back in about the early 1970s, I used to hunt a wildlife management area known as browns farm,
it was just a fairly densely wooded area of about 5500 acres,
bordered on the south edge for about a couple miles with little raised side roads that jutted into the woods,
for a distance of about 1/8th mile, spaced every 1/4 mile,
the ends were where the power company would place huge steel power poles a few years later.
opening day of deer season was Saturday at dawn,


these side access roads where were we parked and set up tents for camping.
one of my neighbors , ALLEN, wanted to try hunting deer in the glades, so we invited him along,
we left home on friday evening and set up camp with a 8 person tent at the far end of one road,
we gathered a bunch of coral rocks, about water Mellon size. to form a ring and make a fire pit,
we had a fire grate, to cook on and several coleman lanterns, we sat around the camp fire untill it was down too coals
and it started a light rain, not all that un-comon , we went to the tent to await opening morning, most of us were asleep in an hour or so.
my neighbor had never slept in a tent or camped out over night,he was worried about florida panthers,,
we had used a couple tri pods made from 7.5 ft lengths, of 1/2" metal conduit to hang two lanterns, at the outer edge of camp to maintain light at the camp site.
the only place too sit was the truck tail gate and a couple coleman coolers we had filled with drinks and ice.
these were placed near the fire ring.
one other guy,in our tent camp site, told him, not to worry, then said, panthers only kill a few guys every season, the odds are good youll survive the night!
we all laughed.. that was probably not the best way to calm the new guys apprehension, ,,,
at about 3 am, I was shaken awake by my neighbor, he was scared silly,he could hardly wispier,
he pointed at the large moving shadow on the tent wall,
for a second I thought, HUGE GRIZZLY, a second later my mind gripped reality ,
the shadow on the tent wall was 6-7 feet long and four feet high at the shoulders,

its rather amazing how large a raccoons shadow,looks if hes standing on a coleman cooler between your coleman lantern and your tent, looks.
yeah, intimidating, we all got a good laugh out of that experience.

it had rained a slow drizzle most of the night, but by dawn it had stopped, temps were in the high 50s low 60s, (about average or a bit cooler for hunts in florida)
that morning , we were tired and rapidly getting wet as we ventured out to the area we were to hunt,
I placed ALLEN in a tree stand on one side of a grove of florida oak, it was basically a 2 ft x 2 ft piece of plywood ,
supported by a few boards nailed too two branches at about 8 ft elevation, I told ALLEN to remain silent, don,t move, remain observant,
ALLEN had an older 303 british carbine.
I told him I would be back to check on him in about an hour as I intended to still hunt the area.
30 minutes later I heard a shot, and ALLEN had his first 4 point buck down, it had wandered by at about 30 yards,
ALLEN, had shot the buck in the shoulder/neck area and dropped it instantly on the spot!
I showed ALLEN how to dress out the deer, I thought he might loose his breakfast,
but after a short time he became very interested,asked questions and helped drag out the buck to the truck,
in fact over the next few decades he was a damn good hunting partner.