I know everybody has some good/funny stories from deer camp so feel free to post them here. I’ll start with mine. My dad, mom, friend from college, brother, and I had rented a lodge for rifle season in Missouri. We got there early in the afternoon so drinking and playing cards started a bit earlier than usual. My dad, who usually is just a beer drinker, was hitting the whiskey with my buddy from college mixing his drinks for him. Before we knew it dad was getting pretty loud and obnoxious so he got to bed early. Fast forward to the middle of the night, we all wake up to my dad pissing in the corner of the bedroom in a half asleep daze. So mom yells at him which wakes him up enough to make it to the bathroom. As he re-enters he gives everyone a funny look and asks my mom why she’s scrubbing the floor. After a pretty good a$$ chewing and a lot of laughs everyone falls back asleep for the night. Morning comes around and dad drags himself out of bed with a pounding headache and everyone heads out for the opening morning hunt. As luck would have it, dad sits in his stand hungover for about 30 minutes, has a 140 inch 10 pointer pop out at 50 yards, and shoots him. Nobody else in the group killed anything that weekend. Moral of the story, no matter how ****ty you feel, get yourself in the stand! You never know what will happen.
I love these threads, and I'm especially excited to see this pop up today because I'm heading to my annual bow camp in about seven hours. The weather may be crap for hunting, but we're going to have a great time! I need to work on my story-telling abilities, but here goes... This one is eerily similar to the story above. For this story, we'll call my buddy Jimmy. Jimmy, who is actually a great guy and continually does good deeds for others, could fall in a pile of dung and come out smelling like roses (there's a lesson in there somewhere). Jimmy goes out for wine and whisky with another group of friends the night before a morning hunt with the usual group. He is usually the first person awake and contacting others to make sure we get where we're going. I wake up about an hour before our meeting time and start texting the group. I receive responses from the other guys, but nothing from Jimmy. Thirty minutes to meeting time - nothing from Jimmy. Twenty minutes - nothing. I pull into the meeting spot and decide to call Jimmy because he has about fifteen minutes to show or we are heading on without him. Good news! Jimmy picks up the phone! Bad news... Jimmy has a pounding headache and has only had about three hours of sleep. I talk him into dragging his butt out of bed and coming along. Jimmy shows up looking (and smelling) like death. I am thinking he won't have deer anywhere around him and I'm glad I'm not hunting within a quarter mile of him. We arrive at the property and everyone gets in his respective spot. As soon as I am in, I get a text from Jimmy. His bowels are uncontrollable. By the time I've made the long walk to my stand, he has climbed down from his twice to heed Mother Nature's call. I am chuckling a little, but I feel a little bad for the guy. The group text starts in about a half hour after shooting light. Nobody has seen anything, Jimmy is telling us how much his head and belly hurt and all we are seeing are squirrels. At 7:35, Jimmy texts that he wishes he was in his warm bed. At 7:37, Jimmy texts "BBD". A slew of texts from the rest of the group come through, but nothing from Jimmy for a while. About 20 minutes later, we hear that it's "just a little buck". I am happy for him, but some of my excitement fades because I had visions of seeing him with a nice, mature buck. The group text goes silent. I get down from my stand earlier than I normally would, knowing that there is work to be done. I make the long walk over to Jimmy's position and he's up in his stand, safety harness on, napping with his head against the tree. I quietly wake him up and ask him about the buck he shot. Jimmy still looks like death. He groggily says, "Oh yeah, I dropped him right over there." pointing to a field edge about 25 yards away. I couldn't see anything from the base of the stand, so I walk over. When I reach the buck, my eyes get pretty wide. I look up at Jimmy and he has the biggest poo-eating grin on his face. What he meant by "just a little buck" was the old gnarly 4x5 we'd seen on camera and had all hoped we'd get a crack at. What a great day. I think about it often.
I figured people would be all over this. Do you think people aren't interested or just don't have stories to share?
