Uncle Buck and The Buck
I spent two days recently hunting deer. By far my favorite method of hunting deer is
to find a place where it is likely that a deer will pass by, and wait until the
deer shows up. Deer, as far as I can
tell, do not necessarily appreciate the brilliance of the strategy, as sometimes
they do in fact show up as anticipated, but not always. I had plenty of time to ponder. With over thirty years of personal hunting
experience there was much to reminisce about, but my mind actually settled on a
memory that wasn’t even mine; it was my father’s.
My father and I were never really close. The strongest point of connection that I shared
with him was our mutual love of the outdoors.
Now, as a father myself who is still always looking for a point of
connection with my own three sons, I’m not sure why he didn’t stress that more. For example, he only told me one story about
his hunting days when he himself was younger.
It was the story of his first buck.
One person that my father definitely connected with was his
Uncle Buck. The name alone sounded more
like a character in a fictional story. It
was the kind of name that sounded fascinating to a young boy. I was never certain if it was his given name,
or a nickname until last summer. My wife
and I happened to be visiting the city where my maternal grandparents are
buried. Since we had the time and the
cemetery was only a few minutes out of the way, I decided to stop and visit
their graves. That was something that we
did fairly often as a family when I was young, but I had only done one other time
as an adult. After finding and praying
over my grandparents’ graves, we wandered around the ‘neighborhood’ for a bit,
because I knew there were other members of my mother’s family buried there. I was more than surprised when we came across
a headstone with the names of Pearl and Buck Wagnitz. I didn’t even know that this was the city
they lived in. Based on the dates chiseled
into the stone, both had passed away more than twenty years before I was born.
The story of his first buck as my dad told it, took place at
Uncle Buck’s hunting shack. I don’t know
where the shack was located, but I do know that it was primitive. I don’t know how old my father was at the
time. He actually wasn’t invited to the camp
to hunt; he was brought along to chop and haul wood for the fireplace and the
cookstove, and to do the cooking and cleaning while the grown menfolk did the
hunting.
The first morning of the hunt was cold and clear. My father had risen before anyone to get the
fires going and to make sure that the coffee was brewed and breakfast was on
the table for the hunters. After the
hunters were all out the door it was time for my father to fry up a couple of
eggs and some bacon for his own breakfast.
Then it was time to get the shack cleaned up. My father grabbed a wooden bucket and headed
down to the lake to get some water, so he could do the dishes. The cabin wasn’t lakeside, as my father said
that it took him a good five minutes to walk the distance.
As he stooped down by the water’s edge to fill his bucket,
he glanced up and across the little bay.
There, near the far shore, standing in the water up to his knees, was a
large buck. The young boy froze still. He blinked hard and when he opened his eyes
the buck was still there, looking back at him.
He let the rope bucket handle slip out of his hands and stood up as
slowly as possible. The buck didn’t
move.
My father backed up the little ridge feeling his way as best
he could because he still faced the buck.
He topped the ridge and slipped down the other side as quietly as you
can step when the forest floor is
covered in brittle leaves that are in turn, even more brittle with thick
morning frost. With the ridge now safely
between the buck and him, my father turned and ran back to the shack as fast as
he could. He blasted through the door
and went to the gun rack. On the top
hooks hung his uncle’s old, lever-action .32 special with the octagon barrel. My father grabbed it down, put a single shell
in and worked the lever so the shell loaded in the chamber.
I suspect that my father probably wasn’t practicing good gun
safety now as he ran back to the lakeshore with the loaded rifle. He reminded himself to slow down as he
climbed that last rise. He poked his
head up over the top of the ridge.
Amazingly the big buck was still standing in the same spot, as if he was
waiting for my dad to return. My father
then said he placed the rifle barrel in the crook of a aspen sapling, waited
for his breathing to calm some, aimed at buck and slowly squeezed the
trigger. The buck dropped where he had stood.
It took my father the rest of the morning to field dress the
buck and get it most of the way back to camp.
His pants were already wet past the knees, and he found it easier to
guide the buck around the little bay in the water than it would have been to
drag him the entire way along the shore. The cold water stung his legs. He floated the buck back to where the bucket still laid where he let it when
he first saw the buck. He left the deer
there and grabbed the bucket filled with water as he still had to clean up the
shack from breakfast.
When the men assembled at the end of the day my father told
them about the big buck. No one believed
him because it sounded more like a yarn than a hunt report. But Uncle Buck came with him down to the
lake. Sure enough, there was the big
buck. When they had dragged the buck
back to camp and hung him on the meatpole, Uncle Buck gave my father that .32
special.
I wish that I still had that .32 special. My father sold it back in the 1950’s for some
much-needed hard cash money when times were especially hard. And, even
though he didn’t tell me many stories of his own hunting youth, he shared this
one. It made for some pleasant reminiscing
as I hunkered further down into my heavy hunting coat and waited for the big buck that never came. It was a
very productive hunt.
“I give thanks to my God at every remembrance of you, praying always with joy in my every prayer for all of you”
Philippians 1:3-4
His Peace <><
Comments
Post a Comment