TITLE: Deer Season By Judy Watters 07/24/08 |
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Deer season on the farm was an exciting time for the family. Many of the farmers around the area posted their land so hunters couldn’t hunt on their property. These were the farmers with large herds of cattle. We never had many cows, so Daddy was able to keep them closer to the barn during deer season. All the farmers of the area liked hunting on our farm because it offered various terrains. We had swampland, woods, hills, as well as lots of open fields.
My brother and sister and I liked to get up early to sit outside in the brisk winter air and hear the hunters start to drive the deer. The hunters who had already shot their quota for the year were the drivers. They started at the top of the hill in the thickest part of the woods whistling and hollering and making all kinds of noises to try to drive the deer out of their slumbering spots and into the open fields so the other hunters who were lying in wait could shoot the unsuspecting prey.
At one time Daddy thought he wanted to hunt with his neighbors. He bought a rifle, much to Mom’s dismay, and after a good deal of time target practicing in the orchard, he finally got up the nerve to join the other hunters. The experienced hunters were glad that Daddy had decided to join the fun and determined that they would do their best to drive the deer right to him.
However, on the first day out, my sister Virginia, then 13 decided she wanted to go with Daddy. They tramped through the snow to the other side of the clearing and settled in for the long wait in silence. It wasn’t long before Virginia developed the hiccups. She tried holding her breath and counting to fifty. She tried holding her breath and jumping up and down. Daddy told her to eat snow, but that didn’t help. In fact, the more snow she ate, the more she had to go to the bathroom. And the more she tried to stop hiccupping, the more noise she made. The path back to the house was where the deer would be running at any minute. One hunter agreed to take Virginia to the other side of the clearing and wait there until Daddy shot his deer. They could hear Virginia’s hiccupping get fainter as they got farther away.
Deer hunting is a sport of patience and a great deal of waiting. After three hours of slow driving through the thick trees, two deer came racing straight for Daddy’s hiding place. By this time, Daddy’s freezing fingers and drippy nose was telling him this might not be the sport for him. But as the deer came closer, Daddy’s heart started racing. He could see the deer’s hot laborious breath being forced out into the cold air.
“Now, Nick. Slowly, raise the gun.” Daddy’s hunting coach was a well-seasoned 20-year-old neighbor boy. Jim grew up hunting…even before he was of legal age to hunt, he had bagged more than his share.
The deer slowed down but came closer still. As he took the cumbersome gloves off his hands, Daddy felt the cold steel of the rifle barrel that was even colder than his freezing fingers. He slowly raised the gun and brought the deer in his site. To Daddy’s surprise, the deer was looking right at him. Daddy fingered the trigger. It was at that moment that he took a closer look at that deer in his scope. All he could see was the big beautiful brown eyes and velvety nose of that majestic 10-point buck. The hunter’s heart melted.
“Shoot, Nick…Shoot,” Jim quietly and excitedly urged Daddy on. “You can do it. Now.”
But Daddy couldn’t do it. He couldn’t pull the trigger—it seemed as though time froze as his thoughts went back to the streets of New York City in the 1930s. A friend who he had known in his orphanage days met up with Daddy and offered him a lucrative job of running numbers. At the same time he forced a small gat into Daddy’s hands and told him he would need that in his line of work. He remembered the cold feel of the gun as he stared down at it before handing it back to his friend and turning his back on that profitable job.
“Shoot,” Jim yelled in a raspy, hoarse whisper. Daddy blinked back from his memories and the deer was still grazing just ten feet from him. Daddy turned to Jim with tears in his eyes.
Jim raised his gun and bagged his buck for the season. Daddy sat in a stunned daze. Jim could have had a good laugh at Daddy’s lack of the love of the kill, but he knew Daddy so well. Jim grew up loving my father as his own, since his own dad had died when Jim was very young. Jim knew Daddy’s soft heart.
“That’s okay, Nick,” Jim said. “You’re just too close to nature and I love you for that.”
We realized too late that Emery, my little brother, possessed the same spirit. When Emery turned 14, the age all boys could hunt legally, he went on a similar deer drive with Jim. But Emery shot his deer, much to his dismay.
As soon as the deer fell, Jim said, “Okay—if you’re man enough to kill it, you need to be man enough to gut it.” What a shock to Emery! Jim handed him the big boa knife and showed him how to start cutting on the tender underside. The touch of that warm velvet brought tears to Emery’s eyes. It’s near impossible to skin a deer when you can’t see through the pools of tears.
Daddy decided to keep the gun in their upstairs clothes closet. Mom knew no one from our family would ever hunt again. She told Daddy that she wanted the gun out of the house. The gun was still loaded so Daddy proceeded to unload it. Instead, it discharged and shot through the closet wall and lodged in the opposite bedroom wall, just missing Mom. She screamed as the gun went off and then lay down on the floor on the other side of the bed.
Daddy came running out of the closet yelling, “Mom, Mom—I’m sorry. Mom.” He found Mom lying face down and was sure he had killed her. When he finally realized that she was playing possum, he got very angry and yet rejoiced at the same time. By the time we kids got upstairs, we found Mom and Daddy holding each other and crying on the bedroom floor.
But when Mom found her two best dresses with huge gun shot holes burned into them, she decided to hang them for a time in the bedroom as a reminder that there would never be a gun in her house again.
From that time on, we left the hunting to others. In return for good hunting land, our freezer was kept full of venison burgers and venison steaks.
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