****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
This author has a great writing style with many stories I could identify with as I also grew up as a youngster hunting in Central Maine. This book helps explain the deep camaraderie known among longtime hunting partners. The short story below captures the same sort of friendships, family history, and love of the outdoors that Mr. Bennett has so beautifully captured and related in his beautifully written book. From... a Field and Stream magazine...Why We Love Deer Campby David PezalTechnically, a deer camp is any place where a group of people congregate to hunt deer. I've been in a great many of them, starting in 1968, ranging from a dilapidated canvas tent in New York's Adirondacks to a trophy whitetail establishment in south Texas that was more like a sheik's villa in Brunei. Let me describe a real deer camp for you so you can see why it is what is and why deer hunters keep coming back to it, season after season.It's in Northern Maine, just a few miles south of the Maine-Quebec Border, very, very far from tourist Maine. This is hard country... too rocky to grow anything, too cold for too much of the year for most people to stay. In November the skies turn grey and stay that way until May. It's the Great North Woords, pines and birches and hemlocks that extend all the way through Canada until you reach the tundra.Deer season in rural Maine has the same effect on daily existence as the World Series did in America. Life doesn't exactly stop, but it certainly changes for a while. The most interesting thing around is found in the local general store --- a blackboard listing who got what, where, how, how much it weighed, and how many points it had.In Maine, they pronounce the word "dee-ah", and if you get a whitetail in this part of the world, you have got yourself a deer no matter how you say it. This far North, high body mass equals survival as the deer grow huge. If you look at the weights on the blackboard, you'll many poundages that exceed 200, and some that hit 300 or more.The antlers are neither particularly big nor particularly handsome, but when you look at the meat pole and you can see something hanging head down that is big enough to pull a plow, who cares.You drive to the camp on logging roads, a combination of potholes, mud, dust, and puddles so deep that they come up to you rocker panels. It's a half hour off a paved road. There are no power lines, and no planes in the sky. Not much can live here. The deer are scarce in the best of times, and an extended winter takes a terrible toll. Moose are probably more numerous than deer --- they do better in the deep snow. There are grouse, and big coyotes that interbred with wolves, and black bears, and beaver, but not much elseThe camp was, for many years, a resort that catered to hunters and fishermen, but a few years back, it was bought by a wealthy individual to entertain his friends. After the resort was sold, some of the past guests --- a group of regulars who had hunted there every year during the third week of November--- got together with the former owners, and together they convinced the current owner to open the camp for that one week.These men, ten in most years, are cut from the same bolt of cloth. They are all New Englanders and all lifelong deer hunters. Most are retired, or close to it. They come up here for seven days of hunting to get up at 4:30 in the morning, freeze, fight to keep from falling asleep on the tree stand (-try it when you are 70) and maybe shoot a deer.I say "maybe" because the odds of killing a deer here are not high. One of these men went 13 years without filling his tag. If there are three deer on the pole at the end of the week, it's been a good week. Two years ago, after a frightful winter and spring, not one person saw a single deer in the entire seven days.Most of the men live long distances apart, and all the contact they have in the 51 weeks between seasons is a couple of emails. But they all come back. They come back because they get to spend a week in the woods, and not shave, and argue, and share in one another's successes and failures. They come back because of the unspoken acknowledgement that for any of them, for any number of reasons, this may be his last season.The cover story in this magazine this month is about developing skills and outwitting a buck on its own turf. And that's fine; in fact, that's terrific. But that's only part of why you come to deer camp.The 10 men who congregate in Maine each November know the real reason. It's the same thing that draws war veterans or college classmates together after they've parted. It's shared experience, and a brand of friendship that occurs nowhere else.You'll understand what I a talking about when you're hauling your duffel bag out of the pickup and a fellow whom you haven't seen in a year comes up to you, unable to hide the joy on his face, and says:"How the hell are you, you old son-of-a-bitch?"
