I am going to try something different in the way of sharing stories of deer hunting, when I was a teen,or other events from my youth. These stories are as I remember them,dates and time may be general in some instances. I'll will start with this one:
15,November,1988
Opening day of the gun hunt season. At this point I was 14 or 15. The morning did not produce anything but a cold body. If I remember correctly, Dad and I headed to the big swamp. We made our trek back home and discussed strategy for the evening hunt. Dad decided to put me on the old fence row, this is the boarder of Grandpas property, and the next property. He had said that the deer love to travel this fence row, really there wasn't much of a fence row left. Anyway, it was a plan.
3:45pm rolls around and we head off to our spots on our 40. Dad takes me to the spot and I climb and get up in the tree.Dad headed off to one of his favorite spots, the "S" shaped tree. The top of this tree was shaped like and S, thus the name.
So,I'm in my spot,wind was blowing West to East,SW to SE, heavy snow, not blizzard but darn close. It was uneventful sitting for the most part. As I am scanning, I heard a cough. I knew it was getting late and Dad would be here soon to get heading home. Time was about 5:00pm. So a few minutes go by and I'm scanning left, as I scan back right I look down, turned my head left and quickly looked back right. There was a nice, large 9 point. He was darn near under me on my right, I was facing West, he came in from the North. I am sitting on a branch at this point, I pull up my rifle only to find the glove on my hand made my finger to large to pull the trigger. I take the glove off and set it on my lap. The buck was moving very slow, unaware of what was going on above him. Remember the wind was blowing hard, killing any sound. So, with the glove on my lap, I pull up to shoot again, now the branches are in the way because the angle changed. So I stand up, and there goes the glove down the tree.
The buck looked up, he knew he heard something odd. The wind had muffled the scrapping down the tree otherwise he would've been gone. I was standing, pulled up and BANG. I saw the blood splatter from behind his front leg,his leg gave and headed east. I took one shot at his rear for good measure.
I got down in a hurray and checked for splattered blood, it was all over the tags. I went back up the tree and waited for Dad. About 5:20pm, here he comes.
"Was that you shooting," he asked.
"Yep," I replied
"Where'd he go,"
"Between that tree and that tree," I pointed.
Dad wanted me to stay there,he went to go look. He's gone not two minutes. "Brian dang it,this is a Doe" he says
"Bull crap that was a buck I saw antlers," I replied. So I got down to look. There stands Dad with that nice, old 9 pointer.
He was more excited than I was. He asked me if I wanted to gut it. I kindly insisted that he could do it. He was more than happy to take care of it. Now it was to late to drag it back,so we would come back the next morning to bring it home.
So this is the story of my first buck and one proud Dad.
It is easily forgotten why we have a Thanksgiving holiday. I see no one, myself included, giving thanks for God giving Columbus , then the Pilgrims, the guidance to sail over here. I mention God first because nothing happens without Him. The Pilgrims started the whole Thanksgiving day tradition, yet there is not any mention of being Thankful to them. There is never any mention of thankfulness to Washington, Jefferson and the rest of the writers of the Constitution, never any thankfulness to the revolution. These are things that helped gain our freedom from the British. I never hear any thanks for Harriet Tubman and the under ground railroad, I hardly ever any thanks to our WWII vets, that were the nail in the coffin of Hitler. We are finally starting to get it with thanking our current troops, and protecting us from people that just plain hate us.
