Chris Baker, GPC Student
I enjoy getting together with my family and hearing all the stories that are told. Most of the time they tell the same story and add different twists to it. Sometimes I think they add to the story just to make it more interesting. When I called my dad, and asked him to tell me a story, he told me about the day he and grandpa went deer hunting at the lake house.
This hunting story took place in the early seventies. Early one morning my dad and grandpa were getting ready for a day of deer hunting at the lake house on Lake Oconee in Greene County. They started the morning by making coffee and getting their clothes together. Because it was the end of November, it was very cold and snowing outside, so they had to put extra clothes on under their camouflage coveralls. After finishing their coffee, they grabbed their guns and headed out. The property they were hunting on was across the lake from grandpa’s house. So they went down to the dock, loaded the boat with their things, and went across the lake to where they would be hunting.
Before walking away from the boat, they put on their orange safety jackets and then started walking up the power lines to their tree stands. Grandpa was hunting from the stand closest to the lake, because he was very overweight and had a hard time walking a long ways. They first came to grandpa’s stand, which was located just off the power lines in a little open grassy area. This stand was a five foot square platform with a swivel seat from an old john boat. The stand had three support rails to give that extra added safety and a ladder built of wood and placed at an angle so it was easy to climb. My dad, worried about grandpa climbing up the ladder, waited until grandpa was situated in the swivel chair before he walked a couple of hundred yards to his stand.
About
an hour went by and grandpa heard some leaves crunching behind him. He sat still, not wanting to scare off what
was walking behind him. Then after what
seemed another hour, he slightly turned his
head and got a glimpse of two whitetail deer.
He noticed that one of the deer had antlers, which got his blood flowing
and made him start sweating. After a
minute or so, he started to turn around in the swivel chair to get a good look
at the deer and his weight shifted very quickly. When this happened, the chair turned quickly, throwing him into
the support bars, which he went right through and fell hard to the ground. After hitting the ground, he could not move
because the fall had knocked the breath out of him. The deer ran about thirty yards then stopped and looked
around. He looked at the deer and saw
that one of the deer was about a ten point buck, the biggest deer he had seen
in a long time. Lying on the ground all
he could do was watch the deer, which would have been his biggest trophy ever,
walk into the thick brush.
Hearing the loud noise coming from the direction of grandpa’s stand, my dad got down to find out what was going on. Walking toward grandpa’s stand, my dad heard him calling his name. He frantically ran to grandpa’s stand. When he got there he noticed grandpa lying on the ground next to the tree. My dad was very worried because grandpa was about fifty-five and weighed around two hundred eighty pounds. But grandpa reassured him that nothing was broken and told him that he was just bruised up pretty bad. My dad helped grandpa up and walked him back down the power cut to the boat. Once in the house grandpa had to lie down on the sofa, and he then began to tell everyone what had happened.
My
dad said that he would never forget this hunting trip. Although it was not a great day of hunting
it led to a memory of my grandpa that my dad will never forget. This story could have been tragic but it
turned into a joke that one of biggest deer grandpa saw he almost fell on. Family stories are great because they keep
the memories fresh in the mind.