Uncle Charlie's Deer

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A long, long time ago I used to go hunting. It was primarily an opportunity to hang out with my Dad and my brothers far from the authority of Mom. She used to say that we spent more time looking for a place to cook lunch than a place to actually, you know, hunt deer. I have fond memories of those days. One year Dad actually got a deer, we kids weren't with him which is probably why he managed to bag one.

Now I am the eldest of three brothers and my Dad was the youngest of three brothers. For some reason we never really clicked with Dad's oldest brother, Uncle Louis. Uncle Charlie, on the other hand, was in many ways like a second Dad for me. Later in life he and I actually worked at the same company. He was a mover and shaker, as for me...

Yeah, I've always loved that commercial.

Anyhoo, from time to time Uncle Charlie would go hunting with us. He was a WWII infantry vet and was handy with a rifle. He also liked to hike through the woods with us, giving my Dad crap at every turn (Dad would give it right back, the two were close.) Those were good times.

One November we headed on up to Pomfret, Vermont to go hunting, Uncle Charlie and my cousin Joe would meet us up there at that spot in the opening photo. We called it the "Old Meeting House" though I believe today it's the Pomfret Town Hall. Pomfret is not a big town, in 2010 it had about 900 people, probably fewer back in the 60s.

The Saturday we went up was cold in Springfield (my home town) but there wasn't any snow on the ground there. Pomfret had quite a bit of snow, fairly fresh as I recall. Did I mention it was colder? No, but it was. Bear in mind this was probably high 20s, low 30s cold, not real cold. Back in those days Vermont tended to ease into winter. It would start getting cold in September and by the time November rolled around we Vermonters were used to it.

Just had to dress in layers and have a good pair of boots ya know.

Now that particular year my cousin Joe had joined the Air Force and had finished basic training down in San Antonio just in time for hunting season. Problem was, Joe hadn't had the chance to get used to winter, he just got dumped right in and wasn't used to it. I do believe Joe shivered that whole day.

But I digress.

Now the next photo is an overhead of Pomfret, well some of it anyway. Of particular interest is that big wooded area out behind the Old Meeting House (the leftmost building of the two on the right side of the picture). Now that wooded area was atop a pretty good size hill, as you can see in the topographical map that follows the overhead view.

Google Maps

The spot marked "Town Clerk's Office" is the rightmost building to the right in the photo above, is across the road from the Old Meeting House. I don't recall if that was there back in the 60s, might have been, maybe not. Hey, it was a long time ago.

Google Maps

As you can see, that hill is pretty steep and pretty high, probably a good 300 feet higher than where we parked our cars, next to the Old Meeting House, where Joe was shivering to beat the band and who kept wondering if we were going to go hunting or just stand there freezing to death.

We decided to split up, Uncle Charlie and Joe going towards the orchard marked on the map, Dad and my brother Rob and I would go straight up that big damned hill. In the snow.

Well we did, it was a bit of a hike, all of us had unbuttoned our jackets as we were getting warm marching up that hill. But by Jove it was beautiful up there, fresh snow on the ground and a pretty nice view through the trees, mostly deciduous, all bare naked in the snow.

Once we'd got to the top we sort of hunkered down for a bit, checking the area out before moving on. I think the real plan was for Dad to haul his two noisy sons up the hill and hopefully drive any deer down to the orchard, where Uncle Charlie and Joe would be waiting. At any rate, when we started moving again, to the northeast where you can see the open area (probably a power line right of way, might have been a firebreak, again, a long time ago but I remember an open path running right about there), we heard a rifle shot down in the valley below us.

A bit later, as we continued to move to the northeast, cousin Joe came puffing up behind us (he'd followed our tracks in the snow) and announced that his Dad had had a shot at a magnificent buck. A big one, a four pointer, in the West he'd have been a two pointer, for those of you who keep track of such things, which is all about how many tines there are on a buck's antlers. Uncle Charlie swore he hit the buck in a hind leg as the animal had moved suddenly when he'd pulled the trigger, causing him to not hit the buck where he'd aimed.

Anyhoo, we pressed on and met up with Uncle Charlie, no deer in sight, alive or dead. Seems that the animal had been making his way through the orchards when Uncle Charlie and Joe spotted him. My uncle only had time for a quick shot as the deer would have been out of the snow brightened background and back into the trees in just moments.

Uncle Charlie hit the deer, he claimed, and when we got to the spot, sure enough, the animal had gone down and then got back up and headed off at speed, but he was limping, there was quite a bit of fresh blood on the scene. So off we went, had to follow him and finish him, didn't want him to suffer.

The blood trail was fairly substantial at first and easy to follow in the snow along with the deer's tracks themselves. But after a couple of miles we could still see the tracks but no more blood. Seems his wound wasn't that bad after all. We kept going but in November the sun goes down early and the hunting day ends at sundown. So we gave it up and headed back to the cars. My Dad giving his brother crap the whole way, betting that it was really just a small deer and was only big in Uncle Charlie's imagination. You know, brotherly love kind of stuff.

At any rate, a couple of weeks later Uncle Charlie came over to the house with a newspaper in hand. Seems that the weekend after Uncle Charlie had shot "his" deer, a local hunter in Pomfret had bagged a 200 pound buck (that's dressed out by the way) in the vicinity of the orchards near the Old Meeting House. My uncle particularly wanted to show my Dad the line in the article stating that the deer had recently been wounded, in his right hind leg.

My Dad just looked at the article and said, "Damn, that's a big buck."

Uncle Charlie just headed back to his car after saying, "No shit."

And that's the tale of Uncle Charlie's deer.

I remember it like it was yesterday...