<TITLE>12. Par 134-146</TITLE>L-134 And those white-tail deer, if they're ever shot at, you talk about Houdini being an escape artist, my, he is an amateur to them. And so then they really stay hid. And it had been moonlight nights, snow on the ground about six inches, good trailing work.

L-135 And so Bert, when he come down to the cabin where I was at, he said, "Say, Billy, I got a good one this year for you."
And I said, "What?"

L-136 Reached down in his pocket and pulled it out. He had a little whistle. He would blow it, and it sounded just like a little fawn crying for its mother. Little baby deer, you know, crying for its mother.

L-137 I said, "Bert, how cruel can you be?" I said, "Do you mean... You wouldn't do a thing like that!"
He said, "Ha-ha, you chicken-hearted preacher!"

L-138   And we went on hunting, that day, and we went up over the Jefferson Notch. And you didn't have to worry about him, he knowed how to find his way back. So we climbed up till about noon, and then we'd separate and go one one way, and one the other. And then if we got our deer, we would hang him up, and--and then we'd get our horses and go get him.

L-139 So we got about eleven o'clock, we hadn't even seen a track, not one track.

L-140 All the deer were laying down. They'd get in the brush, and under the brush piles and things, where the tops of the trees, where the loggers had been. And they would, they was hiding, stay away, 'cause they had been shot at. They were scared.

L-141   About eleven o'clock, Bert stopped, sat down. There was a little opening about, oh, the size of this building, and the--the inside maybe twice this size, a little opening there. And he sat down, and he reached back to get, I thought, his--his thermos that he had in his coat. We usually carry a thermos and have some hot chocolate, and, 'cause it's got fuel to it, you know, and--and then have a sandwich, and then we separate. We was getting up high towards timber line, so I thought maybe that Bert was going to have his sandwich. So he sat down to pull out this thermos and to... I thought he was going to pull it out. And I just let, set my gun down against a tree, and started after mine.

L-142 But, what he was, he was getting that little old whistle out. So when he got this little whistle out, he blew it. And anyone ever heard a little old baby fawn cry, it's kind of pitiful, anyhow. And when he blew that whistle, to my surprise, right across from him, a great big mother doe stood up. Now the... A doe is the mother deer, you know. So, she stood up. There was her big brown eyes, apiece, leading, them big ears pointed right up like that. See, her baby was in trouble.

L-143   And he blew it again, and she looked around. And she walked right out into that opening. Now that's unusual, any of you hunters know that, for a deer to do that. She walked out there. I could see her big eyes. She wasn't standing over twenty yards from me. And I thought, "Oh, Bert, you can't do that, and kill that poor precious mother; her looking for her baby, and you deceiving her like that." And this whistle had blowed, and she was... She walked out there.

L-144 And the hunter raised the lever on his thirty-o-six rifle, dropped it down; that cocked the gun, you know, with the safety off.

L-145 And she heard that. And she looked around, and she saw the hunter. Her ears peeked right down. Usually they had been gone. And she wouldn't have walked out there, in the first place, at that time of day. But, you see, she was a mother. There was something in her, she, something genuine, something. She wasn't putting on no show. She was a mother. She was borned a mother. And her baby was in trouble, and that was to her interest.

L-146   And he looked up at me, with those lizard-looking eyes, and grinned, I said, "Bert, don't do it. Don't do it." He just grinned; turned around with that rifle. Oh, my!


<A HREF="P13">Next Page</A>