Here is another of my favorite stories I’m resurrecting for those who might enjoy it.
By Thomas K. Remington
(Photography by Milt Inman)
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Spectacular views of the Presidential Range
with Mt. Washington and Mt. Adams
in the background.
I sat motionless leaned against a big pine tree on the south-facing slope of Mollyockett Mountain. The sun was bearing down on me and was acting like an intoxicant rendering my entire body limp and unable to move. Off in the distance I could hear a faint noise but it was indistinguishable. I strained to hear but nothing seemed recognizable. I began to get frustrated and irritable.
What was wrong with my arms? Why couldn’t I see what was making the noise? Suddenly, there in front of me stood a very large deer. It was a mature and hefty buck with widespread antlers and tines that seemed at least 12 inches long. His ears were like tennis rackets twitching from side to side and standing very erect. He snorted loud and it echoed down the hillside and filled the valley below. He began making long graceful leaps but he was having trouble getting through the semi-dense undergrowth. Each leap he made seemed to get him no further away from his peril. It was as though time was frozen in a moment. I needed to shoot!
Things happen so quickly when hunting especially when a trophy deer steps into your line of fire but my gun was too heavy. It must be hooked on my bootlace or something. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before. I was always so calm and methodical in my hunting techniques. The deer is still there as if he is waiting for me to take my best shot and I am helpless. Finally, through an eternity of effort and confusion, my rifle finds its way to my shoulder. It is so heavy and I realize I must be getting older but how old am I? As I take aim on this monster there is a loud noise again coming from someplace I don’t recognize. What an odd noise to hear while hunting. Now I recognize it. It is a loud and distinct “clangâ€, “clangâ€, “clangâ€. I have heard that sound so many times before. It’s the sound of the iron lids rattling on an old wood cook stove.
Gourmet scrambled eggs being prepared on
the old cook stove.
Most of the camp remained quiet. Someone was putting wood on the fire that was left to burn almost completely out. I could hear them blowing on the cinders trying to breathe life back into them. Smoke rose through the cracks in the old floor and hunters began to stir. Realizing it was only that dream, again, I contemplated crawling out of my sleeping bag and heading downstairs to assist in building a fire, making coffee and preparing breakfast.
It was too cold just yet to get up, I thought, and now I could hear both Greg and Dennis talking low. They were up to their usual one-liners of insults showing each other how much they cared for one another. There were seven mighty hunters sacked out in the upstairs and one designated fire tender who slept on the couch downstairs. Of the seven, some arose almost immediately while others pulled their covers up a bit higher and resumed their efforts to get some more sleep.
Hunting camp is a tradition and few have the privilege of enjoying such an event. There are hunting camps scattered all over Maine but not many are like this one. This one is truly rustic and the walls hold over 50 years of stories and traditions. There is no place like it on earth. It is opening day of the Maine deer hunting seasons and the camp dwellers are stirring, getting ready to assault the woods.
Slowly I unzip my sleeping bag and swing my legs off the side of the bed to get up. I am glad I am still half-asleep and my senses are numbed. My movements become quicker as I come face to face with the reality that it is downright cold. The temperature outside had fallen into the 20s overnight and the fire tender hadn’t done a very good job of keeping the stove warm. I smell the coffee perking on the stove and Dennis now has a couple pounds of bacon sizzling in a big cast iron frying pan.
Once dressed I stumbled down over the crudely built steps. It was really the only way to negotiate them. All the steps tilt hard forward and with each step it seems to thrust you forward. Fortunately there is a big cabinet at the bottom to assist in catching you or at least slowing you down. Both feet now firmly planted on the first floor of camp, I sensed quite easily that it was time to visit the tree outside by the edge of the stonewall. I opened the door and stepped outside and was introduced to a wall of frigid air. The grass around the front of camp was snow white with a heavy frost and each breath I took nearly blinded me with so much steam.
Lifetime friends and hunting buddies
sharing stories of the days hunt.
I knew I needed to hurry but that was difficult to do. The air was intensely dry and absolutely deafening quiet. It was still dark and the deep midnight sky revealed every twinkle from the North Star to the smallest of nameless ones. The milky way looked as though it was within reach and off in the eastern sky, I could begin to see a hint of what was to come – another sunrise that would begin a glorious day.
Back inside, the low tones had become louder and more and more hunters where stumbling down over the stairs looking for coffee or juice. Dennis has the bacon snapping and popping in about one inch of fat and he is asking somewhat frantically if someone will begin cracking open the eggs so he can make his usual gourmet dish of scrambled eggs – milk and beaten eggs. Someone grabs the toaster, a wire rack that has been hanging around the camp since I can remember over 30 years ago, and makes toast. Breakfast at the hunting camp is a ritual that is repeated every morning for the entire week that we are there. Sometimes one breakfast mirrors the next but yet somehow it is always different.
When I was a young man, most of us would be into the woods at or shortly after daybreak. These days it takes a bit longer and the sense of urgency seems to have waned. Stalking the big buck to make the kill doesn’t seem as important as just taking a nice walk in the woods to visit the places that yield fond memories. When all the circumstances are right, any one of us will down a buck but the experience of being at camp with good friends and sharing in many episodes of laughter, drama, excitement and maybe even a yarn or two, cannot be compared or replaced. I am thankful for what I have been blessed with.
After breakfast, hunters seemed to scatter here and scatter there. Only the night before extensive plans were being laid out – where we were going to go, what time we would go and who would be the one to go in this direction and that direction. But with reality setting in hard, it appeared that most opted to go his way.
Once geared up, I headed up the Proctor Road, an old dirt road that many decades ago was a well traveled artery leading up over Pratt’s Mountain and down into Welch’s Gore, but this day what remains is nearly impassable. I eventually ended up on the west shore of Moose Pond. I found a spot in the sun and sat down waiting for some errant buck to wander by and surprise us both. It didn’t happen and after sometime I headed up the shoreline toward a couple of primitive summer camps that dot the hillside next to the pond.
Let’s face it. I wasn’t really hunting. I was taking a nice walk and carrying my hunting gear with me. I was exploring and until certain curiosities had been satisfied, it was going to be difficult to settle down and do some serious hunting.
I reached another logging road that lead back to where the camps where. Almost immediately I heard a gunshot that seemed to have come from my left up on the side of the hill away from the camps and the pond. I believed that some of my fellow hunters were in that area so I contemplated what to do.
I good friend of mine, Sayward Lamb, just recently wrote a story and it is published online at MaineHuntingToday.com. It is called “Expect the Unexpectedâ€. The truth is, we seldom do. Otherwise most of us would shoot more deer. I certainly was not expecting the unexpected. I looked around me and come to the rapid conclusion that I was in a location that basically rendered me useless in any attempt to see a deer. I still didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to intrude into the hunt taking place on the hillside but if I could get myself into a position to increase my odds at seeing a deer, that’s what I wanted to do.
Once I realized there was no “good†place to be, I settled on the next best thing. I decided to just have a seat somewhere and wait. Perhaps one of my hunting buddies would need some help and I could be close by to assist. I looked around and found a nice stump on top of a rise next to the road I was standing on. I climbed up the little embankment to the top and had a seat.
Perhaps 15 minutes had passed and I hadn’t heard a sound from anybody or anything. Suddenly, I heard a little rustling in the dry leaves about 75 yards down the old logging road. I waited and watched and much to my surprise after what seemed an eternity, a nice young buck slowly stuck his head out from the thicket and looked directly at me. I remained frozen. No, this is not another of my dreams, is it?
I knew he must have seen me because he did not move a single hair – not an ear twitch. Then he turned and looked down the road in the other direction. That is when I began to slowly raise my rifle. About half way up to shooting position, the deer turned again and looked at me. Had he seen me this time? I waited until he looked the other way one more time. I knew my time was running out because he was about to bolt and I didn’t want to risk a running shot. I’m not that good at running shots.
I brought the deer’s head and neck, which is all that I could see, into my scope. I decided on the neck about 6 inches below the base of the ear and one shot was all it took.
I would find out later that one in our party had fired a shot at this same deer and missed. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time. And what is the right place at the right time? Hunting camp with very, very good friends. A place like no other on earth. A climb up Peabody Mountain can reward a tired hunter with some spectacular views, as can many others nearby. The woods are always full of wonderful and mysterious surprises and I wouldn’t trade any of it for the world.
Thirty years have passed since I began my yearly pilgrimage to the hunting camp but it seems like only yesterday. Whether it’s staying in camp on a rainy day, staying warm and dry, or trudging through knee deep snow, all are life long memories that linger and linger and can never be taken away.
Tom Remington
