Chapter Two: (flashback)
One of the first memories about deer hunting I have is, when I was about 6 or 7, we had some leased property in Shiloh, Ga. The way this property was situated was along a power line and the road going in off the main road was a dirt two track that was littered with mud holes that would swallow most trucks. It was the whole family in the club. My dad Phil and Pop my grandpa, and my Uncle Eddie and cousins Scott and Corbett, Uncle Bob and cousin Bobby, and Uncle Butter (Leon). Who happened to invent his own dance called “The Butterball Shuffle” which normally would get demonstrated after the hunting was done and the Jar was pulled from its hiding spot and passed around to the adults on the trip (Wink, Wink). Then there was my Grandad Bo. He was a man’s man, big, strong, wore carpenter overalls everyday smoking a cigar kind of man.
At this time Grandad drove a Ford courier pickup truck, 2-wheel drive and a 5-speed manual transmission. He would load the back of the truck down with everything he needed to stay at hunting camp for a week, then he would hook his old Scotty camper to the hitch on his “peanut truck” and start his long drive from Forsyth county, GA to Shiloh, GA. Once he arrived at hunting camp, he would drive his peanut truck with camper in tow down the muddy and rutted road to camp and never get stuck in the road. As soon as he would get parked, he would ask my dad how long it took to get his Chevy Scottsdale outta the mud hole. He would rib him about how his “peanut truck” never got stuck, or he would tell around the campfire that Phil was not holding is mouth right. That’s what he would say when something did not work out the first time.
Everyone that was close to Grandad had a nick name of some kind, I don’t remember them all but mine was one of two Danson the Granson or the long legged Mexican. My cousin Bobby was The Pecos Kid. I guess they were names that reminded him of something and we got them. All of the cousins loved going to deer camp because we could be in the woods all day and not take a bath for a week, even though most of the time by the middle of the week we were bathing by force with ice cold water because no one could stand to be in a camper or a tent with us for very long.
This trip in particular was an early season hunt and everyone had already placed their stands to hunt from. We had been down earlier in the year to scout and set stands. Most were stands that were built in a tree, like a tree fort or a homemade ladder stand. We did not have any fancy climbing stands because they cost too much. We always got up around 4 am to get ready and drink coffee (for some of us) and have breakfast before heading in to our stands. Most of the cousins were young enough that we were hunting with our dads or in a tree right next to them. We all had breakfast and headed off just before daybreak to get settled in our tree stands for the day. Except for Grandad, he always waited until it was light enough to see to walk then he would head off into the woods to hunt. The weather was cooler than normal for this time of year it must have been October because it was the opening weekend for gun season. We had been in our stand for about an hour, the sun had just gotten up over the trees and we heard a shot. It came from down around where Grandad was hunting, then 15 seconds later we heard another shot from the same place. Then another and another and another, then silence. My dad said to me he wondered if Bo was just target practicing. He said that with sarcasm because if Grandad shot at something you could guarantee the deer was down because he didn’t miss. At about 11 am we got down and headed to camp for lunch, when we got there Grandad had lunch all ready for us. My dad asked him if his gun was sighted in because we heard all the target practicing this morning. Grandad looked at my dad and said that he was not target practicing, that every shot he heard this morning was one deer down on the ground. My dad said ” you got five deer down on the ground?” Grandad said “Yes sir, and I am glad you are back so you can help drag them up to the road so we can load them on the truck”. If you remember me telling you that during this time period, we only had 5 deer tags. Well Grandad’s season was over in the first hour on the first day of gun season. He had completely tagged out. We spent the rest of the day dragging deer and dressing them.
(This is the disclaimer for those of you that need it.) For those of you that don’t know Dressing a deer is slang for processing the meat for consumption. Field Dressing is the process where you take all of the guts out of the deer. Then once you are back at camp you can hang the deer up on the Skinning pole and skin and quarter the deer up then cut all of the meat off the bones and package it for storage in coolers for the ride home. There was a deer cooler not far down the road but it was too expensive to pay to have our deer processed by them. However, they would let you store your cooler full of deer meat in their walk-in cooler for a very small fee. Which is what we would do most times until it was time to go home. During this dressing process we always kept one of the backstraps and the tenderloins to eat in camp for dinner or breakfast. Tenderloins are small and very tender. Grandad’s favorite way to fix them was in a cast iron skillet that was very hot, seasoned with salt and pepper. First, he would sear the tenderloins in the skillet on all sides then he would pull them off the heat they cooked to about medium rare/ medium. Then he would chop some onion and peppers and cook those in the same skillet with some bacon grease that he brought from home. He would cook the onion and peppers until tender then throw the tender loins back on the warm skillet to warm them back up. After serving them he would take a bite and say ” If Mom were here, I would smack her cause these are so good, but I’m glad she ain’t here because she’d be mad at me.” He was just kidding about smacking Mom, but he was telling the truth about them being that good, to this day that is one of my favorite dishes he cooked.
We spent the rest of the week in deer camp, I can’t remember if anyone else shot any deer that time, but we shot lots of coke cans with the BB guns and burned a lot of sticks in the fire. The best part of deer camp was not the shooting of the deer it was the time we spent sitting around a table eating, talking, asking a billion questions about how to do this and that and why. Or sitting around a fire, murdering marshmallows after we had eaten so many that we were going to be sick. Deer camp is where I learned about man stuff, like how to cuss properly and how to spit. Laugh until I hurt because someone farted, then blamed it on a barking spider or a turd frog. For a 6- or 7-year-old boy that was quality entertainment. Those are some of the fondest memories I have as kid hunting with the men in my life. Some of those men will never know how important they were to me, but they help to create the foundation of who I am today. I love them all dearly for that.
Comments
Hunting camp was legendary!