For some guys, deer camp is like a bachelor party on a yearly basis.
For me, it's a homage to my childhood.
As a kid, we never went on vacations to Florida or anywhere very far away. Aside from a week each summer at our family cottage on Lake Michigan, yearly deer and trout season expeditions to the Manton area were our get-aways.
Those were the days.
My father and I would trout fish on the Manistee River and its tributaries all day long. He was a far better fisherman than I, and we often brought back enough fish for dinner.
But deer season was king. Nov. 15 was circled on the calendar and it was just a foregone conclusion there would be no school that week.
At least not your typical schooling. Hunting -- and being around a deer camp -- is an educational experience of its own.
A day spent shivering on a blustery November day among the majestic oak trees on the ridges where we hunt is far better than one behind a keyboard.
It doesn't really matter if anyone bags a buck. If it happens, it happens. If not, everyone still goes home happy. The last person out of our six-man camp to bring one down was my uncle Bill two years ago.
The hunting near our cabin isn't nearly what it was as a child, but that's not the point. The simple, one-room cinder-block cabin was built by my late grandfather during WWII. We have always hunted there and will continue to for many years. I hope to teach my children the valuable lessons hunting offers -- patience, preparedness, safety -- at the same site I learned them.
Besides, the food is incredible.
One of our group works for a snack food distributor, so we're loaded with chips and snacks of all sorts. Another manages a Panera, so the bread and soup flows in like wine.
And speaking of beverages, there's my cousin and I, who bring our homebrew beers to share. There's never a shortage of food, drink and conversation, which more than makes up for the scarcity of venison.
The tales are tall, the results are short and the camaraderie makes frowns a distant memory.
There are stories that are legend around the cabin: A relative who got bored while hunting and kept shooting at a tree until he felled it; the deer taken by hunters who didn't know how to gut them; and the myriad of ones that got away. And then there's the fact my late father -- a minister by trade -- earned the nickname "Doc" and nobody will tell me why.
The typical day goes something like this: Wake up early and have breakfast, go hunting until about noon, return for a hearty lunch of soup and sandwiches and go back out hunting until dusk. Then the evening brings a generous dinner, beverages, conversations that run the gamut from politics and current events to remembering the good old days. An evening of poker has also recently made a yearly appearance.
Then comes the cacophony of snoring. It runs in my family, but luckily skipped me. Still, I have to bring earplugs to sleep as six guys crammed in three vintage U.S. Army double bunks results in a symphony of snoring that can wake the dead. Perhaps that's why the deer have fled the area.
Anyway, these are the days.
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