Another Mess

Big Sis and Little Brother.

Lamb's ear. Several plants had jumped the rocks so I transplanted them back behind the rocks in the flower beds.

Grace Ward Lithodora and Johnny Jump Ups. I planted these Friday.

Complete view with a sprig of lavender in the middle.

I met my siblings at Applebees for lunch on Saturday and we had a grand visit. We just started this kind of get together with only us and no spouses allowed. We laugh and cut up like we are small children again. It is more fun to reminisce about our parents and grandparents at this time. Things that may have not been funny at the time are at least kidded about now. Some subjects we avoid which are better left in the past to not rear their ugly heads.

Little brother loves to talk about hunting stories and he had taken some pictures with his phone while hunting and he asked me did I recognize the place. It was in Horse Shoe Bend where I had killed my first really big deer. Big Sis wanted to know how I could tell where that was at and I told her if you spent as many hours up in a tree looking at that scenery you would know where it happen to be located. She is the prissy one of us three, not an outdoor mans in the least.

The weekend I killed that big deer it was cold and raining. I had gone up to my parents house on Friday evening and spent the night so I would not have to drive so far to hunt the next morning. Mother wanted me to eat breakfast that morning but I was running late to get in the woods before daybreak so I asked her to just wrap me up a couple of sausage and biscuits and I would eat them later.

I had my coffee in hand and I loaded up my 1973 Nova and started for the bend. My tire went flat so I pulled back into the family driveway and ran in the house telling Dad I needed his car. Now his car was his most prized possession so I was asking for the moon but I had seen that big buck while bow hunting and just knew he would be in the woods this cold morning.

Very reluctantly Dad helped me unload my car and load up his with tree stand, gun and ammo. He told me he would fix my tire and bring my car down in the bend because he did not wish to have a deer put in his car. So he thought ole dead eye Kitty would get that big boy too.

As I left in Dad's car I could not figure out how to work the wind shield wiper so since it was not raining too hard I just poked my head out the window and kept driving. It was a good ten miles or more to the spot. I had hunted there lots of times by myself so I had no fear of being alone.

At that time I weighed about 120 soaking wet and I carried a stainless steel hunting stand that said it would hold 300 pound man. The reason I used that stand it had two parts one for the feet and the other for your seat and you climbed the tree and hunted facing the tree. The teeth on the stand would let you climb any tree in the woods except a slick bark hickory. I tried it once and for each foot I gained I would slide back down three.

Getting back to that morning, I unloaded everything ready to back pack into the woods and then I noticed I had lost a glove. I was beginning to think I should turn around and go home but no way I was determined to harvest that big guy. It had already started getting light by the time I got into the woods and secured my tree stand for the climb. I had just settled into my hunting seat and pulled one of the biscuits out to eat when I heard a snap of a twig. I was on alert, I poked the whole biscuit in my mouth and raised my 308 Remington wood master. Just like a majestic warrior here he came and I thought "You are mine". Not to brag but with one shot he dropped like a rock to the ground.

I swallowed what I had in my mouth and then pulled out the other biscuit as I knew I would need all my energy to get him out of the woods. After I had finished my meal, I inched myself down the tree and took my tree stand off the tree and leaned it up against the tree for easy retrieval. I walked over to where he lay and proceeded to field dress him and when I tried to drag him, I could not move him. I could barely get him turned toward the road. Mine you it was up hill on a river bank.

I knew there were lots of hunters in the lower part of the bend and I would just have to go and try to find someone to help. I slung my gun over one shoulder and the tree stand over the other and headed to the car. When I got to the road, I started laughing so hard I almost dropped my equipment. Dad had fixed the tire and brought my car down as he really was serious that he did not wish to have any dead deer in his car.

I had put my equipment in the car and was taking off my heavy boots and coverall when a truck came by and I flagged it down. I asked if he knew my brother and if so was he in the lower part of the bend. I told him I had killed a deer and was not able to pull it out of the woods. He said" I have not seen anything all morning and I will be happy to help you out." So this stranger and I went into the forest and when he came to the point where he could see the buck, he used some four letter adjectives and then apologized for using them. It was all he could do to drag that buck up hill and then load him in my trunk.

He looked at me with admiration and said "Little lady you sure got a nice buck and with one shot is hard to believe." I thanked him and cannot remember his name if he ever mentioned it. I drove out of the bend with a smile on my face and an occasional life as I could see Dad rushing to fix that flat. I went back to my parents house to show off my big buck.

The Kitty Justice is that I am still a good shot and one little picture on a telephone brought back a very exciting morning years ago on a cold rainy hunt.