Last Updated on January 11, 2019 by Terry
Remember last week:
It was November, the year was 1975 and I was pretty young. Deer season had opened that particular Monday. I had not fired a shot the first two days. Well that’s not exactly true. I had not fired a shot at a legal buck. I did kill a doe Tuesday morning. Being it was bucks only, I drug her into the brush and cut out the back straps for supper.
Four does had crossed the road right in front of me and I could hear one more coming. David had told me that the bucks would be following the does. As he came into view, I fired. Boom! She hit the ground right in front of me. David was wrong. As I stood there, I remember thinking; “I wonder what else he was wrong about”?
Anyways, David and his friend had been spotlighting at night and sleeping during the day. He had told me at lunch on Wednesday how many bucks he had seen Tuesday night. He was attempting to talk me into going with him Wednesday night.
I knew that I should say no as it was/is against the law and wrong at the same time. I went with them Wednesday night. It remains the only time I was in jail. I was incarcerated for 24 hours in a dreary county lockup in southeast Arkansas. Apparently, I learned my lesson as I have never been back in a jail of any type. (Accept the one at Silver Dollar City.)
The untold details of the adventure:
Yes, I went with Dave and his friend Wednesday night. They had a couple of problems, they showed up for a deer hunt with minimal funds and out of gas. They didn’t tell me that we had to sneak on to a farm and get some gas. So, there I was, helping some nuts siphon gas from a farm truck. Dave cut a hydraulic hose from a tractor and began filling a five-gallon bucket so he could pour it into his friend’s car. It was a 1961 Chevy Impala. The hot rod was black with a standard transmission, three on the tree. (Ask an old person what that means.)
We filled up the car and the bucket. You know, extra for tomorrow night. One of them threw the hose in the trunk. It was one inch in diameter. Filled the bucket in seconds. It was also the first time that I had attempted to siphon gas. I mean, it was only about thirty cents a gallon, why would I need to steal any?
I should have worked my way up to the large hose. Most folks use smaller, like about a half on an inch inside diameter. As we were in the process of gathering our fuel, I asked them to let me try. The hose was too large and I swallowed a mouthful of gasoline in a couple of seconds. It is really not good for you. I was dizzy immediately. (High) First and only time I have ever been drunk.
I needed some relief and quick. They drove me to the local store about a mile away. There used to have coke machines outside the stores back then. No luck. We were too far out in the country. But, one of the milk companies in Benton placed big refrigerated boxes outside for milk. It was similar to the boxes that hold bags of ice now. The store owner would use a hasp and lock at night.
As we pulled through, the friend jumped out with a tire iron and snapped off the lock in two seconds. He grabbed a gallon and handed it to me as he jumped back in. Now I’m sitting in the back seat guzzling out of the jug. It was probably the best thing to drink for someone in my condition. But, I was now not my normal self-due to the fact that my poor choices earlier had left me in a vegetative state of consciousness.
We had given up on spotlighting and were heading back to camp. There was an old established deer camp on the way to our campsite. They had been giving us trouble during the week. They didn’t like us hunting in the same area they were. It was timber company land and open to anyone to hunt so they could not make us leave, but they knew the local game warden and had asked him to hassle us in an attempt to run us off.
The game warden would pull us over every time he met us driving on the logging roads we were hunting. He would accuse us of killing does so he could search our truck. Wednesday morning, we saw the truck of two of our hunting buddies. It was pulled over on the old highway near where we would turn to get on the gravel roads. We were hunting in a dry county so they had driven about 40 miles to the nearest liquor store.
They had now pulled over to urinate in the ditch. (Take a piss for the unpolitically correct.) The game warden pulled in behind them and got out. He asked them why they were hunting without their orange vests on. They communicated to him that their guns were locked in the truck’s camper shell and they were not hunting. He assured them that they were and wrote both of them citations.
This is a taste of what we had been dealing with during the week. I was mad about the constant hassling and told Dave to stop by the camp. I was going to borrow (Steal) a small 8-point deer head that one of their hunters had killed. We had seen it hanging up at their camp the previous morning. Dave tried to talk me out of it but I insisted. He pulled over, I jumped out and ran up the hill to retrieve the prize, and someone yelled: “Hey, what are you doing”?
I jumped in the back seat and away we went, tearing down the gravel roads in the hot rod. It was like something out of the Thunder Road movie! All the timber company roads are squared off. Almost all of them were criss-crossed with 90 degree turns at every intersection. As we approached n “T” in the road, he would cut it to the left, down shift into second, and begin side sliding aiming right, and gun it so we never slowed down. I looked back and we were being followed by about eight big trucks loaded with hunters and guns.
We were not very accomplished at being criminals and therefore made many bad decisions that week. This “get-away” attempt was one of them. Back then, hunters who used dogs to run deer, all had CB radios in their trucks. Therefore, they were all communicating what was happening. Dave made three 90 degree turns. We were heading right back to the camp where we had committed the crime. I can still hear them laughing.
As we topped a small rise, there was a roadblock made with big trucks. It was directly in front of the camp. I told Dave to try to ram his way through, but he decided it was in our best interest to stop. So, he pulled over and we began exiting the truck. By now we were surrounded by angry hunters with guns. We knew we were outnumbered so we had scrapped the idea of shooting it out. (Sounded like a good idea when I mentioned it to Dave.)
Remember, we were 19 and 20 years old. The term smart alec is a given (And we were experts). One of their biggest guys was right in front of us. Some old man behind him kept shouting “Tie ‘em to a tree and whoop ‘em”.
The big guy pointed his rifle at me commented, “I’m gonna blow you all over your car”.
I told him to “Go ahead.”
His face was pretty red by now as his anger kindled. He handed his gun to the guy to his right and said, “I’m gonna beat you all over your car.”
I said “Come on,” as I began to remove my jacket.
Dave stepped in to attempt saving our lives. He told the angry large man that I was not speaking clearly due to being high. “He’s high, he don’t know what he’s saying,” Dave plead with him.
It didn’t dawn on him that they would be searching our car for drugs later as they did not understand Dave’s meaning. (And of course, they found the marijuana in the ash tray that was hidden there.) (That I did not know was hidden there.)
They led us at gunpoint into the camp. Guess who they called? Not the sheriff, but their friend the game warden. When he arrived, they did in fact search the car. The game warden confiscated our guns and the hunters confiscated the other stuff.
We were forced to drive over to where my truck was parked, I got into it and followed the caravan of hunters and criminals to the warden’s house. We slept in my camper in his front yard that night. He was very angry the next morning. We found out that he had hoped that we would leave during the night. He simply was a thief and wanted our guns!
He had over 30 rifles and shotguns in his living room when we went in that morning. He even told us how he had gotten several of them, a situation just like ours. He would find someone committing a hunting or fishing violation and trade them out of the ticket by taking their guns. Well, he wasn’t getting ours. But, after about an hour of chastising us for being bad people, he called the sheriff and two squad cars came out and took us to jail, where we spent that night.
I did learn two very important lessons:
- Don’t go to jail! What a horrible experience. (This story is getting too long so I’ll tell that one in my hunting adventure book coming out this summer.)
- If you’re going to commit a crime and get caught, take your own vehicle. You know, the one without weed hidden in it!
Thanks for your time. There are in fact 7 other events that took place during this adventure. It will simply take too long to describe them all with this format. They will all be included in my hunting adventure book that I hope to be out before fall hunting season begins.
