Henry's and Winchesters and Me and Jackson

Yesterday was “Constitution Amendments Election Day” here in Texas. All seven proposed amendments passed, including a very redundant one that guarantees Texans the now “constitutional” right to hunt and fish. Duh. Yea, it caused a lot of people to wonder just what we’ve been doing for the past 200 years.

The white tails and bass tried to launch a “Vote No” campaign, sort of like the cows that promote the Chick Filet fast food joints, but it never got much traction. I mean, who listens to ghost-like deer and invisible bass who only surface when caught? And Texans don’t much go in for whiners, even those with fins and hooves. If the antlered ones and the big-mouth fishies can’t take care of themselves, then maybe they deserve to get the hook or the arrowhead or a chunk of lead between their shoulder blades.

Is there a link here to my Civil War novels? Of course, even if tenuous.  The photo is me in November of 1964 with my first, and biggest, deer trophy, hunted on my granddaddy’s (who we called Daddy Todd) deer lease near the Trinity River bottoms in East Texas.

It was 51 years ago this month, but I can still vividly remember that a running doe broke into the clearing where my tree stand covered the game trails that crisscrossed the clearing, a rare open space surrounded by thick woods. Sensing the doe had a good reason to be running, I aimed my rifle where she had left the trees. Sure enough, just a few seconds later, here came this big-rack buck hot after her. I shot. I missed. I cussed in my best 15-year-old manner. I levered a new shell into the barrel and put the rifle on half-cock and waited.  I probably was shaking like a leaf in the wind.

Half an hour later, a contented looking doe wandered at a slow grazing pace into the clearing. Again, being the brilliant teenage hunter, and at 15, was learning how stupid, horny males of any species can be, I cocked and aimed behind her again. By damn if a big-rack buck didn’t mosey into the clearing.  I waited for him to stand still, and then I put the sight on his upper shoulder and squeezed off the shot. Bingo.  

I was one proud puppy when Daddy Todd walked up an hour later, after a fruitless morning in his deer stand. I led him to where my trophy had fallen, and he said something profound like, “Damn, Phil, not bad.”  We dragged the warm carcass to the closest place he could get his Dodge four-door sedan. We somehow levered it into the trunk, and hauled it to the deer camp where we hung and field dressed it. That was bloody business, but heck, I was floating, and if I was up to my elbows in blood and gore, so much the better.

The ten-point rack was mounted by my other granddad, and it’s still on a shelf in my garage.

I was using Daddy Todd’s new Winchester 30-30, Model 94, with open sights, the same rifle I’m holding in the picture. 

The Civil War link is that the old Winchester lever action was the child of the Henry repeating rifles used by some lucky Union regiments during the Civil War. First came single-shot breech loading rifles and carbines that could be loaded quickly without standing. They were bad enough for the Rebs to face. But, repeaters were the bane of the Confederacy. Luckily for the Rebs, only 3,200 of the 17-shot Henry repeaters were made before the war ended.

I’ve not hunted for nearly thirty years now. I still have a good deer rifle, not the Winchester, though. I guess my uncle got that when Daddy Todd passed on. I never took my two sons deer hunting. Between the cost involved in guns, gear, and deer leases, and their involvement in fall sports and Boy Scouts, it just didn’t happen. I regret that. But, both grown sons have shot the Civil War muskets at targets, and know the feel of a long-arm’s kick, the smell of burning gunpowder, and the thrill of seeing a hole near the center of paper target. That’s OK, too.

Nonetheless, in just fourteen years, little Jackson will be old enough to handle a rifle. If I can just stay on the green side of the grass, his Granddaddy Phil will be a spry eighty. That seems just the right age to put a teenage boy in a deer stand and leave him alone with a Winchester, patience, and dreams of a trophy buck. Who knows, he might get lucky. It's happened before.