Most of my stories come from when I was around 15 and started bowhunting. There was a guy that we hunted with, Jay, that was, well let's just say he walked a thin line on being law abiding.

In my early days of bowhunting, we hunted with a bow like we hunt with a gun. Sit in the morning, drive in the afternoon, and sit in the evening. We knew no better because we were barely high school kids. Heck, none of us could even drive at that point. Jay was older than us, probably in his mid 30's at the time so we listened to him. He also had a nice collection of antlers so we figured he knew what he was talking about. In my first year of bowhunting we had just completed a drive and were heading back to the cars to go to a different spot to push. On our way back we saw a group of deer milling around in some brush. They were at least 40 yards away and with old Bear Whitetail Hunters in hand with 45-50 lb. draw weights that was way out of our effective range. Jay saw the deer and yelled, "What are you doin'?!?! There're deer over there! Shoot em!" We all just kind of looked at him like he was crazy. Jay had already tagged out so he didn't have a bow. He murmured something about stupid kids and grabbed my bow out of my hand. Fortunately, I'm left handed so he gave me my bow back and grabbed my friend Danny's. Next thing you know there are arrows being flung into the brush. Nowhere near the deer because the bow was about 6 inches too short in draw length for Jay. Danny's dad hears all the ruckus and turns around and asks Jay what he's doing. Jay's reply, "don't you see the deer?!?!" Danny's dad just shook his head and told Jay that unless he planned on buying Danny new arrows to give the bow back. Needless to say, those deer were in no danger.

On another hunt with Jay, the following year, we were putting on a drive on the hillside. We had a lot of permanent stands on this hillside and this drive always put deer out. I was a driver and Jay was in one of the ladder stands. I had made the push through the thicket andapproached the stand that Jay was supposed to be in. I saw no Jay, but saw his quiver up in the tree. I got excited because I figured he had hit a deer and was looking for his arrow. As I got closer, I still couldn't see him. Then when I was under his stand I saw his bow laying on the ground and could hear some faint moaning. I looked up the hill and there was Jay laying on the ground about 20 yards from the stand. I ran up the hill to him and called everyone over. He was a mess. His shirt was torn open and there were leaves all in his shirt and his hair. He had a big scrape down the side of his face. His pant legs were all muddy and his arms were all scraped and cut up. Obviously, 20 yards is too far to fall out of a tree so we all wanted to know what happened. Apparently, our drive was successful and we pushed a nice buck past Jay. He drew and was taking aim when the stand he was in shifted and sent his arrow flying Lord knows where and his bow tumbling to the terra firma below when Jay dropped it to keep himself from falling(no safety harnesses in those days). The deer confused by the noise ran almost directly under the ladder stand. Jay, never being one to let "his" deer get away, drew his knife and figured a 12 foot drop onto the back of a deer wouldn't be such a bad idea. Needless to say, his knife never found its mark and Jay was taken for the ride of his life and beaten along the way. He said he would have gotten the deer if it hadn't rammed him into a tree to get him off. We tried to convince him that the deer was probably not thinking that much into it and most likely just ran into the tree because Jay's weight had him off balance. "Naw, that buck knew what he was doin'! I could see it in his eyes!"

Looking back on it, Jay kind of reminds me of Shaw from Open Season for you guys that have kids. Good ole Jay, I wonder what he's up to these days.

Quicksilver, that shop you put an arrow in the ceiling wouldn't be Bergie's would it?