I haven’t been deer hunting since…well a long time ago. I’ve got nothing against it, as matter of fact I’ve still got my 30-30 that my father gave me when I was a teenager. My brother and I have the same model gun and they have consecutive serial numbers. Now deer hunting for me was a true adventure and a nightmare. The hunting party said that I would be good on the drive, trying to flush the deer out for the posters at the end of the section of woods. Here was problem number 1: I couldn’t walk a straight line. Even though we would give a periodic shout to keep track of each other’s pace, I’d either fall behind or I would end up coming out the side of the section onto a county road.

2: I remember going through some extremely heavy brush when a buck, with what looked like a whole lot of antlers on his head, walked no more than ten feet in front of me. But it’s like he knew I couldn’t shoot because the brush was too thick. If I’d pulled the trigger, I probably would have shot myself in the foot. I used to come out of the woods with all these little red lines on my face from the brush and low branches hitting me…. But hey….I was trying!

3: So they decided to let me post the drive. I think the chance of getting lost or shooting myself in the foot was starting to worry members of the party. The next drive was planned and I was driven to the other side to wait and see if they could flush out some deer. About four of us waited patiently when we saw something stirring in the woods. I got ready and raised my gun to my shoulder with my finger on the trigger. Oops! It was not deer but two moose coming out of the forest! I was told by another hunter, “Keep your guard up, they don’t see very well. If they charge you can protect yourself, but otherwise leave them alone.”

“What! They might charge!!! You’re kidding me?” (I didn’t use the word kidding, but this is a family newspaper). We were lucky and they just wandered off. There was a lot of snickering by my fellow hunters.

When you post on the drive, sometimes you stand right along the woods edge so you can see down the road should something come up on the side. Well lucky me that on this particular drive two deer popped out the side of the woods, crossed the gravel road and into the next section of woods. I opened fire and got off two shots. One flinched, but kept going. When the group was out of the woods we went to check for a blood trail and found none. It was later decided that the deer probably caught part of its leg on the barbed wire fence as it leaped across the line. It’s like the old line… “I couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn.”

By the way this was many years ago and almost all the hunters in my party were owners of the land we were on.

McKenzie’s Swamp was next. It was pretty much dried out, so we spread ourselves out across it and started moving to see if we could get something to jump out of the tall grass. It was half-way through the drive a doe popped up between me and the guy to my left. It started running behind us, so we both turned and fired. The deer went down hard. One bullet from each of us and when we got to the deer….it had been hit TWICE! One bullet hit close to the heart. The other shot, hit the right rear knee. Now the other man who fired the shot tried to tell me I could have made the better shot of the two. I asked him how many years have you been hunting? He told me over 40, a deer every year. This was only my second year, I think the knee shot was mine.

My partners in the hunting party got a good laugh on that one too.

That was a lot of years ago but something I’ll never forget. Here’s hoping that all of you with tags got your deer this year.