Veteran's Hunt

Well, I took the old Springfield out of the soft, cloth carrying case, shouldered it, and drew on the wall clock in the bathroom, and felt the same heft and awkward wrist grip that I had felt in the box stand a few days before. I could still feel just a hint of the thrill I'd had as I did so. It was nice to revisit.


If you remember, I had mentioned this old rifle--not my oldest--a few weeks ago here, http://dumbasscarpenter.blogspot.com/2010/11/veterans-day.html, so I won't rehash what I wrote then, but when I picked it up again to hunt, I was serious. I intended to do it right, and I intended to do it well.


Having squandered my free time between work and hunting with silly things like the holidays and family time, I didn't have a lot of time to "work up" a pet load for the Springfield and had to resort to just buying (gasp) factory ammunition and hoping for good performance at the range.


The brand I was gonna buy was a no-brainer since the rifle was a Remington made Springfield. And from experience, I knew the '06's I own like heavier bullets, so I settled on their 165 grain, yellow and green box--most "affordable" (not cheap mind you) cartridges and headed to the club. I hadn't checked zero on this rifle in a couple of years, and I had never fired this store-bought ammo in it at all, so, I had to check it.

Basking in the sun at the range.

Of course, I hauled ass up to the range in a hurry. I had duck hunted that morning, and was going to carry this rifle with a friend to the same fish farm made famous by J.B. Irving and those spot and stalk duck hunts (more on that later perhaps). So I threw the benchrest and bag on the bench, set up my spotting scope, and got started.

Remington Core Lokt Ammunition

I was ready to stretch the old veteran out. I had only previously shot at 8.5" X 11" sheets of paper without ever thinking of shooting at game, and taking a cue from trying to get my kids to shoot well, I made a target that is easy to see at one hundred yards and fun to shoot. And since it was just a few days before Christmas, and visions of expensive iPod Fourth Gen with 8 gigabyte memories were dancing in my head (and stressing me out), there was only one choice.

Santa before induction into brett's training.

Someone, a jolly ol', no-iPod-making-then-giving-it-away-for-free elf, was gonna catch hell. The first shot I fired was high and to the right, and then thankfully, the next shot was as well, which meant I felt confident enough to move the rear sight by twisting the adjustment knob thus making the sight move the direction I wanted the bullet to go. I fired one more, and bingo. I killed Santa.

The two high and right were shot before twisting the rear sight left.

I fired three more, all into the 6 7/8" plate, and felt I had enough accuracy at 100 yards to do in any giant buck, doe, coyote, Nazi or zombie that showed its ugly face. Again, I didn't have the time to develop a cartridge that would shoot an even tighter group in this rifle, though next year, that might be different.


I also decided to limit my shots inside 100 yards. The one shot I took at the Santa I stapled out at 200 yards was six inches low and a tad to the right. Easy to compensate for I suppose, but frankly, I had no idea if I could even see a brown deer out at 200 yards without a scope, but I had an idea of what the rifle could do...or rather, what I could do with the rifle. 

The one time I flipped the rear ladder-sight up to try it at 200 yards, I never even hit the blueprint I had stapled up behind Santa...so that option was out. A while back I had traded the original front sight for a taller one from a demilled ROTC parade rifle and I'm sure that messed up the paring of the front and rear sight. Rest assured I'll be tweaking that as well so perhaps I could drop a deer at two hundred plus yards with it knowing my cartridge trajectory inside and out. After all, the rear sight's calibrated for out to 2700 yards!


Well for the first Veteran's hunt I returned to the pond where I had seen two small bucks eating acorns out of the sand during muzzleloader season. And seeing acorns still on the ground, even after a snow and hard-freezing mornings, I felt pretty confident I'd see deer. So I slipped in, sat down and waited. My buddy Brian C. came along but hunted elsewhere on the property.

First hunt with a Veteran. Cocked but not locked.

The row of trees was hundred or so yards off and so I was set. But I didn't see any deer! In fact, I'll tell you something else, when the sun dips down behind the trees in the afternoon, your hunt is over. Well mine is, yours may not be if you're 12 years old and have 20/20 vision. The law, "half hour after sunset", doesn't apply to WWII veterans with wafer-thin front sights preceded by shallow-cut rear sights that are tough to see even in broad daylight. 


So the first hunt was a bust. Brian and I walked out chatting. He had at least seen a deer or two, though he didn't shoot, and he did say, "You're the man if you can get one with open sights." Which goes to show you what a rarity it is these days to carry a rifle afield without a scope, and for me, that was part of the point.


The next Veteran's hunt, just up the brier patch from the little pond, was another afternoon hunt but heaped in snow...and wind, lots of cold wind. I would have liked to say it was a pleasant passing of time, but it was not. I walked out actually glad I didn't shoot because I would have died trying to get a harvested deer out of there that day needing to drag it over the snowy, muddy roads too soft for a truck  for about half a mile.


So, I would have to wait for a different venue, down by The Miller Beer River (also known as The Dan) for a third attempt,  but, as the old adage/saying or wishful-thinking goes, the third time is a charm.


That morning in Draper, NC, we gathered before the hunt. Some were putting on more clothes, a couple were eating biscuits, but we were all murmuring to each other the way people do when speaking before dawn, as if to not wake someone sleeping behind the next bush. 


One of the guys asked me off hand, "What're you shooting?" and I replied jokingly, "Deer." I hesitated to mention the Vet, so I followed up with, "A 30-06," and said it boldly enough that he didn't ask anything else, only chuckling at the deer comment. He's one of those one rifle guys...how do they survive with just one?


After those quiet "hello's" followed by the "good luck's" I was off to the stand of all stands on the property. It overlooks the edge of a text book flood plain created by the Dan River. And beyond the tangles and thickets before it, there's a vast corn field until the tree-lined banks of the river. Naturally, by this time, the corn's cut and gone, and what the combine left behind was buried under our white Christmas!


So the short scrub trees with bits of green on them down below were all the deer had to eat this particular morning. And I watched in the growing light, deer after deer march past, but just out of the comfort-zone range I had set for myself. On another note, the law that says legal shooting time starts 30 minutes before sunrise also was not meant for a 44 year old pair of eyes shooting over a 68 year old rifle.


By the time the sun was high enough to see well, the mini-migration had ceased. I began to think I had sat in the freezing cold wind for nothing. Then, about 400 yards distant I saw two deer strike out of the thicket and start to cross the corn towards the river--pure suicide usually. Stark brown against blazing white snow, the two deer sauntered across. In fact, it was so strange, that I watched through the binoculars to see what they were up to and where they were going.


Then I caught movement out to my left, and dropped the twins and saw a huge doe crossing an old logging road about 100 yards away. She made no sound, and I hustled for the rifle, and I shouldered the Vet and drew a bead on a moving flank, and then she was gone! I missed my shot. My moment had just walked right by without even looking my way. I missed my shot! I missed the whole reason I was out there because had I watched two deer a quarter of a mile away!

She walked through at the top of that "road."

I couldn't believe it. I cussed out loud and waved my arms, even posted to facebook. I had blown it. And I almost, in my anger, decided to get down and give chase, but of course I didn't. Instead, I munched on a biscuit, watched a buddy 700 yards away shoot at and miss (I would find out later) a coyote, and thus refused to get down out of the box stand until I saw more deer.


I had to wait along time.


But again, a little further away, another deer walked into view in front of the stand. She was slowly walking by herself, and I thought she was a small buck at first (again) but I checked through the binoculars and could see she was what I call a normal-sized doe. I mean, it was 9:30 AM, which is late for these corn-thieving deer to be up and about, so I told myself, "It's a doe, and you gotta make it happen."


I threw the rifle up and worked at getting on target, but she was so tiny behind the front sight that I felt like I lost her every time I drew down on her. Not because she was small, but because she was over 100 yards away, and I had open sights. I am used to killing magnified deer, by God, not life-sized reality deer. 

So I locked in on her, held the cheek weld and the sling taunt, and had her shoulder zeroed, and couldn't do it. Suddenly I had forgotten the confidence shooting Santa had given me and couldn't pull the two-stage trigger through that second stage! 


Amazingly, she stood there looking ahead, holding broadside while I hemmed and hawed and, after some deep breaths, I locked in the rifle solidly, hid her shoulder behind the front sight, held my breath and fought the flinch, and slipped past that second stage and shot the Veteran's deer.


She didn't jump, she didn't fall. She "R-U-N-O-F-T" at a great rate of speed.


"Fuck!" I thought, "I missed!"


I racked the empty case out, and unlike the obsessed reloader I've become, I paid nary attention to its trajectory, but watched my deer bound perpendicularly to me through the tangles and readied myself for what was going to be a publicly loud second shot--the kind I don't like. But as I watched, she slowed, faltered, and then fell over kicking, already gone. We had her.

The old Veteran had spoken, and had done what it was built to do. And I, along with my buddies, helped it along. When the doe fell, I felt as if I she were my first deer. It felt that fresh and amazing to kill something the same way hunters did when they wore knickers, calf-high, lace-up linesmen boots, and red plaid Woolrich jackets and carried Winchester Model 54's and  '03 Springfields and Enfields, and funny little Remingtons called the Model 30 Express.


And of course, The veteran rifle also carries with it the terrible history of War--an indescribable mix of death, maiming, mud, mayhem and horror that we can only imagine, probably, barely. Part of the reason I wanted to use the Vet was to also cleanse it of that history and give it another? Perhaps let it do its work for good, that is, the maintenance of a healthy population of deer in the wild who, left to their own devices (including a panache for breeding) would soon overrun us, and themselves.


Hmm, now about that funny looking Remington...I happen to have one laying around here somewhere, and I need to take it hunting.


Post script,


The last day of the season, which is usually the first day of the year, I took that funny-looking Model 30 hunting in the drizzle. Since it too has open sights, I carried it along for the morning hunt, and even though I had been "busted" sitting in the stand by a little spike buck, I was shocked to see a doe trek up out of the thickets along the edge of the gas lines mid morning and stop.


She was looking down the gas line, at, I would realize later, Brian's orange hat up in his stand. But she gave me opportunity, which I took quickly, and, though I didn't know it, this was the last shot at deer I would fire for the 2010-2011 hunting season. 

I hunted that evening in the rain, but only listened as a friend shot his last deer of the year (with one of my rifles and home made ammo) and counted myself lucky and happy and ready to go home and forget all the work until I get the itch again...oh...usually sometime mid summer.

I Learned Everything I Needed to Learn at Lakeview Farms.

It's been written before, that one learns everything one needs way back in the third grade? Kindergarten? But I beg to differ. There are things no tiny little kid could learn inside the hallowed halls of their lower educational buildings and domiciles.


Naw, I'm talking about the shit that you really need to know to make it through the world as a Man of Action, or Woman of Action and Substance. And it's all easily learned when you're a teen, and you're working at a Horse Farm--in this case, Lakeview Farms, as it was known back then, nestled within the Greensboro city limits--a shortish bike ride (that's bicycle) from home.


I learned that being to work on time is a must. Being on time doesn't make you a slave to the clock, or your wages, but it makes an important statement about you: Look, I'm right here right when you wanted and I'm worth every dime you give me. Also, on a horse farm, there are hungry mouths to hay, feed, and water. And, these same mouths' owners have been pooping and peeing in their bedrooms all night and need to get out for some serious frolic time.


Later, that early training comes in handy for many things, too many things to list here...you're not stupid (assuming you worked on a horse farm as a teen).


I learned to cultivate a pride in my work no matter how gross or boring or so fucking hard it was. Cleaning stalls, one of the most important jobs on a horse farm, became a study in efficiency. I mean, the longer it takes, the longer you're doing it. So you learn how to get it done in fewer brushstrokes while at the same time doing a good job to maintain healthy horse feet and a clean barn.


And the same went for fence mending--how many rails can I carry so I only have to make ten trips instead of twenty ALL the way back up to the lumber pile. I'll cut this rail in half and use the drop elsewhere with no waste. We'll round the corners of paddocks (not my idea) so the bush hog can make the turn.


And weed eating became a study in logic and efficiency as well...carry the gas with me, drop it off half way then go all the way down to the last paddock so it'll be there when you're half done and empty working your way back.


I didn't recognize what was going on until I read Pirsig's book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and even as I had moved on from farm to foundations as a budding dumbass carpenter, it hadn't dawned on me that Lakeview Farm had trained me to keep Quality undefined. Now I know. I got laughed at the first time I got two skill saws out to cut jack rafters--now everyone I know does it.


I learned how to back a trailer! A skill worth its weight in pure gold! I remember being at work well after hours waiting for one of the young women boarders (with whom, of course, I was smitten) at Lakeview to get back from a horse show with her mom and nonchalantly asking them, after watching Kathy's mom try and try and try to back their horse trailer into its designated spot under the shelter, "Can I try?"


Of course, I slipped it in on the first try. It may have been (hell it was) my proudest moment up to then, and I thought I would've got the girl after that, but...


I learned that if you carry a pitchfork, or work with your hands, and are around, and working "for" the boarders, who have money, then you get what I call the Dumbass Shitkicker syndrome, or, later in life, when you trade your pitchfork in for a hammer you get what we get now, hence the title of this web log.


It was a hard lesson, but it stuck. And I work hard not to generalize people the same way I've been lumped in with manual laborers, but I fail too, many times.


I learned that hard work is great for the body.


I learned to keep my mouth shut when running a manure spreader--especially when looking up at the last few road apples that are flung high by the whipping blades when the bed is almost empty. It's also a good idea to wear a brimmed hat (thus began my love affair with the humble boonie hat) as well.


I learned how to drive a nail.


I learned how to drive a manual transmission with aplomb. Pops gave me the initial tutorial in the Sedgefield Presbyterian Church parking lot, but "Ol' Green" (the nasty green Scottsdale Cab Chevy) with the three on the tree taught me how to drive like a wild-eyed teenager on the surrounding dirt roads and empty fields when everyone was away at a horse show....when I was fifteen.


I only got caught once trying to see a young woman at her home (a certain meteorologist she is now) when the whole crew came home from an out of town horse show early. Did I mention I was fifteen? And being busted....


I learned how to own up to mistakes like a man, with my hat in my hand. I wrecked everything you could drive at Lakeview--except the horse hauling van, but only because I was never allowed to drive it I reckon. I even wrecked the barn one day missing first gear in the tractor and slipping her into fourth and tearing out of the barn and thus ripping out the door jamb with the manure spreader wheel. I cut cords on power tools, spilled buckets of paint, bent mower decks on tree roots, and scrubbed walls backing shavings trailers inside narrow barn aisles.


The upside to owning up to mistakes like these is having men around you who can teach you how to fix them, how to overcome a self-imposed disadvantage. At Lakeview, that was my boss, Johnny Barker. Now he was a Man of Action, a hero, but human too. Years later I could look back and see where he slipped, but then, hind sight's pretty much 20/20. But when I was 14, 15, 16, 17, and 18, he was a god.


In my earlier years I adopted his persona when dealing with employees, but it's a methodology  better left to a later discussion. It could be said, however, that to lead by example may be the best thing he had to teach--because if he couldn't do it, he wouldn't ask you to. And I'm the same way.


I learned that horses are people too.


I learned how to build things, things that'll last for decades and decades. There are things down on that farm now, though now called Torihope, that I had my hands upon 25 years ago. When they open the spigot down by the paddocks or flip on the paddock lights I was there to dig and run the pipe and Romex. Half the fences, some of the gates, and a retaining wall or two, all had my hand upon them...countless layers of paint, jump standards...


Of course, I caught the bug there. After hemming and hawing for a few years after Lakeview, I nestled into a commercial construction job, until fate would bring me back into contact with another former horse-farm hand turned builder and the rest is history.


Although, being a dumbass carpenter ain't as lucrative as it was two and a half  years ago (in fact, it's downright poverty stricken), it's still the only thing I want to do for nine hours a day, five days a week...even hunting would get boring. Making stuff never gets old.


I learned I have no stomach for chewing tobacco. I hay, fed, and watered the whole farm on my hands and knees one evening after indulging all afternoon and having charge of the place by myself. Hell, the boss chewed, so so was I! And when they drove up and found me laying in the grass that evening, he kinda laughed and forgave the untidy appearance after I told him I'd gotten into his Levi Garrett stash.


I learned what Michael Stipe would immortalize in song about swimming at night.


I learned that the hot female children of wealthy parents were too smart to fall for a farm hand. That only happens on the big screen, but I did notice one of them needed my help when we both got to the same college--poor girl could barely put two sentences together. I reckon she had never seen "Conjunction Junction" or if she had, ignored it thinking it was a cereal commercial.


And I learned something from a girl who came by to help out for a few days, though her name escapes me now. I was in love--dark hair, odd hair cut, ear rings stuck in awkward places, and an aloofness to me which, looking back, if I were a betting man, came from the fact she was gay. I can remember thinking, "Hey, you're a shitkicker! You can't be stuck up to me too!" Now I would just say, "Hey, I'm a lesbian too!" because I'm so much smarter.


Well, actually, it wasn't from her that I had learned something but the ass end of her car. She had a bumper sticker on her junky ol' yellow Datsun: 

Live simply so that others may simply live.

And from all of the characters I had met down on the farm, this flip-head chick's car brought it all home.

I reckon the circle I run with do the same thing. I know I try. Of course, Brian D. would say different, but I might be the most harmless persona you'll ever meet. In fact his dad is the former farm-hand that hired me up and taught me to swing a hammer and love it...though he too had gone to the Johnny Barker Employee Relations School.

But, thanks to those days, there's not much I cannot handle from the real world--or too, there's not much I'm afraid to try to tackle myself since becoming a Man of Action myself. Sure, I've taken a pile of parts to the gunsmith and asked, "Can you fix this?" but more often than not, I can do it myself.

I wish I could go back.

Not Just for Acupuncture

Pretty sure what the little round band aids that come in those variety packs from CVS are for!


I recognized the awesome capacity for nipple irritation to ruin my day early on in life at the beach. Those old (well, they weren't old at that time, they were cutting edge and all we had) canvas coated inflatable rafts mixed with salt water, cold, slightly caustic salt water, made for some scabby nipples after about four days at the beach with the folks. A cringe or two every time you took a dip until finally you gave up riding the waves on your corrugated air bag for some good old fashioned body surfing was the way to go.


I never thought about them much after that having learned to pace myself on a raft for the years after that. Until the raft and the venue changed that is. A few years later, I had to squeak into a wet wet suit on a crisp fall morning (I wanted to write mourning, because, if you know me, you know I can handle being cold, and I can handle being wet, just not both at the same time) just before risking life and limb going down the Gauley River. Did I mention the water in the river itself is released from impoundment through a giant gateway, from the bottom of a lake, where it's coldest?


The wet suit was a must. To not have it would have made the miserable trip lethal. Hypothermia (and butt-loads of yellow jackets too by the way) kills dozens of nervous paddlers every Gauley Season I'm sure, but the real victims here were, you guessed it, my nipples. The first day, packed into the already wet and uncomfortable suit, and then made to paddle furiously like a slave on a Roman galley, I wore the poor useless appendages damn near off. The second day, I groaned, hated life, and pulled the suit on not having any choice, nor any little round band aids. If I ever go white water rafting on the Gauley again (I won't) I'll be sure and pack a few of those useless-for-anything-else little bandages.


Lately, due to the weather being colder than I remember (I got a short memory I suppose) my nipples, once again, register a climate that is a far cry from the warmer globe everyone seems worried about. To stay warm, I've been wearing layer upon ridiculous layer and have been beating the cold, though messing up my hair in the process, but that's not really the problem with my nipples.


As a result of all the vestments, my tool belt will not stay put on my hips and constantly slides down to wrap itself around my thighs in an uncomfortable and awkward arrangement. The quickest and easiest fix is to attach good old fashion suspenders to my tool belt thus transferring the weight from my hips to my shoulders. This truss arrangement however, obviously cuts a path over my shoulder, right down over the twins and therein lies the rub. Nine hours trussed up (yeah, thirty minutes or so for lunch out of wraps) makes me painfully aware I have nipples usually being unaware of them.


For some reason though, I have resisted getting what I know would be a quick and easy fix (besides quitting work). I don't know if the shame of having Hello Kitty on my nipples is stopping me, or the sure fire knowledge that if I did sport the pink kitty, sure as the world,  I'd end up in the ER getting my clothes cut off by an eager, then startled staff. Even a regular straight laced normal band aid would fell better than nothing, yet I still resist.


It must be the redneck pride that keeps me from saving the nips from their daily brushing. I mean, who wants to be the only guy on the jobsite with sensitive nipples? It's isn't as if there are manly products, manly prophylactic stickers in the shapes of skulls and crossbones or some other macho icon just for suspender wear.


So I'll suffer alone, if not silently, and go on about my day. Remembering that it could be worse (and more scabbier) and that I'm probably not alone in my troubles. I imagine too, that somehow, suspender-nipple pain might have had something to do with Robin William's early problems with drugs.


-rbm

Oops (Part 2)

Everybody had to have heard me shoot. There was no denying that report. And if I said over the two way radio (or sent the info in a text message--21st century and all) that I had missed, someone would want to come to the spot and make sure there wasn't a blood trail...and I couldn't have that. Ray Charles (Or Marshall Westmoreland) could have followed that blood trail--.444 Marlin, remember?


No, I had to do better than that. I quickly sent a text to the host and fellow hunter there, "I fucked up."
Which, at first glance, looks like a confession, but is so open ended that I had plenty of spin room should I need it. I've been known to spill forth a passel of bullshit should the need arise.


It wasn't dark yet, or even very near it. In fact, having seen a smallish deer that early in the afternoon hunt should have rung the look-out-it's-a-baby-buck bell for me, but it didn't. So just after 4:00 or so, I had to get him out of there. And I had to be quiet because I didn't want to call attention to myself nor spoil someone just over the way's hunt either. It's easy to sneak around in the woods like that, I mean, I was wearing camo'. Save for the state-mandated orange hat, I was a ghost.


I was a ghost with a diesel truck, however, which meant that its guttural knocking and hacking noises wouldn't do for the others' hunt. So happily driving down to the creek bed to pick up Bambi wasn't going to happen. And, for the second time in a week, I was going to have to drag a deer up hill, for a quarter of a mile. Though not because of the snowy weather this time, but because I wanted to be sly.


And really, that's all the plan I had hatched: get him out of there. Since he was kinda small, I tried the old grab him by the front feet and drag him, my rifle, my poncho (in the stuff sack) and my little stool post haste...but that wasn't working. Where was all the snow of last week? It was gone. Amazing how grabby a dirt road is (without some slippery snow) when you're working hard to go up hill.  So I got to make a trip back to the truck, off load the gear, and half of my clothes, and then head back down to the deer.


A quick lasso later I was dragging this poor little guy through the dirt up the old logging road orange hatless the whole time lest the others see me! And for those who are counting, yes, that's four trips, and that's one mile. Penance I suppose. At any rate, I got him into the back of the truck, and climbed inside and sat behind the wheel. Now I was about to play my hand, about to announce to the world that I had something to do elsewhere.


I didn't want to get busted with Bambi, so I snuck to the old "cleaning" spot where deer were delaminated in years past.  The big oak tree at the old spot had fallen over, and the location of operations had therefore changed, but at either spot, deer are butchered, tucked into a cooler, and carted home. The rest, the offal I think it's called (better than gut pile or carcass) is left there, though off the beaten path for the lazy raptor types--circle of life stuff. It was a quick job, and it was easy to manage alone. The quartering shot had hit slightly back, then diagonally pushed through the diaphragm into, yes, the intestines, so to say the job was pungent is poetic license. But I took my medicine.


This whole operation, coincidentally, had taken until the last legal shooting light, and when I snapped the cooler lid shut on the meat, it was time to rally with the others for show and tell. No one else had shot so I couldn't hide in the background while others retold of their shot and sightings. Everyone would want to hear what I had done, well maybe not everyone, but the host would.


The gang was parked at the new cleaning post by then, and I pulled up. The three others were talking rather quietly amongst themselves as I strolled up. When I got within ear shot, Lowell, the most jocular, asked, "Did you get something?"


"No," I quickly lied. I was out of my camo', and he looked at the blood stain on the left pocket of my khakis.


"Well, what's that? Are you bleeding?" he asked, pointing at my crotch.


By then, Tay, the host, walked up half smiling, thank goodness. "Yeah," he said, "What do you mean, 'I fucked up?'"


"What'd you shoot?" asked Lowell again?


And my whole plan fell apart. I have an uncanny inability to lie to anyone but my wife ('Is that a new gun, brett?' 'No, Lisa.') and cops.


"Uh," I started, "A deer."


"What kind of deer?" asked Tay.


"The kind that you see at four in the afternoon?" I asked, wanting to spill my guts, but still not.


Anthony, the quiet carpenter, spoke up, "A young one." I visibly cringed, and he noticed the grimace in the spreading darkness of night. "Oh, a spike," he concluded.


Busted, I said, "He would've been..."


"Oh man," said Tay, "That explains seeing your truck backing up the hill so early. Did he all fit in your pocket?" He too pointed at my crotch.


"Naw, he was bigger than that. Not much. Here, look," I offered, popping the lid off the cooler. 


Tay looked in, and wasn't too awful disgusted, so I figured I would get an "invite" back. He didn't have too much to say.


Looking back, from a few days before this whole episode, I am reminded of something Lowell had told me: "It's supposed to be fun." And of course he's right. When it isn't fun anymore, I'll go back to grocery shopping and eating at Church's Fried Chicken for all my predatory needs.


But that sinking feeling, when I'd made the mistake of shooting a young deer, will stay with me the rest of the season, but will probably be forgotten after a long hot summer of shooting new rifles and many a clay target. But for the rest of this deer season, I'll be carrying the Leupold 10X50mm's religiously.


And I never regret having lower power scopes than most folks like on my rifles , but the binoculars will certainly make decision time easier. Nothing's funnier than seeing a short action rifle hindered with a 6-20x by 50mm super scope, and nothing's worse than seeing a new shooter (or an old hand shooting awkwardly or quickly) getting dinged in the eyebrow by a less than ideally powered scope with minimal eye relief. 


It almost goes without saying, that mistakes afield are lessons. And the more you hunt, the more you'll make, but all the time, remember, as you freeze to death or carry a wounded deer that you didn't mean to shoot to the veterinarian's office, it's supposed to be fun.


-rbm

Oops. (Part 1)

You can't take a bullet back. Once the hammer falls, it's gone, and whatever is in front of it, is going to be gone too. You just hope it's what you wanted to shoot.

I killed a button buck yesterday. Yeah, I killed Bambi.

The only excuse I have is that I left my binoculars in the truck because where I was sitting had a limited range, and therefore, or so I thought, I wouldn't need them to discern the sex of a questionable deer at hundreds of yards with the 10X50's. Besides, I had the Marlin .444 topped with a Vari-X III 1.5-5x scope, so If I needed to, I could check the head for nubs, and count tines, whatever.

Well, I checked the head for antlers, and didn't see any. I know that. At 5x, there wasn't a thing showing. At 10x, I know I would've seen the little brow buttons, but "the twins" were in the truck. So, I settled the cross on what I thought was the doe's shoulder, and squeezed the trigger.

At that moment, two unexpected things occurred simultaneously. One, the hammer dropped, clicked loudly, and nothing happened. The "doe" looked up and stared at me. The other unexpected thing was that I flinched like a beginner anticipating the recoil. Two things I couldn't believe would happen to me, brett mothershead, had just happened.

I thought I had forgotten to chamber a round after pulling the rifle from of the truck to hunt, but I knew I had. So I levered the rifle open and out spilled a .444 cartridge, with only the slightest dent in the primer. So I quietly levered a fresh round in, all the while watching the chamber to ensure a well fed cartridge and the "doe" making sure "she" was still there.

Of course, by now, "she" was aware of the big, clinking bush I was trying to be, and was acting flighty, as if "she" were about to raise the white flag and bolt. So, now, quartering to me, I put the cross on her shoulder/armpit area, and this time, ignoring the impulse to hurry, slowly pulled the trigger, took the recoil like a man, and was amazed to watch "her" run off into the woods.

My Marlin's hand-loaded .444 cartridge is topped with a 265 grain hunk of lead-jacketed copper with only the metplate still showing lead. It shucks out at about 2200 feet per second at the muzzle, and if I had hit "her" where I thought I was going to, "she" should have dropped in "her" tracks. I knew something else was up, so I muttered to myself and made a decision.

Rather than sit until the last legal light, I decided to get up and make sure "she" was squarely hit, find "her", and make sure we could get "her" out quickly after the other guys were done hunting as well so we could all get home before 8:00 pm--a must for the hunter with a wife and kids.

And at the point of impact, Instead of bright pink lung tissue and rib bone, all I saw was meat and hair on the ground, and my heart sank. What that meant was I hadn't put my bullet through the "boiler room". I hadn't done my job like I'm used to doing. I visualize the shot again, sitting here at the keyboard, and the only thing I can figure is that quartering to me, a hair's width to the left or right, line of sight, translates to a couple or more inches on the deer's body, fore or aft.

It meant I shot "her" a little behind the heart lung area. It meant I had better start tracking "her" before the sun settled behind the hills along side the Dan River. It meant "she" could run for days perhaps. Luckily, I found a bright red blood trail that was indicative of eminent death if not a well-placed shot. I knew "she" couldn't have gone far, and sure enough, piled up in the bottom of a creek bed, there "she" was--little over thirty yards from where "she" took the bullet.

Only problem was, "she" was rather small. And, of course, "she" had a raised eye-brow look to "her" that only meant one thing. I muttered, "Fuuuuck," under my breath and rubbed the hair out of my eyes, and hated the feeling I had. Now I was the shit-heel.

I hated that I'd killed a future monster buck. Especially since the unwritten rule for the land I was hunting on was "no little bucks". Had he been the tiny doe i thought, I could have chuckled it off with the rest of the guys, but this was serious. A button buck...I don't even like writing it now.

Right then and there, I hatched a plan...

Nothing to Prove

I spent the day, and yesterday with four guys who will never have to prove their manhood to me ever again. I mean, to say it was cold outside would be an understatement. And the low temperature coupled with the wind that blew for two whole days meant that it was even harder to take with a smile on one's face.


In the morning, at seven, getting out of the truck might have been the hardest thing I've done in a while. But Marshall had a(n illegal) fire going. And I was bundled up. So I stepped out like I have since the eighties when I quit lying to myself that I'd be going back to school some day and thought that maybe swinging a hammer wasn't such a bad thing. At least when skies are sunny...and the temperature's mild.


Did I mention that there's still snow on the ground from a few days ago? It's not deep, but it won't go away! There's a scattering of ice cubes from a drink someone poured out over the weekend while we, the construction crew, weren't there, and it too remains...three days later! I think the high was freezing today, and just a tick above yesterday.


So when the day's high temperature doesn't climb much above freezing, one would think there's the advantage of no mud, and it's true, there isn't, until the ground thaws out a thin skin of mud with the same viscosity as k-y jelly. Since it's good old North Carolina red mud, it'll stay with you until you cut the legs off of your jeans for next summer thus finally removing the mud stains once and for all.


Well, the days can't all be dry and dusty and warm. If they were, the world would be a great place to live and work outside, but then, we'd have no way of proving how tough we are. We wouldn't have an excuse to scream and holler at every gust that sneaks up our backs and pant legs. We wouldn't have license to wander around with snot dripping from and drying on our noses. Try doing that working at Big Blue.


So tomorrow, since it's forecast to be just as cold, and windy, I'll sit there in my truck like the grunt in Apocalypse Now sitting at the door of the Huey screaming, 'I'm not going! I'm not going!" until someone else shows up, builds a(n illegal) fire, glances at me through the glass, walks past and starts unloading tools...in that order.


-rbm 

Bird in the Tree

You think deer hunting is getting into a tree stand and sitting on your ass waiting for the ambush, waiting for the deer and then shooting it?
Shit.
You're right.

This morning I took a shot
At the doe
Just out of ear shot, crossing.
I used a huge caliber
From so far away,
Yet,

She took my hit,

But ran all the same.

I knew where the cross was,
I knew I was still.
I knew I had practiced
At paper until,
I knew I could kill.
But,

But I couldn't know,
She wouldn't say,
If now were her day.

So I sat,
Wrung my hands,
Sweated my sweat,
And waited with my pride.
And hoped and waited
Then happened to see,
Smatterings of blood in the weeds.

To some, the finest,
Not knowing.
Not seeing it, death,
Is good enough.

For me though,
I need to know,
She's just not here;
I want to know
I did that--
That I made her mine.



What makes a hunter special?
Well, I shot a doe through the falling snow this afternoon too.
I am five foot eight and a half and weigh 137 pounds.
The doe I shot is seven hands high, and weighed, oh, 125 pounds.
And that's what makes a hunter "special."
I dragged *that* doe to the truck, in the snow, after sunset, all by myself.
Tethered to a rope, behind me through snow, creek, and mud, I pulled her to the truck.
She weighed 90% of my body weight.
More or less.
That's what makes it a sport I guess.
Could you drag yourself a quarter of a mile?
Your spouse? Girlfriend?
With an eight pound rifle over your shoulder?
Bundled from head to toe in green polyester?

The whole time I was dragging her I was thinking,
"This is what no one sees or thinks about,"
The thirty minutes of torture,
The burn in the legs,
The bite of the rope over my shoulder,
Wrapped around the off hand.
Burning lungs, chapping lips.
And hating that shot.
That made me hump,
Made me schlep
And sweat in snow...