When a boy is young and very poor, I’m sure he looks forward to the time when he is older, when, hopefully, his life will be different. He likely thinks that the good times, the great happenings in his life, will come later.
That was how I felt more than half a century ago, when I was fourteen. My family was about as poor as poor can get, but that year, way back in 1946, brought me a hunting memory that has remained clear in my mind for my entire life. My kids, grandkids and anyone willing to listen has heard me tell of my hunting experience that year.
I was born and raised in the small town of Cedarville. I had just gotten my first deer hunting license and had been asked by two of my brothers-in-law, Dean and Dale Kammers and their dad, Joe (St. Ignace natives) to go hunting with them and their three Native friends, Pete Moses and Jim and Pete Wasageesyck. I was pretty excited about being able to hunt with all those seasoned hunters.
Back then, deer baiting, scaffolds and warm blinds weren’t part of the hunting picture. Walking through the woods or driving the swamps was how things were done. Driving a swamp entailed having a few men go into the swamp, shoot guns and make a lot of other noise, hoping to drive a deer out to the other guys stationed on runways.
On this particular November morning, we were west of an old Native American graveyard along what is now M-134, several miles from Cedarville.
Early in the morning, Pete came out of the woods, noticed that I was crying, and wanted to know what was up. It was four below that morning, and already I was so cold that I knew my feet were on the verge of freezing. I had no proper hunting gear, and wore only thin socks and rubber boots.
Pete told me to build a fire, but I told him that I was afraid it would scare the deer away. Pete proceeded to build me a nice fire and said, “Lad, I’m going to give you something to warm you up.” I took a big swig of what he offered. It sure did warm me up, so much so that I hardly knew what hit me. Pete’s remedy was pure rubbing alcohol.
The drive that morning produced no deer. We ate lunch—cheese sandwiches toasted over the fire—and drank coffee. It’s odd how I can remember that lunch way back then, when now I forget what I had for lunch a couple of days ago.
The guys sat around the fire a while talking. I decided that I’d try my luck with rabbit hunting, and got five rabbits within a short time. Since I had my limit, Dean sent me down a truck road about a quarter of a mile away, where he said there was a good deer trail.
I ran down the road, found the deer trail and sat on an old rotten stump to wait, hoping a deer would surface. The others had decided to abandon deer hunting and try their luck with rabbits.
After sitting on my stump for awhile, I heard a shot pretty close to where I was. Then I heard a different noise.
I looked, and within ten feet of me stood a great big buck, apparently scared off by all the shooting. I could see the fear in the buck’s eyes. He didn’t seem to know what to do. I was so scared that I didn’t know what to do either.
I held a 16-gauge, double-barrel shotgun, with a slug in one barrel and buckshot in the other. Another shot rang out, again close to the buck and me.
Finally, the deer decided that he had to do something. He proceeded to jump right over me. My rotten stump fell over and I was on my back, looking up at the white belly of the deer. My hunting instinct must have taken over, because I pulled both barrels of my shotgun. I was too terrified to move. About that time, Dean came out of the woods, asked me what I was doing lying there on my back, then turned and saw the buck lying dead beside me.
“Lloyd, you’ve got yourself a 12-pointer,” he said.
I was so thrilled that even being cold was forgotten. The guys congratulated me over and over and Pete told me that his rubbing alcohol had brought me luck.
I’ve never forgotten that experience. A memory of a lifetime was made that November day, sixty years ago.
I’m now seventy-four years old. I have decent hunting gear and some of the comforts of life. I live in Gwinn and I have a hunting camp about seventeen miles south.
Each year, my son, sons-in-law, grandsons and others gather for the various hunting seasons. We sometimes even go out to camp just to escape the world.
The walls of the camp are covered with mounted horns of deer that were shot by family members and friends.
The horns are mementoes of many years of hunting, and mean a lot to me and to my family. A fair number of the mounted horns represent my hunting successes.
Not one set of those horns stirs up a memory that comes even close to the one I have of that day, so very long ago, when I was a poor fourteen-year-old boy who bagged himself a twelve-point buck.
—Lloyd Smale

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