FENCEROWS... Deer Drive
By John Luthens
I grew into my early deer hunting experiences in Barron,Wisconsin, living three miles out of town and smack off of state Highway 8 which was and still is a busy northern state thoroughfare. Fortunately for me, Barron was a small enough where three miles out of town-even on a busy road- put you in the middle of hardwoods, hidden meadows, and rolling turkey farm hills. I grew up being lucky enough to hunt by walking out the back door and into the field.
If I got up early and clipped along at a half-jog, I could make the sandy slopes of the gravel pit, sight in my deer rifle, and make it home in the nick of time to catch the school bus. I knew plenty of ridges and blinds within shouting distance of my house and faithfully walked every scrape line that stretched between them. There were plenty of local spots where I could get fairly decent odds on seeing some white tails. The point being, I never would have had to drive anywhere to go hunting, especially when the gun deer season rolled around.
Preparing for the deer drive.
Thankfully, my dad and his hunting partners took a broader view on the local deer population, along with deer hunting in general. They knew there was more to the whole affair than just seeing a lot of deer. They introduced me at a young age to the annual deer drive, and I’ve been a faithful follower ever since.
Our crew back then consisted mostly of teachers: Figuratively, because they understood the value of the deer drive, and literally, since most of them taught courses at my high school. My history teacher was among them, and I’m still working out how he was able to run a buck-board pool, right out in the open on the chalkboard in class, and with brazen disregard of school board anti-gambling policy. I’m also still counting the dollars I lost to him over the course of my four years at Barron High School.
His high-racked deer were never taken from the Barron area either. None of our deer were, at least not during the third weekend in November. Because every year, after school let out on that magical Friday, we packed into vehicles and drove to Ladysmith. It was only 40 miles down the road, following the very same highway No. 8 that passed by my back-yard deer domain. It was not too long a drive, but it was the drive itself that really counted.
There was a sense of kinship with others on the highway, something exciting that comes to pass only once a year; orange caps and flannel shirts from behind the wheel of nearly every vehicle on the road.
We made the same stop along the way at the sport shop every year. We didn’t need anything. We had planned and packed for weeks. But every gun in the display rack, every shell box on the shelf, every glass case of hunting knives, and every pile of premium priced blaze orange jackets held qualities and auras that only exist once a year. They only exist along the passage of the deer drive. We always bought something that we thought we needed but probably didn’t.
Then there was the traditional dinner stop at Rosie’s. It was a bar and restaurant of epic proportion, with a fenced deer yard outside, lighted and in full view out the window behind the bar, complete with the annual 10-point buck strutting for the hunting patrons, priming the pump of their imagination while they sat and primed up their own pumps a bit.
The standard fare was hot beef sandwiches, topped with as much home-made horseradish as you cared to chance. The horseradish could blow your sinus passages into next week if you weren’t careful. To be young and sitting at the bar, eating horseradish and hearing the stories and colorful talk; A deer drive doesn’t get any better than that.
Our drive ended at a small motel in Ladysmith. Without fail, we stayed there every year, even reserving the exact same room. There was deeply ingrained superstition among us. It was firmly believed by all, that staying anywhere else would red-flag every deer into the next county. It would be worse than a picket line of meat hunters with automatic rifles opening up at the crack of dawn on Saturday morning.
There was also the small, often overlooked fact that the local Catholic Church sat on a corner opposite the motel. The very same history teacher, who religiously supplemented his income with my buck-board dollars every year, always walked across the street after opening day to attended Saturday night mass. He’d call his wife to detail the day’s hunt, and he always claimed that she insisted he go to church.
Ever since the year he shot that 12-pointer, he never missed a Saturday night mass. I guess some superstitions are well beyond mortal comprehension.
More years than I care to count have passed since I hunted the paper mill logging tracts surrounding Ladysmith. Some of the old party is still around, very likely making the annual drive past the same sport shop, into the same restaurants, and to the same small motel. Some of the old crew watches from above, from the great hunting stand beyond. Those early drives sure bring back memories. Maybe none of those old places are even there anymore, but I like to think that they are.
I hunt in a lot of different areas now. I wasn’t certain where I would hunt until the week before the season this year. It was northern Douglas County at first, along the shores of Lake Superior. But plans changed. So I will be watching the sun rise over Lake Winnebago instead, in Calumet County from a spot of woodlot farm land outside of Chilton. It will be an hour drive for me to get there instead of a seven hour marathon.
The distance doesn’t really matter. The important thing is, I already know where I’m going to stop on the way for a new box of 12-gauge slugs, when I already have three or four boxes sitting at home on the shelf; Or maybe a new pair of orange gloves to add to my collection pile of blaze orange in the closet. I expect I will see plenty others on my deer drive, wearing hunter’s orange and of like mind and spirit to myself.
I’ll take my time getting there, enjoying the sights of the opening drive, and I’ll only hurry a little towards the end. I know a little bar right outside of Chilton that used to serve the best bowl of chili around. I can’t wait to find out if it still does, because I tend to believe that there are superstitious properties surrounding chili beans that have never been properly investigated.
Here’s to a safe drive and a safe hunt to all.