Ray's Corner

My First Deer

"... So we lived around home there and we done odds and ends and all sorts of things until...! I remember when I was ten, why I come home from school one night and mother said we got no deer meat for supper.  She said you'd better go over in the field and shoot a deer, and I'd never shot a deer before. And we had an old 12 gauge shotgun with no front sight on it; the end of the barrel had blowed off, my brother got snow in it. So anyway, I said "All right!", so I headed over in the field with this old shotgun. I went out to the barn first and I filled a bag of hay because I knew that I couldn't lift the shotgun up to shoot at a deer but I knew if I laid the bag of hay down I could lay the shotgun on the bag of hay and I could sight it on the deer and I could shoot him. So I layed this bag of hay down near this apple tree - called a town sweet tree - and I counted 17 deer in the orchard and I knew they'd be coming up by and by underneath this tree. So I layed there behind this bag of hay and I waited. There was five of them come up under this town sweet tree; and we always put salt under the tree on a flat rock - the deer liked salt - and they used to come up and lick the rock. So I layed there and when this deer came up, there was five of them, I took the little feller, he was about a year old, and when he turned around sideways I took aim for his heart - I only had one bullet  - I let go and down he went. The other deers jumped up and looked at him and stood there. So I got up and I had an old knife off the table with the blade broke off and I had that sharpened up for a hunting knife because we didn't have hunting knives or any money to buy them with.  I cut his throat and I took his stomach out and took it over to the woods and buried it in a hole so the flies wouldn't get on him. So then I went back and cut him in two and I drug half of him over to the house, it was the only way I could get him there - I had to back up with him - so I drug the hind quarters first and got them over in the barn. And I took and axe and went back and cut his head off  - I didn't want his head - and I drug his ford quarters over to the barn. Well then I hung him up in blocks and ropes and took the hide off him and the hind quarters I cut some steak off him and mother fried him for supper. Well, that was the first deer I shot. ..."