Interesting story from the KC Star,

Grandfather’s deer permit from 1933 is treasured keepsake



$1.50 for the tag. But that was a lot of money then.

Would have been a better keepsake if it had grandpa's bloody fingerprints on it and was tied to the antlers of the buck he shot.



We probably don't have too many guys (if any) on this forum who deer hunted in 1933. But I remember hearing all the stories from the old fellas I knew as a youngster. When I started deer hunting at 12 in 1977 some of the guys who could remember hunting in 1933 weren't all that much older then than I am now. Learned a lot from those Depression era folks, most are long dead but I really miss them.

For a lot of them, the game they took as kids was the primary meat the family ate in those times. Lot's of rabbits, fried in bacon grease kept in the coffee can above the stove. And 40 years later they did the same thing with the rabbits I'd give them.

That story brings back memories for me, of hunting with my grandfather! Thank you!

My Dad killed a lot deer during the depression but don't know how many lics he brought.

My father is gone now, but I remember him telling me about his boyhood friend shooting the first deer my father ever saw. As Dad told it, the deer had been imported into Robertson county Texas back in the late '30s. He and his friend were out poking around in the woods when they came upon a doe. My dad's friend supposedly tried to "scare the deer" and it fell. Dad told me he had never been that scared before or since...

My dad does not hunt anymore but he would have been hunting in 1933. I doubt that he bought any tags.

My grandfather and his friends started hunting in northern Wisconsin back in the mid-1930's. In those days they set up a wall tent with a dirt floor. The stove was an old iron kitchen stove that they hid and left in the woods at their campsite after hunting was done each year. For beds they cut balsam boughs which they piled on the ground and covered with blankets. The would take a whole hog along and make "pork chops" each day. Only bucks were allowed in those days and they generally took several.
In 1940 my grandfather bought a 40 on a high spot in a balsam and cedar swamp a little closer to his home for $500, along with a right-of-way through a farmers pasture. My family hunted there until shortly before my grandfather's death in 1998. We had a 16x20 foot cabin with a lean-to kitchen, indoor handpump and outhouse.
When he bought the land it had recently been logged (primarily the hemlock that took over after the white pine logging of the 1870's and 1880's) and there were many deer in the new growth. By the time I began hunting up there in 1972 deer were very few and far between. (The first buck I ever saw while hunting up there was in 1979, an eight-pointer that I shot on Opening Day. I surprised my dad by flying home from college that year to go hunting, after telling him I just couldn't afford to.)

I grew up in Milwaukee and going up north to hunt deer at The Buckshack was the highpoint of my year as a kid, much bigger than Christmas. Sometimes we would go up in the summer. The mosquitoes were a nightmare, but the smell of the balsams is still in my nose whenever I think of it.

After my grandfather died we had to abandon the place. (He insisted on selling it to the DNR instead of it staying in the family-- long sad story.) A few weeks after the funeral my dad, one of his brothers and I went up to clear out of the cabin a few things that we wanted. I have the rocking chairs and one of the bunk beds in a room in my basement I have fixed up as The Buckshack, along with some of the dishes.

This weekend when family gather at my home to hunt on Opening Day, my nephew will sleep in that bunk. Saturday after the skinning is done (we have a lot of deer on the property I hunt near my home) we will sit around during and after dinner, my sons, my nephew, my brother and I, and re-tell some of the stories my grandfather told about hunting in the old days.
It is still one of the highpoints of my year.

That is a great story, sdirks.

I hunt at a camp in The Adirondacks that belongs to a friend of mine. Aside from the hunting itself, the most fun is listening to the three generations that hunt there.

Great stories going back to when it was first built in 1929.

Phil--

Glad you enjoyed it. I hope you have a good deer season, with lots of deer, lots of companionship and lots of stories!

Scott