Last Updated on March 1, 2019 by Terry
A couple of months ago I wrote about the Rambo knife I kept finding on my porch around Christmas. It was a token from a friend of mine to remind me of how many times I have been turned around.
He was just exaggerating. I’ve only been turned around, upside down, spent the night out, or lost four times. A couple of those times, I brought others with me to enjoy the fun. I was thinking about it recently so we might as well discuss another one of them.
If you have been following me through these Friday blog stories or read my fishing book, you should have come to realize that I spent a great portion of my fishing and hunting adventures with The Camp Boss, a.k.a. Allan. It’s a fact, every hunter/fisher can only wish that they had as much fun as we did, and we filled our tags/caught our limit regularly.
Allan had a real knack for being in the right place when it comes to deer hunting. He killed a bunch of ‘em.
As an example, Allan, Dale, and myself were walking down the right of way one afternoon, heading for the corner. We were nearing one of our favorite spots and Allan decided to step over into the wrong side of the right-of-way, the posted land, about fifty yards.
This way, if we spooked one, it might run close to one of us. As soon as he got out of earshot, Dale mumbled about Allan being lucky all the time. About the same time Dale said “lucky”, we heard Allan’s gun fire. “Another deer went down” as they say.
It turned into quite a habit/skill, Allan and his deer shooting.
But he had one weak spot, he never could get lost. For some reason, he just never caught on. He seemed to always know which direction it was to get to the truck.
Me, on the other hand, I could spin in one circle and then it would take hours to find my way out. The only time I remember Allan getting lost, he was following my directions of course. Let’s talk about that one.
We were hunting on the southeast section of the White River Refuge. It was a Saturday through Monday hunt. Like most of the hunters, we arrived Friday mid-day to set up our camp and pick out our hunting spots.
There was a swampy area about a half mile from the road through the big woods that we had never hunted, but I had studied a map of the area and decided to give it a try.
It appeared if I came in from another direction, that there was a long narrow section with water on both sides and I would even have to wade a waist deep ditch to find dry land. I thought it looked like this:
Map 1
Here is what it really was:
Map 2
I worked my way to the end of the peninsula by hugging the east side along Moon Lake. I crossed over twice only to find another lake. I thought. It appeared to me that I was between two long lakes. You can see from the two drawings that the west side of the land was actually broken up a little.
I did not know there was a slough that cut across connecting the two lakes. As I neared the slough. I saw a movement up ahead. I first thought it was a bird moving around. It turned out to be a deer’s tail flicking. I looked closer and could see a small set of antlers, it was a buck!
I raised my rifle and shot. The small buck dropped quickly. (That means a perfect shot!) I ran toward him and suddenly realized that he was on the other side of some water.
I eased into the water in an attempt to wade across to retrieve my prize. After two steps, I was waist deep. Wading was out of the question as it was going to be over my head.
I came out and walked along the bank of the slough to both lakes. There was no way across. It was about 40-45 feet across the slough to my buck. It was getting close to sundown and I was becoming a little panicky. “What can I do”? I thought.
I sat down and leaned against a large log. I was attempting to calm down and think. “Hmm. I am leaning against a log”.
I put my rifle aside and got behind the log and began rolling it toward the water. The log was about three feet in diameter and about ten feet long.
It splashed into the water and floated! I was getting excited. I crawled up on the log just shy of the middle. This kept most of my weight to the back of the log. The front was now angling up out of the water with the back-end angling down under water.
I leaned forward a little to balance my new boat. I began using a swimming stroke with my hands and arms. I maneuvered my cruise ship toward the other side. I eased up on the other bank, drug the buck over and positioned him over the log in front of me. I turned and paddled back across to my side. I drug him up on the dry bank and accomplished field dressing him. (I gutted him.)
The sun was now down. I hung the buck up on a five-foot-tall stump for protection from other animals. It was now pretty dark. I ran over to the east side in order to have more light and ran along the bank to the ditch I had to wade back over to get to my truck and head toward camp.
During supper, I was re-telling my story to my co-hunters. They were listening intently as I described the giant 8-point I had harvested. (I was afraid they would not go help me retrieve him if they knew it was a small one.)
As soon as we had finished eating, about five of us headed out. We crossed the ditch and began walking along the west side of the peninsula. I had left the buck on that side of the slough, so I decided to stay on that side. What I did not know, was that the lake on that side was in reality, lakes. (See map two.)
So, just before we arrived at the buck, we crossed the beaver dam and walked into the big woods. Right about now, it started raining. We wandered aimlessly for hours. Apparently in circles. We never carried a compass back then.
Turns out, one of our friends did have a compass but did not tell us. He did not know how to use it and was embarrassed to tell us. If we had a compass, we knew we needed to go due west to get to the road and camp but it’s very difficult to know which way west is in the dark, while raining.
Somewhere around two to three am, we found the road. We walked about a mile or so before arriving back at camp. “Drowned rats,” I heard someone say.
The next morning, I overheard Allan giving the compass guy a piece of his mind. (Cursing him out.) He had come clean to Allan about having a compass. If he had given Allan the compass, we would have got back to camp hours earlier.
After we had broken camp and got most of our gear, I grabbed a couple of my buddies and headed back to get my buck. We walked right to it and brought it back to camp and finished loading up and headed out on the muddy roads.
It took a few days for most of the Lost Boys to realize that my trophy was a small spike. They were a little put out for wandering around lost and wet for simple spike.
By the way, don’t forget about all my heroics. Remember, I had to swim a log across some water to get the small buck. That’s something, right?
Thanks for your time and I’ll talk to you later.
