My uncle Joe wasn’t a serious hunter. He was the kind of guy who bought his tag the night before opening day, hunted from the same fallen oak tree every year, and usually fell asleep by 8 AM with a half-eaten sandwich in his lap. He killed deer — good deer — but he did it in a way that made the rest of us, with our camo patterns and scent spray and pre-season scouting, feel like we were trying too hard.
One year he shot a ten-pointer at 9:15 in the morning. We found him at his usual tree, awake for once, smoking a cigarette and looking at the buck like it had shown up to ruin his nap.
“Walked right up,” he said. “Didn’t even have to stand up.”
The rest of us had been hiking ridges since 4 AM.
The Advice He Actually Gave
Joe didn’t lecture. He wasn’t a teacher. But over the years, if you listened, he told you things. Not in paragraphs — in sentences, usually while gutting a deer or drinking a beer or both.
“Dogs move because they smell dogs,” he told me once. “You ever notice that? They don’t come investigate. They leave. So stop spraying yourself with deer piss. You smell like a deer. Deer smell deer all the time. It don’t mean anything.”
Another time, watching me glass a field for the third time: “You’re looking for antlers. Look for horizontal lines. Everything in the woods is vertical except a deer’s back.” I still use that one. It works.
“Slow down,” he said. “You walk like you’re late for something. The deer knows when you’re in a hurry. He don’t know why you’re in a hurry, but he knows you are, and that’s enough.”
The Last Season
Joe’s gone now — heart attack, three years ago, in his kitchen, not in the woods the way he would’ve wanted. I still hunt his tree sometimes. It’s not the best spot on the property — too close to the road, too much underbrush on the approach — but it produces deer somehow. Or maybe Joe just knew how to be still in a way I’m still learning.
I don’t fall asleep in the stand. I don’t smoke. I still bring too much gear. But I walk slower now, and I look for horizontal lines instead of antlers, and I stopped spraying myself with piss. The deer don’t seem to mind.
Thanks, Joe.
