As I mentioned in my last column, I went deer hunting this year for the first time in close to 40 years. Maybe I should call it stump sitting instead of deer hunting since I never saw a deer and never fired my rifle during the opening weekend of the season. It sounds like I was in good company in that category. The extremely cold weather for November and lots of standing corn around this part of the country gave the deer a distinct advantage. It helps that deer are very intelligent animals too.
Truth be told, I’m glad I didn’t see a big buck and have to decide whether to shoot it or let it live another day. I still can’t bring myself to say harvesting deer. You harvest a crop of corn or soybeans, you shoot and kill a deer. Might as well tell it like it is. We always called it deer hunting, not deer harvesting. That thought went through my mind as I sat on a stump in our ten-acre woods that cold morning. My son-in-law, Tim, was sitting about 100 yards up the trail from where I was sitting. Tim wanted to go deer hunting this year. He likes venison, or “deer meat” as he likes to call it when he sees photos I’ve taken of deer. I prefer shooting them with a camera. I still have two rifles and didn’t want him to hunt alone. He used my 30-30 and I used an old Marlin 35 that I had used as a kid when I first started hunting. I positioned Tim along intersecting heavily used deer tails that head down the valley to the West Fork of the Kickapoo River, where there’s plenty of water for them. The woods slopes downhill from the road on two sides and is full of deep gullies. Those trails were hardly used during the nine-day deer hunting season.
It was still dark as we sat and waited for the dawn and the beginning of the hunt on opening morning. As I sat on a snow-covered, cold stump, I reflected on what I was doing. I was sitting there with a loaded rifle lying across my lap and my mind wandered back to a time many years ago when an M-16 and a .45 were my constant companions. I spent many nights sitting on ambush with my M-16 cradled across my lap as we waited for enemy soldiers, not white-tailed deer, to appear. It’s one of the reasons I gave up hunting. I was tired of death and killing of any kind.
Sitting, waiting, thinking, and freezing.
I have nothing against hunting and I’m happy for those who enjoy it. Unfortunately, the Vietnam War destroyed many things for many people. The love of hunting is one thing it destroyed in me. Some memories still have sharp edges. I found that 47 years hasn’t softened those edges for me.
As I sat on the stump and waited, the first light of dawn began to filter through the trees. The wind had also picked up and was whistling through the remaining leaves. It was cold, but I sat unmoving, only my eyes scanned back and forth, looking for any sign of movement. It’s just like sitting on an ambush waiting for a target.
My cold body was frozen in time, but my active mind continued to wander. I thought of the soldiers in World War II and Korea who had to live and fight in conditions like this with snow and freezing temperatures. I can’t imagine how they must have suffered. Unlike us deer hunters, who could leave the woods and go someplace to thaw out and warm up, those soldiers couldn’t abandon their post or foxhole. They had to stay there day and night and try to survive as they battled the enemy and the elements. We don’t give them enough honor and recognition for what they endured for all of us. I was lucky. We lived in hot, humid, and wet conditions. I’ll take that any day over snowy, sub-zero, windy, cold conditions.
When you’re sitting on a snow-covered, cold stump, with a frozen butt, cold fingers, cold feet, cold nose, and your glasses fogging over from your warm breathe in the cold air, you have those kinds of thoughts. Visions of a warm fire and a hot cup of coffee danced through my head. I could smell and taste the coffee my mother would bring to the barn, along with sandwiches, while we were stripping tobacco on cold winter days. There was something special about that coffee and I can still smell and taste it.
I could also feel the warmth from the old wood stove in the kitchen when she would open the front oven door and we’d sit with our cold, frozen feet resting on the door and let the heat thaw them out. I remember the stinging pain, as my feet began to thaw out. Four-buckle boots didn’t provide much insulation against the cold. Luckily, I now have insulated boots.
After a couple hours of daylight, we finally abandoned our stumps, left the woods, and headed to Nelson’s Agri-center where we bought some hand and foot warmers. For the afternoon hunt, we also brought red stadium cushions from home to sit on. We didn’t get any “deer meat” for Tim, but at least we were warmer.
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