Dekalb County 2011 memories

     I have the privilege of being able to hunt with the man who taught me how to track, shoot, and gut animals.  Even though my father is 67 years of age and suffering from emphysema he decided to make the four hour drive to Dekalb County in middle Tennessee to hunt deer with me.  It was to be a three day hunt on private land that my father has access to. This is a trip we have taken for several years and is responsible for a lot of the meat that has filled my freezer in that time.  Dekalb County is very rural and is know mainly for spawning country music star Aaron Tippen and the town of Smithville which hosts the Fiddler's Jamboree.  The weather was perfect, not cold enough keep Dad off the stand due to his medication thinned blood, but not to warm to make a "stocky" guy like me uncomfortable.  I carried Dad's doghouse blind out to the edge of a cleared area he and a couple of his friends had sowed in winter wheat the year before and made my way into the dense cedar thicket to the north of this area.  we spent that evening and the next day in this rolling rock pile with no success and faced the fact that with only one day left to hunt we might be skunked for the first time in Dekalb.

My father with his kill in 2011 at 67 years old.

While the sun broke over the ridge top spilling its light and warmth into the valley we were parked in. We split ways at the truck and tuned our two way radios to channel one. I remember thinking how bad it would be to come down here and come back empty handed, not just because of the nostalgia but also for practical reasons. It was deep into deer season and I only had two deer in the freezer.  I was a little lost in thought hiding up in my blind deep in the dense cedar thicket when I heard dad's shot. I snapped to attention seconds before I saw a deer in the distance moving through the thicket. It was so thick that I would lose sight of the animal from time to time. I picked the shooting lane I

Three pointer I shot on same trip.

hoped to the deer would step into and waited patiently. After a few painful seconds the chest and head of the deer appeared. It was a 3 point and one squeeze of the trigger of my Knight Wolverine muzzle-loader laid him down where he stood. It is rare I don't have to trail a deer after a shot, but I was blessed with the perfect angle to get both heart and lung this time. After the excitement was over the work began, I gutted my deer and drug it back over the ridge and left it just behind Dad's blind. He greeted me and took me across the field to were his deer lay. It was amazing, he had shot a three pointer as well. I gutted him and drug him across the field and out the valley to the truck. By the time I got back Dad had already packed up his blind and was waiting by my deer. As I drug my deer back to the truck I not only thought of all the tenderloin that my family would enjoy once I cut these deer up, but also of the blessing of getting another successful hunt in with the man that shared the gift of hunting with me.  Don't ever stop hunting....Your pal The Envirocapitalist.