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DEER ARE EVERYWHERE UNTIL THE GUNS CRACK - Killin' A Deer Wasn't Always Easy |
| (11/22/2010) |
| By Bob Weaver Cars have been flocking to Sunny Cal all day Sunday, and supplies on the Foodland shelves are likely running low. Deer camps are crowded with men, boys, girls, guns, food, and basic essentials. Refined hunters are taking to their tree stands or tree shacks, while others are hitting the woods on their ATVs. Yes, it's deer season. Most of last century, Calhoun men would load up in a car and drive through deep snow or blizzard conditions to the higher mountains of West Virginia to hunt deer. Few existed in Sunny Cal. Some of my relatives, maybe yours too, had an old flat-bed International or Ford truck on which they built wooden shacks, some resembling extended outhouses with stove pipes sticking from the roof. Poor man's campers, back then. The distribution of deer into the smaller mountains commenced in force in the 1950's, and more and more hunters stayed back to kill the local buck. Sometimes you could hunt from daylight to dark, all week, without spotting a single deer. Sighting tracks before the season was a preoccupation. When you did sight one, it was almost as gratifying as killing the animal, giving you bragging rights 'till next season. By the early 60's the deer kill rose to a hundred or so in the county. Now they're thicker than mice, except when the guns start banging. Before season starts, a dozen or more come in my yard, eating the shrubs, flowers and herbs in the planters. I knew it was over when our cat Callie would be spotted rubbing noses with the critters. School is closed, after the education system tried to keep it open during deer week. And if you need work done, repairs, services, etc., don't bother to call. They're in the woods. Let the hunt begin.
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