Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Deer Camp Stories....

In another thread I posted a Deer Camp Story-DCS-about a guy who died in camp on the eve of the opener and how it was handled..

A couple others from the same camp..

There is another camp up the valley from the one I mentioned, and one cold dark night during a bigwoods snowstorm one of their members was dragging a Deer past camp. The members came out to see it and congratulate the fellow...and to have a celebration drink..Well it went on for awhile and my Stepfather decided to have some fun on his own, and hide the Deer that was being covered over with snow in the barn. The kicker was one of the members saw him and decided to hide the Deer again on him and play his own trick. Only two people knew the deck had a couple jokers.

Finally the guy from the other camp, who was now not walking too straight, decided it was time to make the final pull to his camp..But when he went outside his Deer was gone...And since it was dark and snowing hard all drag marks were covered...Then the lights flashed in his head and he thought they had gotten him drunk and then stole his Deer. At which time a confrontation started up..Now again, only two people knew about what is going on..

Finally my Stepfather admitted he was having some fun and took the guy to the barn to get his Deer....Except the Deer wasn't there any longer and he had admitted he had placed it there...At which time the confrontation became more heated and the other members were in the dark about what was going on.

The second guy finally brought the Deer back and all ended. Except the guy from the other camp was still pizzed and drunk...To make amends they dragged the Deer the rest of the way to his camp, which was about a quarter mile away, in a blizzard. Then went back to theirs and had a laugh...

There are others, but what have you got...

Keep the stories coming.


I’ve enjoyed deer camp more for the fellowship that the hunting.
The stories live long after the meat is eaten.

We have a fairly subdued camp, and not too many of what happens really rises to the level of Battue's stories.

A few stick in my head from the early days.

Story #1

When we got the place back in 2001, it was sort of an undeclared WMA for the neighbors. They'd been hunting it for generations. A good number of stories come from my interaction with them in that first deer season. Most guys took it well and moved on. Some did not.

I had an arrangement with the guy behind me. He was leasing out 55 acres to my south, and I was allowing them to park in my yard and walk in. That eventually blew up, because I found out the guys were poaching my property and leaving their 55 acres alone. However, during the initial weeks, all was good. One fellow kept coming out, and he was unloading his ATV and driving in. We talked. He was a nice guy. The problem was, he was not one of the leasees. He'd been a guest of a previous bunch, and just kept coming. It took about 6 weeks for this to all percolate. It finally dawned on us all that he was just a plain, old, everyday poacher. I called the property owner to check.

He was now to the point of sneaking in a back way and then roaring past our cabin so he didn't have to face me to get to his truck and skeedaddle. I knew this guy was monitoring our walkie-talkie communications. I had put a chain across the road that effectively blocked vehicle traffic. I waited until I knew the guy had come in a back way and then I went out and locked the chain up. KYHillChick was home with a bad cold, but he didn't know that. I went out and hunted in the afternoon, and kept up a one-sided communication with KYHillChick, allegedly at the cabin. I told her I was going to be late coming in, and to start dinner without me, blah, blah, blah.

Sure enough, the poacher tried to slip past the cabin at sundown. However, I was there to catch him with his atv handlebars wedged in under the chain. Until I was on him and he knew his goose was cooked, he still thought he could get through an roar off. I politely informed him that his lease story hadn't held up, and he was not welcomed back. He left rather quickly and has never returned.

Story #2

In the early years of our camp, it was just KYHillChick, myself and two young sons. One night, I'd had a tough time getting a deer out, and it was well after sundown before I had things squared away. I sat down in a lawnchair on the back of the house. We all had fun watching the moon come up. Eventually everyone went in the house and started on dinner-- all except for me. I tried to make it out of the lawnchair and my back had frozen up-- typical middle age crapola. I couldn't move. I was facing away from the house, so I couldn't yell for help so they could here me. I finally realized I was screwed and just sat there in the moonlight. I could hear them inside wondering why I hadn't come in, but quite a while passed before they took alarm.

I finally decided to self rescue. There was a scotch bottle handy, and I knew the scotch would relax my back. So I started sipping on the scotch until, after an hour, I was finally able to roll the chair over and crawl inside on my hands and knees. From then on, everyone knew to check on Dad before going in.

Story #3
One of Mooseboy's first does was gut shot. We got it out, but it was a wretched affair. I had never had to face one like this before. Both of us were hurling before it was over. We finally got things squared away and . . .

DINNER!!!

KYHillChick had laboriously prepared her famous venison roast. The recipe was Henry VIII's favorite dish. It really accentuates the venison taste, and it has a really bizarre mix of cloves and such that is alien to today's palates. There we were, wiping spittle off our chins and faced with. . . Thought makes me almost retch to this day. ANYTHING would have been better. A hamburger, a hotdog, but NO! We were eating venison roast. I told him to follow my lead. We spent the meal holding pieces and counting down 3,2,1 and popping them in with our eyes locked on each other. Nobody else knew what was going on. Father and son were forever bonded by this event.

Was at a Bud's camp during Doe season and we both filled our tags early and headed home...I decided to stop at my Cousins camp and see what was going on. Pulled in and it had just started to rain...Just then they start coming in from a drive and Unc is there..81YO and frail. He says would you mind driving me home, I'm cold and wet..It was on the way and if it was the other still would have...He and Dad broke me into the hunting game.

So we load up his stuff and head to his house. The weather broke and the sun came out and he started to feel better by the time we got to his place. He says would you mind driving me around, I would really like to shoot a Doe..Now Unc had shot hundreds on his farm, literally at least a hundred, and he wasn't much for abiding by the game regulations and all knew it. But off we go around the countryside looking for a Doe.

On an old dirt road one crosses in front and stops at the top of a bank about 60 yards away and I stop..Unc grabs the Model 70 with irons and sticks it out the window. I knew what was coming and plugged my ears. Baaaam and off the Deer goes.."Get up there and see if I got it." So up I go and start looking for blood...None. But I'm up higher and can see a green Bronco coming hard. The GW's drove green Bronco's..oh boy here we go. I get down and tell Unc I think the GW is coming, and he says, "Here" and sticks out his rifle..Automatically I take it..

Less than a minute later a green Bronco blows by, but it wasn't the GW. Whew!!! I then say to Unc, that was a dirty trick you pulled on sticking that rifle in my hand. He grins and then says, "And I'm ashamed my blood was dumb enough to grab it."

Back in the days when I hunted out of dad's old guy deer camp it was the second weekend and the group was making drives for one another. Now the second weekend of the deer season in those parts a guy could pretty much depend on only getting exercise because everything with antlers had been shot off already. It was along about noon and the guys all wanted to go back to camp for lunch so we piled into our cars and headed for the cabin. Dad and I were in dad's old Plymouth sedan and bringing up the rear. A few miles from the cabin dad looked out and said that he thought he saw a dead deer out in the field. I backed up and sure enough a very nice 9 pointer had been hit by a car and had made it a ways out into the field. The coyotes had eaten most of it, but the head and cape was still in good shape, so I cut that off and loaded it just sticking out of the trunk. We rolled into camp about ten minutes later than the other guys blowing the horn and high fiving each other parking just far enough away as to be believable as the guys all piled out of the cabin to see "our deer".
That was back in the days when the gas station guys pumped the gas. I figured to have more fun with that head and tied it sticking out of the trunk for the ride home. The gas station guy came out to fill the tank and said that was a real beauty of a buck and asked how much I figured that it weighed? "About eleven pounds" I told him. We had a lot of fun out of that deer camp. I miss dad and those days.

Your story reminds me of one told of Dad and Unc finding a dead Doe in the woods. It was frozen and Doe season was on so they propped it up solid against a tree and waited..Don't know how many times it was shot again, but some couldn't believe they missed it and walked up closer and shot it again.

Oh they are coming back...

Dad and Unc are up at another camp, which in fact was a leaky old barn up in the big woods they were allowed to use during Deer season. Dad had a brand new Pre64 Model 70 and sometime during the hunt kills a Buck. Uncle really liked the rifle and asked if he could use it. No problem...

Well he then proceeds to kill a Buck the next day with it. Buuuut, then he discovered he forgot his drag rope...Hmmmm...Well his belt should work and it does..However, his pants were falling loose the whole time, so he was pulling a Deer and trying to keep his pants on at the same time. And the rifle was a hindrance to forward progress. So he just placed the rifle in the Deer belly and went on his way, making sure it didn't fall out. He got in late and just left the Buck laying outside the barn..

Later that night Dad asked him were his rifle was...and that's when it hit, that it was still in the Deer..all covered in frozen blood and partial Deer guts..Not sure what was said then, but they laughed about it for years....

Great stories! Appreciate taking the time and the sharing.

In my Grandad’s hunting pics there’s a picture of a pretty blonde haired gal in a red flannel shirt lying on one of the bunks in our old wall tent.

One day my Grandad and another guy were tagged out and just hanging around camp reading and enjoying the view. Up pulls the warden and his pretty wife in her red flannel shirt. They asked to check tags for the deer that were hanging and all was well. As they were about to pull out Grandad had an idea. He got his camera and asked the lady if she’d lay back on this one particular bunk so he could snap here picture and she agreed.

Now one of the guys, just so happens the gal was lying on his bunk, had a wife who was rather gruff and wasn’t 100% sure that Leon actually went hunting for 3 weeks every fall. The stage was set for the prank of the century.

Back in the 50’s and 60’s it was a pretty big deal in our small town that my Grandad and his friends would travel 650 miles for a 3 week hunting trip every fall. Usually Grandad or someone would write up a summary of the trip for the paper when they returned and everyone in town knew about their adventures. They’d rent the community gathering hall when they got back and the wives would all cook a roast or something and all the families and friends would get together for a game feed and story telling. The climax of this was when they’d dim the lights and set up the slide projector and Grandad would narrate as he switched through the slides.

So mid slide show he hits the button and this picture of a pretty gal laying on Leon’s bunk pops up. He says into the mic,” oh no that wasn’t supposed to be in there!” and quickly hits the button to change the slide. All the sudden Leon’s wife is hollering, “I knew it, I knew it!” as she is flailing him and cussing him! Of course Leon had no idea what was going on since he’d been out hunting when the warden and his wife stopped by.

It took some convincing but Grandad of course admitted that it was a prank and got her calmed down. But those guys laughed about that for the rest of their lives, Grandad still laughs about it but he’s the only one involved whose still with us.

One time the evening of opening day we were cleaning up after supper. One of the guys came in and said, "The deer are milling around in the bottom near the target stand like they're spying on us!" The was a knock at the window over the kitchen sink and there was a doe's head looking in being help up by another guy from camp.

The same two guys propped up a 10 point they found frozen on the hill. They propped it up against a tree and someone came by and shot at least 10 times.

First weekend of camp two older guys packed up and left about noon on Sunday, as they had a 4 hour drive, and were done for the year. One of them had pretty bad eyesight and everyone kind of looked out for him.

We finished lunch and got prepared to do a drive.

One of the younger guys who made a pretty meager wage had left his boots on the front porch as we all did to keep from tracking snow in.

When everyone else was ready, he complained that he couldnt find his boots.

There was a set of boots left on the porch that nobody claimed but they were 3 sizes too small for him.
One of the two older guys had taken the wrong boots.

Cussing, he walked to his truck in his socks in the snow and drove off.

One of dads friends was pretty abrasive and had a strange sense of humor and liked to annoy people and didnt care who liked him and who didnt. One of his pranks in black bear season in PENN was to put a stuffed fake bear in a tree in front of his hunting camp. From a distance it looked like a real bear hanging as if someone had shot it and was displaying it for everyone to see. Plenty of people stopped got out of their cars and walked up to it and realized it was fake and would hurry back to their car and leave.

I hunted out of a camp owned by a pair of brothers who were distant relatives of mine. The camp was the farmhouse where they grew up. At the time, I lived in our farmhouse, about a quarter mile down the road. End of the day, I parked my truck along the township road for a few minutes before heading to my house. While I was in the camp, a neighbor came driving down the road, looked to see if we had anything on the game pole and drifted his Jeep right into my truck. Wrecked them both bad enough that neither could be driven so we called the cops to report it. We also called the neighbors son because the neighbor was pretty elderly and had some health issues

A newly minted state trooper and his training officer show up, the new guy starts gathering information. I'm Dale Kriner and it was my Jeep Comanche that got hit. The neighbor who hit my truck was Ray Kriner and he was driving a Jeep Wagoneer. His son was Fred Kriner. The rookie cop looks a bit confused, shakes his head and turns to get the camp owners information. "I'm Phil Kriner" he says and we all bust out laughing including the troopers.

The final kicker was that my uncle's ex wife (also a Kriner) worked for Ray's insurance company, somebody at the company dropped the file on her desk to handle.

Nothing wild but I still grin when I think of that rookie cop trying to keep it all straight.

Dale

Went to the gym for an evening workout and a couple others came to mind....

No Deer were harmed in this one..

Unc number 2 had a small camp in Clarington, Pa. Like 4 people was a crowd small....The two of us were there playing cards one evening...Me about 17 and him late 50's. He looks up and says to me, do you drink beer? I replied no, and he says well I do, lets go. We are soon in this little bar not much bigger than his camp. 5 or 6 stool joint. There is another sitting at the bar, obviously over his threshold and wearing a Pa tuxedo, aka woolrich pants with suspenders. In a bit he gets up and goes to the BR and a little later so does Unc 2. Soon Unc 2 comes out and he is rolling with laughter.."What's up?" "Well that guy with the Woolrich pants is sitting on the toilet grunting one out. No door and I could see him." I give him an odd look and he replies.. "He still has the pants on" "No," "Yes"

Soon the guy comes out and sits down, and in a bit says something to himself. Next thing we know he waddles out the door...We both were crying...

We had a new guy in camp and we all constantly told him to keep a sharp eye out for rattlesnakes. We got him convinced they were everywhere.(There really were quite a few around.) We had a very old out house / privy and we told him to check in there good before he used it as the snakes liked to hide in there. One day he went in there and was doing his business and one of the guys snuck around the back of the outhouse with a long piece of straightened out coat hanger wire. He ran the wire up underneath the outhouse and poked the dude in his butt. He exploded out of the outhouse without opening the door taking the whole front of the house with him screaming bloody murder. The whole group of us were out front and saw the whole thing happen. Looked like a wrecking ball coming out of the front of that outhouse. I dont think we stopped laughing the whole rest of the time we were there. We all got to use the now open air outhouse the rest of the trip. The new guy is a regular member after that and his nickname is old stinky.

Mohawk, you brought back a memory....

Up at the Sinnamahoning camp they would have a kids weekend..the members would bring their kids and grandchildren and it was a blast...I got to bring my Daughter but wasn't there this time...One of the guys had a Bear rug and he was going to scare the kids one evening..There were two camps close together and some pines separated them...All were getting ready to go to bed and a guy was walking up to the other camp to turn in, when the other jumps out from behind a pine holding the bear rug up and making some Bear sound..The guy let out a scream and was leaving a smoke trail to the camp door.

One camp story from the late 90’s when we used to hunt the Sandhills of north central Nebraska. Camp was a very old original, vacant farm house on the place. The last time we were there, I decided on the weak, rusty shower after a long days hunt.

I turned the rusty faucets to let the water warm up a bit and went for some other toiletries. Getting in and pulling the shower curtain, through the steam and water, I noticed a large black object at the drain. It was moving and now entering the tub. Al I could think was getting my camera or I wouldn’t be believed.

Back to the shower, there was a four foot snake in the tube. If you bring the tip of your middle finger together with the tip of your thumb, you’d have the girth or real close to it.

The rest hardly dared to use the stool let alone the shower the rest of the weekend.

The next summer they tore the place down and the septic tank had corroded to the point there wasn’t much left except for a mass of writhing snakes in the hundreds, maybe the thousands.

Our camp chef, Ernie brought up to camp a TV one year. He put tin foil on the antennae so he could get better reception. We all told him we didn't want any TV's in camp but he said he wanted to watch the Giants and Murder She Wrote.
A couple weeks prior my FIL had an old TV he wanted to get rid of and asked me if I wanted it but at the time I said no.
Ernie got drunk and went to bed and I went to town and got the old TV from my FIL. We hid Ernie's in a cabinet and put the tin foil on the antennae of the imposter and set it down by the brook, about 50 yards from camp.
The next morning Ernie stumbled downstairs and saw his TV was missing. When he looked out the window and saw it outside he started hollering that it was going to have condensation in it. I told him it's about to get a lot worse. 3 of the guys were lined up as a firing squad and did the ready, aim, fire thing They blasted that TV to pieces! (Those old picture tubes really exploded!)
Ernie was dumbfounded to say the least. Later that night we pulled his TV out of the cabinet and put it in his car for him.
We have a picture of two of the sharpshooters posing with their foot on top of the deceased TV. We still laugh about that one.

Enjoying these deer camp stories. One from my youth:

My Dad, Uncle Bill, and this skinny 12 year old were heading up to deer camp when Dad and Uncle hatched a plot. Uncle Bill got some pliers and pulled the bullets out of three shells, dumped the gunpowder and pushed the bullets back on the brass.

Later that evening up at deer camp the big hunting group (probably 15 men and boys) were all sitting around the blazing campfire swapping stories. My Uncle Bill sat there playing with those three shells, rolling them in his palm and whatnot until he was sure everybody had seen what was in his hand. My Dad had waited patiently directly across the fire and in a lull of conversation said, "Hey Bill, what kind of shells are those? Let me see them." They both reach over the fire and Bill "accidentally" dropped the shells into the fire.

Holy Moly You never saw so many men move so fast! Falling out of lawn chairs, scrambling on hands and knees, hitting the dirt or running for the trees. It was pandemonium. My Dad and Uncle standing there laughing their asses off.

Later, they were saying it's a good thing there weren't any heroes jumping on the fire to save everybody else.

my favorite memories of deer camp was sitting around and listening to my old man and his buddies get liquored up and start talking about ww2. there was a b17 bombadier (dad), a gunner on a destroyer in the pacific and a guy who went across europe with patton. wish to fugg i would have asked them more questions. lot of fun hunting with them guys in those days. cold weather, schitty clothing and tons of deer to keep you warm.