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It was deer season again which meant a trip to Alabama and a stay in our wonderful single wide trailer on our fifteen hundred acre lease. Not many members were hunting as it was the last week of archery and muzzleloading season. Before I left I dug out my old .54 caliber Renegade and tried to sight it in. I hadn’t shot it in almost fifteen years, instead opting for bows and rifles. We had some trouble sighting it as it jumped from left to right and back to left. At one point, my buddy, Bob, wondered if the sights were loose. I pulled on the rear sight and it was fine. I pulled at the front sight and much to my dismay it moved back and forth easily. That explained the wandering groups! Several quick taps from a hammer and a punch rolled the dovetail down and the front sight was working again. We didn’t have a chance to sight it back in before the trip so we grabbed up all the gear and hit the road.

Now I love bowhunting in any form including crossbows. I don’t like wheels so I took along my Excalibur. It is a tack-driving weapon and I have the shaved and Robin Hooded bolts to prove it. However, it is an awkward weapon. Sorry guys at Excalibur, but it is what it is, and this creature can get in the way. Especially when sitting in a tree stand or trying to move around inside a shooting house. (Shooting houses on my lease are built on the basic 4×4 design. Good for rifles, bad for anything oddly shaped.) I knew my daughter would have trouble with it, so when we got up to the lease I had her shoot my old black powder and I’d use the crossbow. I should say that I may gripe about the crossbow’s design, but it is a deadly weapon. I killed a nice sow with it one year, hitting the pig at better than thirty-five yards in the near dark and nearly knocking her over. It sent a bolt with a Fred Bear Razorhead through her ribs and out the other side in a blink of an eye.

With a quick sighting in session and a few lessons on how to handle the rifle like how to     prime it with caps and the safe removal of the same, I sent my daughter out to a shooting house on our “400” property while I climbed a pine tree with my Summit at another food plot. As I struggled up the tree, it had been a year and my biceps were not used to pushing me and my gear up, I realized that being on the wrong side of fifty was starting to take a toll on me. Next year, God willing, I’m getting one of those sit down/pull up stands. Anyway, I get settled in and start to relax. It’s a good clear day and a good wind. I ranged a couple of trees and got ready for that six point I was after last year. It was only a matter of time. About thirty minutes later I hear BOOOM!!! from the area where Kaley-Ann had set up. I waited a minute and she radios me (we use radios to communicate when set up separately) “Dad, I got one.”

I was grinning under my face mask “What was it?” Hoping and not hoping it was that six point we both were after.

“It’s a doe.”

“Is she dead?”

“Oh, she’s dead!”

I figured as much. Getting hit with a 230 grain lead ball a half inch in diameter had to put the dinky-dink on that deer. So I realized my hunt was over and I got down so I could go back to the truck and drive down to Kaley-Ann’s location. When I showed up she had already tracked and recovered the deer. It was a small doe and I could see the lead ball hit her right through the chest. Kaley-Ann smiled and said it was right where she was aiming. However, she didn’t like the gun that much. “Dad. I’m not sure about this black powder deal.”

“Why? It seemed to work.”

“Because when the deer showed up I followed your instructions and pulled the hammer back. When I pulled the trigger the hammer fell but nothing happened. The doe looked up at me but luckily didn’t move. I so quietly pulled the hammer back again and pulled the trigger a second time. That time the gun went off! I couldn’t see the deer! The smoke was everywhere! Then I see her run off. When she did I saw my right hand trying to work the bolt like I do on my .260. But there’s no bolt, I’m out of bullets!!

Kaley-Ann firing the Renegade

I was laughing out loud imagining my daughter frantically waving her hand back and forth working a bolt that doesn’t exist. I pointed out the rifle did exactly what it was supposed to do, hence the dead deer on the ground next to the truck. She had to admit I had a point and we loaded her trophy into the bed of the truck and drove back to camp. We later figured out she didn’t have the primer set square on the nipple and the first strike set it up correctly. It went off on the second, as it was designed. Had it been a nervous six point, I think I would have lost a future black powder fan. As it turned out my Dad, who is failing steadily and giving away his things, told her he would give her his old .50 caliber Hawkins when he got back to Florida. That is a tack driving old style rifle, fully decorated in brass and wood. The old way for sure. It’s a hard way to gain a prized possession, but if he lasts till she shoots a deer with it, the moment will last forever in the stories told by our family. Isn’t that really what hunting and family and loving is all about?

I think it is.

P.S.- With this deer, Kaley-Ann has taken game with every type of weapon except a bow.   Although she did hit a running bunny with a blunt, just the wrong arrow head. Pretty good for a fourteen year old girl who has to travel 600 miles to hunt.

I’ll be posting photos later when I change the bandages.  However, last night I learn again about safety even with the simplest tasks, like sharpening a broadhead. Usually, I wear heavy leather gloves.  That way when I slip, and I do, I don’t cut anything seriously.  This time I got lazy, what could go wrong  when using a carbide cutting tool to put a new edge on a broadhead?  Well, just about a stroke before I figured on quitting I slipped and cut my shooting hand index finger across the knuckle and to the bone.

Stitches and the end of my bow season

The doctor said I didn’t cut the tendon (luck), but a number of stitches later, I was pretty sure bending back my longbow this weekend is done, and maybe for next month in Alabama.  It will heal, but it is going to hurt and heal slowly.  I’m severely right-hand dominant, but not for now.

Safety first!

the offending tool. Now in the garbage. Gloves, gloves, gloves!!!

My daughter and I have a hunt scheduled for the end of the month in a WMA just up the road.  Years ago I hunted it when it was open land, but stopped after the state bought the land up.  Now I see the area, which was swamp with buggy trails, is criss crossed with roads.  My buddy Bob says the pigs are thick but are probably a little shy after muzzleloading season.

Who cares, it was a good time back then and I hope a better time coming up.  My daughter is ready, I’m ready, our gear is getting organized as we speak.  Here are some old photos of my time in the area.  We’ll blog our experiences.

Let me tell you a story.  When I decided to dedicate myself to bowhunting with recurves, I spent a lot of time practicing and refining my skills and equipment.  I also spent a lot of time hunting.  Almost three times a week I would go out and service feeders, or set up and hunt.  I had an old Toyota pickup that took a beating driving through the wet buggy roads that criss-crossed the land.  There were times I waded to the high ground where I hunted. It wasn’t easy but it was close.  And it was fun.

Over the years the pig population went from having a few around, to have a bunch around.  That was even with it being open land and hunted by everyone with dogs.  I found out why when a buddy of mine ran into a man who was hired by a farmer in another county to trap out the pigs destroying his crops. The trapper was transporting the pigs to our area and letting them go.  Nice move on his part.  So, in one year we went to a few pigs of different sizes to full grown boars with an attitude.

In that year I had a small feeder set up in a cypress head.  After work, around two or three in the morning, I would gather the feed and run up to the feeder and service it.   More than once, as I held a flashlight in my teeth while pouring corn into the feeder, I would sense something watching me.  I could hear the pigs moving around me in the underbrush.  It was spooky to say the least.

On the days I could hunt, I would scramble out and either climb a tree (usually a slick cypress) or set up a ground blind.  I took so few shots, that the pigs got used to me being there and would sometimes work down wind to see if I was in the blind or not.  One day, I had one actually stick its nose in my blind. I could have touched him.  I shot a couple but nothing of significance as I was still struggling to harness the recurve’s abilities while not going totally nuts with “buck fever” when a pig showed up.

One day, I was in the ground blind, the one you see in the photo, when a nice sized black boar showed up.  He was nervous and kept looking around at the thickets, something was out there.  Suddenly, I see a huge black blur bust out of the thicket and charge across the opening smacking the smaller pig in the side.  I think my jaw dropped when I got a look at the size of the other boar.  The best way to describe him is a black bear with tusks!  He was so huge his shoulders drawrfed his hindquarters.  He looked like that cartoon bulldog from the old Bugs Bunny cartoons.  The tusks actually stuck out like knife blades as he snapped at the other pig.  Now the smaller pig was about a hundred and fifty pounds.  The big guy was easily twice as big if not more and he was twelve yards away and pissed.  He chased the smaller pig around

the opening for five minutes, charging and grunting.  Once they almost ran me over throwing dirt from their feet over the netting an onto me.   I was wishing I had brought my pistol as I looked at my fifty-five pound recurve and aluminum arrows.   Finally, the big pig backed down a little, froth coming from his mouth as he eyed me and the other pig.    I thought about trying to shoot him, but realized two important things; One, I was on the ground and unarmed other than the bow and he was all of three hundred pounds plus and already pissed off.  Two, getting him out of there by myself would be a nightmare and besides pigs that size arent that good to eat.

The first pig looked at me, then at his adversary, then back at me.  He wasn’t sure what to do next.  He turned sideways and I can honestly say without thinking my bow came up and the arrow was off.  It actually surprised me a little and both pigs a lot.   I could see the arrow sticking about halfway through the boar behind his shoulder.  He took off like a bolt of lightning.  The huge boar did the same thing in the opposite direction, much to my relief.

I waited for a few minutes to get my act together and went to where I had last seen the pig bolting through the cypress trees.  Blood spray was on several of the trunks, I found the back half of my aluminum arrow broken on the ground covered in blood.  I thought this is just like in all those stories I read in the Traditional Bowhunter Magazine.  All I had to do was follow the blood find the pig and some good looking girl would jump out with a cold one and bag full of cash.  EAAASY!

But my luck never really changes.  Nothing comes easy.  No girl, no beer and no cash.  I found out, as I worked my way through the swamp thickets, that the blood had suddenly tried up.   I was down to tracking drops of blood on my hands and knees, and soon that stopped.  It was getting dark and I knew that pig was dead in there somewhere.  It was too hot to leave him for the next day, so I started a grid search in the failing light.  Just as the sun set and dusk was growing heavy I stepped out onto a main trail to double back and took about ten steps and almost fell over the boar!  He was dead in the path!

The arrow had taken out one lung and stuck into the liver on the far side. He had traveled about a hundred yards but in a circular path, most of the blood was sealed inside his cavity as pigs tend to seal up, because of the thick skin and fat,  after being hit with an arrow.  I thanked God for the recovery and the experience.  I was hopping and yelling in excitement, until it hit me he was a lot bigger than I thought.  I was a quarter mile from the truck, in a swamp, in the dark, alone.  I tried to drag him and that wasn’t happening. I tried to load him on a skid and THAT didn’t work, so in the end I had to field dress him and quarter him out to get him home.  I made it out around 0230am.   This is the biggest pig I ever shot or shot at.  In the end I’m glad I didn’t try his big buddy.  It would have probably killed me one way or the other.

I love sitting by the fire and watching it burn.  I think there is something basic, almost instinctive, in the relationship between man and fire.  My father loved to sit by a open fire, as did his father and his father’s father.

Tonight I spent time building and sitting by a fire in my backyard.  As a matter of fact, I had two going, one in a stone pit and one in a homemade tin fire pit.  The stone pit is made up of stones from my second home, the great state of Alabama.  For a while I collected rocks every time I went up and put them around my home as decorations.  With hunting on hold for me I spend time in the backyard chopping wood, gardening, building a fire to ward off bugs and give me a little peace.

Now today’s fire was a little different.  My wife was doing what wives do best, which is going crazy every once in a while.  So, I found it safer to sit- no hide- in the backyard!  I chopped some wood, built two fires, lit a Citronella candle (which doesn’t work by the way) and brought a water bottle full of Jim Beam with me.  I was a very happy backyard camper until the bugs ran me out.

backyard set up, hiding from the Mrs.

As I stood by the fire I began to wonder if the relationship between man and fire has something to do with how the fire burns.  When you first light it, the fire starts out small and weak. Add too much wood and the pressure causes it to go out.  Too little wood and it starves, but if  you treat it just right a fire will grow and burn brightly.  The young fire burns with an energy that gives off light and heat, it seems like it will last forever.  Soon though it slows, but it leaves you good coals, coals you can cook on, stay warm by, coals that last a long time, steady and strong.   After a while the coals begin to cool, their light begins to fade, although they still give off lifesaving heat, but their time is nearly over.   In the end, they quietly go cold, leaving only ashes.

I couldn’t shake the feeling that a fire mimics man, or is it that man mimics the fire.  As children we thrive the best if we are given just the right amount of encouragement, not too much pressure, not too little attention.  When we grow into young adults there is nothing we can’t do, nothing that can stop us. We burn bright with energy and hope.  But as we get older, we learn the meaning of life, that providing a solid, steady place for others to feel warm and secure is our job, our destiny.  In the end, we grow older and weaker.  We have less and less to offer, but if you huddle closer, listen a little harder, we still have something to offer.  Even as ash, long after we have grown cold, we offer the elements that the future can be built on.  A fire gives ashes to the earth that add nutrients so the new growth can flourish.  We give memories and lessons that our children and our children’s children can learn from and prosper by.

After a lot of chopping this is what left of the playhouse

Those were the thoughts I had as I watched the fire slowly grow dark and cold.  I didn’t mourn the loss, as I know it is the same for all things including us.  I hope that in the end I’ll provide the warmth and comfort to my family and someday my words will guide my children to a good life.