Deer tag: $17, Family phone plan: $89, Survival: Priceless
Just My Thoughts
By Doug Smith
Published: Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Updated: Wednesday, November 18, 2009 12:39 PM CST
Updated: Wednesday, November 18, 2009 12:39 PM CST
“Did ya’ get your deer?” That’s the standard mid-November greeting among country folks, especially those wearing orange, camouflage, or sporting a gun rack in the rear window of their pickup truck. Almost like clockwork, my standard answer is always “yes, opening day!” But this year was different ... let me explain.
Fall firearms deer season 2009 started out much like most years around our place. My son and I started talking “deer hunting” about three months ago. Prior to that we had spent occasional weekend mornings making the 45-minute drive to the “farm” — the hallowed Smith family hunting ground which has been in the family for more than a century and served as my grandpa and grandma’s working farm for some 60 years prior to grandpa’s passing a dozen years ago. We visit the farm frequently throughout the year to fill wildlife feeders, tend food plots and freshen mineral licks. We also planted a small orchard there this past year in hopes of someday possibly relocating to the land where my roots run so deep.
The week prior to this past Saturday’s season opener was the annual Smith Family Reunion. We took the opportunity while visiting with my brothers and parents to discuss who was going to hunt this year, what kind of deer sign my son and I had seen in recent weeks, and what the menu would be for the weekend. My oldest brother and dad both pastor churches, so they arrive on Friday afternoon and leave out late Saturday to return home and freshen up for Sunday’s sermon. My other brother, son and I usually stay and hunt through Sunday evening, then head our separate ways to get back home in time for work on Monday morning.
I like deer season. I’m not a deer-hunting fanatic who lives and breathes the sport year-round, but I enjoy the camaraderie and memories made at family deer camp each year. Extended family comes and goes from year to year, and occasionally a niece or daughter decides to sit in for a season. But most often the camp consists of my dad, the family patriarch who doesn’t hunt but tends the fire in the woodstove and helps out as needed, my two brothers, myself and my now 19-year-old son. I had hunted deer with my friends a couple years as a teenager, and grew up hunting squirrels and rabbits on the farm, but only returned to deer hunting about 12 years ago. Whether I took a liking to it or not, I decided I wanted to learn the necessary skills myself and then introduce my two children to the sport — and if they decided to hunt, or not, that would be their decision, and I wouldn’t put any pressure on them about it. My son took an instant liking to the hobby, and my daughter is fine at this point in life with letting us provide her with venison to eat. My wife uses these weekends to foster one of her own hobbies, that being mall shopping, usually in the company of our daughter and my mother-in-law.
That said, everyone arrived at our deer camp by Friday afternoon. We sighted in the last of the deer rifles, unpacked the food and stocked the refrigerator, and got our bedding and hunting gear in order. We had spent time the previous weekend cutting and stacking firewood, sighting in rifles, and setting up tree stands and ground blinds. We put together a feast for supper, then sat around the woodstove and swapped stories until time to turn in. Saturday morning came and we headed to our respective stands. I hunt about a five-minute walk from the old farm house, now referred to as the “cabin”. My brother was hunting the same ridge about 200 yards away and around a sharp bend from where I sat. My son hunted his usual stand on the far end of the farm. I passed on a large doe (or maybe it was a button buck) some five minutes after first shooting light. I didn’t see another deer for the next couple hours, at which time I heard my brother fire a shot. Sure that he had downed a deer, I left my stand to help him field dress and get his harvest back to the cabin. My son heard the shot and headed back to give a hand as needed.
Noon came and went with the usual lunch and helping get dad and my brother packed up for their lengthy drives back to their homes. My son had a midday appointment to keep, and returned back to the farm just as my dad was heading home. They exchanged small talk for a few minutes, then he and I gathered our gear and headed back to our stands for the evening’s hunt. As I said earlier, normally I’d have another brother still hunting with us through Sunday, but he recently started a new business and it kept him away this year.
At about 4:15 p.m. I heard a shot somewhere on the farm. Since he began hunting away from my side a few years ago, my son has always followed my wishes of checking in by phone anytime he shoots a deer. Several years ago a cellphone tower was installed within sight of the farm and provides us with exceptional service. Prior to that we relied on two-way radios, but reception was not guaranteed — and the cellphone service is far superior. A few years ago my wife and I opted to get the family talk plan and outfit each child with a cellphone. Perhaps it’s just a “want” and not a “need”, but we like the security it helps provide for them and the peace of mind for ourselves.
A moment later the call came in. My cellphone began to vibrate in my pocket. I’ve always passed on the potential of spooking a deer to take a call from a fellow hunter. At the time the phone rang I was watching two nice-sized does feeding across the ridge directly in front of me. But I answered, and my son announced he had just killed a buck. I asked if he wanted help getting it back to the cabin. Like usual, he declined and told me to keep hunting. While still on the phone I looked up and caught a fleeting glimpse of a massive buck working its way through the brush trailing the two does over the ridgetop. I ended the call with a “congratulations”, and disconnected and nestled back into my seat to wait for the return of the big buck. In the next few minutes I heard my son fire up the four wheeler at the cabin and head out toward his stand. A short time later I heard him return.
The family farm sits off a county dirt road about two miles from the paved state road. There are other farms and hunting cabins scattered for miles in any direction. About 4:45 p.m. I heard a man or boy yell something. A moment later I heard it again. Then I heard what sounded like a girl scream out, followed closely by another male yell. From where I sat on the side of the ridge, the commotion sounded as if it was down the valley in the opposite direction from the farm house. When my phone began to vibrate in my pocket a few moments later I suspected it was my son inquiring if I could hear all the noise the neighbors were making. I answered when I saw his name on the caller ID.
“(Heavy breath), Dad, I was gutting the deer and the knife slipped and I accidentally stabbed myself. I think I severed an artery. I’m bleeding out pretty bad. Did you hear me yelling and whistling?” My heart sank, because I was a good five minutes from the cabin (which despite my sizable girth I covered in about a two-minute run). Before I set out I called 9-1-1 from my deer stand, and spoke with a dispatcher to get an ambulance headed our way. I told him what I knew, and provided the name of the county road and the description of the farm. He told me that the ambulance would be coming from the hospital in the county seat, a good 30 miles from our location. I explained in brief terms that we were much closer to the hospital in the neighboring county, then disconnected and began my sprint for the house. I talked to God on the way and asked for His help in this situation. He and I converse quiet often, so I bypassed formal introductions and salutations and went straight to asking for mercy and protection for my son.
The boy, now a young man, is an experienced hunter (having taken nine deer himself and witnessed me do so on many more occasions). While finishing the process of field dressing his buck, he had just laid down a massive Gerber® hunting knife he uses to separate the ribcage and picked up a smaller four-inch blade Schrade® skinning knife he uses for more detailed work. He’s handled that knife since he was a youngster and keeps it sharp enough to shave hair or cut a piece of rope with one hard swipe. Somewhere in the process while making the final few cuts the hunting knife bound up on a bone or tendon of the deer, then broke loose and embedded nearly the entire blade into his inner thigh about six inches above his knee.
An avid outdoorsman and pre-veterinarian student, my son is very aware of how a body works. He knew the femoral artery passes through the leg in the area he had just impaled. Acting out of reaction, he withdrew the knife and was immediately met with a gush of blood. He yelled and whistled (the whistle being what I mistook for a girl screaming) for me, dropped his hunting pants to expose the wound and quickly removed the belt from his pants and wrapped it around his thigh just above where the blood was now spurting out. Once he tensioned the belt as tight as he could hold it, he thought to go for his cellphone. After letting me know of his situation he laid down on the ground and tried to calm himself down. His biggest fear at that point was that he’d pass out before I could arrive and his grip would slip and he’d release tension on the makeshift tourniquet. The belt was cinched well past the last hole for the buckle, so the only thing holding it tight was his grip.
[A word of caution here. Medical experts say to apply pressure directly to a laceration instead of using a tourniquet if at all possible. Use of a tourniquet for an extended period of time can cause collateral damage to the entire limb extending past the point of injury. In his case he knew I would arrive within minutes and, fearing he had severed an artery, quickly reasoned the belt as a tourniquet was his best hope until I could reach him. We had this discussion while enroute to the emergency room]
Once at the farmhouse, I found him conscious, very bloody, but otherwise no worse for wear with the exception of a gaping knife wound. Having someone else there to help administer first aid in case he did slip into unconsciousness brought him some much-needed peace. I talked to the 9-1-1 dispatcher and an emergency services person and better informed them of our situation. The bleeding was slowing, and within minutes I had him loaded into my Suburban and we were headed to the nearest emergency room. Several hours and stitches later he was released and sent home with a fistful of prescriptions and directions on how to care for his new injury. A phone call while enroute to the emergency room had summoned his mother from her shopping outing in St. Louis and Kimmswick. She arrived at the hospital and eventually helped get him into her car for the ride home.
I returned to the farm late Saturday night with a good hunting buddy and gathered up the scattered gear, deer and other hunting stuffs. Deer season was over for the weekend. Now we’re back at home and my hunting partner is medicated and limping from place to place. He’ll likely be sore for many weeks to come.
I can’t say he was specifically negligent in any way, at least not that he can recall. It was just an accident, and things happen when you leave your comfort zone and opt to live life. For that matter, things sometimes happen to people when they’re sitting in their own home smack dab in the middle of their comfort zone. The key is to just be as safe as you can possibly be in whatever situation you find yourself.
My son and I — the entire family for that matter — are very thankful the weekend turned out as nice as it did. Despite how it ended, we still shared a part of two days with family members on a piece of land which fits each of us like an old comfortable shoe. Life-giving meat was harvested, stories were swapped about kids, grandkids, siblings, and generations who went before us.
Starting with the first year I took my son deer hunting alongside me more than a decade ago, we began a tradition of carving a small notch on the back tang of our hunting knives for each time we harvest a deer. As the years pass we can always look at those old hunting knives and recall the events that led up to all those notches. I can still look at a particular notch and tell you the story that goes with it. So on Sunday afternoon my son chose to limp out to the garage to watch as I carved another notch on his hunting knife — the same one he’s carried since he began hunting, and the same one he had buried in his leg less than 24 hours earlier. At my suggestion we also decided to drill a tiny hole in the blade near the handle to mark the occasion of a different sort. We’re hoping he earns several more notches in coming years, but no more drilled holes.
As for that greeting I started this story with ... “did ya’ get your deer?”, my answer for now is “no, but I have story to tell you.” I’ll return next weekend to try for another chance at that big buck I saw just as my phone rang Saturday evening. My son says he intends to make the ride to the farm with me next weekend and sit around the cabin and just enjoy being there. After all, it’s not really safe to hunt alone.
Fall firearms deer season 2009 started out much like most years around our place. My son and I started talking “deer hunting” about three months ago. Prior to that we had spent occasional weekend mornings making the 45-minute drive to the “farm” — the hallowed Smith family hunting ground which has been in the family for more than a century and served as my grandpa and grandma’s working farm for some 60 years prior to grandpa’s passing a dozen years ago. We visit the farm frequently throughout the year to fill wildlife feeders, tend food plots and freshen mineral licks. We also planted a small orchard there this past year in hopes of someday possibly relocating to the land where my roots run so deep.
The week prior to this past Saturday’s season opener was the annual Smith Family Reunion. We took the opportunity while visiting with my brothers and parents to discuss who was going to hunt this year, what kind of deer sign my son and I had seen in recent weeks, and what the menu would be for the weekend. My oldest brother and dad both pastor churches, so they arrive on Friday afternoon and leave out late Saturday to return home and freshen up for Sunday’s sermon. My other brother, son and I usually stay and hunt through Sunday evening, then head our separate ways to get back home in time for work on Monday morning.
I like deer season. I’m not a deer-hunting fanatic who lives and breathes the sport year-round, but I enjoy the camaraderie and memories made at family deer camp each year. Extended family comes and goes from year to year, and occasionally a niece or daughter decides to sit in for a season. But most often the camp consists of my dad, the family patriarch who doesn’t hunt but tends the fire in the woodstove and helps out as needed, my two brothers, myself and my now 19-year-old son. I had hunted deer with my friends a couple years as a teenager, and grew up hunting squirrels and rabbits on the farm, but only returned to deer hunting about 12 years ago. Whether I took a liking to it or not, I decided I wanted to learn the necessary skills myself and then introduce my two children to the sport — and if they decided to hunt, or not, that would be their decision, and I wouldn’t put any pressure on them about it. My son took an instant liking to the hobby, and my daughter is fine at this point in life with letting us provide her with venison to eat. My wife uses these weekends to foster one of her own hobbies, that being mall shopping, usually in the company of our daughter and my mother-in-law.
That said, everyone arrived at our deer camp by Friday afternoon. We sighted in the last of the deer rifles, unpacked the food and stocked the refrigerator, and got our bedding and hunting gear in order. We had spent time the previous weekend cutting and stacking firewood, sighting in rifles, and setting up tree stands and ground blinds. We put together a feast for supper, then sat around the woodstove and swapped stories until time to turn in. Saturday morning came and we headed to our respective stands. I hunt about a five-minute walk from the old farm house, now referred to as the “cabin”. My brother was hunting the same ridge about 200 yards away and around a sharp bend from where I sat. My son hunted his usual stand on the far end of the farm. I passed on a large doe (or maybe it was a button buck) some five minutes after first shooting light. I didn’t see another deer for the next couple hours, at which time I heard my brother fire a shot. Sure that he had downed a deer, I left my stand to help him field dress and get his harvest back to the cabin. My son heard the shot and headed back to give a hand as needed.
Noon came and went with the usual lunch and helping get dad and my brother packed up for their lengthy drives back to their homes. My son had a midday appointment to keep, and returned back to the farm just as my dad was heading home. They exchanged small talk for a few minutes, then he and I gathered our gear and headed back to our stands for the evening’s hunt. As I said earlier, normally I’d have another brother still hunting with us through Sunday, but he recently started a new business and it kept him away this year.
At about 4:15 p.m. I heard a shot somewhere on the farm. Since he began hunting away from my side a few years ago, my son has always followed my wishes of checking in by phone anytime he shoots a deer. Several years ago a cellphone tower was installed within sight of the farm and provides us with exceptional service. Prior to that we relied on two-way radios, but reception was not guaranteed — and the cellphone service is far superior. A few years ago my wife and I opted to get the family talk plan and outfit each child with a cellphone. Perhaps it’s just a “want” and not a “need”, but we like the security it helps provide for them and the peace of mind for ourselves.
A moment later the call came in. My cellphone began to vibrate in my pocket. I’ve always passed on the potential of spooking a deer to take a call from a fellow hunter. At the time the phone rang I was watching two nice-sized does feeding across the ridge directly in front of me. But I answered, and my son announced he had just killed a buck. I asked if he wanted help getting it back to the cabin. Like usual, he declined and told me to keep hunting. While still on the phone I looked up and caught a fleeting glimpse of a massive buck working its way through the brush trailing the two does over the ridgetop. I ended the call with a “congratulations”, and disconnected and nestled back into my seat to wait for the return of the big buck. In the next few minutes I heard my son fire up the four wheeler at the cabin and head out toward his stand. A short time later I heard him return.
The family farm sits off a county dirt road about two miles from the paved state road. There are other farms and hunting cabins scattered for miles in any direction. About 4:45 p.m. I heard a man or boy yell something. A moment later I heard it again. Then I heard what sounded like a girl scream out, followed closely by another male yell. From where I sat on the side of the ridge, the commotion sounded as if it was down the valley in the opposite direction from the farm house. When my phone began to vibrate in my pocket a few moments later I suspected it was my son inquiring if I could hear all the noise the neighbors were making. I answered when I saw his name on the caller ID.
“(Heavy breath), Dad, I was gutting the deer and the knife slipped and I accidentally stabbed myself. I think I severed an artery. I’m bleeding out pretty bad. Did you hear me yelling and whistling?” My heart sank, because I was a good five minutes from the cabin (which despite my sizable girth I covered in about a two-minute run). Before I set out I called 9-1-1 from my deer stand, and spoke with a dispatcher to get an ambulance headed our way. I told him what I knew, and provided the name of the county road and the description of the farm. He told me that the ambulance would be coming from the hospital in the county seat, a good 30 miles from our location. I explained in brief terms that we were much closer to the hospital in the neighboring county, then disconnected and began my sprint for the house. I talked to God on the way and asked for His help in this situation. He and I converse quiet often, so I bypassed formal introductions and salutations and went straight to asking for mercy and protection for my son.
The boy, now a young man, is an experienced hunter (having taken nine deer himself and witnessed me do so on many more occasions). While finishing the process of field dressing his buck, he had just laid down a massive Gerber® hunting knife he uses to separate the ribcage and picked up a smaller four-inch blade Schrade® skinning knife he uses for more detailed work. He’s handled that knife since he was a youngster and keeps it sharp enough to shave hair or cut a piece of rope with one hard swipe. Somewhere in the process while making the final few cuts the hunting knife bound up on a bone or tendon of the deer, then broke loose and embedded nearly the entire blade into his inner thigh about six inches above his knee.
An avid outdoorsman and pre-veterinarian student, my son is very aware of how a body works. He knew the femoral artery passes through the leg in the area he had just impaled. Acting out of reaction, he withdrew the knife and was immediately met with a gush of blood. He yelled and whistled (the whistle being what I mistook for a girl screaming) for me, dropped his hunting pants to expose the wound and quickly removed the belt from his pants and wrapped it around his thigh just above where the blood was now spurting out. Once he tensioned the belt as tight as he could hold it, he thought to go for his cellphone. After letting me know of his situation he laid down on the ground and tried to calm himself down. His biggest fear at that point was that he’d pass out before I could arrive and his grip would slip and he’d release tension on the makeshift tourniquet. The belt was cinched well past the last hole for the buckle, so the only thing holding it tight was his grip.
[A word of caution here. Medical experts say to apply pressure directly to a laceration instead of using a tourniquet if at all possible. Use of a tourniquet for an extended period of time can cause collateral damage to the entire limb extending past the point of injury. In his case he knew I would arrive within minutes and, fearing he had severed an artery, quickly reasoned the belt as a tourniquet was his best hope until I could reach him. We had this discussion while enroute to the emergency room]
Once at the farmhouse, I found him conscious, very bloody, but otherwise no worse for wear with the exception of a gaping knife wound. Having someone else there to help administer first aid in case he did slip into unconsciousness brought him some much-needed peace. I talked to the 9-1-1 dispatcher and an emergency services person and better informed them of our situation. The bleeding was slowing, and within minutes I had him loaded into my Suburban and we were headed to the nearest emergency room. Several hours and stitches later he was released and sent home with a fistful of prescriptions and directions on how to care for his new injury. A phone call while enroute to the emergency room had summoned his mother from her shopping outing in St. Louis and Kimmswick. She arrived at the hospital and eventually helped get him into her car for the ride home.
I returned to the farm late Saturday night with a good hunting buddy and gathered up the scattered gear, deer and other hunting stuffs. Deer season was over for the weekend. Now we’re back at home and my hunting partner is medicated and limping from place to place. He’ll likely be sore for many weeks to come.
I can’t say he was specifically negligent in any way, at least not that he can recall. It was just an accident, and things happen when you leave your comfort zone and opt to live life. For that matter, things sometimes happen to people when they’re sitting in their own home smack dab in the middle of their comfort zone. The key is to just be as safe as you can possibly be in whatever situation you find yourself.
My son and I — the entire family for that matter — are very thankful the weekend turned out as nice as it did. Despite how it ended, we still shared a part of two days with family members on a piece of land which fits each of us like an old comfortable shoe. Life-giving meat was harvested, stories were swapped about kids, grandkids, siblings, and generations who went before us.
Starting with the first year I took my son deer hunting alongside me more than a decade ago, we began a tradition of carving a small notch on the back tang of our hunting knives for each time we harvest a deer. As the years pass we can always look at those old hunting knives and recall the events that led up to all those notches. I can still look at a particular notch and tell you the story that goes with it. So on Sunday afternoon my son chose to limp out to the garage to watch as I carved another notch on his hunting knife — the same one he’s carried since he began hunting, and the same one he had buried in his leg less than 24 hours earlier. At my suggestion we also decided to drill a tiny hole in the blade near the handle to mark the occasion of a different sort. We’re hoping he earns several more notches in coming years, but no more drilled holes.
As for that greeting I started this story with ... “did ya’ get your deer?”, my answer for now is “no, but I have story to tell you.” I’ll return next weekend to try for another chance at that big buck I saw just as my phone rang Saturday evening. My son says he intends to make the ride to the farm with me next weekend and sit around the cabin and just enjoy being there. After all, it’s not really safe to hunt alone.
Digg This!
Story Paging
Next storyPrevious story
Ads by Yahoo!
900% Gain on Penny Stocks
Join today to receive our free newsletter, alerts, tips and much more.
www.StockPickTrading.com
Member Center
E-mail updates
