Published: December 09, 2007 11:39 am         

First buck still best buck

Thoughts of Army-Navy day

Mike Burke wrote a really good column a Sunday ago.

That’s not news, of course. Our sports editor has a habit of writing really good columns and I look forward to them as a reader as much as a fellow word jockey.

This particular column was about the Army-Navy football game. After reading it I wanted to salute or sing the national anthem or re-up. Burke wrote about what the Army-Navy game has meant to his family, and to all of us for that matter.

If you haven’t read it, get thee to www.times-news.com and find it.

I tell Burke I like it when he weasels someone in his column. He has named as weasels individuals such as Paul Tagliabue (former commissioner of the National Football League), Bud Selig (commissioner of Major League Baseball) and Dan Snyder (owner of the Washington Redskins), whom he calls The Danny.

Since weasles live in the outdoors and this is an outdoors column, it gave me the perfect bridge.

One of the things columnists do is give thousands of people a look inside their personal lives. It’s part of the deal. Doing so can sometimes be a touchy proposition. You want to provide an anecdote that will entertain the reader, perhaps evoking a grin or a guffaw or an I’ve-been-there response, but not embarrassing the person about whom you are writing.

Anyway, Burke’s column made me remember my most memorable Army-Navy game day. It was in 1962 and I have no idea who won the contest.

Here is what I do remember.

It was the last day of the buck season in West Virginia. I was a junior at La Salle Institute and the owner of a brand new Savage Model 99 in the 300 Savage caliber. I had come by that classic firearm as a Christmas present almost 12 months earlier. One of the really cool things is that the firearm has a counter on the side that tells you how many cartridges are in the magazine.

In the 45 years that have passed, that rifle has put multitudinous pounds of venison on our dining table.

On that last day of that 1962 deer season, which was just a week long in those days, we drove from our home on Williams Street in Cumberland to the Nathaniel Mountain Public Hunting Area in Hampshire County.

You know how you remember little things from throughout your life? I remember that during that morning, a morning during which I saw absolutely zero deer, a Marty Robbins song kept playing through my mind. I think it was “Devil Woman,” but it may have been “El Paso.” Nah, I’m pretty sure it was “Devil Woman.”

The morning had been of the cool-but-not-cold variety. It was sunny. There was no snow on the ground.

I had the typical patience of a 16-year-old and as the noon hour approached I complained about the lack of action and expressed my desire to return home to watch the Army-Navy game on our black and white television.

“OK,” my dad said. “Let’s just walk over here onto that flat and hunt for about a hour and we will still have time to see the game.”

No problem.

I walked about 100 yards away from dad. Blaze orange was not required in those days, but like safety conscious hunters in the early 1960s, we wore red caps. I could see dad’s scarlet noggin through the denuded oak-hickory woods.

I stopped near a large oak tree, noticed that it could be climbed and, for some reason that I cannot explain, decided to ascend onto its branches. Don’t ask me why. People were not hunting from tree stands in those days and nobody had ever suggested to me that hunting from an elevated position was a good idea.

Being 10-foot tall and bullet proof, as are many 16-year-olds, I climbed (with loaded gun probably) onto a sturdy branch about 10 feet from the ground. Please, do not try this at home.

I settled in and surveyed my deer hunting kingdom. “There. If a buck comes over there, I can get him. But if he comes over there (more to my right), I’ll have to swing a little.”

I’m telling you that I no sooner dropped my lever-action long gun to my lap than I heard a crashing through the woods and here came a very large deer. His head was low and he was on what you might call a hard walk or a slow run. I didn’t need the spectacles I would wear 30 years later or a scope (good thing, because I didn’t have one) to see the buck’s big antlers.

And where did the deer finally stop? Yep, over to the right where I had to swing awkwardly and shoot a bit off balance. I put the post of the front sight in the V of the back sight and let her fly.

Not only did the bullet fly, but so did I. The recoil knocked me off balance and off the limb I went, doing a full rotation and landing on my bottom.

No sooner had I touched down than I was on my feet running for the deer. The sight of me jumping up and running allowed my dad to breathe again. He told me later that he heard the shot and saw me fall out of the tree and thought I had been hit by another hunter.

The next thing I remember is a voice growing stronger behind me. It was dad, a very athletic man, who had run and rapidly closed the distance behind me.

No longer concerned about my safety, he was now concerned about my legality. After all, I had never shot at a deer before.

“Does it have horns? Does it have horns?” I can still hear him hollering, followed immediately by “(Expletive deleted) yes it has horns,” as he came within sight of the dead animal.

The bullet had struck the base of the neck, the only shot I had, and dispatched the buck. The shot was about 40 yards.

The buck was a heavy-antlered 6-point, though one tine had been broken off in some testosterone-filled, woodland fight. Although the antlers are a legitimate 19-inch outside spread, there is not brow tine one.

It didn’t take long to figure out why the buck came my way. Here came a hunter. He had been headed back to his vehicle to eat his lunch when he jumped the buck. I was in the right place at the right time.

“Nice buck you got,” he said to may dad, who just shook his head from side to side and pointed to me.

Another thing I remember is that we stuck the buck in the back of a Chrysler station wagon and started down Grassy Lick Road headed for Romney and a check-in station. I think we found one at a Texaco station. On the way out we came to a stone fence where a bunch of kids who didn’t look any older than me were drinking Old German beer. When they saw the big antlers sticking out of the back of the station wagon they all jumped up and started cheering.

To this day, and scores of deer later, that buck is still my biggest whitetail. Not an Army-Navy day comes and goes without me thinking of that wonderful early December day in the high country of Hampshire County.

Outdoor Editor Mike Sawyers may be contacted at msawyers@times-news.com.