Thanksgiving, Christmas … the opening weekend of deer season.
In no particular order, those seem to be the most meaningful gatherings for family and friends in my mind. Of course, most of my family would simply laugh.
“Deer hunting? A family event? There he goes again being provocative – trying to start an argument.”
While it’s true that not all of my family and friends will be at deer camp this weekend, hundreds of thousands of other deer hunting friends and family will be. And combined with the varying opening days across America, that number jumps into the millions across the land.
My point is that to a lot of us, coming to the annual deer camp is as important as showing up for Thanksgiving and, even, Christmas. It is that special.
Really.
Let it also be noted to my non-hunting audience – as well as my non-hunting family and friends – it has so much less to do with the killing as it does the total experience.
And that experience is rich with many different layers: Food (often wild game), drink (’nuf said), tall tales (past and present), new additions (children coming of age), memorial toasts (which generally includes a tall-tale laugh or two), verbal bantering (thin skinned need not attend), a roaring fire (with the smoke blowing in your face no matter where you sit) and, most of all, BIG expectations.
This is just the tip of the mosaic of deer camp, of course. Each and every one of the million out there has its own unique qualities. Some may include bad blood simmering below the surface, a green-horned city slicker (been there, done that), and, hopefully, the old lion.
For many years, my lion was Uncle Bill. After we lost Uncle Bill, I didn’t go back very often to the Boyer/Smith campfire. Latched on to various others, and although I was taken in with much cheer and camaraderie, it wasn’t really the same. But I plan to revisit my kin at the border of Ray and Caldwell Counties this weekend.
It will be different no doubt, but that’s OK because that’s the way life is – it evolves. Uncle Bill and Aunt Genie are gone, but their kids – and their kids – and their kids have grown up, or are growing up. And it’s deer camp where this really hits home and why this rural cultural event is so meaningful.
The year was 1997, and I don’t remember if I even got a deer. Probably not, because I have often hunted the whitetail, and the whitetail was not specifically aware of it. But it was that year, 12 years ago, that really sticks in my mind as one of the most memorable camps. My closest friend was there, Uncle Bill was healthy and very much in his sardonic prime, Cuz and a lot of other colorful characters with similar country monikers. And, of course, my assorted and equally colorful real cousins.
One, Josh Smith, had come of deer age a couple years earlier and was now pretty much focusing on trophy hunting in slight competition with his dad, Bill Smith. His younger brother, Clint, at 12, was going to engage in his first hunt that fall – much to the delight of his dad, but maybe not so much for his mom, Cherie.
I have been thinking of that fall a lot of late because I’ve run into Clint Smith a lot in the last month at Bass Pro where he works and is doing well. Man, the kid has turned into a man – with a striking cross resemblance to Prince Harry and Lance Armstrong.
Deer hunting didn’t make Clint the kind of exceptional adult that he is today. That would be a ridiculous exaggeration. But I know deep inside of me that family – and his years of deer camp at the border of Ray and Caldwell Counties – was a major factor.
As it turned out, Clint got his first-ever deer that morning of the opener in ‘97 – and when his dad (or was it his brother Josh?) smeared a small swirl of blood on the youngster’s cheek, it was a moment that forever links those of us at that camp.
I reminded his mother of that morning earlier this week.
“Oh my gosh, how time does fly by so quickly,” Cherie wrote back in an e-mail. “I remember my baby having that blood on his face too, and thinking that sure doesn’t seem like my Clint. But it sure seems to be him now. And I will have to say it makes me very happy that my dad (my Uncle Bill) had so much influence over both my boys … and actually still does.”
Yep, deer camp seems to rank right up there with Thanksgiving and Christmas to me.
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Thanksgiving, Christmas … the opening weekend of deer season.
In no particular order, those seem to be the most meaningful gatherings for family and friends in my mind. Of course, most of my family would simply laugh.
“Deer hunting? A family event? There he goes again being provocative – trying to start an argument.”
While it’s true that not all of my family and friends will be at deer camp this weekend, hundreds of thousands of other deer hunting friends and family will be. And combined with the varying opening days across America, that number jumps into the millions across the land.
My point is that to a lot of us, coming to the annual deer camp is as important as showing up for Thanksgiving and, even, Christmas. It is that special.
Really.
Let it also be noted to my non-hunting audience – as well as my non-hunting family and friends – it has so much less to do with the killing as it does the total experience.
And that experience is rich with many different layers: Food (often wild game), drink (’nuf said), tall tales (past and present), new additions (children coming of age), memorial toasts (which generally includes a tall-tale laugh or two), verbal bantering (thin skinned need not attend), a roaring fire (with the smoke blowing in your face no matter where you sit) and, most of all, BIG expectations.
This is just the tip of the mosaic of deer camp, of course. Each and every one of the million out there has its own unique qualities. Some may include bad blood simmering below the surface, a green-horned city slicker (been there, done that), and, hopefully, the old lion.
For many years, my lion was Uncle Bill. After we lost Uncle Bill, I didn’t go back very often to the Boyer/Smith campfire. Latched on to various others, and although I was taken in with much cheer and camaraderie, it wasn’t really the same. But I plan to revisit my kin at the border of Ray and Caldwell Counties this weekend.
It will be different no doubt, but that’s OK because that’s the way life is – it evolves. Uncle Bill and Aunt Genie are gone, but their kids – and their kids – and their kids have grown up, or are growing up. And it’s deer camp where this really hits home and why this rural cultural event is so meaningful.
The year was 1997, and I don’t remember if I even got a deer. Probably not, because I have often hunted the whitetail, and the whitetail was not specifically aware of it. But it was that year, 12 years ago, that really sticks in my mind as one of the most memorable camps. My closest friend was there, Uncle Bill was healthy and very much in his sardonic prime, Cuz and a lot of other colorful characters with similar country monikers. And, of course, my assorted and equally colorful real cousins.
One, Josh Smith, had come of deer age a couple years earlier and was now pretty much focusing on trophy hunting in slight competition with his dad, Bill Smith. His younger brother, Clint, at 12, was going to engage in his first hunt that fall – much to the delight of his dad, but maybe not so much for his mom, Cherie.
I have been thinking of that fall a lot of late because I’ve run into Clint Smith a lot in the last month at Bass Pro where he works and is doing well. Man, the kid has turned into a man – with a striking cross resemblance to Prince Harry and Lance Armstrong.
Deer hunting didn’t make Clint the kind of exceptional adult that he is today. That would be a ridiculous exaggeration. But I know deep inside of me that family – and his years of deer camp at the border of Ray and Caldwell Counties – was a major factor.
As it turned out, Clint got his first-ever deer that morning of the opener in ‘97 – and when his dad (or was it his brother Josh?) smeared a small swirl of blood on the youngster’s cheek, it was a moment that forever links those of us at that camp.
I reminded his mother of that morning earlier this week.
“Oh my gosh, how time does fly by so quickly,” Cherie wrote back in an e-mail. “I remember my baby having that blood on his face too, and thinking that sure doesn’t seem like my Clint. But it sure seems to be him now. And I will have to say it makes me very happy that my dad (my Uncle Bill) had so much influence over both my boys … and actually still does.”
Yep, deer camp seems to rank right up there with Thanksgiving and Christmas to me.
