DEER HUNTING

After I was promoted to Lieutenant, I was assigned to a firehouse where they had a hunting club.  They asked me to join.  We were also enrolled in the NRA.  For weeks and weeks we would run up and down flights of stairs in the firehouse to get our legs in shape to go hunting on Hunter Mountain.  One firefighter owned 40 acres of land on a mountainside and he was building a 2-story hunting lodge on a section close to the main road.  The house was closed in but had no running water or bathrooms in yet.  The second floor was a large loft with bedrooms.  Most of the walls were framed and most had insulation in between the studs.  There were no stairs up to the loft – you had to climb a ladder.   

The heat in the lodge was from a huge fireplace on the first floor. The first thing we did was build a large fire because it took about 24 hours to heat the loft.  Not all the windows were in so it was very cold in the house.  There was an old dairy barn on the property and the flies in the summertime were all over the barn.  When winter was coming, flies went to the house and hibernated in the insulation.  We brought up some army cots but most guys just slept in sleeping bags on the floor.  

No one unpacked their suitcase.  We just operated out of it during our stay.  As the loft warmed up, the flies came to life and would buzz all night to get out of the insulation.  My friend Mike, who lived near me, had a large van and we would pick up all the food and, of course, cases and cases of beer.  Some firefighters liked to cook and would give us a list of what they needed.  Mike and I would go up the day before hunting season began and take all the supplies up with us.  Each man chipped in $100 for supplies.  After we unloaded his truck, Mike and I would go up the mountain and look for deer trails and signs of deer.  

Deer grow their antlers all summer.  Their antlers are covered in fur and, as mating season starts, they rub their antlers against saplings to rub off the fur.   The bucks also used several different trails to come down the mountain to the feeding grounds.  They would mark their trails and stop by their markings to look to see if a doe was waiting for the buck. 

First day of hunting season, we would get up at 3 AM, eat a big breakfast, go up the mountain and wait for the deer.  We would stay until daylight and then come back and work on the house until 3 PM – then go back up the mountain until dark.  I had a doe permit, so I got 2 deer and Mike got a buck on the first day.  Quite a few firefighters got deer on the first and second day.  After you got your deer, you couldn’t hunt any longer. Your hunting license had to be attached to the deer’s left front leg.  

 Mike and I decided we were tired of working on the lodge and we were going home with our deer.  I asked the firefighters if anyone wanted me to make a gun rack out of the deers' hooves.  We cut 3 legs off each deer.  We had 15 legs in a big plastic bag.  Since Mike’s van was large and square, there were no front fenders to tie the deer on (state hunting law) and it didn’t have a roof rack to tie the deer to.  So, we put the deer inside the van (a no-no).  We knew that if we got a deer, that’s the way we would get it home, so we brought a shirt and tie and sport coat with us.  The wildlife authority and state police were looking for hunters dressed in camouflage jackets with flame orange vests and hats.  They would be heading back to the city.  When Mike and I went past them we looked like 2 business men coming home from work.  When we got home it was dark, so I tied a rope around each deer and hung them in the potting shed under the stairs to my father-in-law’s apartment.  I was on the day shift for the next 2 days.  Since it was cold, I knew the deer would be okay.  Every afternoon, my 6 year old son would come home from school and go up to his grandfather’s apartment to play games and wait for his mom to come home from work.  This day, he decided to look in the potting shed – something he never did before.  He let out a scream and ran up to his grandfather’s apartment telling him a dead animal was hanging in the shed.  They both went down to look.  My wife told me her father almost got sick and to get the deer out of the shed.

 I was told the easiest way to cut a deer in half was to hang the deer by its front legs and use an electric saw to cut the backbone in half.  On Saturday, I went to my neighbor Ron and asked if I could use his Sawzall.  He decided to walk up to my house to see what I was doing with his saw.  He stood in the driveway and watched me cut the deer in half and he said he couldn’t watch anymore and to keep his saw.  He didn’t want it back!  I cleaned up his saw and returned it anyway.  When he tells this story, he says that the flies return to his saw every summer. 

I   cut the deer into steaks, chops and roasts.  I told the kids it was lamb but they knew better and wouldn’t eat it!  After a number of years doing this annual trek, my wife offered me a deal – if I gave her the $100 dollars I chipped in every year, she would buy really good meat and cook a gourmet meal every night.  I could dress up in hunting clothes and sit up in the big tree in our back yard any time I wanted until it got dark or I got cold.  I agreed to the deal, but I told her I’d forget about the tree-sitting part.  This way we would also eliminate another extremely unpleasant annual event – in our bedroom - the miraculous rebirth of the hibernating dairy barn flies that had hitched a ride home in my suitcase.  YUK!