Born To Hunt

The race was on, and CB radio voices crackled with excitement as the buck turned and twisted through the south Georgia swamp, hounds swerving to his every move. Pickup trucks whirled plumes of dust skyward as they raced down narrow dirt lanes, hunters going all-out to get ahead of it all and hopefully into place for a shot.

The dogs’ GPS tracking collars pinpointed where they WERE—but not where they were GOING! And then the pack split…

Almos Miles, AKA Papa Smurf, is showing no signs of letting up even at the age of 96. This season he’ll record yet another year of Georgia deer hunting.

Bruce Harris knows his dogs: which ones to trust and which still are working out the learning curve. A fellow hunter—and a very special one—had just corralled one of the split group when Bruce noted on his GPS screen that the race had turned again—right toward his friend.

“Papa Smurf, Papa Smurf, slam on brakes right where you are and jump out!” he yelled into the mike. “Hurry! The deer is coming right at you!”

Almos Miles stopped his truck, spotting the deer just as he exited. In a twinkling, it soared over a ditch and into the dirt lane, not even allowing time to get the shotgun to his shoulder. As it bounded upward and over the other side—he Wyatt Earp-ed it from the hip! 

The single load of No. 1 buckshot did its job, sending the buck crashing into the scrub. The race was run, and Almos Miles, aka Papa Smurf, added yet another harvested whitetail to a long, long list.

At 96 years of age!

Bruce loves to tell that story, but I wanted to hear it from the man himself. So down to Wayne County, between Jesup and Screven, I went the first week of November to hunt with Ranger Road Hunting Club and the legendary Almos Miles. Didn’t take long to discover why his fellow club members treat their patriarch with nothing but respect.

His face lit up at the recollection, and he was quick to prove that he was just one of the guys, needling right out of the gate.

“There’s some things these younger guys just don’t know when it comes to the way I hunt,” he grinned. “That morning I was sitting by the railroad track cause I can’t do a lot of walking. I had caught one of Bruce’s dogs and got him in the truck, then started on down the road toward the race. Bruce started calling me just as I got back in, saying, ‘Quick, quick Papa Smurf, stop and jump out, the deer is heading right at you.’

 “Well, I did see him coming, but when you’re 95 years old, you don’t do nothing quick and you sure don’t jump nowhere. I reached across the seat for my shotgun, and when I got it out, the deer was already over the ditch. There wasn’t time to get it to my shoulder, so I pointed it where it needed to be and shot from the hip. The buck hit the other side of the ditch in a heap. That No. 1 buckshot does the trick; that’s the only load I’ve ever used for deer.”

That episode came during the 2020 hunting season, and when we gathered up on the cloudy, threatening morning of Nov. 5, Papa Smurf had added another year. He’s 96 now, hunts up to five days a week and makes the 30-plus mile trip from his home in Waycross to do it, sometimes driving but mostly riding with his great-grandson Bubba Miles. (Whose given name is Cedric—not that anyone in the club would know that.)

In these thick, swampy woods, dog hunting is both a necessity and a way of life. Just ride through Jesup sometime and count the truck bed dog boxes.

As soon as it’s light enough to see, club members are easing down the dirt roads, checking for tracks. Everybody will meet up as soon as all roads have been examined, and a decision will be made as to which track is the most promising. At that point, hunters will surround the selected block of territory and a couple of dogs will be loosed to check things out. If they find what we’re looking for, more dogs will be poured in and the race is on.

That’s precisely what happens on this morning.

Three times.

We like the old-school, black GON hat that Papa Smurf chose to wear. The name Papa Smurf came when Mr. Almos was given it as a radio handle years ago, and it just stuck.

This club is 4,400 acres, which means that a whitetail has a lot of room to run and maneuver in eluding pursuers.  It reaches right up to the city limits signs in Jesup, with busy four-lane Highway 84 bordering one side.

“I can get mine stopped if I can get ahead of them,” Bruce said.

I witnessed that on a few occasions this morning; when Bruce blows his whistle, they come to the truck. Bear dogs I’ve hunted behind, on the other hand, won’t stop for a prison fence… 

The final race saw the deer make its way through two or three club sections—and right to Papa Smurf and Bubba. It was out of shotgun range, so Bubba used a rifle to end things just before they made their way to 84. Thirty minutes later came the rain…

So how long has Almos Miles been in this game? 

Born June 11, 1925, “I’ve been hunting since I was big enough to shoot a slingshot! Mama wouldn’t let us have a gun until we were near ‘bout grown. I was taught by my granddaddy, Bud McKelvin, and we hunted rabbits, squirrels, coons, anything we could, and we ate everything we hunted. Back in those days, my granddaddy didn’t know what a flashlight was. We lit fat lighter and carried it at night to coon hunt. You’d hold it over and behind your head so it wouldn’t blind you but would light up the coon’s eyes in the tree.”

Those early days were spent on Delaware Avenue in Waycross, where he was born and raised.

“I joined the Navy, was in Pearl Harbor in 1945 and came out in 1946. When I left there, I came right back to Delaware Avenue to the same house I was brought up in and am still there. I have one sister, Annie Mae Sanders, who lives about five blocks from me, and we still get out and around very well. She’s 98!”

Back home from the war, Almos went to work at the Ace Pole Mill in Blackshear, and he went right back to hunting.

“There wasn’t very many deer down here back then, so we coon hunted and rabbit hunted a lot,” he recalls. “I had an old bulldog that would point a rabbit like a bird dog points a covey of quail; he would freeze, and I’d know there was a rabbit where he was looking.

“I got into deer hunting when I joined a club in Brunswick in the late 1960s. Not long after that, I joined this club, which at that time was called the Slover Club. That was in the late 60s or early 70s. It has changed a lot since then.”

Bruce Harris remembers, “The club years ago was about 30,000 acres, and Papa Smurf was in it way back then. He was in it when I came in, and over time some of the 30,000 acres broke up and there was a section up where we hunt that someone else leased, so years down the road I got out of dog hunting for a while. Then my son got me back in it, and I joined where we are now.”

Change is inevitable, of course, but with Almos Miles, there’s at least one constant.

“Hunting has done a lot for me over all these years,” he said. “There’s no way I could ever remember all the deer I’ve killed, but I remember the people.”

And some of the deer stand out, too. Seeing his eyes light up and hearing his voice quicken as those recollections come to mind is worth every mile of my two-hour, pre-dawn, deer-dodging ride down 341.

“Back in my 50s, there was this guy in the club who had a dog that nobody could catch up,” he laughs. “He was here to run, and he was going to run until he give out. We had a race going one morning, and I saw a 4-pointer ahead of the dogs. I shot at him once and didn’t know if I had hit him, then shot at him twice and didn’t know if I had hit him, then shot him again as he jumped the other side of the road. He disappeared, and I just didn’t know. Then here came that red dog running across and all of a sudden he just hauled up short and started wagging his tail, so I thought I just might have something there.

“That buck was running so fast, and the last time I shot he must have jumped with the last ounce he had in him, because he came down lodged in the V of a tree. I had to call somebody to help me get him out!”

And then there’s all those folks…

“I’ve been hunting this club a long time, because you couldn’t ask for no better people to hunt with,” Almos says. “From day one, I’ve always treated and been treated like everybody else. I wouldn’t be here if it was any different, but folks here just hunt and come together the way a club is supposed to be. Bruce is the best president this club has ever had; he’ll come get me and take me hunting and fishing or do anything else for me, and I always know that. I probably wouldn’t be here again if not for my (great) grandson Ced. But he loves it just like I do, and he draws those deer just like a magnet. He knows that there’s two things you got to do in this kind of hunting: get ahead of the dogs and keep your fingers away from flipping on that cell phone!”

There are 34 members in the club, and to a man they exude nothing but respect for Papa Smurf.

“He really is an inspiration to everybody here,” Bruce says. “Those guys down there will do anything and everything for that man; when he starts talking, they listen. He’s not just a great man, he’s a great Christian man, and he loves being down there with us. In the off-season if I don’t call him at least once a month, he’s calling me checking on things.”

The club doesn’t dog hunt Sunday and Monday, the former because as Bruce says, “We have several churches in the area and out of respect for them we don’t want dogs running deer through the parking lot.” (Besides, he’s rather busy as musical director at his own church on that morning.) Monday gives the dogs and deer time to rest up and tune up. But the Wednesday after we hunted on Friday, Papa Smurf was back at it. And not just as a spectator this time. He was ahead of the dogs, no cell phone in hand.

“He did get the gun to his shoulder on this one,” Bruce said with a laugh. “He saw him coming and had time to get ready. He can shoot; if he has the opportunity to see him and be ready, he’ll kill him.”

And that’s exactly what happened as the buck presented a broadside shot. At 96, Papa Smurf added more meat to his freezer.

I was curious, all the while knowing pretty much the answer I’d get, in asking, “How many deer do you think you’ve taken over the years?”

In no more time than it took for a broad smile to cross his face, Almos replied, “A heap! There just ain’t no way to remember them all.”

As all of us deer hunters likely do, I’m hoping to have the same problem upon turning 96 years of age. No telling how many more Papa Smurf will have added by that time.

And one other thing: about that name…

“You know everybody down here got to have a radio handle, and years ago they gave that one to me. I’ve been Papa Smurf ever since.”

If you run the deer or the bears, you understand; if not, just know that Jailbird was one of the most special folks I ever knew and best friends I ever had. Tall Man ranks right up there, too. A whole bunch of folks I’ve hunted alongside for over 35 years will instantly be able to put names to those two. 

Ranger Road Hunting Club holds Papa Smurf in that same esteem. He’s one of a kind.