Tag Archives: deer hunting

Gotta Have A Story

If there is one thing I’ve learned growing up in a family of hunters it’s that if you don’t come home with something dead you’d better come home with a good story – if you can swing both so much the better.

So, yesterday afternoon when I found myself watching a pheasant and opossum having a stare down while I was out hunting with the dogs, I figured I was set. “This is going to get interesting!” I said to myself as the dogs came crashing through the cattails toward us.

And then it didn’t.

The pheasant, upon seeing me, dashed off into the cattails.

The opossum climbed a tree, a very small tree.

The dogs ignored the opossum (good dogs!) and sniffed their way after the pheasant.

Storm went on point in the cattails and I couldn’t find her.

The bird flushed – I missed.

The dogs passed by the opossum, stopped, looked up, and carried on (good dogs!).

I went to the opossum and took a quick picture.

Then we tracked down the pheasant and even though I was unaided by any sort of pointing from my dog (bad dog!) I got the bird.

Trip retrieved it, (good dog!).

Then he blasted off through the cattails and ran down another until it flushed -waaaay away from us (bad dog!).

So we looked for it, until the dogs stunk of swamp, I had cattail fuzz up my nose and we were all covered in burrs.

Then I got a phone call that I was needed at home.

I returned home to find my entire family in the field “helping” gut the buck our friend shot (nice work Jeff!).

We spent the rest of the night cleaning swamp muck and burrs off the dogs.

Today the dogs are tired and on drugs to combat the beasties in the swamp water that are disagreeing with their systems and I’m left reflecting that my unexciting opossum/pheasant stare down turned into an interesting evening anyway.

After all, I got my bird and I got a story.

Uncle Tyler

The girls have many uncles but the one they spend the most time with is my brother, Uncle Tyler.

Which is good because little princesses need a healthy dose of Uncle Tyler every now and then. As much farming and hunting that we do we just can’t compete with the fascination of Uncle Tyler. For starters he’s not us, so therefore he is automatically cooler in the eyes of his nieces. Second of all he shoots more stuff and happily shows the girls what he’s doing as well as finds them cool things to see and trees to climb. He also is fascinatingly dirty while he’s hunting – that’s really here nor there just a good side note. Grime aside they were excited to see him so many days last week.  Since all the time spent with Tyler was the middle of the gun season it involved an extra amount of grime and plenty of opportunity to check out the hunters successes.  The girls happily went with him to see dead deer while he showed them who shot which deer and what he was doing when he helped butcher them.

Clara told everyone “Tyler shoot big buck” with her arms in the air for emphasis just in case anyone missed his bow deer of a few weeks ago. Then after John shot a very nice doe she added “Dad shoot done” (rhymes with stone) to her deer hunting talk. She got rides from Uncle Tyler and anyone else who would carry her to and from the shed to see the deer every chance she got. Ivy took her friend in to see all the deer and was perhaps a little miffed when she wasn’t interested in identifying carcasses with Ivy and instead bolted for the door.  In short my girls are not afraid of dead things and they love their Uncle Tyler so I was more than a bit taken aback by Clara’s bedtime conversation with me the other night:

Clara: Uncle Tyler shoot big buck!
Me: Yup.
Clara:  Dad shoot big doe! (we worked on pronunciation since last weekend)
Me: Yup.
Clara: Uncle Tyler cut up dad doe.
Me: Yup he helped. (A clarification to pacify those who did cut up Johns doe (Thank you!) Tyler did not in fact cut up that deer, but he cut up some others and I was trying to get the girl to go to sleep since she was up and talking far past bedtime.)

Then there was a thoughtful silence, followed by a very worried:

Clara: Uncle Tyler no cut me up!

Me: No Clara, Uncle Tyler would never cut you up. (shit… and excuse my language but there is really no other phrase that better suits the fact that at 8:45 at night your two year old is suddenly worried that her beloved Uncle is going to carve her up like a deer.) 

Clara: Uncle Tyler have big knife….. Uncle Tyler no cut me up!

So we talked about all the fun things that her Uncle Tyler likes to do with her and the conversation was going well until I mentioned that he likes to climb trees with her.

Clara: Uncle Tyler cut up trees!

Me: (shit!)

Fifteen minutes and one futile phone call to Uncle Tyler later(Tell me please – is there anything more annoying than a brother who falls asleep before your daughter, who is awake because of him???) I had her mostly convinced that her Uncle was not going to cut her up because she is not meat, and he wouldn’t do that even if he does have a big knife. She finally fell asleep and I haven’t heard any more about it since.

This weekend we will again be spending time with Uncle Tyler.  The girls are already excited and I’m just crossing my fingers that we’ll all be able to sleep when we get home!

Crazy?

This last weekend the family gathered in Pewaukee for an “Early 2011 Holiday Meal” with Granny and Gramps before they head down to Florida. I brought a ham for dinner, my Mom made twice baked potatoes, John brought the wine, and Tyler showed up with this:

Someone should probably explain to Tyler what is and is not acceptable as a hostess gift.

After taking lots of pictures,Tyler graciously gave this deer to John and I. Since this is Tyler’s second deer of the year, and we are out of venison we happily accepted his offer. The deer was well photographed, hung in the garage and we all went and had our “Early 2011 Holiday Meal” The food was delicious, the company was not bad (considering we were all related) and soon it was time for the fun to be over and the girls to head to bed.

That’s when Tyler got a look that was a little like this:

Suddenly at 9:30 on a Saturday night after eating far too much delicious food I found myself sitting at my parents kitchen counter butchering a deer while listening to a conversation about how the family isn’t crazy we just are more interesting, or fun, or something that was attempting to justify the fact that we were spending our night putting meat into little white packages. All the while John is pulling out knives and grinders he is yelling that we made him crazy, claiming that he used to be perfectly happy watching movies or playing cards and that our family had ruined him.

I’m not sure if we are crazy or just know how to have a good time, but it was a memorable night full of laughter and I’ve got freezer full of venison again.

Can’t complain about any of that!

Persistence

John has been out hunting since the start of the bow season.  Waking up early, hunting evenings, taking trips  and sitting in the cold for weeks, he’s had nothing but a few stories to show for all his efforts.

Finally today, four days into the gun hunt, just when I think he was starting to fear that he had some sort of anti-deer force field around him John came back to the yard with a giant grin and a big buck! Most people called it “a little eight pointer,” but John jumped up and down with a big grin and rightly said “I shot an eight pointer!“
(I probably don’t need to point out that he’s never got anything near that big before!)

Then my Dad went out and got this nice little deer of his own, but we don’t need to talk about that… …because John shot his first eight pointer ever!