The Measure of a Trophy

A Monster Trophy

A couple weeks ago I had the pleasure to hunt whitetail deer with my friend Foy Tatum at his property close to Union Springs, Alabama. We met close to Montgomery and drove from there to the property through some beautiful country roads, which included several angus cattle ranchs and long-leaf pine plantations, which probably double up as perfect Bob-white quail preserves.

The former 750 acres cattle ranch is intensively and carefuly managed for deer hunting, and it is formed by a healthy mix of food plots (at least several acres each), long-leaf pines which are regularly harvested for timber and harwoods which are religiously preserved. There are some twenty-six elevated shooting platforms and blinds, many that will sit two people so Foy can hunt with his grandchildren, and several more ladder and tripod stands.

In the heart of the property there is an almost 80 acres lake from which Foy and his friends pull at least one thousand trophy bass every year in order to keep the growing population in check. He told me that local matting pairs of Canada geese seldom see their hatches grow as more often that not the ten-pound bass will feed on the goslings while they swim.

Since the property has no fences, the hunt is completely fair chase, and in order to stay the deer must fell comfortable. Somewhere inside it, there is a one hundred acre deer sanctuary of swamps and harwoods, where no human is allowed to enter, and from February through September high protein pelletized food is offered to the herd at a rate of a ton every ten days.

For the year round efforts, the harvest consists of around twenty-five does and two trophy bucks per year, plus a truck load of memories, quality family time and good friends.

Before going out on the first afternoon I asked Foy what were "the rules of engagement" and which animals the guest hunters were allowed to shoot. Would an eight-point be the minimum antler size?

Foy answer surprized me. He said that hunters could take any deer in the property, either buck or doe, but that any buck taken must be mounted and rang in the main lodge for one year, and the hunter that took the animal would have to come back for a dinner in order to take his trophy home.

During the two afternoons and one morning that I hunted I saw between twenty and twenty-five deer, mostly does, buttom bucks and other yearlings, but there were also two bucks that I will talk more about.

On the first afternnon I passed on several healthy does and watched some buttom bucks play in front of my elevated blind, but on the following morning around 8:45 a buck came from behhind me and walked right under my tree stand. I shot the little five-point, that I also would gladly shot back home, several times. I put the cross-hairs of the clear Zeiss scope mounted on the Steyr Mannlicher 270 Winchester on the deer heart, the when it moved I shot it again at the back of the head, and after a while I shot it again thought the eye, and a couple minutes later I made a broadside lung shot. After several more minutes the young buck wandered away following the sent of three or four does that had come by earlier.

Later that day Foy dropped me at a big "condo" blind. An elevated insulated "cabin" overlooking the a food plot on the clearing formed by a powerline that bisects the property. It was a grey drizzling afternoon that reminded me of the Netherlands, and completely different from the bright sunny, almost warm, previous day. Close to dusk a buck crossed the field at a brisky pace, but not running. As I brought the rifle up on what I knew to be a shooter I started sneezing and just never could steady the cross-hairs on that animal. Was it a case of buck-fever or buck allergy?

While Foy's property is strictly managed according to Quality Deer Management principles, I beleive that the way he defines a trophy buck is a lot simpler and much more effective on its enforcement, for before the hunter pulls the trigger he must carefully consider wether he wants his mount to go in the wall of fame or in the wall of shame!

Sylas Slingshot

Sylas Slingshot (bottle cap for scale)

In general my blogs have no logical sequence and I just write about whatever I want or like, but it appears that events sometimes provides us eventual links.

My wife gave me a Savage Model 99 rifle for Christmas, and then I finished reading Jeff Cooper's Commentaires and found that he had great consideration for this rifle. Then, one of the quotes from Jeff Cooper that caught my attention was about the hunting instinct that can be demonstrated by a boy and his slingshot.

Well, last Saturday my mother arrived from Brazil to visit us here in Traverse City, and she brought a gift from my dear friend Nilson Araújo to my grandson Sylas. Nilson is an avid bird hunter, dedicated shotgunner, and renowned English Pointer breeder. If I am not mistaken, Nilson is now in the 27th generation of the same dog strain and has the records for all the lineage.

Nilson made a bespoken slingshot for Sylas, and as you can see from the photo above, it is just the right size for a very young hunter to be. He even sent a dozen hand selected pebbles to assure that Sylas would have premium ammunition for his initial outings.

As Sylas is already four months old, I hope that in less than a year he will be using his new primitive skills and survival weapon. I hope that Sylas practices enough in order to be able to hit both clay pigeons and live birds on the wing as Bob-white quail guide Melvin showed to me last year in Alabama. (See "Young at Heart in the Old South", April 2013)

A good slingshot is an asset almost as important as a good folding knife to any boy, and an important tool to help the hunter instinct to flourish.

Jeff Cooper's Commentaries

Jeff Cooper, 1920 - 2006

During the Christmas holidays I engaged on the mission to read Jeff Cooper's Commentaires which were publish at least monthly from 1993 until his death in September of 2006.

A Stanford University graduate in political science, Cooper received a commission in the United States Marine Corps in 1941 and served both in WWII in the Pacific and in Korean War when he was involved in irregular warfare, retiring as a Lieutenant Colonel. In the 1960's he received a master's degree in history from the University of California, Riverside.

Jeff Cooper wrote nine books, was an editor for Guns & Ammo magazine where he wrote a monthly column, "Cooper's Corner", and served both as a director and a member of the Executive Council of the National Rifle Association, but he is probably best remembered by establishing the "Modern Technique" for the pragmatical use of the pistol for personal protection, which eventually led to the foundation of IPSC, an the creation and development of "Scout Rifle" concept. Other key contributions by Mr. Cooper were th codification of the "Combat Mindset", the "Cooper Color Code" and the "Rules of Firearm Safety".

But upon reading the "Commentaries" we can perceive that Jeff Cooper interests were much broader than firearms, their uses for sport, defense or warfare and hunting. He had very conservative political views with which I concur in most, but not all cases, had a deep concern with the emasculation taking place in society (which unhappily continues today), was a strong promoter of a "classical education", an admirer of Theodore Roosevelt, a great preocupation with semantics, and a true lover of good literature and "touching poetry", and we both share the taste for Kipling's If and Henley's Invictus. Although not mentioned in Commentaires, I believe that Lord Tennyson's The Charge of the Light Brigade would complement the list of greatest poems.

My observations regarding Mr. Cooper's views in firearms and ammunition are:

• The Colt model 1911 pistol and the 45 ACP cartridge form the quintessential defensive sidearm.
• The Glock was recognized as an acceptable alternative, certainly much better than the double action pistol.
• The 30-06 loaded with 180 grain bullet is the best and most usefell cartridge in world. Who could argue with this?
• The 223 (5,56x45 mm) cartridge is inadequate for anything bigger than varmints, therefore the designation of the Ar-15/M-16 as "poodle-shooter" (and I believe that he was refering to a "toy" poodle).
• During the late part of the XX century and until his death there were only three interesing rifles: the Steyr Scout (308), the Blaser R93 (30-06) and Jim West's CoPilot (45-70).
• The Savage Model 99 in 300 Savage was considered an excellent general purpose rifle that could rival any middle bore centerfire rifle.

In some parts of the Commentaries Jeff Cooper proposed what today would be called a Bucket List of achievements that every man should try to accomplish and towards the last years he recommended good measures for any young man full education, which were much broader than a college degree and could be summarized by "to ride, shoot straight and speak the truth".

Two aspects of Jeff Cooper that are apparent throughout his works and heritage, and that are really admirable and must be used as examples by us are that he lived his life in full, writing, traveling, shooting and defending his believes to very end of his life, and his view that man should have dash, and that was represented by the way he wore his hat!

I recommend that you read Jeff Cooper's complete works, and would like to close this small commentarie with a quote from Comentaries, Vol. 3, No. 14 (November 1995):

"Whether we admit it or not, man is a carnivorous predator, as his teeth will attest. This animal is programmed to hunt and kill his prey for food, and the instict to kill things is rooted way down in his genetic program. One has only to watch little boys and see them grow up to discover this. Hand a 6-year-old a slingshot and he will immediately want to sock a bord with it. You may tell him he should not, but that does not eliminate the instict."