It was late November of my 16th year in 1959. I was already a seasoned hunter, although I had only acquired my shotgun the previous December for my birthday with my twin brother. It was a Mossberg 16gauge bolt action that served well for bird and squirrel hunting. We had also received a Stevens 22 automatic. Since we couldn't share the shotgun on bird hunts, we bought a used 12gauge shotgun for my brother, and the Mossberg became mine. For deer hunting, I would use slugs.
I'd been hunting all my earlier life using slingshots, bows and arrows, snares and knives to kill all kinds of game for food, sometimes using my grandfather's well-worn Winchester pump action 22. A season or two before, I even carried my other grandfather's 38-54, an ancient octagonal barrel lever action rifle to hunt deer with my father. That season, I saw only one deer, a doe. My father was with me and whispered, "Shoot," three times, but I didn't because only bucks were legal. When he asked me why I didn't shoot, I told him. He was okay with that.
I never fired a shot that trip. We did not waste ammunition or make a lot of noise in the woods. I learned my hunting lessons well, both in Boy Scouts, and through NRA training that was offered free in our town. There was an unwritten code of sportsmanship in hunting that my brother and I adhered to. Many of our friends did not.
DNR had opened up the Necedah wildlife refuge for hunting because the deer population was too high with no predators for the deer except coyotes. It'd been a long time since the refuge was open to deer hunting, so some big bucks were expected. We had to get there early if we were going to bag one.
Dad woke us up at 4 am. We worked nights at the bowling alley so that was very early for us. I was a bit groggy even after breakfast and some hot coffee in the thermos as we drove south for an hour to get to the refuge. Dad "straightened" the sweeping curve south of town on 13 with our 1957 Ford Fairlane 500. It was a 65 mph zone, but he took the curve at 90. We weren't in a hurry to get hunting, but enjoyed the speed and maneuverability of the new car. Dad was a trucker and normally drove very safely.
It was a long drive down a logging road to the end where many others had arrived before us. It was just getting light and a frosty fog hung in the air. We hadn't staked out any hunting spot earlier, so we were going at it rather blind. We decided to meet back at the car for lunch and not venture very far into the woods because it would be easy to get lost in the oak scrub and marsh that populated the place. The first thing we saw was a game warden with a guy under arrest for shooting a turkey. He checked our licenses and we headed into the brush.
My dad put my brother on a stand near an opening in the forest and then put me on a stand about 200 yards or so away. He cautioned us to stay put and not move around, but to wait for the deer to come to us. And then he went off to make a stand in the other direction. It was 0° that morning, so as I stood there up against a tree, the cold gradually seeped into my body until my feet became very cold, and eventually numb, something I was accustomed to but didn't like, being unable to move from my stand or stomp my feet.
My stand was next to a rather large clearing and rather quiet in the stillness of the cold morning with the light filtering in through the trees. I watched for a movement that would indicate a deer, but saw none. I did hear an occasional bird like the common chickadee come through with its joyful sound "chicka-dee-dee," but nothing more. At one point I saw the red coat of a hunter moving through the woods on the other side of the clearing. I hoped that he wouldn't stop and take a stand because he would be in my line of fire and would probably scare away any deer coming my way.
Sometime later, late in the morning, shots rang out from across the clearing. "Bang! Bang! Bang!" They were very close, but I hadn't seen anything, so I got behind the tree, not wanting to be hit by a careless hunter's misplaced shot. It's not a pleasant feeling to be shot at and not know where the shots are coming from. A bit like being in a war with incoming. I wasn't afraid, but I did feel a creepy feeling running up my back.
I waited for about five minutes and heard no more shots, but decided that I was too close to the shooter to stay on that stand and started to walk over to where my brother was. A tall man appeared suddenly from the trees and came up to me. I thought he was another hunter. He wasn't. He was a game warden. He asked me my age and to produce my hunting license, hard to get out of my pocket under my heavy coat in my jeans under my snow pants. My hands were so cold.
I asked him, "Did you hear that shooting?"
The warden replied, "Yes, four doe came through. They were shooting at them."
I nodded, knowing that it was only legal to shoot bucks, and went to find my brother. I kicked myself for not having seen the deer. Perhaps I was where I couldn't see them. After retrieving my brother, we joined up with my father, all very cold, and headed back to the car for a welcome lunch of sandwiches my mother had made in the last of the hot coffee in the thermos.
We saw a huge buck being being pulled up to the cars. When we talked to the guy he told us that there were many game wardens and hunters were being arrested for shooting the wild turkeys that had recently been it reintroduced, coyotes, and any other animals that weren't in season. My dad decided to go to another place that afternoon. So we did.
That afternoon, I covered more ground and came upon a hunter or two moving like I was. There was an occasional shooting and, a couple of times, I heard something coming quite fast and it was deer, in small groups, running as though being chased—all doe. I finally found a suitable stand on a heavily traveled deer trail. I hadn't waited long, when I heard a deer coming cautiously down that trail. It looked like a doe coming right at me with my back to a tree, motionless.
The deer walked right up to me, and pawed the ground with its front hoof smelling me, but unable to distinguish me from the tree as I stood without moving a muscle. It was a buck, with 1 inch bumps on its head, a recent fawn without sense enough not to get shot, but thankfully, illegal to shoot. So I didn't, and he bounded away.
A short time later, I heard shooting and quite a bit of commotion. A herd of about 50 deer came through right by me. I held my shotgun up, looking for horns, but saw none. The shooting continued as the herd moved out of sight as quickly as they came. I doubted if there were any bucks to shoot at, but other hunters felt otherwise. In junior high school, earlier, one of my fellow students had described his deer hunting experience by saying that he had had a couple of "brush" shots. I asked him what he meant by brush shots and he casually replied that his uncles had taught him to shoot when the brush moved because often that was a big buck that you would never get another shot at.
I asked him, "What if you shoot a doe?"
The stupid kid replied, "Oh, we take it if we can, otherwise we just leave it."
Later that day, I found out what that kid meant as I came across six recently shot does before I got back to the car that afternoon having never fired a shot. I felt sad that so many hunters were disregarding the law for their own benefit. We found out that one guy had been shot in the stomach that day. I'm surprised with all the shooting, that more people weren't shot. My dad said that in the deer seasons of 1946-47 with all the troops home with surplus guns in the forests lightly hunted during the war years, that it sounded like war with all the shooting going on then.
We returned in the late season for bow hunting in December. This time to a different area in the refuge. There was old, crusty snow on the ground and I walked the entire time to keep warm following deer tracks. Once again, I found six dead doe, they were turning green in spots from warm weather after the earlier gun season. The few coyotes in the refuge were probably too sated from eating other carcasses to bother with these. It was a shame.
Since that time, with careful management, the deer population in Wisconsin has increased. Doe are often now tagged in some counties to keep populations under control so that the forest, their source of food, is not damaged by over browsing during the winter.
With everyone owning pistols and many buying semiautomatic rifles and then converting them to automatic, I wonder what deer hunting is like today. From my experience, it was like war, a dog eat dog competition to see who could shoot the most. The sportsmanship we were taught seemed to go out the window in the heat of the hunt.
Copyright 2015 © Ronald W. Hull
1/22/15
