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It’s the season, that’s the reason for hearing shots ringing out in the county. Deer season is that time of the year in early November when all the guys and some gals go nuts getting their gear together and head for the deer camp. For the gals that don’t attend this mostly male march to the deer camp, it means a few days to shop, not cook, and pretty much do as they please. I heard one woman say when asked if she hated deer season to open “au contraire, what’s to hate? I get to be the boss, cook what I like, go where I please, watch any chick flicks I want and NOT watch football for a few days. What’s to hate about that?”

Until we moved here to the heart of deer hunting country 25 years ago, our whole family was affected by the fact that the men in the family would be scurrying about like persons possessed getting their gear together, airing out the sleeping bags, cleaning the guns, stocking up on food that even guys could cook, buying ammo, transporting their feed, loading up the ATV’s all in anticipation of opening day. You’d think the idea of getting the big one would lessen when the walls already sigh with the heaviness of the heads mounted and hung there and the freezer still bulges with a fair amount of last season’s venison and very expensive venison sausage.

I know many people make good use of their harvest of deer but I also know that many just harvest for the thrill of the kill and the camaraderie of the hunt. I think men are naturally bred to be hunters and gatherers. As for the men in our family, after living among the wildlife for more than 25 years, some of the fun of the sport is gone as we see these animals on a daily basis from our porch. It was just more fun for the guys when they had to travel a distance to hunt and all bunk up together and eat and drink and tell hunting stories over and over again.

For Pat and I hunting is more of a chore than it used to be as when you kill a deer what you have on your hands is a dead deer that you then have to deal with. It has to be skinned, gutted and then carried back to the truck, then carried off to the processor where they will cut and wrap to our specifications. Right now the processor is the least of our problems, we have a new Smokehouse at the intersection of 290 West and County Road 210 and we hear they do a good job and it is very convenient for our hunters. I am sure they can add pork, good seasonings and maybe some jalapeno’s to sausage and make it nearly taste like what you can buy at the grocery store and cheaper but what the heck, then you couldn’t brag, “I brought the meat home to the little woman and she fried it up in a pan.”

When the kids were young and Pat would take off hunting, we would eat our favorite meal and that was Salmon Croquettes, Mac and Cheese and LeSueur English Peas and after that we’d get the Christmas tree decorated. Have you ever been in the grocery store on the day before opening day and watch these men shopping with buggy’s bulging racing through the store? It’s so funny they usually come in pairs, each asking the other, “You want sausage or hamburger meat for dinner, and what kind of beer do you like?” It’s hysterical to watch.

I’ve been along on many deer hunts but I only ever participated twice. The first was up here when we still only had a cabin and came on weekends. Pat put me out in what he thought might be a good place, back in some brush and told me when and how to shoot and he took off. I had brought a book with me in case I got bored and I was sure I was going to be but I was trying to be a good sport about hunting. I sat quietly for what for me was a long time, maybe 10 minutes and then of course I needed to go to the bathroom. Well I found a place to tend to that and in a few more minutes, I really wanted a cigarette. This was about 8 years before I gave up the nasty habit.

I was smoking again some hours after settling in when along came Pat who had already bagged his big one and did I get the lecture. I told him I got bored, read my book for a while and then took a nap, but what he was really interested in and annoyed him was how long I had been smoking. I wondered what difference that made and he not very patiently gave me chapter and verse about how deer had very intense smelling apparatus and they probably hadn’t been within an acre or so of me all afternoon. And he added, even if I hadn’t been smoking one cigarette after another and then the very idea of me taking a nap, well need I say he wasn’t a happy hunter.

I didn’t hunt again for maybe 10 years until we moved up here. I decided to hunt from the barn stand since I remembered sitting on the ground wasn’t that much fun and maybe all the snakes hadn’t left the area yet. I had a perfect place and nice soft hay bale to sit on. I waited and I watched and just a few minutes after the feeder went off here came the deer, some does and a couple of good sized bucks hanging back in the trees.

Here’s the deal breaker about this second hunt of mine. We had put up a short fence around this feeder to keep the cows out and the deer easily jumped the fence to get at the corn, finally the buck did also. That is when I decided to shoot. BANG and down went the buck INSIDE THE FENCE! I hadn’t even given thought about how to get the buck outside the fence. When Pat heard my shot he came quickly to see what I had gotten or IF I had gotten anything. Need I go into detail about the lesson I got about shooting the buck INSIDE the fence? Of course we had to either cut the fence or the two of us had to heft that big 8 pointer up and sling it UP AND OVER the fence and Pat chose the latter. That was the very end of my hunting. He had the horns mounted for me and I had a small plaque put on the mount and it says, “Dropped Like a Bad Habit.” I wanted to put “Is That All There Is?” on it but he didn’t like that idea so much.