“Opening Day!”
Those words ranked right up there with “Christmas Holidays” and “Schools Out” when I was a kid. Back then it applied to squirrel or dove season but now everyone gets excited about gun season for deer.
Deer were so uncommon even when I was in high school in the mid-1960s that seeing one crossing a road was the talk of the boys at school for days. We had the whole month of November to try to shoot two, and there were two or three “doe” days at Thanksgiving.
I got to hunt with a bow a little starting in 1964 and got a lever action Marlin 30-30 for my birthday in 1966. I was buzzing with excitement waiting for opening day in November that year, shooting my rifle every few day to make sure I could hit a deer with the iron sights.
As my young luck would have it, I had to take the SAT on the Saturday deer season opened that year. I wanted to skip it but was afraid to, my parents would have probably taken my gun away from me for a year. So I sat in an auditorium in Augusta while my friend AT took my rifle on its first hunt – and killed a deer with it!
For over 40 years I never missed standing in a tree opening day. From going home for the weekend while in college, even missing football games at UGA to hunt, to being out there in pouring rain, I was there.
Deer season has a longer and more storied past up north. Deer populations in states like Michigan and Maine never got decimated to the point they did in the south, so kids grew up hunting them. And season in some of those states lasts only one week, so it is more intense. Some rural schools even close for the week because all the kids would skip school to go hunting.
When I moved to Griffin in 1972 I had some trouble finding a place to hunt so I often went back home and hunted my old areas around Clarks Hill where I killed my first two deer in 1968. I killed a couple more bucks and does there. Then Jim Goss took me with him to the places he hunted for a few years, and Bob Pierce took me as his guest to his hunting club some.
In 1982 I joined Bob’s “Big Horn” hunting club, a club formed by a group of doctors back in the 1950s. It was a great club for me, only 30 minutes from my house and I loved the traditions.
Every year we had “camp” the first week of November, starting on Friday night with a big steak dinner that often had 100 invited guests eating in the woods. Then we camped in the woods to the next Wednesday, hunting, eating delicious food and sitting around the big fire that never went out snacking on boiled peanuts.
I saw many kids of members grow from young’uns too small to sit in a tree to adults bringing their own kids to camp. It is a fantastic way to learn about life.
I hope all kids have the opportunity to go hunting, maybe in a deer camp, and continue the traditions.
Till next time – Gone fishing!