Free hunting trips can turn out pricey
"So I'd only had the ranch open to hunters for about a year before this lady showed up with her husband to hunt," Harley Tucker told the Hunting Club members as he steered his truck down a dirt road. "No one told me she'd never hunted before."
We were on his South Texas ranch by invitation to participate in a free hunt. Doc had grown up with Harley's late father. Hearing through the grapevine that we're between leases, he called Doc and asked us to come cull a deer or two from his managed herd.
"So I put her in one of our best stands before daylight that morning," Harley continued. With his felt hat perched back on his head and a handlebar mustache that would make a walrus envious, he was the perfect Texas game rancher. "I should have known something was up when her husband got out of the truck that morning at her stand, shined his flashlight on the rifle and showed her where the safety was."
Doc rode in the front passenger seat, while Wrong Willie, Woodrow and I filled the back after Harley picked us up at our stands. We were on our way to get Jerry Wayne and Delbert P. Axelrod. Since we were only a few hundred yards from the ranch house, they'd ride in the back.
"I asked him if he needed to stay with her," the rancher continued. "But the husband said they'd been at the range several times over the past month, and though she'd never shot anything other than a target, he was sure she'd handle herself all right.
"Then I offered to come back and stay with her after I dropped him off, but he said no to that. He told me she wanted to hunt alone for the experience."
"There's Jerry Wayne," Doc pointed at the road. With his rifle over his shoulder in the gathering dusk, Jerry Wayne stuck his thumb out as if hitchhiking. We laughed, even though the joke was older than all of our ages added together.
Doc rolled his window down as we pulled up.
"See anything?"
"Nope, just a couple of wide six-pointers that'll be monsters some day," Jerry Wayne said.
"That's why we let them grow up," Harley grinned.
Jerry Wayne slapped the windowsill and went around back to sit on the tailgate. Harley took off slowly.
"I drove up on a ridge and sat there to wait for the sunrise that morning," Harley continued. "It was good shooting light when I heard her fire. It tickled me that she'd gotten a good buck so soon, so I started the truck. Then I heard her make another shot. I figured she had to anchor the buck, so I waited about 10 minutes to give everything time to settle down.
"I was driving slow down the steep ridge road when I heard her fire again. Then I really became concerned. Her husband stepped out on the road as I went by, so I stopped to pick him up. That's when we heard a fourth shot.
"We hurried up to get there, and when we came in sight of her stand, I heard still another shot and saw a good buck go down. He and I started laughing, wondering how a buck could be so stupid as to stand there and let someone shoot at them five times.
"Then trouble came. There was a big eight-point buck lying dead in the middle of the road. We got out, and I was examining him while the wife climbed out of her stand. She was mad, too. She started yelling at her husband that the scope was off and she kept missing."
We laughed, because we had a hunch about what was coming.
"The husband and I had a bad idea about what was coming, too," Harley agreed. "I told him that I hoped he'd brought his checkbook, because he already had two deer on the ground. She kept yelling that she'd shoot, and the deer would just jump and run off.
"Well, the truth is the rifle was just fine. She had five deer on the ground. Three does, one good eight-point and a monster 12. That man wrote me a $25,000 check without batting an eye, and I haven't seen him since."
We laughed and Doc pointed.
"There's Delbert."
We stopped and Doc rolled the window down to hear an excited Delbert.
"Man, I just shot a great four-point!" he said, and then kind of crawfished. "But it was so dark, it might have been a good spike. At least that's what I hope it was. He ran off just a little ways, and I heard him thrashing just past those trees, but I don't have a flashlight."
Harley killed the engine, and we climbed out. Flashlights pierced the gathering darkness.
"You sure it was only a four?" Harley asked. "You know, you buys are hunting for free, and I said culls only."
"Oh, it was a cull all right," Delbert said. "At least I hope it wasn't bigger ...."
He trailed off and then screamed like a little girl when Harley's flashlight lit up the dead deer.
"EEEEEEKKKKK! Nononononono!!!"
Wrong Willie laughed and added his light on the deer.
"Spike? Cull? How many points you counting there Rev?"
"Twelve that I can see," I said. "Two drop tines, too."
"AAAARRRRGGG!" Delbert added to his repertoire.
Harley stared downward.
"Boys, we've been hunting for this buck for over two years."
"Ahhhhhh!" Delbert wept.
"How much?" Doc asked, embarrassed.
Harley shook his head.
"Well, more than you'd think. He was my stud, but I haven't seen him in a long time."
Delbert squatted and rocked back and forth on his heels, making a high, keening noise.
"How many digits in this price?" I asked.
"Five," Harley answered. "Delbert, I hope you brought your checkbook, because you're about to buy me a brand new truck for Christmas."
He didn't get an answer, because Delbert had passed smooth out.
• Reavis Wortham's e-mail address is r.wortham@tx.rr.com.
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