It was the fall of 1988 and my Grandpa, then 59, was preparing to go on his first deer hunt. His father-in-law, Bill, who still worked the multi-generational farm, was getting too old to go out in the field. Ever since my Grandma and Grandpa were married, Grandpa was Bill’s hunting buddy, as he described it, because Bill’s other sons were not as interested in hunting.
Even though it would be Grandpa’s first deer hunt, it was nowhere near his first hunt. From his telling, his Dad started him hunting from a young age but the focus was always on small game and birds. He and his friends would even break down their shotguns and stow them in their lockers throughout the day and then go hunt the fields around East High when school was over.
My Grandpa’s love of hunting and fishing never wavered and continued throughout his adult life, but it did change. Over his years of fishing, he became an early adopter of the notion of “catch and release” especially with muskies throughout Wisconsin. He was also a lover of dogs and raised several dozen beagles training them to compete in field trials. In the telling of his deer hunting story to me, my grandpa reminisced on the final years of owning beagles.
He said, “I’d load up some of the dogs in my van and drive around to the farms that looked like they’d have rabbits. Then I’d go up and ask if they’d just like to watch me work the dogs and not hunt. It was just as fun watching those dogs run around.”
According to my Grandpa, the farmland available to hunt dwindled over the years as family farms were split apart and sold off. As the land went, so too did the animals. As a result, my Grandpa hunted less and less. That was, until Bill asked him to kill a deer.
Grandpa’s homemade treestand.
In preparation for the hunt, my Grandpa made himself a treestand which was fairly easy for him to accomplish given he owned a sheet metal shop. He found the perfect spot for the stand on the and set it up a fews weeks prior to the season opener.
The day of the hunt, my Grandpa got into the stand with his Deerslayer slug gun and readied himself for the hunt. Throughout the morning, he saw several deer on the hillsides around his stand but none were in-range. There was one big 10-pointer that came near his stand; however, as he turned to reach for his gun the deer looked up at my Grandpa, snorted, and then ran away blowing to alert other deer.
It was at about this point that my Grandpa recalled a conversation that Bill had said to shoot the first legal deer he saw - there was no use in holding out for a bigger deer you weren’t sure would even come around. After his first encounter of the morning, my Grandpa wasn’t even sure more deer would walk the path in front of his stand.
So, later that day when a deer with spike antlers walked under Grandpa’s stand, he aimed right below the deer’s shoulder and shot at it. He then hurriedly climbed down to the ground where he expected to see the deer lying dead in close proximity. However, there was no deer in sight but he was able to pick up on a small blood trail heading into a briar patch.
Grandpa then did what any reasonable man would do; he crawled along the blood trail on his hands and knees. As he moved through the briar patch, he looked up, and simultaneously, the deer stuck its head above the thorns, stood up, and began bounding towards a fence which demarcated Bill’s farm from the neighbors who were all (in my grandpa’s memory) waiting on their side of the fence for a deer to run through.
Grandpa took another shot and the deer immediately fell to the ground. He then turned around to grab his camera out of his pocket and, in doing so, heard a rustling behind him and the deer was gone again.
Now, Earl (Grandpa’s brother-in-law) had eyes on the deer from his truck on the road as Grandpa chased after the deer on foot. As he ran, he got in range of the deer and finally took the shot that laid the deer down for good.
They then gutted the deer, brought it back to the farm, and soon began the butchering process during which he received some ribbing from the family for shooting a spike (however, Grandpa will tell you that a biologist at the check-in station told him the deer was easily 3-4 years old and 200 pounds and said, “some deer just don’t grow antlers.”). My Grandpa says that they looked all over the deer and never found a bullet hole or a slug. Maybe it was stress that finally killed it?
And then, for nearly 30 years, we Osborne’s did not intentionally kill a deer other than those hit by our cars until I started my journey to become a hunter. For me, it only took one shot to kill my first deer, but it did take three close encounters and two seasons before I was finally ready to pull the trigger.