EP 407. Operation Stoned Duck (Part 3): The Aftermath

 

Hunting the Gulf Coast

Ramsey Russell: Welcome back to MOJO’s Duck Season Somewhere, where the story of the Poacher’s Nightmare continues. Joining me today is Mr. Sam Necaise and this story starts down at Hancock County, way down on the Gulf Coast from Mississippi, which I never really thought of Sam, as deer country. Is it deer country down there?

Sam Necaise: Not hardly. There’s deer there, but you could go a couple weeks without seeing one.

Ramsey Russell: Well, I was out here behind your shop and you got a pile of deer antlers. Any of those come off down from South Mississippi or both or from up around here?

Sam Necaise: Most of those are shed antlers and deadheads that I found through the years. I use them for repairing antlers when a customer wants one of their tines fixed or whatever. If I can find one that’s a close match, I can do a little better repair with those. Some of them have been given to me for that purpose, some old horns that people had in their barns and whatnot. 90% of them are the ones I found just walking through the woods. I spend a lot of time in the woods, trapping, looking for new deer sign after deer season and stuff and that’s usually when I find all of them.

Ramsey Russell: Where were you born and raised?

Sam Necaise: I was born and raised in Kiln, Mississippi.

Ramsey Russell: Which is down the Gulf Coast.

Sam Necaise: It’s about center of Hancock County, kind of central. Went to a couple different schools growing up, mostly private school through, then ended up homeschooling for a while, up until my high school years and then I went to Hancock High, graduated from there in 2004.

Ramsey Russell: Did you grow up hunting?

Sam Necaise: I started hunting, I guess, when I was probably about 8, I think.

Ramsey Russell: Where do your earliest memories growing up hunting down there in Kiln, Mississippi?

Sam Necaise: Me and my dad would walk into a patch of woods and there was a lot of fire lanes and whatnot down there. And he would sit with me on the side of a fire lane and we would be close to a trail that he’d seen some deer before. We would sit there, a lot of evening hunts. And I think that was just his way of getting me out there, getting me acclimated to the woods and whatnot.

Ramsey Russell: That’s good way to spend time with your kids.

Sam Necaise: Yeah, it was. And we did a lot of walking. I mean, even when I was young, we would walk through the woods and –

Ramsey Russell: I ain’t never seen no quiet 8 year olds, now I ain’t going to lie to you.

Sam Necaise: I probably was not very quiet at all. Looking back on it now, I really don’t even think we were looking for a deer, I think he was just spending time with me. I killed my first deer, I think I was probably, if I remember, I was 13 or 12 or 13 and we had gotten into a hunting lease that some friends had. And it actually had a fair amount of deer for Hancock County. And my dad really liked to walk. He didn’t like sitting still, he liked to kind of just walk slow.

Ramsey Russell: What they call still hunt spot and stalking.

Sam Necaise: Yeah, wind in our face and just try to just slip up on something and we were walking down this old logging road and there was a food plot about, I don’t know, maybe 80 yards from us. When we made at the end, we could see that there was a couple deer out there. And I had a 410 with a couple slugs in it. And I think he had his 1100 and there was a – I think it was a doe in the yearling or maybe it was a doe in 2 yearlings. Either way, we were going to get close enough and we were going to count to 3 and, we were shoot together and we counted and I shot and I saw mine jump and do the kick and his, I think he missed. I think he did. I really think he did it on purpose, but it’s funny to say he missed, but I ended up killing the deer and we didn’t have a truck at the time. We was in a Honda Accord and I guess we wasn’t expecting to kill anything, because after we killed it, we was like, now what? How we get home. So we actually had to tie it to the trunk and get it home that way.

Ramsey Russell: Like much trunk on a Honda Accord?

Sam Necaise: No, there wasn’t. And so we got it home and we hung it up and started skinning it and I was all out there, just excited. My papa had come over to see it. My mom was a big deal or they made it seem to be a big deal. I was excited and the tradition is you kill your first deer, you get a little blood on your face. Dad was, he was a little abundant on the blood on the face because he had already got down to the, he had gutted the deer, pulling the other vitals out and he reached down there and got 2 whopping handfuls of it and just covered my whole head in it. He told me to come over there and look at something and I peeked in there and he hit me with both hands. It’s full of blood.

Ramsey Russell: Probably couldn’t see nothing, but you grinning through the red face.

Sam Necaise: So I got christened pretty good on my first deer. And then I guess from that point forward, I mean, it’s just really just been a way of life for me. I mean, that’s –

Ramsey Russell: How old are you now?

Sam Necaise: 37.

Ramsey Russell: 37. Been hunting since you was 8? Killed your first deer at age 12 or 13 years old with your daddy. Did you all continue to hunt like that?

Sam Necaise: Yeah, we did for, I mean, pretty much all the way through high school, as I’d got a little older I would 15 or 16. My dad had gotten into a camp up in Meridian and he worked in oil field, so he was, usually it was 14 days on, 14 days off, so I was solo a good bit of time, but he had taught me enough that I could get around. So when he was gone, I would hunt around the house and then when he was home, if time allowed, we would go to the camp of Meridian and we’d hunt. During that time, they would do a lot of man drives certain blocks and it was a really big camp. I don’t remember how many acres it was. But it was big. So they would do one block, they would do a man drive. Sometimes, they would turn some walkers loose if the conditions were right. And we jumped a big buck and he got away, they would dump a box of dogs on him and we’d run them and then we would still hunt in the evenings, getting stands and sit. And he’d started kind of letting me do my own thing once he knew that I was not going to shoot myself or anything stupid with a gun, he knew that he could trust me with it by myself, he would make me sit by myself a lot. And I tell my son this all the time, I used to be scared of the dark. And he laughs because he don’t believe me. And I’m like, yeah. When I was young, papa, which is what my son calls my dad, would put me in a stand and he’d come back and get me after dark. And when he said after dark, he meant after he can’t see any more, then he would come get me.

Ramsey Russell: O-dark 30.

Sam Necaise: Yeah. So there was a couple times I got a little spooked in the dark. And then finally one day, I just, I don’t know what happened. I tripped and fell into an old grave that had kind of sunk in. I didn’t even know there. I had a junk light and it was going dead. And I tripped over the rock that was headstone and kind of fell into that and then realized what I’d fell into. And I’m trying to stumble back to the 4 wheeler and you had that old wind howling through the pines and there was some wood ducks flying down the logging road just over my head, making all these eerie sounds. And then I get back to the 4 wheeler and I’m looking, I’m like, I don’t think there’s really anything out here that’s going to do anything to me. And then I just. I never been scared of the dark since then. Glad I’m not, because kind of sucks being scared of the dark.

Ramsey Russell: How many deer did you kill down there in Hancock County? I mean, what was a hunting like when you growing up like that?

Sam Necaise: Well, at first, they were hard to find. I mean, they were there but it wasn’t a bunch of them.

Ramsey Russell: Dense piney wood thickets is what I’m thinking.

Sam Necaise: I hear people up here talk about thickets and always laugh. They’ve obviously never seen a thicket because we have thickets down there –

Ramsey Russell: That dog hair thick.

Sam Necaise: Some rabbits probably can’t even get through.

Ramsey Russell: But lots of tie and wax myrtle and Briars.

Sam Necaise: Yeah, it’s just super thick, I call them merkle bushes. I don’t even know if that’s really what they’re called, but they’re super thick. And then you get the briars in them. But I mean, you’d find, decent oak flat and be surrounded mostly by pines and thicket. And you could find deer there at certain times. But a lot of the deer were pretty nocturnal because they would run dogs a lot down there. And it was just really hard to pattern a deer during that time. I didn’t really know how to pattern a deer at that time anyway. But looking back on it, I mean, it was very difficult. But I’d gotten into a big club down there that was in the buffer zone and I hunted in there for a couple years and we ran dogs.

What is Dog Hunting?

That’s kind of how I grew up deer hunting, too and I miss it. I feel like I didn’t raise my kids right, not ever putting them on a southern dog hunt…

Ramsey Russell: A lot of people listening may not understand what dog hunting is. That’s kind of how I grew up deer hunting, too and I miss it. I feel like I didn’t raise my kids right, not ever putting them on a southern dog hunt, to listen to guys out west or guys from other parts of the world, especially in this day and age, where being like Hiawatha, the mighty warrior and stalking and hunting this one particular big Boone and Crockett buck is one thing. Man, there’s a lot to be said for turning a dog loose. A pack of hounds, little beagle hounds or walk of hounds. And then hearing them barking off in the distance and how else you going to get them to move through those thickets like it?

Sam Necaise: Yeah, well, it was a lot of fun, looking back on it now, I enjoy my time in the woods, just kind of by myself in the peace and quiet. But it was so much fun running dog.

Ramsey Russell: It’s a social sport. Like, we used to draw, you draw for stands and it be might be just a nail number on a tree at the cut off and they’re going to turn them loose right here. And, boy, you wanted to. If you knew there, you wanted to be, like, in a funnel at them deer going to come piling through. And on cold mornings, one of my fondest memories as a young deer hunter myself, Sam, was hunting over around Clay County and the ground was frozen. And hearing the clattering of hood hooves coming up the draw and I almost couldn’t hear. My heart was beating so quickly, so hard, hearing them getting close. Back in those days, you couldn’t just shoot a deer. It had to be a buck, right? So you got to be looking through the brush for antlers. But go ahead, talk about hunting like it. That’s a big deal, I think it is.

Sam Necaise: Well, yeah, it was a really fun time in life. We, but we joke about it. Me and my friends that used to do it a lot at that age, we really, I mean, we were deer hunting, but we were really more chasing dogs and tearing up trucks, is that about all we really accomplished. Every now and then we would kill a deer, but usually we were pulling each other out of mud holes and dragging a broke truck home and trying to fix it before the next weekend so we could do it all over again. But we, that was just a time to where we could all get together and we didn’t care who killed the deer. I mean, if we was lucky enough to kill one, we just, we wanted to be –

Ramsey Russell: To be in same team, right. Never compete them.

Sam Necaise: And I had my own hounds for a while.

Ramsey Russell: What’d you have?

Sam Necaise: I had some tricolored walkers, a friend through some of the extra activities that we did from like 4H and I showed cows in the 4H and did some high school rodeo and whatnot. But some friends through that, they, he had daughters and they all hunted and ran dogs and stuff, but he, I don’t know, he just took a liking to me. He was a really good guy to me and helped me get my own pack started. And I just, I really got into it. I like going to run them at night, trying to condition them and get them ready for the season. And so we got pretty big into it for a while and then it just kind of faded out. We weren’t able to hunt some of the properties anymore with dogs and it just became more of a hassle. So, I just kind of got out of it.

Ramsey Russell: This would have been, when on a timeline back in the mid 90s, mid to late 90s.

Sam Necaise: Late 90s. Early 2000s.

Ramsey Russell: You’re a young man, got a driver’s license, got your own pack of beagle hounds. You hunt and hunt deer with your buddies and it’s a social sport. What would a, back in those days, what would a big buck, what’s a big buck down there in those days? Browning down or can we know seriously.

Sam Necaise: We weren’t really letting much walk. I mean, we saw a deer, we took the opportunity to try to kill it because we might not see another one for a while, but over time, it got a little better. We’d got, their numbers were up a little bit, but early on, when I was young and like, just barely driving, there was posted properties and properties that people didn’t want you on. But it was a lot different. There was a lot of, at least in my mind, there was a lot of land that just laid there at rest and nobody did anything with it. So I would always call it free game and I’d go hunt on it.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, Aberdeen landowners and stuff like that.

Sam Necaise: Yeah. There was a lot of people that owned land around my real local, around my house that didn’t even live in the state. And it would have some cutover on it or there would be some select cut done on it and I mean, I just find myself walking around, checking it out and find some good deer sign. I’m like, dang, I’m going to hunt here. So I start hunting there.

Ramsey Russell: With your dogs or not. Cause I don’t care –

Sam Necaise: This is when I was starting to get into hunting out of a deer stand, like a climber, a bow hunt, right.

Ramsey Russell: There you go.

Sam Necaise: I was always, I started shooting a bow, man. I think I got my first bow and I was probably about 8 or 9.

Ramsey Russell: And what was it, a bear?

Sam Necaise: I really, I think it was a Jennings. But it was a youth –

Ramsey Russell: I still got my Jennings Warthog.

Sam Necaise: Yeah, this was a youth bow. Real, little bitty bow and, I mean, I would shoot it and shoot it. I’d shoot airs that didn’t even have fletchings on them. I mean, I didn’t care, I just shot. I wasn’t very good at it at that age, but once I got into high school, I’d gotten, went through a couple of bows, but I’d gotten a Jennings Buckmaster. And that’s what I killed my first deer with a bow with. And it happened to be a little 5 point. So first deer with a bow was a little buck and I missed him the first time and he ran off just barely out of sight. When he moved, I could see him. I was on the edge of a timber line. He was in the cutover and he stood there for a few minutes and then he finally decided that’s where he wanted to go. So, he came back and I got him that time. But I really messed up, though, because I’d had a camera on the tree that they were using this trail pretty regular and it was one of those cameras that had the 35 millimeter film. So I’d always go and check it and have to run to Walmart and get printed out –

Ramsey Russell: Oh, right back in the day.

Sam Necaise: And sometimes I would only have, like, 6 pictures on there and I’d ruin a whole roll and have to start over. But there was a bigger 6 point hanging out with that deer and I didn’t see him the first time I shot at the little buck. And then I also didn’t see him the second time when I finally shot the buck. But when I shot him, I watched where the little buck that I just shot ran. And then I looked and the 6 point was looking at me and about the time I realized, oh, my gosh, that was the one I was really wanting to get. He turned and ran off. So that’s kind of how my bow hunting started. Really, seriously started.

Ramsey Russell: Back in those days, the 90s hunting videos were a big deal. We all had VCR’s, I guess you did. And that’s what I remember. I mean, man, the hours you could kill at camp when you wasn’t up in a tree or in a duck blind watching people hunting. Who would have been some of your influences? What was a guy your age doing deer hunting like you doing, growing up like you’re doing like everybody else? Who would you have been watching or aspiring to be back in those days?

Sam Necaise: Honestly, I really didn’t watch much tv at all. Hunting shows just, I don’t think I was even introduced to them.

Ramsey Russell: You spent more time out in the woods yourself?

Sam Necaise: Well, yeah and we had cows and horses, too. And I mean, that’s a full time job. I mean, we had to take care of our horses and our cows and I just didn’t have a lot of time to really watch tv. And even today, I still, I just don’t watch a lot of tv. It’s just never really been anything to entertain me that much. I’ve always found other things to do. But, I mean, I do remember and I may be wrong on my timeline here, but I do remember seeing someone like T-Bone Travis Turner.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, yeah.

Sam Necaise: And I’m having a memory loss here. The 2 funny guys, TK & Mike.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, God. TK & Mike.

Sam Necaise: I have seen TK & Mike. As a matter of fact, a couple cousins, they had one of the video cassettes and we’d watch it sometimes and it was pretty funny. And I just, I really didn’t know what I was doing. I was just kind of trying to figure it out just spent a lot of time in the woods during the winter, I mean, I didn’t really play sports well, other than rodeo. Some people argue that’s not a sport, but whatever.

Ramsey Russell: What event were you doing on the rodeo?

Sam Necaise: I rode bulls for a couple years. Can’t say that I was really good at it, but I just loved it. It was exhilarating, I guess, just chasing and adrenaline high.

Ramsey Russell: What were your buddies like? Were they all big deer hunters?

Sam Necaise: Mostly. They liked to deer hunt for the most part. A lot of fishing, too. Rabbit hunting, dove hunting. Most of them really just like mud riding. I mean, honestly, that was their favorite part of, like, running dogs. I mean, they just enjoyed being stuck in the mud, I guess, because that’s where they stayed.

Ramsey Russell: Catching dogs or sticking trucks.

Sam Necaise: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, back in the day.

Sam Necaise: But I had several friends that, they were big into hunting and we all hunted a little different, though. I mean, just I had some friends that just absolutely did not run dogs and they hated the fact that it was even a thing and then I had some that loved it.

Ramsey Russell: You hunted down in Hancock County. Your dad got into camp over in East Mississippi near Meridian. You’re continuing to run dogs through high school, you got your own pack right now. You mud riding, having a good time with your buddies and you allude to the fact you hunting on some of them apart, landowner property, knowing it was wrong, but big deal. We’re all kind of a young Robin Hood back in the day, isn’t it? What is it about crossing that line that nobody else hunts that makes it so good?

Sam Necaise: I think it was just the fact that nobody else was in there.

Ramsey Russell: Kind of had it to yourself.

Sam Necaise: Had it to myself or at least I thought that, I never really saw anybody. I was kind of able to go in there and move my stand and do my scouting and not have to worry about hunting behind somebody.

Ramsey Russell: Wasn’t nobody else hunting on it, too?

Sam Necaise: Not that I saw most of the time, no. If I did see them, they were doing the same thing. They weren’t supposed to be there either. We’d probably usually end up running away from each other.

Evolving as a Hunter

My grandma, she could make just about anything with deer meat and just make it taste so good. I never wanted her to run out because she would always cook for me.

Ramsey Russell: How did you evolve? How did you begin to evolve as a deer hunter?

Sam Necaise: I guess hunting in Meridian, we had an opportunity to shoot much better quality deer and I started really wanting to hunt bigger deer.

Ramsey Russell: Bigger deer, trophy. It reminds me of the old stages and phases of a hunter, you know what I’m saying? And once you get past the, all right, I can kill a deer, now I want to do quality.

Sam Necaise: Yeah. And it was quantity too there for a little while because, I mean, I really enjoyed shooting the deer, but we ate a lot of deer meat and to this day, I still eat a lot of deer meat. We very rarely buy beef and I just had a taste for deer meat. My grandma, she could make just about anything with deer meat and just make it taste so good. I never wanted her to run out because she would always cook for me. And I also liked sharing it with people that maybe didn’t have the opportunity to kill one or didn’t have the time to hunt. So I just, I liked killing a lot of deer.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, just like, I get it. You start off as a hunter, shoot a big buck and here it comes. Man, we want that bigger buck. We always got to get that bigger buck. What was a big buck where you were hunting? Like 120 inch, 100 inch?

Sam Necaise: No, not even close. I mean, some of the deer, like this, the 6 point I was talking about when I was bow hunting, I mean, he might have been 15 inches wide at the – I mean, he, yeah, I would say he’s probably 15 inches wide. He had little bitty brow tines and just a split.

Ramsey Russell: Young buck.

Sam Necaise: Very young. But, I mean, he would have been just a trophy to me because it would have been the biggest buck I ever killed.

Hunting Big Bucks

I killed an 11 point, but I didn’t find it till a couple days later. And that was the biggest one I’ve killed out of there. 

Ramsey Russell: Whether you watch outdoor television or go by the magazine shop every day or whatever. I mean, we all, as deer hunters know there’s these big whoppers out there, right? Big song of a gun.

Sam Necaise: Yeah. And I had seen some on sides of the roads before. So, I mean, I knew what big bucks were. I was just chasing biggest ones I could find at that time. But I had a friend that was consistent at killing for our area. He killed big deer.

Ramsey Russell: Big deer. What’s a big deer for your area like?

Sam Necaise: A 125 inch deer.

Ramsey Russell: That’s a good deer anywhere, especially with a bow.

Sam Necaise: He wasn’t always doing it with a bow. But he had just and I’d always looked up to him and kind of paid attention to how some of the things were, how he found them and how he went about it. So I started trying to figure it out myself and I had found a couple areas that probably hadn’t been hunted much at all, if any. And it had –

Ramsey Russell: Somebody else’s private property.

Sam Necaise: Well, not exactly. It was pretty restricted. It was in the buffer zone where they test the rocket engines and whatnot for NASA.

Ramsey Russell: NASA land.

Sam Necaise: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Okay.

Sam Necaise: And he had hunted in there, too and I mean.

Ramsey Russell: Federal property closed, restricted.

Sam Necaise: Yeah, definitely not really much hunting on that area.

Ramsey Russell: And so this buddy of yours was showing you pictures of big old buck, you out there crying the blues because you could miss the opportunity on the little old scrub rack 6 point and you got a buddy that you look up to showing you big old whopper bucks he’s killing.

Sam Necaise: Yeah. And so a little badgering for me. I aggravate the snot out of him. Finally, one day he took me and kind of showed me the ropes and it was just, man, it was a different world. I mean, we would see deer everywhere. I mean, we never left the county, but it was just deer. I mean, you couldn’t go and not see deer.

Ramsey Russell: It’s easy to become a better deer hunter when there’s a lot of deer, isn’t it?

Sam Necaise: Yeah, well, it’s more exciting, for sure.

Ramsey Russell: Kind of like duck hunting.

Sam Necaise: Yeah. So that kind of hit or miss a little bit here and there, took off.

Ramsey Russell: Like, if you’re going on to a restricted area, like that, I kind of know if I’m going to cross over to an Aberdeen and owner over here, I can park on my property and walk a little bit and kind of just ease off in there. Could you park anywhere near this thing? We having to get dropped off. How do you sneak onto something like this?

Sam Necaise: We would get dropped off sometimes. Sometimes we could park depending on what area we were going to. We had places we could park, but there was a lot of times we’d get dropped off.

Ramsey Russell: Big old chunk of land might be a big old property.

Sam Necaise: Pretty large. Yep.

Ramsey Russell: So you just go off and hunt it like it’s yours?

Sam Necaise: Pretty much.

Ramsey Russell: Did you start killing bigger bucks?

Sam Necaise: I struggled in there to see the bigger bucks and get a shot on them. I really did. I mean, I shot a 9 point in there. That was pretty, he was a good, he was a great deer for me. I mean, he was one of my bigger deer during that time, but I didn’t get the opportunity to go in there much, as much as he did, but from that time we –

Ramsey Russell: Would you have to go when he was there only? Your buddy?

Sam Necaise: No, well, I mean, I think he wanted me to, but I was kind of in a stage in life where I was really pressing the limits and I was really seeking the adventure and the thrill of –

Ramsey Russell: How old you have been?

Sam Necaise: I think the first time I went in there, I was 17.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, yeah.

Sam Necaise: And that was just kind of like dabbling in it. I didn’t really get real heavy into any of that. It was exciting. It was a little nerve wracking at first, but, I mean, all that just really just went away pretty quick.

Ramsey Russell: Is it just cause you did it? I’m like, I’m sitting there thinking. I’m deep into not just a guy that’s living in Chicago’s land, I’m on federal government land with a big old main federal government. I’m up in a pine tree trying to shoot a deer. I’d be nerve wracking.

Sam Necaise: Well, we didn’t hunt in the stand. We definitely stayed on the ground. We would walk miles and miles. But at that time in my life, I was looking for thrill. Looking back on it, I mean, that was really what I was looking for and the fact that I was not supposed to be there made it way more exciting.

Ramsey Russell: Did you ever kind of get, like, this Robin Hood notion? I think a lot of folks, maybe, myself included, that were young and being placed. I said, maybe I’ve got this noble hunter ideal that I’m, it’s okay. I can justify it.

Sam Necaise: I didn’t feel noble or justified in doing it, but I just, I didn’t appreciate the fact that the government had all this land and wouldn’t let nobody hunt on it. It mean it was just, it was ripe with just an abundance of deer and –

Ramsey Russell: Sound like big deer, too. They got some age structure.

Sam Necaise: There was definitely some bigger deer in there, for sure. I didn’t realize the severity of the consequences. But to be fair, even if I did, it probably wouldn’t have mattered. I went through that particular time in life. I just kind of, I didn’t care. I didn’t think about the consequences. And there was, it’s a small town and then there was favorable treatment to certain people, and so I felt like I was one of those and just never really considered the consequences or the what ifs or it kind of turned really quickly turned into a game for me. I’m not supposed to be here, I can’t be caught here. And it wasn’t even about outsmarting the deer at that point, that kind of went out the window pretty quick. It was more about, now I’ve got to kill this deer, not get caught killing this deer. Got to get this deer out of here.

Ramsey Russell: Was this all archery or rifle?

Sam Necaise: It was rifle.

Ramsey Russell: Okay.

Sam Necaise: Yep. Big, loud, 300.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, boy.

Sam Necaise: Yep. So it was more of a –

Ramsey Russell: Because you talking about being feeling bulletproof and invincible. Youth will do that to a man.

Sam Necaise: Yeah, definitely will.

Ramsey Russell: You’re young and you’re bulletproof.

Sam Necaise: Yeah. And then seeing my buddy doing it for so long and I mean, he seemed to have it figured out and I just, I really wanted to, in my head, in my youth, I wanted that legend status and that’s kind of where I –

Ramsey Russell: Want to be looked up to because of your hunting prowess and big bucks and reputation.

Sam Necaise: Yeah, and I mean, it was doing things that I would say a lot of people just didn’t have the ability to do. They wanted to do it, but they would be too scared to do it.

Ramsey Russell: They didn’t have the county.

Sam Necaise: They did not. And it was a lot of people. I mean, they would talk about all the things they would do and do and I’m like, laughing, I’m like, yep.

Ramsey Russell: But you was doing it.

Sam Necaise: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Was it just you and your buddy, was there more? You all had this whole place to yourself.

Sam Necaise: I really didn’t, I didn’t like going with anybody other than him. There would be a time that there was another person or 2 that would go, but they wouldn’t ever go quite as far as we would.

Ramsey Russell: I’d go deep off into it.

Sam Necaise: Yeah. I mean, we were right by the test station stuff, lagoons and you can see people working.

Ramsey Russell: Deeper you go, the better to hunt.

Becoming a Modern Day Outlaw

I mean, well, it just goes back, like, history there was a lot of bootlegging through the family and had an aunt that got involved with a big marijuana operation and gambling and just a lot of outlaw crowd in my, on one side of my family.

Sam Necaise: Yeah. Because there was a big club on the outskirts of it and they ran dogs and the dogs would go in and run deer back onto the club. So the further in you went, the better chance you’d be finding a more mature deer and one that hasn’t been ran into the club and shot by the dog hunters and whatnot. So there was a lot less pressure on the deer the further in you went.

Ramsey Russell: Was that 9 point the biggest deer you killed?

Sam Necaise: I killed an 11 point, but I didn’t find it till a couple days later. And that was the biggest one I’ve killed out of there. And I don’t know what he scored, but if I could guess, I would say it was probably 127 to 130. He was –

Ramsey Russell: What a heck of a buck for this part of the world we’re talking about. What a heck of a buck for that part of the world.

Sam Necaise: Yeah. And then I started, we were young, we’re burning up the roads. So I started seeing deer on side of road at night or whatever, in people’s yards or just wherever and I would just kind of, like, make a middle note where I’ve seen this and seen a bigger deer and whatnot. And then I would go and look, check and see if they’re still there, multiple nights in a row. And then that’s when I started getting a wild idea. I wanted to shoot them at night, but be discreet about it. So that kind of evolved into there, again it wasn’t about really killing the deer. It wasn’t, I’m outsmarting a deer. I mean, anybody could shoot a deer at night. I know that, but I could also, I felt like, kind of words gotten around. I’d kind of got a little bit of an outlaw status and I –

Ramsey Russell: How do you know word had gotten around you had outlaw status. What do you think about having it?

Sam Necaise: Small town people talk and who hanging out with and all. It was just kind of, just evolved in there.

Ramsey Russell: And what’s your dad say about your outlaw status?

Sam Necaise: He really never asked any. I feel like because of him being gone a lot with work, he kind of, during that time, I had grown my kind of my independence as a teenagers do and whatnot. He was just kind of letting me do my thing. And the time in the area that we grew up, there’s like a long list of outlaws in my family tree and so.

Ramsey Russell: Can you talk about any of that?

Sam Necaise: I mean, well, it just goes back, like, history there was a lot of bootlegging through the family and had an aunt that got involved with a big marijuana operation and gambling and just a lot of outlaw crowd in my, on one side of my family.

Ramsey Russell: So did you feel like you had been legitimized when you realized you had this outlaw reputation among the local, your local buddies?

Sam Necaise: Yeah, foolishly, I did. Yeah, looking back on it.

Ramsey Russell: It was cool.

Sam Necaise: Yeah. I mean, now it was. You had that time –

Ramsey Russell: You build that legend status you talk about.

Sam Necaise: Well, I was just, it’s kind of like following in some of the footsteps, but at the same time, in my mind, I was just killing deer, so I wasn’t really doing nothing bad.

Ramsey Russell: What they out there for.

Sam Necaise: That’s how I justified it, because I guess it. I also knew my mom made sure that we were in church so, I knew right and wrong and I knew just from going to church that some of the things I was doing wasn’t in my mind. It wasn’t exactly right, but it really wasn’t that bad because it wasn’t hurting any individual. I didn’t think about it on the standpoint that I’m stealing resources from people that own land. I didn’t look at it like that. Never really ever crossed my mind. It does now, but then it was not even.

Ramsey Russell: A thought, part of being young Sam, isn’t it?

Sam Necaise: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: So you kind of started off crossing across the fence, hunting on Aberdeen landowner. Then you go down to some big old protected federal property, get a taste for big bucks. One day you drive them down the road and say, look at that big sum of a gun sitting in that front yard. There’s a lot of big down here. Did you see it? I guess in hindsight you can see it easy, how you cross one little line. Cross that one, I cross another one. How many deer a year were you shooting now? You’re out of high school now.

Sam Necaise: Yeah. So out of high school. There was a couple years I’d kill probably, I don’t know, 9 bucks or so and several does.

Ramsey Russell: Did you have a hunting license? Would you buy a hunt license every year? Cause state limit’s 3. But I just wondered if you bought a hunting license.

Sam Necaise: Yeah, I did. I had a hunting license. I never really had any close run ins with the game wardens, except for 2 times that I remember, they called about some shots that they heard and they –

Ramsey Russell: At night?

Sam Necaise: No, this was during the day. They’d come out to patrol and look for us and –

Ramsey Russell: Road hunt.

Sam Necaise: Well, this was when I was in the test site. They had come out there looking for us and I heard the roar of the mud tires coming. I mean, I knew exactly what his truck sounded like coming from a mile away. So, I mean, I just kind of got in the bushes and hunkered down for a little bit. And he had stopped right in front of where I went in the bushes. But I knew he didn’t see me. I just figured he was on the radio or whatever, just trying to, like, figure out which direction you need to go, whatnot. Well, then he got out to take a leak and for whatever reason, he walked down into the ditch and started peeing and it was splattered and hitting my hand. So that was a close call, I would say, but I still, like, in my head, I just knew that he didn’t know I was there. He had no idea that I was there and that really fired me up, it should not have, but it did. And then that’s when it just really got crazy.

Ramsey Russell: Got crazy how?

Sam Necaise: Well, I just enjoyed the fact that he was right there. I mean, I could have reached out and touched him and he had no idea. So it was a cat and a mouse game at that point and that’s just really what it kind of involved into. And then we’d started going to the Delta and I don’t remember exactly when up, the first time I’d went up there with that group of friends, but prior to that, I was still in, I would say, early school. So because I was going on youth hunt, my dad had put us in for a youth hunt draw and I got drawn and we went to the, I was drawn for the Yazoo Wildlife and that was really the first time I’d ever really been to the Delta to hunt. And, man, we saw some, what I thought were just monster.

Ramsey Russell: I guarantee you saw some monsters there.

Sam Necaise: And I ended up. I used my, I had a 270 at that time with a pretty nice scope on it, but I think I bumped my scope and I was worried that it was off. So my cousin had went up there with us just to hang out with us to be kind of hang around until we figured out if we killed a deer or whatnot. We all stayed together and all at some hotel and he had his rifle, so he’s like, use mine. Well, he had kind of a crappy scope on it. And it started raining, it was cold rain and we sat there all day long. And the deer started moving probably about an hour before dark. And a big buck walked out into the field. And I couldn’t, it was kind of hazy. I couldn’t tell if it was a big buck or not. I just knew it was a big deer. So I’m trying to get my rifle shouldered and I point the direction of the deer. And then I realized my scoped fogged up. I can’t see anything out of it. So I set it back in my lap and I’m trying to wipe it off on my wet t shirt and it’s just a catastrophe. And he starts walking across this field and my dad is freaking out. He’s like, are you going to shoot? Shoot or you don’t, shoot? What are you doing? I said, my scopes fogged up I can’t see. And he’s frustrated because, we’ve been there all day and that’s probably the biggest buck he’s ever seen in his life, too. And so, anyway, I get the scope clean enough to see out of it, but the deer done went into the woods and then just a little old. I don’t even know what it was, 3, 4 or 5 point. But during that time, a youth could kill a hard horn. There was maybe some rule, maybe it had to be 6 inch spike or something, but we could kill, very young buck if we wanted to. So I was able to shoot it and that’s always been a funny story of me and my dad, he’ll never forget that, neither will I. But that was the first time I’d went to Delta and experienced it. But then moving forward, as I got older, we started going to the Delta. My friend that kind of introduced me to hunting the test site. He had made a friend up there and I got invited to go with him. So we loaded up and went and I got introduced to his friend up there. And I was young, they were much older than me. And I quickly got a nickname and they –

Private vs. Public Hunting Land

But then I got introduced to panther swamp and when I stepped foot on that place, I was amazed just at the abundance of wildlife of all different, not just deer, the ducks, I mean I saw turkeys, hogs. You couldn’t go hardly down the levee and not see some sort of new wildlife that I’m not used to really seeing a lot of down there.

Ramsey Russell: What was your nickname?

Sam Necaise: Gut.

Ramsey Russell: Gut.

Sam Necaise: Because that was the biggest part of the deer and that’s what I would aim at to shoot. But I’m going from seeing these Hancock County deer to these Delta deer and it’s like a different animal, they’re so much bigger. So I did get a little bit of buck fever and I would just fill the scope up and I’d let her rip. And then me and the guy in the Delta, we kind of became buddies. And so I was able to go up there on my own and I –

Ramsey Russell: That was private property or were you hunting public –

Sam Necaise: There was a little bit of a mix here and there. We’d see deer on the side of the road. If he was big, we’d shoot him. But then I got introduced to panther swamp and when I stepped foot on that place, I was amazed just at the abundance of wildlife of all different, not just deer, the ducks, I mean I saw turkeys, hogs. You couldn’t go hardly down the levee and not see some sort of new wildlife that I’m not used to really seeing a lot of down there.

Ramsey Russell: Now. Was the Sam that set foot on this federal property? Was it the old Sam or the outlaw Sam?

Sam Necaise: It was both, really.

Ramsey Russell: You were the outlaw by then?

Sam Necaise: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Okay.

Sam Necaise: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: By the time you started coming to the Delta, you’d built that outlaw status.

Sam Necaise: Yeah, but I mean I kind of went, I’m like, I want to go hunt, really what I call, really go hunt a deer, not just kill a deer. So I tried to do it a little bit here and there, but I found out that it was mostly bow only. It was draw hunts and there was this big closed area no one could hunt. Well, that tells me that I’ll be the only one in there. So I went and checked it out and our buddy in the Delta encouraged it and I didn’t really need much encouraging. So we checked it out and I shot a couple deer out of there and definitely wasn’t quiet, again, it was 300. I remember one time I was on top of a dirt hill out there in a big CRP field. And the CRP was kind of young at the time and he’d explained it that you go down this bush hog lane and you’ll hit a ditch and then you got to go to the north and there’s a big rock or clay gravel pile out in the middle of this where they were working on a road. And he said, if you get up there, you ought to be able to see pretty good. So I went and it was like, I don’t know, maybe mile and a half, 2 mile walk. And I walked in and I sat on top of that hill and man, it wasn’t long. It looked like ants in all the roads. I mean, there’s just deer everywhere. And there was some bucks out there pushing some does around because I want to say this was around December and I just really sat and watched for a while because I hadn’t really seen that type of activity before. And I was just kind of like, in awe that there’s that many deer in one spot and that big. And, I mean, there were several bucks out there that were 125, 130 inches and you could see them all in plain sight. And then a much bigger buck walked out and I couldn’t contain myself anymore. That all went away and I was like, all right, got to kill him. So I shot him and shot him in the guts. Didn’t mean to do that because I wasn’t under a bunch of pressure that time. I was really mesmerized. But then I knew it was like, all right, its game time, this is a big deer. And I shot him. He probably didn’t run, I don’t know, maybe a 100 yards. But because of the low CRP, I could see him till he fell. And I thought that I would be able to run up and grab that deer and get him out of there. I didn’t even think about the body different or the body weight difference.

Ramsey Russell: They got a Delta above.

Sam Necaise: Yeah. And I went and grabbed one of his antlers and I went to drag him and I literally about jerked myself to the ground and I just sit there and laugh and I’m like, this is crazy. This deer is huge. So had to get some help, get him out of there and we got him out. And, man, it just.

Ramsey Russell: That’s got away with.

Sam Necaise: All I wanted to do is go to the Delta and find big deer and –

Ramsey Russell: On closed areas.

Sam Necaise: Yeah, a lot of that. But we would ride. He would take me riding and we would see, I mean, there was just deer everywhere and you’d see some decent bucks and no, that’s not big enough. Oh, there he is, kill him. And, man, I was just having fun.

Ramsey Russell: What would have been your criteria for a shooter from the road on public land or federal land like that? What have been your criteria for a big buck? Now, you’ve gone from shooting a scrub rack to shoot bigger bucks down on federal property on the coast. Now you and the Delta, the land of giants.

Sam Necaise: Yeah, I wish I could say it was, like, way bigger, but it really wasn’t. I mean, we would literally ride down the road and we’d see deer after and I’d get excited and I would think it’d be about time to shoot. No, no, he ain’t big enough. And then all of a sudden and sometimes I think he just got like the fun out of it, he always wanted me to shoot one that was running like mark 4 across the field and he put the light on it and like, there he is, kill him. And I’m, we’re sliding gravel, trying to stop the truck and I’m trying to get out the window and get lined up on him and shoot and everything else. I really didn’t even have time to tell how big the deer was. I mean, I’m just going off what he said, he’s big enough to kill him. And by going off this dude’s wall, he had some monsters on the wall. So I knew he knew what a big deer was and I was just trusting his judgment. He said shoot, I’d shoot. But man, the thrill of it, though, was just those nights and again, I do not say that was deer hunting. That’s deer killing. Anybody can do it. But the thrill for me was having to go out there and get that deer and get him to the truck and get him home –

Ramsey Russell: Get away with it

Sam Necaise: And get away with it. Yep.

Ramsey Russell: Were you just deer hunt or was there any, was a duck hunting? Was any other kind of hunting going on? Were you just a deer hunter?

Sam Necaise: No, I was just a –

Ramsey Russell: Or just a deer shooter.

Growing into Something I Didn’t Want to Be

Looking back on the hindsight, I could see now where it really started spiraling down fast. But I felt like I had it all under control. I felt like I was making all the right moves, making all the right decisions, going with my gut, not going here. Oh, wait. I got a bad feeling about this. Let me not go here, that kind of stuff really just started feeling pretty invincible.

Sam Necaise: Yeah, just a deer shooter. They invited me on some duck hunting. It just really wasn’t, I never really was interested in it. I liked seeing them, love seeing them from when I was sitting a stand and actually really deer hunt. I love seeing them and hearing them, but I just never really wanted to duck hunt. Just wasn’t my thing.

Ramsey Russell: When you started down this path, outlawed them, you were 17, 18 years old and you were looking for a thrill, you said earlier, looking for a thrill. Beyond riding around shooting deer, was there any other thrill seeking going on? Was there beer involved? Was there anything else involved?

Sam Necaise: I drank a little bit of beer, but I wasn’t much. I wasn’t a heavy drinker by no stretch during high school and even a little after, when I was in college, we would go to a bar or something with some buddies and we would drink pretty heavy then.

Ramsey Russell: Didn’t we all?

Sam Necaise: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Yup. They say there’s a time to play for everything and that’s college, but go ahead.

Sam Necaise: Yeah. So during that time, we would drink beer a little bit and a couple years into me going to the Delta is when I would say I drink beer a pretty good bit.

Ramsey Russell: Okay.

Sam Necaise: That was kind of my thing to do. There was a time in, just before I graduated high school that I had my heart broke. You know how that goes. I think everybody gets it happened one time or whatever, but I was a little bummed out or whatever and I was at a, I don’t know if you want to call it a party or gather and whatever group people. And I was just kind of moping, pouting like you do and a friend of mine offered me something to take my mind off of it and that is when the major problems in life really started happening. I didn’t know it then, I definitely know it now. So he had offered me a hit of meth and I had never messed with any of that stuff before, but I was feeling pretty down and he said it would help me and take my mind off us. So I tried it and it, I guess it did take my mind off of it for a little bit, but it was, kind of started as me trying to drown out some pains and stuff.

Ramsey Russell: Were you using that substance throughout this whole story, going to the Delta, going on federal property?

Sam Necaise: No, it was really on and off. I never really used it hard. It was more of a, it was an every now and then type thing. When I got out of college, I had a spell or I say when I got out of college, after Hurricane Katrina hit, I was in college. I went through pretty bad spell where I was using a good bit but I realized pretty quick that it was turning me into something or someone that I didn’t want to be. So I kind of struggled back and forth on leaving it alone and then I pick it up again. Leave it alone. Pick it up again. But I was really good at hiding it and I don’t really know how I hit. Well, I thought I was good at hiding. Let me say that, there was a lot of people that had no idea. There was several people that suspected it, but there was the people that suspected it didn’t know how to approach me about it. I feel like maybe they didn’t want to insult me if they were wrong, maybe. I’m not real sure, but they did, I know they cared about me. They just didn’t know how to have that conversation with me. And then that turned into just an opportunity to start selling it. And so everything really started spiraling out of control. Looking back on the hindsight, I could see now where it really started spiraling down fast. But I felt like I had it all under control. I felt like I was making all the right moves, making all the right decisions, going with my gut, not going here. Oh, wait. I got a bad feeling about this. Let me not go here, that kind of stuff really just started feeling pretty invincible.

Ramsey Russell: How much of some of that instinct was induced by the influence or how much would you just think?

Sam Necaise: Well, I think there was a game warden down there that he had kind of took in a liking to wanting to catch me. Well, me and a couple other guys. But –

Ramsey Russell: The whole little outlaw posse of you.

Sam Necaise: Yeah. And I kind of fed on that. And I would even so much, where there was a field that we had spotted a big buck or someone had told me they had seen a big buck, but it was way, I mean, it was in the woods. It was pretty good dirt road to get to it and whatnot. And I even took it to the point where I would literally take a stick and draw a line in the sand that evening and come back to check and see if a tire track drove over it. And if no tire track drove over it, then I would go to the other entrance and I’ll check that same line. And if no tire drove over it, well, then I went on in there and that took about 3 times. And I finally I saw the deer. I got a good shot on him and killed him.

Ramsey Russell: Wow.

Sam Necaise: But I was just so fascinated in all the ways I would have to get creative to not get caught, because I knew that.

Ramsey Russell: What are some of the other creative ways? Man.

Sam Necaise: I was in a pickle. I tried a deer on side the road and had to get dropped off to get him. We had cell phones at this time, everybody had one and the game warden. I heard the tires again coming down the road, that roar that they make and then the slowdown and all that. And so I knew it was the game warden. And then I heard another car that sounded like a police car. They just have a sound about them, especially back then. And I could hear him slowing down. And so I just drug the deer further into the bushes. And I called my buddy and I was like, hey, man, I’m in a bond. Like, they are here and I really cannot like, I can’t get out of here with the deer. I’m going to either have to leave the deer, come back and get him. I said, but I got a better idea. There was a field full of hogs up the road and they were pretty close to the fence, so you know what? Far from the blacktop and all that. I’m like, dude, I need you to go shoot a hog. Just shoot a hog. Please go shoot a hog. Just with your pistol, whatever, don’t use a light. Don’t just use the headlights, your truck, whatever. Just need to go shoot a hog. And he was a good friend, so he went and done it. And I heard the door slam and they hauled butt and went down there and they stopped him.

Ramsey Russell: They knew you was around.

Sam Necaise: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: They were waiting on you.

Sam Necaise: Yeah. But I think maybe they might have thought that I shot another one or whatever. I don’t know what they were thinking. So I got the deer closer to the road and covered him up with some. They had just bush hogged in this area, so there was some bigger grass. I covered the white belly up and this head up and got him close enough to where I could get him loaded. And while they were, trying to figure out what he was doing shooting at hogs and all that, it really wasn’t a big deal that, to shoot a hog on the side of the road, because, they were just a nuisance where they were looking for a guy shooting a deer. So we had those guys fooled for a minute and then I called another buddy and told him to come, turn around in the road and I said, there’ll be, I think I’d found a beer box in the ditch and I threw it out in the middle of the road. And I said, when you see that beer box, you stop, you turn around and face the other direction. Jump out, help me load this deer. So we did loaded a deer. We hauled butt and dropped the deer off and then went back and checked on my buddy. They still had him pulled over with the hog, wanting to know a question and all. And I rolled my window down. I was like, you all guys all right? You’re good. And –

Ramsey Russell: Was that your way of kind of rusting in her face, poked the bear.

Sam Necaise: I was just like poking the bear? Man, I guess. I don’t know, just, I was glutton for punch, but just didn’t know it yet. But then there was another close call where I had to run in the woods in the dark and I ran into a barbed wire fence. But I’d slowed down right before I hit the fence because I knew it was right there somewhere. So when I hit it, I didn’t hit it quite as hard and I was able to clear the fence and get further into the woods. And then I heard the game warden running behind me, called me by name. He said, I’m going to catch you. You have nowhere to go. And then I heard him hit the fence and he didn’t hit the fence slow. He hit it wide open and now I was – I think it kind of injured him a little bit, he was a bigger fella, but –

Ramsey Russell: Who know you were?

Sam Necaise: He called me by name.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, yeah. He knew.

Sam Necaise: Yeah. And then he’d seen us at a restaurant and he came and sat down with us and ate and just basically told me, he was like, I know what you’re doing. I’m going to catch you and all that. And I was like, I don’t think you can.

Ramsey Russell: Wow. Poked a bear.

Sam Necaise: Yeah. But just still never even thought about the consequences. Just never in my mind.

Ramsey Russell: How long had this been going on, since 17 until, when did this fence act? I mean, what are we talking about? 2, 3, 5 years?

Sam Necaise: No, see, I was probably. I was – I would say I was 19. No, I was probably 20.

Ramsey Russell: Wow.

Sam Necaise: I was probably 20. When had my buddy shoot the hog for me. And then –

Ramsey Russell: Well, how long did it go on? I mean, did he ever catch you? Did anybody ever catch you?

Sam Necaise: He didn’t catch me, no. But, yeah, we got caught October 17th of 20 –

Ramsey Russell: Well, you remember the date.

Sam Necaise: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: That’s bow season now. October 17, were you shooting that big 300 on October 17th?

Sam Necaise: I had, yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Okay.

Sam Necaise: I bow hunted a little bit, but that was in 2007, I think.

Ramsey Russell: Wow. This went on for a while. So we’re talking how many, 10 years? How old were you on October 17th, 2007?

Sam Necaise: 21.

Ramsey Russell: Okay. 18. 19, 20, 4 years.

Sam Necaise: Mm hmm.

Ramsey Russell: 4 years. You got caught. What circumstances leading up to? – Well, first off, after 4 years, did you have the outlaw reputation that you wanted? Had you achieved the fame that you wanted?

Sam Necaise: I guess. Well, when it got to the point, just before I got arrested, I kind of didn’t want it anymore. I didn’t want any recognition for anything I wanted to be –

Ramsey Russell: The heat was on.

Sam Necaise: Yeah. But it was kind of getting annoying because I had there was the drugs going, that there was the stuff with the drugs going on and the deer and all. And I just throw –

Ramsey Russell: Deer and drug.

Sam Necaise: Yeah. And I was to a point where –

Ramsey Russell: Where you tired of the deer or tired of the drugs?

Sam Necaise: I was tired of everything. I was just tired.

Ramsey Russell: Tired of running.

Sam Necaise: Yeah. And –

Ramsey Russell: The thrill was gone.

Sam Necaise: It really was. Because I started missing. It was almost like I was fighting a battle. I started missing the opportunity to really go hunt and have the failures and the successes that comes with really going and truly hunting. And I tried – I mean, I did dang near everything, but begged to, like, have an opportunity to go sit in a stand, but in the Delta, but somewhere where I could be, where I wasn’t looking over my shoulder and scared to climb up in a tree because I’d have to run and all that. So I guess I was maybe maturing, I guess. I don’t really know, but I was just, I’d kind of been there, done it and I was just kind of tired of doing it. And I wanted to be able to find a deer and kill it and be proud of it for an even playing field for me and him. I just didn’t want to play with the game wardens anymore. I was kind of bored with it, I guess, but I was also looking back on it, I was kind of stuck in that element with some of the other friends because, like, even if I would want to go, really go hunt for a deer, like, oh, well, we saw a big one. We got to go get him and then we load up and go get him. But I had a couple of buddies that were doing it the right way and I saw that and they were really working for it and they might only kill one deer that whole season, one big buck. And I was ready to start doing that again and just trying to kill a big one with my bow, and that’s kind of where I was at.

Getting Back to the Essence of Hunting

That was what was wanting or in me that wanted to slow down and really go and pursue a deer, the way you should do it.

Ramsey Russell: Get back to the essence of real hunt. To that same aura of hunting that you and your daddy were in back when you were young.

Sam Necaise: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: While we all got in it.

Sam Necaise: Yeah, I was just missing that and I didn’t realize it, but that’s what wanted me – That was what was wanting or in me that wanted to slow down and really go and pursue a deer, the way you should do it.

Ramsey Russell: Well, be careful what you wish for. That’s what the old saying says. So, what happened on October 17th 2007?

Sam Necaise: Well, me and my friend, we met at his house and we kind of had suspicions that our friend in the Delta had set us up. And –

Ramsey Russell: In what regard?

Sam Necaise: Well, I have suspected that there was something going on. He kind of changed the way he would talk to us and he was real bold on lots of things and he had introduced us to some guys and they really – the guys he introduced us to, one of them really wanted to buy drugs, like, really bad. And I never had a good feeling about it and I can’t say that it was like a good gut feeling or anything. I just, I didn’t, it’s something didn’t sit right with me, it wasn’t, it didn’t feel genuine.

Ramsey Russell: Watch that a million time. If you get a little red flag in your stomach, don’t never ignore. Please continue.

Sam Necaise: Yeah, just something didn’t feel right. And it was more so with our friend in the Delta. He was just – There was a lot of drastic changes and I didn’t know if –

Ramsey Russell: His personality changed.

Sam Necaise: Yeah. And I didn’t know if maybe he had, like, really gone off deep in with some drugs or not, but there was definitely a change. And I think throwing on the fact that I was kind of tired. I was tired of the lifestyle that I was living. Didn’t exactly know how to get out or how to change, how to do anything different. I was kind of stuck. But even then, didn’t realize I was stuck. So, anyway, we went to, I met him at his house.

Ramsey Russell: And the buddy of the Delta had called you to come up to the Delta?

Sam Necaise: No, actually, no. My friend from the coast, we went to this house and I told him previously at the gas station, I’d saw him a day or so before that and I told him, I was like, man, I think we’ve been set up. And I told him my reasons why I think so. And he kind of agreed. He had, I think he was too proud to admit, though, that he’d been duped. But I was like, man, something’s not right. And I just got a really bad feeling that we’re in a lot of trouble. And so I was going to his house to meet him to talk more about it and then not long after I pulled up, we were standing in his yard talking in and there was, I didn’t even know the state of Mississippi had that many game wardens, but there is dang there. If I had to guess, if there was 50 game wardens, 49 of them were in that driveway.

Ramsey Russell: When you pulled up or right after you pulled?

Sam Necaise: No right after I pulled up and-

Ramsey Russell: They just come whooping with the lights on.

Sam Necaise: I don’t even remember the lights. There is just green trucks everywhere. But the first vehicle that pulled up behind my truck, it was like, if I remember right, it was like, maybe like a gray ford explorer or something and we just kind of looked at them like maybe they were lost, wanting directions or something? And then when they got out of the truck, they had FBI on their shirts or some or their vest or whatever it was and looked at my friend and I was like, man, that’s the feds. And then all the green trucks started pulling in across the road in the yard. I mean, they were everywhere. And that’s what I was like, yep, we’re in trouble. And so, anyway, they swarmed us. They arrested us. I thought about –

Ramsey Russell: Handcuffed? –

Sam Necaise: Yeah, I thought about running for, like, a really brief second and they must have read my mind, because some little bitty short linebacker looking guy, freaking, he was on me really fast.

Ramsey Russell: Well, you a big old linebacker look really like a line kind of guy.

Sam Necaise: I don’t know about that.

Ramsey Russell: You’re a big old man.

Sam Necaise: Yeah, well, I wasn’t then, I was a little skinny fellow then. But anyway, so they had us on our knees, arrested us, put us in handcuffs. And the 2 guys that were with us that day, they ended up being undercover agents. And so, then it all made sense.

Ramsey Russell: What was one of them undercover agents names?

Sam Necaise: We called him turtle man.

Ramsey Russell: Turtle man.

Sam Necaise: Yeah, that was one of them. But One of the head honchos of the investigation was Mr. Kenny Prince.

Ramsey Russell: Folks, thank you all for listening this episode of MOJO’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast. We going to come back for part 3. You all do not want to miss the 3rd part of this episode. Thank you all for listening, we’ll see you next week, I know you’re coming back.