Best hunt ever
“It’s the most wonderful time of the year” - for deer hunters, anyway.
The 2023 deer season got underway last Saturday, and while most hunters aren’t too keen on getting out in 70-degree-plus weather to kill a deer, there are still plenty of guys and gals who got out and gave it a go, nonetheless. I’m just not that mad at ‘em, anymore, but I get it.
There was a time in my life when I couldn’t wait for deer season to start. I hardly ever killed anything, but every year, I dreamt of deer season before it started, and I lamented the coming of the last day.
There was just something about being in a deer blind before sunrise and watching the little part of the world in front of me come alive as the sun rose that was inspiring; the cardinal that lit right above my head, not knowing I was there, or the coyote, hog or deer that circled around me until the wind told them I most assuredly was. When I was 23-ish, I lived with my grandparents for about a year on 65 acres just north of Pleasanton. Every chance I got during deer season, I’d get up early and trek out in the dark to a deer blind in the back pasture. I’d hunt for a couple of hours and trek back.
The weather didn’t matter. If it was unseasonably hot, I’d go, just as I would if it was oppressively cold. On the oppressively cold mornings, I was comforted by the fact that I knew my Mamaw would have hot coffee and breakfast for me when I got back.
Though she wouldn’t touch it due to her high cholesterol and triglycerides and whatnot, the bacon she fried up in an electric skillet to the side of her stovetop, using a bacon press to make sure it all came out perfect, was the best.
It’s a funny thing. On one of my most memorable hunts that year, or probably ever, I couldn’t tell you what I saw while I was in my deer blind. I certainly didn’t shoot anything.
It was a bitterly cold morning late in the season, so I figured I’d stay out a little longer just in case. When I got so cold I couldn’t figure anymore, I headed back.
When I got to the little 10 x 10 tin feedshed about 50 yards from the house, I noticed the nail that held the clasp on the door was out, so I walked over to secure it so the cows wouldn’t finagle it open and founder on feed.
I opened the door to see what was up and saw my Pap sitting on a sack of feed and sewing up the holes in the empty tow sacks to make sure he got his twenty-five-cent credit when he went back to the feed store for more.
It was just as cold inside that shed as it was outside, but at least we were out of the wind. I pulled up a sack of feed and sat down. As he sewed, he told me the story of the biggest deer he ever killed. It was back in the late 1960s.
He said he was smoking a cigarette and walking to his stand on a deer lease in South Texas, when he saw a big buck in the brush headed toward a sendero. He snuffed out the cigarette and slowly worked his way to a spot where he thought he might get a shot.
When the deer came out in the clear, it cut and ran away. The only shot available was through that buck’s backside (a humane shot when done right), so that’s the shot he took. Pap said the deer stumbled a bit but kept right on keeping on afterwards.
Pap sat down and smoked a cigarette before he started tracking, and when he finally decided to give it a go, blood spots were hard to find. After a while, he followed them to the Dobie Ranch fence line.
About 10 feet away on the other side of the fence, he saw the deer, dead as a doorknob. He knew the Dobie Ranch folks didn’t take too kindly to trespassers, so he didn’t dare cross the fence to get it without permission.
I’d like to say for certain that’s for sure what he did, but too many years have gone by. I wish I had written it all down at the time. All I know is that he got his buck, and after the story, I left him there to sew his sacks and headed on in.
When I opened the back door of my grandparents’ house, the smell of bacon cooked on an electric skillet to the side of Mamaw’s stovetop, using a bacon press to make sure it all came out perfect, let me know that all was right in the world.
