GRANDPA JOE TEACHES ME HOW TO POACH A DEER
I was a young boy, about nine years old when my dad and my Uncle Cosme Chacon took me hunting up the mountain. The only problem was it was not hunting season. Some people would probably call that poaching, but in my dad’s way of thinking, he wasn’t poaching unless it was nighttime, and you used a spotlight. We drove up the mountain and I remember my dad taking our small caliber rifle a 0.22 Remington with open “buck horn sights”. My dad loved a gun with “buck horn sites.” Many of the best hunting stories included his trusty old 0.33 Winchester with “buck horn sites”.
So today was different we were hunting but we weren’t in hunter orange, and it seemed like we were not trying to draw attention to ourselves as we drove out of town. Now that I am little older, I suspect that the small caliber gun was more about stealth and not about the “buck horn sites”. But I was new to this, so I will let it stand. We used the 0.22 rifle for rabbits all the time, so I was familiar with the gun. I coveted the times when my dad let me shoot the rabbit. Grandpa Joe had assured me a well-placed bullet to the head of small deer with our gun would have plenty of knockdown power. He seemed to be talking with the confidence of experience.
Up to this point I had no idea what we were doing, but I was never one to pass up a chance to go up the mountains even if I was often suffocated with secondhand smoke from my dad. He would always roll the window down just enough to give me hope that I could live for another five minutes. He would always cuss the cigarettes as if they were an entity that possessed a stand-alone identity. “These damn things are gonna kill me some day. I don’t even like them and I don’t smoke nearly as many as Shorty-Vigil.” By saying this and cursing the cigarettes I think it made him feel like he was doing everything possible to take care of his health. His prophecy of dying from those “damn things” came true eventually
We drove further up the mountain and had seen a few does on our way up, which at this time of year and on this mission seemed to get a free pass from my dad and Uncle Cosme. Near North Creek we saw a nice little buck. Since it wasn’t technically hunting season, we stopped and looked both ways along the road. I was pretty sure they wanted to shoot a buck, but if we hadn’t found a buck, well then, venison is venison. It was only a spike, but as every hunter that shoots a small deer claims, “you can’t eat the horns.” Of course, every hunter that shoots a big buck with monstrous antlers will always arrange the animal in the truck so that everyone will be able to see the rack spilling out of the back of the truck and claim, “Well, I always try to pass up the small bucks and give them time to grow up some.”
We saw the deer and my dad pulled the truck to the side of the road and slowly came to a stop. Cosme looked at my dad flicked his eyes in the direction of the deer, and without saying a word permission had been granted the slightest nod of my dad’s head and up an down of his chin. Uncle Cosme rolled the passenger window down, aimed the gun and shot. The deer dropped where it stood. I was a little surprised because up to that point no one had mentioned that we were poaching. Suddenly I feared for my life. I had heard my mom and dad arguing and besides his drinking, poaching was right up there on the top of the list that made my mother furious. Many heated arguments about poaching ended with a “well I guess will we will just have to agree to disagree”, only not that civil. Of course, we needed the meat, but my mother was a rule follower and she worried about everything and of course it was one more thing she would have to pray to God for. It was full time work for her to confess her families’ sins, plead that we would not get caught, and that we would not all go to hell or jail. I didn’t think going to jail at age nine would do anything to help me with my future plans; which was at the time to play professional football.
The deer dropped like a rock and Grandpa Joe and Uncle Cosme told me to stay in the truck. They told me to tell anyone that stopped and started asking questions that my dad had just went up into the trees to go to the bathroom and that I was just fine, and he would be back shortly. I am not sure what lesson was the most valuable that day; teaching me how to poach or teaching me to tell a little white lie without flinching. I eventually mastered the second part and became an award-winning newspaper writer. As Mark Twain said, “Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.”
Before long, my dad and Cosme were back, and we were driving down the road with a deer covered by a tarp, covered with junk made to look natural. We road down the road as happily as two poachers and an apprentice could be. We pulled all the way into the garage and closed the garage door so we could hang the deer up and skin it. I wasn’t sure how this was going to end, but I didn’t see any way that it would be good for me. Sometimes, as my dear mother would lecture me, and make the sign of the cross, I believe my mother thought I was the designated adult of the poaching trio.
These seemingly innocent father son bonding moments seemed like a tenuous start that might send a person down the road of crime. I guess it won’t surprise the reader that I poached my first deer when I was twelve and it was a deer that I would have gladly hauled down main street so everyone could see. But as it were, I was twelve and Byron and I had poached a deer out of season on private land and had no clue what to do with it now that it lay dead in front of us. It was the biggest deer I ever killed in my entire life of hunting. We both had 0.22 guns and we hit the deer about 15 times, or at least that is how many holes we counted when we finally skinned the animal.
We went to my house to confess our sins and decided that Grandpa Joe would be much more understanding than my mother or the priest. We explained that we had shot a deer behind the elementary school which was adjacent to our backyard. We asked his advice. Afterall, he was an experienced poacher. Without a flinch of concern, for our freedom or my soul, he told us to bring it home and hang it up in the garage. We spent the rest of the afternoon and evening quartering up the deer and hauling it to our house. We left the antlers to be picked up later and it truly was the largest five-point mule deer I have ever killed. I guess I was so scared that I would be going to hell or to jail that I let Byron take the antlers home. We mounted them on a nice board and to this day, he still has them.
There was one other time that I should probably disclose at this time since we are on the topic of poaching deer. My dad was a contractor at times building fences for the USFS and the BLM. Most of this work was hard labor, but there were six brothers and all of them needed direction in their life and hard labor to keep them out of trouble. It didn’t work all that well, they would only work hard some of the time and we all seemed to find trouble around every corner. One summer we were building a long section of fence for the USFS up on the Blue Mountains.
Our practice was to camp up the mountain and only come to town when necessary. Sometimes, we would make a run to town to get more fencing materials from the USFS ware yard. It isn’t done anymore, but back then the FS would load up a truck with fencing materials and then my dad would drive it up the mountain and bring it back later. This would never be allowed in today’s world of red tape and overzealous attorneys. My dad loved having a Forest Service truck to drive, he figured with an official government truck nobody would ever stop us or question us and the truck was new, full of gas, and had good tires on. We never owned a new vehicle that I know of, we were always running on a fume and a prayer, and the best tires we ever had were retreads. He would drive with his arm resting on the door window because he had to keep the window rolled down when he smoked. That that was a small price to pay to enjoy his working for the “guvment”.
Feeding a family of nine kids and half a dozen strays was full time work so Grandpa Joe, by necessity had to be opportunistic. As fate would have it, a small two-point deer was near our camp and so my dad decided that the “Lord provides so who am I to question His ways?” My dad poached the deer while we were fencing for the FS and he loaded the deer into the back of the FS truck and then covered the deer with a load of wood and started down the mountain confident that no one would stop or question an official USFS truck.
On our way down the mountain, we ran into the State Game Warden so of course we stopped to visit with him since he was always checking in on us up at our camp. I don’t know if his frequent visits were because he enjoyed our company and eating a few tortillas and beans whenever he stopped, or if he was just checking on us, since I am sure my father’s poaching reputation was well known.
We talked. “Joe, it looks like you are starting to haul wood for the winter?” It was a question more than a statement. My dad responded without making eye contact, “You know the winters are long and the wood is right near our camp seemed like a good time to start.” The Game Warden walked around the truck and back to the driver’s window, where my dad was sitting looking as innocent as a dog with chicken feathers in his mouth. The Warden looked at my dad and said, “Joe it looks like your load of wood is going to bleed to death. I suggest you hurry and get it home.” He walked away and my dad didn’t need to be told twice. He high tailed it down the mountain with his bleeding load of wood and pulled into the garage and closed the door. We washed out the truck and returned it to the FS later that day.