Deer Hunting

I cannot remember a time when my family was not involved in hunting.  Deer season was always a very special time.  My mother always took in hunters, and that meant a lot of work for all of us.  Now that I am an adult, I realize just how much work was involved.  The work started in the spring when the garden was started and right through the year, with preparation of extra food to have for the hunters.  Those guys liked to eat!  They loved home cooked food and my mother was an excellent cook!

Mother would have her menus all planned out weeks ahead of their arrival.  The guys would start arriving on Sunday afternoon.  Sometimes we would have as many as fourteen men staying at our house, but no one seemed to care.  There was lots of excitement and the stories to be told.  With everyone talking, you could hardly hear yourself think!  It was so loud, but we loved it.  My Uncle George would come up from Ephrata for the week and we looked forward to that also.  He would sit at the table in the kitchen with the family and eat with us.  Uncle George's favorite expression was "hell's bells".  It is an expression that I picked up from him and still say it from time to time.  I really loved that guy and cherished time spent at his home with him and Aunt Wilma.

One time when a group of returning hunters came they brought Jerry toy New Holland tractor equipment.  We were pretty happy kids, we played for hours with those toys and you know when warm weather came they went outside.  They were prized toys!

Sunday night was usually homemade soup and sandwiches with pie for dessert.  I would always help mother clear the table and help with the dishes.  After the dishes were done, we would pack lunches for the next day.  Everyone would get a sandwich, cookies, fruit and a Hershey bar.  She would always put our telephone number in their lunch bag in case they came out someplace and not know where they were, so they could call us.

We all went to bed early and everyone was up before dawn.  Mother always made pancakes with our homemade maple syrup and our own sausage the first morning.  Daddy would do the milking and be back to eat breakfast and then be ready to go to the woods when the rest of the guys were ready.  Uncle Ted would often be ready to go hunting with the guys and he would bring his truck for everyone to load into.  Daddy always told the guys there would be no drinking while hunting, so leave their drink at home and they would take their flasks back to the house.  He would warn them about being careful to shoot only bucks.  They always posted their roster on the front porch as instructed by law.  Off they would go.

Back then when they hunted, they would drive the woods and have men posted to watch for the deer to come out.  The men would take turns on who would drive and who would watch.  This was long before tree stands were thought about.   This is one reason they wanted Daddy, Uncle Ted, or Uncle George along to tell them where they should go and how it was best to drive and post a certain area.  It was always good to do a head count so you didn't leave a hunter on a watch and go on to the next spot without him.  I remember hearing a story about leaving a hunter on Cobbler's Knob for a whole morning before someone realized he was missing.

Barbine group

Usually Daddy would come home before the other guys, as he would have to clean the barn.  He would always carry his 30.06 on the tractor when he took the stables out just in case he saw a buck and he would always take a break and come out of the barn and check the hill for deer, and I remember one year that was how he got his deer.  His rifle would shoot accurately at that distance, but the guys from Quakertown couldn't believe it, so he paced it off to prove it! You can see from the picture it is a good distance up to the edge of the woods.

Daddy would get his barn cleaned out and get the cows fed for the evening and throw down the hay and straw and be ready for dinner and the return of the hunters.  They would come back with stories of all kind, some would have gotten their bucks that would need to be strung up in the back yard, back then it was always cold and the meat would be frozen quickly and the hunters would take the deer home on their cars showing off their trophies!!

Mother would have a large dinner ready for the men, usually a roast with mashed potatoes, gravy, several kinds of vegetables, cabbage salad, homemade bread, cinnamon rolls, assorted homemade pickles and for dessert on the second night was usually her homemade chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting.   After dinner, the leader of the group would get the roster and call the roll of who got a deer and who didn't.  Shame for the hunters that didn't get a buck,  he would cut the tail off of their shirt, pin it to the roster and hang it back on the porch!  I remember one year one of the men had a brand new Woolrich shirt on.  It didn't matter...off came his shirt tail!

After dinner the guys got cleaned up.  Sometimes the younger ones went into town to the local bars while the older ones would enjoy staying at home retelling the stories of the day and getting into bed early.  When Jerry and I were in school, we would be selling Christmas seals during hunting season.  The kids would always want us on their teams, as we always had good luck selling seals to the hunters.  We would always sell all that we had.

Jerry, Ralph with Pop's deer along with Queenie - Daddy's dog.

One year when the Barbine group of hunters was with us, Pop wanted to cook dinner one evening and Mother agreed.  He made Italian spaghetti and it was delicious.  Mother was used to the way she prepared her spaghetti, which was also homemade; however, Pop put Italian sausage in it, some different spices, lots of garlic, the whole top of the stove was bubbling with sauces.  They also made homemade Italian bread to go with it.  Mother told me afterwards, that she was more tired than if she had done the whole meal herself, but she enjoyed the day working with Pop.

All of this went on for three days, as most of the hunters left on Thursday morning.  Uncle George would stay the rest of the week.

Tarrintino group 1949 Note Jerry and Daddy with the group.

The first bunch of guys came from Quakertown were the Tarrintino boys (Johnny, Frankie, Joey, I  don't remember the rest of the men in that group) in the 1950's.  In 1981 when we moved back from Ohio, Frankie came to my house and visited for a while, it was really nice to catch up on his family and relive those years again.

The second group of hunters was from Media area Joseph Barbine family, that was in the 60's.  Ralph and I were guests in their homes and were treated royally.  We went to the Italian Club and enjoyed an evening of dancing and entertainment.

As far as stories of actually getting a deer, I guess my brother would have to tell those stories.  I do recall, a story of one fellow shooting an illegal deer and my dad being really upset with the man, as he had warned the men about that.  I also remember Junior shooting a deer and dragging it down, and then couldn't find it.  Jerry and I found it the spring with Junior's red handkerchief still tied to the rack, so we knew it was Junior's deer, and it really wasn't far from the road, how he forgot where it was we didn't know.

I used to go hunting with the guys myself when I got older; in fact, the first time I shot a rifle it was my dad's 30.06, which was a Teddy Roosevelt Model with a steel butt plate.  I always shoot left handed.  Daddy put me up next to the barn and showed me how to use the open site.  I pulled the trigger and thought I had  broken my shoulder, but I hit my target. The first rifle was a
222, I never got a deer with it, but lots of woodchucks.  I loved shooting and did a lot of it growing up.  Jerry was good to share his hand guns with me and I would often shoot with him and Davy.