Dec 3, 2021 4 min read

It’s nearing Christmas and smack dab in the middle of hunting season. Who thought this was a good idea?

When I was younger, I remember being accused of being one-minded when it came to this. My wife and kids would be wanting to get a tree and go shopping. Me? I wanted to hunt.

Back in those days, I would put off the shopping and Christmas stuff a long as possible to get more hours of hunt time. I was a legend just ask my kids.

This one year, I had decided to hunt right up until a few days before Christmas and had taken some time off work to do so. I was on a search for a big buck I had previously seen. Eileen was pretty much on my side as usual, but she was starting to try to decorate between bouts of hunting. I knew I was almost done so I was starting to push harder. Getting up well before dawn and walking into spots where I had seen a buck earlier to stand and endless hours of waiting. The tree wasn’t even bought yet, and Christmas was closing in on me.

That morning, we decided to drive very early up the road to the store before starting to hunt as we didn’t have any coffee in the house. We had been hunting so much we were out of coffee. It was still dark as we drove out the ridge road. Eileen was a little grumpy with me and she said, “You know, it’s almost Christmas.” I didn’t answer, just kept driving, trying to be quiet. That’s when it happened: the Christmas miracle. Low and behold in the center of the road lay a new real Christmas tree. I almost wrecked the truck.

We stopped and looked both ways waiting some minutes for someone to show up before loading it in the truck. My wife made me drive really slow in case someone lost it and came back. I saw no one. Well, we got our coffee and went back with the tree. It was beautiful and we were both shocked. That day in the woods I would shoot at my big buck and lose it to another hunter but the next day I got a nice eight-point. Everyone was happy. Eileen stayed home and decorated her tree. We never did find out who lost that tree, but I say it was a sign that hunting during Christmas season is OK.

When my daughter grew up, she gave us two grandchildren who were like my own children. Later, she would have a third but at first there were the two. They would go on many trips with us. One year around Christmas time, one kid or the other got into some trouble and the daughter sent them over for a little grandpa time. Of course, I wanted to take off and go somewhere hunting but Eileen said I had to take a kid, so Douglas had his first real hunting lesson on a snowy day in December.

He had been out before with me, but this year, he would shoot his first buck. Now Eileen said she didn’t think hunting was a correct punishment for him, but I pointed out the discipline and patience required to hunt and won that round. Because there was a problem with one of them, I can’t say I remember what exactly it was I made them both go ride with me to take this deer to the processors and turned on my Willie Nelson tape as loud as it could go for the ride. They both complained loudly about this, which is why I did it. It would become a thing for us; get in trouble and go with pap and Willie. I bet both remember all the words to some of those great songs. It was hunting, punishment and Christmas all together on that one.

Christmas and deer hunting go together in my mind. The snow, the lights and the deer hunting all rolled up in one shiny, bright package.