We moved up North when Dad started work in the mines. I became of age to take gun training and Dad figured we could get more venison if he took me with. Dad was a good hunter and always got a deer! 

Well, the first year I could go I didn’t have a gun of my own so Dad let me use his grandpa’s .38-40 1873 Winchester. He put me on a spot that was on a power line out of Ely and I waited and waited? Nothing, but then I heard some brush cracking down below me on a tree line so I pointed that old rifle in that direction. Out of the woods came the biggest moose I had ever seen. I asked myself should I take a shot or not? Well, I didn’t, but he stood there nibbling on twigs for 5 minutes anyway! 

I rested my gun and then I heard a shot just over the hill from where I was, and I figured it was Dad. But then 15 minutes later I heard another shot, and a short time after that I heard a whistle, and Dad was waving at me to come to him. I got to where he was and he said he shot at a nice buck, but it ran off and then he saw it again in the same spot? He shot again and it took off again? He thought his rifle must be off so he started trailing it and there it was not far away, and then ahead of that deer was another? Well, we filled our tags, and he thanked me for not shooting a moose, he said he didn’t want to go to jail!!!!

Now next year he found a good deal on a Savage bolt action 30/30 with a scope and case for $40. The fellow had used it only one year, so boy was I ever proud! One weekend we went down to a gravel pit near where we lived and Dad was going to see if I could hit anything?

He laid a piece of cardboard on the ground and I got my rifle out, loaded it, and lay in a comfortable position. I took careful aim and pulled the trigger! Boy did that thing kick! I went to take aim and another shot but I was having trouble seeing through the scope? I was getting water in my eye? 

Then Dad said, “Let’s go home, you’ve got a cut above your eye! You didn’t have the rifle tight against your shoulder and the scope hit your head, now you’re bleeding.”

This was just the beginning of deer hunting for me!

Deer season came around and Dad was going hunting with a bunch of neighbors. They had a spot picked out east of town. I had since learned to hold the rifle tight when shooting and hit the target pretty good. Dad found a spot for me at the end of this long ridge in the woods that dropped down to a swamp with thick brush 6’ to 8’ high, and at the bottom end of this ridge was a very large rock and it had young birch trees all around it! 

He told me to stand behind the rock facing the swamp and watch for any deer coming this way as most of his friends were farther up the ridge in different spots. He said if I hear shooting to be ready, especially if the other fellow happens to miss, and off he went to find a spot for himself. 

Well, I sat there maybe 45 minutes and then there were shots coming from up the ridge. I had my rifle resting on that rock and sure enough a nice buck came running down the ridge and stopped and was looking back and then I had him in my sights and I gently squeezed the trigger and then harder and harder nothing?

UH OH the safety was on and I’m left-handed. By the time I got the safety off, all I had a shot at was the back end of that buck? I couldn’t shoot him there. Dad would have put me in an orphanage for sure. It would just have been too disgraceful to do that!! 

Now I was faced with what I was going to tell Dad when he came? I put the safety back on and rested my rifle against one of the birch trees near the rock. I wasn’t feeling very good! Well as fortune would have it, the wind started blowing and my rifle slipped off of the tree and fell against that rock. I picked it up and things went from bad to worse? Half of my front site was missing; I never even fired a shot, now what?

A while later Dad came along, following right in the tracks of that buck and then he turned and looked at me where that buck had turned into the swamp. He raised his hands like, “What went on here?”

I told him, “My safety was on, and then my rifle fell over on the rock.”

He just shook his head and we headed back. The hunt was over! 

This was the start of my deer hunting career and it remained the same the rest of my hunting days. It may have had something to do with being cold out. It didn’t make much sense to me to sit out in the cold freezing. I had a lot better luck bow hunting when it was warmer out! 

It was some years later that I got married and bought a place in the country next to county land. I liked archery and did a lot of target practice in the yard. I could do it for hours. I could usually hit everything I wasn’t shooting at and was good at it too! One day I hit a 55 gallon barrel, hit a tire, hit a tree or two, and the garage! 

After my last day of practice, I had all my equipment in the garage ready for the start of hunting the next day. I got up early the next morning, slid out to the garage, and started suiting up when I looked on the floor by the car and lo and behold there was an 8 point buck laying on the floor? I thought this can’t be, boy he was nice!

I couldn’t believe it. I went back in the house had some more coffee and waited for my wife to wake up, then I told her I got a buck!!!!!

She said, “Where?”

I said, “In the garage!” I told her it was just lying there, then I told her I figured that there must have been two of them in the woods yesterday watching me target practice and they flipped to see which one would just die because they knew one or the other was going to get shot by mistake after seeing all the random things I had hit!

This sounded like a reasonable explanation? To me! 

And the buck had even field dressed himself so as to not get the garage floor messy, which was really nice! 

But then my theory was crushed when I got a phone call and someone said they wanted the horns?

Well, I still got a deer!

After this I liked gardening better anyway!