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

These are fantastic!!

Camp meat, fact or fiction I've heard a couple of good stories about camp meat over the years.

Dad never admitted to it, but I'm pretty sure they didn't bring a lot of beef to camp with them....... I can honestly say that in the time I hunted there, we never had "camp meat" unless it was from last year's deer.

Same here.

I've never heard of this "camp meat." Please explain.

30 years ago or so, you were allowed a camp deer in MI. I think it had to be consumed in camp. My guess is that too many were taking "advantage" of it and the DNR suspended it. Too bad, I think it, among other things, hurt the tradition of staying up at camp for a couple weeks. Now most stay just a few days.

Yep! That's it! Awesome country! I even saw a very large road kill black bear laying on the side of the road one morning on my commute to Brookville. We have bears in MN but I have never seen one road kilt.

Gopher,
These are great stories! Thanks for sharing

Tom-seriously? 'Never heard of camp meat? You friggin' hayseed!

Our guys tried their had at bow hunting for deer. As the old saying goes, "the hunting was great, but the shooting sucked':

Oct.2-1960

Burt Callan, Grubb, Jim Biggers and Guy Mercer bow hunted for deer Sat. No deer. Left Sun 9 a.m.

Grubb

P.S. Grubb shot all his arrows at a buck and a doe stands and watches him cut an arrow out of a tree.

Our guys were good gun hunters, but I can find no records of anyone taking a deer with a bow. My dad was the target of much good natured ribbing over the incident discussed above. Apparently he shot 8 arrows at a buck, missed every time, dug one out of a tree in front of him, missed with it, and then threw the bow at the buck out of frustration. The standing joke in camp was that you could have made a toothpick factory out of the pile of arrows dad left in the woods that day!

Nope. Completely new concept for me.

many times the plan with my uncles was that we would stay at camp until the camp meat ran out. you could do a lot with a few jars of gravy, a few onions, and a 10lb bag of potatoes with your camp meat...

I look around this little camp and try to imagine what it must have been like with 10 guys and all their gear crammed in there. 'Couldn't have been much elbow room with a crew like that. A kitchen and dining room were added on years laters, as we a big front porch. Dad cut a window into the back wall of the camp with a crude screen in it. It was put there purposely as a gun port, as the deer regularly cross between the cabin and the outhouse.

I can assure you, their "gear" was a lot less than all the gadgets we bring now. Last year, I really lightened up my pack. Several 1/2 day sits, I didn't even have a pack.

I'm guessing those guys has a rope, a knife, matches, a sammich, and a "pop".

Love these stories. Keep em coming. And for Gods sake share them with your children and their children. As a society we have lost the oral tradition! These stories ,as humble as they sound, are the true essence of all that make is who and what we are!

Jan 11-64 Bow season

Arrived with Biggers about 10:30 P.M. Thursday night. Snow was drifted on road and had to leave car at foot of hill. Biggers saw 55 deer & I saw 51 in two days. Biggers missed one & I broke an arrow trying to shoot through trees. 10 degrees above zero Sat morning. Left camp around noon Sunday. Squirrels were by the back door.

Bert

The was the heyday of deer numbers in Penn's Woods. If you didn't see at least 30 deer a day, it was a slow day. I remember one opening day when I counted 47 deer. This was before QDM was enacted. It wasn't at all uncommon to see those kinds of numbers and maybe see one spike buck out of all that. The herd was definitely out of balance and QDM eventually leveled out the buck/doe ratio quite a bit, but that didn't come until much later.

There are many entries about the guys taking 35 or more squirrels in a weekend too, and that's with no Sunday hunting. Many of the entries talk about the guys getting to camp at about 1 a.m. in the morning on Saturday. This is because most of the guys were working until 5 or 6 in the evening, and then had a 4 hour plus drive to get to camp. When Interstate 80 went through it shaved an hour and a half to two hours off our commute times.

I've had a camp sinse 1989. I never kept a journal but took quite a few picture. Now, more pics than ever. We hang them up on the joists and sheds and antlers go on the beams along with a few bear skulls. My sons first kill is on the beam, a red squirrel tail. I could write a journal now and remember everything. Never could remember the last time I forgot something. Now that I think og it i'm going to copy my old 35 mm prints and hang them on th joists.

Pics are great too.

One of my most prized possesions is the photo album from my Uncle Jeff's(mom's brother) camp. I don't think they had a journal but I have "the book". My dad was part of the camp, mostly to hang out with his BIL's. My Uncle Rick was my dad's best good friend and they did a TON together. Rick was at our house every weekend at 6am wether dad wanted to hunt or not. I ALWAYS wanted to go and was up, dressed, and ready. Most saturdays, dad had to work anyway, so jumped in the chevy and we went to camp to hunt "partridge" and fix stands.

The camp was sold by Jeff in the mid 80's so he could pay for his wedding. (WTF?) That should have been the first signal of an evil woman. Jeff wasn't around there much but was the full owner of the camp. Rick and dad tried to buy it but for some reason Jeff wouldn't sell to them.

I hunted and spent MANY hours in the woods with Rick. He passed from cancer when I was 11. Two months before I turned 12 and could legally hunt in MN. We've been hunting together every years since 1988. He gave me his knive, a Chicago Cuttlery lock back.

If my house burns down... I'm grabbing my kids, that kinve, and "the book". The hell with the rest.

There's just nothing quite like being the first one to make it to camp. Sitting back in a tired old overstuffed easy chair with a glass of good whiskey and "the book." The wood stove hisses and crackles as it comes back to life, taking the chill off the late evening air. The smell of wood smoke, mixed with stiff alcohol and Hoppe's No. 9 makes everything in the world right if only for a short time. The dull glow of the gas lantern paints the room, as the stories in the book bring the camp back to life. A tired Brittany lays at your feet, feeling the exhaustion that came with chasing grouse all day in the thick woods. It is times like this when a man is truly at peace in his world, and for the time being, all is well.

Good read. This part made me laugh:



One of my parents' neighbors had pretty much quit hunting due to health issues in his late 60s, but bought a license and went to camp (Cameron/Potter county line area) with his bunch every year in buck seasons, mostly to cook, tend to chores and just hang out with his amigos.

Same old haggles about who would get the first buck, bets and lots of guff when they headed out Monday mornings.

One year the neighbor took the breakfast dish water out on the porch to toss it, saw a nice buck coming up through the woods towards camp in the driveway. Went back in, loaded a rifle, cracked the door a bit and dropped it right in the camp dooryard.

Dressed it, hoisted it on the meat pole and relaxed until the first few guys came back in for lunch. Said no one had shown up with a buck by that point and all had a great time the rest of the week giving him the bidness, over "the cook" shooting the first buck.

IIRC, he said the following year they joked about not leaving any firearms/ammo at camp when they headed out to hunt, so he couldn't whup 'em again, sittin' on his ass at camp while they hunted?

One camp that I went to had a rule. Person with the first Buck in camp became the cook. People were hiding out on the edge of camp waiting for someone else to drag one in.