SowGreen
Senior Member
This is a story a good friend of mine wrote about his first experience at deer camp. He didn't grow up around camp and didn't have a father figure to take him. You can tell what an impression this left on him as he wrote this later in life and remembered it like it was yesterday.
I wish we could all do something like this to enrich the lives of young kids while ensuring the growth of our sport. I read this every year before the season and it jump starts my heart. Enjoy.
Campfire Chairs
I grew up in the sprawling suburbs just outside Atlanta. The first time I attended a deer camp, I was already a senior in high school about to go to college. I barely knew the skinny underclassman with floppy hair who invited me. His name was John. He and I shared a class together. It was Theater 101, and we had somehow stumbled upon the topic of deer hunting during “group breakout sessions,” which is a pedagogical term for when teachers take a break and students talk amongst themselves.
I knew very little about deer hunting, but I had wanted to do it for a very long time. When I learned that his old man was in a hunt club, which John occasionally attended, he gained instant high school credibility in my eyes. We talked about deer hunting so much that John finally got the hint and said maybe I could come to “camp” the following weekend. He’d have to check with his dad.
John knew everything about deer hunting and guns and strategies and the right gear. He had stories about the colorful club members too. A crazy Vietnam vet with ear necklaces. An undercover narcotics officer with a beard and ponytail. A retired ATF agent that could shoot a dime with his sniper’s rifle from 300 yards. I really hoped he’d remember to ask his dad about next weekend’s camp.
Of course, my mom would not let me go unless John’s dad went along too. I found that out the hard way my freshman year when another boy invited me to deer camp. Older brothers do not count as chaperones, it seems, and mothers of the suburbs do not send their teenage sons to unsupervised deer camps.
John gave me the nod Monday morning, and I gave my mom the good news and John’s dad’s telephone number when she came home from work that evening. I assumed correctly that mom would call John’s dad to ensure the chaperone. Trust but verify. Moms used it way before Reagan.
She allowed me to go to deer camp that weekend. John and I talked about it for the rest of the week, making our plans between classes. I needed all the information I could get since I’d never been to the formidable sounding event in the woods. John may have been a sophomore, two years below me, but he had been to many deer camps, killed and cleaned a deer, knew the camp members, owned all the correct gear. I didn’t want to look like a complete nimrod, even though I was one.
John and his dad picked me up Friday after school in an old orange F-100 pickup truck. Mom came out to meet John’s dad on the driveway. I walked in the opposite direction to the bed of the truck to stow away my sleeping bag and backpack full of newly purchased camos and long underwear. I didn’t own a rifle then, but John said I could borrow one of his dad’s. It embarrassed me having my mom come out to meet John’s dad, Mr. Williams, who I’d just met myself, John making the brief introductions. While the adults’ meeting took place, John picked through my recently purchased Wal-Mart outdoor gear with the critical eye of a veteran sportsman. I heard Mom thank John’s dad as we loaded into the cab of the old pickup. I sat on the narrow back bench, and tried responsibly, albeit fruitlessly, to find a seat belt as we backed out of the driveway. I saved the further embarrassment of actually waving to my mom, and felt bad about it most of the way.
Mr. Williams dialed into an AM country music station and talked about the weather and his work and the deer they had harvested so far this season at camp. He dropped the names and nicknames of the members that would be present that weekend, the old cops and retired military, and confirmed all the stories I’d heard over two weeks. I didn’t want to disappoint any of the members, mainly John and his dad.
We drove east along Interstate-20 for what seemed like hours, well outside of the suburbs, where the strip malls disappear and give way to cow pastures and lone filling stations. Finally, thankfully, we exited the interstate at a rural junction with one gas station. I could not wait to see what a real deer camp looked like. Once we were off the interstate and on the state road, it seemed like any of the fields and patches of woods could have held deer. Lots of them. I kept waiting impatiently on the back bench of the pickup for us to turn off onto one of the well-worn dirt roads. Instead, we drove slowly along the nearly empty asphalt, through several venerable Georgia town squares, as Mr. Williams and his son conversed. Old veterans of deer camp.
John transformed from the younger classmate two grades below me. He knew everything that really mattered this weekend. I leaned forward from the back of the cab, listened intently, and said “yes, sir,” to most everything Mr. Williams spoke. Father and son seemed to speak of higher things, things I did not yet know, and I anxiously waited for the right moment to fill in pauses with a sentence of my own meager experiences. Mr. Williams asked if I’d ever been hunting. He meant deer hunting, of course, but I wanted to gain some quick credibility, and so spoke about the only hunting I’d done to date.
“Yessir, heck, my uncle and I went rabbit hunting once. Killed a big rabbit. Ate it for dinner. It was good. Tasted like chicken!”
Mr. Williams and his son nodded wisely from the front seats, knowingly, innately, correctly, “He’s never been to a deer camp. How do we handle him?”
What I didn’t tell them was that after a day of walking a few bean fields and coming up empty, my favorite uncle and I had adjourned to his friend’s place that bred rabbits commercially. My uncle asked me to pick out a rabbit for dinner, and so I did, reluctantly, a large white one with a pink nose, and my uncle’s friend snatched it up, twisted its neck with a snap and showed me how to clean it properly from a meat hook. I had leftover fried catfish for dinner that night.
I didn’t know it yet, but being able to pull off an otherwise mundane story in an entertaining manner is a big part of deer camp. That particular story would have been funny, but, of course, I didn’t know that then.
The sun was just going down over the tops of the trees when we turned onto a graveled dirt road. A field of tall, regal pecan trees blocked most of the setting sun. Mr. Clendenen stopped the truck at a field gate, and his son, a full two years younger than me in school, impressively, intuitively, sighing loudly like it cost him something, got out of the truck to unlock it. I made moves to follow, but the truck’s metal door swung shut, and his dad and I eased slowly through the open gate and stopped so that John could lock the gate smartly behind us, so smartly, knowing precisely where to put the key back in its hiding spot, and get back in the truck. Still bored with a hint of petulance about opening the gate.
We three drove through the pecan orchard on a dirt path up over a slight rise and down again to where four portable campers were stationed around an already burning camp fire. A few middle aged men sat around in camp chairs with plastic cups in their hands. We pulled up next to a weather beaten pop-up camper, and Mr. Williams turned off the truck. As my new friend John and his dad opened the doors and stepped out of the truck, a barrage of shockingly deep-bellowed curses erupted from the men sitting around the campfire.
Fat man.
- I AM A POTTY MOUTH -- I AM A POTTY MOUTH -- I AM A POTTY MOUTH -- I AM A POTTY MOUTH - target.
@#$%*!
It sounded serious enough. A skinny kid, junior high school type, was laying a fresh log on the fire, grinning. Mr. Williams fired back to the campfire in general with a loud obscenity-laden retort. This brought an increased amount of laughter from said campfire.
“You’re an old grouch.”
“Michelin man.”
And, “Terrible shooter.”
John’s dad didn’t react to the other recriminations, but retorted to the latter with, “I’ll take any of you whippersnappers from 300 yards every day, twice on Sunday.”
This elicited more laughter from the campfire. My new best friend, John, gave me a grin, and, as I stood there, ambled toward the campfire gathering and announced casually, “This is my friend, Fred,” with a thumb over his shoulder as I tried to look serious, clutching my sleeping bag to my chest. I nodded at the gathered men folk, their cups in midair, and smiled like an ape. They nodded uninterestingly and all turned back at Mr. Williams and said, “We didn’t think the wife would let you come another weekend this year.”
“Jump in a lake, ” said he without a glance as he started unloading piles of camping gear from the truck.
And I was in heaven, I tell you. Pure heaven. Like in heaven, scared, intimidated, but somehow safe and belonging.
As we watched Mr. Williams unload supplies and generally stayed out of his way, John informed me that we’d be sleeping in the pop-up camper with his old man. We unloaded the orange truck of our personal gear and moved them to the camper. No one from the campfire said another word to us, having picked up their previous conversations. Handguns. Long guns. Velocities. Scopes. Perps. Undercover work. Former colleagues.
The old pop-up camper smelled of moth balls when you stepped into it, and moldy plastic. John pointed me to the swing out berth where I would sleep, on the opposite side from his and his dad’s berths. I threw my sleeping bag and backpack full of new camo clothing and emergency camping provisions up on the thin mattress and watched them for what I was supposed to do next.
Father and son were presently exiting the camper with folding camp chairs. I exited after them, without a camp chair, and walked toward the campfire about three steps behind them. Mr. Williams held two camp chairs in his hand and handed one to me without comment as he spread out his own. John had already plopped down in his own chair by then. I made a mental note to buy a folding camp chair as we settled around the campfire. I set up my borrowed camp chair in the space between Mr. Williams and his son, a relatively safe spot around the campfire, I hoped.
Mr. Williams expelled a tremendous sigh as he plopped down in the sagging canvas chair underneath his considerable weight. I felt like a ballet dancer next to him, regardless of my carefully planned outdoor gear, including cold-weather flannel shirt, hiking boots, and jeans. John again introduced me as his friend from high school. The old men around the campfire said things like, “Glad you could make it,” and “Nice to meet you,” and then started again on Mr. Williams.
“You sorry old coot, you came to camp without a drink?”
“Well, is the old lady still ragging you for last weekend?”
“The glare off your bald head is blinding me…”
Mr. Williams responded with vulgar obscenities. “I’m resting before I partake in the libations, you ugly dogs…and you, you!” pointing at the youngest guy, called Giblet, after his father, Mr. Gibbs. “What are you doing sitting there smiling when this here ‘fore’ needs tending? ” The kid from earlier tossed another log on the “fore” without the usual teenage reticence.
A fire’s a “fore” at deer camp, I noted to myself.
The men around the campfire talked about adult things for the next thirty minutes or so as the sun set properly beneath the tree line. One of the older men brought Mr. Williams a large plastic cup, and I knew then what whiskey and coke smelled like. The young Giblet threw another log on the fire without anyone asking. Conversation was mainly shop talk for cops. My friend and host, John, made one or two adult observations, at which I gravely nodded, intimating knowledge. Presently, a set of headlights shown from the direction of the gate.
“That’ll be Kenny,” the bearded one called Mr. Gibbs said.
“He still flying helos for DeKalb County?,” asked another.
“Yeah, made lieutenant last year,” replied Mr. Gibbs.
“Well, I’ll be dipped in pooh.”
The arriving club member named Mr. Kenny pulled up in a Chevy Blazer. The adult men shouted greetings and curses at him from their campfire chairs, just like at Mr. Williams. Mr. Kenny responded with profanities, just like John’s dad, and he took his gear into a compact tow camper that its previous owner had camouflaged with spray paint. Eventually he came out of the camper with a fold out camp chair and a beer and took his place around the campfire. One of the older guys moved his chair over for him.
“Well, Lieutenant, welcome to deer camp, you old curmudgeon.”
“I wouldn’t want to miss it. How’s your daughter?”
The man’s daughter had apparently been having family troubles, because the guy who had welcomed Mr. Kenny by cursing him loudly, tucked his neck in, and said, “She’ll be alright. The boyfriend just left her …but she says they’ll get back together.”
Mr. Kenny said, “Yeah, man, she’ll be okay” as he cracked open the beer, just before another old policeman around the campfire, turning the conversation more cheerful, offered that Mr. Kenny was completely worthless for becoming a “zero,” an officer. Mr. Kenny laughed happily, and sipped his beer.
It went on like this for some time as the horizon turned darker, colder, and the fire drew larger. The senior members of the deer camp continued with their incredible stories of chases and stops, and cussed each other occasionally. They laughed a lot, or agreed seriously, with heavy nods of the head, and sips from aluminum cans or plastic cups. I glanced up to the cold sky above, noticing that the stars were much brighter out here than anywhere else I’d ever been before. There was a definite chill to the wind, but it felt wonderful beneath the layers of my heavy flannel shirt, the hot fire pit, and the camp stories. The voices of sage grown men laughed and reminisced over lives of service and the fire crackled. Cigar smoke and the smell of bourbon in the wind. I went for another Dr. Pepper for John and me in the communal cooler, which I attempted to pull out of the ice chest with the same detached coolness as the members going for beer, popping open the caps disinterestedly, before handing them off. I didn’t even look at my friend John, though I had the urge to shake him with pure joy.
All too soon, the older members began stretching in their chairs, excused themselves to take leaks next to trees, and stumbled to their campers in the dark. Mr. Williams stayed out with us till the last two members seemed like they could go all night long. He gave a great yawn that momentarily squelched conversation, and announced loudly, “I’m going to bed.”
The two serious drinkers cursed at him as he ambled to his pop-up camper. John and I collected up our camp chairs shortly thereafter, stowed them smartly under a communal tarp, and walked to the pop-out camper where we could hear Mr. Williams, aka “The Bear,” per campfire talk, rooting around.
John and I had offered little to the campfire discussion that night, me almost nothing. But, that seemed correct, being a new, young, inexperienced guest and all. The members didn’t even say anything mean to me when I did speak up, like they regularly did to Mr. Williams shucked out of his clothes down to his long johns, climbed into his bunk, said, “G’night,” and turned off the propane lantern with a hiss of extinguished flame, his old man snoring above him.
It was completely dark in the camper. And cold.
By the time I was in my white fruit of the looms in the darkness, and had crawled into the chilly down of my sleeping bag, it was obvious that it was seriously cold outside. It was truly almost freezing, and downright icy in my sleeping bag.
It felt great.
Outside, the two camp members who’d hung around the campfire eventually shuffled to their campers, mumbling quietly. After their aluminum camper doors swung shut, the bouncing reflection of the remnant campfire against the thin plastic of the camper’s walls kept me company, my eyes wide open to the gravity of my situation.
I was finally at deer camp, and tomorrow, I would try to kill a deer.
My senses were completely awake. Awake as I had ever been in 17 years. I didn’t want this night to end. I certainly didn’t want to sleep. Deer camp is awesome. And so I curled into a warmer position, my flannel shirt substituting as the pillow I’d intentionally eschewed, listening to Mr. Williams, “the Bear,” snore loudly, grossly, coyotes howling in the distance.
Coyotes howling in the distance!?
Did the other members hear them?
Listen.
Shhhh.
Heart pounding against the sleeping bag.
Yep! That’s coyotes!
I wanted to immediately mention it to John and his dad. Coyotes! At deer camp!
I studied the remnant fire flicker against the thin plastic walls of the camper for some time, even after the coyotes stopped calling, still thoroughly awake, engrossed in thought about all the wise conversation around the campfire, and the possibilities of white-tailed deer tomorrow. I watched my breath condensing from mouth and nose against the stuttering firelight outside.
Eventually, sometime, much later in the cold early morning darkness, I slept a light sleep full of intermittent dreams - laughing men folk in camp chairs, hugely horned buck deer in the forest, endless Dr. Peppers pulled from an ice chest and coyotes hunting under moonbeam.
Out of my blurry dreams, a propane lantern hissed to life in the darkness of the camper. Mr. Williams was moving heavily about, dawning his cold-weather camouflage gear. I was finally warm and comfortable in my down sleeping bag, after squirming the whole night, but I realized immediately, energetically, in my now fast moving mind:
I wish we could all do something like this to enrich the lives of young kids while ensuring the growth of our sport. I read this every year before the season and it jump starts my heart. Enjoy.
Campfire Chairs
I grew up in the sprawling suburbs just outside Atlanta. The first time I attended a deer camp, I was already a senior in high school about to go to college. I barely knew the skinny underclassman with floppy hair who invited me. His name was John. He and I shared a class together. It was Theater 101, and we had somehow stumbled upon the topic of deer hunting during “group breakout sessions,” which is a pedagogical term for when teachers take a break and students talk amongst themselves.
I knew very little about deer hunting, but I had wanted to do it for a very long time. When I learned that his old man was in a hunt club, which John occasionally attended, he gained instant high school credibility in my eyes. We talked about deer hunting so much that John finally got the hint and said maybe I could come to “camp” the following weekend. He’d have to check with his dad.
John knew everything about deer hunting and guns and strategies and the right gear. He had stories about the colorful club members too. A crazy Vietnam vet with ear necklaces. An undercover narcotics officer with a beard and ponytail. A retired ATF agent that could shoot a dime with his sniper’s rifle from 300 yards. I really hoped he’d remember to ask his dad about next weekend’s camp.
Of course, my mom would not let me go unless John’s dad went along too. I found that out the hard way my freshman year when another boy invited me to deer camp. Older brothers do not count as chaperones, it seems, and mothers of the suburbs do not send their teenage sons to unsupervised deer camps.
John gave me the nod Monday morning, and I gave my mom the good news and John’s dad’s telephone number when she came home from work that evening. I assumed correctly that mom would call John’s dad to ensure the chaperone. Trust but verify. Moms used it way before Reagan.
She allowed me to go to deer camp that weekend. John and I talked about it for the rest of the week, making our plans between classes. I needed all the information I could get since I’d never been to the formidable sounding event in the woods. John may have been a sophomore, two years below me, but he had been to many deer camps, killed and cleaned a deer, knew the camp members, owned all the correct gear. I didn’t want to look like a complete nimrod, even though I was one.
John and his dad picked me up Friday after school in an old orange F-100 pickup truck. Mom came out to meet John’s dad on the driveway. I walked in the opposite direction to the bed of the truck to stow away my sleeping bag and backpack full of newly purchased camos and long underwear. I didn’t own a rifle then, but John said I could borrow one of his dad’s. It embarrassed me having my mom come out to meet John’s dad, Mr. Williams, who I’d just met myself, John making the brief introductions. While the adults’ meeting took place, John picked through my recently purchased Wal-Mart outdoor gear with the critical eye of a veteran sportsman. I heard Mom thank John’s dad as we loaded into the cab of the old pickup. I sat on the narrow back bench, and tried responsibly, albeit fruitlessly, to find a seat belt as we backed out of the driveway. I saved the further embarrassment of actually waving to my mom, and felt bad about it most of the way.
Mr. Williams dialed into an AM country music station and talked about the weather and his work and the deer they had harvested so far this season at camp. He dropped the names and nicknames of the members that would be present that weekend, the old cops and retired military, and confirmed all the stories I’d heard over two weeks. I didn’t want to disappoint any of the members, mainly John and his dad.
We drove east along Interstate-20 for what seemed like hours, well outside of the suburbs, where the strip malls disappear and give way to cow pastures and lone filling stations. Finally, thankfully, we exited the interstate at a rural junction with one gas station. I could not wait to see what a real deer camp looked like. Once we were off the interstate and on the state road, it seemed like any of the fields and patches of woods could have held deer. Lots of them. I kept waiting impatiently on the back bench of the pickup for us to turn off onto one of the well-worn dirt roads. Instead, we drove slowly along the nearly empty asphalt, through several venerable Georgia town squares, as Mr. Williams and his son conversed. Old veterans of deer camp.
John transformed from the younger classmate two grades below me. He knew everything that really mattered this weekend. I leaned forward from the back of the cab, listened intently, and said “yes, sir,” to most everything Mr. Williams spoke. Father and son seemed to speak of higher things, things I did not yet know, and I anxiously waited for the right moment to fill in pauses with a sentence of my own meager experiences. Mr. Williams asked if I’d ever been hunting. He meant deer hunting, of course, but I wanted to gain some quick credibility, and so spoke about the only hunting I’d done to date.
“Yessir, heck, my uncle and I went rabbit hunting once. Killed a big rabbit. Ate it for dinner. It was good. Tasted like chicken!”
Mr. Williams and his son nodded wisely from the front seats, knowingly, innately, correctly, “He’s never been to a deer camp. How do we handle him?”
What I didn’t tell them was that after a day of walking a few bean fields and coming up empty, my favorite uncle and I had adjourned to his friend’s place that bred rabbits commercially. My uncle asked me to pick out a rabbit for dinner, and so I did, reluctantly, a large white one with a pink nose, and my uncle’s friend snatched it up, twisted its neck with a snap and showed me how to clean it properly from a meat hook. I had leftover fried catfish for dinner that night.
I didn’t know it yet, but being able to pull off an otherwise mundane story in an entertaining manner is a big part of deer camp. That particular story would have been funny, but, of course, I didn’t know that then.
The sun was just going down over the tops of the trees when we turned onto a graveled dirt road. A field of tall, regal pecan trees blocked most of the setting sun. Mr. Clendenen stopped the truck at a field gate, and his son, a full two years younger than me in school, impressively, intuitively, sighing loudly like it cost him something, got out of the truck to unlock it. I made moves to follow, but the truck’s metal door swung shut, and his dad and I eased slowly through the open gate and stopped so that John could lock the gate smartly behind us, so smartly, knowing precisely where to put the key back in its hiding spot, and get back in the truck. Still bored with a hint of petulance about opening the gate.
We three drove through the pecan orchard on a dirt path up over a slight rise and down again to where four portable campers were stationed around an already burning camp fire. A few middle aged men sat around in camp chairs with plastic cups in their hands. We pulled up next to a weather beaten pop-up camper, and Mr. Williams turned off the truck. As my new friend John and his dad opened the doors and stepped out of the truck, a barrage of shockingly deep-bellowed curses erupted from the men sitting around the campfire.
Fat man.
- I AM A POTTY MOUTH -- I AM A POTTY MOUTH -- I AM A POTTY MOUTH -- I AM A POTTY MOUTH - target.
@#$%*!
It sounded serious enough. A skinny kid, junior high school type, was laying a fresh log on the fire, grinning. Mr. Williams fired back to the campfire in general with a loud obscenity-laden retort. This brought an increased amount of laughter from said campfire.
“You’re an old grouch.”
“Michelin man.”
And, “Terrible shooter.”
John’s dad didn’t react to the other recriminations, but retorted to the latter with, “I’ll take any of you whippersnappers from 300 yards every day, twice on Sunday.”
This elicited more laughter from the campfire. My new best friend, John, gave me a grin, and, as I stood there, ambled toward the campfire gathering and announced casually, “This is my friend, Fred,” with a thumb over his shoulder as I tried to look serious, clutching my sleeping bag to my chest. I nodded at the gathered men folk, their cups in midair, and smiled like an ape. They nodded uninterestingly and all turned back at Mr. Williams and said, “We didn’t think the wife would let you come another weekend this year.”
“Jump in a lake, ” said he without a glance as he started unloading piles of camping gear from the truck.
And I was in heaven, I tell you. Pure heaven. Like in heaven, scared, intimidated, but somehow safe and belonging.
As we watched Mr. Williams unload supplies and generally stayed out of his way, John informed me that we’d be sleeping in the pop-up camper with his old man. We unloaded the orange truck of our personal gear and moved them to the camper. No one from the campfire said another word to us, having picked up their previous conversations. Handguns. Long guns. Velocities. Scopes. Perps. Undercover work. Former colleagues.
The old pop-up camper smelled of moth balls when you stepped into it, and moldy plastic. John pointed me to the swing out berth where I would sleep, on the opposite side from his and his dad’s berths. I threw my sleeping bag and backpack full of new camo clothing and emergency camping provisions up on the thin mattress and watched them for what I was supposed to do next.
Father and son were presently exiting the camper with folding camp chairs. I exited after them, without a camp chair, and walked toward the campfire about three steps behind them. Mr. Williams held two camp chairs in his hand and handed one to me without comment as he spread out his own. John had already plopped down in his own chair by then. I made a mental note to buy a folding camp chair as we settled around the campfire. I set up my borrowed camp chair in the space between Mr. Williams and his son, a relatively safe spot around the campfire, I hoped.
Mr. Williams expelled a tremendous sigh as he plopped down in the sagging canvas chair underneath his considerable weight. I felt like a ballet dancer next to him, regardless of my carefully planned outdoor gear, including cold-weather flannel shirt, hiking boots, and jeans. John again introduced me as his friend from high school. The old men around the campfire said things like, “Glad you could make it,” and “Nice to meet you,” and then started again on Mr. Williams.
“You sorry old coot, you came to camp without a drink?”
“Well, is the old lady still ragging you for last weekend?”
“The glare off your bald head is blinding me…”
Mr. Williams responded with vulgar obscenities. “I’m resting before I partake in the libations, you ugly dogs…and you, you!” pointing at the youngest guy, called Giblet, after his father, Mr. Gibbs. “What are you doing sitting there smiling when this here ‘fore’ needs tending? ” The kid from earlier tossed another log on the “fore” without the usual teenage reticence.
A fire’s a “fore” at deer camp, I noted to myself.
The men around the campfire talked about adult things for the next thirty minutes or so as the sun set properly beneath the tree line. One of the older men brought Mr. Williams a large plastic cup, and I knew then what whiskey and coke smelled like. The young Giblet threw another log on the fire without anyone asking. Conversation was mainly shop talk for cops. My friend and host, John, made one or two adult observations, at which I gravely nodded, intimating knowledge. Presently, a set of headlights shown from the direction of the gate.
“That’ll be Kenny,” the bearded one called Mr. Gibbs said.
“He still flying helos for DeKalb County?,” asked another.
“Yeah, made lieutenant last year,” replied Mr. Gibbs.
“Well, I’ll be dipped in pooh.”
The arriving club member named Mr. Kenny pulled up in a Chevy Blazer. The adult men shouted greetings and curses at him from their campfire chairs, just like at Mr. Williams. Mr. Kenny responded with profanities, just like John’s dad, and he took his gear into a compact tow camper that its previous owner had camouflaged with spray paint. Eventually he came out of the camper with a fold out camp chair and a beer and took his place around the campfire. One of the older guys moved his chair over for him.
“Well, Lieutenant, welcome to deer camp, you old curmudgeon.”
“I wouldn’t want to miss it. How’s your daughter?”
The man’s daughter had apparently been having family troubles, because the guy who had welcomed Mr. Kenny by cursing him loudly, tucked his neck in, and said, “She’ll be alright. The boyfriend just left her …but she says they’ll get back together.”
Mr. Kenny said, “Yeah, man, she’ll be okay” as he cracked open the beer, just before another old policeman around the campfire, turning the conversation more cheerful, offered that Mr. Kenny was completely worthless for becoming a “zero,” an officer. Mr. Kenny laughed happily, and sipped his beer.
It went on like this for some time as the horizon turned darker, colder, and the fire drew larger. The senior members of the deer camp continued with their incredible stories of chases and stops, and cussed each other occasionally. They laughed a lot, or agreed seriously, with heavy nods of the head, and sips from aluminum cans or plastic cups. I glanced up to the cold sky above, noticing that the stars were much brighter out here than anywhere else I’d ever been before. There was a definite chill to the wind, but it felt wonderful beneath the layers of my heavy flannel shirt, the hot fire pit, and the camp stories. The voices of sage grown men laughed and reminisced over lives of service and the fire crackled. Cigar smoke and the smell of bourbon in the wind. I went for another Dr. Pepper for John and me in the communal cooler, which I attempted to pull out of the ice chest with the same detached coolness as the members going for beer, popping open the caps disinterestedly, before handing them off. I didn’t even look at my friend John, though I had the urge to shake him with pure joy.
All too soon, the older members began stretching in their chairs, excused themselves to take leaks next to trees, and stumbled to their campers in the dark. Mr. Williams stayed out with us till the last two members seemed like they could go all night long. He gave a great yawn that momentarily squelched conversation, and announced loudly, “I’m going to bed.”
The two serious drinkers cursed at him as he ambled to his pop-up camper. John and I collected up our camp chairs shortly thereafter, stowed them smartly under a communal tarp, and walked to the pop-out camper where we could hear Mr. Williams, aka “The Bear,” per campfire talk, rooting around.
John and I had offered little to the campfire discussion that night, me almost nothing. But, that seemed correct, being a new, young, inexperienced guest and all. The members didn’t even say anything mean to me when I did speak up, like they regularly did to Mr. Williams shucked out of his clothes down to his long johns, climbed into his bunk, said, “G’night,” and turned off the propane lantern with a hiss of extinguished flame, his old man snoring above him.
It was completely dark in the camper. And cold.
By the time I was in my white fruit of the looms in the darkness, and had crawled into the chilly down of my sleeping bag, it was obvious that it was seriously cold outside. It was truly almost freezing, and downright icy in my sleeping bag.
It felt great.
Outside, the two camp members who’d hung around the campfire eventually shuffled to their campers, mumbling quietly. After their aluminum camper doors swung shut, the bouncing reflection of the remnant campfire against the thin plastic of the camper’s walls kept me company, my eyes wide open to the gravity of my situation.
I was finally at deer camp, and tomorrow, I would try to kill a deer.
My senses were completely awake. Awake as I had ever been in 17 years. I didn’t want this night to end. I certainly didn’t want to sleep. Deer camp is awesome. And so I curled into a warmer position, my flannel shirt substituting as the pillow I’d intentionally eschewed, listening to Mr. Williams, “the Bear,” snore loudly, grossly, coyotes howling in the distance.
Coyotes howling in the distance!?
Did the other members hear them?
Listen.
Shhhh.
Heart pounding against the sleeping bag.
Yep! That’s coyotes!
I wanted to immediately mention it to John and his dad. Coyotes! At deer camp!
I studied the remnant fire flicker against the thin plastic walls of the camper for some time, even after the coyotes stopped calling, still thoroughly awake, engrossed in thought about all the wise conversation around the campfire, and the possibilities of white-tailed deer tomorrow. I watched my breath condensing from mouth and nose against the stuttering firelight outside.
Eventually, sometime, much later in the cold early morning darkness, I slept a light sleep full of intermittent dreams - laughing men folk in camp chairs, hugely horned buck deer in the forest, endless Dr. Peppers pulled from an ice chest and coyotes hunting under moonbeam.
Out of my blurry dreams, a propane lantern hissed to life in the darkness of the camper. Mr. Williams was moving heavily about, dawning his cold-weather camouflage gear. I was finally warm and comfortable in my down sleeping bag, after squirming the whole night, but I realized immediately, energetically, in my now fast moving mind:
The kids that don't have the chance to experience hunting with a mentor... so many kids that grow up in the city, and so many of them that would love to have this opportunity. I remember my own son getting to go to camp with his cousin, and how much he loved it. Eating breakfast in camp, hunting, the camaraderie of the other men and boys in camp... He could hunt at home but it just wasn't the same. My own nephew, who came once a year to hunt a day, two at the most, with me... he cherished every minute and dreamed of it and couldn't wait to shoot his first deer. When Georgia first started the youth weekend where 15 and under could hunt with a rifle on muzzleloader weekend, he came for probably the third year, and he shot his first deer, a six point buck. It now hangs very proudly on his wall, along with the eight point he shot on my property the next year. A city boy, that is country in heart and absolutely loves the woods and hunting. If you have the opportunity this year, take a kid hunting. It will give them memories they will forever cherish.
