Story

[trailtwister]

The great hunting partner, Other than My brother

I don’t know just how one gets a hunting partner let alone a great one. A great hunting partner is hard to find and a treasure worth more than a ton of gold. Finding one is a matter of great luck.
I’ve had several hunting partners guys from work who decide we are combatable enough to be around each other with guns and sharp objects. Most of these outings are going out for a day of hunting a certain game animal such as rabbits or partridge, some times it is fishing. Most time there is a agreed time and place to meet for these hunts or fishing expeditions.

One of my best hunting partners was a great one. We spent 45 great years hunting and fishing and a few other things together. We helped each other on building projects as well as other project not hunting related.
I don’t have any Idea why we clicked so well, I suppose it was mostly his doing since I am on the hard side of being a nice person. Like at work I was called mister personality by most every one.
How we met was at some sort of function my Aunt with throwing where family and friends of her family gathered for a day of fun, food and more fun. I had not been home from Viet Nam a long time so was getting the third degree from family about my being there. When Some one finally got the nerve to ask If I had killed any body I got up and left the table going for a walk in the field behind my aunts house. Isn’t some thing I feel needs to be talked about even today.

As I was returning this tall drink of water met me about half way across the field. He starts off with did I shoot trap with a shot gun. I tell him NO, I didn’t even have a clue how it was done or where. He says to me that if I am not doing any thing the next day to meet him at his brother in laws and we would shoot some informal trap behind the BIL’s house.

I met him the next day at the appointed time, he had told me to bring several boxes of shells telling me that shot size didn’t matter .
Finally they set every thing in place with about 4 boxes of clays. My new friend started explaining how they their rules were and the object of what they were doing.
We had a good time with a lot of ribbing and such. I got an invite to join them several times after that.
It came on pheasant season and I was invited to do a couple hunts with them. We had a really good time doing those hunts. In return I invited them to go duck hunting with me. We had a real good time doing that in my hunting area. I got invited to hunt ducks where they hunted them, I was told to get some chest waders as they hunted by sneaking thru flooding. I liked doing that even better than hunting from blinds around beaver ponds.
I invited him to deer hunt my dads farm with me. Being as my dad wasn’t much of a hunter when it came to deer I only knew what I had read in books about it. My new hunting partner taught me nearly every thing I know about deer hunting today. We hunted deer together for 17 years together both rifle and bow. It was getting crowded what with only 60 acres of wood land. My brother had friends who hunted with him as did my dad there was one of my sisters and my hunting partners son and the second ready to hunt alone too.
He went and found a place for him and his sons to hunt deer.
We still bow hunted together since he his sons and my brother were the only ones who used a bow.
We also fished together a lot.
I kept hunting my dads place for about 5 more years during firearm season. Then my dads friend brought his son to hunt there and he just seemed to always show up where I was at and want to stay. Being the cranky SOB I am I told him he had been assigned a very good area to hunt in so he should get back to that area and leave me in piece.
That evening I told my dad I would find a new place of my own to hunt as I was packing to leave.
Just before the next season My oldest sister called and said her Husband wondered if I would hunt with him since his brother in the Air Force had been sent to Texas. I gun hunted there for two years. I was nearly alone all that time as my BIL didn’t hunt on Sundays.
Finally Kare and I decided we would buy a place to retire too in the UPPER. After many trips to look at property a realtor would call and talk to me about and leave the directions to the property in a place for us to pick up and look at the by owner places we saw we bought 37 acres on Big Bay DeNoc surrounded with sever thousands of acres of state and federal land. We closed the Deal Nov 3d 1991. I didn’t deer hunt there that fall.
The next year I had two guys from work who I had hunted with say they would go up and hunt that year with me staying in our travel trailer. Three days before we were to leave they backed out saying that was a awful long ways to go and they didn’t have doe permits in that area.

Kare went with me for my first time hunting there. She used to laugh because I would be down in a cedar swamp and the deer were laying right behind where I parked the travel trailer.

When I got home I called My friend and asked if he was still hunting with his son, one was in the the service stationed in Colorado and the other was married and living a good distance away. He said no he was just hunting some small woodlots near his home.
When I asked if he wanted to hunt the UPPER with me he asked for directions. He called me back in two weeks and said he had drove up there and looked around and liked what he saw. We both worked second shift but his was finished well before mine was and we were an hour and a half apart me being the most southern. So on November 12th 1992 I called him and said I was finished at work, I was running home for a shower and a change of clothes and would be at his place by 6:00 AM. I got to his place and a fresh cup of coffee was waiting for me as I walked into his house. We loaded his gear up and I told him to drive and I would get some sleep. I never did sleep that day we had so much to catch up on it seemed.
We did some scouting in the afternoon when we got there. We unpacked our gear from the truck and the next day we scouted some more.

ON the forth day I shot a nice 8 point and he shot a nice 4 point about the same time. We got them back to camp and hung them in a big oak tree near the trailer. The next day we were out hunting and got soaked during a rain storm. All our hunting clothes were wet and we just couldn’t find a place to hang all of them to dry. I fixed that by the next season.
We hunted for 14 more years together there till he died in May 2005.

  Al

[Okanagan]

Good story.  Sorry for your loss.  You never forget.

Great hunting partners are rare.  I've had two, both living.  The best now is my son, who talked me into hunting when I was too blind to drive or see well.  He had me hold his coattail as we tracked a buck in snow.  He patiently waited while I skewed my misshapen eyeball around till I could see the buck through the scope and kill it while leaning on a pine.

My other great hunting friend I met in 1975.  He is happy that I hunt more with kids and grand-kids now.  He and I helped each other get a Rocky Mountain goat, an ordeal on both of those critters.  We've shot bears together, two on one afternoon, then swapped hides because I was going to trade mine for taxidermy work and his wife wanted the plush pelt on my bear for a rug.   I cut his shirttail off when he missed a whopper whitetail one morning.  He is normally one of the best shots on game I've ever known, way better than I am.  He saved my life on a cliff where I tore my knee enough for surgery after I crawled down and hiked a mile before it locked up.  Many memories outdoors and others, our boys playing football together, some sorrows, many laughs over mix-ups.  He fell 45 feet out of a tree on a calling stand for lynx, he approached a bear up close while I guarded from a vantage point:  the memories keep coming back as I type.  I wish my grandson could play football for his son, who is now one of the best high school coaches in the PNW.    Good man with a good family. 

May each of us know the depth of having a great hunting partner.  I suspect that Dave and Dave are such.

[FinsnFur]

Interesting storys. It sure makes you think about things when you read em and look back.

[trailtwister]

On the other side

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When my long time hunting partner passed away in 2005 I finally gave in to a couple of guys I worked with who kept asking about coming to my deer camp in Michigan’s UP. They were told many a time how our group worked and did things around the camp as I was proud of how smooth thing went thru the years.
They show up the day before the season opened and had a extra guy with them who was not invited nor given permission to be there I have never met him before in my life.
One requirement was bring food enough for 3 persons for 5 days each for a total of 15 days’ worth of food for 2 main meals and a lunch.  Well they did bring some eggs and bacon and sausage links for breakfast but after that a box full of Campbell’s chunky style soup and even some condensed stuff.
Here I had brought tuna casorel, goulash, Jack pot and frying chicken several pounds of burger to make my hominy burger fry.
I already had a pile of fire wood by the cabin door and they opened up some beer and were going to watch me carry it into the cabin while they watched. I was still steaming about the extra man so I just told them if they had come to my camp to stand and round and drink to pack their soup and get to hell off my property, No free rides here.
Opening day came and they loafed around in the morning while I went out and got the gen set started and came back in and fixed breakfast.  That was a every morning thing.I had to tell them to fix coffee in the big urn, had to tell them to go pump water for it too. I was really sick of them by the end of the second day so I called my wife from my deer blind and told her to call me that evening with an emergency and I was needed at home.
She called that evening so I told her I would leave ASAP.  I hung up told the guys to pack their stuff I had to leave for an emergency at home. First they wanted to stay and said they would lock up. I told them I wasn’t going to allow that to happen. They were so lazy I figured locking a door was something they were not skilled at let alone shutting the propane tank valve off and remembering to shed the gen and lock that shed door.
So they packed and left while I was still cleaning dishes and putting them away. Vacuuming the floor and shutting down the propane tank, and making sure the wood burner had burnt down to coals.  Sheded the gen set and locked the shed up.
I guess they had figured I was providing a free guide service for their pleasure.
When they asked to go again the next year I told them I had my brother and a couple of his sportsman club coming. We had already made the plans at our New Year ’s Day rabbit hunt.
I have hunted alone ever since, ya I have to do everything myself but I only have to do it for me.
I hunt a bit different but enjoy myself. No pent up anger over a bunch of lazy people is a bonus 

   Al

[bambam]

Great stories trailtwister. I have been blessed with 2 awesome hunting partners, my dad and my daughter. Dad got killed in 1992 so I hunted alone until my daughter was old enough to hunt with me. Now she is going off to college so I will be alone again. I would rather hunt alone than hunt without my dad or daughter, at least until my granddaughter gets old enough to hunt with me.