My older brother Stan just stopped by for lunch on his way home from my nephew's place. While he was here we talked about the old days when we were young. He left a while ago and I've been sitting here remembering what deer season was like when I was a kid. I'm not sure what was special about the age of 12 to my Dad, but that was the year we would get our first shotgun. That's the year that come rabbit season, we were turned completely loose to chase rabbits and squirrels from dawn to dusk with zero supervision. More importantly, that was the year we would go on our first deer hunt. We didn't bow hunt back then. The concept was alien to us. Now, my Dad didn't have the first clue as to how to hunt deer. I still remember him getting up early, filling a pan with freezing-cold water and shaving with one of those old, metal razors that used a replaceable blade. Then he would splash on regular old blue Aqua Velva, have some coffee while standing around then fire and eventually it would be time to hit the woods. He would find a spot in the open woods where he could see f-o-r-e-v-e-r, kick the leaves away from a stump, tree or a rock and sit down. Then he would open his ever-present thermos of coffee, pour a cup and start watching for deer. I know this routine because the first year we got to go hunting we had to sit with him. Needless to say, we almost never saw a deer. If we got lucky enough to catch a glimpse of one back then we had a real story to tell back at camp. Heck, we got excited when we saw deer tracks! My Dad died in August 1989 without ever having tagged a deer. The fact that he never tagged one never did dampen his spirits or lessen his excitement as deer season drew near though. You could tell from the way he acted in the days leading up to the season opener that he was positively giddy with excitement. He passed that excitement and love of hunting on to us. He infected me with it most of all. Deer herds have recovered from where they were in the 70's in this area. Also, I've actually learned how to hunt deer now. We lost our middle brother Roger in 2007 to lung cancer, but my older brother and I still go back to the same ridge near Van Buren, MO every year for a hunt and we bring along a new generation of hunters. Every year I take a little time to myself and ride my four wheeler to a spot you'd miss if you didn't know it was there: An old, overgrown "dim" logging road that is all but invisible now. I shut the four wheeler off and walk about a quarter mille to find a spot that's very special to me. There's an old stone fire ring that hasn't been used in decades. My Dad stacked those stones before I was old enough to shoot a BB gun There's an old, rusty 20 penny nail sticking out of a red oak tree where Dad used to hang the old pump-up Coleman lantern. There's a big old rock that I used as a makeshift camp chair when I was a kid and was impervious to the discomfort of sitting on a rock. I always walk over, have a seat on that same rock, look around and think back, remembering what great times we had there together. He and I may have never gotten to hang a deer in that camp, but looking back I wouldn't change a thing. Thanks, Dad.
Great read sir. I understand completely. I first started hunting with my around 1980. There were not a lot of deer here in those days. We never killed anything. He gave up hunting when I was about 8. I had to learn on my own at the of 12. He always encouraged us, but he just didn't have the interest anymore. The younger generations hunting today have and are living in the golden era of deer hunting. More deer than ever, bigger bucks, better habitat, better equipment. Lots of them have a tape measure on the deer before they tag it and will actually be mad if it doesn't "measure up" to their standards.. I know there are some that do just love the peace and quiet of the woods, but because of social media and youtube and hunting forums, they have to produce giants or be left behind.. But the older I get, now 45, the more I just love to remember how it used to be. Thanks for the read
Great read! Me being young (24), I guess I don't realize how much I have missed growing up. Of course deer hunting when I was a youth is entirely different than what the deer hunting was when you older folks were kids. I never got the experience of hunting camps, hunting trips with family, etc. Sure my old man and I would hit the woods a couple times a year but pretty soon he set me off on my lonesome. Anything beyond pointing the ball of a smoothbore shotgun at the deer was foreign to him. I started reading books, joined these forums, made friends at the local bow shop. That's where bowhunting became a passion for me. Sent from my SM-A505U using Tapatalk
every year about this time I start youtubing old dan fitzgerals videos, Im talking late 80's early 90s. My friends and I would watch his videos every friday night before the next day hunt. We made a night of it man. we never killed deer, but we did see them and miss them. It wasn't until the after I graduated high school that I actually killed a deer with the bow. I went 5 years before killing one..I never lost the drive and still haven't after 64 deer with archery equipment. even to this day, if I smell autumn scent killer it floods my memory with those early days of learning.
As far as weapons go, it wasn't much different for me as a kid. My first gun was a Harrington/Richardson single shot 20 ga. shotgun. I deer "hunted" with rifled slugs. I remember how I felt when Dad would give me my box of slugs. I would take them out of the box and admire them at least 20 times before the opener, imagining what it would be like to line up those sights and launch that huge ball of lead into a big buck. Needless to say, that never happened. I bought my first bow in 2007 when I was 44 years old. It was a brand new Mathews Drenalin. Prior to that I had killed a total of four deer. I didn't know the first thing about bowhunting and to be honest, I had no idea how it was possible to get close enough to a deer to be able to draw and get the shot off without spooking it. Months before the first season started I stumbled across what one could call the "predecessor" of this site, HNI. I met a lot of the guys on here and started learning. I killed my first deer with my new bow that year. In 2008 this site stood up, but I didn't realize it until 2010. When I figured out where everyone had went I migrated to BH.Com and continued learning from the guys. It was hit and miss for me for a few years, but I have to say that bowhunting became a passion for me the first time that I leaned out, settled the pin and dropped my first deer. At that point I was hooked for life.
That's awesome! Incidentally, I love the smell of Autumn Scent scent killer. There was no such thing when I was growing up in the days of Jone-E lighter fluid handwarmers (which is something we couldn't afford), layered blue jeans and cotton shirts inside insulated coveralls, layered cotton socks inside non-insulated rubber boots and jersey gloves (the only gloves we had). We froze our asses off.
There is just something about that arrow hitting that deer perfectly. I shotgun hunt as well. I have killed 150 or so deer with a shotgun and although I still enjoy it, it pales in comparison to a bow kill. Bowhunting was not big here when I started back 1990 but it's grown a bunch.
If that isn't the most 80s hunting video I've ever seen lol! I remember watching some bowhunting VCR tapes from the late 90s, brings back memories. Sent from my SM-A505U using Tapatalk
Nice read LC. I never grew up hunting. Picked it up myself at 17. But my Dad and I were inseparable fishing buds for many years. The crap that we got into and the vehicles we got stuck in the mud, railroad tracks, etc was hysterical and memorable. Those were the days...making me wade into chest high water and "grab the fish!" while he laughed. Just trying to make me tough. Lol
I know what you're talking about, Brett. Long before I was old enough to go deer hunting my Dad would take me fishing. One of my favorite childhood memories is an old 5 foot, pistol-grip, solid fiberglass rod with an ancient Zebco 33 reel on it. That was the fishing pole that I used as a kid. My dad always took me fishing and he always told me that when I caught 10 "keeper bass" that the fishing pole would be mine. I fished and fished for years and finally caught 10 keeper bass in one day. I was so pumped! It was finally mine! I'll never forget him laughing and laughing at that, and at the time I didn't understand what was so funny to him. It wasn't until I got older that I understood that the damned fishing pole had been mine all along. My Dad was a simple man, but he sure knew how to instill a love of the outdoors in us.
This a great thread!! Man oh man could I add some good ones but I'm too slow of a typer for a long one.
Man dad was a farmer so hunting came second to that and he was addicted to work so he encouraged me to hunt but I had learn on my own. He never showed any interest after I was turned loose on my own
Great read! My dad was a hunter through and through. Always rifle. He was a still-hunter always, never ever sat down and watched an area unless it was while pausing when still hunting. Blue jeans and a flannel were standard hunting wear, and always his red hunting hat with a turkey feather in it. I was around 9 or 10 when he start letting me follow him while deer hunting. I can still see that "slow the hell down and quit making so much noise!" stare he'd give me when I wasn't being careful enough. He'd let me carry an old side by side .410 that he let me shoot grouse with. There was only one time we actually ran into some grouse that held still long enough for him to decide to let me ruin the deer hunting and shoot at them. There were two up in a brushy tree. The back one was lined up with the front one and I ended up getting them both with one shot. Shortly before I was 12 and could take hunter's safety he started me shooting an old Remmington 7mm Mauser he had. Worst trigger you have ever squeezed I can guarantee, it was a two stage military type trigger with about a 9 pound break. I used that rifle until I was 19 and bought my own. I shot my first deer my first season I turned 12. On the very last day of the season around 3 hours before dark. That fork n horn might well have been a 150" deer for how proud of it I was. I can still see the slight look of surprise in dad's eyes when I took the 160 yard steep downhill shot and it dropped. I hadn't accounted for the steep downhill and hit it in the spine, but still it was mine. Deer hunting was great back then. We farmed and ranched property outside of a population 800 ag community, the kind where everyone knows everyone. You could hunt anywhere you wanted as long as you shut the gate. We did a lot of pheasant hunting too. I used that old .410 for the first couple of years. It wasn't real great for knocking a pheasant down, many times they'd keep on going after I knocked feathers out of them. I can remember the last time I used it, we were walking a scab patch when a rooster got up. That old .410 had two hammers and two triggers, I always shot the right side first because it was a modified choke and the left was full. I shot at the rooster and feathers flew but it kept going. Used to this I had already cocked the left side after the first shot, so I gave it the other barrel. More feathers flew and that dang thing still kept on going. I had already been telling dad I was about disgusted with the .410 not knocking them down, so he knew my disgust was going to be pretty strong after this. He didn't say a word, he just walked over to me and swapped me his 12 ga. pump. The next two roosters that got up fell to it on the first shot. That Christmas I unwrapped my own 12 ga. pump. Dad has been gone for 12 years now. I still think of him every hunt.
I was born in 1959; and my dad took his first buck that year in Indiana. It was shot on a special 3 day hunt in the state park where our states herd restoration efforts first started. Deer hunting goes a ways back in my family. I remember that Dad taught me more woodsman ship than anything else... didn't talk much about deer specifically, but always made insightful comments about habitat and where game like to live, travel and hide.... As I got older I saw how It applied to everything from fishing to hunting. I started hunting at 8 with a 20 gauge Ithaca saddle gun that i got as a Christmas preset. Still got it. Hunted for squirrel, rabbits, quail, and at age 12 I was allowed to deer hunt with it. Picked up my first bow at 13 (recurve) and bow hunted the first time at the age of 16 with a Bear Polar LTD 6 wheeler, Easton 2117 game getters and zwickey Alaskans that I shot bare bow.... Lots of misses in the early years... Lots of lessons! Dad kill his last buck at the age of 69. He passed in 1998--- I miss his laugh, wisdom and love more than I can convey!
Thanks LC, that was a great read! It does remind me of when I first started hunting with my Dad, back in the mid 70's. My memories of those great days will stay with me. This was Camp Cobblestone, how I miss it.
That's awesome. Here in my part of the state, we don't have "cabins" and get aways. We have hunt club houses but we talking 30-50 members. not many stay the night. From mid Nov to early Jan we run deer hounds here and it's more of a get together than a small group camping and hunting. But it sounds like a lot of fun!
My Dad was a farmer also. I was driving tractors from dawn to dusk long before I was old enough to get a driver’s license. Growing up we only hunted the opening week of gun season every year in November. Anything farm related could be put off for a week at that point.
Yeh me too. I always remember him cutting beans the day before gun season. I would ride in the combine all day and even after dark..
