On the Porch with Dirk: Old School

Sports

November 14, 2012

On the Porch with Dirk: Old School

By Dirk Thayer The Star Herald The Star Herald Wed Nov 14, 2012, 02:50 PM CST

KOSCIUSKO — From what I’m seeing and hearing, the local youth have started deer season off with a bang–(pardon the pun).

I have seen some impressive bucks being taken and a lot have filled their freezers with meat.

I have also seen some fine bucks being taken by stick and string.

My son in Georgia traveled back to Kentucky and took another fine buck–a heavy racked nine-point.

I don't have any stock in the Kentucky Department of Fish and Game, but I have seen some fine bucks come out of there in the last few years.

I have never hunted there but have talked to many that have and they say it is a sleeper state for trophy bucks.

The first primitive arms season is now open for does only, and I’m only seeing bucks–go figure.

If I was hunting alligators I would be surrounded by crocodiles.

I can remember long ago when we were tickled to death to shoot a fat spike or fork horn, but that’s not legal anymore and I reckon that is a good thing.

I remember a little further back when just the sight of a deer in Attala County was talked about in every country store, like a Bigfoot sighting. Seeing deer tracks was a rare occurrence then as well. Raccoon’s were the biggest game you could hunt when I was a boy.

Recently I was speaking with a friend and we talked of how difficult it was to take a deer when we were teenagers and how the youth of today don’t realize how good they now have it.

I don't want to sound like the old guy that walked three miles to school, all uphill, through the snow with holes in my shoes, but we do have it pretty good these days.

Yes, times are changing but not always to the good.

Seems like we have a culture that wants it all and all right now.

We have Iphones and we text back and forth with one another while we’re on the deer stand, we even check the weather and Lord knows what else that little box can do.

We've got trail cameras that can show us that big buck and even what time he is coming out.

How in the world did we ever kill a deer years ago without all that technology? I'll tell you how; we hunted hard and scouted hard. We studied our species and we checked the wind, food sources and tracks.

I used to trap years ago and learned more about game in a couple of years trapping than twenty years of hunting.

Why, you may ask? Because a trapper had to be precise and know exactly where that animal walked, fed, denned up and many other factors involved that would bore a lot of the youth of today.

If you didn't know these things your pelt bag would be slim or empty.

I'm not knocking all this technology because I use some of it myself. I'm just saying it wouldn't hurt our youth of today to take a small dose of the old school ways.

It might even make some things more rewarding.

I think parents today strive too hard to be a buddy instead of a parent.

I think some start their youngins off too early in the woods and water. They don't let them really earn or want that experience.

This even includes my grandchildren to whom all have taken a deer early in life and I am afraid they won't really value the experience if they get it all right now.

I hope I don't make anyone mad, I’m just calling it the way I see it.

My parenting days are over and I am sure I made my share of mistakes.

There were a bunch of guys talking at a local pawnshop about the aforementioned.

One spoke up and said, "On Sundays when the kinfolks got together for dinner, the kids would eat in one room and the adults would eat in another. The kids better be eating and not talking because play was for outside and not the dinner table."

He said he didn't even know a chicken had white meat until he was grown.

I’m not saying we should go to all of those extremes but wouldn't it be nice if we could blend a little of each and get it just right. Naw, it ain't happening, that is just the human condition.

Anyway, I'm going hunting in this wind blown evening and maybe I can get me a fat doe for the freezer––as soon as I find my Iphone.

On the Porch with Dirk is a recurring article written by Dirk Thayer, an avid outdoorsman and storyteller.

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