Long ... but indulge an "old" man if you will ...

My first deer was way before video cameras !!! It was the winter of 1963. I was barely 15. I had worked about 6 weeks of 12 hour days the summer before , 6 days a week burning piles of dried tree tops on a family friend's newly cleared pasture land ... @ $.25/hour. I had been with Dad when he went to Steinberg's in Baton Rouge and saw a 50# pull, Shakespeare Wonder Bow recurve. I had become a decent archer in the Boy Scouts and having read a book by featuring Fred Bear, spent about $45 of my savings on an fancy archery set-up, replacing my 40# pull $16 fiberglass Ben Pearson stick set that I had bought a year earlier at a local hardware store. I practiced countless hours shooting into hay bales so that I could earn an Archery Merit Badge ... and thought I was a good shot !!

For years, wile hunting squirrels with my only shot gun .. a Mossberg .410, I had seen deer tracks on several oak flats in a swamp near where I lived at the time. After football season ended, I started hunting these deer every Saturday morning. I actually got a 30 yard or so shot at a spike the second time out, but shot over the buck about 5'. I was shaking so badly it was a miracle the shot was that close. It took me seemed like forever to find my precious arrow. I only had 3 !! Cedar shafted with Herter's broad heads. I never saw any deer again that season.

I practiced a lot the next year and was a ton stonger, bigger and a really good shot by the fall. I had found great sign of deer feeding on acorns that fall and had built 3 ground blinds .... one on each of the 3 acorn flats within about 25 yards of the trails where the deer were coming onto the flats out of the swamp. I had killed many Nutria (which we ate by the way) from those blinds but had not seen any deer. It was not until near the end of the season that I lucked into a shot. It was a fork-horned 4 point walking knee deep in the swamp water with 3 does in tow. It was at about 18 yards. I hit it a tad back but mid-up on the body and passed through both lungs. I was too inexperienced to know to let the buck lay. So, for about 15 minutes I chased it though the swamp. Finally it gave out ... about when I did too.

I did not have a truck or ATV or anything other than my 28" Murray bicycle equipped with a "paper-boy basket". Took me hours to drag the deer out to the fence row where I had left the bike near the graveled road. I certainly I had not planned how to manage getting that much dead weight back to the house. I wound up dragging the deer back to the edge of the swamp and gutting it. I sloshed it as clean as swamp water can and dragged it back to the bike. I took the strings out of my worn out "Chucks" and used one to tie the front legs over the handle bars, placing the head and precious rack in the basket. I tied the back legs straddled across the rear "seat" ... then took my belt off and cinched the buck to the bike frame ... and proceeded to walk my trophy the 3 or so miles back home.

About a quarter mile into my trek, a family friend passed me in his hay truck ... backed up and after much gawking at the kid that had killed a buck with archery gear proceeded to haul me all over the east side of the parish to about every "jot-em-down" grocery in the area. Some hour or so later I arrived at home ... full of soda and junk food .... and no one was there to greet me. I was so let down. By then I truly had the big head.

Dad was a school teacher/coach and was working a Saturday job to help make ends meet. Mom had taken my younger brothers to the grocery. Mr. Babin strung the deer up to the swing set and skinned it out. He washed it off good and butchered it out for me. I wrapped it in freezer paper and kept the head out for dad to see. When he finally came home he was astounded to say the least.

What I cannot describe here is how I must have looked to all those who saw me before I cleaned up ... knee deep in mud, wet well above the waist and covered with deer blood !! But for a few weeks I was a local "celeb". Heck, my dad by then had been dog hunting deer in the swamps of SE Louisiana for over 10 years and never even got a shot. So, I was one up on the ol' man.

Now knowing there was nothing to this bow hunting deal, it took me only 13 more years to get another shot ... and I missed it to boot !