When I was about sixteen years old, my dad took my older brother Karl and I deer hunting in the Kiamichi Mountains of southeastern Oklahoma. My mom worked as the high school principal’s secretary, so being allowed to skip school for such an outing was pretty easy as I never had to do the asking. Mom just simply said she would talk to the principal. I also could not skip school on my own as it always seemed she knew I was gone before I had actually made it off the school grounds. Moms are just like that, I guess.
I finished my few extra credit lessons beforehand so I wouldn’t be behind and bragged to my friends about where I was going, while dreaming of a big buck to hang on the wall.
The day finally came and we loaded the truck with a tent, clothes, bedding, guns, Dad’s old Coleman stove and various other odds and ends. The food we took was stored in a couple of ice chests, but with no ice. I remember my dad explaining to me that the ice chests were to keep the food from freezing in the cold outdoors. That was probably the first time I ever gave my dad that apprehensive look associated with one’s sudden realization that what we were about to embark on might be a bit rough. I mean, I liked being outdoors in the winter and I especially like hunting in the cold and snow, but I never thought of actually living in it.
After we were loaded, we told Mom goodbye and headed out. We drove all day while talking with truckers on Dad’s new electronic contraption called a CB radio. I was the keeper of the mic since I had to sit in the middle, so naturally I argued with my brother over who would talk next. Thinking back now, I would lay odds that my dad wanted to throw that thing out the window by the time we got there.
When we did finally arrive we were met by our friend Riley, whom we met during the yearly excursions to Christ’s Forty Acres, Oklahoma. Now this place was a literal forty-acre pasture with a creek bed in the middle, nestled in the southern Oklahoma mountains. A few dormitories had been erected, along with a mess hall and a large chapel with no exterior walls but plenty of wooden benches, with room for what seemed like a thousand men and boys. Riley was one of the men in charge of the place and, as a Deputy Sheriff standing over six feet tall plus cowboy hat and a .41 magnum revolver on his hip, he got no arguments. He was also a preacher with a very gentle way about him.
Riley directed us to an area in the national forest, just a mile or two from the Arkansas state line, where we could set up camp and hunt right out of the tent flap. We set about putting up the tent and establishing camp, fire and all. This thrilled me to have a campfire to tend every night. We cooked hamburger and fried potatoes most every night and we even had some marshmallows to toast. We had no canned or bottled drinks, aside from a gallon of milk and some orange juice, only Dad’s five-gallon metal water can which never needed ice because hey, this was wintertime in the mountains.
I carried an old Savage bolt action 30-30 with a box magazine. This was an old, odd-looking rifle but it was deadly accurate and I could shoot it well. My brother sported a Remington semi-auto .308 rifle with a scope. I remember how heavy it was and how much more I liked my 30-30 and its lighter weight. I believe my dad carried a Remington 700 scoped rifle, the first real deer rifle he’d ever bought for himself. He was a handloader and a meticulous one at that. If he couldn’t make three shots touch at a hundred yards he would go back to his bench and work up loads until they did. From the time I was sixteen until he died, I bought only the occasional box of bullets or can of powder, but never a box of factory-loaded ammunition. I really miss that now and I think about it every time I purchase a box of shells.
I hunted around camp since we were atop a hill and I could see down in a valley in about any direction I looked. I never saw a deer that weekend. My brother left camp every morning and made himself at home on a dirt two track that ran through the property. On the third day, a fine nine pointer crashed through the woods and came to a stop at the edge of the road. Karl said later he had heard the buck coming and had gotten his gun up and pointed in the right direction. When the deer appeared he already had him in the scope, with crosshairs centered on the left shoulder, and he was squeezing the trigger. His rifle roared and the deer crashed away over the road and into the brush.
I nearly jumped out of my new electric socks at the rifle’s report. I was too far away to hear the deer crash in the woods, but soon I was listening to him tell the story and watching my dad beaming with pride at his son’s first deer. Karl had heard, as had I, that one should always give a deer half an hour before taking up the trail but that was not going to happen today. We found the buck in the scrubby brush just a few yards away. He hadn’t gone very far at all. I remember Karl recounting later how he worried about getting his gloves off in time to pull the trigger, if the opportunity presented itself, and how he had forgotten all about it and fired with his gloves on and was amazed he had done so without a problem.
Field dressing chores were performed by my dad since Karl was still shaking and I didn’t really know what to do yet. A number of other hunters ambled by during this time, making comments and shaking hands, and we decided that buck was being hunted by several people at the same time and one of them had probably jumped it and sent it across Karl’s path. We took the deer to Riley’s church and cut it up in the kitchen, cleaned up the mess and took some over to his house for a fine dinner of fried venison backstrap, potatoes, gravy and pie for dessert, all prepared for us by his wife, whose name escapes me now but she was a fine lady and a grand cook. That was the first time I remember eating fried backstrap and I thought it was amazing
The next day we broke camp and headed back to Kansas. I believe I slept most of the way home because deer hunting is hard work, after all. If you ever have the chance to go camping in the woods with family, please do it. We did it several times and it constitutes some of the best memories I have of my youth and my family. Deer hunting at the same time was an added pleasure that I will never forget.
Of Fishing and Family 