We spotted a set of reddish eyes and knew immediately it was not a coon…

Rain pelted our one room, tin roof camp. Large drops propelled by a “blue norther.” Since the cold front’s arrival thirty minutes before sundown, the temperature had dropped thirty degrees.

Those last minutes of the evening hunting vigil had been exciting. Whitetails, mostly does and near-grown fawns, had been on the move, anxious to fill their rumens with browse to ward off the cold of night. Before deciding to crawl out of my cedar tree deer stand, a board nailed in the fork of two limbs, I watched fifteen “slick heads” and two young bucks, both six-points, pass by. As my right foot touched the ground I heard a loud snort. I turned toward the sound. A nice eight-point buck turned, then ran before I could get all the way to the ground and swing my .30-30 in his direction. I mentally kicked myself for not having done a better job of looking around before leaving my seat.

I got back to our “camp house” just as the first rain drops fell. My mom and dad, Lillie and Lester, and younger brother, Glenn, were already there. Thankfully, they had stoked the fire in our old wood burning stove. I checked a third time to make sure my rifle was unloaded and placed it on the rack in the corner by my bed.

“Whatdyasee?” questioned Glenn.  Before I could answer he added, “Saw two little bucks and eight does and fawns. Mama only saw four does and Daddy saw a big eight-point buck heading toward your stand.”

I glanced at my dad. He was nodding as he said, “Looked to be a bit wider than his ears and his back points were about as long as his ears ­– really nice buck!”

“Must have been the one I saw just as I got out of my stand. Didn’t have time for a shot. He did look good!  Wish he had showed up a minute earlier. If he had, I might have been able to show him to you up close!”

“Water is almost hot!” my mother shouted. “Y’all want any hot chocolate?” We each grabbed a blue enameled cup. Outside, lightning flashed followed moments later by a loud thunder clap. “Glad we’re safe and warm in here,” she said. “We’ll have supper in about twenty minutes, soon as the corn bread is done.  Have a big pot of beef stew I’m warming up.”

“Larry, you and Glenn drag some more wood in from the porch and stack it next to the stove,” my dad directed. “And when you finish doing that, put those four big flat rocks under the stove so they can start warming. We’ll put them at the foot of our beds later to help keep our feet warm during the night.  Heard on the radio this afternoon right before I went to my stand, it’s supposed to be in the lower twenties in the morning.”

Before sitting down for supper, I grabbed the latest issue of Outdoor Life, December 1964, which had arrived that morning. Mom had brought it to camp for me. I paged through it, anxious to see what Jack O’Connor was writing about. It was about then Mom said, “Corn bread’s ready and the stew is hot!”

As we sat around the table, quiet for a moment before asking grace, we heard the wind blowing outside, rain falling hard on the tin-sided building. “Sure hope the rain stops before morning!” I said.

“You’ll have at least two full days to hunt, even it it rains all day tomorrow,” replied Dad. “School doesn’t start again until Monday.”

“Next year we’re going to have turkey again on Thanksgiving Day with the family,” Mom announced. “but this year, it’s stew and corn bread!” Turkey with aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandmothers was great fun and certainly great food.  But secretly, I said a prayer of thanks that we were in deer camp!

I had taken my first whitetail buck a year earlier at the ripe age of fourteen, after a “lifetime” of hunting. I loved whitetail deer hunting. Back then it was what I dreamed of night and day. I guess some things have not really changed.

“Daddy, tell us about some of your early hunts, please!” My brother and I begged.

“When I was little, people used to show up on Papa’s place in horse-drawn wagons,” my dad began. “They set up several big tents and stayed there and hunted for the entire season, all six weeks.  Some hunted with rifles, others hunted with shotguns.

“Most all the hunters carried horns, made from cow horns like the ones I use now to call in my hounds. They blew them if they got lost or when they shot a deer, to ask for help to drag it to camp. There were not many deer back in those days, but generally the racks were bigger than those on the bucks we see these days. Taking a deer back then was a really big deal.”

“When I was younger I liked deer hunting, but I really liked hunting with hounds,” he continued. “Had a pack of coon hounds from nearly as far back as I remember. Hunted most of the time with Lee (my dad’s twin brother) and Buck Kollman.  Buck and I had the hounds, mostly coon hounds, Walker crosses.  Later we got blueticks and black and tans.”

“Remember one night, Buck and I took our hounds out behind his mom and dad’s house. Hunted there because something had been killing the Kollmans’ chickens. We had just turned the hounds loose when they struck a track. In no time the hounds were out of hearing. Buck and I took off running trying to keep up with them. They headed north, and we could barely hear them. We ran in their direction. At one point their bawls turned to chops, like they were treeing. But before we got to them they were running again.

“All of a sudden, they turned and were coming right toward us. They passed within about fifty yards, heading south. My ol’ Belle was leading the pack. Buck’s Tom was pretty close behind.”  Dad took a drink of hot chocolate. “They made two more big circles before they treed again, this time only about a quarter of a mile away.

“Buck and I took off running and got to the tree. Back then we didn’t have flashlights, we used carbide lanterns. Shining up into the tree, we spotted a set of reddish eyes and knew immediately it was not a coon. But then we knew that already by the way it had run!

“I took careful aim with my .22 and shot. Soon as I did the animal fell to the ground. It was a nice bobcat. Later that night we treed a coon as well. Surely was a good hunt!”

For another hour, Daddy continued telling stories about hunts he had been on, chasing deer and following hounds. Outside the wind blew violently. Large rain drops became hail. The fire from the old wood stove surely felt warm and comforting.

Finally, my mother got up, grabbed the ashes shovel, wiped it clean and started putting the big, river flint rocks at the foot of each our respective beds.

I fell asleep under my “feather bed” that night, feet next to the warmed rock, and dreamed of hunting.

Those were the days….