First off, it was a miracle I was there at all. As you all can probably tell from my spelling abilities, I wasn’t the brightest crayon in the box during high school. When I was in school we had to take a permission slip to each teacher and have them approve it, or you didn’t go. I was a strong D+ student then and taking a week off was probably the last thing I should have done, and a couple teachers told me so. All but one signed it though and he let me hang there in that seat for an entire week before he finally agreed. During that week I just sat there and glared at him, 40 minutes each day for 5 days. When he finally came to realize I was a lost cause, he signed it, and I started drafting again.
I rode up with Butch in an Oldsmobile he had, and that sum’bitch didn’t get below 80 until we got to West Branch. We had dinner with the worst cup of coffee ever brewed and I was pinned to the back of the seat a few minutes later. Expressways were still new then and the people traveling them would form up into packs. These packs would be anywhere from 5 to 15 cars with just enough room for Butch to blast through ‘em at 85 miles per hour. It only took us 2 hours and 15 minutes instead of the usual 4 and a half. That sounds a little fast now, but I remember during the time that I’d wished he’d go faster.
We got to Uncle Ted’s campsite about 4 that afternoon so there was still enough daylight to see where we were. Uncle Ted showed us what was left of Hitchcock Station, which is east of Skinkle Rd. From what I’ve recently heard, it’s not a good idea to go down that road anymore so I’m not going to go into directions, just the destination. Hitchcock Station was a town with a lumber mill that our Grandpa Griffin worked on, in the early 1900’s. Most of the buildings were still there then and Uncle Ted showed us which ones to stay out of. Eventually during that trip, Grandpa told us which buildings did what and which one he got caught behind. Ted set up his tent just at the tree line between the town and the swamp. Some people refer to it as the Taylor swamp and some the Intermediate.
He had a 6′6″ center, walled tent that he’d placed on straw after he had shoveled out all the snow. Inside the tent, he spread another bale of straw and then a blanket, that we rolled out our sleeping bags on. He heated it with a kerosene stove, that was placed on a piece of plywood. The kitchen and dining room he made out of visqueen sheets, he was a brick layer and had access to that stuff and used it very creatively. I think Uncle Ted enjoyed making the camp more than he ever did hunting from one. There was pleanty enough room to cook and eat in and not get in each others way. He used a portable ice shanty for an outhouse, and an antique chair for the throne. He’d taken out the normal seat and replaced it with a toilet one, then he would staple visqueen around the inside of the legs and down into the hole. Hanging just out the door was a kerosene railroad lantern with a deep red chimney. (I’ve got that lantern here if there’s any family members looking for it.) It was where I heard the first time that red light won’t effect your night vision, and it worked great for heating that shitter. One other thing, he said to always check in the hole before you put yours near it. I’ve never had any suprises, but I still look.
By then I was a nervous wreck. Here I was, living right where I’m going to be hunting and from the looks of all the tracks, we were going to be busy. Up until then, all my deer hunting had been obtained from books and the stories I’d heard growing up. I was so wound up my piss corkscrewed.
Uncle Ted fed us porkchops with fried potato’s cooked with a lot of black pepper for dinner and I entered a whole new world. Dad had a nasty reaction every time he ate pepper so I’d never tasted it, and Uncle Ted loved the stuff. By 8 o’clock it was darker than a lawyers heart and twice as cold and was quite happy it was bedtime. That night, Uncle Ted was still giving us advice when he started snoring right in the middle of a word. I laid there wired to the gills and tried to remember everything I was supposed to do the next day. I had visions of 12 point monsters both bounding through the forest and walking majesticly with his does. All different kinds of scenerios of which way it was going to approach, or under what circumstances. Hell, I had one where he’s gettin’ laid and do I shoot it in the act, or having a cigarette afterwards? Stuff like that was going through my brain when I finally passed out.
Butch and I woke up at real-dark:45 to the aroma of steak, eggs, sausage, onions and fried potatos cooking up in the kitchen. The humidity was 125% in there with droplets running down the visqueen. Water was on the outside too, but before Uncle Ted got up, it was all snow. It was so exciting to step out of that tent heading towards the red light and having 4″ of fresh snow to walk in. It was like living in one of those story’s I’d read in Sport’s Afield.
We were just starting to eat when Grandpa, Uncle John and Aunt Ruth drove up. They had stayed at the Webber cottages in Green River ’cause grandpa was a few years beyond camping again. There was pleanty enough room for everybody to eat and we were once again advised on how to act and where to go over breakfast. Uncle Ted worked on us all the time and then we would get Uncle John’s take on it, and John telling us Ted was full of shit, and Ted telling us the John was. I’ll tell ya what folks, if I’d not been so afraid, it would have been funny. Grandpa would get his two cents in, but when Grandpa talked, everybody shut up and listened. That was nice. Aunt Ruth didn’t start giving me any advice until we were walking together on the way to our hunting spot.
Butch and Uncle John were going to hunt in a field that’s across the tracks from the ruins that’s probably 40 acres. On the edge of that pasture is a Hemlock that was somehow left alone when they were cutting down all the rest, and they were going to hunt from under it. I don’t remember where Uncle Ted and Grandpa hunted at, but Aunt Ruth and I ended up over the ridges on the far side of that pasture. We walked back from the camp towards the creek we dipped out drinking water from and then south through a pass.
Aunt Ruth told me pretty much what everybody else did, but she took her time and just talked to me. She radiated a spirit that made you feel good to be around and wern’t suprised at all to have a chickadee land on her. She didn’t have the same attitude towards deer that the uncles did, hers was more of the deer joining their spirts to hers, and hers to them. She never said anything that would attest to that, but everyone who knew her, knows what I’m talking about.
We walked over two ridges and made a left down the third and took position against a Maple about half way up the ridge. Aunt Ruth watched up the hill, and I down, across a clearing and then open trees up the next ridge. We’d been sitting there for a while when Aunt Ruth heard from Uncle John that Butch got his doe. “An old dried up doe, and no meat lost” is exactly what he said, and Aunt Ruth smiled. Not long after that, I saw my first deer.
My first deer wasn’t “An old dried up doe”, this one just got rid of it’s spots. Aunt Ruth felt my movement so she turned around and whispered about sight picture, and breathing, and trigger squeeze, and CRACK! I let’er go. She dropped like a rock and bolted at the same time and this is where I had my “Sports Afield” moment. Not two weeks before I was reading story after story how these deer were bounding through the trees taking 50′ bounds and traveling at high speeds. I was drawing a bead about 30′ in front of that poor doe and kept snapping limbs in front of her. I mighta helped there with a couple of ‘em. Aunt Ruth laughed her ass off. She asked me why that all happend I and told her the first problem was with the front bead. It was too big and I couldn’t see the deer behind it, and then I told her about Sports Afield. She understood and let it go at that.
When we got back to camp we walked by a pile of guts that looked as though something nasty had happend to ‘em. It’s entrails were spread about a bit. Butch’s doe was hangin’ from the tree and when we walked up to congratulate Butch, we gagged. Ya see, the Griffin Uncles are of a different sort that enjoys trying to make each other puke. Yeah…. Well, after Butch shot and dragged the doe back off of the field, Uncle John and Butch had dressed it and they were both quite proud. Butch, because he hit that doe at 150 yards and it was a called shot. He told Uncle John exactly where the bullet would enter and exit, and then did it. Uncle John was pround because he’d finally gutted a deer and not puked. Uncle Ted was there observing all this and just as they finished, he shot it three times with his 125gr, ‘06, hollow point, and he was proud too.
