I just watched this...thank you for sharing it. I got off of our deer lease this year and I am severely missing the deer camp feel...if there is a way I will be back on it next year!I'm sure many of you guys up north have watched some of these documentaries on old deer hunting camps in the U.P. of Michigan. For anyone that hasn't, they are just cool to watch. Here's one I'm watching now. There's plenty more on the Discovery YouTube channel.
Okie - I too miss the deer camps of my early hunting years. Love hunting my own place now. However, the camaraderie of good friends at deer camp over the years was a special thing that I enjoyed a lot.I just watched this...thank you for sharing it. I got off of our deer lease this year and I am severely missing the deer camp feel...if there is a way I will be back on it next year!
Makes me wanna go out and buy some old school woolen flannels. Not sure I could to the pant flannels though.Check all the flannel!!!!
Brings a smile and a lotta childhood memories
bill
I have been fortunate enough to have been invited to join a camp like that in northern WI. The camp began in the 30's and has been going ever since. It is always interesting to hear the stories from years past, many times the same stories are told every year. Last year there were 13 people in camp opening weekend, this year there will be four. Its all public land around the camp so there is plenty of room to roam during season. No one is worried about pushing their buck to someone else.
I probably have better hunting at my house but going to deer camp is becoming more fun than hunting. Some years are good for shooting deer and some years we struggle. We will see Saturday morning how the week will go. Friday will be a long day of work before we can head out. On the hour drive up to camp I will probably hear the 30 point and 2nd week of deer camp songs multiple times.
The deer camp tradition is very strong in the state. Many of the people in the town I live in have a "shack"
that might only be 15 minutes from home where they spend the 9 day gun season. Most of the kids take off school for deer season and spend it at the "shack".
This brings back many hunting camp memories from the shack called the "cabin" on top of "Shade Mountain" 2 miles back in on a logging road smack in the middle of the best hunting Pennsylvania could offer.
Thirty years of stories, the trophies, the misses, the cut off shirt tails (We didn't cut off shirttails for missing, we only cut off shirttails for lying about missing) Ice on the water bucket, cutting wood for the old cast iron stove, and winter trips to the outhouse. The good food, the cook that used to much grease, the time we only had baked beans and lots of fumes. Hiding your buck and pretending you didn't have any, helping someone else drag one out, catching up with guys you hadn't seen in a year, the day everyone tagged out the first morning.
Then Gary Ault and the PGC wiped out a lot of the deer, aphids wiped out the hemlocks, moths decimated the oaks, coyotes, bears, and hawks moved in, and the squirrels, grouse and turkeys all but disappeared, people started posting their land, the older members started passing away, and I saw the writing on the wall as it was unfolding, and started managing wildlife on my own private land, and another chapter of life faded away.
But, as the pictures of the U.P. so richly reminded me, I have made friends and memories that never go away, and I keep my interest in the shack just so that I can go back from time to time and relive some really special things from a different era of time when the hills were thriving with game, there was no covid and the old guys in camp always had the time to sit and chew the fat, and had all the answers to life's problems.
The cities and the rural areas of this nation are two different countries anymore. I propose that we have two separate presidents and two separate policies for the US, if a state votes republican they get that president, and if a state votes democrat they get that president. Imagine the possibilities!You forgot the libtards moving into Philadelphia and wiping out the Republic.