Some readers may not understand the culture that this account comes out of. But it's something that means a good deal to those who take part in it.

Errand In the Woods

The telephone ringing late in the afternoon on Thanksgiving Day startled us. We had had a quiet day. Dad’s brothers and sister all have children and grandchildren to spend the day with. With my brother and his children all living out of state, Mom and Dad had to make do with me and Danny.

Danny is a long-time friend of Mom and Dad’s. At first he was only one member of a group of hunters who came to camp on our land each deer season. Over the years the others started going elsewhere. Danny kept coming. A few years back he got permission from Mom and Dad to build a cabin on their land at the old house site, a little down the road from their house.

I sometimes say jokingly that my parents have a hermit living on their land. Danny’s not really that at all. He has family and sees them regularly. But on Thanksgiving Day they all have in-laws to spend the celebration with. That’s why for the past several years Danny has spent Thanksgiving with us. That day he had eaten with us, we’d visited for a time, and then he had headed out to try his luck (Thanksgiving Day being the peak of deer season) at his hunting stand on the back side of the property.

The call that startled us, as we lounged around that late afternoon, came from Danny’s cell phone. He had just shot a large buck. Could Dad come out and help him haul it home? Dad assured him that he could. He then asked if I could come out and help as well.

In a couple of minutes Dad and I were slowly bouncing along the rugged lane that snakes through the woods in back of the house. Mom put the dog—a remarkably large Chihuahua whose outdoor life in the country has made him much stronger than most of his kind—on the leash and followed on foot.

We turned from the lane onto the broad natural gas pipeline right-of-way cut that runs across that end of the property. I grew up walking up and down that cut for miles, exploring side trails and creeks, sometimes using the only exposed section of the line as a bridge to cross one especially deep stream. From the rise where the lane meets the pipeline you can see for a good way to the northwest. The cut lays bare a series of folds in the land—steep, narrow ridges and hollows that keep a hiker going up and down.

I would have thought that the creek that cuts across the bottom of the first hollow, near the edge of the property, would have been impassable to Dad’s pickup. But no, he was able to cross it by dipping into the woods to one side and weaving carefully through the trees. I tried not to watch where we were going too closely.

On the slope just past the creek lay Danny’s fresh-killed buck. He was a big, healthy deer, well filled-out, with a good coat and a well-developed “rack” of antlers that had a total of nine points. Only a couple of marks from where he had been shot and the gash where Danny had cut his throat to finish him marred his body. A trophy hunter would have been glad to have him. But this was not just a trophy. He was part of an annual harvest of game that has been going on for generations. He would be put to good use.

That was where Dad and I came in. Danny is no longer up to lifting a deer of that size. Dad turned the pickup around and pulled as close alongside the deer as he could. Then, with Dad grasping the buck’s antlers and me holding his hind legs, we carried him over to the pickup and heaved him up over the tailgate. He probably weighed a good deal more than I did.

By now Mom and the dog had arrived. We congratulated Danny on his kill. He was quite happy about it. He went for his own vehicle and said that he would meet us at his place in a few minutes. Mom, Dad, and the dog got into the cab of the pickup. I climbed in back and sat on top of the right-hand wheel well. When I was a kid we thought nothing of riding that way. You don’t see people doing that much now.

I held on and braced myself while the truck threaded its way back through the woods and over the creek. The deer’s still flexible body swayed and jolted slightly. A little left-over blood oozed from his throat onto the corrugated metal floor of the truck bed. I could smell the buck’s strong animal scent.

As we topped the next rise I looked down the pipeline to the northwest. The sun had sunk low in the sky; the woods and hollows were now in shadow. Here and there the tops of the trees on the ridges of the folded terrain still caught the mellow evening sun. It was as beautiful a view as I’d ever seen on the pipeline. At that moment the rolling country below the clear sky seemed as breathtakingly wide and expansive as any mountain vista. There was just a hint of bracing chill in the air. I felt grateful to have grown up with all this almost literally in my back yard.

We let Mom off at the house. She didn’t care to be part of what came next. I got in the cab with Dad and the dog, and we drove the few hundred yards down the road to Danny’s cabin. It sits on a steep little rise just off the road, behind an old concrete slab that is all that remains of the site’s earlier house. Sixty years and more ago some of Dad’s cousins lived there. He reminisces sometimes about going to visit them back in the day. Nearby is what remains of a small barn that I remember exploring in my own youth. In the woods at the bottom of the hill you can, if you know where to look, just make out a brick barbecue pit that Dad’s father built for his sister and her family.

Danny parked beside his little carport and let Dad back the pickup into it. Then he took a knife and got to work making incisions in the buck’s rear lower legs. Soon he had gaps between the metatarsal bones of each leg through which he could thread a length of rope supported by pulleys mounted overhead on the back end of the carport.

Meanwhile Dad and I hooked a portable come-along winch to the other end of the carport and paid out enough cable so that we could hook the winch to Danny’s rope. When all was ready Dad told me to start winching away. As I took up the slack the come-along rose above my head. I had to reach high in order to keep working it. The awkward position meant that I could only turn the winch a couple of gear teeth at a time once I started feeling the load.

Slowly the buck’s back end rose from the pickup. Eventually Danny was able to take him by the antlers and swing him all the way out of the truck bed. This left him hanging head downward, his head just off the ground. The dog stopped a short way from the deer’s head, barked, and moved in to take a good sniff. He had smelled deer often in the woods. This was the first time he had ever gotten this close to one.

Danny thanked us profusely. We told him we were glad to help. By now it was getting toward dark. We left Danny to his work and headed home.

On Saturday morning Dad and I and the dog—who insists on going for a ride with Dad each morning—drove the pickup into town, filled up with gas, and checked the family’s mail box at the post office. Dad told me a few things I’d never known about Brown, the man who had once owned the machine shop near the post office where I used to see all the old electric motors whenever we went to get the mail.

When we went home we swung by Danny’s cabin. Danny greeted us in his usual cheerful manner and invited us into the snug living room/office/kitchen that occupies most of the cabin. The dog came in with us and immediately made himself at home. Danny’s place is a kind of second home, as far as the dog is concerned; Danny keeps him on the rare occasions when Mom and Dad must go out of town and can’t take him along.

From a cooler Danny took a freezer bag containing a handsome cut of deer roast. He said that he had saved it for me. The offer was an honor. Prime cuts from one’s game are the sort of thing people in the region reserve for family and close friends.

I told Danny that I would be glad to have it. He took the cut out of the bag, set it on his kitchen cutting board—only a few feet from where I sat—and began carefully slicing it. The dog reared up on his hind legs near the counter and sniffed the air with great interest. Though he has never been given raw meat, something about the game smell stirred his instincts.

After visiting with Danny for a time we went on our way. I set the freezer bag full of venison on the dash of the pickup where the dog could not get to it during the brief drive home. There I put it in the freezer. The next day I took it home.

It sits in my freezer now. In a few days I plan to make it into a hearty venison stew. Perhaps I’ll have a chance to share some of it with friends. I know that whenever I eat the stew I’ll think about Danny, and all the years he has been a friend of the family.

The hunting season lasts only a few days out of each year. The rest of the time Danny regularly goes up into the woods on the back of the property and sits there for a time. Over the years it has become his favorite place to be. Not long ago he asked Mom and Dad for permission for his family to bury him there. We’re all fine with that—as long as it isn’t any time soon.

Yesterday I cooked up some of Danny's venison. It was very good to have. I've been careful not to waste any of it. It wouldn't be right to do that.

This is excellent.