The old men—they all seemed old then—gathered around the open bed of the pick-up truck, their orange hats aglow in the early rays of sunlight. Frost lay in an icy layer upon the sparse grass of the yard as well as on the trucks, save for those that had already been started. Defrosters in the idling trucks battled the freezing temps while large white plumes of exhaust billowed from the tail pipes, wafting like ghosts among the living.
Standing in the back of the truck, the huntmaster outlined the plan for the morning hunt in a voice graveled from years of sipping Champion 8. We would be hunting Claude Drake’s, one of the club’s biggest and best properties, and perfectly suited for the large gathering of hunters on that December Saturday morning.
We’d line up on each of the paths on the property, most of the hunters spread about 150 yards apart on the winding logging trails, some sitting on overturned 5-gallon buckets for stools, others simply leaning on large trees or sitting on the ground against their bases, and a few lucky ones perched 10 feet up on some of the new “treestands” the club had begun to build from salt-treated two-by-fours, hammered together and bolted into trunks. Other men would line the fields in strategic locations—on a point of woods or along a ditch bank—hoping to catch deer attempting to escape danger after being kicked up by the
