Memories and Place

I have two memories that keep overlapping. One is of a young boy holding onto the antlers of his fist big buck along a hidden mountain stream deep in West Virginia. And the other is not quite as old, it is of two young men, myself and my good friend.
I was thinking of those two memories as I set up camp along a frigid mountain stream. As I picked up my bow, I felt like I was drifting back into the first of those two memories, back with my father.
My second memory was of my friend and myself taking a trip into the wilderness. We drove through the night, and arrived at our destination early the next morning ready for anything. After about 3 trips from my jeep to our newly discovered campsite to unload our supplies, we started to set up. We had not come here to do simply nothing, we had come here for the whitetail. Not any size in particular, but any wild deer in the untouched and undiscovered wilderness is natures definition of perfection. I had come here for the hunt and to spend time with a friend, but I had also come here for a more personal reason.
The crystal clear water and forests colored white with fresh powder were postcard material. By day, we sat quietly in our tree stands amongst the 300 foot trees, and put a stalk on some nice Bucks over the top of mountains and past a frozen waterfall. At night, we sat on soft moss eating some grilled trout we had caught straight from the stream, sipping our sour mash whiskey, and listening to the far off howls of the nights. We had driven to the trail head through the mountain valleys that now seemed decades behind us. All this seemed so familiar, but still strangely distant, for I had been here before, this was the place of my fist memory.
Four years earlier I had come to this place with my father. I had suppressed that memory. I took a sip of coffee and watched an eagle cruise up the stream with his white cape gleaming brightly in the morning sun. Something was different here, I felt it and I wanted to know why. Then it hit me, as I gazed out over the silence, I felt the answer floating just beyond my reach. It wasn't what was here that was different, it's what wasn't here. My father was what was missing. There was no guidance like before, the echos of his voice were disappearing like howls from the night. There were no other people here, just the distant memories of those like me and my father.
As I lay there on the moss of that hemlock forest and ate the firm red meat of the big 12 point buck I had killed earlier in the day, I realized that in the last few days I had found the connection that I hadn't looked for in the three and a half years since my father had passed. I breathed in the warm smell of the wild venison and thick wood smoke and thought about my two memories. The first will always remain a part of who I am, but the second I see differently now.
Now in my memory, that deep forest in West Virginia is more than a place where I once hunted or fished. It is a land of century old trees, rocks form the basement of time, winding streams, and wild whitetail and trout. More importantly, it is also a place where my two memories have finally become one.

Best Opening Day Ever!

Last Saturday was the opening of archery season for deer here in Virginia. This is only my third hunting season with a bow. Last year I got skunked, and the year before that I put an arrow through my first deer, a respectable 4-pointer.
After getting skunked last year I really put some effort into scouting this summer on the small 100-acre farm that I have permission to hunt on. I have never seen any big mature deer on this property, mostly I would see a lot of does and some small bodied bucks. But this season was going to be a little different.
I set out an hour and a half before sun-up to my pre-selected tree on the edge of a small grove of oaks that have been dropping acorns. As dawn began to break, I was trying to make some distance measurements with an old range finder I have. The type where you look through an eyepiece while turning a knob until an object comes into focus (usually a tree I use as a distance marker) then looking at the wheel with yardage markings on it. But there was not enough light to see through it clearly under the early October tree canopy.
Just then, I see movement to the left side of my stand and the nicest buck I have seen while hunting emerges from cover. An 8-point beauty. I quickly estimate the buck to be 30 yards, draw as it turns broadside and let the arrow fly. I hear the arrow pass through some leaves that I hadn’t noticed and the buck startles and walks slowly 10 yards away behind some thick cover. I can’t believe my poor luck for not noticing the small branch above my pin, directly in my arrows arcing path to it’s target.
In 15 minutes it has gotten light enough for me to use the range finder and I find out that the buck was actually at 20 yards, not thirty. So, I realize that I surely must have shot over the animals back. As I am putting the range finder back in my pack I catch more movement. Another buck, larger than the first, a 9-pointer, is 20 yards away and walking straight towards my tree stand. The deer is facing me so I do not have a clean shot. As the buck walks behind a tree, I draw my bow and follow him until he is 5 yards in front of me, and broadside. I lean down and let the arrow fly. This time I can see the tuft of hair open up where my arrow has entered, a great shot. I can hear the deer run up the hill through the leaves and then go down. My luck has changed for the better on this opening day.
I descend from my tree stand to retrieve my arrows and am shocked to find them both coated with blood. I walk around to the edge of the thick cover where I last saw the first buck and there he is, not more than 15 yards from where I shot him. I stand there for a minute to let this all soak in as a big grin spreads over my face. It is 7:30am on opening day and I already have two beautiful bucks down. This is the best opening day ever!

Note: Photographs upon request

After being hit by a hail storm two days earlier, I could still feel the marks in my back that the ice had made. I decided that it was a fine day to go hunting for the skies had cleared up. I put together my gear and headed out to the fields. Near my house was a large corn field which had been chopped just a week before and I knew that this was a deer hot spot at about five thirty P.M. I didn't want to scare away the deer right away so I set up camp in some tall weeds near the pond. After waiting for fifteen minutes, nothing came and I told myself that I had nothing to lose. I pulled out my Primos Hyper Doe Bleat and put it to work. I used it once and within two minutes a good sized six pointer came out of the woods and through the cornfield headed straight at me. I slowly drew back my PSE Predator as he turned broadside. I grunted and the buck stopped dead and looked at me. At the very second that the arrow flew off of the rest, he sensed danger and crouched close to the ground getting ready to leap away. The arrow flew straight at him. Because of the fact that he hunkered down ready to run, it missed his back by two inches. As the buck sprinted off, I tried to call him back in. Little did I know that another surprise was coming. Minutes later, a doe and her fawn came straight at me. I knew that it wouldn't be right to shoot them for they depended on each other. I sat still and watched the two as they headed towards the clover field. They came within ten yards of me and just stood there and ate. For thirty minutes they fed not even having a clue that I was within yards of them. As the sky darkened, they trotted back to the woods. It had been quite a day of bow hunting for me.

Opening Day

Rodrigo Tardelli Meirelles

To tell someone in Michigan that I bagged my first deer at 34 years of age will probably bring the question, where were you in the previous 20 years or so? Well, I can just tell you that I was not in Michigan. Sufficient is to say that I hunted before, and that I am a hunter, or at least, I am a hunter in my heart.

The quest for my first deer started on the afternoon of the Friday, November 14th, 2003. I left work around 2 pm, drove home, got my gear and my Remington 870 shotgun with a brand new Hastings rifled barrel and scope that I had bought several months before and never fired a single shot though it, four boxes of slugs and went as quick as possible to the Southern Michigan Gun Club shooting range. At 25 yards, I could not even hit the paper. I just started going nuts.

Before despair overtook me, I drove (again, as quick as possible) to the D&R Sporting Center in M-43, just west of Kalamazoo, and had the scope bore sighted in no time by their ever-helpful staff. At this time my confidence was so low that I bought four or five more boxes of slugs to help me in the sight-in. The result was consistent two inches three shot groups at a hundred yards, just under point of aim.

Saturday, opening day, a long time before first light, I was at my friend Bob Scott’s home, met his son who was also aiming for his first deer, prayed that the cold air would disguise the buck fever shrills, packed my ground blind (being much heavier than squirrels I don’t feel comfortable in trees) and the three of us took off to the tree line facing a field that we would hunt. I must say that it takes a lot of a friend to invite you over to opening day when his son is also coming to try for that first whitetail. I can’t thank him enough.

By first light the fusillade almost made me think I was in Iraq or some other part of the world not as nice as Michigan and I started seeing something white across the field, but it was nothing more than some paper taped to a pole. Around eight, I missed, just missed, a very nice buck running at 60 or 70 yards. But since I was quite comfortable in my blind, I endured.

Nature was forgiving to me. Around nine, a nice sized buck came walking about 40 yards, directly in front of me. I took my time, put the cross hairs to his shoulders, kept moving my shotgun like on a very slow “high house” clay pigeon, and could see fur coming out of him when he was hit, and before he took off.

After a quarter of an hour or so we started trailing him. Bob was the first to see the blood spoor and we found the buck about a hundred yards into the trees. For one moment I felt as being robbed of something. The left antler was crooked, twisted downwards and just barely attached to the skull skin. At once I remembered Robert Ruark’s “The Horn of the Hunter”, when after trailing Kudu for several days or weeks, he shoots this prize bull only to find out that he was an immature animal with only one curl in his horns. But this feeling only lasted a moment.

I drove home and brought my family back, so my kids could see that beef (or venison for the matter) doesn’t come from “Meijer’s”, and took the rest of the day butchering and packing the meat. I could say that this story ends at Christmas Eve tasting the very well prepared venison ham, but no. Those unimpressive antlers will keep bringing me back nice memories, especially of friendship.

Thank you, Bob.

http://www.publishedauthors.net/rodrigotmeirelles/

My dad and I are sitting in our new turkey blind on an old logging trail. It is around 5 a.m. We called to him for over a half an hour until he flew down. Then he started walking toward us. His bright red head was just so visible over the grassy slope and then a group of hens flew down from over top of us to the field on the other side of the woods. That ended my dream of getting a turkey. We then went to sit where we thought the turkeys were heading. We were sitting in waist deep grass on the edge of the field. After an hour of calling there was still no answer. Then my dad got up to see if we scared them back into the woods, we had. Two toms, and three hens, were strutting around in the clearing, my dad tried to get a closer look but they never let him get close enough. I was ready to quit. I was tired and mad that I didn’t get a shot at that bird. So then we hopped into the truck and drove around the field. I was wondering where in the world those turkeys could have gone. The answer was the little row of corn on field opposite of where we were sitting they must have made a complete circle. Then my dad pulled the truck back into their drive way and we crept across the field into the patch of corn. After we got to there we army crawled over 200 yards to where there were some hay bales on the edge of the corn. I crept behind the bales and listened nothing seemed to be coming so I went back in and started to crawl to the other side. As I got in and turned around a little head poked over the bale and gobbled. I raised my sights and…”bang”. He flopped around a little and then he was dead. He was 20 pounds with a nine-inch beard, and 1-inch spurs. He was fairly decent sized. He was my first and will be the most memorable.

I think they should make everybody who posted for week 2 a winner since they forgot about this little contest.

My hunting stories are few but this one is very special to me. It began in January of 2008 as my father’s childhood best friend, Brian, and I pushed my father around in a wheelchair around the Safari Club International convention in Reno. At one point when I had run off to look at an outfitter my dad talked to Brian to make sure that I stayed hunting especially big game. A few months later my father passed away from cancer he had been battling for the past 5 years. Later in 2008 I got a phone call from Brian. He asked me if I would meet him at the SCI convention in Reno the next year. Over the next few months we discussed ideas about hunting trips we would like to go on.
We met at the convention center and Brian kept asking me, “what do you want to hunt” I proceeded to respond with no real answer just saying “I’m not really sure”. As we walked around the convention center looking at outfitters for deer hunts, moose hunts and every other animal in the world. But there was one country that had interested me since I was a kid, that was New Zealand. We decided to check out the auction hall because there are some great deals on hunts and firearms. As we sat there listening to the many Africa hunts finally a hunt for New Zealand came up. As the bidding started I waited for my chance. I put a few bids in but it eventually went over my price limit. Not long after I had missed what I thought was my chance for a hunting trip in New Zealand another one came up. This was a 5-day two hunters trip for the Himalayan Tahr. Brian and I set our limit for out cost of the hunt and began bidding. But shortly we had been out bid. But then the auctioneer came to us and told us that the bidder that was over us had withdrawn his bid and we were still the highest bidder and the hunt was ours if we still wanted it. We went from no hunt to a Trip to New Zealand. After leaving the auction hall we went to our outfitter for the trip, Four Seasons Safari with Shane Johnston. We planned out the trip adding a few more days and an extra animal for both Brian and I.
In May 2009 Brian and I set off on our trip to New Zealand. Upon arrival we were met by our guide Jim and drove toward the Southern Alps on the South Island of New Zealand. Once we got to headquarters we again met with Shane the head guide of the outfitter. Brian and I were told that we were being flown to our base camp by helicopter in a few moments. We put on our cold weather gear to prepare for our snowy camp. Once we landed and unloaded the helicopter took off and there we were, surrounded by mountains with only a small cabin for shelter. After a few days of spotting we took off on foot down the canyon after some Tahr we had spotted. Brian had decided to stay behind when Jim decided to climb to the top of the ridge after some Tahr we had seen. There I was climbing through knee-deep snow up the mountain. Once we climbed to the top of the mountain I sat down to drink some water and take a few pictures. As I pulled my camera out my guide tells me to grab my rifle there was a Bull Tahr only 50 Yards from us. As I jump to my feet and shoulder my 300 Winchester magnum I fire a shot and the Tahr was gone. I knew I had hit him but did not know how well. I packed up my gear and took off down the mountain after him. As I reached the bottom of a canyon there was no sign of him and I was stuck waste deep in the snow. I managed to pull my self out of the snow and I look up at my guide hoping he had seen some blood or any sign of the Tahr but there was none. I climb a small ridge and there he was dead in the snow. I let out a loud yell to let both my guide, Jim and Brian who was somewhere in the canyon to know that I had found the Tahr. After skinning the Tahr we began to hike back and night fell on us I reach in my backpack for a small bottle I carry with me that holds some of my fathers ashes so he can be on all my adventures with me. I also look up into the stars in the sky knowing he has been watching us on this amazing hunt. This was my first big game hunt and it will be one of the most special hunts of my life. As for the rest of the hunt Brian shot a very nice Tahr him self and I finished the hunt with a 6x7 Red Stag. But the one thing about this hunt I will remember most is being able to hunt with my dad’s child hood friend Brian and have him share the stories of my father and his memories. This truly was a hunt of the lifetime for me.

We were living in my grandmother's house this time four years ago. Gun season had opened up just a week or so earlier, and this was the first chance I would have to get out in the woods with my trusty Marlin .30-30. I had told my wife the night before that I was going to go hunting in the morning and her response was that I had better not wake her and my eight month old daughter up that early in the morning.

Waking up to my alarm, they stirred slightly as I got out of the bed and got dressed. I had never hunted in the woods behind my grandmother's house so I picked a place to go as I walked across a small field to where I was going to sit. Dawn had yet to break when I stepped over the old barbed wire fence into the crunchy bed of oak leaves that covered the ground. There was a stream that ran through the middle of this small patch of oaks, so I chose a medium sized tree to lean upon as I prepared for a long morning.

Just a few minutes after I settled in on that cold morning, I heard something walking my way. I could barely make out the dim shape of a deer as it browsed the floor looking for acorns to eat. The first light of the day had come, and it felt like I was in a light fog. As the seconds ticked away, the deer made it's way from right to left about twenty yards in front of me.

Fortunately, I had chambered a round before I had settled down in my spot. Easing the hammer back, my rifle fit perfectly against my shoulder and felt light as a feather when I aimed at the doe. She was perfectly broadside to me, so I aimed for a shot right behind the front shoulder. A seemingly miniscule amount of time passed between the squeeze of the trigger and when the doe hit the ground where she stood from my perfect shot.

I stood up in a flash, ecstatic as this was my first deer in few years. Making the short walk to the deer to check and make sure I had made a good shot, snorts of alarm sounded all around me. I looked up to see at least five other deer running away. I shouldered my rifle and grabbed the hind legs of the doe for the drag back to the house. It was a slight uphill climb to the field, so I did not think much of it.

Dragging the doe almost halfway across the field, I was winded and thinking of how else I could haul it to where I would dress it. I left it lying in the field and went across the road to my grandmother's mobile home. I was in luck as she had a wheelbarrow leaning against the wall on the back side of the home. Feeling a slight triumph, it felt good as I walked back across the road to the field where the doe lay waiting.

I loaded the probable hundred thirty pound deer in the wheelbarrow and quickly made my way home. I looked at the clock when I walked into house and was surprised to see that I had only been gone for forty minutes. This was definitely the quickest hunt I had ever had.

I want to tell you my story of the one that got away. This is my story of “The Belk”.

It was an opening day of deer season. The rain came down in buckets as we headed for the mountains. I muttered, “if it's raining this much when we get to our hunting spot, I'm staying in the truck.”

My hunting buddy, Chet, looked over at me with a look of shock. I stammered, “With all this rain, I don't think the deer will be out from under cover and besides it might rust my gun.”

I knew they were shoddy excuses but it was too early in the morning and I was not thinking.

As we started up the road to our favorite hunting spot, we were stopped by a sign. We peered out the window through the sheets of rain and were finally able to make out that the sign said, “Road closed.”

“Where do we go now?” I said, hopeful that we were going back to the local diner for breakfast. “Let's go up a road that we've never gone on before!” Chet said with enthusiasm.

“OK,” I said with some reservations.

Chet stabbed the map. “That's where we're going! On that road.” he said with an air of finality.

I squinted through my bifocals. “I think that is just an elevation line. It's too squiggly,” I said.

“No, it's a road,” he said as he closed the map.

True to what Chet said, it did turn out to be a reasonable facsimile of a road. We bumped and spun up the mountain.

“Don't you think we ought to put it in four-wheel-drive?” I said with a tremble in my voice. “We came pretty close to the edge on that last turn.”

“No, we'll be fine,” Chet yelled over the roar of the motor. “I have new traction tires. Want to see how good they are?”

“Not right now,” I said as I looked dizzily out the window into the blinding rain.

We finally slid to a stop at the beginning of a much smaller skid road. We started off just as daylight was coming up. I was in the left track and Chet in the right. We walked silently down the road for about 200 yards. We must have been moving quietly or else how could we have come so close to HIM.

There was a bush hanging over my side of the road. Chet turned to me and whispered, “There's an elk up ahead. Come over here so you can see.” He grabbed hold of my shirtsleeve and pulled me sideways.

“Great!” I thought sarcastically. “This is the way it always happens. I see elk during deer season, and deer during elk season!”

I have always considered Chet to be a good hunter or at least he tells me so. I expect Chet to know his animals when he goes hunting. From now on I have my doubts.

Picture this in slow motion. I lower my gun to a relaxed position. I look out expecting to see an elk, but I saw HIM as HE turned to look at me from 60 feet away.

“Thaaaat's nooot an eeeelk,” I thought groggily. “Thaaaat's a DEEEER! THE BIIIIGGEST DEER I HAVE EVER SEEEN!”

Just then Chet realized the same fact, and set about to correct his mistake by yelling in my ear, “IT'S A DEER! SHOOT IT! SHOOT IT!” He pulled on my sleeve hard enough that I slipped in the mud and stayed horizontal long enough to watch HIM take two leaps off the edge.

Then gravity took over. Chet was already 10 steps down the road after the deer as I began to slip and slide up to a standing position.

“THAT WAS THE BIGGEST DEER I'VE EVER SEEN! WHY DIDN'T YOU SHOOT IT?” Chet queried.

I thought about shooting Chet and hanging him on the wall or just shooting him and dropping him over the edge of the cliff. Lucky for Chet that he alone knew where he had hidden the keys to the truck.

Chet rattled on.

“Wow! I can't believe you didn't shoot him. He was SO big and his antlers looked light enough and thick enough to be an elk,” he exclaimed. “And his body. It was so light-colored. That was a freak of nature! It wasn't a buck. It wasn't an elk. It.....It was a Belk! Hey, Keith, why are you so muddy?”

Looking back on the event, I realize he might have been right that I could have shot him. I had to think fast in order to lay the blame on Chet rather than me.

“1. I missed that Belk because you told me it was an elk and I trusted you! 2. You were yelling in my ear! 3. You got me too close to that Belk! I didn't have time to prepare,” I said.

“Gee, you don't have to get so huffy! Just because you missed the chance at the biggest deer you and I have ever seen,” Chet responded.

I realized he had me dead to rights. That deer was so close I probably could have shot it from the hip. I thought quickly and came up with an idea.

“Yeah, I probably could have shot it. Let's make a deal. You take credit for this miss and I'll take responsibility for the next one.”

“No,” he grinned. “This is all on you. But ... remember that elk story I told two years ago about the big one that got away?”

“Yes,” I stated warily. “You start backing me up about that elk being a 7 by 7 and I will help you out “

“OK,” I conceded. “You have a deal.”

No matter whether I shot that Belk or not, we had a great story to tell to the guys back at the cafe. Would they believe us? No, probably not. But we had the memory of the Belk that got away.

Hmmm still no update huh?

After the end of opening day of 1998 gun season, I met my Dad at the truck while we waited for my brother to show up. While waiting and talking about what we saw today, we spotted something that seemed like a fire glowing in the woods coming from my brother’s treestand. After deducing it was on the other side of the creek, my brother emerged from the woods running and yelling, “My tree’s on fire! My tree’s on fire!” My brother’s tree overlooked a marsh and we all knew if the marsh grass started on fire, nothing was going to stop it. All three of us jumped into my pick-up truck and headed to the house which was ¼ mile away from the hunting land we leased. We raced up to the house and headed for the shed, my Dad grabbed the chainsaw and my brother and I went for the five gallon buckets. Racing back to the fire tree, my father climbed up in the tree and stood on my brother’s tree stand platform and like a lumber jack in a skills competition he pulled on the starting cord and the chain saw came to life. My Dad topped the fire tree like the guys on the TV show “Axe Men”. While my father was cutting down the tree my brother and I headed to the nearby creek to get some water. Since it was very cold that day we had to break ice from the creek to fill up the 5 gal buckets of water to douse the flames. Three hours later disaster has been diverted. It turns out; my brother was throwing his cigarette butts in the old bird hole above his head and they landed in a nest. The next day, my brother asked me to help him attach the tree stand to the half tree that was cut down the night before. Still mad the he almost burned down the swamp. I refused, our father helped him. Fast forward 4 days to Thanksgiving morning. My brother got drunk the night before and did show up to go hunting in the morning. Dad said, “Why don’t you go sit in your brother’s stand.” (The same stand I refused to help my brother with after the fire incident). So after crawling in the tree, would you believe that a big buck walks out of the marsh straight to me! Well, I ended shooting a huge 9 point buck w/18-1/2” inside spread. That buck hangs on my wall and make my brother grimish every time he comes over.

Matt Woods

Well it was another exciting day of deer hunting!!!! Got up earlier, Sat. was the first day we were taking dogs ourselves. We like to wait until the weather gets cooler. Got down to my uncles and we loaded up the dogs. Somehow everyone of the dogs knew exactly where they were going!!! We took two of my pups.

After the stands were drew and the dog men (nine packs of dogs) were told where to go, we all left for the woods!!! I drew a stand, close to my uncle in NC, so I could get out if our dogs went towards Rockingham. One pack of dogs come through where I was standing but evidently the deer had done been through because they jumped behind me. I started looking behind me. Then as I was doing that, another pack was coming down the creek so I then had two packs of dogs to listen to. Have you ever wondered what about 10 dogs sound like on a cool crisp October Morning? Its almost like angels singing, traveling down the creek!!!! Well needless to say the pack behind me went on across to some more hunting properties. The one coming down the creek, just stopped. I was listening to my uncle and another stander talking on my radio. The stander told my uncle that the dogs were raising some kind of cane down there in the bottom not too far from him. I radioed my uncle and asked about our dogs and he said they were down there with the other dogs. My black and tan had never been hunting before!! My uncle said well they dont sound too far from me so I am going to go see what they got. Both started making their way towards the dogs. The only way all of them dogs were staying there and not moving in thirty minutes is if they had something bayed. And it had to be a deer.

I had already come out of my stand and was sitting in the truck with another stander. We were waiting to see what they wanted us to do. Well my uncle kept going, through briars, vines, and worse of all knee deep in water!!! The stander, Ricky, said he finally got to where he could see the dogs and the deer. We kept asking him where he was, all he could say was he walked down through two cutdowns!! Then he would laugh. We were about to have to send a helicopter in to look for him. He finally said that he could hear cars on a highway not too far away. He said the dogs were all around the deer and the deer was just standing there, fighting the dogs back. By that time, my Uncle had come down the creek so far he could see the dogs also. But couldnt see the deer. He made the choice that he was already so wet that why not get a little wetter. Because where the dogs and deer were, was right in a beaver dam!!! My uncle crawled over the beaver dam, the water was waist deep then! Ricky had gotten his chance and went ahead and shot the deer. Hoping to get the dogs to go back and for their protection also I guess. Ricky said he wasnt going to go get the deer, because it was too deep for him. So my uncle was already so close he could see the deer laying in the water with his antlers sticking above the water. He made his way over to the deer and radioed back to us. They were going to float the deer downstream to the cutdown Ricky came out of and they needed a four wheeler to haul the deer. The guy I was riding with had a four wheeler so we went on over there. Ricky was at the treeline and started waving his hat. I saw him and we all started walking down to the creek. When we got there, boy was I surprised. First time I have ever seen dogs so pleased with theirselves. They were on top of that deer eating him like they were at a pig pickin or something. We all grabbed a dog and took the dogs up to the four wheeler. When I walked back down I was surprised to see a nice 11 pt deer!!! One side where it came out of the skull at the bottom was as wide as my hand!!! You dont see that kind of thing down here that much. I asked Ricky where was my uncle he said that he had gone back to go get all of the guns, radios, and the rest of their clothes they had taken off! LOL My uncle got 20 yards from dry land and I heard him start saying "NO, NO, NO" with limbs and branches crashing. I have been in the woods long enough to know what that NO meant!!! My uncle was in the water! Sure enough his foot had went down in a deeper spot, he lost his balance and he sat down in the water!!! Somehow Ricky's gun stayed above the knee high water but unfortunately my uncles gun was completely submerged with all their clothes, radios, cell phones. My uncle finally made it out, and I helped carry his clothes and gun (which had the water running out of the barrel and extension). This story shows what deer hunting with dogs is all about. My uncles dogs and some more hunter's dogs were in there, and they worked to get the deer out, but most of all they love their dogs so much they would wade water to get them!!!

In explanation of the deer, we found out later on that on the Hunting Club next to us a guy with his son had seen the deer and he let the kid shoot it. They thought they had missed. But what happened was they had shot the deer's front leg in two, broke it and the deer had came on our land where our dogs picked up the trail.

It also payed off in the end, my uncle and Ricky was on the money pot for the biggest deer of the day. That buck weighed in at 146 lbs so Ricky got the money and give my uncle half of it for going and getting the deer! My uncle ended up back at the club in front of the wood heater for about an hour drying off!!! Luckily he had another pair of boots with him!!! We ended up with the 11 pt. , a 3 pt. , and a doe. It was a good day of hunting!