Saturday, November 2, 2019

Uncle Charlie's Deer

Google Streetview
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...





32 comments:

  1. I hunted for a few years in Pennsylvania. When I stopped because the cold got the better of me, the score remained where it started.
    I'd heard, or read, somewhere that hunting was described as taking your rifle for a day's walk in the woods, and in my case quite true.

    The sign on the white building says, "Pomfrettown Hall" and I wonder why the name got shortened.
    There is an advertisement for a Harvest Supper on the easel at the door.
    We are about three weeks late for this year's supper.
    https://www.pomfretharvestsupper.com/

    I wish I'd done more things with my father.

    Good post. Thank you.

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    1. I kept digging into the photo, (you knew I would) and from other angles there is an obvious gap between Pomfret and the word Hall.
      It was the incredible pressure to get the coveted first post that did me in.

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    2. One year we were in that parking lot packing up after a day in the woods when folks started showing up to prepare a supper that very night. They actually invited us to stay and eat with them. Those were the days. Kinda wished we had stayed for supper.

      That walk in the woods thing? Yeah, me too.

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    3. Ah yes, the pressure of the coveted first post. "Do I hit publish now? What if someone is already commenting and hits publish first? What to do, what to do?"

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  2. A 200 pound buck dressed out will provide a fair amount of venison and then there's the....ahem....braggin' rights in the family eh? That's why hunting is called that, like fishing and not catching. Myself, I prefer grouse.... have one of them explode out of a snowdrift near your feet will get the heart racing. Season here begins mid-September until New Years. Growing up I remember the neighbor across the street having two deer and a moose hanging in his garage one fall, he lived to hunt and fish.

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    1. Yup, a lot of meals in one that big.

      Grouse? I've had partridge burst out of a nearby bush and cause me to nearly fill my pants, so yeah, I understand that thrill.

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  3. Hey AFSarge

    Reading this story reminds me of my time chasing the elusive white tail. Unfortunately I have taken more deer out with my car than my rifle...I am not sure how much of a distinction that is, lol

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    1. Apparently now in California if you hit it you can eat it.

      Not that that is an inducement to move there...

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  4. Thanks for the memories. Here in PA, the deer are considerably smaller, I don't think I've ever seen one that, dressed out, would go 200. Wow, I'll have to visit VT sometime. But we hunted every year, every member of our family (even Mom had a tag), as that was the main way of providing meat for the family. The guys also did small game a lot (although I didn't go then.) Nowadays, dad's 85 and doesn't really go anymore, and life is busy. I don't think I have the umph anymore to butcher a whole deer by myself on the kitchen counter. Or can all the meat after it's cut up. (We saved loin, occasionally a few big steaks, and ground or canned the rest.) I always wished that hunting season (the first Monday after T'giving) was a different time of year, or that we could move Christmas to those bleak days of February, to have something to look forward to, and more time to make/buy gifts.

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    1. In Vermont there are multiple deer seasons, they even have one for black powder muzzle loaders!

      I'm not sure they get that big anymore, though we have a buck on the grounds where I work who looks pretty damned big. Of course, he doesn't worry about getting hunted and he has a whole herd of doe which belong to him. Must be a pretty good life for a deer. Lots of cover, lots to eat, and a fairly mild climate.

      Christmas in February would certainly brighten that bleak month! Not a bad idea.

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    2. Friend in Maine (now deceased) maintained there were four deer seasons - bow & arrow, muzzle loader, rifle/shotgun, and Ford. He ran a camp where my grandson at age 15 took his first deer (a two-fer) with a muzzle loader. Old Gunner's Mate

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    3. Your friend knew what he was talking about.

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    4. Yeah, the Ford hunting season is year round down hear. I knew when it was sunrise this morning as the first rifle shot broke in the season. While I don't hunt, I'm not against it. Been down here 21 years, have hit a deer in the majority of those years. Pests!

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    5. I noticed down in Virginia last month that there were a lot of dead deer near the highway. I've even seen them here in Little Rhody on the way to work in a rather built up area! There are a lot of them and as we've killed their natural predators, the four legged kind that is, hunting them is pretty important.

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    6. To farmers, they are just tall rats. Deer are the reason almost every squad in Wisconsin has a Deer Smucker on the front of it.

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  5. My father and his siblings were subsistence hunters, seasons and game wardens be damned. An early childhood memory was being in the back seat when the door opened and a bloody deer carcass landed on the floor. Then my Dad and Uncle Ed took off like Nascar drivers.

    In later years he guided hunters and my teen weekends consisted of packing hunters in and game out. I haven't hunted in years. To me, it is a lot of hard work. I do cherish the memories of our times together.

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    1. Like most things done to survive, it is hard work.

      The memories are good.

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  6. Never got a chance to hunt, my dad was into fishing offshore after his retirement until the motor blew in the late 70's.

    Always wanted to. But maybe being allergy-boy was a sign hunting wasn't in my bag.

    The opportunities to hunt would periodically start surfacing, always being sunk by mundane matters.

    But I have lots of book knowledge, and I have defended against raccoons, so I have some basic experience about things like don't look down the barrel of a gun, don't run with a loaded weapon pointed at something you don't want to shoot. And shooting something is an action that is just not for everyone. Can I do it? Yep. Do I wanna do it? Yep. Am I able to do it at this time? Nope.

    Then there's the 'whereamIgonnaputit?' Small apartment, already have two refrigerators, no room for a chest freezer. And I think the apartment manager would get kinda bent if I hung a deer in one of the big trees to clean it. Along with a bunch of neighbors, the police, the local vegans and the pot-heads at the medical marijuana dispensary. Though the free-range rooster might enjoy it.

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    1. Yes, your neck of the woods (so to speak) seems less than conducive to hunting.

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    2. Oh, there's lots of places just 5-10 minutes away and father to hunt, it's just I don't have anywhere to store any meat, plus I canna be away from home for long enough.

      Wild hogs are year round except on state and federal land, where there's a season for the invasive little and not-so-little bastiges.

      Though I do have some plastic bags and a set of skinning and cleaning knives in the car in case I come across fresh roadkill (yes, I have thought lots about this...)

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    3. This does not surprise me, you are a most thorough chap.

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  7. Closest thing to hunting for me was in Colorado in 1984.
    Everyone else was elk hunting.
    I was camping.
    It snowed in time for opening day.
    ~ Skip

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    1. "snowed in time for opening day" - Not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. 😉

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  8. Easier to track in the snow. As long as it isn't too deep.

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  9. Ah, the coveted last comment! ;)

    Great story and one to cherish. I've been watching a five-point Muley since he took up residence in the corn in late August. He was standing by the airport road as I drove home this evening; I waved and he shook his head. It's a perfect setup for me, I could bag him within five minutes of the crack of dawn on November 16. Except... he'd be gone NLT sundown on the 15th. I've a good idea where he'd be, yucking it up in the canyons of the ranch. So, it would be a good hour-long hunt. Except... No Hunting on the ranch! Dad's rule, now Mom's rule, and I agree. I'm too soft hearted to hunt anymore, and I love that our ranch is a sanctuary. I get to see 'em up close and personal every day of the week and twice on Sunday, get to see the babies when they're tiny and watch 'em grow, yada-yada. I've got memories of some epic hunts; have to rite a few down, I reckon.

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    1. I do love observing the wildlife, we have quite the herd on the grounds where I work.

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