He better be whistling about a deer, I thought, when I heard my dad’s distinct whistle coming from somewhere outside my hunting blind.

Pop whistled again, up the hill behind me, and I knew he was ready to quit hunting early. But there was still plenty of shooting light, lots of it. And now he wanted to leave?  Are you crazy? No way we’re leaving, Old Man. No way.

Arm-twisting

 Convincing my dad to hunt with me that afternoon, on Saturday January 8, had seemed like a small miracle. Pop likes to hunt on the 20-acre tract behind his home, where he can walk five minutes then hunt, then walk back to a warm house, and to Ma Davis.

He has also endured a frustrating deer season. We have yet to figure out when and how those Terza deer move in and out of those Davis pines, and Pop and I have gone several seasons without bringing home something brown. I have seen only one deer, a doe, this year. He had yet to see even one.

So I had to do some creative talking to convince the old man to ride with me that day to a friend’s home for an afternoon hunt.

“Where is it?” Pop asked.

“It’s south, down 51,” I said, which was true. You can reach Tallahatchie County by driving south down Highway 51.

“How far?” he asked.

“Not far. Fifteen minutes.” That is also true, if we were driving in a Lamborghini to deer hunt.

To really lasso the old man, I lobbied Ma Davis to mention to Pa Davis how much his deer-hunting son wanted to go hunting with his dad. That was true, too: the season had almost passed us by, and I had a really promising location for us to hunt.  I just needed to convince Pop to take a chance.

The woodsman

It had not always been like that. Not too many years ago, Pop would religiously scout and deer hunt around Enid Lake, in a tract of steep hills and long hollows that he mapped out in his head.

To really grasp this unfolding story, you have to understand Pop, and understand me, and the last twenty years of Davis family hunting. When I was growing up, Pop was the woodsman. I was not.

Bill Davis can walk through a hollow of dry leaves, and snake through a wall of briars, without making a sound or shaking a leaf. When I walked through the woods, it sounded like someone had tied a 12-piece set of Paula Deen pots and pans to both my legs.

Pop also has an uncanny sense of direction. A long-running joke in the Davis family is that he can take you to the tree where he shot the first squirrel seven years ago, then the second and the third.

When we deer hunted, Pop could sit under a tree, in a cold January morning, for four hours. I lasted until eight o’clock, lured by a warm truck, and a can of Viennas and some Ritz crackers.

Squirrel hunting didn’t fare much better. I would search the trees in vain for my first squirrel, when in the next hollow the woods would ring with the pop, pop, pop of Pop’s .22 rifle. It was frustrating to be me, but at the same time I was impressed with my dad, a proven woodsman.  

The deer hunting eventually moved behind Ma and Pa’s home in the Terza community, where the deer hunting has been fair at best. But it was our own little place, and over time the old-school deer hunter saw his son introduce alien concepts such as the “ladder stand,” the “food plot,” and the “shooting lane.” More recently, Pop was introduced to the “shooting house.”

The shooting house

Pop has said for a while that he gets cold very easily. It’s the thin blood from a man who turns 62 this week. The heart medication to keep the blood thin doesn’t help.

To fight the cold weather, I convinced Pop to build himself a shooting house. It was a foreign idea to a man whose idea of comfort is a bucket turned upside down. But eventually he gave in.

I suspect he was persuaded after I built my own, seeing for himself that four walls knock off the winter wind better than a homemade ladder stand. I also assured him that a shooting house, even with open windows like mine, traps his scent better than sitting in the open.

How Pop built his own shooting house is a story, too. We had built a deer stand that resembled a tree house and Pop figured it would make a good shooting house once on the ground. But we had to get it on the ground first. To bring it down safely, Pop tried to jack it up and brace it, but the floor was too high and the lumber was too short. What to do? What to do?

“Let me get the chainsaw,” Pop said, and he cranked up the old reliable Poulan, whacked at the tree house legs, and we took off running. Down came his brand-new shooting house, mostly intact.  

To help keep the old man warm in his new shooting house, I purchased a Coleman heater that is now ready to help warm that thin blood. I also gave him a pair of camouflage coveralls for Christmas.

‘This is primetime’

When Pop whistled the second time, I unzipped the blind and stepped out, leaving my backpack inside the blind as well as any thought that I was leaving that early. I took I few steps up the hill then waved at him stiff-armed like a policeman directing traffic.  

Down the hill he came, leaving his deer rifle propped against a fence post. I pointed toward the blind and Pop followed me inside.

 “Pop, there’s twenty minutes of shooting light left,” I whispered. “It’s not a long time, but it’s the best time to be watching.”  

 “My blind was in a bad spot,” he explained. “I couldn’t see anything so I was ready to go.”

“Well, this is a good spot,” I told him. “This is primetime to watch this pond and we’re not going anywhere until we can’t see water.”  

I pointed to the pond levee seventy yards in front of us, where my friend Rick had seen several rubs. Beyond the pond I pointed out a hillside where a deer could walk on the edge of the woods. Then I showed Pop the little draw twenty yards to our left, a low patch of woods and briars that would allow a deer to quietly move toward the pond. To our right, a set of woods also served as a natural funnel toward the pond, but they were too thick to see. The pond itself sat thirty yards in front of us.     

Fewer than five minutes later, I heard the leaves crunch behind us, in the little draw. Then I heard them crunch again.

“Did you hear that?” I asked.

Pop shook his head.

“You didn’t?”

He shook his head again.

Maybe he was right. The least little wind moved that blind to and fro, and its fabric sounded like a herd of hungry squirrels running across the leaves. But then I saw the deer. And horns.

“Buck, buck, buck, buck,” I told Pop, trying my best to whisper. The deer stood in the little draw, not ten yards from our blind. The corner of the blind prevented Pop from seeing what I saw, and by the time he saw the deer my heart had already sunk.

“Four point,” I said. “Too small.”

Pop recalled later that I had instinctively pushed the rifle barrel down, to ensure the little buck walked away, but I don’t remember that.

The little buck had come from our left, walked to the edge of the pond, then walked between us and the water’s edge. It looked at us, or at the blind, then kept moving. I was watching the little draw, hoping for a second buck, and Pop watched the four-point skirt the pond and walk away.

There was still a little bit of light left when we walked back to the four-wheeler.