by Samuel Old Craigs Creek Deer and Wildlife Management
I was a young, buck-toothed, bald-headed little kid at the very early age of four years old, when I saw my very first whitetail deer. I knew then that my passion in life was to be a deer hunter. Of course, at that young age, the management end of hunting had never even entered my mind. At that stage in my life, I wouldn’t have even dreamed of such a thing, let alone known what it was.
But, when I went on my very first deer hunt, at the age of six years old, my dream that morning was to come home with a big old bruiser buck, but the Good Lord had other plans of running me through a lifetime of learning curves!
I will never forget the day when my dad told me that I was going to get to go deer hunting. Then, when he told me in his next sentence that I was going alone it felt even better! Great day in the morning… that made me feel like I was the biggest man in the world! In the years previous, my dad would take me with him to the old ESSO station in the town of New Castle, Virginia which was where all of the old farmers and pulpwood cutters would gather after a hard days work and tell their tales, not only of the days happenings, but also of hunts in their past. This was also the only big game check station in the county. While all of the rest of the town’s kids were running around playing sports in school, I was all ears listening to these old stories and absolutely taking in every word as though I was listening to the best preacher in the world. Little did I know, I was absolutely listening to the best teachers in the world!
The eve of the first day of deer season, I felt so much like a man that I believe I almost rubbed the finish off of the wood on that old .410 Stevens single-barrel shotgun. I polished on that little shotgun as if it were the most expensive and prettiest gun in the world, and to me, it absolutely was just that.
Now, back then, there were no really warm hunting clothes, and worse than that, no really good flashlights, or batteries to use in them. My dad was going to let me use his old, black, plastic household flashlight. We had bought some brand new, blue and yellow RAY-O-VAC batteries for it the night before at the old ESSO station. I opened up that old light, shucked the batteries in it, and flipped the switch. The beam on the wall shown like new money! My mom had my hunting clothes ready, that we thought would keep me warm. A pair of the old white dimpled long johns, a pair of old blue jeans (the coldest fabric on earth), two pairs of socks and my school shoes. They were the only shoes I had, and I got one pair a year at the local 5&10 cent store for about $3.00 a pair back then. Now, I was all set for my first deer hunt… so I thought!
That sleepless night seemed like it took forever before 5 A.M. rolled around as visions of that BIG OLD BUCK were not dancing, but prancing through my head like sugar cookies on Christmas eve! Little did I know that in a few short minutes I was about to get my first dose of reality when it comes to deer hunting. I ate breakfast, shucked on all of my clothes, so many that I could barely walk, and out the door I strolled. Mom and Dad both proudly watched me disappear around the house out of the glimmer of the porch light, and into the moon lit dark of night. Well, then I heard the door close behind me and they snapped the porch light off, and I froze in my tracks. Not only had I never been out in the pitch dark of night by myself before, but the reality of having to walk a half a mile in that darkness caused a lump in my throat as big as a basketball, but I didn’t stop. I was a DEER HUNTER!
So, with that thought in mind, I continued on. The first leg of this ghostly walk was 125 yards to the swinging bridge that crossed Craig Creek. Now, although the moon was up big and bright, and the 18 degree frosty white ground made it almost like walking in the daylight, I still was shining my light at everything that could possibly have something hiding behind it to jump out at me. By the time I had reached the riser on that old swinging bridge, that old flashlight was almost out of juice! I think those batteries were probably 5 years old on the shelf at the old ESSO station, and this was making the dark even darker for me!
So, I reached the riser on the old swinging bridge, and up those frost-slickened boards I went, kind of pulling myself along with the hand rails. As I reached the top and started across the cabled swinging part of the bridge, out across and above the water, I could see the moonlight real bright reflecting off of Craig Creek looking right back at me. Then I saw something swimming right under me and all of a sudden a great big smack in the water that about made me jump over the page-wire covered side of the old bridge! IT ALMOST SCARED ME TO DEATH BECAUSE I DIDN’T KNOW WHAT A BEAVER SOUNDED LIKE! Scared me so much that I poked the end of that already loaded .410 shotgun barrel through that page wire and shot down into the water, KAAABOOOOM! The shot caused a splash that rose all the way over my head. I had never seen a muzzle flash in the dark and that scared me almost as much as the beaver tail slapping in the water! I thought to myself, “Is that thing going to get me?!” I didn’t know.
After shooting into the water, and all of that commotion, I started running toward the other end, and the old bridge was swaying in that ‘whipping’ motion. By then, I was running so fast that my feet were only hitting the high parts of the floor treads. As I reached the ground, down the other riser, it dawned on me. Whatever that was in the water, I was now at its level and it really could get me now. Route 615 was up a 75-yard long hill in front of me, and I knew if I could get there that I would be safe. The first day of deer season, traffic was almost bumper to bumper like interstate 85 rolling through Atlanta during rush hour! When I made it to 615, almost in a run up that hill, I was exhausted and sweating like I was at a July 4th picnic. I still had 400-yards to go before I would reach the gate to the field where I was headed to. I walked beside that traffic so close that when the cars would pass me I could feel the wind whipping off of my legs. I finally reached the gate to get to my old honeybee hive where, as per my dads instructions, I was to use as a seat for my deer stand!
Now, to get through that old honeysuckle covered gate was another trick in itself! That honeysuckle had to be two feet thick, and there was no way I could get my little 6 year-old leg through that to stabilize my foot on a gate board and to get up over it, so I had to come up with a different plan. A few weeks before, the cattle had gotten out into 615 through a hole in the fence that we patched by running barbed wire through the hole and pulling it banjo string tight (4 strands of it) and I knew that was where I could get through and into the field. SO I THOUGHT!
Now, let’s back up a little bit and let me tell you what happened every Sunday. Well, Sunday night was always haircut night for us kids, and dad would line us up in the kitchen, and one-by- one, he would skin our head with his old clippers boot-camp short. One of the neighbors up the road from us said he could always tell when us boys had gotten our haircut because we had an old blue-and-white, 1957 ford station-wagon and when we would go by his house with our skinned heads shining, it looked like an open carton of eggs on wheels going up the road. So now here’s where that thought comes into play!
Upon devising a plan on how to get through that fence, the instructions from both my mom and dad were “DO NOT TRY AND GO THROUGH THAT FENCE!! YOU CROSS THAT GATE!” Well, there was no way and the only real good opening was where we had repaired the fence with the barbed wire, and I mean tight and close strands of barbed wire! So here I was, twice as fat wearing a big, old, Naugahyde jacket, along with two big, thick shirts and the dimpled long johns top underneath all of that. My plan was to take the jacket off, throw it across the fence to the other side, and then stick one leg through between the barb wire strands and push down on the strand beneath me, and then pick up my other leg and smoothly slide right on through to the other side. Seemed like a really good plan, until I tried it. Now, remember, those strands of barbed wire were banjo string tight and very close together. I got one leg through, but when I tried to push down on the bottom strand to get my body through, well, the Good Lord had other plans. As I was trying to finagle my way through the fence to the other side, while trying to push down on the wire below me, it would push my back up and into the top strand! That barb wire in my back was really feeling good… so then I wiggled my way back to the outside of the fence and the bottom strand started poking me in… well, lets just say “IN A SENSITIVE SPOT!”
Now picture this!
Here was this little 6 year-old kid with a fresh haircut that made his head shine like gangster-wall tires in the headlights of those cars going down the road, with his britches caught in a barb wire fence all in the name of just wanting to go deer hunting! Finally, after getting myself all caught up in that fence, I had gotten mad but I also knew I was on my own, and I had to somehow get myself out of it. So, I reached to the outside of the fence and got that old shotgun, unloaded it, and brought it in close to my body and while giving as much down force as I could on that bottom strand of barb wire, I just gave a big lunge to the inside of the fence because I knew that something had to give. Well, guess what gave? I believe you could have heard the backside of my pants ripping all the way to town, two miles away! But… I got out of that fence!
After picking up my coat and putting it on, and picking up my now frosted-over brown jersey Handy-Andy gloves, I bent over to pick up my gun and noticed a sharp cooling sensation on my backside. When I finally got turned around to look, there it was laying on the ground behind me. I had ripped a piece of denim all the way from my hip pocket to the cuff end of my pants leg and it was two inches wide! I almost started to cry because I knew I should just go home, but “NO SIR, I’M GOING DEER HUNTING!”
Now, my dad, while feeding his cattle in that same field a few weeks before, told me that he had seen an old doe and two fawns in that field every morning, and that I should concentrate on finding them. Now, in that corner of the field, right next to that gate, the fence made a tee that extended some 400 yards through to the backside of the field, and there again it was covered in honeysuckle with a see-through spot every once in a while. I was easing along, peeking through that fence, and sure enough, in the frost-covered fescue grass, I saw ears sticking up.
Now, the hunt was on! I eased up to the fence and poked the barrel of that old .410 through, and got me a good rest. I rattled some of that honeysuckle pretty good so the doe could hear it and sure enough she hopped to her feet looking my way. Knowing that she hadn’t seen me, and only heard a rustling, she started easing my way three to four steps at a time. She was probably 150 yards away at the start but she was closing the distance. She had gotten some 25 yards way from me and I knew the closer the better with that little slug loaded .410 gauge shotgun. So, I was going to wait until she was about 15 yards away and I was going to plug her! Well, remember I said something about being close to highway 615? Well, at about 300 yards, there was an old barn that stood maybe 50 yards from the road! I was just getting ready to pull the trigger when all of a sudden three booming shots rang out and I was suddenly hearing bullets flying towards me and hitting in the ground not 10 yards in front of me and spraying dirt on me! The old doe, of course, disappeared in a flash. Almost in self defense, I jumped up and started waving my arms and yelling to the top of my lungs at those poaching hunters. They had stopped beside the road and eased down behind that barn to take a pot shot at those deer. I was hoping they would see me and stop shooting. Well, they did, and in a run they jumped back in their car and scratched off down the road like a jet because they knew they were in trespassing. So, I missed my chance at my deer due to poachers, or should I say ‘road hunters’.
I looked around at my cold leg and saw about 2 feet of frost-covered denim dragging on the ground behind me and I decided it was time to just go home. I walked back through the field and crossed the swinging bridge again. It was around 9:30 am by that time, and I was frozen to the bone. My mom met me at the door and she immediately noticed my ripped open pants leg and asked me how I did it. I knew that I couldn’t tell her about crawling through the fence so I sort of fibbed and told her I ripped them on a nail sticking up out of that old bee hive. She knew what I had done, and knew that I wasn’t being honest to her, and let me tell you, within about 30 seconds my backside was as hot as fire and the cold in my body instantly went away with a burning sensation!
So the moral of this story, and the three things I learned from my first ever deer hunt was:
NUMBER 1
Don’t ever feel like you are a big man just because you are getting to go deer hunting at age 6.
NUMBER 2
Try to at least spend a little time out in the dark and get use to it, and learn what a beaver sounds like when it slaps its tail in the water!
NUMBER 3
Unless you want your backside to feel immediately like you have just sat down on a blazing hot iron as apposed to the rest of your frozen body then, DON’T COME HOME AND LIE TO MOMMA ABOUT HOW YOU RIPPED YOUR PANTS! She knows better!
