50 Autumns

On an October Saturday morning 50 years ago, drops of cold rain water fell on my neck as I leaned close to the reed wall of the duck blind. I tried to peak upwards through the brim of my hat. I didn’t dare look up and expose the shiny, bright skin of my face. Somewhere above, wary mallards circled. I can still smell the sweet blue bent grass inches from my nose. The tiny seeds stuck to the rain water on the blued finish of my Savage 20 gauge. After an eternity, there came a loud hissing sound and a splash as deceived ducks settled into the decoys. I gripped the shotgun tightly and waited for the word from Dad to stand and shoot.

Another autumn day found my friend Sam and I working our way home during an after school small game hunt. Pheasants, rabbits, woodcock, and squirrel were all fair game. We were tired and walked side by side along the gravel road back home. As I veered to my right to walk through a five foot wide square of knee high grass, Sam said “There’s nothing in there”. I still remember his gasp as the cottontail that was hiding in that little patch burst straight away and dashed in to thicker cover before either of us could get a shot.

Yet another autumn afternoon found me sitting in “The Bucket Stand”. My after school favorite for archery deer season. The bucket stand sat in a pin oak at the corner of two fields. One could see several hundred yards in any direction and there were heavy woods to the rear. A deer could emerge at any moment. Most days it would be warm when I climbed into the stand. Waves of heat would rise off the soy bean field as I pulled a school book from my bag. Deer activity usually wouldn’t pick up until the temperatures began to drop with the approaching sunset. Once in a while, engrossed in reading, I would be taken by surprise by an unheard deer walking under the tree.

All these memories jumble together over time. Triggered by the smell of Hoppes No. 9 or the discovery of an old, wooden deer stand, any one of them can leap into my head at any moment. All seem as vivid as if they happened last week though all of them were a half-century ago.

In those high school days when most of my life was ahead of me. I had the good sense to squeeze in a hunting or fishing trip at every opportunity. No chance, no matter how small, was missed to get outdoors. I had no idea how fortunate I was to grow up where I did and when I did. I was allowed to own air rifles, and .22s and, once mentored in safe handling and shooting, allowed to take them along on my daily excursions. I was introduced at an early age to the wonders of the duck blind. Then learned on my own the way of the bow and arrow. Also how to solve the mystery of harvesting game with those ancient relics. There was no internet, no YouTube, no TikTok and no Google. We learned the old fashioned way with books, magazines, and what mentors we could find.

As I write this bit of nostalgia, it occurs to me most of my life is now behind me. While I still try to get into the field at every opportunity, those opportunities are now tempered by life and adult responsibility. I have also learned to appreciate quality over quantity. I have a younger friend I often hunt with who, as I write, is probably out in the field right now. I think he shakes his head at mine and my buddy Joe’s attitudes when we don’t hunt in less-than-ideal conditions. These days I no longer sit through a rainy maelstrom. I also don’t like to hunt when it is better fishing or beach weather. Once upon a time, Joe and I quite literally hunted in a hurricane. I don’t know what we thought we were going to see. Of course the answer was nothing. Looking back I realize it was more dangerous than smart. Additionally, I do this for fun. I’ve taken enough game in my life that if I am never successful afield again, I consider myself most fortunate. If it is pouring rain, or hot and humid I’ll stay home and sip coffee and remember better days afield.

For most people, with age comes wisdom but being wise, doesn’t come from age alone. Wisdom comes when we learn from experience. Mother Nature is an excellent teach if one listens and learns, and the natural world is full of excellent teachers. Some of them, like a Catholic nun, are pretty harsh. Weather, and gravity fall in to this category. Mess around with either of them and you are going to get something worse than a rap on the knuckles. Other teachers like the wind, the animals, the seasons, and the moon all use much more subtle teaching methods. The attentive student can learn a lot simply by paying attention and taking good notes.

I remember as a young man discounting the things many older hunters said. “What would they know?” As I learned things the hard way I realized, in most cases, someone had told me about those lessons. I chose to ignore the advice. It’s at this point that you realize who your mentors were. I’m reminded of a story told about baseball great Ted Williams. Anyone who purchased any sporting goods from Sears in the latter part of the last century will remember the “Ted Williams” signature. It was on virtually everything they sold. Ted was one of the greatest hitters to ever take the baseball diamond. He was also an avid hunter and fisherman. Some years after he retired, he and teammate Johnny Pesky were fishing along a river in the Pacific Northwest. The two never saw eye to eye on batting strategy with Johnny being much more of a free-lancer than Williams. During their fishing trip, the two got to arguing so much they stopped fishing. They engaged in a deep-dive into batting strategies right there on the river bank. Passing fisherman paddled by with a smirk thinking “Look at those two crazy old men arguing.” Meanwhile, that same conversation could have filled Madison Square Garden for $500.00 a head if tickets were being sold. The smart hunter shoiuld not discount the opinion of those that have been around the block a few times. As in life, in hunting good advice is timeless.

As a modern outdoorsman, I feel I have lived a fortunate life. I got to grow up in hunting and fishing heaven with 70 acres to roam in out my back door. I have also been very lucky with the friends I have made as I have aged. After leaving my native South Jersey, I was fortunate to be invited by my friend Joe to a traditional Pennsylvania deer camp. This was in the early 1990s when deer season still worked “the old way” in Pennsylvania. If you are a deer hunter, you know what I mean. If you aren’t, it isn’t especially worth the required long explanation. Suffice it to say that those were the end of the golden years of the first age of Pennsylvania hunting. I consider myself fortunate to have had the opportunity to partake. I will be forever grateful to Joe for that opportunity. And also for the lifelong friends that came out of that early hunting camp.

Duck hunting was my first love when it came to the outdoors. Dad, like most World War II veterans, came home and took up duck hunting. It was the thing to do outdoors. There weren’t many deer around then, but ducks were plentiful and migrated in waves of millions of birds. The magic of duck hunting is that the game comes from the sky. The birds may have been 1000 miles away the day before. Nothing is as exciting as hunkering in the blind as cautious mallards circle above. The whistle of passing pinions is replaced by the slashing sound of cupped wings as the birds commit. There will forever be a soft spot in my heart for the smell of burned nitro mixed with the sweet scent of blue bent grass.

I thought I would be a lifelong duck hunter but two things happened as I came of hunting age. The first was the collapse of the duck populations from the severe droughts of the 1980s. The second was the rise in the deer population. To my Dad’s generation, deer hunting was a bit of a novelty. He never took up the game though indulged me a few times to build a safe stand. (I think he discovered one or two that my cousin and i built using scavenged barn wood and recycled nails.) But my generation was probably the first really devout deer hunting generation. Even as I looked forward to the annual waterfowl forecast in the “Ducks Unlimited” magazine, I began reading everything I could get my hands on about deer hunting. Magazines like “Sports Afield” and “Outdoor Life” usually had a deer hunting annual. Back then other issues of such periodicals were about all forms of hunting. Occasionally, as deer season approached there were articles about how to be a successful deer hunter. This was before the world became obsessed with big antlers transforming those magazines into deer ranching journals. I read and re-read books by authors like Byron Dalrymple, Leonard Lee Rue III, and others including Fred Bear. Fred Bear became the most influential.

Back in the 1970s, deer were not as plentiful as today. South Jersey was no exception. I can still remember stories in “The Salem Sunbeam” about someone spotting deer in a local field. Deer season was antlered deer only, and ran from Monday to Saturday in mid December. Deer hunters were allowed one deer. Period. As the popularity of deer hunting grew, most of the rural kids would be absent from school on opening day. It was an exciting week, but success was far from guaranteed.

As long as I kept my grades up, I was usually allowed to take off opening day. Otherwise, I could hunt the Saturday. If I got a ride home from school I could hunt the last hour of daylight of each day. With such a little bit of time to dedicated to hunting, odds of success were not high. This is why I found Fred Bear’s work so appealing.

Fred Bear is known as the father of modern-day bow hunting. Yes there were people like Saxton Pope and Art Young who learned about hunting with a bow from Ishi. Ishi was the last Yahi Native to wander out of the California hills. Fred Bear brought bowhunting to the masses. Not only was he a skilled archer and bow hunter, but also founded Bear Archery. Bear Archery was the first company to mass produce affordable, safe, and reliable hunting bows and to encourage their use. Bear worked hard to promote hunting with a bow and was the first to have video of actual hunts. Can you imagine the gear one would need to haul around to video a hunt back in the 1960s and 70s!? They didn’t have Go Pros back then. There was a rather famous video of Fred taking a massive brown bear somewhere in Alaska. It aired on prime time TV if you can believe it. The hunt was spot and stalk. In addition to Fred, there was a cameraman with his giant recording apparatus and a Producer! Just picture a film production crew stalking through the Alaskan bush trying to take one of the most dangerous and wary animals on earth!

As the story goes, after a couple failed stalks, the Producer told Fred that it would be good to have the bear stand up before he shot it so it could be seen better. These weren’t trained animals but dangerous, wild bears that would literally eat you up for invading their personal space. But Fred being the agreeable sort, nodded his head and said “Okay”. The roving movie set finally got in range of an unaware animal. Fred gave it a whistle to get it to stand up. Once the Producer nodded that they had the footage they needed, Fred drew his long bow and sent a deadly shaft into the bear. Nothing to it! Only a hunter that has taken an animal with a bow can truly appreciate the ridiculousness and danger of the situation. But Fred did it all for the advancement and promotion of bow hunting.

As a 10 year old kid, I never imagined myself stalking far away places after dangerous game. I did fantasize about one day maybe killing a deer. I’d only ever seen a couple deer while out in the woods. The idea of hunting and bagging one burned in my soul. Unlike the super-short gun season, bow hunters had a full month of hunting to take a deer. The equipment was more complicated, harder to learn. It also required getting super close to a calm animal. Still, it seemed impossible that one could go an entire month and not have a chance to get a deer. So began the process of bugging my parents for a 35 lb compound bow. That was the minimum poundage required to use for deer hunting in New Jersey.

The big break came when I was filling one of our bird feeders. It was mounted on an old cherry tree stump a few feet off the ground. I climbed up to fill it and felt a sharp twinge in my lower back. It was painful enough that I mentioned it to my Mom. I was diagnosed with severe scoliosis. I was sentenced to a teenage life of wearing a torturous Wilmington brace. I extorted my Mother’s guilt and got her to take me to a small, local archery store. We left the shop with my first bow, a handful of arrows, and a leather shooting glove. The obsession with archery and bow hunting was underway!

It would be several years of learning before I finally took my first deer with a bow. It wasn’t a big deer but a button buck which is the first deer for many. Had I been a bit more patient, I could have taken a much larger doe. But I was over-the-moon happy with my first deer. And especially happy because I had taken it with a bow. I don’t think I slept at all that night.

Since then, I have taken a couple hundred with bows and rifles. In those early days of my youth, getting a single deer was an accomplishment. As deer numbers ballooned and tags and opportunity grew, so too did the desire for a high body count. Does, fawns, bucks of all sizes all were fair game. There were a couple years of getting 6 to 8 deer most of which were given away or donated. Now button bucks, fawns, and most does get a pass. I don’t want my fall days in the woods to come to an early end. I won’t take more deer than my wife and I need for a year’s supply of meat. I have been very fortunate to get my share of legal bucks over the years. I have also enjoyed some splendid days afield in the deer woods.

Hearkening back to those youthful days of learning, I read with rapt attention stories of hunting bugling elk in the far-off western mountains. There were also stories of mountain sheep hunts high in the Rockies, tales of caribou hunts as great herds migrated across Alaskan tundra and many tales of African exploits by the likes of Jack O’Conner and others. Each year I would acquire the Weatherby catalog. I would spend hours marveling at the ornate game rooms of the rich. I admired their magnificent trophies from all over the world.

Over the years any urge to hunt Africa died quickly. I have never been rich. I have never had need to be a pampered rich hunter catered to by people barely making enough to support their families. But elk hunting was another story. Elk hunting was mano y mano. Man against beast in some of the wildest parts remaining in North America. The appeal of hunting a rut-crazed bull as he shepherded his lady friends away from challengers burned a bright fire within. One day at work, I wandered in to Joe’s office and said, “So, are we going elk hunting or what?”

I was fortunate enough to arrange and attend a dream elk hunt. We rode horseback miles back into National Forest land. We lived there without the benefit of engines or electricity for days. I was even fortunate to take my first bull elk on that trip with a bow at that! I returned to the west several more times to hunt elk. Each trip featured different variations of success. There was also one tremendous moose hunt at the very top of North America. Modern economic times, and other responsibilities, at least for now, have reduced the opportunity for far-flung hunting adventures. I still get just as excited by the whitetail rut and being in the deer woods near home every fall. I no longer regularly spend time in the duck marsh. That, of course, could change. As long as I am physically able I will return to the woods each fall. Heck I’ve been doing it for 50 years. In that time, I’ve traveled to amazing places both near and far. I’ve met my best friends. I’ve seen some fantastic dog work, and been part of the very core of the natural world. Why would I want to stop now?