Memories swarm like ghosts as I
gaze from this stand in a hardwood bottom for what seems like the thousandth
time.
It might be more than a thousand,
and some of the ghosts are real. I've
hunted this spot since I joined the Old Belfast Hunting Club in 2009. It’s in Grant
County, Arkansas, in the northern part of the state’s deer-rich Gulf Coastal
Plain. Like most hunting clubs in southern
Arkansas, we lease the property from a corporate landowner. The atmosphere is
family oriented, and it gives us ample opportunity to pass our cherished
hunting heritage to new generations of young hunters. The property that comprises our lease is a
vast industrial pine forest in various stages of succession. Natural forage is
sparse, so we provide additional food in the form of corn and cultivated food
plots.
My stand in the hollow features
three openings that stretch about 150 yards each. They are narrow and shady,
but Whitetail Institute’s Imperial Whitetail Secret Spot provides a mixture of
seeds that thrive in that environment. I
cultivated them with a four-wheeler and a tow-behind disc from a popular
farm-supply chain, and the results were excellent. I am father to seven children, ages 10 to 25.
The oldest three are boys. Of my three sons, my middle son, Daniel, exhibited
the only sincere interest in hunting. It started at age 5, when I took him on a
muzzleloader deer hunt in Oklahoma. “When
the shadows cover that field, pay attention because deer will come out of that
ravine down there and start feeding,” I said as we rested beneath a big oak
tree. As predicted, a herd of does raced
out like a football team running onto the gridiron. A young buck peeled away
from the herd and came right to us. From that time on, Daniel considered me a
deer prophet, but I nearly ruined him with the mistakes of inexperience. Youngsters quickly grow impatient and
discontented if there isn’t any action, and I made Dan sit too long during days
when deer didn’t cooperate. He enjoyed short outings, though, so I modified our
routine. By extension, I learned to
concentrate on the early morning and late evening, when deer are most active. I
found that I more enjoyed shorter hunts, as well. I brought Dan to the stand in my “Secret Spot”
when my plots were established. It was an evening in mid-October, the first
weekend of our muzzleloader season. My strips were verdant among the fiery oaks,
hickories and sweetgums.
The evening was still, and it was
late when a quartet of does emerged from a thicket and stepped into a strip
directly in front of us. Dan was
anxious, but I urged him to wait for the buck that he really wanted. With about 10 minutes of legal shooting time
remaining, the deer got nervous. “They're
getting ready to boogie,” I said. “If you want one, you’d better do it now.” He chose a mature doe. When the smoke
cleared, the strip was empty. Dan was distraught. “I made a good shot,” he insisted. “I know you did,” I said. “We’ll find her.” We walked widening circles in the gathering
darkness, and I found the doe to the side of another strip. It was his first and only deer. One week later, I took Dan's little brother,
Matthew, to the Secret Spot. Matt didn’t have the same drive, but he wanted to
upstage Dan by killing a buck. On October mornings,
the Secret Spot has a consistent and peculiar history. At about 8:30 a.m., a shaft of sunlight
illuminates a circular zone at the far end of the middle food strip, almost
like a stage light. At that time, a deer almost always steps into it. It’s happened
every year I’ve hunted it. As if on cue,
a doe stepped out of the thicket into the spotlight and presented a perfect
broadside profile. Matt squinted into
the scope. He squinted over the scope. He squinted to the side of the scope. “That deer isn’t going to stand there forever,”
I whispered impatiently. Matthew rubbed
his trigger finger vigorously against his trousers. “What's the matter with you?” I asked. “I can't feel my finger,” he said. “What do you mean you can't feel your finger?
What's wrong with it?” “It's … It's
frozen.” “Frozen? Dude, it's 72 degrees out
here.” “It’s frozen. I can’t feel it.” Matt clearly didn't want to kill the deer. “Relax,” I said. “Let's just watch. Maybe a
buck will come out.”
Eventually, the deer departed, and Matt never
hunted again. My oldest daughter, Amy,
might be my most avid hunter. When she was small, I took her and her siblings
on walks around town. She always carried a stick and pretended it was a gun. On
those nightly safaris, she killed enough elephants, elk, buffalo, deer, hippos,
lions and tigers to stock the Sultan of Brunei’s trophy room. When she was in ninth grade, I took Amy to
the Secret Spot during Arkansas’s statewide youth deer hunt. I selected for her
a Browning BPS 20-gauge with a slug barrel.
To my astonishment, the biggest buck I'd seen on the property at that
time stepped into the strip precisely where Daniel shot his doe. The buck was only about 35 yards away, but
Amy struggled to find it in the fixed 4X scope. The shotgun was too long and
too heavy for her. That is why you should fit your child with a gun and have him
or her practice before the hunt. The
buck walked away without a shot. A year
later, Amy killed her first deer — a doe — with a Savage bolt-action chambered
in .22-250, a combination for which she was better suited. My youngest child, Hannah, accompanied me on
her first hunt on opening day of the modern gun season two years ago. You know how it is with children. They’re excited
on the eve of a hunt, but you can’t wake them when it’s time to rise. If that happened
with her, I’d just let her sleep. I
needn’t have worried. She popped up as soon as I opened her bedroom door. She
had slept in her hunting clothes. I’d
learned a few things through the years about keeping little children happy in a
cold deer stand. I filled Hannah a thermos full of hot cocoa. I brought the
peanut butter crackers she loves and a honeybun, and I got her a hot sausage,
egg and cheese biscuit before we entered the woods. She was warm and content.
About 90 minutes after we arrived, a quintet
of does stepped into the open at the far end of the Secret Spot. We watched
them feed for a few minutes until Hannah said, “Well, are you going to shoot
one or not?” I recognized that tone. She
sounded just like her mama. “Do you want
to shoot?” I asked. Hannah shook her
head negatively. “Do you want me to?” She nodded vigorously. I fired at the biggest doe, but it stepped
forward as I squeezed the trigger. The
shot struck too far back. Hannah and I
went to where the doe stood, and we looked for a long time before we found the
first drop of blood. “I'm going to put
my hat on this drop, and then we'll look for another drop,” I said. “We’ll just
make us a little hat trail until this deer shows us where she is.” Hannah proved to be a natural tracker.
Crawling on hands and knees, she found droplets far down in the grass that I
wouldn't have seen. Drop by drop, we crawled to a rise that dropped into a weedy
ravine. We looked down and found the doe lying dead about 20 yards away. She
only ran about 70 yards, but she was concealed in the thick cover. “I wouldn’t have found her without you,” I
said, pulling Hannah’s cap bill over her eyes.
Hannah is looking forward to going again, but she doesn’t care to hunt.
She just wants to be with her papa. All
these memories swirl around me as I gaze alone down the strips in the Secret
Spot. Matthew is away in college. Amy, a high-school senior, will leave for
college next year, so this might be our last hunting season together for a
while. And Daniel, my companion in so
many deer, duck and dove hunts, died in an automobile accident at the beginning
of summer, just five months ago. He was 22 years old. The metal chair where he sat — where Matt
sat, where Amy sat, where Hannah sat — is empty beside me. This is where I feel Dan's presence the
strongest. I hear his voice and see his grin when we found his first deer.
Those memories sustain me in his absence.
I’ve experienced all the ups and downs with my children that most
fathers experience, but we put them aside when we were here because there are
no walls in the deer woods. There are only bridges. We’ve learned a lot about each other as I
shared my love of hunting, and I hope my kids will do the same with their
children. Maybe they’ll even do it here,
in the Secret Spot.
