in 1967, Harry and I came up with a good thought to go to Henry’s Creek, for one day to hunt for deer. My son, Kevin, was old enough to hunt and was well schooled in the use of a large rifle. I had taken him on many hunts even before he was old enough to hunt.
Harry Picked us up early on a Sunday morning, before the sun was even thinking of coming up. The plan was to be on Henry’s Creek by daylight, if possible. The trip would take an hour or so by going up Grimes Creek to New Centerville. Henry’s Creek runs into Grimes Creek, where all the roads come together to make a junction. All the roads in that area are unpaved, making travel a lot slower. Harry had an old Chevy pickup with four-wheel drive that ran well. It was equipped with seatbelts which we had on, as the law requires. We had no problem with wearing them. The sun was just coming over the mountain as we arrived at the road up the creek.
About a mile up the road, four does ran up the hill out of the creek bottom. They stopped at the top of a small ridge to l○○k back at us as mule deer, often do. I unhooked my seat belt when first saw the deer, so when the truck stopped I could jump out to shoot. I had to run around the back of the truck to get off the road before I could do any shooting. The does were still on the ridge watching all the commotion. I took aim on the nearest one and she dropped with the first shot. I had luckily hit her in the head, and it was a killing shot. I then looked around to see where Kevin and Harry were. Kevin was sitting in the middle so he had to wait for me to get out, before he could. By then it was too late. Where was Harry? I found him hanging out the door, with his feet off the ground. He had forgotten to undo his seat belt before he opened the door and jumped out. After we finally got over a laughing spell, we helped him back into the truck to get unbuckled. He felt like he was cut in half. The truck was moved out of the middle of the road then Harry and I went up the hill to see about the doe. We really were really not too sure if it was clean shot or not, because she fell out of sight.
Meanwhile, Kevin made a circle around us to look for the other deer. The doe was right where she had dropped dead from a head shot. We cleaned her out in our normal manner except for skinning her. We looked around for Kevin, because he should have been there by this time. He was nowhere in sight and did not answer our calling. He had completely circled up above us not realizing he had bypassed us. oh well. We would find him after we loaded the deer in the truck. The doe was pulled down to the creek bottom then packed the rest of the way up to the truck. All this took about an hour because we were taking our time hoping Kevin would show up at any time.
We were standing by the truck pondering which way to go to look for him, when a pickup came down the road and stopped beside us. Kevin had walked a long way up the creek, looking for us when he heard a truck on the road near him. He seemed bewildered and lost, so they picked him up. He was sure our truck must be down the creek. He was as glad to see us waiting for him by the truck as we were to see him. We didn’t want to spend the rest of the day trying to find him. He had done the right thing by asking for help.
It wasn’t noon yet, so we drove on up the creek to the fork in the road at the summit. We didn’t see any more deer from the road along the creek. We drove around until noon. Lunch time was upon us, and we were getting hungry. Breakfast had been early that morning. We had brought plenty of lunch because we were planning to be out all day. Over a sandwich and soda pop we pondered on where to go to find another deer. There were lots of deer in this drainage but finding them was pretty hard sometimes. We drove to a likely spot, found a wide place to park, then took off on foot hoping to scare something out of hiding. The three of us stayed fairly close together this time. After a couple of hours of walking we decided to go back to the truck. We seemed to be wasting our time and the one deer had to be taken care of when we got home. We headed for home, so we could hunt down the creek on the way back to town. There was a chance we could see something along the road somewhere. Nothing showed up by the time we reached the main highway, so we hurried on for home.
The doe was hung in Harry-s garage to be skinned. She was bagged up so that the flies would not spoil the meat, then hung there until we could cut her into steaks. This turned out to be a very good eating piece of venison for the table.