Reminiscing

[Nicodemus]

Nic, I don't ever remember a fall turkey season growing up In Irwin county or never ever saw wild turkeys back then or never heard of any those old timers going or referring to turkey hunting.
May have been a turkey season but I wasn't aware of it because there wasn't any turkeys around in our area & nobody talked about it. Never saw any in the fields or anything.

This was in Wheeler County down on the South end of the county. There weren`t any deer, and the turkeys were beyond wild. They stayed in the swamp and I don`t ever remember them in the fields. And if you spooked them, they flew most of the time rather than run. Those birds were smaller and darker than the turkeys we have today. It was a big gobbler that weighed 16 pounds. Only after I moved to Florida for a couple of years did I realize that they were Osceola turkeys. When the state did all that restocking, they were using Easterns.

 

[Resica]

We drug the hair off your first buck in places because we drug it so far. We had some fun in that ancient land.


View attachment 1262750

Was it gutted?

 

[Nicodemus]

Was it gutted?

I don`t remember? Probably not.

 

[WOODIE13]

Was it gutted?

Drug with the back legs

 

[Nicodemus]

Drug with the back legs

No, we drug it by the antlers.

 

[specialk]

i find myself reminiscing now more than paying attention to the woods around me when i'm on stand....2nd season without my dad and it just aint the same, glad my son will be with me....

​

 

[Resica]

I don`t remember? Probably not.

Would have been a slightly easier drag. I never heard of people not gutting deer till I got on here.

 

[Resica]

Never heard of coolers either. It is much hotter down there though.

 

[WOODIE13]

No, we drug it by the antlers.

My cousin's son was dragging one out by the hind legs, swore it was 200 pounds, told him to drag it from the head, was a lot easier

 

[Hillbilly stalker]

My cousin's son was dragging one out by the hind legs, swore it was 200 pounds, told him to drag it from the head, was a lot easier

But then he was going away from the truck, wrong way.

 

[WOODIE13]

But then he was going away from the truck, wrong way.

You heard that one too...

 

[outdoorlife99]

i find myself reminiscing now more than paying attention to the woods around me when i'm on stand....2nd season without my dad and it just aint the same, glad my son will be with me....

​

i find myself reminiscing now more than paying attention to the woods around me when i'm on stand....2nd season without my dad and it just aint the same, glad my son will be with me....

​

Mineb

i find myself reminiscing now more than paying attention to the woods around me when i'm on stand....2nd season without my dad and it just aint the same, glad my son will be with me....

​

Been two years for me too, head still goes into deep thoughts. But like you my kids enjoy it with me now, just wish I could call him up an tell him about a hunt

 

[Jim Thompson]

Kids today are missing out on having to drag a few hundred pounds of 2x4's and plywood, a bucket full of bent nails, saws, and hammers deep into the woods to build stands over trails and early season food sources. We probably built 25 of them in that swamp over the years.

Altho I didnt start messing with deer until the mid-late 80s, funny that it didnt seem as hot and nasty and mosquito and tick infested back then when doing summer work. Nowadays someone has to talk me into messing around the woods in August

 

[rugerfan]

Would have been a slightly easier drag. I never heard of people not gutting deer till I got on here.

I was reading a paper ad for a deer processor the other day and saw 50 dollars for gutting fee. I thought to myself, growing up hunting in PA, the first thing you did was tag the deer, then you gutted it. Then if it was cold enough you hung it in a tree, because it could be hours or the next day until you got it to a processor or started the butchering process yourself.

I had never heard of taking a deer to a processor with the guts still in it until I moved here and started hunting here.

 

[Darkhorse]

Old post I know, but....
Before I got a deer rifle I got a Marine K Bar and was taught how to gut a deer. Those old lessons stuck with me over the decades. I still gut my deer asap.
In those early years we had no portable tree stands, it was either sit on the ground or build one out of scrap lumber. But later on I wanted a Baker. A co worker had made me one and gave it to me. First one I had actually seen, it didn't even have foot straps. I solved that with an old belt.
I was curious. I worked a 4 day week and this was friday and I was home alone. The wife was at work so was the rest of my neighbors. I had a yard full of large pine trees so I went out and got that thing all set up and ready to climb. Put my feet in the straps and started climbing. I had put on a thick sweatshirt and a canvas quail jacket so it wasn't too uncomfortable.
I climbed maybe 30 feet until the limbs stopped me. So I turned around and sat down and just looked around. This ain't too bad at all I thought. After a while I managed to stand back up, turn around and get my feet back under the strap. I lifted the stand then turned my toes down to begin my decsent...... and that stand just slid off my feet and all the way to the ground. Leaving me with a death hold on that tree. I clung there like a foolish monkey as long as I could then loosened up and started to slide down. Worked good for several feet then the bark slipped and I shot to the ground, the sweat shirt, canvas jacket, both slipped up under my arms and over my eyes. Suddenly it wasn't so comfortable anymore.
I slid all the way down until I was stopped by the baker and the ground. My arms and belly were both oozing blood, bruised, and pieces of bark were imbedded in my arms, belly and the side of my face.
So what did I learn? I learned I needed a strap behind my feet to keep the stand from falling.
I hunted that old stand a couple of years then one morning I got down and just walked away leaving it on the tree.
That was one of the best things I've ever done.

 

[WOODIE13]

Old post I know, but....
Before I got a deer rifle I got a Marine K Bar and was taught how to gut a deer. Those old lessons stuck with me over the decades. I still gut my deer asap.
In those early years we had no portable tree stands, it was either sit on the ground or build one out of scrap lumber. But later on I wanted a Baker. A co worker had made me one and gave it to me. First one I had actually seen, it didn't even have foot straps. I solved that with an old belt.
I was curious. I worked a 4 day week and this was friday and I was home alone. The wife was at work so was the rest of my neighbors. I had a yard full of large pine trees so I went out and got that thing all set up and ready to climb. Put my feet in the straps and started climbing. I had put on a thick sweatshirt and a canvas quail jacket so it wasn't too uncomfortable.
I climbed maybe 30 feet until the limbs stopped me. So I turned around and sat down and just looked around. This ain't too bad at all I thought. After a while I managed to stand back up, turn around and get my feet back under the strap. I lifted the stand then turned my toes down to begin my decsent...... and that stand just slid off my feet and all the way to the ground. Leaving me with a death hold on that tree. I clung there like a foolish monkey as long as I could then loosened up and started to slide down. Worked good for several feet then the bark slipped and I shot to the ground, the sweat shirt, canvas jacket, both slipped up under my arms and over my eyes. Suddenly it wasn't so comfortable anymore.
I slid all the way down until I was stopped by the baker and the ground. My arms and belly were both oozing blood, bruised, and pieces of bark were imbedded in my arms, belly and the side of my face.
So what did I learn? I learned I needed a strap behind my feet to keep the stand from falling.
I hunted that old stand a couple of years then one morning I got down and just walked away leaving it on the tree.
That was one of the best things I've ever done.

Never had a near death hunting experience until you used a Baker.

Did the strap and made a hand climber that I tied a rope to it and the platform

 

[Darkhorse]

I'm not prone to panic, I usually keep a cool head in times of great stress, but when I was clinging to that tree way up there without a rope or tool I came real close to a major panic. I was trying to find a quick, safe, solution in a situation of my own making when such a solution did not exist. So I just didn't look down.
Finally I just grabbed at sliding down. I really had no choice. Else I'd end up with a broken neck or worse.
After that homemade baker I bought a real one. It had all the straps and a bungee to go over the heel. It was fine at first but got old quick. About that time I saw my first metal ladder stand at Ace hardware and it came home with me. For awhile those ladder stands were all I hunted with. The main thing was they were quiet to get to and into. Plus they just felt safer.
I ended up with 2 bakers, an amacker, and a summit but the new had worn off and they were seldom used.
The closest I came to actually killing myself was in a stand I'd built. This was down in a swamp where I often had to wade to it too hunt. It was 16 feet to the 4' square platform. It had a rail all the way around with plywood sides. I had a stacking chair on the platform. It was built for safety and comfort.
Then came a Thanksgiving morning and about 11 oclock I decided to get down. I sat on the edge of the platform and turned around putting my foot on the top step just as I'd done many times before, then stepped down and reached for a hand hold on a step........and missed. I was already stepping down and I just went over backward...still reaching for the step. 16' later I slammed into the mud flat on my back. That probably saved my life but it still knocked all the wind out of me and shocked my whole body. It took maybe 30 minutes to get up and start for my truck.
Now I hunt mostly alone, always have. Nobody knew where I was. In fact nobody but my wife knew I was even hunting. I could have lain in that mud for hours. That was when I started carrying a cell phone.
I hate to get started remember things, from a kid with a shotgun riding in the dog box in a swamp buggy in the Florida Everglades to wind swept mountain tops in the American west. There are just too many and it clutters this old mind. But I often drift off to sleep remembering rib sprung pointers and long gone buddies with humpbacked brownings.