpa says, come here, I want to
show you something. You look at. My grandpa goes, look
at that right there, and and there's a tree stand
just basically a platform built on it in a tree
with some big old nail spikes, spikes, railroad tied spikes,
just just you know, hammered into this tree and this stand.
You know. He said it was probably twelve or fifteen
(35:32):
feet off the ground. You know, it's pretty high. Back then, well,
that had never even seen a tree stand. Was the
first one he'd ever seen in his life. My grandpa
looks at that and he says, would you believe that
somebody would do something like that? No, I I can't believe.
So you just just unheard of during that time for
people to hunt out of tree stands. Yeah, And it
was the first time my dad ever realized that you
could actually still hunt a deer. You know, he was
(35:53):
raised that wasn't an option. It was kind of eye
opening to him that you could, you know, you just
set in that tree and hill a deer walk by,
you know, and it sounded like an insurmountable task, you know,
to set that stand, just waiting on a deer to
happen by. So anyway, my grandpa just kept on about
it because I just can't believe anybody is sitting something
like that. He's just stupid, just setting a stand when
(36:13):
you could, you know, turn a dog's loose on something,
you know, I mean, just a totally different frame of mind.
And Dad, Dad kind of said something, well, whose is it.
My grandpa said, well, it's that Lawrence boy, and Dad,
so who's that? And so anyway, he got a My
grandpa kind of elaborated about James Lawrence back in the
late sixties and said, nobody in this part of the world,
at least, you know, in southwest Arkansas was even doing
(36:35):
anything like that, you know, so he's way ahead of
his time. But yeah, James was doing he was hunting
low saddles and mountains and the stuff that I grew
up thirty years later, thirty years later, and I understood
that that's what you had to do, you know, that's
what you did hunt deer. Well that wasn't It wasn't
that way, you know, people, people didn't really start understanding.
There was kind of this revival, well not a revival,
(36:57):
but a new understanding of how to deer hunt came
in the seven or mass distribution of knowledge about deer
hunting in the seventies eighties, and then in the nineties
with outdoor television and just increase of outdoor media. But
a lot of these guys were kind of pioneers for
how to pattern deer do all this. You like to hunt,
(37:22):
you like to hunt off horseback too, though, I like
to hunt horseback, and I like to get as far
away from rhodes and chicken houses, dogs, you know, and
get as far back as I can. So you would
lead the horse in with the saddle paniard, which is
basically you'd have a riding saddle and then you'd put
a paniard over and carry all your stuff in. I mean,
(37:43):
when you were camping, we started out from army duffel bags,
tying them, balancing them on a saddle. You know, worked
your way up to that, and then that was wonderful.
You know, go from backpacking in having that horse carry everything,
and then you'd get to camp and unloaded, then you
could ride the horse. We'll see you you taught me
(38:04):
how to do that. That's the way. That's my favorite
way to hunt. I missed that so much. There were
one time you told me you stayed nine days back
in there by yourself. That's that's the longest I've ever stayed.
Um And I just want to say that, like out west,
like there's this big, vast country and you know, people
(38:27):
go back in on these long hunts. Around here, there
was very few people that we're getting back in that
deep and staying that long. I mean, you didn't know
anybody around here doing that, did you? Nobody did, so
I just I kind of put that into context. You know.
It's like for for around here, that was like extreme
(38:47):
whitetail honey, and would be to this day. I miss it. Well,
you know, James, you massively inspired me. And I mean
since we've been good friends for a long time now,
I mean I model a whole lot of what I
do after you, you know, And it's my favorite way
(39:11):
to hunt. And I'm not very good at it. I'm
not as good at as you are. Oh Man. Mike
Schultz is one of the leaders in our church and
he's also a master woodworker. He has also someone whose
life has significantly impacted mine on many levels. I want
(39:32):
to discuss with him why and how relationships affect us.
Mike Schultz, I'm trying to understand why relationships are so
unique and why some relationships impact us in certain ways.
And it's interesting that you're the one sitting here, Mike,
(39:54):
because as you know, you're you're a man that I
would consider someone who's been deeply influential in my life
in many ways. I also have seen you be real
intentional with the mentors and relationships in your life. Why
does some relationships impact us, Well, that's a good question.
(40:17):
I think relationships are how we gain an understanding of
who we are. Relationships can fulfill things inside of us
that we're looking for. Ultimately, I think humans are designed
to be relational. That's the starting point. We need each other.
I found that in my own life some relationships I
(40:38):
knew or divine. Um, I knew it very early on
inside of the relationship that there was a connection that
would be deep and that would be really heart joining
and heartfelt, and that they would be long term. And
to me that those are the ones that I know
are divine, those are the ones that I know that
are orchestrated. I was side of myself their relationships that well,
(41:03):
the Bible talks about iron sharpening iron, where each person
is growing, each person is gaining understanding, each person is
developing as a human being. Mike, I've heard you talk
about how the different relationships that you've had in your
life have helped form personal identity for you. Can you
expand on that? Yeah, I think the best way I
(41:25):
can talk about that is just through one example that
comes to mind, a relationship with people that I've had
on learning new skills and watching someone who had a
very high skill level in a particular area. And the
area that I'm going to talk about is a friend
of mine that was a very very fine woodworker, cabinet maker.
I came to him and asked him if he would
(41:48):
begin to mentor me or teach me in that area.
He was very generous, and I watched him cut handcut
dovetails for for drawers, and I was impressed by the
skill of his hands. And when I first saw it,
I thought this is impossible to do. Seeing his hands
and watching him and with his encouragement, it took me
(42:09):
into a whole another level and I discovered something about
myself that I could do things beyond what I thought
were possible. And you know what, he didn't just teach
you with skill, because I think somebody could just say, well,
he just taught you how to do something. You could
have watched it on YouTube. I don't think so. Like
he he did teach you a skill, but he expanded you.
So there was like a technology that came into you
(42:32):
about this high level of skill that you didn't know
it was possible. And to stretch yourself and to grow
that wouldn't have came from a YouTube video. That's exactly right, Clay.
And it was through relationship too. It was through his encouragement.
That's that was the That was the word that I
keyed in on, Mike. I've seen you prioritize relationships inside
of your life. Why do you do that? It's very
(42:54):
easy to have a lot of friends for somebody like you,
it is Mike, maybe uh uh. I think the important
thing inside of relationship is that relationships can grow us,
or they can stunt us, or they can slow us
down in our our development as a as a person.
(43:15):
And it's important to know which relationships are the ones
that are are nourishing us personally. I want relationships, the
deep ones are important to me that those ones where
I become a better human being. Yeah, the uniqueness of
who we are as an individual is deeply formed by
the relationships that we form that nourish us. And there
(43:37):
are aspects of who we are that actually come from
different relationships that we have. We need a multitude of
people around us for us to discover really the multifascined
nature of really who we are. I think about my life,
I very clearly see that my life is a unique
combination of all the people I've been close to and
(44:01):
I have let in. And I believe that's part of
the divine nature of life. Uh. Is that that understanding
that I need others that I cannot be an island
unto myself. James built much of his life around deer hunting.
(44:23):
He loved the fall and wild places so much he
decided he'd work hard for ten months of the year
and hunt the other two. How maybe it was nine
and three. The wild thing is is that for somebody
so passionate, he never shared with many people about his success.
Maybe he even kept it hidden just a little bit,
or at least by modern standards, hidden. People in the
(44:45):
community knew about James hunting, but he wasn't one to
brag on his accomplishments. I think it probably goes back
to the initial response he got from the first deer
he ever killed. Sharing things that are valuable to us
make us vulnerable. James would learn to set his own standards,
and he'd celebrate his accomplishments with a few close friends.
(45:06):
He was never bitter, but it made him humble about
his deer hunting. And trust me, he's the guy you
want around if you have a successful hunt. He's all
about celebrating the success of others. I don't know that
I've ever had a hunting buddy that convinced me with
more certainty that they'd rather me have success than them.
(45:27):
So you're hunting really shaped shaped your life in a
lot of ways. I mean, you built your life kind
of around deer hunt. May be sad, but true. He
said something to me one time, he said, I'd lose
a crop for a good deer hunt. Yeah. Yeah, I've
used that since then, because you know what, I've built
my life sort of in the same way we we
(45:50):
like you have grown up out here in the mountains,
your whole life. To you, this is just normal life.
But it's a pretty incredible privilege to be a backwoodsman
in twenty two money. I can't imagine anything else really,
and this is my life. I mean, that's uh. I
was lucky enough this this property I'm own, um factually
(46:10):
come up with, uh shy sixty acres of the old
homestead place where I grew up. I didn't dream of
the situation growing up. I never thought about losing my family,
my granddad and my uncle's special It's pretty pretty unique
for this day and age. I'm blessed to be here,
you know, to be able to do that. What I've
(46:37):
always noted about James, even from our first meeting, was
this humility in the midst of notable accomplishments. He's never
left his humble roots. James became a master woodsman in
whitetail hunter and rarely got more than ten miles from
where he was born and raised. He's lived an incredible
life of adventure in back country hunting that I say
(47:00):
would rival any hunter that I've ever met. He didn't
have to travel to exotic hunting destinations to experience the
incredible bounty, both internal and external, that wild places offer.
James's dedication to woodsmen craft and the specific style of
hunting is inspiring and challenging to me personally. His humility
(47:24):
is a standard to which I evaluate my own life.
His story also causes me to reflect on the early encounters,
both positive and negative, that I had in hunting that
steer me to this day, and this makes me want
to be a positive voice in the story of the
young hunters of my life. Relationships build the framework of
(47:45):
our lives and affect its trajectory. James is one on
a short list of people that have altered the shape
of my life in a significant way. And sometimes it's
hard for me to even understand why. The unique shape
that is our personal identity is a combination of the
(48:05):
influential relationships in our life. I just can't get away
from this idea. Yeah, we're hunters that love wild places,
wild meat, and adventure, but I believe the thing that
we're after that's of extreme value is the human relationships
that we build throughout our life. And what we're passionate
about connects us to people. It's like a bridge that
(48:27):
connects us. So for us, hunting is that connector so
then hunting becomes something really special. The cool thing is
is that we get to choose who were impacted by
so choose wisely, no matter how technologically advanced hunting gets.
I hope we never lose what James has shown me
(48:48):
is still very much alive in North American hunting, a
lifestyle dedicated to craft, a pursuit of true woodsmanship for
the region, and the nurturing of an ageless and adventure
a spirit that does not lose its seal. Hey, long
live the beast, long live the hunt, and long live
(49:09):
our timeless friendships. M
Host
Clay Newcomb
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