We’re in the midst of our annual midsummer burn out. A ‘cool’ day this time of year is when the mercury only reaches 95! But fall and cooler weather is not that far away. Whitetail season is less than a scant three months away. The summer hunting shows will soon be underway in several of the major cities across the state. This is a time when we deer hunters make plans for fall hunts and devise strategies to outsmart that wily old buck that eluded us this past season. Is he still out there on our hunting grounds, did he move on or succumb to a pack of coyotes after the rut before he had a chance to regain his strength and vitality? Why not fast forward a few months and think about cooler weather and deer hunting, I think it will do us all good!
I’ve been a deer hunter since my early years when I would jump off the school bus at the age of ten during deer season, grab my .410 shotgun loaded with a single rifled slug, snatch a cold sweet potato off the stove and headed to the woods behind our little farm to set on a bucket and ‘hunt’ deer. This was way back in the late fifties when deer were precious few in northern Red River County where I grew up. I once saw a big buck cross our hay meadow but never after all those amateurish attempts to kill a buck did I see hide nor hair of one. I knew next to nothing about whitetail deer other than that they fascinated me and I had a burning desire to hunt them. It was several years before I killed my first deer, a goat horned spike but that little buck was the trophy of a lifetime for me back in the early 60s.
As a young man with a growing family, dollars were tight but I still managed to get out and hunt the woods of northeast Texas each season. I even managed to take a few deer back in those years but I was well into my twenties before I had the opportunity to travel down to the Texas Hill Country near Llano with a couple of buddies for a glorious three day hunt with an outfitter that offered day hunts. I remember to this day that our cost was $180 apiece and that included transportation to and from stand and camping rights near the old camp house. We all enjoyed a big barbeque dinner that first evening before opening day. I remember the outfitter kidding me about my little ‘brush gun’, a iron sighted lever action 30-30. Most of the hunters back then had gravitated to scoped rifles, mostly in 30-06 or .243 caliber.
