Well, I got it figured out. Sorry for the delay in posting-we had a storm roll through here yesterday and I have been swamped at the office.
We got it up on a friends lift Sunday night, and checked the motor and trans mounts and they all seemed to be in great shape. I did notice a fresh scrape on the transmission skid plate/bars and started thinking about how that coulda got there
. I had taken the boys wheeling down at one of our farms the weekend before and we were doing some rock crawling over a few exposed areas and I remember tapping the undercarriage on one of the passes. Right where I tapped it was close to where the exhaust was and it left the clearance between it and the transmission insanely tight. We got it down off the lift, and fairly confident at this point that it wasn't the transmission internals at all took it out and drove it for a half hr. and then right back up on the lift. Sure enough warming everything up to operating temps the trans was now touching the skid plate. We took a torch and two pry bars, heated it up and bent it back into shape and viola! no more growl! What a relief that I wasn't gonna have to spring for a transmission!!
Thanks again everyone for all of the suggestions! I don't know as if I would have even crawled underneath it if I hadn't got any responses or ideas from all of you!