Like most ol'boys, the farmer has bad knees - so he travels lite.
A thermos of hot coffee, a cold meat sandwich(nothing with sprouts tho) and a rifle - any ol' rifle will do(a 30-30 is still best)...but no more than that!
After a large breakfast all cook in one big iron skillet - can't tell where the eggs stop and the buscuits and gravy begins.
He heads to the deer woods, later than most, but with a full belly and he knows where the little eatin' deer are.
No deer scents, grunt calls, rattlin' horns or fox urine for him!

A thermOs of coffee....only a city slicker would tote all that.

My dad was a farmer and he never bothered to bring coffee or food with him. Camel cigarettes yes! but non essentials like food??? Of course he was on "home turf" and the diners were never very far off. I miss him every day.

Parris George

Is this just a short story? Or is there a point or question to your post?

Battle, as you can tell - places like Cabela's would soon go outta business with these old fellers...maybe a box of bullets every other year or so.
I see carts over-flowing with these deer things at our local hunter's supermarket.

I'm forty years old, and glad to think of myself as..........old school!

This old farmer and his wife would make breakfast for my brother and I, later he'd shoot a little one, and tell us to go after the big ones.
...and this is what he took to his stand them frosty so many years ago.

I have some of the best deer hunting in the country, but i can not sit in a stand. As long as there are good bird dogs and quail to be found. I can not go hunting without a box of shells, My favorite old double, and a great Setter.
Too much fun and alot of action. Never had it so good sitting still and freezing in a tree stand.

You are missing one of the rites of late fall double A.
But!
Give me a couple of days chasing deer, and then I'll be duck hunting - with my Labs.
You take what the land gives you!

AA Plantation............freezing in a tree stand? Your in S. Carolina or Georgia(not sure which) it hardly gets below freezing there?

Heck I got heaters in mine....

This will make 42 years I've hunted deer here in PA. The first years were the best of course! The year I started my father and older brother stretched a canvas tarp under a large hemlock, put our bags on half and covered ourselves with the other half. We had 4" of snow the next morning. I remember it like it was yesterday. We graduated to a tent and used that for the next 35 years. The locals started calling us the tent people. We took it as a compliment. We carried cold turkey sandwiches and candy bars. Turkey has no taste when that cold and you really notice the wax in chocolate. I liked to still hunt east from camp until noon, sit and eat my lunch then still hunt back. I shot most my bucks doing that. Everyone else that made up our group, but for me and two others have past on. Hunting the eighty acre farm is just to small a piece of woods. I miss the walk into that expansive forest. Deer hunting has lost its charm for me- I am sad to say. I really do enjoy the meat though.

Kurt

If that ol' farmer would cut the bisquits and gravy out of his diet, he wouldn't have bad knees and could probably stay awake without the caffine. Might live longer and not have that heart attack while putting his socks on while still in his 60s neither.

Lowell...I believe you're describing my dad. I remember when he got older and it was hard to walk we put him on a stand with that old octagon barrel 25-35 winchester while the rest of the hunters walked toward him.

When he started shooting at all those running deer coming out in front of the drivers he used up more than his annual quota of one cartridge per season as was his norm. So, he sent me to town to buy him two new boxes of 25-35 ammo. When I told him what they cost I was sure I had lost my inheritance...he hadn't bought a box of ammo for that gun in at least 25 years.

After he passed away and mom asked me to come to the ranch and take possession of his guns...there were those two boxes of 25-35 ammo...one full and one with two rounds gone.

Started hunting deer and elk in the brutal cold of Central and Eastern Idaho so when I moved to Pennsylvania the 10 below temperatures of the Allegheny National forest seemed balmy. Everything I needed fit in my Woolrich coat pockets. Most important was dry matches and a canteen cup to heat water for hot drinks. What Lowell is calling a farmer is better described as a woodsman - someone who is so at home in the woods he long ago learned not to get lost and to deal with the weather and terrain. Most hunters today are city people and are not at home in the woods. So many more things are carried along to help them get by in the unfamiliar environment. They seldom get more than a mile off the road for which they now want a quad vehicle. It is sad how little they know about the woods or the hunt.

This ol'boy was a farmer, thru and thru.
By noon, he'd have his deer!
After he'd shot his deer, I would watch him driving his pick-up over hill 'n dale and pasture to fetch it - didn't want any help, he said. On those colder Novembers, he would hang his deer on the barn door...it was usually a smallish doe. Nothing to brag about.

Chuck, this ol'coot's farm house had every un-healthy smell known to man...smoke from his cigs, smoke from the pot-belly stove and smoke from the ham 'n eggs cookin' in the kitchen.
He was bent-over from a hard life!

Now we need charcOal suits...

It ain't about the braggin' Lowell. It's all about the eatin' !! Mine used to shove a PB&J in the pocket of the old green and black check wool coat before headin' out. Nothin' wrong with that!

Lowell: You describe a "hedge poker" or "rough hunter" and I represent that. I am the sporting goods store's worst nightmare. I shoot a twenty-year-old Golden Eagle bow; yesterday I dropped off 11 ten-year-old arrows to be re-fletched, rather than buy a dozen new. I "waste" one or two arrows a year when they zip thru a deer, and have to replace maybe $10 worth of broadhead razors every 5 years.

For shotgun deer season I use an 870 with sabot barrel and iron sights ($209.00 once in a lifetime). I go thru maybe a box of 5 shells ($9.00) every year. No special clothing that I can't double-duty on the farm. My luxury is a substantial ladder stand at $109.00 that my wife insisted I start using when I reached Medicare years.

Pheasants abound just outside my humble domicile, and my arm of choice is, of course, a Parker, and accompanied by ParkerDog, my Yellow Lab, we make it "pay." No driven birds at great expense and great distance, just hedge poking, plain and simple, like it oughta be for those of us living the nostalgia of a yesteryear and born a century too late.

It never ceases to amaze me when I visit Destry "Markethunter" Hoffard in Michigan, and we take a short side trip to the Dundee Cabalas and see how much white people's "bling" exists for the would-be nimrod who is short on opportunity but long on cash. The amount of camo clothing deadens the senses, and the idea that a full size styrofoam deer with antlers is necessary for target shooting seems to me "over the top." Yet it is encouraging that such places continue to exist and even proliferate, supported by a next generation of hunters and sportsmen still willing to tear themselves away from 24-hour cable news, instant messaging, Blackberries, and surfin' the Internet for a little old-time outdoor entertainment.

I'll have to admit that I head to my deer woods later than most, about a half hour before sunset. My last archery season I took two bucks (10 & 4 points) in five one-hour episodes; other years I have zeroed out after thirty or more evening hunts, and my only profit was sitting in the woods at sunset while watching the trees change and drop their leaves. But how do you really measure the "profit" of the primeval experience? I've been a hedge poker for 55 years, since at age eleven when I stuck my first rabbit with a homemade arrow loosed from an osage orange long bow. My first pheasant dropped to my first "double," a Stevens Mod.24 O/U .22/.410 in 1956. A half century has passed in the blink of an eye. This old farmer looks forward to another season; no deer scents, grunt calls, rattlin' horns (plastic or otherwise) or fox urine being part of the equation. EDM

A "Real" farmer being the utilitarian that he is probaly lets a select few hunt his property with the provision that he in return gets some venison.

Lowell,
I once met a handy ol' wrangler that couldn't stand straight up from shoein' too many horses and probably had broken most bones once or twice, his knuckles looked like a bag of marbles and his face was worn and weathered like an old saddle and just as tough, 'made ol Curley, in City Slickers, look like the pampered Hollywood actor he was. Ol' Mike had wrangled all his life of around 50 yrs and maybe coosied a bit, but wadn't much for social graces. Mike cut loose once over more than a few drinks during that week up in the White Mountains of Arizona and we all had a good time. I think a few drinks may have been one of the few pleasures that man had in his tough life.

There's nothing finer than to get out there while the stars are still twinkling in the sky. To pick a ground blind depending on the direction of the morning's zephyrs and silently wait as the day brightens. Or to sit at the base of a tree deep in the woods in a Vermont snowstorm, perhaps to fall asleep in what is probably the most peaceful settings I can think of. If a deer approaches I am confident that a good intentioned red squirrel will wake me. I've taken all my bucks from the ground with one shot.

I got a clean head shot on a doe with my Toureg the other night in Tysons Corner, VA (DC suburb). Does that count. We had steak and salads in the Capital Grill while watching the Redskins get their butts waxed by the Patriots and I had my coffee before I left..no thermos hauling for me.

I must admit I had little to do with bagging this deer, it ran out of the dark and leaped right into the side of my fender. But at $4300 worth of damage, I feel that I earned it.

Seriously, I live in some pretty dense suburbs and for the second time in as many months I saw a large buck wandering through my community. All of the bleeding hearts want to stop the vicious act of deer hunting, meanwhile, fully half the cars in the body shop were there due to deer strikes. No predators here, very limited hunting, and deer are running around like rats in a NY sewer. If they cut the deer population in half in this area, it would serve both the people (at least those that drive) and the deer overall.

It was a clean kill, however.

Cheers

Lowell reminds me of Karl May.

My Uncle Herbert ran a hardware store and owned a tree farm ..... mostly Christmas trees. During the weeks before the season he would "take a walk in the woods" with me along on occasion to find our "spot". The first day of the season he was to busy in the store to hunt, and the woods "to full of fools" ..... he would say. Sometime mid week he would talk my mother into letting me take off from school "to get our deer." I had to be ready to go by 5AM. I was up by 3 to excited for sleep. My mother always made me eat even though our first stop was my Uncle Andy's restaurant where we joined a dozen or so other hunters in a country breakfast .......I even got to drink coffee, just like the adults. The drive to the tree farm took about an hour so it was well after 8 by the time we reached the spot Uncle Herbert picked out. We didn't have scent block camo or anything else much for that matter and usually just stood about talking about deer.

The 4 or 5 times I went with him (until I found out how much fun girls were) back those 50+ years ago we never left without a deer. Sometimes as early as lunch time and only once past 3 PM. We would then bring the field dressed deer to the local butcher who had a place set up behind his store for processing. My uncle would take a picture of us with our bounty using his old Kodak 35 and a week or so later it would hang in his store window with the rifle from his stock we used that year. He would always tell his customers it was my deer, which was only true one time ..... but he said it was OK to say because advertising always takes liberties with reality!

Bouvier

Makes me want to bring out my nasty old '92 in 38-40 - it does!
Altho', no self-respecting farmer would be caught dead with it.
It is well beyond being a tool even.

I must admitt, that I have had a love/hate relationship with the deer hunters in the past.
We all know my tales of trespassing and poachin'.

mOst farmers I know just hunt out of their truck..

Or from the combine. But here's a twist. One of my guys combining today about a quarter mile from the house reported sticking a doe in the side with the corn head, guts out and all. She was down when he hit her. The coyotes should make quick work of the carcass. I hope so; it's quite a mess. We have a lot of deer herebouts and they get hit by cars regularly, but with a combine?! One for the books. EDM

Ed, I live about a half hour from you. The Combine gets more Deer than one realizes. I have heard of it several times.

I think what Lowell failed to realize when he had this dream was....back in the day he's looking there were hardly any deer for the ol'farmers to kill.

Better change the post to ye ol'Rabbits.

j0j0, the dream was a mere two decades ago - a short time in the lives of ol'sods!
...but the farmhouse and barn still stand to this very day.
I'll go and see again, and pinch myself along the way!

Lowell, you may take it as gospel that farmers didn't take their lunch. They went to "have a look" and would be home in a few hours. They knew the location of their prey. In my parts, all-day gunning with sandwiches and thermos is for "sports." The rest of us are home by 9a and go to work. We sip and graze at the sport because we're surrounded by it.

Yep, when I was growing up in Amsterdam I used to get one every season in ole' apple orchard deep in the woods at Bill's Schoharie Co. NY farm. Used to wear oversized caloshes from Agway and shot 20ga Winchester Mod. 37.

HomelessjOe:

Your truck response reminded me of a story I heard at my dads wake. In the late 60's early 70's he and his foreman were at one of the farms before deer season and dad had his rifle with him. A discussion took place where dad told his foreman that he could hit one of the deer that were in the field. The foreman called him on it. Long story short dad shot the deer but they both paid the price of not being able to hear for about a week due to the muzzle blast. Neither of them would get out of the truck for as it was relayed to me because they "didn't want to spook the deer". My bet is that they just didn't want to expend the effort of getting out of the cab. The thing that gets me is that they were out of season and also in our section of NY even if it was the right season all our farms were in shotgun only areas. Thanks for bringing that memory back.

Parris

Lunch, or no lunch hmmm King? Anyways, I've always appreciated the farmer's un-hurried approach to deer hunting. If not today, tomorrow, and as you say, they know where the deer are.
No couple of days of buck fever lust...just part of what they do.
If hunting has a future, it will be on the deerhunter's shoulder - new, or old country - like 'em or not!
Last year in Missouri there 450,00 tags sold - I doubt if there's 450,00 using doubles in the wide world today.

Ducks Unlimited did a survey a few years ago of guns used for ducks and geese and SxS's were a paltry 2%. When Destry "Market Hunter" Hoffard and I shot ducks in LA pre-Katrina with our Parkers we might as well have been shooting flintlocks--the locals were amazed that such things still exist; some had never seen one.

Suffice it to say that we doublegunners were held somewhat in awe to our faces, but probably laughed at behind our backs. After all, the way these good ol' boys keep their 870's clean is to sprinkle some sand in the bed of their pickup truck and let the uncased gun slip and slide all the way home after a day's hunt. Yet even handicapped with our Parkers, it was all opportunity, and we never but once failed to shoot our 6 bird daily limit. EDM

Most Ol farmers I knew had a half-pint of George Dickel, .22 WMRF, spot light, and a bunch of deer tearing up their peanuts.

I'm seeing the same here in Nova Scotia. Few of the new generation have the same feeling for guns. Maybe it's because the old timers who died expressed their feelings differently or possibly, about their guns, hardly at all.

It seems newer gunners are indoctrinated with notions of utility, semis and pumps, bigger gauges and longer shells, low-maintenance composites and plastics, their guns less important than latest camo fashions from Cabela catalogues.

It doesn't bother me. It's their time, their turn. Maybe I indulge myself with fanciful notions of my years with poor men and their Ithacas, Stevens, Lefevers, Parkers and Belgians who related more to their guns as friends than mere acquaintances.

That time has gone.

I think it is a progression albeit rather quick for me. You start with an inexpensive pump or maybe a semi-auto, go to O/U for competition or better handling (read any magazine and they say that) and finally as you get older the SxS becomes suddenly more interesting. This does not work for everybody and disposable income has a lot to do with the progression also.

There is some hope - my son the grizzled former Army SGT, prefers O/U's and SxSs - with a pump being the third choice. He say he doesn't care for the motion in front of his face, and feels break action guns are safer.

I resemble that!