Thursday November 19, 2020

 2020: A Palmville Deer Season

Brothers-in-law Martin Davidson (1900-1975) and Clifford Palm (1915-2004) used to hunt deer together here in Palmville, back in the 1930’s,‘40s and ‘50s whether it was deer season or not. Clifford and his wife, Delores, would come ‘uphome’ from Wisconsin, to visit their respective families and the men would always set to shoot a deer or two, legal or otherwise, to take some venison back home with them. Poaching wasn’t out of the question. It wasn’t done for trophies, but to feed their families; heralding back to an ancestral era of ‘stalking the king’s deer.’ Though not at risk of death in prison nor at the end of a rope, avoiding the game warden was paramount and stories still abound about their antics and mishaps staying one step beyond the long arm of the law.
Presently, many people in ‘northern’ Palmville, Zone 101, are participating in deer season. Our township ‘residency’ numbers ‘shoot up’ (pardon the pun) during deer season, although not in the usual fervor due to the constraints of Covid-19.
At our house, deer season is among the celebrated heights of the year. It ranks right up there with Christmas, and the St. Cloud Easter Gathering (cancelled this year), the Red Cliff Wisconsin Pow Wow (cancelled this year), the Stony Point Resort Grand Gathering (also cancelled this year). Deer season was almost cancelled, right up to opening weekend. My wife Jackie’s longing to see her family plagued her until she devised a way to do it as safely as possible by requiring stringent sanitizing regimens that included her sons and grandsons getting Covid checks prior to arrival; that they wear masks; they do rigorous handwashing in addition to the regular use of sanitizers; that they practice social distancing -- to limit the number of hunters staying here to one or two, each of the three weekends of deer season. She did not want them all here on opening day. Her boys reluctantly agreed.
Still, Jackie was greatly nervous, reading as she does of daily Covid cases in Roseau County; there had been one death. We also had news of three of our close friends -- two in Badger, MN and one in Jamestown, ND -- having the disease, in addition to Jackie’s sister, Cherie, in a St. Paul nursing home; and Jackie’s ex-husband; her children’s father, having contracted the disease in a nursing home in St. Cloud. Jackie's mother had died with Covid 19 in April at a New Brighton nursing home and her loss is felt greatly, accentuated everyday with the news of rising cases in Minnesota, and the nation.
We all understand her concern with her underlying health issues and suseptible age. And who wouldn’t, except those people in denial, who obviously doubt that Covid-19 is a real threat to their lives or their families; who are convinced that it only happens to someone else; and God or Jehovah is their divine protector and all that. They neither will get it nor spread it, so will not wear masks and think that those who do get it, are all fools. “Besides, we’ll all die of something sooner or later. When it’s my time, it’s my time. I won’t be hidin’ in my house wearin’ a mask.”
So on the first weekend, beginning November 7th, John and his son, Ozaawaa, arrived having spent two weeks in self-imposed quarantine prior to their departure from home. They did not stop anywhere, except once for gasoline, on their seven hour road trip here.
The anticipation of their arrival, precipitated by their cellphone call that they were within a couple miles of here, gave us time to get a thick smudge of sage smoke going in our entry where they would stand for a minute or two awash in the heavy smoke. As Anishinnabe people they know the cleansing attributes of medicinal sage smoke and regularly use it in their lives.
We’ve adopted the use of a sage smudge as part of our daily use, especially when I bring groceries home from the store 20-miles away. I sanitize each can, package, and bottle with Lysol wipes, that we make ourselves, prior to entering the house where everything sits for several minutes in the blinding smoke. Vegetables go through a separate cleansing wash made for them.
Although I’m generally the only one who leaves the farm for any reason, the processing of groceries and supplies requires both of us. I generally remove my outer clothes afterward, and lay them outdoors to air out no matter the weather; and although I religiously wear a mask, I wash my beard and hair, and sanitize my hands. Then, I relax in an office chair with a beer and a book for several minutes as she puts the groceries away upstairs.
Deer hunting doesn’t have such restrictions. Deer hunting is a freeing exercise of both mind and body in which you must devote your whole being just to keep warm and safe. You must wear florescent orange (or florescent pink) clothing on the upper parts of your body when outdoors. Ten year old Ozaawaa was reprimanded about that after he left the house to greet us one afternoon with no florescent orange on his head or chest.
“YOU DON'T LEAVE THE HOUSE WITHOUT ORANGE ON EVER, EVEN HERE IN THE YARD!” John and I said angrily, almost in unison. Grandma got on his case too when he returned to the house. He knew better, he just didn’t think, which, is sadly, like not remembering to wear a mask, maintain social distancing, and sanitizing your hands. Even as adults we forget (Well, I do sometimes) to put on a mask until I get almost to the door of a business then have to walk back to the car and get one. But even as an old guy, I haven’t forgotten to wear my florescent orange cap and jacket.
John and I are 13-years apart in age, the same age difference between Martin and Clifford. John’s younger brothers: Craig and Martin are fifty five and fifty-two. Craig’s son, Joshua, is thirty and Ozaawaa, John’s son, only ten. Like the Clifford and Martin, we enjoy the same humor, embrace the same joy of family gatherings, love our families -- and love the hell out of deer hunting. Me and ‘the boys’ don’t poach, but the camaraderie the older men shared while deer hunting, I think the four of us, including Josh, share today; the older guys advising the youngest; each of us learning a little something from the other, something new, and something old.
Dead deer serve as anatomy lessons. Here we stress respect for the animal in its deceased state. Two years ago, when he was eight, Ozaawaa wasn’t comfortable watching his dad and I skin deer; he lead his grandma away toward the house and she followed him without hesitation. This year, he helped me as I skinned a waawaashkeshi (Ojibwemowin for ‘deer.’), and asked me questions about what part of the animal was what with genuine interest.
“This is just like your knee, see?” I said, moving a front leg so the knee bent.
“This, is a shoulder blade,” I said, nudging his shoulder blade through the back of his jacket.
“This is its spine,” I said. “It’s backbone, just like ours. It carries messages from the brain through the nerves in the spine.”
As older men we think about doing things the easy way now. Deer hunting hasn’t changed much for our camp; we don’t use four-wheelers to get to our deer stands, but instead walk the distances often through the brush and trees. If the wind is wrong for us to get where we’re going, walking, we sometimes get chauffeured to a place and dropped off. Still, it’s the same grunt work hunting has always has been out in the elements, walking our aging bodies through the brush.
One afternoon Josh said he was going to walk along the creek, past Marty’s Stand, and to John’s Stand, a distance of maybe a slow quarter mile. I thought he might surprise some deer as he did that and I could maybe intercept them if I drove my car up to near John’s Stand and walked in from there. I had to drive my car about a mile and a quarter and I didn’t waste any time doing it. Neither did Josh, because he beat me there. I couldn’t believe it.
“Did you run?” I asked him as kindly as I could muster. "I can’t believe that you beat me here. Did you just take the path?”
Josh admitted that yes, he had just walked the path -- but he didn’t see anything.
Biting my tongue, I told him that he had hurried too much and deer and whatever other animals that were there likely just stood still and watched him pass by.
“I don’t want to sound critical, Josh; you just didn’t know,” I said. “You should’ve gotten off the path and walked slowly along a deer trail through the brush and trees, stopping every so often, just to look around you. Sometimes deer will be surprised at your approach and bolt away. If they didn’t smell you, they’ll try and get behind you so they can. You have to watch for that.
“You won’t learn much about what deer are about if all you do is shoot from a deer stand. I tell you what, why don’t you take a walk through the willows there and learn the lay of the land. You’ll see some sign of deer out there.”
And with that I thought I’d just walk back to the car and wait until evening to hunt, but a thought came to me that I should shadow him on his walk instead, maybe offer him counsel as he walked along. I didn’t want him to think I was angry, as I sometimes unintentionally put people on the defensive. As it happened, he did surprise a deer about the time he and I changed direction from westerly to southerly. It ran around behind us, and I shot at it but clearly missed it. I didn’t manage a second shot because it ran in the direction of the county road and I was unsure should a vehicle there be traveling behind it.
I hope it was a kindly lesson I communicated; he seems to enjoy hunting so.
As men between the ages of sixty-nine and fifty-two, not counting Josh, we no longer have the energy we used to have to pull a dead deer all the way to the road or fence line. I have a little four-wheel drive 1986 Toyota pickup that serves as my ATV with a cab. It’s been dry enough here this fall that the ground froze before it snowed, so we can go almost anywhere with it, when we need to, except drive across the iced-over creeks, using it to pull the animals where we will skin them.
At the beginning of season, knives become tools again; things that we use but once a year. We dig them out from their hiding places in the basement closet and from see-through tubs on shelves. We check their edges for sharpness, honing the ones that need it. I fixed a sheath that was cut through by a knife it was carrying, by patching it with a strip of leather belt. It’s going to work for another few years.
Sometimes one of us carries a sharpener with them to the field. Sure there’s a science to sharpening a knife perfectly so it stays sharp for a good long time, but I don’t have the patience for it. A few swipes through the sharpener or diamond-edge tool and its ‘good enough’ to cut through animal hide and cartilage; don’t need it perfect.
We sometimes lose our knives too, and it’s usually where we used them last, in that last gut pile ‘way out on the north forty. One guy said he realized he had misplaced his knife at the site and when he reached around through the dead grass looking for it, he cut his hand. Other hunters have left their knives in the forks of trees or on a vehicle somewhere, then lost it as it bounced along a trail or rough road. I momentarily lost my Ulu knife a week ago, but found it again under a semi-frozen pile of intestines because it was the last place I looked.
There’s a sort of melancholy about the end of deer season, a portion of a hunter’s life stops for a brief while; the anticipation he or she developed for hunting season ends, as their regular life intrudes again. Their florescent orange caps and hoodies emit ‘that deer smell’ odor that everyone recognizes. The pile of sporting goods catalogues and email notices seem pointless; food plot seed sale specials seem premature. The little bottles of doe-in-estrus urine in your hunting coat pockets lose their allure for more than just the bucks, and especially your wife or life partner when they discover it in the laundry just prior to its swim around the washing machine or spin in the clothes dryer.
Now that’d be one deer season to remember . . .