This was a story I submitted to the TTHA that was published a while back and edited down significantly.
Late Start
by Art Griepp
I grew up in the middle class suburbs of Houston, Texas but my father was born in rural South Dakota – two very different experiences. Dad, growing up on a farm during the Great Depression and Dust Bowl years made for a meager existence, although he never saw himself as poor. By farming, ranching and the grace of God, the family of 11 was provided with all their needs. Leisure time was a luxury, and hunting was more about provisioning than it was a hobby.
By the time I came around (in 1968, the youngest of five children) the subsistence experience of his formative years was well in his past. He never expressed much desire for hunting in his adult years and now, living so far removed from the open spaces of his youth, I don’t think he ever intended to pursue it again.
Dad tells the story of a time in the early 1960s when he took my older brother gopher hunting on his dad’s farm. As anyone who grazes cattle will tell you, gophers need to be shot to prevent livestock from breaking their legs in gopher holes. At any rate, as a young lad my brother didn’t have that perspective. Seeing Dad put an end to one of the little critters, my brother turned to him and said, “I guess God doesn’t love gophers, does He, Daddy?” As a caring father and an ordained minister, that struck him pretty hard and ended their hunt.
Despite not growing up in a hunting family I was nevertheless captivated with the idea of being a hunter. I think the spark that ignited that primal urge happened before the age of 10 one particular Sunday afternoon. The home of a deacon of the church where my father pastored was surrounded by a patch of woods, just the sort of place a young boy could find adventure. He handed me an old wooden stocked Crossman air rifle and tube of BBs. I don’t think I even got a safety lesson before he sent me out to entertain myself. Those were the days when it was still okay to let kids learn hard lessons by their own stupidity. To his credit, I don’t remember Dad protesting in the least. Mom on the other hand, being a city girl, had to be convinced I wouldn’t shoot my eye out! Soon after I managed to convince my folks to buy me a Crossman of my own. I still own it, though the barrel is shot out and it no longer holds air. Besides a rescued beagle mix named Butch, that air rifle was my most faithful companion.
Only a few hundred yards from our suburban home was a bayou, and every manner of critter was likely to succumb to my well-practiced aim. Much to the chagrin of my mother, many birds and a few squirrels also fell victim from the second story balcony of that same home. I was a crack shot, though not the safest nor the most disciplined marksman. I even shot poor Butch once when he attacked the milk jug target I had taken a bead on. That haunts me to this day to think about. The BB didn’t puncture deep and he was no worse for wear, but it scared me terribly and taught me to be much more careful from then on.
In my early teens I really started becoming aware of my dream to hunt whitetail; but not having friends or family that hunted, and not having access to land, it remained only that, a dream. Around that time Dad was invited by a pastor friend to go hunting. I remember thinking it might be the first of many invites that could possibly include me some day. Instead, my dad was exasperated by the experience. He said, “He stuck me up in a tree all day long; that’s not hunting!” You can imagine that hunting in East Texas and hunting in South Dakota are exactly as similar as their geography, which is to say, not at all similar; and being East Texas in the 1970s, it was no great surprise they didn’t have success.
My first taste of venison also came in my early teen years. The church bought a couple acres and moved an old office building on to it to serve as a sanctuary. You wouldn’t believe deer could exist within fifty miles of that area to look at it today, but back then they were still eking out a living in spite of urban sprawl. Dad arrived on the property one morning to find a doe had managed to get her head caught in the field fence and flipped her body over the fence in her struggling. It was obvious she wouldn’t make it, so Dad called the sheriff who came out and agreed the humane thing to do was to put her down. The sheriff began to draw his revolver, but Dad stopped him insisting he would spoil too much meat, so Dad did the job himself with the decisive blow of a hammer. He brought her back to our home to process her himself. I found a Boy Scout manual that gave some basic instructions on how to tan the hide. I stretched, scraped, and salted the hide but I never did manage to get it soft. I eventually had to throw it away, but the experience added fuel to my dream of one day harvesting a deer for myself.
After much pestering on my part I succeeded in getting Dad to take my brother and me hunting. Another church member had a cabin in East Texas and agreed to let us use it. We brandished shotguns with buckshot, fanned out, and walked around the Big Thicket. My brother claims he saw a deer that apparently didn’t have the good sense to fear for his life, so he chased him off to make sure he didn’t get shot. To my dad’s chagrin when we had given up on taking a deer, I shot a bird out of a tree just to fulfill my bloodlust.
After high school I attended Sam Houston State University which is situated close to the national forest. I bought a Bear “Pronghorn Hunter” compound bow and taught myself to shoot it pretty well. Not having anyone to pass on to me any of the required skills or knowledge to be a successful hunter, my attempts at hunting public land amounted to nothing more than a series of pleasant walks through the woods.
Lacking scholarly discipline, I eventually dropped out of college and headed to the Marine recruiter’s office. As it happened, he was out to lunch but his neighbor the Navy recruiter was all too happy to see me coming. After my four years in the service I went back to college and earned my degree in aviation maintenance. I eventually ended up working for a major airline in Tulsa, Oklahoma where I became good friends with George, a mechanic who grew up hunting deer in Utah. George taught me the basics of hunting and we made several trips to public land to put them into practice. This was the first time someone besides myself took an interest in my dream. Had I stayed in Tulsa for more than that single year I’m sure I would eventually have found hunting success there, but work brought me back to Texas and the dream began to fade.
Several years and a couple of address changes later, I landed in Mansfield, Texas. Although my aspiration to be a deer hunter remained unrealized, I had over the years accumulated a lot of hunting paraphernalia as we deer hunters tend to do. When it came time for a garage sale at my new residence, I felt it was time to let it all go. After all, it wasn’t doing me any good. The dream was all but dead, taking a backseat to career and raising a family. John, a neighbor I hadn’t yet met, came to my garage sale. Seeing all the hunting junk, he immediately struck up a conversation on the subject. He was quite a storyteller, and when it was my turn to reciprocate, I admitted to my shame I had never taken a deer.
Oh, the humiliation. We’ve only just met, and he already knows I’m less of a man… a deer hunting failure.
But instead of mockery or derision the very next words out of his mouth were, “We’re going to fix that this year.”
What? Could it be? I tried to play it cool, but I could barely contain myself. I was on pins and needles. That next fall couldn’t come fast enough. The date was set for Thanksgiving weekend. Before I left my houseful of guests for the 4½ hour drive to Medina County where John had a lease, my four-year-old daughter left me with the words, “Get a Big One, Daddy.” To this day my deer season doesn’t officially start until I hear that refrain from my now grown daughter. She did have her concerns, however. She wanted to be sure I wasn’t going to kill ALL the reindeer. After all, Christmas was just around the corner and Santa still needed a few!
In retrospect the hunt itself was little more than a formality, but for a grown man fulfilling a lifelong dream it was pure magic. After setting up camp John pointed me down a path and told me to follow the power line to the second pole where I’d find a box blind. He painted the picture for me: “There is a feeder about 50 yards in front of that, and when the sun starts to get low the deer will come out to feed.” And his parting advice, “Take your First Available Good Shot.” He used the less politically correct acronym, of course.
It happened just exactly as he predicted. The first and only deer I saw was a yearling basket rack six that probably weighed 60 lbs., but buck fever still managed to send me into a panic. In my exuberance to grab the 270 Winchester leaning in the corner, I jammed the barrel hard into the roof of the blind. In the stillness it might as well have been the thunderclap of a lightning strike, but the little buck barely noticed and quickly settled back to grazing a mere 30 yards in front of me. I was certain he would see me shaking with adrenaline and bolt for cover, leaving me once again and forever “deer-less.” I sat as motionless as I could manage until he finally stepped behind a bit of brush before I got up the nerve to slowly ease the gun out the window. I waited an eternity (at least a couple of seconds) for the barest bit of his front shoulder to peek out before I yanked on the trigger. I must have closed my eyes because the next thing I remember he was on the ground right where he had stood.
At last, I had done it and I could hardly wait to put my hands on this trophy of a lifetime. I called John to share the news and he told me to stay put since every hunter knows the best hunting is that magical last fifteen minutes of light. This order I promptly ignored. Loss of camera light wasn’t going to make me miss out on getting a picture with my deer right where he lay, so I climbed out of the blind lugging the chair with me because I didn’t have a tripod for my camera. And while a picture is good… a full shoulder mount is better! It could have been a doe, but I had already determined it was destined for the taxidermist. Not all trophies are measured in inches, and while someday I hope to harvest a buck worthy to be called trophy by TTHA standards, I have killed a few decent bucks and managed to put meat in my freezer every year since.
I eventually found a way to turn my passion for hunting into a small business in the hunting market as the inventor of T-Mate® the “T” post game camera mount. TTHA has been a great help in growing that business to the point that it makes the land payment on my own little West Texas hunting property.
We often hear the refrain, “Take a kid hunting to help grow and preserve this legacy for future generations.” I got too late of a start to get my own kid immersed in the hunting lifestyle but maybe there is hope for a grandkid hunting buddy someday. I hope dads will take their kids hunting; but don’t overlook that 35-year-old “kid at heart” that might be your new neighbor having a garage sale.
P.S. Two years ago my now 88-year-old dad and I shared his first ever dove hunt.
He shot a limit.
by Art Griepp
I grew up in the middle class suburbs of Houston, Texas but my father was born in rural South Dakota – two very different experiences. Dad, growing up on a farm during the Great Depression and Dust Bowl years made for a meager existence, although he never saw himself as poor. By farming, ranching and the grace of God, the family of 11 was provided with all their needs. Leisure time was a luxury, and hunting was more about provisioning than it was a hobby.
By the time I came around (in 1968, the youngest of five children) the subsistence experience of his formative years was well in his past. He never expressed much desire for hunting in his adult years and now, living so far removed from the open spaces of his youth, I don’t think he ever intended to pursue it again.
Dad tells the story of a time in the early 1960s when he took my older brother gopher hunting on his dad’s farm. As anyone who grazes cattle will tell you, gophers need to be shot to prevent livestock from breaking their legs in gopher holes. At any rate, as a young lad my brother didn’t have that perspective. Seeing Dad put an end to one of the little critters, my brother turned to him and said, “I guess God doesn’t love gophers, does He, Daddy?” As a caring father and an ordained minister, that struck him pretty hard and ended their hunt.
Despite not growing up in a hunting family I was nevertheless captivated with the idea of being a hunter. I think the spark that ignited that primal urge happened before the age of 10 one particular Sunday afternoon. The home of a deacon of the church where my father pastored was surrounded by a patch of woods, just the sort of place a young boy could find adventure. He handed me an old wooden stocked Crossman air rifle and tube of BBs. I don’t think I even got a safety lesson before he sent me out to entertain myself. Those were the days when it was still okay to let kids learn hard lessons by their own stupidity. To his credit, I don’t remember Dad protesting in the least. Mom on the other hand, being a city girl, had to be convinced I wouldn’t shoot my eye out! Soon after I managed to convince my folks to buy me a Crossman of my own. I still own it, though the barrel is shot out and it no longer holds air. Besides a rescued beagle mix named Butch, that air rifle was my most faithful companion.
Only a few hundred yards from our suburban home was a bayou, and every manner of critter was likely to succumb to my well-practiced aim. Much to the chagrin of my mother, many birds and a few squirrels also fell victim from the second story balcony of that same home. I was a crack shot, though not the safest nor the most disciplined marksman. I even shot poor Butch once when he attacked the milk jug target I had taken a bead on. That haunts me to this day to think about. The BB didn’t puncture deep and he was no worse for wear, but it scared me terribly and taught me to be much more careful from then on.
In my early teens I really started becoming aware of my dream to hunt whitetail; but not having friends or family that hunted, and not having access to land, it remained only that, a dream. Around that time Dad was invited by a pastor friend to go hunting. I remember thinking it might be the first of many invites that could possibly include me some day. Instead, my dad was exasperated by the experience. He said, “He stuck me up in a tree all day long; that’s not hunting!” You can imagine that hunting in East Texas and hunting in South Dakota are exactly as similar as their geography, which is to say, not at all similar; and being East Texas in the 1970s, it was no great surprise they didn’t have success.
My first taste of venison also came in my early teen years. The church bought a couple acres and moved an old office building on to it to serve as a sanctuary. You wouldn’t believe deer could exist within fifty miles of that area to look at it today, but back then they were still eking out a living in spite of urban sprawl. Dad arrived on the property one morning to find a doe had managed to get her head caught in the field fence and flipped her body over the fence in her struggling. It was obvious she wouldn’t make it, so Dad called the sheriff who came out and agreed the humane thing to do was to put her down. The sheriff began to draw his revolver, but Dad stopped him insisting he would spoil too much meat, so Dad did the job himself with the decisive blow of a hammer. He brought her back to our home to process her himself. I found a Boy Scout manual that gave some basic instructions on how to tan the hide. I stretched, scraped, and salted the hide but I never did manage to get it soft. I eventually had to throw it away, but the experience added fuel to my dream of one day harvesting a deer for myself.
After much pestering on my part I succeeded in getting Dad to take my brother and me hunting. Another church member had a cabin in East Texas and agreed to let us use it. We brandished shotguns with buckshot, fanned out, and walked around the Big Thicket. My brother claims he saw a deer that apparently didn’t have the good sense to fear for his life, so he chased him off to make sure he didn’t get shot. To my dad’s chagrin when we had given up on taking a deer, I shot a bird out of a tree just to fulfill my bloodlust.
After high school I attended Sam Houston State University which is situated close to the national forest. I bought a Bear “Pronghorn Hunter” compound bow and taught myself to shoot it pretty well. Not having anyone to pass on to me any of the required skills or knowledge to be a successful hunter, my attempts at hunting public land amounted to nothing more than a series of pleasant walks through the woods.
Lacking scholarly discipline, I eventually dropped out of college and headed to the Marine recruiter’s office. As it happened, he was out to lunch but his neighbor the Navy recruiter was all too happy to see me coming. After my four years in the service I went back to college and earned my degree in aviation maintenance. I eventually ended up working for a major airline in Tulsa, Oklahoma where I became good friends with George, a mechanic who grew up hunting deer in Utah. George taught me the basics of hunting and we made several trips to public land to put them into practice. This was the first time someone besides myself took an interest in my dream. Had I stayed in Tulsa for more than that single year I’m sure I would eventually have found hunting success there, but work brought me back to Texas and the dream began to fade.
Several years and a couple of address changes later, I landed in Mansfield, Texas. Although my aspiration to be a deer hunter remained unrealized, I had over the years accumulated a lot of hunting paraphernalia as we deer hunters tend to do. When it came time for a garage sale at my new residence, I felt it was time to let it all go. After all, it wasn’t doing me any good. The dream was all but dead, taking a backseat to career and raising a family. John, a neighbor I hadn’t yet met, came to my garage sale. Seeing all the hunting junk, he immediately struck up a conversation on the subject. He was quite a storyteller, and when it was my turn to reciprocate, I admitted to my shame I had never taken a deer.
Oh, the humiliation. We’ve only just met, and he already knows I’m less of a man… a deer hunting failure.
But instead of mockery or derision the very next words out of his mouth were, “We’re going to fix that this year.”
What? Could it be? I tried to play it cool, but I could barely contain myself. I was on pins and needles. That next fall couldn’t come fast enough. The date was set for Thanksgiving weekend. Before I left my houseful of guests for the 4½ hour drive to Medina County where John had a lease, my four-year-old daughter left me with the words, “Get a Big One, Daddy.” To this day my deer season doesn’t officially start until I hear that refrain from my now grown daughter. She did have her concerns, however. She wanted to be sure I wasn’t going to kill ALL the reindeer. After all, Christmas was just around the corner and Santa still needed a few!
In retrospect the hunt itself was little more than a formality, but for a grown man fulfilling a lifelong dream it was pure magic. After setting up camp John pointed me down a path and told me to follow the power line to the second pole where I’d find a box blind. He painted the picture for me: “There is a feeder about 50 yards in front of that, and when the sun starts to get low the deer will come out to feed.” And his parting advice, “Take your First Available Good Shot.” He used the less politically correct acronym, of course.
It happened just exactly as he predicted. The first and only deer I saw was a yearling basket rack six that probably weighed 60 lbs., but buck fever still managed to send me into a panic. In my exuberance to grab the 270 Winchester leaning in the corner, I jammed the barrel hard into the roof of the blind. In the stillness it might as well have been the thunderclap of a lightning strike, but the little buck barely noticed and quickly settled back to grazing a mere 30 yards in front of me. I was certain he would see me shaking with adrenaline and bolt for cover, leaving me once again and forever “deer-less.” I sat as motionless as I could manage until he finally stepped behind a bit of brush before I got up the nerve to slowly ease the gun out the window. I waited an eternity (at least a couple of seconds) for the barest bit of his front shoulder to peek out before I yanked on the trigger. I must have closed my eyes because the next thing I remember he was on the ground right where he had stood.
At last, I had done it and I could hardly wait to put my hands on this trophy of a lifetime. I called John to share the news and he told me to stay put since every hunter knows the best hunting is that magical last fifteen minutes of light. This order I promptly ignored. Loss of camera light wasn’t going to make me miss out on getting a picture with my deer right where he lay, so I climbed out of the blind lugging the chair with me because I didn’t have a tripod for my camera. And while a picture is good… a full shoulder mount is better! It could have been a doe, but I had already determined it was destined for the taxidermist. Not all trophies are measured in inches, and while someday I hope to harvest a buck worthy to be called trophy by TTHA standards, I have killed a few decent bucks and managed to put meat in my freezer every year since.
I eventually found a way to turn my passion for hunting into a small business in the hunting market as the inventor of T-Mate® the “T” post game camera mount. TTHA has been a great help in growing that business to the point that it makes the land payment on my own little West Texas hunting property.
We often hear the refrain, “Take a kid hunting to help grow and preserve this legacy for future generations.” I got too late of a start to get my own kid immersed in the hunting lifestyle but maybe there is hope for a grandkid hunting buddy someday. I hope dads will take their kids hunting; but don’t overlook that 35-year-old “kid at heart” that might be your new neighbor having a garage sale.
P.S. Two years ago my now 88-year-old dad and I shared his first ever dove hunt.
He shot a limit.
Comment