Sue: Hunting and
fishing are big with many in the Taylor-Baker families. I remembered my Dad
going hunting when I was a kid, so I asked him about it. He talked with Harold Taylor
to get his memories, too, then sent me the following story.
My deer hunting adventures started in about 1954. Dick
Lochner had talked to Merle Barrows [Ethel
and Lil’s cousin] at one of the family gatherings and Merle told him about
the great deer hunting get-together he and his neighbors had every year near his
home in Pitcher, NY. Dick asked what he and I had to do to get invited and
Merle said, “Consider yourselves invited! You can stay with Viola and myself.”
So next November, the day before deer season opened, we
drove down to Pitcher, NY, raring to go. I had picked up an old double-barreled
shotgun at my parents' house in Waterloo, NY that was originally my Dad’s. My
brother, Dick, had used it for pheasant hunting.
Merle and Viola's Farm, July 1955
Sue and Dan Kinsella by front of car
After we arrived, Merle gave us the lowdown on the deer
hunt. He said the participants were all neighbors and friends. We hunted on a
neighbor’s lands that, fortunately, backed up to government land that was off
limits for hunting. The deer that lived there in this wide open area wandered
back and forth between the government and the private land so that there were
always lots of deer in the area. I must mention that hanging on Merle’s living
room wall was the biggest mounted deer head I had ever seen.
Early the next morning around 5 o’clock, Viola shouted up
the stairs that breakfast was ready, and what a breakfast it was — heaps of
eggs, pancakes, sausages, and bacon plus lots of freshly baked bread. We then
piled into Merle’s truck and drove a few miles to his neighbor Bob's house.
There we met the others that were included in the hunt. While waiting for it to
get light we spent the time eating doughnuts and drinking coffee.
Just before daybreak, we split into two groups, the
shooters and the beaters. Dick and I were in the first shooters group. We piled
into Merle’s truck and drove on a dirt road that led to a hill about 1⁄2 mile
from Bob’s house. Merle then dropped us off, one by one, about 100 yards apart
along the hill. We could see Bob’s house from there. As soon as daylight came,
the beaters came out of Bob’s house, spread out into a line and, banging clubs
and pans together, started marching towards us.
There was a small forest of trees halfway between Bob’s
house and where we were waiting. Several of the beaters entered that forest and
shortly after I saw at least a dozen deer sprint out of the other side and run
in our direction. Don’t you think that made me excited! Just then I heard a
shot off to my right where Dick Lochner was positioned. I saw Dick take a
couple more shots at a running buck and then I realized the deer was running
towards me. It was about 40 yards away as it ran past me so I shot, aiming for
its shoulder. Much to my amazement, the deer dropped like a rock. When I
reached it, the deer was dead. Shortly after the drive was over, up came the
trucks that picked us all up, plus the two deer that had been killed on that
drive. We were driven back to Bob’s house, where we had more coffee and doughnuts.
After a suitable rest, we all got into the trucks and
were driven to a different area where another drive was organized. The beater
and shooter groups exchanged assignments and we started all over again. In that
drive, three bucks were killed. I was not too far from Bob when he shot his
deer. It was running at full speed and he dropped it with one shot!
That night when we were back at Merle’s house, I
mentioned to him having seen Bob drop the deer and that I thought that he was
an excellent shot. Apparently there was some rivalry there because that seemed
to upset Merle and he promptly told me many tales of his hunting skill.
All the deer that were killed were brought back to a barn
on Bob’s farm and hung up from a long beam. When Dick and I left, there must
have been 12 to 15 deer hanging there. I don’t know who made the decisions on
how much deer meat each person got but I think it depended upon on how much
time the person spent hunting, not on how many deer they shot. As far as I
could tell, everyone got some deer meat, whether they had been beaters or
shooters, and whether or not they had personally killed a deer. Dick and I each
received a generous portion of a rear haunch and all that winter we had roasts
and steaks and hamburger from it.
The following year, Dick and I must have told Harold
Taylor how much fun we had had hunting deer at Merle’s because he decided to
join us at the next year’s hunt. The three of us stayed at Merle’s and, as
usual, Viola provided us with delicious calorie-laden breakfasts.
We followed the same routine of beaters and shooters, but
this year things were different. Now does were legal to shoot, which meant
there were many more opportunities to shoot a deer.
Harold said early on in the hunt he had a nice clear shot
at a deer. He told me, “I took good aim, pulled the trigger and shot. I don’t
know what happened but the deer just disappeared. I never saw it again. I
wasn’t worried, though. I still had two more days to hunt so I felt confident
that I’d get my deer by then.”
But then Dick Lochner stumbled upon two deer and he
killed both of them. This posed a dilemma for us. You are only allowed to kill
one deer per day. When you do kill one, you have to attach your tag to that
deer and then you must stop hunting. There were four people in our particular
shooters group: Dick, Harold, one of Bob’s neighbors and me. The neighbor and I
had already shot a deer that day and Dick had killed two. We needed a tag to
put on Dick’s second deer and the only solution was to use Harold’s tag, which
is what happened. That meant Harold had to stop hunting even though he hadn’t
killed a deer yet.
Harold was disappointed but he continued the rest of the
hunt as a beater, as did Dick and I. On one of the beater drives, I couldn’t
believe my ears. I heard a dog barking, but it was illegal to use dogs on a
deer drive. Nevertheless, I could distinctly hear that ‘arf’ ‘arf’ sound. As I
kept walking, the sound got louder and then I heard ‘arf’ ‘arf’ “Red Heart” -
at the same time I came upon Harold singing the Red Heart dog food commercial!
That year I had slipped a disc in my back and it was
giving me so much trouble I wore a corset to ease the pain. One day during the
hunting trip, I had a call of nature. This necessitated my removing my corset.
When I was finished, I rebuckeled my corset, pulled up my pants and started to
walk away — but I couldn’t. That’s when I realized that as I buckled up the
corset, I hadn’t noticed I was
close to a small sapling and that was now wrapped inside my corset!
Oh, it was the best of times and a record number of deer
were killed on our hunting trip with Merle's neighbors. We all went home with
plenty of deer meat that year.
Sue: When I was
asking about hunting stories for the blog, Mom and Dad started laughing and
told me a story that suggests Uncle Dick wasn't the only "hunter" in
the Lochner family.
As they told it, one
year Uncle Dick went on a week-long hunting trip to the Adirondacks. But he
came back rather dejected because, for all his efforts, he had not gotten a
deer all week. Imagine his surprise when he got home, then, to find a whole
deer waiting for him!
It turned out that
while he was away, Aunt Esther had been driving on some domestic errand or
other and a deer had run in front of her car. She couldn't avoid hitting it and
killed it. Flustered and upset, she called the police, who decided that, since
she had killed the deer unintentionally, she could keep it.
So Uncle Dick had
worked hard, hunting all week, but did not get a deer. Yet he came home to find
that Aunt Esther had bagged one with no effort at all!
Breaking News!
Diana sent this picture of modern-day hunting, showing her son Mike McCarty and his dog Payton. Thank you!
