It was my 18th birthday. And I was halfway up a tree, on a foggy, wet, cold November morning. The bone-chilling cold only those from Northern Missouri can know. Awaiting the (hoped for) arrival of a buck.
A really big, 10-point or bigger buck. One of those 230 pound whitetails! Lemme' fill that freezer and head on off to the pool hall to brag to my buds. Hallelujah!
Back where I'm from everybody hunts. Everybody! They hunt deer, and hogs, and ducks, and geese, and rabbits, and squirrels. And quail and pheasant and pretty much anything else of a lower order that walks, crawls or flies. To the extent when deer season opens, every November 11th, they call off the school day. 'Cause nobody would show up if they didn't.
As at it happens, November 11th happened to fall on the day between my Mother's and my birthdays. So my Dad and I made it a family tradition to bag our deer each fall, and then feast on backstraps the rest of the year.
So like all my friends, I was in my favored tree, in my favored area, just south of Chillicothe, hoping that a big buck would grace my presence. Before I froze to death.
I believe the only reason there are any animals left standing (or sitting or flying) is the horrible weather. Just sayin...
It was before daybreak. Around 5:30 a.m. As always, mine was the only car on that gravel road for as far as the eye could see. I'd parked and walked the several hundred yards to my tree. I then eased my way up into my blind, hoisted up some black coffee in a Thermos, and willed myself to stay completely still.
And wait for sunup...
These are the most delicious parts of hunting, BTW. The parts where you don't know how your hunt will go, but you have hopes, and so you sit there. You've done everything you can to tilt the odds in your favor, but you don't know. You're waiting. Hoping. Yeah, the best part...
I'd used this same tree and this same stand for the previous 5 years. My Dad had come with me on my first year, back when I was 13, teaching me all I needed to know. But since I'd gotten my license, I was on my own. We'd gotten a deer that year, between the two of us, and each year since. We'd alternated, as a matter of fact, which made our annual hunts a Father-Son competition. Dad, to be sure, was only a half-mile or so away, just in case I got lucky. Or vice versa. So we could help one another.
It was before cell phones but not before yelling.
I was using my hand-built .30-06 sporter that morning (I mentioned I was a gunsmith, right?). I'd made it from a cut-down 1903-A3 Springfield WW1 rifle. I fitted it with a very light (and very beautiful) Reinhardt Fagen birdseye maple stock and a 4x Weaver scope with Redfield helium filled mounts. I was even handloading my own ammo back then. My deer load was a 180 gr. Sierra soft point bullet on 50 gr. of DuPont #4350 powder, in Norma cartridge cases and Federal primers. It was a thumper. That rifle weighed in at only 6' 8 oz., for ease of carry. But that heavy bullet escaping the barrel at about 2,800 feet per second, proved the concept of, "For every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction."
And that reaction was a black and blue shoulder.
Dawn was breaking. I was at the heel end of a horseshoe-shaped cornfield. About three acres of it, I'd guess. Since the farmer had already harvested the corn, the ears which had fallen on the ground instead of landing in the truck made a tasty treat for the local deer. So they'd come in for breakfast and feast on the corn, bringing themselves within 200 yards or so of my stand. And 200 yards ain't nothin' where I come from.
You could throw a rock 200 yards, 'fergodssake!
The sun was high in the sky. The morning hunt was pretty much over, I thought. I was just about ready to call it a day and head on home. And there, all of a sudden, he was! A huge 10-point buck! (That's 5 spikes on each side, BTW). Easily over 200 pounds. I'd guess 3 or 4 years old, and ready for the taking. So I quietly picked up my rifle, took the caps off each end of the scope, raised it to my shoulder, quietly clicked off the safety, leaned up against the tree, lined up the shot, and prepared to pull the trigger. Right behind his shoulder. Ready? One, two, ...
BANG, BANG, BANG! I head three quick rifle shots! And a bullet took a chunk of bark off the tree about a foot above my shoulder! Another whizzed by my head. Bits of wood were raining down on me as I instinctively ducked. Damn! Somebody's shooting at me! So as quickly as possible I bailed on that tree. I left the Thermos but took the rifle, thinking I might need it for a gun fight which just might happen.
I ran as fast as I could to my car. When I reached the road I noticed the two brand new Ford Broncos, parked front to back, same color, just a couple of hundred yards from my car. With identical Kansas City Ford dealer's stickers on their back bumpers. Since nobody else was around, I stopped to gather my breath and my wits. I quickly scanned the immediate area through my scope sight. Whew! I was safe! So I jumped in my car, popped the clutch and threw as much gravel as possible at the front end of one of those Broncos. I hope I cracked the windshield and chipped the paint.
Why? These Big City boys were obviously camped at the other end of the meadow, two or three hundred yards from my stand. Not even knowing I was there, but within their sight picture when prepping to shoot at something. So when I was aiming at the deer from south to north, they were aiming at that same deer from north to south. And it became a war zone.
With me as the noncombatant.
Fortunately, I got out with my scalp. But that event scared me. And it caused me to give up deer hunting thereafter. I was not scared of dying, to be sure, but of Big City, one-day-a-year hunters, bringing their terror to small town America. And them most likely filled to the brim with "aiming fluid," and most likely manufactured by your friend and mine, Mr. Jack Daniel, just looking for something to murder.
Thankfully, this time it wasn't me...
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