Growing up, I never did the camp thing. During summer vacation, there was too much baseball to be played, and the thought of anything interfering with the annual visit to my grandparents’ farm was one that never entered my mind.
My kids have gone in the other direction. Every summer, it’s church camp, Boy Scout camp, weekend camps for the Girl Scouts. Even the carrot on the end of the stick waved in front of my son is camp-related. A week at Mark Richt’s football camp awaits the flat-footed JV fullback who gets the correct mixture of A’s and B’s on the report card.
The closest I came to camp as a kid was when I was 13. Dad packed up a handful of kids from our church basketball team and hauled us to Campbell College for a camp that featured Pete Maravich. I felt sick after an hour. I was running a fever by supper time. Dad picked me up from the infirmary the next day. The doctor said it was strep throat. I think it was anti-camp fever.
Finally, in middle age, I have gotten it. When November arrives, I start marking days off the calendar until I leave for deer camp. I haven’t broken it to him yet, but when the flat-footed fullback is on the varsity next year, if his team makes the state playoffs and the season stretches on toward Thanksgiving, it will stretch on without me — for at least one Friday night.
Deer camp cranked up 20 years ago, in the farm house where my father grew up. The couple renting the place left, and my uncle decided to leave it empty. He turned the front bedroom into an office and filled the den with bunk beds. Dad and a handful of hunting buddies filled it for two weeks every November.
Work and a house full of kids kept me occupied for the first 10 years. There was a telephone on site, and I could call and get daily reports on who had killed which 8-point buck and where.
When the flat-footed fullback finally reached school age, I was able to join them. Now, I pack the truck and make the long drive. I can’t wait to see Smitty, Sam or Dad’s other friends. Taz makes the drive with me most years, and the flat-footed fullback has missed a day or two of school the past three years to help eat the quail, Venison chili, porcupine stew and fried fish that is regular fare.
I know I don’t go for the food, because I eat well at home. I figure it’s part of the camaraderie thing. It’s the chill that runs up my spine when I hear a shot, then wait for the walkie-talkie to crackle and inform us who has profited from a big buck’s fatal mistake.
We help winch the deer up to the big limb on the chinaberry tree behind the smokehouse and reduce him to hams, shoulders, backstrap and tenderloin. It isn’t work; it’s more of a joyful act.
At morning, noon and night, around the breakfast, lunch and dinner table, we try to figure out what’s going on in the deer world, discuss which stands we ought to hunt, and trade barbs about bad haircuts or bad shooting.
Last year, I got the word at deer camp that the job I’d held for 28 years had been eliminated. It was one of the few environments in which I could have handled the news that I was four days past my 50th birthday and suddenly unemployed. My support group was assembled, and there was a big 8-point buck with my name on him. We winched him up and butchered him the next morning. It didn’t solve all my problems, but it took some of the sting out of them.
Did I mention how much I love going to camp these days?
Be the first to comment