My First Day as a Big Game Hunter

November 16, 2007, 10:00 am; posted by
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My wife was born in Tupper Lake, NY, which should tell you, if you know anything about Northern New York, that she’s from the mountains — the Adirondack Mountains, to be exact. That means that when we married in 1982, I gained a father-in-law and some brothers-in-law, well versed in the ways of the woods. They were deer hunters. My dream to finally attain manhood was now in reach.

For the first few months of our marriage, all I heard about were the pastexploits and foibles of the Ferry clan. How Craig and John had once shot a deer five times between them, blowing off an antler and a hoof in the process, while still not bringing any venison home to the table. How Paul Jr. had spotted a buck, jumped up onto a stump and emptied every cartridge from his gun — cocking and expelling shells with frenetic fury — without ever actually firing a shot at the fortunate deer. Buck fever, they called it, the condition of being so excited you can’t even get a shot off. Times had been rough, kills few and far between, but according to my father-in-law, those times were changing.

“Dave is our good luck charm,” he would tell anyone who would listen. “I’ve just got a feeling he’s gonna get us a buck this year.”

Hunting season finally arrived, and we packed into a car in the dark hours before morning, so we could be at our spots by daybreak. There were promises of a large breakfast at some roadside diner, but apparently the restauranteurs in our neck of the woods were smarter than the average hunter, and none of them were open at such an ungodly hour. This was my first tactical error; I didn’t make coffee before I left the house, planning on getting some at the diner. Groggy, hungry and feeling the beginnings of a caffeine headache coming on, I stumbled into the woods of Belfort on the Stillwater Reservoir.

My father-in-law gathered us together and started pouring out marching orders in a nearly unintelligible language, directing people to ridges and ravines, while making wide sweeping motions with his arms.

When he finished I said, “What do I do again?”

He pointed to a tree a short distance way and said “Just sit there, we’re gonna drive the deer right to you.”

He handed me a Winchester 30-30 lever-action carbine rifle and a fist full of bullets, and then they started to scatter. I looked at the bullets, then the gun, and realized I now had my second problem of the day. They were getting away and I had no idea how to load the gun! Me, the hero, the avenger of past defeats at the hand of the Deer clan! How could I play this without dashing their hopes?

“Uh… Wait! What do I do with these?,” I called out. “Where do they go? I mean, in the gun — how do they get in the gun? The bullets…”

I’ve never seen a more confused and scared bunch of men in my life.

“Didn’t you take the 6-hour hunters’ safety course required to get your license?,” one of my brothers-in-law asked.

“I did,” I said, “I took it in about a half hour. The guy teaching the course had a football game to get to. He’s an official. He gave me a bunch of stuff to read, but I haven’t read it all yet… haven’t read any of it yet actually. I will, though!”

After helping me load the gun, they left quickly and quietly. That was the last I saw or heard of them that day until we left for home several hours later. They all scattered, hunted, and presumably stayed as far away from me as possible. I sat under the tree with a growing headache and dozed fitfully.

At one point, as I slept with my back against the tree, my hands in my pockets for warmth, the loaded gun in the crook of my arm, I jerked awake causing the gun to fire very close to my left ear.

When everyone re-assembled, the conversation went kind of like this:

“Craig, did you shoot at something?”

“No, wasn’t me.”

“Paul? Did you get a shot at one?”

“Nope, never saw a thing.”

All eyes turned to me. “Did you shoot at something?”

“Uh…yes and no… It’s kind of a funny story. Let me turn this way, I can’t really hear anything out of this side right now… See, I was sitting where you told me to sit, and . . .”


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