A Newbies First Hunt

Grumpy

The Grumpy Grease Monkey mechanical engineer.
Staff member
ever help get a new guy started into hunting?
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 5500-6000 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 eventually place huge steel power poles a few years later.
opening day of deer season was Saturday at dawn,
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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 fire ring and make a fire pit,
we had a fire grate, that was about 3ft x 18" to cook on and several Coleman lanterns,
that we sat around the camp site , while we sat around the camp fire, on milk crates and coolers,
we stayed up talking until the fire was down too coals and mosquitoes got bad,
and it started a light rain, not all that un-common ,
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 tripods 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 to sit other than on coolers or a couple milk crates was the truck tail gate and a couple Coleman coolers we had filled with drinks and ice.
these were placed near the fire ring. we placed one Coleman lantern on the cooler and two others were hung on the metal tripods.
one other guy, in our tent camp site, told him, not to worry,
then hiding a grin...said, panthers only kill a few guys every season,
the odds are good you'll survive the night!

we all laughed.. that was probably not the best way to calm the new guy's 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,

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

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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 the 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.
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I told him I would be back to check on him in about an hour,
as I intended to slowly 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,
At first , I thought he might lose his breakfast,
but after a short time he became very interested and helped, he
, 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.
 
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That's a great story! Lol... I have a few stories along this subject line also, Someday I will post some of my hunting stories.
 
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