Every so often, it occurs to me that I am, without question, one of the luckiest guys in the world. It’s a brash statement, no doubt, and I hope that it doesn’t come off as bragging, because that’s not how I mean it. To me, it just means that I understand, and that in my heart of hearts, I’m truly thankful for the life that I’ve been given!
You see, I’m a country boy at heart. I’ve always loved the outdoors. I love to hunt and fish and camp and canoe and hike, and sometimes, just to fiddle around in the woods or a small stream and ogle the miracle of creation “up close and personal.” And I’ve lived most of my life in places where I could do those things and where my lifestyle choices were generally accepted. And I’m grateful for that too, because I know that not everyone has that experience.
These days, too few people have a deer stand within earshot of their back door. Nor can they sit on their own back porch, drinking their morning coffee, and listen to a wild turkey gobbler proclaiming his loneliness from the same stand of oaks—the way I did this morning. And there aren’t a lot of folks who get paid to gallivant around the world just to hunt and fish and write little stories about their adventures. Lucky? You bet!
At the same time, I have to confess that I’m a crusty old goat—stubborn, set in my ways and opinionated enough to sometimes forget that my way isn’t the only way. And that other folks’ circumstances are likely different than mine. And I guess that I should, at the same time, confess that not everybody can do it my way. Which is an old writer’s way of getting around to telling about my latest escapade. One that opened my eyes, and more than little!
It started innocently enough—with African PH Gordon Stark engaging in a campfire conversation with a client in the deepest, darkest nowhere of Mozambique. The client had, that very day, successfully concluded his quest for a Mozambique Cape buffalo with Gordon’s Nhoro Safaris outfit. I’m told that the conversation ranged far and wide, as they will over a campfire and a celebratory toddy or three, and sometime late in the African night, while the hyenas chuckled and the bush babies cried, the client allowed that Gordon should grab a friend and come to the U.S. to hunt with him at his deer lodge in Indiana.
The client related that when it came to whitetails, he had lots of ’em and big-uns, too. Gordon, caught up in the spirit of the moment, admitted that even though he’s taken a multitude of elephant, buffalo and such, he had in fact never taken a really big whitetail. What’s more, having been robbed of any vestige of pride by the aforesaid toddy or four, he carelessly admitted to being my friend and, by the time the toddy count reached five, the plot was hatched.
As it turned out, the client was a heck of a nice fellow named Doug MaComb, another lucky guy who devotes his time to living life to its fullest, and he does in fact own a magnificent deer lodge named Camelot Ridge a little north of Fort Wayne, Indiana. A couple of weeks later, the two conspirators lobbed the idea my way and, although I had never hunted a preserve except for birds, I did figure that I had shot somewhere in excess of a bazillion pen-raised quail, so I might as well give it a try. I reasoned that if a fellow was going to have an opinion about something, he should, at the very least know a little about the subject.
Besides, I had in hand a brand-new custom-built Ruger No. 1 from Todd Ramirez that needed a little work, and I didn’t think it was fair to make the little .300 wait ’til the next season! As it turned out, Doug liked mine so much that he bought a fabulous custom bolt-action .308 that Todd had built on an FN action and it had never been blooded! Those two facts alone were reason enough to warrant a trip!
When January rolled around, Gordon and Doug picked me up at the small airport in Anderson, South Carolina, on a gorgeous faux-spring day, with the temperature hovering around 75 degrees. The clear blue sky was dotted with fluffy, white, cotton candy clouds that forecast a balmy hunt. As with most weather forecasts, though, this one was wrong. When we landed at Fort Wayne a couple of hours later, it wasn’t particularly cold, but the flat gray, leaden skies carried the feel and smell of coming snow. Suddenly, it felt like deer season all over again!
An hour or so later, we turned into a winding gravel drive that looped around a huge beaver pond that was chocked full of mallards and Canada geese, and climbed a small hill where the lodge, which also serves as Doug’s home, perched on the crest and stood sentinel over the pond and fields below.
The lodge is nothing short of fabulous but is hard to adequately describe. It’s a massive structure of wood and stone with all the charm that you’d expect from a first-class hunting lodge. At the same time, it has the look of a medieval castle standing guard over the grounds below. Inside, it has the warm, comfortable feeling of home. The staff clearly love their jobs and make sure that guests feel like they’re visiting with family.
Kevin Rarey runs the outside operation, while Janet Johnson runs the lodge. The kitchen is the domain of Chef Dylan Janiszewski, whose culinary talents are unsurpassed. Expect to gain a lot of pounds while you’re there! Brittney Lepley was Gordon’s guide, while I hunted with Kevin.
The place has all the luxury that a guy or girl could want. Easily on par with your favorite 5-star hotel. It can’t be easy to roll all of those things into one package, but somehow they pull it off!
Our first day dawned cold and breezy under broken gray clouds. Over breakfast, Gordon confessed that he had developed a considerable fondness for the little Todd Ramirez No. 1 and when I offered, he elected to take it. I carried a 300 WSM that I had brought along for just such an eventuality.
Shortly before dawn, Gordon and Brittney headed for the far side of the property, while Kevin and I wound our way through dark stands of hardwoods dotted with small fields and food plots and slipped into a cozy, warm box blind. We were securely ensconced by the time that weak shafts of light began to break the pink horizon. The camouflaged blind was tucked inconspicuously into the side of a low ridge where it commanded a good view through a spare stand of small hardwoods. To the left, a small gap accessed massive hardwoods in the bottom that lay in front of the box. Kevin whispered in the dark that whitetail often traveled the trail that ran through the gap to feed in the bottom.
Daylight came slowly that morning due to the cloud cover, but it wasn’t too long before I made out a doe and a medium-sized buck feeding in the bottom. A few minutes later my binoculars picked up the twitch of a tail on the far side of the bottom, but I couldn’t make out the sex of the deer that it was attached to. In a few minutes, all three had moved on and the bottom was vacant, save for a couple of squirrels feeding beneath a huge oak that stood along the far side of the little valley.
For about 30 minutes, the two nutcrackers were the only entertainment we had, and Kevin and I relaxed in the glow of the camp heater that warmed the box blind. Deer or no deer, I figured that life could be a lot worse than where we were, watching daylight come on a crisp winter morning from the comfort of a heated blind!
In a little while, Kevin, who was seated to my left, leaned over and whispered, “Switch places with me. But don’t make a sound!” I did, but couldn’t figure why. I stared out the side window for a good ten minutes but saw nothing. A quizzical look in Kevin’s direction was answered by a nod and a single finger pointed out the side window. More staring! Nothing!
More minutes passed. Then slowly, I noticed that something was out of place! There was a peculiar whitish, horizontal stick hanging about four feet above the ground about a hundred yards out. I think I sensed more than saw something. In the way that old hunters do, I simply knew that something was there! With that, I slowly eased the binoculars up and watched the spot intently until I saw it move slightly.
More time passed. Then it moved again and turned slightly to the left. Finally, the apparition eased forward a couple of feet to reveal a massive crown of whitish sticks that suddenly transformed into a huge set of antlers. Wide! Typical. Ten points, I guessed! Maybe a “sticker” on the right side. Time crept like cold molasses while the pale, disembodied antlers floated through the timber right at the limits of my vision. Finally, I made out the grizzled old muzzle of a tremendous buck!
The old boy may have sensed where I was about to send him, because he was in no hurry to get there. He took a couple of steps and stopped with his shoulder exposed, but he had turned away, leaving only a severe angling shot. Then, for no apparent reason, he buck-jumped forward, ran ’bout 15 yards and stopped, but his vitals were covered by a clump of small saplings. That’s when I decided that the show was over, the fat lady had sung—and he was going to ghost out of my life the same way that he had come into it. He was right on the fringe of my vision, ghosting in and out of the maze of light and shadow. And he was going away!
And then, AND THEN, the Dear Lord, Mother Nature, Fate, the Universe, the Easter Bunny and Santa Clause all conspired to intervene, because some thing, some noise, some movement that I couldn’t see or hear, caught his attention and he turned his head to look up the trail in the direction that he had been heading. With a single step, his body changed direction just enough for me to see an opening where a bullet that slipped in behind his last rib would surely make it into the boiler room. When the .300 boomed, the bullet went exactly where it was supposed to go, and the huge buck dropped straight down. He never kicked, never twitched. And suddenly the woods were as still as death itself.
And while I often muse that the writer’s worst nightmare is to kill in the first hour of the first day, to tell you the truth, I wasn’t complaining at all!
Gordon’s morning was not so eventful. He and Brittney had gone to the far side of the ranch, several hundred yards away, and sat for hours, but saw nothing but does. That afternoon, the weather worsened, the wind picked up, and the sky began to spit little droplets of rain and tiny little snowflakes. After lunch, Brittney decided that they should try a spot down the ridge from their morning stand, and they shifted to an area that was more protected from the weather. And it worked because, with the change, the deer began moving.
The little custom Ruger, which had quickly become my “lucky gun,” produced for Gordon, too, because a true “pig” of a deer sauntered past his stand about mid-afternoon and succumbed to an easy shot. Doug and I were warming our buns by the fire in the lodge when we got the call to come help, and when we arrived on the scene, Gordon was grinning from ear to ear and they were standing over a whitetail that was even more massive than the one that I had taken that morning.
While we were at dinner that evening, it began snowing in earnest. After a little discussion, we all concluded that it was time for Doug to take the little Todd Ramirez rifle for its first hunt, and Doug agreed. After breakfast, Gordon and I wished him luck and settled in front of the fire to wait.
Doug parked the four-wheeler well short of his blind and slipped the last couple of hundred yards through the ankle-deep snow to where the stand surveyed the edge of a small swampy area. Behind the blind was a big stand of hardwoods where whitetail often fed. The little swamp was full from recent rains and he reasoned that any deer in the area would skirt the swamp and pass in front of the stand on their way to the hardwoods. When the time came, the big buck slipped by without giving Doug a chance. And then proceeded to do it again. The third time was the charm, though, because when the buck showed again, the new gun cracked and the big buck ran about thirty yards before plowing head first into the snow.
In retrospect, I think I learned a lot from my first exposure to preserve hunting. Good times come in many forms, and there is no set recipe that works for everybody. On the other hand, I can surely tell you this—the combination of a great lodge, with good friendly people and big deer slipping through hardwoods on a chill winter’s morning is hard to beat.
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