The year would be 1952 or maybe it was 1953 – memory fails me - when my cousin Wayne and I shot our first deer. Those who have nimble fingers or can do the math in their head will realize that we were fourteen years old that fall. We were experienced squirrel, groundhog, rabbit, and crow and partridge hunters, having graduated up through the ranks from slingshots to BB guns to .22 rifles.
This was in the dark ages before gun handling and safety courses were de rigueur, but our fathers had tutored us in the art of safely firing guns for a number of years. Although we were not old enough to get a hunting license for large game, we could hunt for partridge (Christian Valley Rules) – as long as Wilson the Game Warden was not in the neighbourhood - the neighbourhood being the twenty or so square miles surrounding our homes in Christian Valley. Neither us could wait until we were sixteen and thus eligible to get a real gun license and in the fall, a deer license!
We did have some big-game experience before that fall day when Grandpa Hoffman saw the buck standing in our field on the last day of deer hunting season. For instance, we had shot the mice in the granary with .22 shorts. We did get a few mice but somehow we did not realize that Grandpas’ rubber garden hose was the mouse’s defence line as they ran from their holes to the bags of chicken feed. We invented the automatic lawn sprinkler system that day, but we were banned from shooting mice thereafter. Several times, we scared the fox that came to the chicken coop looking for a plump Plymouth Rock hen, although he seemed to know the exact range of our .22 bullets and/or our sighting abilities.
We were always careful around the house and barn with our guns as we had smaller sisters and brothers along with cats, dogs, and chickens that might appear at the precise moment when a person got a good bead on a starling. Wayne had a bolt-action Cooey, while I used my Dad’s Browning pump .22 . That Cooey had a safety catch on the bolt that gave us some trouble over the years. Like on April Fool’s Day the next spring when Wayne shot himself in the foot while setting the safety. However, I digress.
Dad and Uncle Gordon had taken the last day of hunting season off work to try to get a deer. Dogs, and men barking like dogs, had chased through the Valley for the past two weeks so our fathers thought the best place to find a deer was up near Simpson Lake near a groove of beech trees. So you can imagine our surprise when a large buck, a doe and a fawn walked out onto the field beside our house. Grandpa, who was a law-abiding and God-fearing man as you would want to find, suggested that we get our guns and try to shoot the deer. We had no license, but Grandpa said we could use my Dad’s to tag the deer later that night, that somehow making our hunt legal in his mind. That was all the encouragement we needed. Somehow, Grandpa knew the men would return empty-handed. I guess Grandpa was getting tired of eating chicken and wanted some venison.
I took the Browning down from its perch high on the kitchen wall while Wayne ran across the road to get his gun. We would be lightly armed for our hunt since Gordon had the .30-30 and Dad had his old .38-55. Until this day, I do not understand why Wayne came back with the single-shot .410 shotgun instead of the Cooey, but off we headed. We knew this copse of bush very well as it was bordered on the west side by Wolf Creek and a rocky knoll on the east. In between the creek and knoll was a tag alder swamp, filled with large clumps of buck grass. We figured the deer were laying low in that grass.
The plan was for Wayne to go down the creek bed with the shotgun while I would go through the alders, perhaps flushing the buck out to him. Wayne had No. 4 shot in the gun and he figured that would knock down a deer. Right.
Approaching from downwind like real hunters, I had hardly moved into the swamp when I heard the .410 fire and Wayne yell. Suddenly there were deer everywhere! I fired at a white flag, thus exposing my strategic position and the big deer turned and headed right towards Wayne. I barked, as we had agreed, however, I may have sounded more like a terrier than a blue tick hound. The excitement, you know. Anyway, that deer came right out to Wayne who fired again, then it turned and came bounding right at me. The Browning held 12 long rifle bullets and before I knew it, I was pumping and pulling the trigger on an empty chamber.
A deathly silence fell on the swamp. All I could hear was my heart thumping in my ears. Wayne yelled, “Did you get him?” “Yeah, I think so!” I said, figuring I had filled that deer so full of lead that it would be inedible. It took us a minute or two to find the deer. Wayne said his Dad told him to cut the throat right away so the blood would drain out and not spoil the meat. He applied his trusty hunting knife to throat and it did indeed bleed a lot.
After we calmed down a little we realized we should get the deer out of the bush and to the house. Wayne figured that Wilson the Game Warden might have heard all that shooting and he would come to investigate. We told Grandpa that we had the deer and he suggested using the tractor and trailer to haul it to the house. He even suggested covering the deer with some of the old asparagus brush, which he was cutting that day and had already put on the trailer. Grandpa said he thought it must have been at least an 8-point buck, but we made no comment as we took the tractor and trailer.
The men arrived a few hours later and they put their deer tag onto our deer. They had us repeat our story a couple of times, praising us for our hunting prowess. The autopsy revealed that the deer had died from a severed throat. There was one pellet from the shotgun in the spine that may have temporarily given the fawn a sore back and one crease on the skull where a .22 had perhaps stunned the little deer, neither gunshot wound being lethal.
The rest of the story is that while we were sitting there in the swamp admiring the deer that we had shot and exchanging how we thought we each had shot it, there was a loud snort. Not twenty feet away a big 8-point buck jumped up from the tall grass, gave us a dirty look, and bounded away.
