Opening Day

By A. Sayward Lamb

In all of the many years that I hunted with my sons, Jim and Ron, we never succeeded in the feat of all three of us shooting a deer on the same day. The nearest we ever came to accomplishing this occurred on the first day of deer hunting, in November of l964.

We always looked forward with anticipation and excitement, to the first day of deer hunting season. This year was no different because all three of us were up, and ready to go hunting, long before daylight. Our hunt was going to take place directly behind our house, on Main Street, in West Paris. We would hunt from our back field, northerly, towards Berry’s Ledge, which is a prominent landmark, located about a quarter mile behind our home. We chose this particular area because we had seen three deer there on several occasions, throughout the fall. The last time I saw them was on the previous afternoon, while I was scouting the woods for deer signs.

The night before season opened, we sat down and planned our hunt. We knew the area extremely well and planned to take advantage of our knowledge, hoping to find the three deer that were living there. Our hopes were to get the deer to go by at least one of us, in order to get a shot at them. We decided Jim would go up an old logging road that led up past the westerly side of Berry’s Ledge, and once he found a good place to look down into the draw below him; take a stand there. Ron and I planned to give Jim a fifteen minute head start, so he could be in position before we left the house.

 

Opening day was a typical cool November morning, and we were all anxious to get started. Jim headed out only a few minutes before legal hunting time, because he was to take a circuitous route around the strip of woods where we believed the deer were staying. We figured it would take him fifteen or twenty minutes to walk to his stand. Ron and I had only a five minute hike to get to the edge of the woods, so we waited for the agreed time, after Jim left, before we struck out. It was just getting light enough for us to be able to see our rifle sights, as we headed up the steep hill to our back field. We passed over the stonewall that separated the field from the woods. Once there. Ron and I separated, until we were only a couple of hundred feet apart, then slowly still hunted our way uphill, in the direction of Berry’s ledge. We would take a few steps, then stop to look all around, and listen intently, before moving forward. We went down into the ravine that led up to the base of the ledge. We hoped those three deer wouldn’t be too far from where I had seen them the day before. We hadn’t been hunting for more than ten minutes when we heard a rifle shot, which sounded as if it came from the direction of the ledge. We figured it must be Jim shooting, so we stopped to listen. Almost immediately we heard Jim shouting to us that the deer was coming our way! Sure enough, in a couple of minutes we saw the deer coming down the hillside, directly towards us. The deer was moving rather slowly, so we realized it must be wounded. As it got closer we could tell it was a five point buck, and was badly hurt. The deer collapsed on the ground only a very short distance in front of us. I told Ron to use his rifle ( a single shot Topper, in .30-.30 caliber) and go dispatch the deer.

In just a few minutes Jim arrived on the scene. He admired the buck, then exclaimed: “That’s a nice deer that I got.” I replied: “Wait a minute, I thought the person who dispatched the deer was the one to tag it, and that is your brother.” Jim was some upset, and let us know emphatically that he didn’t think much of his younger brother tagging his deer! Both Ron and I started laughing at Jim, and only then did Jim realize that we were just teasing him. He said: “ You guys had me worried for a few moments.” We asked Jim if we had pushed the buck up towards him? He replied: “No, as I stood there, I heard a noise and then saw the buck coming down the ravine, passing by me, heading your way.” That was surely different than we had planned, but of course we had no complaints, because Jim had a nice buck on the first day of deer hunting season.

We field dressed the buck and it only took the three of us a few minutes to drag it home. We helped Jim get the deer hung up so that he could rinse out the cavity with cold water, and finalize field dressing the buck. Jim told us he had rather stay home with his buck, and we couldn’t blame him for that. Ron and I decided we had time to try another hunt, so we drove up the Perkins Valley road, in South Woodstock. When we got part way up Guyboard Hill, we stopped by to see if Leon Poland was home. His wife, Rosalie, told us hat Leon was already out hunting. After getting permission to leave our car in their dooryard, we walked across the road to start hunting on Mollyockett Mountain. After climbing a steep hill, we came out onto a plateau and discovered someone had built a deer blind only a short distance from an apple tree. At that time, we did not know who built it. It was unoccupied so we decided to crawl inside and wait, hoping a deer would come to the apple tree to feed.

The blind was crudely built out of evergreen boughs that were layered, in shingled fashion, over a framework of small poles. It was a type of open-faced lean-to. The front was only about four feet above the ground, while the back slanted at a fairly sharp angle, down to the ground. Both sides and the roof were covered with the evergreen boughs. Inside, at the center, was a tree stump that made a good seat for one person. However, with both of us inside, it was very confining. We had nothing to sit on, so we both had to remain in a kneeling position. There was only room for me on the right side of the stump, so I knew from that position that I would have to shoot right handed. This wouldn’t be easy for a “southpaw”, like me.

It was now three o’clock in the afternoon, and we were getting cramps from kneeling so long in those close quarters. As a matter of fact, I was seriously thinking of going somewhere else to hunt, when Ron said to me: “I can hear some deer coming up over the hill, behind us.” His hearing was much better than mine was, so I took his word for it. Sure enough, in a few moments, even I could hear the deer coming as they walked in the dry leaves. We glanced behind us by looking through the boughs, and saw a doe, with her “skipper” close behind. Ron wanted to stick the rifle out the backside of the blind and shoot at them. I whispered to him to wait, remain still, because I knew the deer wouldn’t even know we were there waiting for them.

I whispered for him to wait until the deer passed by the blind, and walked out in front of us. Then he would shoot whichever deer was on the left, and I would shoot at the deer on the right. The blind proved to be very effective, because those two deer passed by, within four feet of the blind. Of course, we both had our rifles up and trained on the deer. Ron fired at the “skipper” with his .30-.30. Immediately, I fired at the doe with my .308, from my right shoulder. The “skipper” ran back beside the blind and dropped dead. The doe wasn’t even hit by my shot! I must have pulled the gun to the right when I pulled the trigger. I knew I had missed, as I watched her go running out of sight. Ron was a happy young fellow because he had just shot his first deer!

It was a good day of hunting for the Lamb family that day, because we each had our chance to shoot a deer. If “Father” Lamb could have fired straight, from the right shoulder, we all would have been able to tag our deer on that first day of hunting, in 1964.