Deer Hunting With The Grandkids
Not a big deal! Maybe an ORDEAL!
A while back I wrote a story about deer hunting with my wife in my outhouse deer stand. That was in the early 1970s and since then that deer stand has been moved to my own deer pasture, located only about 300 yards downhill from my barn yard. I personally do not have any trees or brush on my 100 acre property but that out house deer stand is situated on an open coastal patch right between my neighbor’s clump of trees and brush and my other neighbor’s wooded area. I feel very lucky that neither neighbor deer hunts. My coastal patch is a natural path for the deer to cross from one wooded area to the other. I also stated in my hunter-wife episode that since then I have hunted alone. Well, there is one other time years later that I tried squeezing not one but two other persons into that 3x3 foot deer stand. Well never again, and here is the reason why.
One sunny Sunday afternoon my two older grandchildren, Samantha, and younger brother Brennan, got tired of watching television at my house. I was telling my oldest son, Stephen, a deer hunting story and in listening to me they asked if they could go deer hunting with me and see what it was all about first hand. Samantha was 10 and Brennan was 6 years old. So to get them out of the house and out of G’ma’s hair, I said “OK.” Naturally G’ma had to pack them some goodies to eat in a zip lock bag which included one miniature box of rice krispies. So, with Samantha holding on to the goodie bag and Brennan sporting his toy binoculars around his neck, we started out toward the deer stand on foot. As we entered the patch and closed the gate behind us, I spied and pointed out a large buck running along a fence line and entering the neighbors brush property. I told the kids that the buck would probably come out of hiding later that evening. As we entered the deer stand, we got pretty crowded so I sat down and put my rifle in the right hand corner. I then positioned Brennan on my lap and Samantha sat on a small stool I had brought along. Even though I had made them promise to be real quiet, it didn’t take long for them to start arguing as to who gets what from that bag of goodies that G’ma packed for them. I quieted them down reminding them that the art of deer hunting started with being very still and very quiet. After eating all the goodies from their bag, all that was left was that one miniature box of rice krispies, so Samantha opened it and started eating it. I reminded her to save half of that box for Brennan. As he was peering out from one of the 8x8 inch gun ports, I asked him if he saw anything yet. “Yea, FloPa” he said “I think I see that buck in that brush out there!” Looking through that other port hole, I saw nothing. But to hold his interest, I said that it did look like a deer. Well, naturally Samantha wanted to see also and she tried to grab Brennan’s binoculars which were still looped around his neck. As he was leaning over and she over him, she happened to tilt the half full box of rice krispies and emptied most of it into his exposed “plumbers crack.” Well, what ensued was equivalent to a cat fight and after quieting them down once more Brennan started squirming in my lap and scratching his behind. I had no choice but to strip his jeans down to his knees and shake those crispy critters from his BVDs.
It was getting late in the evening and I said we might as well start back to the house when lo and behold I saw movement along the fence line coming towards us. It was a buck! I told the kids to be really, really quiet. They were watching and as I grabbed my rifle and stuck it through the gun hole, I told them to shut their ears real hard cause once that deer stopped trotting and stood still long enough, I would shoot. Sure enough, as the buck got half way through the open field he stopped long enough for me to squeeze off a shot and down he went. I thought it might be traumatic for them to see that buck fall to the ground and kick a few times before it lay still, but they took it in stride. Samantha even exclaimed “Hey that was cool!” As we walked over to the deer, I called G’ma on the cell phone and she came over on the four wheeler. After loading it up, we proceeded to haul it home. After calling my younger son, Rodney, he helped dress the deer. Not minding all the blood, Samantha even had to poke a finger into the stomach, liver and heart. Maybe 40 or 50 years from now one of them might write a story to the Fayette County Record and relate their memory of their first deer hunt in an outhouse deer stand with their grandfather, FloPa. They probably will never forget their first deer hunt and as a matter of fact, neither will I. Years later, Brennan has grown up to become quite a marksman and last season shot his first deer - an eight point buck. He was sitting in that same outhouse along with his dad, Stephen, who also shot an eight point buck no more than five minutes later and no more than 50 feet from Brennan’s “drop”!
OH, if that out house could talk!