Arrivederci Torino

The author, Pino, Vito, Signora Luciana, Rosaria, Rocco

Since June last year I’ve been working in Europe, and due to that I kept an apartment in Torino, the fantastic piemontese city that was the first capital of unified Italy.

While working and spending a lot of time in Europe and having my family in the United States had its challenges and made me sick and tired of airplane food, not to mention all the time spent in airports and flying across the Atlantic, it also had many positive aspects.

I could tell stories about all the museums and gun clubs that I visited, restaurants known and unknown where I enjoyed fantastic meals, sometimes with good company, many times alone, and the moments of solitude that led me to start to write this blog.

Now, almost ten months since I started my assignment in Europe I am about to start a new chapter in my professional life, and due to that I no longer have an apartment in Torino, nor will I be going to Europe with the same frequency.

I hope to have the opportunity to spend a lot more time with my family, but this welcome change is bittersweet in at least one point. My father used to tell me that one of the most important aspects of life is that you should leave tracks by the places that you travel, and that you should always be able to go back to those places and be well received. My tracks are my friends.

In less than a year I had the privilege of establishing some fantastic friendships, and to celebrate that I had a farewell (in Italian “arrivederci”) dinner at my favorite restaurant in the world, “FRADIN DA VITO” in San Mauro Torinese, that belongs to my dear friend, superb chef and master hunter, Vito Benevelli and his gracious wife Signora Luciana.

To celebrate our friendship, my brave friend Pino Facchini, president of the Federazione Italiana Tiro a Volo (FITAV) – Comitato Regionale Piemonte, and my host in almost all my shooting experiences in Italy, along his son Rocco and Rocco’s wife Rosaria, joined me at Fradin for a fantastic meal.

From the Terrina di Pesce Persico, first of many antipasti to the last drop of Vito’s Genepi, a fantastic after dinner liqueur of Alpine flowers made by Vito himself, we spend several hours talking, remembering, eating, drinking, laughing or just enjoying life.

When we leave our tracks in the hearts of our friends, saying goodbye is just an excuse to meet again in the future. Even with tears in my eyes, I happily say:

Arrivederci Carissimi Amici, Arrivederci Torino, noi sentiamo a domani. Con grandissimo affetto, Rodrigo.

A Deer Story

I was raised in a farm in Brazil, “Fazenda Taboa”, located deep in the rich red soil of northern São Paulo state – the “Alta Mogiana” region. And, just like Scarlet O’Hara got her strength from Tara, I replenish my heart and soul when surrounded by family and friends in the cool veranda or shooting white winged doves that come to nest on the old mango and giant fig trees, in the few precious days I can visit Taboa each year.

When I was a child we knew about four deer species in Brazil, from the Labrador size “veado-mateiro” to the majestic “cervo-do-pantanal”, probably bigger than a mule-deer, and one of the largest mammals in South America. Nowadays biologists tell us there are eight deer species in Brazil, including one identified so recently that the poor animal only has a scientific name and the, common to Michiganders, white-tailed deer, known as Cariacu in Brazil and found in the savannahs of Roraima, north of the Amazon river.

My first contact with deer came when I was four or five years old. My father was driving my mother’s car, fast as usually, in the dirt roads we relied on, when we hit a doe of the small (under 60 pounds) “veado-catingueiro” (deer collision is not a privilege of Michigan). While still alive, the little doe could not be saved and her hide was my bed side rug for years.

In Brazil, the traditional way to hunt deer was “ridding the hounds”, in a similar fashion to fox hunting in Great Britain, although I can guarantee I never saw a single hunter with a red coat or even a tie. We enjoy a more relaxed life style in the tropics.

One day, when I was around seven, my father organized such a hunt and invited some friends. It was winter, sometime between June and August when the days are not too hot, the nights are cool and it is very dry. The expedition consisted of about ten hunters and equal number of horses, twice as many dogs, my mother with a large lunch to be served under old shade trees and a wild bunch of children. Sometime between main course and dessert the dogs found a deer, the hunters mounted and went after the “toque” as we call the sound and general action of dogs pursuing prey. We, children, stayed with my mother and the remaining of the lunch, spread over the white table cloth on the ground, and we did not even have time to be bored. Somehow the “toque” changed direction and that deer, followed by twenty frantic dogs came running right over the dishes while hunters and horses were kind enough to go around us.

Unhappily today, even with twice as many identified species as thirty years ago, any deer hunting (well almost any hunting at all) is outlawed in Brazil and the consequences are that it is very rare to see a deer or other mammals almost anywhere, unless you go far away from civilization. WARNING: Never allow the eco-terrorists to gain a position in this great country. The kind of damage they can do is unbearable for anyone of us who loves the outdoors.

B.S. Rifle Ammo

Complete buckshot handloading kit

Centerfire rifles are great guns, but their inherit power, loud report, heavy recoil and ammunition cost minimizes their potential use to big game hunting or the serious target shooter, leaving most us with a nice firearms that sits idle during most of the year.

I remember an article in the January 1987 issue of Guns & Ammo magazine where Ross Seyfried said that “if there is anything we could do to our favorite centerfire rifles and handguns that would make them more useful and enjoyable that they already are, it would be to reduce their power to almost zero.”

I have several air guns that shoot at 6 ft.lb, but they have different balance, trigger pulls and sights than my centerfire rifles, and may not be what I want to drag out in the woods. Additionally, good quality air guns may be expensive, so they may not be a solution for every body.

Currently, there are several reloading manuals that present information for “managed recoil” rifle loads, but most of them are quite powerful and noise, and use expensive bullets and reasonably large amounts of gun powder.

Sometime ago in conversations with my friends Stan Bell and Eric Weeldreyer we were discussing squirrel or basement loads for .30” caliber rifles. The long standing recipe requires a new primer, two or three grains of fast burning pistol or shotgun powder and a single buckshot (No. 1½ buckshot has a .310” diameter and performs well) or musket ball.

This load can be used in basically any .30” caliber centerfire rifle, and the brass does not need to be resized. Just de-prime, insert a new primer, pour the desired amount of powder and sit the “bullet” by hand.

Although I have a very nice CZ 550 rifle in .30-06, I wanted a inexpensive and robust nock around play rifle, and there is not a better deal today than a Mosin-Nagant, and in order to celebrate 2012 I bought one of these rugged battle rifles for around one hundred dollars.

At the same time I purchased a chamber insert that allows .32 pistol cartridges (.32 ACP, .32 S&W, .32 S&W Long and .32 H&R Magnum) to be shot in the 7,62 x 54R mm rifle (these inserts are also available for .30-06 and .308 Winchester) and for an additional ten dollars I bought fifty new .32 H&R Magnum empty cases and went home to play with my new toy. In order to keep the cost even lower you could just scavenge some empty .32 pistol shells at your local range.

I currently don’t have dies to reload .32 pistol ammo, but I did not think that they were required for what I was planning. I primed all cases and poured just over two grains of Universal shotgun powder. I had a bunch of .32 musket balls at hand and just set each bullet by hand and was ready for some action.

At the Southern Michigan Gun Club outdoors pistol range I place a target at 25 yards, loaded one round into the insert, chambered it in the rifle and fired. The results were surprising! One soft pop, a hole in the target and the range officer on duty asking me to check the bore as he thought that I had a squib load. I explained that I was shooting a very low power round and there was nothing to worry about and we had some great discussion about other “almost zero power” alternatives and their multiple uses.

I fired a ten shot string off-hand at 25 yards and had a group of around two inches. Not bad at all for an open sights rifle made in 1943 and with unrefined Russian-grip trigger pull.

I cronographed the load and the 46 grains “bullet” had an average speed of 620 f.p.s. resulting in a calculated muzzle energy of 39 ft.lb. Just for comparison, a typical .22 LR fires a 40 grains bullet at 1,200 f.p.s. for muzzle energy of 127 ft.lb, and the surplus military ammo fires a 150 grains bullet at 2,950 f.p.s. resulting in almost 2,900 ft.lb of energy. Even at this low energy, treat this load with the same care and safety precautions as any other, as it has enough speed and energy to cause serious injury or death.

An important note: never use jacketed bullets for reduced loads as they will probably get stuck in the barrel and are very hard to remove. If a lead bullet gets stuck in the barrel it is relatively easy to push it out, but a jacketed bullet will require an expensive trip to your local gunsmith.

An additional benefit of the reduced load is its reduced cost. One pound of pistol or shotgun powder sells for around twenty dollars, and by keeping the charge at around two grains a person can get over 3,300 shots per pound. I ordered an eight pound jar of No. 1½ buckshot for forty four dollars (delivered) and it contatins 1,840 “bullets”. Small pistol primers are around thirty dollars per thousand. While the surplus 7,62 x 54R ammo costs twenty three cents per round, my buckshot (or B.S.) reloads cost around six cents each, which is cheaper than many of the .22 rimfires available today, and just one or two cents more than the cheapest twenty-twos.

With everything going so well I wanted a “survivalist” reloading kit to carry with the Mosin-Nagant. My goal was that is should fit in one of the WWII vintage ammo pouches that came with the rifle.

I am blessed that I read a lot, keep all my books and most of my magazines, and generally can remember where to find information that I read in the past. The Gun Digest 2002 (56^th Annual Edition) has an article by Steven Hurst (The Family Colt) where he describes how a neighbor crafted him a reloading kit to reload .32 ACP using buckshot bullet, which his friends called “B.S. ammo.”

Following the same guidelines I built a reloading kit out of basically scrap items that I had at home. The picture that illustrates this article show the complete set up in the lower right corner. The broken drill is used to remove the used primer. You just sit the fired cartridge on top of the nut, center the drill over the flame hole and tap on it. You can use a hammer, a piece of wood or the bayonet supplied with the rifle (apart from grilling marshmallows or hot dogs, this is the only other practical use for the Mosin-Nagant bayonet).

Next step is to sit a new primer. Just put a primer in the pocket, sit the case over a flat surface, and using the Allen wrench (or any other suitable object) and tap gently (again, you could use the bayonet). I use the pencil on the photo to “eject” the pistol case from the insert, but it probably be used in place of the Allen wrench or vice-versa.

Since I could not find any wire at home, I glued a .22 Short case to a nail and use it as a powder measure. In my case it drops just over two grains of Universal gun powder. Last, place a No. 1½ buckshot or a .32 musket ball (both are .310” diameter) and sit it by hand.

The pressures developed by this load are so low that the cases don’t need to be resized, and they should last a very long time.

Some people may ask what the practical purpose of the B.S. Rifle Ammo is. First and foremost, they are fun, and second they are cheap. With virtually no recoil and as little noise as an air gun the B.S. loads are perfect to train new shooter, improve your riflemanship (sight alignment, trigger control, overall gun handling), and even hunt small game. In the last case, if more power is required you can work up the load by adding a bit more powder, but don’t overdo it or you will defeat their purpose.

Notes:

1.    This article was featured in the May/June 2012 issue of Backwoodsman Magazine.

2.    You can find different diameter (caliber) buckshot at Ballistic Products (www.ballisticproducts.com).

How I Got Started in Shotguns

An Unmatched Browning Pair

Lightning Sporting Clays Edition (12 gauge) and Model 12 (28 gauge)

We lived on a farm in Northern São Paulo state, Brazil, and money was then a very rare commodity, and factory ammo was expensive and difficult to come by, therefore reloading was not only an option but almost a necessity. My father would gather some of our decades long farm employees and his trusted hunt companions and reload several boxes of 28 gauge shells. The process was quite labor intensive, as was much of the farming activities in Brazil at the time. The first step was to use a punch and a hammer and cut felt and cardboard wads. Each shell required one felt and three cardboard wads, and each wad required at least one hammer blow, so there was probably as much noise in making a shell as in discharging it.

The next step was to de-prime and then re-prime the shells, and that also took some hammering, at least to remove the old primer. Then gun powder was poured in the hull. I remember clearly that we used “Pólvora Química Tupã” (Tupã Chemical Powder) and you may guess any connection or coincidence between that powder and my dog’s name. Tupã is the god of thunder for one of the major Brazilian Indian nations and is a very appropriate name for gun powder. Tupã powder came in a small light blue plastic bottle (100 grams or 3.5 ounces per bottle) with white lettering and the caricature of hunter stepping over a knocked out jaguar while holding its tail in one hand and having a large bowie knife in his belt.

And finally came the shot, an overshot wad and the hull received a roll crimp in a small hand powered tool.

When I was finally allowed to hunt by myself I used a small 310 (8 mm) rim fire shotgun (a single shot, exposed hammer CBC) to hunt doves, pigeons, and tinamous or using their proper names Juriti (Leptotila varreaux), Azulega (Columba cayennensis) and Inhanbú-chitã (Cryptellus parvirostris). I must confess that I was never an accomplished wing shooter during my early years and that I would stalk those birds just as I stalked big game in Africa many decades later. Locate the prey by sight or sound and sneak close enough for the diminutive load of number 11 shot to be effective. The 310 shell is about the same size as a .32 S&W Long revolver cartridge so there is not much payload there to play with.

While the seed of the blood sport was present in my hunt so was the basic instinct of the predator, and not one of those birds were ever spoiled, unless you consider bad cooking as spoiling good game birds.

I also used that 310 as an effective replacement for a fishing rod, and I didn’t even need line and hook. As you may have guessed by now I deeply enjoy hunting, the chase and the outsmarting of the prey, but it I am still working on refining my taste for fishing. The Rosário creek that cuts the farm I was raised in, at one point makes a pronounced “S” shaped curve where at an outer part of the curve the slow waters form a shallow beach. Touching the shallow waters there was a pig sty and the bagres (Bagre spp.), a kind of Brazilian catfish, would come to feed on pig manure. I would stay out of sight, under some shade tree with other kids, and when the foot long fish would come in the shallows waters I just had to shoot at it and one of us would wade in to retrieve our prize.

By late afternoon we would gather our daily bag of fish and fowl, find some discarded kitchen oil can - there were some rectangular peanut oil cans that made wonderful fry pans when opened properly - and hide among the banana trees where we would make a small fire from the huge dry leaves and cook and consume our wonderful harvest without having to share it with grown-ups.

Big game hunting is challenging and rewarding and I am blessed to have the opportunity to do it, but I can’t get no better enjoyment than scouting the woods and meadows for small game with a small gauge shotgun, be it for tinamou in Brazil or cotton tail rabbit in Michigan.

And talking about small gauge shotguns, as I grew up and wanted to hunt larger animals I graduated from the 310 to an old Rossi 28 gauge side-by-side shotgun with external hammers. Although technically a small gauge shotgun when I first started using the 28 I felt like I was ready for lion and elephant. The hulls were much bigger than the tiny 310 rim fire shells.

But if my father would allow me to use his old shotgun (he never really let me play with his nice Beretta double gun, also a 28 gauge), ammunition was my problem.

Factory ammo prices and availability had not improved any, and just like my father I had to resort to reloading or in my case, hand loading. Most of my father equipment was misplaced or lost when we moved to town, and I didn’t have the helpers or the patience to reload the aging paper hulls. So I bought some full brass shotgun shells, primers, shot and gun powder, which could be Elephant FFFg black powder or whatever smokeless powder was available or the lowest price one. Wads were made from old newspaper or even toilette paper, again whatever was handy.

My reloading, or better saying hand loading gear, was as simple as you can imagine. A pocket knife or a big nail to pull out fired primers, a pencil or other piece of wood to sit the over powder wad and a candle to seal the finished shell with some paraffin.

When I started to hunt capivara (Hydrochaeris hydrochaeris), or capybara as said in Spanish and English, I became very displeased with the performance of TTT shot, similar to No. 4 buckshot, and the largest shot then available in Brazil, and decided to use slugs. Although we could generally find some cast slugs, IDEAL brand, I saw no reason to pay hard cash for them, and the normal shooting distances inside a swamp or surrounding bush being short as they are; pinpoint accuracy was not really an issue. So, I just fished for some lead sinkers of about the proper diameter in the fishing box and loaded it in my shells instead of shot. The heavier oval sinkers performed much better than the round ones and these bullets stopped more than one capybara with definitive authority.

By the beginning of high school I finally had a “man’s gun” having taking possession of one of my father’s 12 gauge trap guns. I was back to a single shot but the 12 gauge was the most powerful firearm that could be legally owned in Brazil. What more could I ask? But bigger gun or not, the ammunition situation didn’t change and I continued with my proven hand loads, just bought new 12 gauge brass shells and looked for larger sinkers.

Not until after I got married I shot a couple rounds of trap and some friends allowed me to use their reloading presses to make some proper shells, plastics hulls and wads and 11/8 ounces of 7½ shot. If I remember one thing in particular is that those shells kicked much harder than the calves we had in the corral, but I was then a grown man, had a daughter, and had to handle a heavy trap load no matter what. By this time I was living with my new family in a big city and didn’t have much opportunity to hunt or shoot a shotgun and for several years I used pistols for much of my shooting, a lot of fun plinking and some less than serious competition.

But as the saying goes, the world is round, and in due time I went back to the 28 gauge. I had a Beretta 686 and a Remington 1100, both of which I traded for side-by-side shotguns, a Browining BSS 20 gauge and an AyA 4/53 16 gauge, but the 28 gauges are back. I have my dad's cherished Beretta 409 side-by-side, that doesn't get shot too much as it is too precious, and a great shooting Browning Model 12, that is asking to go to Uruguay on a perdiz (Notura maculosa) hunting.

By the way, I no longer hand load my 28 gauge shells, I used a MEC 9000 press instead.

Pope on Hunting

Saxton Pope

Bow hunting is an art and a challenge. It took me 9 seasons to bag my first whitetail deer using bow and arrow (see my post “Appointment in Bangor” from October 2011), and along with the black bear that I also shot using bow and arrow in Ontario in August 2010 those are among the highlights of my hunting life.

While hunting with bow and arrow is clearly more challenging that with a firearms, I don’t think that this lessens the firearms hunter, especially since I do both. We need to be united as a hunting community, and cannot let ethics be confused with preferences (for an excellent article in this subject, click at the link http://www.huntright.org/where-we-stand/ethics-vs-preferences). We must keep in mind that united we stand, and if we brake our ranks we will fail and those that wanted to prohibit hunting and see men apart from nature will prevail.

But this is not the reason that I am writing about. On my last posting I talked about the “Love of the Chase”, and tried to articulate the reason of why I hunt, probably in a very clumsy way, but while reading “Hunting with the Bow and Arrow” by Dr. Saxton Pope, one the fathers of modern archery, I came across a passage called THE PRINCIPLES OF HUNTING, that I reproduce below. I only wish I could write as well as Dr. Pope.

“In the early dawn of life man took up weapons against the beasts about him. With club, ax, spear, knife, and sling he protected himself or sought his game. To strike at a distance, he devised the bow. With the implements of the chase he has won his way in the world.

Today there is no need to battle with the beasts of prey and little necessity to kill wild animals for food; but still the hunting instinct persists. The love of the chase still thrills us and all the misty past echoes with the hunter's call.

In the joy of hunting is intimately woven the love of the great outdoors. The beauty of woods, valleys, mountains, and skies feeds the soul of the sportsman where the quest of game only whets his appetite.

After all, it is not the killing that brings satisfaction; it is the contest of skill and cunning. The true hunter counts his achievement in proportion to the effort involved and the fairness of the sport.

…

Here we have a weapon of beauty and romance. He, who shoots with a bow, puts his life's energy into it. The force behind the flying shaft must be placed there by the archer. At the moment of greatest strain he must draw every sinew to the utmost; his hand must be steady; his nerves under absolute control; his eye keen and clear. In the hunt he pits his well-trained skill against the instinctive cunning of his quarry. By the most adroit cleverness, he must approach within striking distance, and when he speeds his low whispering shaft and strikes his game, he has won by the strength of arm and nerve. It is a noble sport.

However, not all temperaments are suited to archery. There must be something within the deeper memories of his inheritance to which the bow appeals. A mere passing fancy will not suffice to make him an archer. It is the unusual person who will overcome the early difficulties and persevere with the bow through love of it.

The real archer when he goes afield enters a land of subtle delight. The dew glistens on the leaves, the thrush sings in the bush, the soft wind blows, and all nature welcomes him as she has the hunter since the world began. With his bow in his hand, his arrows softly rustling in the quiver, a horn at his back, and a hound at his heels, what more can a man want in life?”

Note: The book “Hunting with the Bow and Arrow”, as well as many other fantastic books, can be downloaded for free at several internet sources, including www.Amazon.com and Project Gutenberg (www.guntenberg.org).

The Love of the Chase

Uruguay 2008 with Ariel

Over the years I have tried to answer the question of why I hunt using rational and scientific argumentation, talking about the negative impact of human development over nature, the virtual elimination of predators and other animals that compete with society’s scarce and disputed economic resources, and rationalizing that the only way to preserve a piece of nature or a little bit of wilderness is by extracting an “economic surplus” from them, and that only hunters, among all members of society, are willing to allocate the time and money to manage nature in such way.

However, as I began to dedicate more time to hunting and the outdoors I also tried to explore not only why I loved to hunt but why I had to hunt. Which compulsion would make me crave for autumn and winter and dislike summers or how could I explain to my wife that I am not trying to punish myself when I wake up long before first light and go out in inclement weather to hunt or worse yet why I spend more money on my Labrador retriever than on our children college fund?

After chasing it for many years, from when I hunted quail and shot fish in my childhood in Brazil to going on safari in Africa, I believe I finally found the answer to such pressing and profound question. It is still rational and scientific, but biological and philosophical instead of economical in its content.

I am not an anthropologist or a philosopher to write a treaty on human evolution or meditate on hunting, I am a hunter, and as a hunter I can say that deep in my genes and in my soul the predator lays, patiently waiting for opportunities to surface and strike upon its prey. I hunt because I am a predator. I am on the top of the food chain and as part of nature I must perform my ecologic function, occupy my niche, and feed on my prey.

Although detractors of hunting would like us to believe otherwise, Homo sapiens are as integral and important components of nature as any other creatures, and as we went through a similar evolution process as all those living creatures we evolved as the most successful predator this planned has ever had. Evolution shaped us not only physically but also emotionally and psychologically, and not even in our modern yet stupid time will misguided and ill-intentioned people be able to negate that.

Of course, it could be argued that humans being rational creatures should be able to control their most basic instincts, but by doing so we would only further remove ourselves from the natural world and then nature would play a constantly diminishing part of our life until by being ignored for so long it would be forgotten. And if nature becomes unimportant by being ignored and forgotten what can we expect that will become of it, a wasteland of shopping malls, golf courses and subdivisions or worse yet a dump yard for human rejects?

By castrating our instincts and not hunting we would not only deny ourselves the much needed vacation from our demanding lives and pressing (and some times depressing) routine, the human condition as mentioned by Ortega Y Gasset, vacations in which man can develop true happiness but also risk developing a total disregard for nature, a disregard that could have a most terrible outcomes, the end of all wilderness within human reach.

Hunters, more than any other group in human society, are responsible for conservation since we not only want to be able to hunt today but also in the future, and we want our children and their children to be able to have as close a communion with nature and we do. Hunters have a symbiotic relation with their prey, while hunting provides us nourishment for body and soul, we make our prey stronger by helping providing suitable habitat and maintaining the prey population within the habitat’s carrying capacity. Hunters interact with their prey year after year after year.

Because of this constant interaction between hunter and hunted, predator and prey, at one time I was afraid that the burning ember that keeps the predator alive deep inside us could be extinguished either by lack of fuel or by too much fuel but I no longer worry about that. Due to circumstances of life I had to spend many years without hunting. It was hard but I endured and Hemingway, Ruark, and other close friends kept the ember burning. On the other extreme I was exposed to Africa and not even its abundance of game could tame the predator inside me, for all the excitement of the chase was present again on the first opportunity, either shooting a pheasant over my dog or drawing my bowl at a whitetail doe.

The excitement and trill of the chase, the fulfillment that it gives us, reminds me that men are entitled basic rights, among them “the pursuit of happiness”. But, happiness is a state of mind, is doing what we like, pursuing what gives us pleasure. Happiness is in the action, not necessarily in the achievement. Ortega Y Gasset really captured the essence of men’s pursuit of happiness in saying that “the hunter does not hunt in order to kill; on the contrary, he kills in order to have hunted”.

And, since the happiness is found in the action, and the continuation of that action, not necessarily in the achievement, then, I hunt not only because I am a predator, but I hunt in order to be happy.

Chess Game

Probably the greatest benefits that I have from writing the posts for my blog is that I can exercise my memory and remember some occasions that were really special.

In the seasons of 2003 and 2004 I hunted deer (or was taught how to hunt deer) with my friend Bob Scott at his place in D Avenue, between Kalamazoo and Gobbles. I told the story about the 2003 hunt in my book “A Wild Beast at Heart”, in the chapter “Opening Day”.

I just can’t remember where I hunted in 2005, but that is probably when Bob took me bow hunting a couple times. I was immature enough to blow a chance at a nice eight pointer that Bob shot later on the same day, and also moved to hastily and spoke several does at dusk on another day when I was on a tree stand for the first time.

Soon after that Bob and Pam sold their “D Avenue” home and acreage and moved into town, and suddenly we no longer had access to a property were to hunt.

During the summer of 2006 my son Daniel and his friend Ryan discovered the “secret pond”, which is formed by the Whisky Run creek, and could be reached by foot from our subdivision. As I knew that it was located in private property, I escorted the boys to the home of the owner and told them to ask permission to visit the no so secret pond.

When deer season was around the corner, I went back to the same farmer and asked if I could have permission to hunt his property, or even if I could lease the hunting rights for a portion of it. After much talking he gave permission to hunt the Northwest corner of his property that comprises a corn field by the road, small woods and a swamp.

I took opening day, a Wednesday, off work, and by o’ dark thirty I left home for the three minutes drive to my new hunting grounds. I set a camping chair by a fence among bushes and started long wait for first light.

In the morning there were song birds of all types, but no deer, and at around 11:30 AM I went back home for lunch with my wife. Just as I got on the road I doe crossed it. After lunch I watched “La Dolce Vita”, the fantastic 1960 Federico Fellini movie staring Marcello Mastroianni and the gorgeous Anita Ekberg. After the rather sad ending, I returned to my hunting post.

After a lot more bird watching, when dusk came and I was getting ready to leave, I saw a beautiful eight or maybe ten point buck and had a terrible case of buck fever. The problem is that besides all my trembling, that buck was looking straight at me from seventy or eighty yards away.

I took a hasty shot; the buck jumped the fence and disappeared in the swamp never to be seen by me again. I looked a lot for blood, but the shot was a clear miss.

On Saturday I went back to the same spot, and continue to watch birds. This time a group of does came from behind me by mid morning. The wind was on my face and they soon scented me and got hell out of Dodge.

On Sunday I relocated my chair to try to spot the does before they could scent me, but they came by a different path, and although I could see them coming I never had a shot before they spooked.

This was becoming an intriguing game of wits.

During the week I had to work, and on Thanksgiving Day we went to Holland, Michigan, to visit with our friends Clóvis and Sandra. As we were leaving the sky was clear and stars were everywhere, I the air carried a cool bite. I sensed a frost for the next morning, and confidently told our friends that I would shoot a deer the next morning.

As the family left for “Black Friday” I left for my usual sitting place and found that the corn had been picked. I relocated my chair to have a better view of the swamp and the “doe highway”, and started the wait. This time the group of does came at the outer edge of the swamp, and when they were about thirty yards from me, there was a loud snort and took of running. Immediately I left my chair and found cover behind some bushes.

They went up a slope and most of them disappeared behind it, but the largest doe turned back and started stumping its front paws while trying to locate me. There was just enough ground behind her, to make an uphill shot safe, so I placed the crosshairs of my scope at her chest and let go a Lightfield slug.

It was like hitting a toy with a sledge hammer. The doe flipped backwards, and disappeared in the corn stubbles. I quickly came looking for her and found a very large and fat doe, very dead on the spot she was hit.

I paced the distance back to the bush that I hid behind and counted about ninety yards. No bad for an off-hand shot.

After field dressing the doe I took her home and waited for my family to come home. The only pictures that I have are completed out of focus, courtesy of the bad mood that my teenager daughter was in.

While butchering the doe I found the lead slug resting against the hip bones.

After eating all the venison, the only trophies that I have from this hunt are two out of focus photos and the memories of the great chess game those does and I played. This again proves that antlers or horns are not required to make a hunt successful.