• Help Support TNDeer:

Deer hunting in the " Old Days "

I also have vivid memories of freezing to death and considering it an accomplishment to stay in the stand until 8. I had a the old cotton long Johns and then piled as many pair of jeans and shirts on top to try and stay warm. I can remember building stands into forked trees and sitting on a 5 gallon bucket. I used a recurve bow and just a regular old bead sighted shotgun with "deer slugs". I often think back and wonder how much more successful I would have been with the equipment I have now.
 
BSK said:
I remember when you had to make reservations a year in advance to get a spot in the local KOA Campground or any of the motels at my freeway exit (143 on I-40). And all of the truck plates in the motels were East TN. Every tree around the Days Inn would have deer hanging in them. Now, you can hardly tell it's deer season at the local motels. Maybe a dozen trucks at the Days Inn that are obviously hunters.
Click to expand...
I made a few trips to Hickman County in the late 70's early 80's. There would be 10 or 12 of us in 3 or 4 pickups. We never stayed in motels or campgrounds. We would take tents and sleeping bags and camp out and hunt on some paper company land. We killed a lot of deer and had a lot of fun even though I did think I was going to freeze to death a time or two trying to sleep in those old tents with no kind of heat.
 
Brings back a lot of memories reading all this...

There were no deer near us in our part of rural west TN (north central Shelby County) when I was a kid in the 60's.. The closest deer herd being in Shelby Forest State Park near the MS River.

The first sign of a deer I can recall seeing was a track in my grand dads garden in Chester County during the mid 60's. One of my uncles spotted it and me and all my cousins were in wonder as we staired at it with visions of the Hartford Elk having been right were we were standing! The adults all surmised it must have wandered over to the farm form nearby Chickasaw State Park.

I started chasing deer in the late 70's as huntable populations had made their way to our area and that of some of my friends who had family farms up in Decatur County.. I remember sitting on tree limbs with my Ben Pearson long bow with arrows tipped off with Satellite broadheads just hoping, and that's all I did was hope. And like others have mentioned, if I got sight of a deer, that made a successful hunt!

Hunting in blue jeans with cotton long johns, flannel shirts, and my brothers camo army jacket (he's a Vietnam era vet) and whatever boots I had at the time with probably 4 pair of socks.. Got so cold one time me and a buddy built a fire after a morning hunt and I set my pants on fire from trying to warm my feet up!

Finally managed to stick a small doe in the late 70's I think it was.. and have been hooked every since.

When muzzleloader seasons came to be, I build me a Hawken rifle from a kit.. patched round balls and fff powder. And still to this day hunt with an open sighted side hammer most of the time although I do own and take out my scoped single shot high powered Knight rifle at times as my old eyes are not as good with irons sights as they need to be..

Now I have retired to my little farm up in middle TN and still have to get out there after them every fall, but not nearly as much as way back then.. Now I pass deer after deer, when I used to be if it's brown it's down, and I sure miss hanging with my hunting buddies from back in the day..

I sure miss those old days..
 
Last edited:
Ya'll sure are bringing back a lot of "old" memories.
I bought my first big game stamp in 1961, it cost me $5 and had a kill tag for deer, turkey, bear and boar. I still have all those kill tags, lol.
I killed my first deer in 64, a spike. I shot him in the neck with a Marlin 336, 30-30. He hit the ground right there and I walked up and was standing there looking down at him when he jumped straight up and took off down the side of one of those Jackson Co. hills, straight down. I took off after him running and sliding down the hill, he went about half way down and fell again and I shot him again.
I field dressed him there and was so pumped up I put him on my shoulders and carried him most of the way back up the hill. He might have weighed 75 pounds.
I have been hooked to this day, I have made eight sits so far this season. I am now limited to hunting out of a blind but still love it. I just turned eighty in August.
 
KTS - that is wonderful that you are still hunting at 80.
I'm 73, and hope I will still be hunting at 80.
I have been out for deer 16 days so far this season. Most days I sit in what I call "my local blind". It is a ground blind and is only about a quarter mile from my house. I'm too unsteady on my feet to chance going up in a tree any more.
Several times this season I have gone back into the mountains of the South Cherokee. It is tough terrain to hunt, or even just to hike through. I can still get pretty far into the back country, but if I got a deer back there I doubt I could get it out. The last mountain buck I got was nearly 10 years ago and packing it out took me all day and nearly killed me. ():~).
Last year I took a nice 7 pt. here in my local blind.
Just one deer a year is all I want.
 
First deer I killed was a spike on some public land in White County where I lived in the mid-80's. Strapped that thing on the hood of a bronco and I was more proud of it then if I killed a b&c buck today. Second deer I killed was a 3 point. Strapped it on the hood of my Mazda hatchback. I was by myself. I killed it at first light. I drug it to the road, and a man and his son were already driving out. Asked them to help me load it on the hood. Good ole days. I laughed at a previous post. My hunting partner in the early days convinced me you had to get in the woods at least an hour or more before daylight to let "the woods settle down". Oh I wished I had a dollar for every hour I sat in the woods, in the pitch dark, freezing my butt off, waiting for the woods to settle down:D:D:D:D I finally figured out myself that was a waste of time. It's a wonder we didn't freeze to death back then...I'm pretty sure I about did a few times.
 
BSK said:
I remember when you had to make reservations a year in advance to get a spot in the local KOA Campground or any of the motels at my freeway exit (143 on I-40). And all of the truck plates in the motels were East TN. Every tree around the Days Inn would have deer hanging in them. Now, you can hardly tell it's deer season at the local motels. Maybe a dozen trucks at the Days Inn that are obviously hunters.
Click to expand...
LOL, I was one of those guys, actually just a kid then but we either camped at Bucksnort or Waverly exit in a little pop up cloth camper and froze to death. We couldnt afford a Motel room and looking back im glad. I will never forget those trips and nights camping, only to go hunt overloaded public land with hundreds of other hunters. Boy did I learn a lot through those years however! I had a long conversation with Game warden while he was aging and pulling Lymph nodes from one of our bucks a couple weeks ago. He was telling his college students about starting with TWRA in 1988 and being sent to Giles co. where they had a couple wknd draw hunts to actually shoot a doe with a gun. 2500 hundred permits and not an acre of public property in the county! LOL he said it was a nightmare!
 
Hey, what about the old baker tree stands? I remember my first one, I didn't have a safety belt, I was bowhunting up at LBL. I think half the time I was holding my bow in my left hand and my right arm was wrapped around the back of the tree holding on because I was afraid of heights. LOL
 
I was just talkin to a friend the other day about the old days. I too believed you needed to be in the woods an hour before shooting time. I also thought the deer had mystical powers to pick out a hunter by sight, sound, and smell that would make it almost impossible to see one let alone shoot it. I know now by thousands of deer observations how wrong I was. I get away with a lot that I never thought possible. The county that I killed my first deer in had 33 killed the entire season. The local newspaper listed everyone that killed a deer and what it was. I still have that clipping somewhere.
 
I started taking it seriously in the early 80's. Man it was good times.

High lid hats, see thru scope mounts, red and white box Federal Hi Shok ammo, and BDU camo pants. The smell of gun oil, and sounds of loading up a rifle in the early morning leaving the truck will stay with me. The sound of the old Woods Wise striker grunt call, which still sounds better than anything today IMO.

Just seeing a deer was magical. Killing one made you a hero.

The stuff we did was hilarious. Wearing tarsal glands on our boot laces, Tink's 69 and scrape drippers.

Fun times as a kid.
 
Red fox pee on your boots on the walk in so the deer wouldn't smell you. Best stuff EVER.

killed my first deer ever back in '83. Took me, my Dad, and Grandad the entire weekend to skin and process him. Many saws were involved, flesh and blood slinging everywhere.

Last weekend my Dad was laughing about that story while he watched me process my nephews buck from whole animal to done and in the freezer in 30 minutes.
 
Anybody remember the synthetic skunk cover scent? I think it must have been some time in the 80's. It came in two little containers and when you put a few drops of each together it was "really" potent.
I took it to work with me one time and put a cotton ball in the ac duct work over the control room. I put a couple of drops of each on it, shut the door and took off. I came moseying into the control room a little later and most everybody had evacuated, the ones left were doing some real bad cussing.
Man you would have thought a real live skunk had been in there and sprayed, it was rough.
 
Started in the mid 90's but everything was very different even at that time. Remember using the clear hand warmers where I believe you pushed a metal button and they released a white liquid into the clear liquid. Got hot as hell if I recall but didn't last long.

First trail cameras came along and we all made abunch of money for the film developers, sometimes getting back an envelope of nothing but leaf and squirrel pics. Still have all of those pics. Never would have bet any amount of money that 30 years later there would be cameras that could instantly send a pic of a passing deer to a small handheld phone that would allow you to talk or text from anywhere with a signal.

One of our local check stations took Polaroid pics of all the bucks and turkeys they checked in. For you millennials that was a box looking camera that automatically spit out the picture below it.

Everyone would always stop in to see the pics on the wall. Also recall listening to other hunters on the 2 way radios before cell phones came along.

Agree with everyone about all the bundling up we used to do. I looked more like the Michelin man or ralphie's little brother on a Christmas story because the clothes just weren't very advanced with how warm they kept you so to compensate we just wore more clothes.

Even though I don't shoot near as many deer as back then and only try to shoot bigger deer, still often get the shakes when any deer gets close. Especially after shooting anything with a bow. Even though he said it about turkeys, like tom Kelly said, the day I stop shaking and breathing heavy I'm of no use to anyone or anything anymore.
 
spur necklace 3 said:
Even though I don't shoot near as many deer as back then and only try to shoot bigger deer, still often get the shakes when any deer gets close. Especially after shooting anything with a bow. Even though he said it about turkeys, like tom Kelly said, the day I stop shaking and breathing heavy I'm of no use to anyone or anything anymore.
Click to expand...
Probably about 2004 or so, I was on a juvenile hunt with my son in a metal tower stand. We were overlooking a big food plot cut in a pine plantation. A big group of does walked out. He started shaking so hard I was afraid the deer were going to hear the stand creaking and squeaking. It was great to hear and see him that excited about deer hunting. He finally calmed down enough to pull the trigger on a huge doe.

He is grown and has kids of his own now. Hopefully we will get to pass along some of the shaking to my grandsons.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top