Come November: Journey Proud

 

Of all people, Mama was the one to notice the odd detail that showed up so plainly in the trail-camera photo. After the incident on Saturday with the two trespassers, who we knew had to be Clarence and Dace Maxwell, Mark and Luke had gone back the next day and set up two card cameras near the corn piles. Since all of our cellular cameras were being used, they grabbed a couple of Papa’s older cameras and put them out overlooking the two bait piles. Standing on Mark’s shoulders, Luke attached each camera to a tree as high up as he could reach. They made sure the cameras were well hidden. Then they did something nobody expected. They took a third camera that had a bad lens and set it up in plain view near one of the piles.

Papa said it was brilliant. We all laughed about what the Maxwells might do when they discovered that camera. My brothers were determined to get some pictures of the Maxwells poaching on our land, not to mention maybe getting some pictures of the mystery buck they were trying to pull over to their leased 20 acres. We knew it had to be Mr. Majestic. A picture would prove it. Even though baiting has been legal for a couple of years, Papa doesn’t like to put out bagged corn on any of our property. He believes in hunting deer naturally.   

After Papa told Mike Stringfellow what had happened, Mike went to see Clarence Maxwell. He wasn’t surprised when Clarence denied being on our property.

“Must’ve been somebody else,” Clarence said. “Clive Owens lets all kinds of people hunt on that land.”

“But didn’t you lease the hunting rights?” Mike Stringfellow asked him.

“Yeah, but we been so busy we ain’t had time to go over there,” Clarence lied.

“Word has it that a large buck has been seen on the 20 acres,” Mike Stringfellow allowed, “and that you’ve been putting out corn to try to pull him off the Allison place.”

“Don’t know nothing about no big buck,” Clarence lied again. “And we ain’t put out a single kernel of corn.”

“That’s not what Clive Owens told me,” Mike Stringfellow asserted. “He saw several bags of corn in the back of your pickup.”

“That was for baiting some hogs on some other land we have,” Clarence insisted. “Anyway, there ain’t no law against puttin’ out corn for deer.”

“Oh, yes there is,” Mike Stringfellow said. “If you don’t own the land, you have to have written permission from the landowner to put out bait of any kind in Georgia, and Clive Owens says he’s never given you written permission.”

“Yer just trying to trick me up,” Clarence said angrily. “And it ain’t gonna work.”

“Stay off the Allison place,” Mike Stringfellow warned. “If I catch you or Dace hunting or trespassing over there again, I’ll make a case against.”

“Ronnie St. John would love that,” Clarence said defiantly. “Since he has you in his back pocket.”

   •  •  •

After school on Tuesday afternoon, Mark and Luke drove out to the farm to check their cameras. The decoy camera was gone. They had attached it to a small sapling about 30 feet from one of the corn piles, and the entire tree had been cut down at ground level. Only a small stump remained. The two boys switched cards in the two hidden cameras and quietly sneaked back to Mark’s double-ladder stand. They hunted until dark without seeing a single deer.

When they got home, they told Papa about the missing camera.

“We thought they might shoot it or something, but we never thought they’d cut down the tree it was in,” Mark said.

“A shot would’ve made noise,” Papa said. “I guess cutting down the tree was some kind of power play on their part.”

Everyone anxiously crowded around Papa’s desk as Mark brought up the first card on the computer screen. The card contained 32 pictures that included five or six does, two yearling bucks and three fat raccoons. Unfortunately, the tree holding the decoy camera was just out of view in the pictures, so we couldn’t see who cut it down. The second card really got our attention. The first picture showed two does eating corn and a portion of a huge main beam from a large buck in one corner of the photo. The second picture showed the buck’s entire massive rack, but he was turned at an odd angle. The third picture was the real showstopper. It was a clear side view of the most magnificent buck any of us had ever seen. No one had to tell us it was Mr. Majestic. The right side of his huge rack clearly showed his heavy main beam and several long tines that had splits and forks at the ends.

We were amazed. None of us ever expected to see a buck like that on our deer lease.

“Do you see the time?” Luke said excitedly. “All three pictures were taken in full daylight at 8:32 a.m. this morning. You know what that means!”

We were still drooling over that third picture when Mama casually said, “Wonder how he got that hole in his antler?”

“What hole?” Luke asked in shock.

“Right there…” she pointed.

We couldn’t believe it. We’d been so busy gawking at that huge rack that none of us even noticed the tiny hole.   

Mark zoomed in on the right main beam, and sure enough we could all clearly see the small hole about 6 inches from the tip of the beam just in front of the heavy G-4.

“That has to be from a .22,” Mark said. “Mama, you’re amazing.”

“It just kind of jumped out at me,” she said.

“That’s definitely from a .22,” Papa agreed. “A larger bullet would’ve shattered that antler.”

“Just like we thought,” Mark said. “Somebody’s trying to shoot him in the head with a .22.”

“And they almost succeeded,” Charlie added.

“I wonder who it could be?” Luke asked. He was mad.

“Three guesses,” I blurted out. “And the first two don’t count.”

“No wonder y’all couldn’t find any blood near the corn,” Charlie said. “He’s one lucky buck.”

“I bet he had a heck of a hangover, though,” Luke offered.

“Now that we know he’s on our property, what do we do about it, Papa?” I asked.

Everyone turned to Papa.

“Papa oughta be the one to hunt him,” Mark insisted.

“This buck is a real game changer,” Papa said. “He’s one of those once-in-a-lifetime deer that most people only dream about. Hunting him should be a family effort, but we’ll have to be extremely careful. We don’t wanna run him off with too much pressure.”

“The Maxwells will probably do that for us,” Mark said.

“They can certainly ruin things if they want to,” Papa agreed.   

“We need a plan,” Mark said.

“True, but let’s not lose focus on some of the other great bucks we have,” Papa reminded us. “We know we’ve got that huge 8-pointer down at the Cove that Matthew is drooling over, and he can’t wait to get back down here this weekend. Mark, you’ve got your swamp buck that you passed up last year, and you know he’s a lot bigger this season. Charlie and Rusty, you two have Slim and Curly on the Patterson Farm. I’d love for one of us to get Mr. Majestic, but there are no guarantees we’ll even see him again.”

“I think we will, Papa,” Luke argued. “You saw him on that hardwood ridge, and now we have pictures of him. We know he’s been on our property at least several weeks, and he’s gotta be bedding back in no-man’s-land. When he starts chasing does, who knows where he might go next? I’m all for huntin’ him as hard as we can.”

“And you’re welcome to do that,” Papa said. “Just make sure you don’t push him too hard.”

“I love hunting over the soybeans on the Patterson place, and I’m happy to keep trying to put an arrow in one of the bucks we already know about,” Charlie said. “If I saw Mr. Majestic, I’d probably fall out of my tree.”

“Me, too,” I piped in. “I’ve been worried about getting buck fever if I see Slim. If I saw Mr. Majestic, no telling what I might do.”

“When the time comes, you’ll make the perfect shot without even thinking about it,” Charlie said. “You and your .44 Magnum are unbreakable.”

“Thanks,” I said. I gave her a big hug. Charlie always says things to make you feel good about yourself.

“Master of mirth, what do you plan to do about Mr. Majestic?” Luke asked Mark.

“My ladder is in about the best place it could be to get a crack at either Mr. Majestic or the swamp buck,” Mark said. “So I plan to stay put. Especially now since the rut’s kicking in.”

Mama smiled. “It’s nice to know all of you are so journey proud about this season,” she said. “I think we’ll end up with lots of venison.”

Everybody smiled back at Mama. “Why don’t you hunt with us on Saturday morning, Mama?” Luke asked.

“I might just do that,” Mama answered. “I might have to tame ol’ Mr. Majestic myself.”

‘Journey proud’ is an old country expression Mama got from her grandmother. It means being so excited about a journey or event that’s about to take place that you can’t sleep or eat. I think we all fit that description, at least about the sleeping part, because the rut was really heating up. Despite the problems we were having with the Maxwells, we all felt like something pretty important was about to happen in the days ahead.

“Looks like it’s down to me and you, Papa,” Luke declared. “What should we do about Mr. Majestic?”

Papa thought about it for a long time. “Let’s sleep on it,” he said.

•  •  •

We knew the Maxwells could really muddy the water for us, and they probably would have, but something happened that nobody expected. The following Saturday morning broke cold and clear, with a heavy frost. It was just what we were hoping for. Matty had come home Friday afternoon to hunt the weekend.

We spent the night at the Home Place, and Mama went overboard as usual by fixing a high-powered breakfast of pancakes, bacon, eggs and grits. Willie Nelson was singing “On the Road Again” on the old tape player when we paused to present Luke with a special gift—a camo dove-hunting bucket with a cushion on top.

“This is to sit on while you’re checking things off your bucket list,” Mark told him. “It’s guaranteed to bring you good luck.”

We laughed as Luke sat on his bucket and ate the rest of his eggs.   

“I’ll use it for sure,” he said with a smile. “But not today! Today I’m hunting a stand that is totally awesome!”

Papa had told Luke he could hunt from the ladder stand he had set up on the ridge where he’d first seen Mr. Majestic. Luke was tickled pink. Charlie and I were hunting on the Patterson Farm, as usual. I was back in Charlie’s tree stand hoping to see Slim, and she was once again in a ladder down at the end of the field. Mark was in his regular ladder stand over on the Allison place, and he was pretty excited, too.

For some reason Papa decided to hunt from a wooden platform that Mark and Luke had put in a tree last summer near the east property line. It was only about 100 yards south of where the corn had been put out.

“That little voice inside is telling me to go there,” he told everyone at breakfast. “I just have a special feeling.”

Mama had been missing Matty something awful since he was away at school. You know how mothers are… So she planned to keep him company in his elevated pop-up blind down at the Cove.

•  •  •

It was just getting light enough to see, and I was watching several does feeding in the soybeans way down at the end of the field near Charlie. All of a sudden a large buck came running across the field directly toward me from that very direction. He had a nice rack, and I got my gun up and ready. When he got within about 60 yards, he slowed to a walk. I could see that he had a very narrow spread, and I realized it was Slim. My heart started pounding as I tried to take aim. Just as I started to squeeze the trigger, Slim staggered and fell over. I was in shock. It took me several minutes to realize that Charlie must’ve put an arrow through him with her recurve.

Back at the Cove, Mama was sitting in a chair to the left of Matty. A large buck came out of the woods to the right of the platform and started walking along the tree line, nibbling on clover. “It’s a very large buck,” Mama whispered, pointing. “But it’s not the 8-pointer you’re after.”

Matty couldn’t see the buck from where he was sitting, much less get a shot.

“Go ahead, Mama, take him!” he whispered.

Mama nodded. She quickly aimed and fired her old Winchester .270. The buck ran into the woods and collapsed.

Things were a lot quieter with Mark and Luke. Luke spotted a big-bodied deer walking through the woods behind him, but he never saw it clearly. Mark saw five does. Over by Papa’s way it was a different story.

Why Clarence and Dace decided to get on their 4-wheeler at 9 o’clock in the morning when they should’ve been hunting is a question nobody could answer. They strapped several bags of corn on the back of the 4-wheeler and headed for the two corn piles on our property. Dace was holding on behind his father. They were only 30 yards from the first bait pile when Dace looked over and saw a huge buck standing with a doe about 40 yards off the trail.

“Slow down, Daddy,” he yelled excitedly. “I think it’s Goliath!”

“Goliath” was the name Luis Martin, the man who cut hay for Mr. Owens, had given the monster buck we all knew as Mr. Majestic.

The huge whitetail obviously had more on his mind that morning than eating corn. Before Clarence could stop, Dace jumped off the 4-wheeler. He knelt down and unshouldered his AR .308 and started to draw a bead.

“Whoa! What’re you doing?” Clarence screamed. “That’s my buck!”

In his excitement, Clarence turned the 4-wheeler sharply toward Dace and did the only thing he could think of to prevent his son from pulling the trigger. He tried to run him down. Dace saw what was coming at the last second and lunged out of the way. The front wheel of the 4-wheeler veered off a large pine stump, causing Clarence to lose control. The vehicle slammed into a tree. Clarence went over the handle bars and hit the tree with a sickening thud. The 4-wheeler bounced off the tree and ended up on its side. Clarence was on the ground dazed and moaning. The big buck and doe had melted into the woods.   

Dace approached his injured father. “Are you alright, Daddy? Why’d you try to run me over?”

Clarence had a serious scalp wound above his eye and his head was gushing blood. He was still conscious, but shock was setting in.

“That… was…  my buck,” he stammered, wiping the blood from his face. He squinted up at Dace. “You… tried to kill my buck. Now look what you did.”

Dace felt nauseous. “Are you hurt bad?” He glanced down at his father’s leg.

“I think it’s busted pretty bad,” Clarence said. “I… need… help…”

Then he passed out.

Dace could see the end of a jagged white bone sticking through his father’s camo pants a foot above his ankle.

“Oh, Daddy, what should I do?”                            

•  •  •

Papa wasn’t surprised when he heard the 4-wheeler going through the woods. But it really got his attention when he heard the crash. No one had to tell him something serious had happened. He climbed down from his stand and hurried toward the corn piles. To his surprise, a large doe and an enormous buck were running toward him. They obviously had been spooked by the noise. The instant the two deer saw Papa, they veered to the side of the trail and paused. Papa’s reaction was pure instinct. He raised his old Savage 99 lever-action and fired at the buck at less than 20 feet. He later said he pulled the trigger in self-defense.

After the shot, both deer ran off through the trees. Papa was wearing his favorite orange baseball cap that morning. He hung it in a sapling to mark the spot and then he rushed on over toward the corn. “You’ll have to wait,” he said to the buck he’d just shot.

Papa found Dace sitting next to Clarence, crying like a baby. “Are you hurt?” he asked Dace.

“No, but Daddy’s hurt bad.” He pointed to Clarence’s leg. Clarence was semi-conscious but in shock.

“Is he gonna die?” Dace asked.

“No son,” Papa answered. “Everything’s gonna be alright. We’ll get him to the hospital, and he’ll be just fine.”

Papa knew Mark was the closest family member to where the accident happened, so he pulled out his phone and called him.   

•  •  •

Whenever something bad happens, Papa never seems to panic and he always knows just what to do. He figured it could take hours to get an ambulance back in those woods, so he told Mark to get Luke and drive their pickup as close to the corn piles as possible. An old logging road runs off the main road that splits the Allison Farm. Fortunately it dead-ends not far from where the corn piles had been put out. Mark and Luke were there in less than 20 minutes. Mark was able to get his 4-wheel drive Tundra within about 50 yards of where the 4-wheeler had crashed.

“Grab your first aid kit,” Papa yelled.

Mark always kept a first-aid kit in his truck. While Luke talked to Dace, Papa and Mark bandaged Clarence’s head with gauze and tried to stop the bleeding. Then everyone carefully lifted Mr. Maxwell into the back of the truck and placed him in a sitting up position against the cab with his broken leg straight out in front of him.

Mark and Luke both knew Papa had shot a buck, but Papa hadn’t said much about it.

“Dace and I are gonna ride in the back with Clarence while you drive us to the hospital in Newnan,” Papa told Mark. “Luke, you to stay here and go find my deer for me. My hat’s hanging on a tree directly between here and the platform stand. My buck ran off to the right of the trail. I don’t think he went far. Call Matthew and Mama. Tell them what happened and ask Matthew to jump in the Jeep and come help you.”

“Will do, Papa,” Luke said. “Is your buck very big?”

“Yes, he’s a right good buck,” Papa answered. Papa had such a strange smile on his face that Luke knew immediately.

“No way, Papa!” Luke said. “You mean… you smoked Mr. Majestic?”

“Just go find him for me,” Papa said with a smile.

“I will Papa. We’ll have him hung up and waiting for you when you get back!”

•  •  •

On the way to the hospital, Papa asked Dace what had happened. Dace had calmed down enough to admit that his father had tried to run him down with the 4-wheeler. Papa was stunned.

“He didn’t mean me any harm,” Dace insisted. “He just wanted that buck for himself.”     

Papa knew he’d have to report the incident to Mike Stringfellow.

•  •  •

Charlie later insisted that the Good Lord had used Papa as an angel that day by putting him in the right place at the right time so he could help Clarence Maxwell. She swears the Good Lord rewarded him with Mr. Majestic. The doctors were able to set Mr. Maxwell’s broken leg with several titanium screws and a large leg cast.

A few days after the accident, Mike Stringfellow paid the Maxwells a visit. Dace begged him not to make any charges against his father, and he didn’t. Mr. Maxwell never would admit taking a shot at Mr. Majestic with a .22.

Funny thing though. Dace started attending Charlie’s Sunday school class at church every Sunday morning after that. Charlie kind of rolls her eyes when you ask her about it, but she says it’s the best thing that ever happened to Dace.   

For months, Papa had been telling everybody that, come November, we were gonna have the best season we’d ever dreamed about. Who could’ve guessed we’d end up shooting three incredible bucks on the same day, and that one of them would be the biggest buck any of us had ever seen in our lives? Mr. Majestic ended up scoring 194 non-typical. He had 19 points and an inside spread of 21 inches. He field dressed 215 pounds. Turns out, Mama’s buck was the same 11-pointer Matty had captured on his trail cameras. He scored 151 inches, and he was a real hog. Matty hunted hard for his giant 8-pointer over the Christmas holidays but never saw him again. Mark had a chance to shoot his big split-tined swamp buck, but he decided to pass him up for another year. Luke shot two does. We made sure Sally had plenty of venison.

As for me… well, I never saw Curly again, or any other buck that I might wanna shoot. I didn’t get Slim like I’d hoped, but it was still the best November of my life. Papa was so right.

Charlie had made a perfect pass-through shot at just over 20 yards on Slim, and she deserved him a lot more than me. I’m awfully proud she got him.

She keeps saying the Good Lord has something really big planned for me… come November… next year. I can’t wait!

THE END