‘Poor Bull’ Firearms Deer Season

The draggers getting ready to "read us a page from the Good Book."
Kyle and Troy dragging the 500 pound doe with Dale and Alex adding to the effort.

In mountain man speak, for me antler hunting during firearms deer season 2010 was ‘poor bull, sure.’ ‘Poor bull’ was bad times for a mountain man as opposed to ‘fat cow.’ And to know ‘poor bull from fat cow’ was to know what was what - what was bad and what was good. According to the Missouri Department of Conservation the firearms harvest for 2010 was off about 5,000 compared to last year. Lucky for us my boy Alex is a ‘keener’, or exceptional marksman, and got us started off during youth season or, according to native Ozark mountain man language, we’d have ‘grease hunger’ but empty ‘meat bags’, - meaning hungry for meat but empty stomachs. Thank goodness we still have archery season through January 15th and smoke pole season from December 18th through the 28th. You can bet since you can’t eat antlers we’ll be strictly ‘making meat’ or meat hunting and laying in a good store of meat for all remaining deer hunting seasons this year.

This year, prior to opening weekend I ‘cut for sign,’ meaning, in mountain man terms, to walk back and forth across an area looking for evidence of a man or animal, in this case a deer, passing through. Deer sign was plainly evident to the experienced ‘bossloper’, or hunter, throughout the area in Ozarks where we hunt. Opening weekend the deer were moving fairly well but we were hunting wall-hangers instead of meat and so we didn’t ‘throw smoke,’ or fire a gun, all weekend.

During the week of firearms season my hunting highlight was Wednesday when I saw 3 bucks – a couple of 4 pointers and a spike, and 9 does. Still horn hunting however, I never fired a shot. One humorous highlight to our hunting forays for the week was when my good friend Dale Head’s son, Kyle took a doe about 3/4 mile from the nearest road. He learned a valuable ‘green hand’ lesson that day – never shoot a doe over a few hundred yards from the road. The first 100 yards Dale and I ‘heft’, or lifted and felt the wait of the doe as we drug her down the hill and across the fence. As soon as the descent changed to ascent we decided we would turn over the dragging chore to the hunter. So, Kyle and our other hunting compadre, Troy Oppelt, began the long drag up the ridge. About 100 yards into the long drag, from behind the two I motioned for Dale to ‘Indian up’ or sneak, and grab one of the deer’s front legs and “help out” the draggers so that they would get a better workout. You know me, always concerned about someone’s well being. Apparently Dale was concerned too because he immediately complied as he picked up a front leg and began to add resistance. The two draggers never looked back and kept on walking and talking as we headed up the ridge. Dale, Alex, and I followed behind laughing quietly and hysterically the whole way. It had warmed up considerably from the early morning and we all still had on many layers of clothing. Finally, after several hundred yards Troy wiped his brow and said, “Wow, I’ve got to rest. I’m burning up and this thing weighs a ton!” I didn’t know if they would ‘get their bristles up’ and ‘read us a page from the Good Book’, which in mountain man ‘palaver’ meant to get angry and give us a tongue lashing but we could hold our laughter no longer and we burst out laughing. Needless to say we had to walk in front of them the rest of the way to the truck!

Kyle’s deer was one of only a very few our party harvested. As was reported in many Missouri hunting periodicals, the mast crop was plentiful this year and that combined with the full moon the second half of season and the lack of ‘crimpy days’ in mountain man talk, or very cold days, was another factor in the decrease in harvest this year. Judging by the amount of game we saw the last 4 days of season the deer seemed to be ‘gone beaver,’ which means dead and gone for some time. The weather was perfect but the game was not cooperating. If ‘Aux Aliments Du Pays’ or nourishment from the land, was still the only means for food then our ‘grub’ would’ve been as thin as track soup.

In closing, if you want to keep deer hunting this year, mountain man ‘palaver’ would say any ‘Hiveranno,’ or experienced mountain man, with ‘hair of the bear’ should pack ‘Du Pont’ and ‘galena pills’, or powder and ball in your ‘possibles bag’ making ready for muzzleloader season. The only soup thinner than track soup is powderless Big 50 soup, or getting to the woods with your 50 caliber muzzleloader with no powder – now that’s some powerful thin soup and ‘poor bull, sure’! So says the One-Eyed Hillbilly.



Greg Stephens is a 35-year veteran & life-time student of the great outdoors. His column appears weekly in print & online publications. You can email him at gregstephens@one-eyedhillbilly.com. For more columns go to www.one-eyedhillbilly.blogspot.com.