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Friday, November 24, 2017

My First Deer Was a Buck

My first time to ever shoot my first deer, a white tail deer, was near George West Texas, around 1978.
I had just started dating Connie Crisp at the time, and her mom's brother, Richard Bellows, let the Crsip family hunt the land, which was between George West and Three Rivers, TX.
To get their, Connie's dad, Tinker, would drive us there in the blue GMC Jimmy, in the dark early morning hours, down the dusty caliche gravel roads. Once we arrived, one of us had to jump out into the dark cold air, and unlock the gate, and pull forward a few feet in order to lock the gate behind us.Just inside the gate, on the right, was an old abandoned house, affectionately referred to as "the huntin' cabin"!
We'd hunt the morning until 0900,Zotac then meet back at the cabin to swap stories on what we saw, then hang-out around their until the afternoon hunt. The ole house had some old bedding we could rest on, but I never trusted the rat & mice families at the time, to fall asleep and chance a rat nibbling on my ear. 😁 "Uh, uh, ain't gonna happen!"

This being my first Texas hunt, I was excited to see if the deer were as large as I heard they were.
After the sun began to peek-out over the hill, I could make out the terrain much better, and the fallen rotten tree trunks weren't  what I thought they were. I finally heard something making it's way through the heavy brush, but couldn't ever spot it. What kind of animal would make itself know so easily? I'd never hunted deer before this day, or at least back in Alabama & Tennessee, I never saw a deer while using my shiney new lever-action scopeless 35 Marlin.
Finally, I got a glimpse of the animal making all that noise! It was a buck with some beefy looking antlers.
Using a 30-0-6 rifle Tinker loaned me, I drew a bead on him, and shot him once, twice, three times, I was so nervous & excited. I shot him standing, kneeling, laying down, even after he was dead.
The house said, "it sounded like a battlefield taking place of your way!"
I wanted to make sure he didn't get up and run!
Once I walked over to the deer, and examined him, he had 7 points on a heavy set of horns.
When Tinker, and his son Mark Crisp, and brother-n-law Brian Hatch got their, someone said, "someone else already wounded it, and it has Gangrene on it's front shoulder!"
All I took home that day were the antlers, of which Tinker showed me how to mount them using plaster-of-paris formed around the skull, then mounting it on a board, of which I cutout and routered.
All in all, I wouldn't trade the food memories of hunting with my family that day, and days beyond that period of life.
Since then, the Lord has called all these men on to their eternal home in Heaven with Jesus, and only Mark & myself remain to laugh about my Gangrene buck! <3 p="">

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