Why I Golf Instead of Deer Hunt
By Jim Gatzke
I’m not sure why the bug never bit me, but most assuredly I had never taken to hunting, and the Opening weekend of deer hunting was never anything I looked forward to.
It’s not like I didn’t have an opportunity to grow into the hunting experience. As the youngest of five boys in my family, with a father who loved to hunt and fish and four older brothers who not only lived for the chance to take game but were accomplished in their outdoor adventures, I was exposed to hunting from an early age. I, however, chose every excuse to miss the annual hunt. In middle school and high school I played basketball and couldn’t possibly miss practice. In college and law school I had to study for final exams. Early in my career as a lawyer, I couldn’t get off work.
Maybe I had Attention Deficit Disorder (not a known 1960’s affliction, the symptoms of which were treated with a ruler across the knuckles) and the idea of sitting quietly in the woods or still in a boat was beyond my youthful comprehension. Maybe the fact that my hearing and vision were so bad that I could have sat for hours in the middle of the deer exhibit at the Milwaukee County Zoo and claimed “I never saw a thing,” rendered the hunting process interminably boring. Maybe, as my sister Jean once told me, as an infant I was found in a milk crate on the front porch and my “family” took my in only out of pity, explains why the hunting gene is missing … and it clearly is missing. That would also explain why I’m a 6’6” Republican in a family of 5-foot something definitely-not Republicans.
But like every little brother, I grew up wanting to tag along. So, in spite of my trepidations, my lack of expertise, my general love of sleep and disdain for cold, in November, 1994 I joined the boys in hunting camp.
By ’94, my Dad had passed away, but my older brothers had filled in the absence with a brother-in-law, and several of their own sons, all of whom began filing into the Buffalo County hunting cabin starting on Wednesday morning before Opening Day (I have since learned that “Opening Day” is to be capitalized, not unlike Christmas, Easter and Boxing Day, and that “Opening Day” needs no more explanatory modifiers, it is, simply, OPENING DAY).
I, of course, hadn’t even decided that I’d be joining the hunt until I was halfway between my Waukesha County office and the Eau Claire County Courthouse, where I had a Friday morning appearance in Criminal Court. During the four-hour trip I called into my office and was told that my brother had called. Knowing that he was going to go through the annual ritual of inviting me to deer hunt, I was initially reluctant to return the call, but finally relented.
JIM: “Lee, Jim, you called?”
LEE: “Yeah. Just wanted to remind you that we’ll all be in Buffalo County this weekend and we’d love to have you join us. I called your house and talked to your wife, and she said you don’t have any other plans for the weekend and she’s OK if you want to go. Then I called your office and they said you were heading up to Eau Claire for an appearance. You know Eau Claire is only about 30 minutes from our land…” {BIG LIE #1} and it’s an easy drive {BIG LIE #2}
JIM: “I don’t have a hunting license.”
LEE: “No problem. We can get you a license in Modovi.”
JIM: “No gun …”
LEE: “We got an extra.”
JIM: “No warm clothes”
LEE: “It’s not gonna be that cold {BIG LIE #3} and we’ve got plenty of clothes here that will fit you [BIG LIE #4}. The only thing you’ll have to do is stop at some outdoors store in Eau Claire and get some warm boots and maybe a good pair of gloves.
JIM: “I haven’t even shot a gun since the Red Ryder episode when I was in 2nd grade” {Another story for another day}.
LEE: “No problem, it’s just like falling off a bike.” ({Metaphors were never Lee’s strength}.
I was quickly running out of excuses, and I actually DID like spending time with my brothers, so I signed on.
JIM: “Well, if you got the room, I’ll run down after I’m done in Eau Claire.” (I had a court appearance and then a meeting with a buddy of mine from law school who was an Assistant DA).
“As long as I have to stop for boots and gloves anyway, I’ll get a license up here. How do I get to your place?”
LEE: “It’s easy.” {Repeat BIG LIE #2, and this was long before Google Maps and GPS in cars). “I’ll write the directions down and fax them to your buddy in the DA’s office.”
I arrived in Eau Claire and quickly took care of my Court matters. Since I had a couple of hours before my lunch meeting with my friend, I ran into town and bought a pair of Sorels, a pair of gloves and a brown and white knit hat and I picked up my first hunting license at a Kmart. As I was checking out, the clerk and I struck up a conversation.
CLERK: “Heading out to deer hunt tomorrow?”
JIM: “Yep.” (Hitching up my suit pants and trying to look like a hunting pro).
CLERK: “Plan on wearing that hat?”
JIM: “Sure. Why not, it’ll be plenty warm enough.”
CLERK: “Yeah, but it looks like a deer’s ass. You might get shot in the head. I think you’ll probably want to get an orange one.”
I walked out of the store with my new boots, gloves, license, brown and white hat, and an orange hat, feeling a lot less like a man of the woods than I did when I walked in.
I returned to the Eau Claire County Courthouse and met up with my buddy, Rick, who handed me the fax from my brother, and proceeded to tell me that he had cleared his afternoon calendar and that, after lunch, we were going to go to a commendation ceremony for an Eau Claire County Sheriff who had pulled a couple of kids out of the river the previous Spring, and then to a post-commendation party at a local club. I reminded Rick that I had to be at my brother’s place in time to check out my stand (I had been told this was important) and to get in a couple of practice rounds with the gun I’d be using (seemed to be a sensible move). He assured me that I’d get out of the party plenty early {BIG LIE #5} and that it was probably only 20 minutes from the club to my brother’s land {WHOPPER #6).
I left for the cabin in the wee hours. During the course of the afternoon and evening, a light snow had turned into a heavy snow, which had turned into a blizzard. The drive south wasn’t too bad and I was able to go about 65 until I got to Modovi where there hadn’t been any plowing done. I put the truck into 4 wheel (I started feeling like an outdoorsman again) and continued on at about 55. About halfway between Mondovi and the property, the road turned into a paved single lane road with steep ditches on either side and I slowed to 50. About five miles later, the pavement disappeared and I was driving on gravel roads and the ditches on either side started to get deeper, so I slowed to about 45. Two miles from the cabin, the road was dirt and it felt like I was driving on an isthmus between two really deep ditches, although with the blowing snow, it was hard to tell. I slowed to 35.
I rounded the final turn, past an old out-building, and saw the cabin in the clearing. As I pulled up to the front where the other trucks were parked, I rolled to a stop, closed the door as quietly as I could so as not to wake anybody, grabbed my bags of Kmart’s finest, and walked to the front door. As I eased the door open, I noticed all of the hunters were already awake, half-dressed and working on their first cup of coffee. A resounding greeting went up and I was welcomed into camp and encouraged to quickly get dressed, as they were just about ready to go.
Lee hustled to get me some warm clothes (all too small, but definitely orange) and handed me a pretty nice jacket (a leftover from a couple years earlier, I was told that it had once been used to cover the outdoor pump handle, but I’m not sure what that meant. I just nodded like I understood). He introduced me to my weapon (which was much smaller than I had imagined it would be, but who was I to complain). I pulled on my new boots and gloves, stuffed my pockets full of candy bars (apparently deer are drawn to the scent of chocolate). While Lee secured my back tag on my jacket, I headed toward the door to walk back outside to head out for our deer stands.
After about a 20 minute walk down the driveway and the onto a logging road, we took a sharp turn into the woods. It was then that I was reminded of one of my earliest, and least enjoyable memories of hunting. The Face Whip.
Walking directly in front of me was my 18 year old nephew Tommy. Tommy is everything to hunting that I am not. I’m convinced he used a 20 gauge shotgun to blast his way through his Mom’s cervix and out of the womb. Even as an adolescent, he was nearly Crockett-like in his ability to kill animals large and small with his bare hands. He was known as Hunter Tom in middle school and high school and it had nothing to do with his talent with the ladies (which was also considerable, but that’s yet another story). He received a Master’s degree in Engineering so that he could build a better tree stand, and he currently divides his time between his “work” as a professional fisherman, and his training of the next generation of hunter/gatherers.
As we entered the woods, Tommy was two feet in front of me. By the time I had taken my third step, he was six feet in front of me and just as I looked up to see where he was going, the first branch lash hit my rosy red cheek. As my eyes started to water, the tears froze and I stumbled across some brush and landed face first in the snow. With candy bars falling out of my coat pockets I started to my feet just in time to get three more branch lashes in the face as my brother Dave rushed past me to catch up with Tommy and the rest of the group.
I had already been alerted to the fact that I needed to maintain absolute quiet as we made our way into the woods, but with blood running down my cheek from the slashes across my face, and my “guides” continuing into the woods, I felt like I had to call out for them. I resisted the temptation, got to my feet and stumbled on after them, the sound of my heavy footfalls deadened by the new-fallen snow.
After what seemed to be ten minutes or so, I caught up with everybody as they stood near a pile of brush stacked alongside two large trees.
LEE: “This is your stand,” Lee whispered. “You’ll want to set up with your back to these trees and just as the sun is coming up you should look for the deer moving from over here (pointing to his left) to over here (sweeping his hand to his right). You’ll have a clear shooting lane right in the middle.”
TOMMY: “Remember, bucks only. They’re the ones with the things sticking out of their heads.” (Smartass little %$#*, I’d have smacked him if my coat had been big enough to allow me to raise my arm above my shoulder).
JIM: “Where do I sit?”
LEE: “It’s called a “stand” for a reason.
LEE: “Listen. We’re going to be just over the ridge. Tommy will be along the edge of the swamp, TG is going to start alongside the cornfield but he’ll spend most of the time after sunrise moving around, and Dave and I will start out in our stands and then we see how things go. We may do some drives later, and you can either stand or drive, your choice. If you take a shot, wait here and one of us will come over.”
I had no idea what any of that meant, but I nodded my head like it was all crystal clear.
TOMMY: “And don’t shoot at anything orange.”
JIM: “I got the perfect hat for you back in my car,” I thought.
As the rest of the group headed out, I immediately took stock of my surroundings. Snow continued to fall, it was still at least an hour before sunrise, so I could make out the shapes of trees that were within about ten feet of me, but beyond that everything was a mystery. To the left where the deer were supposed to come, there were trees, brush and snow, to the right, where they were headed, there were trees, brush and snow. My “shooting alley” looked the same as everything else. As I stood there I was pretty sure that, unless a buck came into the ten foot ring around my stand, I wasn’t going to see him.
I began with some maintenance of my space. The lawyer in me immediately recognized that I needed to clear away all of the snow from my stand, thus reducing the risk if slipping, and I needed to get rid of any downed branches to eliminate the possibility that I would trip and send an errant shot into Minnesota. The other benefit of getting rid of the branches is that I would reduce the risk of snapping a twig as my trophy buck approached. I’ll bet that little sh%& Tommy would have never thought of that. I also started eyeing up my two trees because I knew there was going to come a point in time when I needed to prop myself up somewhere and get a little shut eye.
By this time, the rest of the hunting party had disappeared over the ridge and not a sound could be heard in the woods. As I looked again toward my target area, I began to notice that the distant trees were moving and that small, barely discernible shapes were flitting about. I looked like a bunch of dog-sized animals were taunting me from about 30 yards away. I closed my eyes and re-opened them, and the flitting animals disappeared. Then, about 45 seconds later, they re-appeared again. This went on for about 5 minutes before I realized that fatigue had taken over and I was seeing things.
I decided I’d be better suited for the excitement of the dawn if I took this opportunity to get in a little nap. I kicked some of the snow into about a four inch high, butt-sized pile in front of the trees, and I sat down with my back against the trees, my gun across my lap, and, with a light snow continuing to fall through the trees and into my mouth, I was asleep within a minute. I have a hazy recollection of waking up several times. Each time I woke up, the woods became lighter, I could see farther, and the fuzzy shapes surrounding my stand became clearer.
I was finally awakened completely by the sound of a gunshot very close by. I looked down in my lap to make sure that it wasn’t my gun that had gone off, and I was relieved to find that my safety was still “ON,” and there was nothing inside the trigger guard. When I looked up, I realized that the snow had stopped at some point and we were at least well into Opening Day. A quick scan around me revealed no animals, no other hunters that I could see, and a panoramic view of the woods that was completely new to me. In fact, if I hadn’t known any better, I would have guessed that the Eau Claire cops had pulled another prank on me and had towed me to a different woods entirely while I slept. I now could see my “shooting alley,” and the worn trail, about 20 yards in front of me which the local deer had apparently used like some superhighway to get from the cornfields to my far left to the swamp over the ridge and to my right.
I got up and walked slowly over toward the trail and was surprised to see several sets of tracks in the new fallen snow. Utilizing all of the outdoor skills that I had attained in my Tenderfoot-capped career in the Boy Scouts of America, I determined that the tracks were from a herd of likely several deer that had traveled from my left to my right, and had probably paused for a little dance party dead-center in my shooting alley about 15 yards from where I slept liked a union plumber working a time and material government job.
I was doomed! Animals that I was supposed to shoot, in fact I was licensed by the State of Wisconsin and authorized to do so, had walked close enough to me that I could pulled up their whitetails and checked for hemorrhoids, and I didn’t get off a shot. Those same animals had then strolled over to the rest of the hunting party, where one of the group had fired a shot.
I needed a story, and I needed one quick. I immediately harkened back to my days as an error-proned first baseman and thought of using “the sun was in my eyes,” or “my glove was too big,” but I didn’t think those would work. Then I thought about my high school days as a seldom used forward on the basketball team (where I backed up Dick Ellis, ‘nuf said as to why I was seldom used) and considered saying that I’d been hacked on the arm while preparing to shoot, but that wasn’t going to work either. I finally settled on a fool-proof excuse.
JIM: “I couldn’t get a clear shot at the buck. There was a doe in the way and then it was outside my shooting alley. I figured that, rather than wasting the chance on a bad shot, I’d let it work its way down to where you guys were so one of you could take it.”
My lawyer friends would have been so proud. In one bald-faced lie I had managed to hide my own laziness, cover up for my own stupidity, and appear to be a team player who was willing to sacrifice my own shot at glory for the best interests of my fellow hunters. The only thing missing from this lie was that I wasn’t getting paid $400/hour to tell it.
I made the statement while kneeling next to my brother-in-law, Gary, who was gutting the 180 pound eight-pointer, which he had taken at about 8:40 in the morning after passing on the other nine deer that had worked past his stand since sun up.
GARY: “Wow. That shows pretty impressive patience for somebody deer hunting for the first time ever. Personally, if I were you I’d have taken the spike that came through at about 6:30, and even if I’d passed on that, I’d have taken the four-pointer fifteen minutes later.”
JIM: “I had in my mind a certain deer, Gary, and those just didn’t fit the bill for me.” (This lying stuff just gets easier and easier).
I helped Gary drag the buck back to the cabin. Given the fact that nobody else was back yet, I decided to run into Mondovi to get something to eat. I had the vague recollection of a Burger King restaurant, and right about that time something flame-broiled sounded pretty good.
I jumped into my truck and started retracing my steps from the night before. What I saw as I drove out caused me no little amount of anxiety. The snow-covered dirt road was still snow-covered, but now, in the daylight, I could see the 20 foot drop-offs on either side of the narrow path that served as the roadway. Recalling my speed from the night before, I was amazed that I had not careened off the road and created my own stand at the bottom of a 20-foot cliff.
I returned to the cabin at about 1:30, certain that all the boys would be finishing off a hearty camp lunch and swapping tales of opportunities missed (with the exception of Gary, of course). Instead, the only guy in camp was oldest brother, Bill, who was busy preparing a batch of camp chili for the evening meal, a concoction that would simmer while he and the rest of the hunting crew would work the afternoons drives (I initially thought that was a radio thing, but I’m pretty sure now that I was wrong). Bill somehow knew everything that had happened that morning for every one of the hunters in the party, except me.
BILL: “How’d it go this morning, counselor?”
JIM: “Great. Saw a couple of bucks but didn’t have a good shot. Anybody else besides Gary get a shot?
BILL: “No, but how is it that Gary saw nine deer, and you didn’t have a good shot at any of them?”
JIM: “Well, first of all, a number of them were … you know … no horns …”
BILL: “Does?”
JIM: “Yeah, that’s right. Does. And then a couple of the bucks were pretty small, and the one Gary got … I just never had a good shot at it.”
BILL: “Tough break. I sat on your stand Thursday, just scouting it out, and I would have had clear shots at a bunch of bucks.”
My story was unraveling. I had to think quick.
JIM: “There was a little problem with the sun, too.”
BILL: “That’s OK, you ready to go out for the afternoon?”
JIM: “Of course.” I actually didn’t think we were going to be doing two-a-days, but I wasn’t going to let Bill know that.
BILL: “I’ll put you on a stand. TG, Dave and I and a couple of the other guys are going to drive, so just be careful.”
By 2:45 I was back in the woods, in a new place that I again had to groom and modify to fit my skill set. Bill took off and told me that they were going to work up from behind me about ½ mile, and that I should be on the lookout for deer moving in advance of their push.
BILL: “Now unlike this morning, these deer will be more skittish and they may be moving. So you might have to take a shot while the deer is on the run. You okay with that gun?”
JIM: “Oh yeah. A regular Annie Oakley.”
BILL: “Alright. Remember, don’t shoot anything orange.”
I was starting to get the sense that they didn’t have faith in my hunting skills.
I settled into my new stand and I waited. Then I leaned against a nearby tree. Then I sat down and leaned against the tree. Then I fell asleep. I woke up to a loud crashing sound and by the time I cleared my head, I was pretty sure that three deer had run within about 10 feet of me. I could now see their tails disappearing deeper into the woods, but the memory of the crashing sound took me back to where at least one of them had jumped over a pile of brush close enough to me right shoulder that if I had swung the gun I might have been able to trip him.
I had no idea where my hunting party was, and I was pretty sure that under the circumstances that was a bad thing. Given that the deer had just passed in front of me, moving away from where the drive was originating, I deduced that my brothers were still behind me, but I had no idea how close. The woods had darkened slightly as dusk approached under the overcast skies, but it was still clearly daylight. I slowly looked around behind me to see if I could locate anybody, but I could not. As I turned back to look forward again, I saw movement from my left side. I adjusted my attention to the left, but didn’t see anything moving. After a few seconds with my attention focused on an opening to my left, I saw that flitting movement again that I had first noticed this morning before I fell asleep. I thought that fatigue was again playing tricks with me, but then I saw it. It was a buck. And not just any buck, but a monster.
My heart began to race. The buck would move a few steps and then stop and look back. Then it would move again and stop and look back. It was moving mostly away from me, and I could see that its tail was up. About 30 yards out it turned to the right and began crossing directly in front of me, getting a little closer with each step. It stopped and looked directly toward where I was sitting and then it put its head back down and started to walk. At that point I slowly raised my gun, clicked off the safety, and started to track the deer, waiting for an opening between the trees. Just as I was about to shoot, the deer looked quickly to its right again and began to bound away. I tracked the deer, now about 20 yards away, and pulled the trigger as it took its second step.
I saw the back end of the deer swing out away from me and then it disappeared. The sound of my shot reverberated through the woods, and I felt liked somebody had stuck my head in a toilet and dropped in a cherry bomb (which Lee had actually done to me once, but that’s still another story). In the fog of the moment everything moved in slow motion. Actually nothing moved at all. I did not see my buck running away. Other than the ringing in my ears, I didn’t hear noise from a fleeing deer. I wasn’t sure what to do, but I was reasonably confident that if I just sat there and did nothing, I couldn’t get myself into any more trouble. So I waited.
After 10 minutes of waiting, I could wait no more. I walked over to where I had last seen the deer and I found a spray of blood on the snow. That had to be a good sign. I walked another 10 feet or so, and there was my trophy buck.
Except it wasn’t quite the trophy that I thought it was. While it was a buck, it was barely a buck. And unlike the man-sized animal that Gary had dropped that morning, this one looked like it would have been a high-fashion model version of a deer, all skinny and anorexic. Mt first Opening Weekend and I had managed to shoot … Twiggy. I had seen lap dogs that wouldn’t have been scared by this thing.
I reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out the short piece of rope that I had used to help pull Gary’s back out of the woods earlier that day. My kill moved a little easier than Gary’s. After about 10 minutes I found the logging road and a few minutes later I was out on the roadway leading to the cabin. As I got within a couple of hundred yards of the cabin, Dave walked out of the woods and began walking toward me in the setting sun.
DAVE: “Hey little brother. Looks like you got a …” “It looks a little small.”
JIM: “Yeah, but that’s OK, it was easy to drag out of the woods.”
DAVE: “Just imagine how easy it would have been if you gutted it first.”
JIM: “Oops.”
Just at that moment, Tom walked up.
TOM: “Some kids going to be awfully upset you shot his puppy.” (apparently that’s the hunting equivalent of asking a golfer if his husband plays golf when he leaves a putt short of the hole).
JIM: “I don’t see you pulling a buck out of the woods,” I retorted.
TOM: “Right back at ya. I also don’t see a tag on that thing, counselor. “
DAVE: “That’s a good way to get yourself in some serious trouble James.”
With that, Dave reached into my back tag holder, pulled out my tag and legalized my kill.
After a Saturday night of Sheepshead and chili and about six hours of sleep, I ventured out for a couple of hours early Sunday morning, better prepared to appreciate the beauty of the woods, the peace and serenity of a November sunrise and the smell of pine. I never took the gun off SAFETY and I was OK with that. I came back in and watched the Packer game on an old 12” television and then went out in the afternoon and took a two hour walk up and down the ridges and valleys of a gorgeous Buffalo County woods. Gun in hand, candy bars in pocket and a story that I could share with friends for the rest of my life, I was glad that I allowed Lee to talk me into joining them.
My 70 pound buck has grown in proportion over the last 20 years. I have not again returned to the woods, joking that I’m not sure I want to risk my 100% success rate, but every year I get the call. Who knows, maybe I’ll be back again.
Jim is a lifelong resident, and former Mayor, of New Berlin. A graduate of Marquette University and Marquette Law School (delivered the Valediction to the 1994 graduating class) he and wife Eliesha have five children. Jim can be contacted by email at jgatzke@gatzkelaw.com , or by phone at Gatzke Law at 262-814-1680.