THE FIRST KILL

The Land Between the Lakes (LBL), is a National Recreational Area about 90 miles northwest of Nashville, and about 26 miles north of Clarksville, Tennessee, right on the Kentucky and Tennessee state line. The inland peninsula itself is half in Kentucky and half in Tennessee and was formed when the Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers were impounded, around 1953, creating Kentucky Lake and Lake Barkley. The large area is bisected by The Trace, also known as KY 453, a 45 mile long highway. The land is prime deer hunting land and the former location of many old homesteads.

I hunted LBL twice during my hunting career, the first time successfully, but the second time, while not successful; it was the most challenging experience. This story is about the first time.

The first hunt was with Vernon, Leroy, Martin, and Squeaky. They prepped me for the hunt about two months prior to the hunt, making me shoot countless arrows down through the trees at a range in north Knoxville. There were a series of tree stands and ground stations throughout the woods near the rifle range there. Martin in particular made me practice shooting straight down from a tree stand to a target below at about an 80 degree angle. He had missed a doe directly under his tree stand the year before and he was determined that neither of us would make the same mistake at LBL.

The morning of the hunt, (I’m skipping right to the chase because the two hunts are meshed in my memory and the details leading up to the actual hunts are somewhat confusing now), the five of us skirted a large cornfield in the dark, walking to our stands, spaced some 200 yards apart, located between the field and a slow sloping hill.

I quickly inched my way up the tall hickory I had scouted and settled in for the wait, scouring the area with quick little movements of my eyes in order to pick up movement, but not really focusing on anything. This is the same technique I had learned in Vietnam while standing post, and the same reason lifeguards can watch a large crowd and still pick up something out of place – not normal.

All day I sat there, sucking on the kernels of corn from a dried ear I picked up coming along the field. Slowly, as went the time, kernel after kernel dissolved in my mouth and occupied my time. Occasionally, I would have to pee in the plastic bottle I had packed…along side my lunch!

The day drug by and the heat rose to around 65 or 70, and I could feel the sweat trail down my brow and into my eyes, but I was careful to move very slowly when I had to wipe it away.

The sun sank lower until it silhouetted the top of the hill about 200 yards away. I started to think that my hunt was over for the day and that I had wasted all the preparation and anxiety time.

Just then about 5 or 6 deer came up over the hill from the opposite side from me and stood looking toward the field that was vexing them to “come gorge on my corn.” They suddenly broke and started to run down the hill toward the field but away from my stand. Again my heart sank.

Then, as if divinely guided, one doe broke ranks and headed in my direction. While the doe was still shielded from me by low limbs loaded with fall foliage, I came to full draw and followed her; bending from the waist and maintaining the proper shooting posture.

As fate, or God, would have it she stopped dead still directly under my feet and perused the immediate area, but never looking up. My arms began to feel weak as I strained to hold the 60 pound bow at full draw, and Martin’s voice went over that particular shot one more time in my head.

I aimed lower than she appeared, like shooting at fish in water, taking aim about a foot lower than dead on and released! As happened to me many times, the doe took one more step, maybe jumping the sound of the string being that close, and the arrow twanged into the ground. The doe squatted slightly, and bolted, tail down. In a moment she was lost in the darkness that had now crept into the valley.

I cursed myself, only audible to myself, and began the climb down, making more noise than I should have. Just then Leroy appeared and asked, “Did you hit her?”

“Hell no…I screwed up the shot…Martin will be pissed,” I said loudly.

“Where’s your arrow? Was her tail up or down?”

“I don’t know…down I think…let’s see, she was standing about here...” then my flashlight highlighted the arrow. I bent down and pulled it out of the ground and I felt something wet and yucky. Leroy stepped up and we both lit up an arrow with blood and deer crap all over it!

“You hit her man, you hit her!”

“I hit her,” I shouted!

The five of us searched for about two hours and could not find the doe in the dark. I had to ride back to the motel and try to sleep wondering about my deer…lost out there in the dark woods.

The next morning, not 50 yards from my tree we found the doe lying under some bushes, with about half of one of her hind quarters eaten away by the forest scavengers; skunks, possums, raccoons, maybe even coyotes, who knows. Needless to say, I was very disappointed, but nonetheless, it was decided that I should salvage what I could, if for nothing else to feed my dog.

So, for the first time, I pulled out my Air Force survival knife and began to cut from where the animals had left off up to her chest cavity.

I heard Leroy make a bet with Vernon about whether or not I would upchuck, but as I laid her open and rolled out the already severed entrails, it was Leroy who gave up the first “Ralph and Earl!” The smell was just too much for him!

I had passed my first rite of passage and made my first kill, as they said with “beginner’s luck!” Either by luck or skill, I made the grade with many witnesses. It don’t get any better than that!

BOOTS

In the film “The Deer Hunter” the central character, Michael, tries to drive home the point of always being prepared to his other hunting buddies by insisting his friend Nick not loan Stanley a pair of boots. The movie goes on to show another character flaw in Stanley when he randomly fires at deer, forgetting the group’s creed of “one shot – one kill.”

These are two of the movie’s good points and things I held true when I participated in the sport. Always being prepared was not just something I learned in “Scouts,” it was also something the military police training drummed into me. It was also among the first things I learned from friends when I began hunting.

“You can always take it off, but you can’t put it on if you didn’t bring it,” Vernon used to say as we worked.

“Staying warm or cool is part of being prepared,” Leroy would add.

Vernon and Leroy were brothers-in-law that I worked with when I first went to work in Oak Ridge. We were second-class mechanics in the “converter” shop, and the hard, side-by-side work soon made us close friends.

The two used to talk deer hunting year ‘round, but especially during the summer just prior to the opening of the fall bow season. I guess I got caught up in the intrigue of deer hunting, and because I still remembered a neighborhood friend who used to hunt with his dad and would come back telling stories of the things he had witnessed. I always wanted to be part of that experience, but my dad had no interest.

However, the driving force was probably the loneliness I was experiencing after my divorce. I was desperate for new relationships and for things to occupy my off time. So, it is easy to see how I would get caught up in the excitement and camaraderie of any sport.

Soon, I was interested enough that I bought a bow, camouflage clothing, insulated boots, a tree stand, and everything else that went with the sport. It was probably a small fortune! I began practicing at the range with them after shift, driving many a sleepy mile out of the way just to shoot arrows, talk hunting techniques, and just be with new friends.

Anyone that has ever been around guys who are deep into any sport knows how much they love to talk and pass on what they know. Maybe it is just a way to show off, but it makes no difference, if you ask a question, someone is going to load you up with more than you can remember. Vernon and Leroy were no exceptions and they rattled on endlessly, stopping only briefly to spit out a dark stream of Red Man before continuing!

The first hunt went flawlessly, except that I did not make a kill as I had fantasized. I brought everything I needed and more, and I loved every minute of the ride to Chuck Swan Wildlife Management Area, in Union County, Tennessee, much of the time I was in the tree, the time we spent having lunch, and the ride home sharing experiences of the day.

However, the trip into the dark woods to the tree I had previously found on a scouting trip, and getting the stand to the predetermined height, was not nearly as enjoyable!

The first rule in deer hunting is get to your stand before the sun comes up. Somehow, they think that deer are hard sleepers and will not hear a hunter crunching his way through the dark, flipping on and off some strange light source, and breathing as if he is nearing a heart attack!

Anyway, it’s the code, and if you really want to piss off a redneck hunter, just walk by his tree stand after day break and you are liable to get shot, or at least an imaginative cussing! “Might as well go home now, you’ve spook’em all!”

My particular problem with walking in the pitch blackness, besides taking sharp little switch hits across the lips and wiping spider webs off my face, was that I held my breath so I could hear any movement around me, but in particular – behind me! I would not realize I was holding my breath until my lungs screamed out and I fell against some small tree panting like a beagle on a rabbit hunt! In later years, I learned to slow my pace and breathing, and strip down to one thin layer, but for these first few years the result was I was soaked in sweat and ended up nearly freezing to death before the sun could come up and dry me off!

My second deer hunt was on the AEDC (Arnold Engineering Development Center) near Manchester, TN. Vernon, Leroy, Squeaky (who you’ve already met) and another new friend Martin loaded up and headed to a motel we used often as our center of operations. Across from the motel was a Waffle House that served us well over the years, warming up our bodies for the morning’s trip into darkness and holding us until the noonday lunch.

This first morning, however, was to be etched into my memory; it was the morning I rewarded with my second moniker, “Boots!” With all the great planning and hunting packing traditions, I went off without my hunting boots! Luckily for me, there was no “Michael” character around to talk Leroy out of loaning me his backup pair!

Martin was the first to call me Boots, and from that point forward, with that group anyway, I was “Boots!” Often, as I moved through the giant refurbishing complex at the K-25 Plant known as K-1401, I would often hear someone from high above me yell, “Boots!”

Looking up, I would find Martin, standing in the steel near a 40-ton crane he was working on, at full-draw; left arm outstretched pointing straight at me, right hand fingers anchored deep into his lips and right jaw and releasing an imaginary arrow at me. I would fane being hit mid-chest and stagger around the concrete floor! It would all end with us both laughing and giving each other a “thumbs up” before returning to work.

“What’s up Boots,” he would say?!

That first morning at AEDC was another lesson learned in my hunting career.

We hunted all day in a steady warm rain, the kind of day that heats you up under your rain gear, so much that you end up wetter than you would have been had you just stood in the rain without it.

It was hard to hear with the rain beating on the vinyl camouflaged rain hood, so I was totally surprised when I turned my head and saw my first deer. At least I thought they were deer, but they looked too small, more like large dogs, so I watched puzzled for several minutes before realizing – THESE ARE DEER! The AEDC deer are, or at least they were then, smaller than their free roaming cousins in the nearby forest.

I quickly came to full-draw and nervously released my first arrow at one of the does. It sailed harmlessly over the nearest deer’s back, and frightening all but one away.

I struggled to load another arrow onto the bow’s rest and snap the string into the arrow’s plastic knock, which held it fast until I could raise the bow and pull to full-draw. There was no need to move slowly and stealthily, because the rain drowned all sound. I took aim, calculating the yardage in my mind, and released. The arrow buried in the ground about a foot from the doe. “Damn,” I said barely audible!

The doe heard the arrow but did not see it hit. She turned and sniffed the fletching on the arrow, but only turned and walked away about 10 feet.

Again, I fixed an arrow and shot sending it wide of the doe’s tail as she moved forward just as I released. It crashed into some bushes, making the doe twirl to see what was behind her, but surprisingly she did not flee the area.

I began the process of loading my final arrow, this time making sure I calmed myself and did everything as the voices in my head of Vernon, Leroy, Squeaky, and Martin told me. I held my anchor point tight against my first upper molar, took a deep breath, figured the yardage in my head and found the 25 yard florescent pin through the peep-sight that was woven into the bow string, relaxed my grip on the bow and let it hang loosely in the fork between my thumb and index finger, released half the air in my lungs, and gently clicked the trigger on the string release. The bow string slid by my left arm guard, forcing the arrow away, bowing the aluminum slightly as it flexed from the 60 pound release of kinetic energy, and sending it straight at the upper shoulder of the doe. With a crack and twang sound, the arrow centered a 2 inch sapling! Had it not been for the little tree, I would have made a perfect lung and heart shot!

The doe pranced around the little tree twice, sniffing at the shaft. I could not contain my pent-up emotions any longer. I screamed, “Get the hell out of here you little bitch!”

The doe was gone in a flash and I sat exhausted on the edge of my tree stand, swinging my legs, mulling over and over the last 15 minutes of my life!

When Martin and Leroy arrived they asked what was going on, “Did you shoot a deer?”

“Hell no, but I shot all my arrows!”

Once on the ground, we located all my arrows, and only one was bent and unusable. The others survived to hunt another day.

Hunt another day I did, but some valuable lessons were learned that day, and not the least of which was that deer are not as big as cows!

Soon I would complete the rite of passage, and take back a little of what “Boots” had lost!

THE DAYS OF BONDING – PART TWO

Corey was fourteen, so the act of killing his first deer might be considered his “rite of passage” or his “coming of age” event, but, in all honesty, he did not transition, or enter his liminal phase, a period between withdrawing and re-entering his social position with new insight, until about midway into his fifteenth year.

It was in the summer of 1989 that Corey stepped over into adulthood. You can almost see this move on the VHS tapes I made of him that year. He went from a chubby little uncoordinated kid nicknamed “Chunk”, to a confident baseball player, secure within himself of his capabilities and social interactions. Of course, there was some resemblance to Lawrence "Chunk" Cohen in the 1985 teen-flick, Goonies, but Corey never seemed to mind, much like me with Mushy!

After his fifteenth year he lost the glasses and the nerdy look of his youth and began to mature into the good man, husband, and father he is today. I doubt that killing his first deer had much to do with the transition, but it did not hurt! I could argue that from that fourteenth year forward he was a much changed human being.

At fourteen, Corey was still not confident enough to want to use my Ruger .270 on the youth hunt at Cumberland Springs Wildlife Preserve (formerly a state park), near Tullahoma, Tennessee. He feared the recoil, which I must admit has tagged several hunters, including myself. However, for me, with a trickle of blood running down from between my eyes, that was what made me want the .270! I remember telling my friend, whose gun I was zeroing in, “Man, I got to have one of these,” I said, licking the blood from the corner of my mouth!

He replied, as many have commented since, “You’re crazy!”

To me the recoil was something I wanted to own and control. I never again “half-mooned” myself between the eyebrows and would never consider deer hunting with anything else.

For that reason I began letting Corey practice with my 12 gauge slug-gun. I placed a paper plate on a fence post about 20 yards away and told him that if he could hit that plate, he could kill a deer. So, with that instruction, Corey set his sights on hitting that plate, and with the second shot he was well on his way to being consistent.

Corey and I took several overnight trips to Cumberland Springs, sometimes sleeping in the back of my S-10 Blazer, and other times we enjoyed pillow fights at a little motel in Manchester, Tennessee. However, this particular morning we decided to drive down the morning of the hunt, which was about a 2 ½ hour drive. It had been raining much of the week, so we decided to hold off and see if the weather changed, and it did. The morning was still drizzly with some fog as we left three hours before sunrise.

We arrived at our pre-scouted location before sunup, but waited in the truck for the rain to slack. Around 10 a.m. the sky began to clear and we moved on into the woods, thinking to ourselves that it was a waste of time. Entering the woods after daylight is usually a no-no in the hunting world, but the idea was to give Corey his time in the woods.

The first hour passed slowly with Corey fidgeting, twisting, and pulling up little twigs, and me fussing at him to “Be still!” I had long become accustom to sitting motionless for long periods and moving slowly and deliberately when necessary, but he was a kid! I could expect nothing less, and actually did not really mind. I just wanted him to learn the rules that he could reference in later years.

Nonetheless, he would squirm and I would fuss. Often times, on other hunts, we would end up wrestling in the leaves behind the camouflaged netting, and laughing and teasing each other. Once we were even surprised by two does that stood just feet from us trying to figure out what all the commotion was about! It just proves that deer are very inquisitive animals, and times like those make all the rules about stealth being a requirement seem like myths!

While I was lecturing, and he was ignoring me watching a chipmunk play nearby, I suddenly diverted my eyes to movement over his shoulder and said very softly, “Son, there’s a deer!”

“Yeah, right,” he said not believing me.

However, as he turned to look my way, he realized that it was true. Not 15 yards from us walked a very gray doe, and our hearts began to pound! She ambled along, head down browsing, and at about 20 yards I knew that Corey needed to make his shot or lose the opportunity for the season. I kept whispering instructions to him about target alignment and his breathing.

I watched him flip off the safety on the Mossberg, steady his aim, and re-feel his grip. Suddenly the shotgun BOOMED to life and spit out the huge rifled-slug of lead toward the still unaware doe.

As it turned out, the doe had nearly turned its tail toward Corey, lessening his target area, when he fired. The slug entered the doe’s right rear hip and exited its left shoulder, bisecting almost the full length of the doe’s body! The doe dropped in her tracks and was dead instantly.

Corey stood for a long time, surveying the area and reliving the experience. After the photo of him at the scene, I introduced him to the dreaded “field dressing” part of the hunt.

I actually helped him little, watching him step back as a roll of steam wafted up, bringing the “innards smell” that usually brings on either the dry heaves, or worse to the new hunter! However, he did well and followed my instructions to the letter, even reaching in up to his elbows and rolling the cavity contents out on the ground.

I kept teasing him about having to, by tradition and rite of passage, eat a piece of the heart! That almost brought on what the smell had not!

Back home, he retold the story over and over. I even made a video tape of him telling the story, and while he spoke I noticed that he kept touching and running his finger between the split in deer’s hoof. Was it out of respect, which most hunters hold for their quarry, a way of reassuring himself it was real, or was it nervous guilt over what had happened?

Either way, it is times like these that are called “bonding days”. I miss them so.

THE DAYS OF BONDING – PART ONE

Corey and I used to spend the fall and early winter months in the woods of Tennessee, hunting, exploring, building hide-outs, and playing hide-and-go-seek – Rambo style! I have always loved being in the woods and I did my best to pass that fondness along.

We spent a lot of time together up until he turned fourteen, and then girls and friends, like they always do, pulled him in another direction. However, up through that period in his life we did enjoy the smell of the forest, the crunch of the leaves, and the silence of a snow falling through bare limbs.

Dressed in our camouflage, we took turns running ahead down a trail and hiding from each other. I had a little more experience, of course, so I often scared the little fellow of ten or twelve by falling on him from a tree limb, or jumping up in front of him out of leaves I had used to cover myself. I think he learned a lot about tracking, scouting, and concealment, but regardless it was loads of fun for us both.

Corey started accompanying me on deer hunts when he was about ten years old. He had performed well in his “hunter’s safety permit” class, even downing more clays with a shotgun than I did! So, he was ready to go hunting!

I was a bit concerned about how he would react to killing such a large and beautiful animal. That concern originated from a squirrel I killed once while we were in the woods when Corey was about seven. As I struggled to pull the fur-suit off the still warm body of the squirrel, Corey asked what I was doing. I tried to explain it so he could understand, so I said, “I’m pulling off his pajamas.”

Corey watched closely with a concerned look on his face. I could tell he was trying to deal with the scene as his eyes recorded every move. He finally reconciled the experience and said, “Jesus will put his pajamas back on someday, right?”

That almost broke my heart and I questioned whether or not I had let him watch at too young an age. “Yeah, Jesus will put’em back together one day.”

That seemed to satisfy him and he never again questioned the act of killing and skinning game, but I was still apprehensive about how he would handle a deer in the same situation.

We spent a great deal of time in the woods scouting for deer, and just sitting under a tree listening to the forest sounds. Corey was a quick study and soon learned to find “signs” of deer – droppings, a rub on a small sapling, a leaf that was half eaten hanging from a limb, the browse of greenbrier nibbled down from the tender ends, tracks in the dirt or snow, the oval leaf bed of a buck on the east side of a hill, and even the exciting scarp find along well used trails. He, like me, loved scouting better than the actual hunt.

To enhance his experience I took him along on early fall bow hunts. I dressed him in the same camo and painted his face just like me. We would arrive before dawn and pick our way through a thicket and set up a camo netting ring around two stools just on the edge of the thicket near a well traveled path.

It was great to be there with him, whispering things about deer hunting or little jokes to keep him entertained. I often had to call him down from talking too much or too loud, and for moving around too much, but he never seemed to tire of just being there.

On one particular cold morning a large doe came out of the thicket just about twenty yards from our stand. Corey sat directly behind me and had a clear view over my right shoulder and down my arrow. We watched, hardly breathing, as the doe walked cautiously down the path and directly ahead of us. My arms were beginning to shake from holding full-draw so long, but finally the doe stopped and I took the opportunity to release the arrow at a full-broadside shot.

The arrow left the bow’s felt rest and was sailing true when the doe suddenly squatted to pee – just like a female dog! I had never witnessed that before and I was shocked!

The arrow narrowly missed the doe, sailing just over its drooped back and into the ground beyond.

Corey thought that was hilarious and fell off his stool and rolled on the ground in uncontrollable laughter, which frightened the poor deer far into the woods.

The humor of the shot hit me and we both rolled for several minutes in the leaves, retelling the story over and over.

Corey even made up a little ditty on the way home to rub it in, “Dad sees deer, dad aims, dad shoots, deer squats, dad misses!” He retold the story many times that day.

It is times like these that are called “bonding days”. I miss them.