Foxtrot1
Well-known member
An earlier post about “the good old times being over” has had me thinking about earlier times in my life.
When I was a kid, hunting was a family affair. It was a collection of uncles, cousins, along with myself and my older brother. In general it was a rag tag bunch that sported only the finest gear that the local army surplus store had to offer. When I was 13-14, my hunting gear consisted of used woodland fatigues, leather combat boots, and my Uncle JB made me a “jacket” by cutting a hole in an army wool blanket so I could wear it like a poncho. I am pretty sure our group contributed to the designer camo movement. More respectable individuals had to find a way to differentiate themselves from our kind.
We would all meet, camp, and hunt on our WMAs primitive weapons hunts because they were some of the only either sex hunts offered at the time. I remember lots of snoring, terrible food, and wondering if I was going to freeze to death on the side of one of the ridges they would leave me on. Even with those hardships I looked forward to hunting trips all year long. I remember listening to the stories of the “old days” and thinking my uncles had to be some of the greatest deer hunters that I knew. Though truth be told, there were far more stories than deer brought out of the woods.
A few years later, when I was away at college, my older brother somehow secured our group access to hunt a large farm in NC. I took a few days off class and we all convoyed the 12 hrs up to hunt the farm for 5 days. It was the first out of state trip we had ever taken. My Uncle Verbon had installed flooring for 40 years, so he had converted his old carpet hauling van into a hunting rig. They would run his 1985 honda ATV up into the back of it and fill it to the brim with gear. If pressed, he and Uncle JB would sleep in it as a makeshift camper. I’m sure 2 old farm trucks and that grey van, all packed with ATVs and hunting gear, made quite a sight going down the interstate at a whopping 65mph. That was pretty much all the old van could handle.
The farm was a little over 13k acres and was absolutely full of deer. I had never seen anything like it, even now. Each morning and evening, the block we hunted in sounded like a civil war reenactment from all the muzzleloader shots going off. Iron sighted Hawkins and old eyes were not a great combination, but my 2 uncles were having the time of their life. At lunch and in the evenings the young guys in the group would go check on those 2 to help with anything they had shot. It was usually a pretty big chore to get all the deer collected, skinned, and on ice at the end of each hunting session.
One day at lunch we went to check on Verbon. Luck would have it that Uncle Verbon had shot a “giant” buck coming out of a bean field that morning, but it had made it out of the field. My older brother, Randall tracked it to the edge of the swamp across from the beans. Those poccossin swamps were nasty places. Waxy shrubs, briars, and hardwood saplings over head high. The only real way to get into them was by crawling down the tunnels the deer and black bears had made through the thickets. So Randall dropped down on his hands and knees and started into the swamp to follow the blood trail. About 75 yards in, he found the deer stretched out laying in the trail. With no real room to move, he reached out and grabbed it by the hind foot to start dragging it backwards. When he did the deer lifted its head and kicked him in the face with his other foot.
Meanwhile, back out on the edge of the field, sounds that I can best describe as someone beating an old rug mixed with an occasional grunt drifted out of the swamp towards us, as Uncle Verbon stood there anxiously waiting. At this point we heard a muffled “IT’S A…LIVE” as all hell broke loose and the brush started crashing about. Verbon couldn’t stand it anymore and had to yell some words of encouragement, “Randall, don’t mess him up! I want JB to see how pretty he was!”.
In the ensuing hand to hoof combat, Randall was getting the worse part of it. With it’s free back foot it was raining kicks down on him. But luckily most of them landed on his face and shoulders, nothing vital was being hit. Finally the deer tried to hook him with his antlers, but got them hung up in the brush. Randall took this opportunity to pull his muzzleloader that was slung across his back, around. Holding the deer in his left hand and rifle in the right he was able get a shot off to dispatch the buck. As it turns out, 54 caliber TCs aren’t designed to be fired one handed when the gun isn’t on your shoulder. The rifle went flying into the brush taking a large chunk of skin from Randall’s index and bird fingers with it.
Back on the outside we just heard thrashing, and grunts followed by a thunderous boom and then quiet. A white cloud along with the smell of blackpowder and burnt hair slowly wafted out of the swamp. I wasn’t exactly sure who had won, I was just really happy it wasn’t my turn to crawl in after that deer. In a few minutes the conquering hero came crawling out dragging that poor deer behind him. Randall was bleeding and battered, but all smiles because he had Uncle Verbon’s deer for him. That whitetail was the size of a nice Sitka blacktail, but was the biggest buck I ever remember either one of the old guys shooting. Over the course of that week our group shot 27 deer. Big ones, little ones, but none were more memorable than that 9pt. Its shoulder mount hung proudly in Uncle Verbon’s gun room up until he passed away.
At the time I didn’t know that would be the last hunting trip I would ever take with them. Life happens.
Since then I have been fortunate enough to hunt some amazing places around the country and world. That has been over 20 years, but I still think to myself “Uncle Verbon and JB would have loved this” whenever I go somewhere new.
When I was a kid, hunting was a family affair. It was a collection of uncles, cousins, along with myself and my older brother. In general it was a rag tag bunch that sported only the finest gear that the local army surplus store had to offer. When I was 13-14, my hunting gear consisted of used woodland fatigues, leather combat boots, and my Uncle JB made me a “jacket” by cutting a hole in an army wool blanket so I could wear it like a poncho. I am pretty sure our group contributed to the designer camo movement. More respectable individuals had to find a way to differentiate themselves from our kind.
We would all meet, camp, and hunt on our WMAs primitive weapons hunts because they were some of the only either sex hunts offered at the time. I remember lots of snoring, terrible food, and wondering if I was going to freeze to death on the side of one of the ridges they would leave me on. Even with those hardships I looked forward to hunting trips all year long. I remember listening to the stories of the “old days” and thinking my uncles had to be some of the greatest deer hunters that I knew. Though truth be told, there were far more stories than deer brought out of the woods.
A few years later, when I was away at college, my older brother somehow secured our group access to hunt a large farm in NC. I took a few days off class and we all convoyed the 12 hrs up to hunt the farm for 5 days. It was the first out of state trip we had ever taken. My Uncle Verbon had installed flooring for 40 years, so he had converted his old carpet hauling van into a hunting rig. They would run his 1985 honda ATV up into the back of it and fill it to the brim with gear. If pressed, he and Uncle JB would sleep in it as a makeshift camper. I’m sure 2 old farm trucks and that grey van, all packed with ATVs and hunting gear, made quite a sight going down the interstate at a whopping 65mph. That was pretty much all the old van could handle.
The farm was a little over 13k acres and was absolutely full of deer. I had never seen anything like it, even now. Each morning and evening, the block we hunted in sounded like a civil war reenactment from all the muzzleloader shots going off. Iron sighted Hawkins and old eyes were not a great combination, but my 2 uncles were having the time of their life. At lunch and in the evenings the young guys in the group would go check on those 2 to help with anything they had shot. It was usually a pretty big chore to get all the deer collected, skinned, and on ice at the end of each hunting session.
One day at lunch we went to check on Verbon. Luck would have it that Uncle Verbon had shot a “giant” buck coming out of a bean field that morning, but it had made it out of the field. My older brother, Randall tracked it to the edge of the swamp across from the beans. Those poccossin swamps were nasty places. Waxy shrubs, briars, and hardwood saplings over head high. The only real way to get into them was by crawling down the tunnels the deer and black bears had made through the thickets. So Randall dropped down on his hands and knees and started into the swamp to follow the blood trail. About 75 yards in, he found the deer stretched out laying in the trail. With no real room to move, he reached out and grabbed it by the hind foot to start dragging it backwards. When he did the deer lifted its head and kicked him in the face with his other foot.
Meanwhile, back out on the edge of the field, sounds that I can best describe as someone beating an old rug mixed with an occasional grunt drifted out of the swamp towards us, as Uncle Verbon stood there anxiously waiting. At this point we heard a muffled “IT’S A…LIVE” as all hell broke loose and the brush started crashing about. Verbon couldn’t stand it anymore and had to yell some words of encouragement, “Randall, don’t mess him up! I want JB to see how pretty he was!”.
In the ensuing hand to hoof combat, Randall was getting the worse part of it. With it’s free back foot it was raining kicks down on him. But luckily most of them landed on his face and shoulders, nothing vital was being hit. Finally the deer tried to hook him with his antlers, but got them hung up in the brush. Randall took this opportunity to pull his muzzleloader that was slung across his back, around. Holding the deer in his left hand and rifle in the right he was able get a shot off to dispatch the buck. As it turns out, 54 caliber TCs aren’t designed to be fired one handed when the gun isn’t on your shoulder. The rifle went flying into the brush taking a large chunk of skin from Randall’s index and bird fingers with it.
Back on the outside we just heard thrashing, and grunts followed by a thunderous boom and then quiet. A white cloud along with the smell of blackpowder and burnt hair slowly wafted out of the swamp. I wasn’t exactly sure who had won, I was just really happy it wasn’t my turn to crawl in after that deer. In a few minutes the conquering hero came crawling out dragging that poor deer behind him. Randall was bleeding and battered, but all smiles because he had Uncle Verbon’s deer for him. That whitetail was the size of a nice Sitka blacktail, but was the biggest buck I ever remember either one of the old guys shooting. Over the course of that week our group shot 27 deer. Big ones, little ones, but none were more memorable than that 9pt. Its shoulder mount hung proudly in Uncle Verbon’s gun room up until he passed away.
At the time I didn’t know that would be the last hunting trip I would ever take with them. Life happens.
Since then I have been fortunate enough to hunt some amazing places around the country and world. That has been over 20 years, but I still think to myself “Uncle Verbon and JB would have loved this” whenever I go somewhere new.
