NORTH DAKOTA OUTDOORS MAGAZINE

Something Worth Celebrating

Ron Wilson

The Wilson boys, Nate (left) and Jack, pose with their sister, Lauren, and her first deer shot a handful of years ago.

I wore diapers to my first deer camp.

That's how I remember Mom and Dad telling it before they died decades ago.

It's a story I heard more than once, so I buy it, mostly because I like the idea that for 60-plus years I've been part of camp and the hunt from where the seed was planted in the Ochoco National Forest to where it will likely end someday in Burleigh County.

I attended that first camp until my late teens, a flat spot shaded by towering pines that was roomy enough to hold a couple campers and three or four green, canvas tents that faced the communal fire.

It was a pretty spot, and I would like to think I could feel my way along dirt roads and find it today, but I've been told by old friends who never left the area not to bother.

Like a lot of things in life, they said, things have changed there and elsewhere, and not for the better.

While there was never doubt where camp would be every season, much was made about going to Grandpa and Grandma's house days before the deer opener so the adults could sit around the kitchen table and discuss the merits of one forest flat spot over the other, all the while knowing that the only thing that counted was Grandpa's voice and what he'd announce unsurprisingly behind a cloud of cigarette smoke.

I get the gathering for what it was and applaud it because it was as big a part of the ceremony that is deer hunting and the camp itself.

Gripping the back of Dad's kitchen chair, I would stand listening with great interest as the adults retold stories of big mule deer bucks shot, bigger bucks missed, the time when one of my aunts shot a young mule deer buck that made the mistake of running through camp, and the one where the newbie in the camp got his head turned around in the big, unforgiving woods, but finally wandered back well after dark just like they thought he would, which is why, they convinced themselves, there was no need to interrupt the day's hunting plans to bother looking for him.

Jack dragging a deer to the truck

Jack drags a whitetail doe across public land back to the pickup.

I was never a character in any of those stories but knew for certain that I would be once I passed hunter safety and could legally pull the trigger.

I did shoot my first deer at age 12, a forkhorn.

Dad dropped me off in the dark, told me to find a stump, sit on it and not move.

It felt like I'd hiked miles into the dark timber but was probably only a couple hundred yards from the road when I found the mule deer in my scope at shooting light.

With a new folding Buck knife in my front pocket, but zero experience in using it on an animal that needed cleaning, I sat on a log and waited for Dad.

If they told stories around the kitchen table about my hunt years later, I don't remember them.

Bloody hands after skinning and quartering two deer

Resting after skinning and quartering two deer.

I did get my picture taken with the buck back home in front of Oscar's Sporting Goods where the owner pinned it on the cork display board next to much bigger bucks, elk and fat rainbow trout caught in the local river.

I would look at that photo every time I'd go into Oscar's to, say, buy a baseball, tube socks or fishing bait and was disappointed when it was taken down to make room for another first deer, fat fish, or whatever.

When I moved to North Dakota nearly 40 years ago, I felt as green as that 12-year-old sitting on a stump.

I'd never seen a white-tailed deer before.

I didn't know where the deer hid for the lack of trees, didn't know how people hunted them, was quick to learn that I couldn't just buy a deer license over the counter but had to apply, and not only was it mandatory to wear fluorescent orange during the season but fashionable in a way to wear around town when the season was in swing or not.

And I was most certainly clueless to the state's well-embraced hunting heritage that included a history of deer camps — just like I remember — at grandpa's farm, a wall tent in the badlands or campers parked near a shelterbelt to break the wind.

I've been part of a handful of deer camps in North Dakota over the years and I miss them all.

I miss the mouse traps going off in the middle of the night, wondering if it was caused by my bird dog licking the peanut butter bait or a real mouse meeting its end.

I miss standing around wooden, electrical cable spools turned on end inside a metal pole barn to talk about the day, and I miss the stews, stroganoffs and hotdishes eaten off paper plates with plastic forks.

Skull and antlerrs of a deer hung from an electric fence

Our last deer camp, based about an hour from home and 10 minutes from where we do most of our hunting, was, as I understand it, sold.

While it was perfect for the kids and me, we made the transition to basing our small operation out of our home in Bismarck, which means we have to get up earlier than most would like to make the drive and hike into favorite morning rockpile perches to catch deer moving, but we do get to sleep in familiar beds, so things even out.

If you don't count Christmas, the early November deer opener is one of the few times during the year that we're all together as family.

One wandering home from college, one from out-of-state and one from across town.

That, like the deer season, is celebrated no matter where we lay our heads at night.

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