Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Birth of a deer camp

Hello all! New poster. Took me a couple weeks of reading to get to this point but boy, was it worth it! What a great story. Laughed until it hurt many times. To be honest, wiped away a few tears also.

ND, you are some guy! I'd be honored to share a deer camp with you any day. Same goes for Stan, Rooster, Tzone, wabo and everyone else on here. Too bad I'm so far away.

I'd be glad to share some camp stories and pics from our place here in PA if you are interested. And a little bantering too, I'm thinking.

Later!

Ron

Thanks Ron, nice of you to say. Welcome to the campfire forum.

we'd be happy to see your pictures & hear some stories.

Dave

I hoist my half caffinated coffee for Thad! And rusty cable ladders! Adventure!

Craig

Welcome to the fire Ron! May your frontside be smok'in and your backside, well it be your backside. That Dave's expertise - Somethng about a monkey.

Craig

Sorry to hear of your loss, ND. It must have been one of those weeks. I lost three friends last week and spent most of the time at the funeral home or at the funerals. Things are looking up this week, however.

Welcome Ron! You found the right place to be. ND started quite a saga....

Dave,

something tells me Thad might like the climb up the old cable ladder to the Pearly Gates. Sounds like that is the way he would have liked it.

Ron,

Welcome. We could always use some pictures and stories from a tradition rich deer camp in PA...Always. Don't be shy, we'll listen anytime you want to tell 'em too.

Tom

Here's to Thad! It is amazing any of us lived to adulthood, eh? Now that we are adults, I shudder at the thought of what my kids will someday do. Is it bad form to require them to be encased in bubble-wrap every time they leave the house??

To be honest, as much as I'd worry about it... I'd preffer a little outdoors adventure for the kids rather than watching them cook there brains sitting on the couch staring at a tv screen playing violent video games all day.

And Tom, you're right. If there were an elevator and a rickety dangerous rusty cable ladder to choose from, both leading to heaven, Thad would have chose the ladder.

Unless there were free drinks and dancing girls in the elevator.

You can always hope for that dave, My thoughts go out to you man! A tip of the glass for thad and yourself. Keep the fires burning. Times are tough you just got to think about the good times.

There might be a long line of clergymen he be behind for that. Ah Oh, now I'm going to get it.

Oh for sure, they are gonna be outside doing things. The couch will not be an option. When is the last time you saw a pickup baseball game? We used to do that all the time, nowadays, you hardly see that. Oh, and NO video games in our house, that is the rule.

No video games in this house either. I've asked the kid if he'd like one, and he usually says he wants a few conibears or something instead.

Boy's gonna be alright.

Craig

Dave, that pit mine sounds like an interesting place!
Round here we got brown stone quarries. They're flooded also. Bruce

Welcome Ron! We'd love to see some pics and hear some stories. Its truly funny that even though many of us live in different parts of the country, we seem to be cut from the same cloth so post up!

Thanks for the welcome, everyone.

Sorry to read that several of you have lost friends or family recently. They may be gone from this earth, but they will still live in your memories. I'd love to have one more day hunting rabbits with my dad or one more fishing trip with my grandpa on his houseboat. Won't ever happen again on this earth, but I take those trips often in my memories.

Which reminds me, I've got a "grandpa" story involving a Browning Auto 5 shotgun, a German short-haired pointer and a ringnecked pheasant. Allow me to set the table, if you will.
My grandpa owned an auto repair shop and as a youngster and a new hunter I could usually goad him into sneaking out for some after-school hunting trips once or twice a week. This day he had just taken delivery of a trained German short-haired pointer that a friend of his had to give up for personal reasons which I no longer remember.
Anyway, when I got home from school (I lived with my parents over the garage) Grandpa met me and said "I just picked up a new shotgun to go with the new dog! Let's take Pepper (the pointer) and bust a few pheasants before supper."
And away we went; me with my single-shot 28 gauge, him with his new Browning Auto 5 12 gauge, Pepper riding in the back of the old canvas-top Willys jeep.
We quickly got to the farm and began walking toward a hedgerow full of multiflora rose. With me on one side and him on the other, we began pushing the hedgerow toward the woods. I asked Grandpa if he had shot the new gun yet and he said he hadn't, but he had shot so many guns had hunted for so long that he didn't need to shot it before hunting with it.
About that time Pepper goes on point. I started kicking the hedgerow and out came a big old cock pheasant, cackling it's head off and flying across in front of Grandpa.
Boom #1 (clean miss); Boom #2 (a couple feathers); Boom #3, down comes the bird. Grandpa calls for Pepper to "Fetch" but evidently she wasn't as fully trained as he thought because she wasn't making any move to get the bird. While Grandpa is yelling at her, (with an empty gun!) the pheasant pops up and starts running towards the woods.
NOW Pepper was interested! She lit out after that bird and shortly they both disappeared into the woods.
Soon we heard her barking like a coonhound with a coon up a tree. We get to the woods to see her running around a big brushpile and barking her head off.
I got down on the ground and started looking into the pile. I saw the pheasant several feet inside the pile but I couldn't reach him. We tried jumping on the pile and poking sticks into it but the bird wouldn't flush. All the time we're doing this, Pepper is going beserk around the brushpile!
Finally, Grandpa decides that if he tears some of the pile away he might be able to reach in and grab the bird. And so he does. How-w-w-w-ever, there was one sli-i-i-i-ght problem. That pheasant had NO INTENTION of trading his position in that brushpile for one in Grandma's oven. As Grandpa's hand approached his throat, he proceeded to peck Grandpa's hand. Well, perhaps peck is too kind a work for what happened. He got Grandpa in the web between his thumb and forefinger. Did I mention that Grandpa was of PA Dutch heritage. He could curse better in German than most people could in English. That day he proved that statement for all time. When he returned to speaking English after several memorable minutes, he looked at me and told me to step back and hold the dog. As i did, I saw him slide the barrel of that new Browning Auto 5 into the brushpile.
KABOOM #4! As a few stray feathers floated down onto the brushpile, he stood up, dusted off his pants and said, "I think that's enough huntin' for today".
I was about 14 or 15 when that happened and I'm 60 now. As I've aged my memory has been known to occasionally falter, but by darn, that's the way I remember it.
"Hunt 'em up, Pepper"
RIP, Grandpa.

Ron

great story Ron, thanks for sharing it with us here.

Craig, tell the boy I love that hat, awesome.

We're planning a camp chickenbuck weekend of lounging & snowmobiling.

I'll see about maybe taking some pictures.

Pictures are good !!! Wife and I were near camp last weekend so I wanted to stop by just to see if there were any tracks beyond where the snowplow turns around. I took this pic of her and the lil' pumpkin there at the turnaround. Here is a link to her flicker page . you can click on " all sizes " to see it better.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lkenyon66/3226612453/

Any of you Minnesota guys catch the picture in the Wall St Journal of the house being moved across White Bear Lake on the ice? Says it weights 60 tons.(the house) Bruce

Great story!!! It made me laugh audibly. That sounds like something I would do too. Espically after the damn thing pecked me.