The Deer Camp

Shooting with my father in the Piedmont National Wildlife Refuge

Being raised as my father’s only son I received membership to a certain world my sisters tended to have less access to. Although folks like me from the Deep South don’t particularly like the stereotypes the outside world tends to use when portraying us in entertainment media there are definitely traditions and practices unique to our culture that I suppose feeds the imagination of fancy pants northerners and Hollywood types. I was born in Atlanta in the late 1950s into a world that very nearly doesn’t exist today. I was a very typical southern boy with an even more typical southern father. My dad was the Great Outdoorsman. He was the Southeastern Champion of the National Field Archers Association, president of the Georgia Wildlife Federation, founder of the Georgia Bowhunters Association, a national field representative for Ben Pearson Archery, as well as Zebco fishing equipment, Bagley Bait Company, Mann’s Bait Company, and a few other fishing products. He was personal friends with big named sportsmen like Bill Dance, Rowland Martin, Tom Mann, Orlando Wilson, Howard Hill, Owen Jeffery, and Dan Quillian, just to name a few. All of whom I had the pleasure to meet.

My father was bigger than life to me throughout my childhood. I walked in his shadow everywhere he went. I mimicked his every action. From the time I was two or three years old I would stand out in the yard with him when he was shooting his bow, standing next to him shooting my imaginary bow. Then walking with him to the target and pulling each of my imaginary arrows out one at a time. I finally got my first Browning recurve bow when I was four years old. Before the end of the year I was shooting in an exhibition at the Atlanta Boat Show, popping balloons from 20 paces for the crowd.

Little by little I became more involved in my dad’s universe. I began fishing with him at Brown’s Lakes in South Fulton County when I was three years old way before he found his way into the spotlight as a professional bass fisherman. By the time I was eight or nine years old he gave me a Daisy BB gun. By the time I was twelve I was shooting his 35-caliber deer rifle. You see, when you were a boy in the Deep South in the sixties and seventies guns were as natural to your existence as your blue jeans and your pocketknife.

As I grew up my archery skills grew too. We were members of the Tomochichi Archery Club in Griffin, Georgia and I began to compete. My dad handed me over to Lt. Col. Milan Elott, who ran the Archery College in College Park, Georgia. With the Colonel’s help I eventually won the silver medal in the NFAA Georgia State Freestyle Championship. However, the biggest advance for me in my dad’s universe is when I started going to the deer hunting camps with him.

For years our regular camp was always at the Piedmont National Wildlife Refuge in Jasper County. Then there was the big hunt that happened once a year at Clarks Hill in McDuffie County. We also hunted in Green County and on some land in Polk County, and for a brief time at a hunting camp called Kapow somewhere south of Henry County. But the big camps where my best memories come from were Piedmont and Clarks Hill, which frankly we all called Clark Hill.

Although I had met many of my dad’s friends when they would come over to our house, or on an occasional visit to theirs, it wasn’t until we all gathered at the hunting camps that I really got to know them. I forgot to mention my dad was also a very skilled taxidermist. Our basement was like a mad scientist’s lab, which for me was the coolest thing in the world, but my mother hated it, and my sisters could not handle the dead animals and skulls, and snake skins, and pelts, and glass eyeballs. It was freaking awesome! Anyway, as I was saying this is what would bring my dad’s hunting buddies to our house on occasion. I grew into adulthood around these guys between the ages of 12 and 20. They had wonderful, colorful nicknames. There was Groucho (Lewis), Shorty (Lamar), Smitty (Eugene), Boney Maroney (Buddy), Punkin (my uncle Lamar), and those without nicknames like my dad, Richard, my other uncle, Paul, and Tim, who was Smitty’s best friend. There were others, but these guys were the ones I saw as the core group.

These were hilariously funny and vulgar men. Mostly men of the Korean War. They had jobs that spread the gamut from auto mechanic to CEO of a power company. They were good men. They were brothers, and they all stayed friends until the end. Today, Punkin and Tim are the last ones who remain living. Tim’s daughter is the nurse practitioner with my primary care physician and she has told me how lonely her father feels today, especially after the loss of Smitty. I can still remember how upset my dad was when Groucho, who was the first to go, passed away.

We would sit around the campfire at night and my dad and I would listen to their crazy stories. I would laugh until my sides hurt. My dad was always quiet and was more into listening to the other guys’ stories. He would occasionally remind one of them of something to get them started, but he himself wasn’t really one of the story tellers. He sure loved those guys though, and he would laugh as hard as me on those nights. My dad’s reputation with the gang was really interesting. They all knew he was the best marksman in the group, but he was also the true Boy Scout in their pack as well. My dad was the good kid who loved hanging out with his rascal friends. Dad was a known authority when it came to the ethics of hunting. He was vehemently opposed to poachers and campaigned heavily against them when he was president of the Georgia Wildlife Federation. He played by the rules and the rules mattered.

I helped my dad drag a fair share of deer out of the woods, and I became very good at tracking them. In fact, I loved tracking. Truth be told, I loved everything about hunting but hunting. This is where I should point out that I have never killed a deer. However, before you think I’m a goody two shoes you should know I killed my share of squirrels, birds, and rabbits in my earlier days. I should also say I wanted very badly to kill a deer during most of those years and twice shot and missed. Which is strange for a person who is as good a shot as me. It wasn’t buck fever that caused me to miss either. If anything, it might have been apathy. Some years after my last bow hunt down on Herman Talmadge’s property, when I missed an eight-point buck from a wide-open broadside position only 20 yards out, I began to reflect on that day. That was my last hunt, now 40 years ago. I know my dad would have been so proud if I had taken that deer. I really wanted that for him. And that’s when it truly hit me. I never wanted to kill a deer. I didn’t even want to kill those poor squirrels before that. What I wanted more than anything was to be the kid I thought my dad wanted me to be.

The beauty of my father was in the end it didn’t matter to him. It was me putting the pressure on myself, not him. My dad’s unconditional love did not need a sacrifice at the altar of his ego. This realization was a massive liberator for me. Consequently, I have never questioned my father’s love for me, and he was proud of me for damn near anything I ever did. My dad was far from a perfect man, he might not have even been a perfect father, but his love was authentic, and in that respect nearly as perfect as any love I have known.

Only a few years prior to his death, when the early effects of Alzheimer’s were only beginning to show, we were having dinner at a barbeque house nearby. We were there with some other family members, but my dad was sitting closest to me that night. Somehow the subject of hunting came up. When it did my dad looked at me and said, “I can’t do that anymore.” I smiled and said, “Well, I suppose you finally made your count and it was a good run.” He quickly interrupted me and grabbed my arm. He looked me squarely in the eyes. I’ll never forget looking into his watery cerulean blue eyes that night as he said, “You don’t understand. I can’t take a life. I can’t ever take a life again.” I was dumbfounded and completely without words. I just put my hand on his and nodded.

My dad loved animals his entire life. Even when he hunted, he treated the event as something sacred. Years ago, we were having dinner and I talked about a dove hunt I had just come back from. I made the mistake of joking that shooting from a blind out in the field was like shooting anti-aircraft weapons. He became livid with me and shook me down pretty hard for making a mockery of the hunting tradition in such a way. It really mattered to him that in all aspects of the hunt respect for the animal was imperative. It was to be treated as an almost sacred right. I’ve never forgotten that, and even though I don’t hunt any longer I still know how to advocate for a proper hunt thanks to my father.

From left to right: Uncle Punkin, Tim, Smitty, Groucho, Uncle Paul, and my dad, Richard Sr.

I Never Cried

I never cried.

My father passed away 8 years ago. I’ve been reflecting on him since Father’s Day earlier this week. Something that has always stayed with me since the night of his passing is that I have yet to actually cry from the event. Now, for some, depending on the relationship you may or may not have had with your dad, this may not be a big deal. However, anybody who really knows me knows that I am an emotional creature that cries at nearly anything that might cause one to shed a tear.

Seriously. I cried uncontrollably at the end of the movie “Ghost.” I cried when Spock died in “The Wrath of Khan.” I cry when listening to music and hear a perfect harmony. I can’t finish some of my favorite hymns in choir because I’m usually crying too hard by the third verse. When my cat, Roger died a few years ago I fell apart. I cried so hard when I was interring my friend Sharon’s ashes into the ground a fellow minister had to reach down with a handkerchief to keep the snot from running out of my nose and onto the ground along with her ashes.

So why? Why then have I yet to shed a tear for my father? The man I loved more than just about anything in the world. I can still remember years back loving him so much I could not comprehend what a life without him would be like. I was scared to death of what would become of me on that dreadful day sometime in the future should I outlive him. I truly wasn’t sure I would be able to survive his passing.

The closest I came to really crying was on the day of his funeral. It was my time to reflect on him in front of the congregation. I had chosen to read out loud the letter I wrote him during his Emmaus Retreat some years earlier. I asked the pastor to be standing by if I could not read the letter without breaking down. I read no more than the first two sentences out loud before having to hand it over and let the pastor finish reading the letter for me. Perhaps I should have powered on and let the tears flow at that point, but I know for sure it would have been an ugly mess, and I wasn’t really in the mood to make a spectacle out of myself during his memorial.

So here I am, 8 years later, and I still have never cried over the passing of my dad. I have speculated on a few reasons that may or may not be the cause, but there is one reason of which I feel rather certain. You see, my dad died from the complications of Alzheimer’s. “The Long Goodbye” as Nancy Reagan called it. Alzheimer’s steals from everyone it touches. In my case it may very well have stolen my tears.

When my dad was in hospice there was plenty of crying from everyone there. My two sisters practically never left his bedside. Over time we each had some time alone with dad. What would be my last “conversation” with him came only a day before he passed. He was completely unconscious, so I’ll never know if he heard my words, but I did my best to tell him how much I loved him and how much I owed to him. Near the end I lifted his hand and kissed it. Unfortunately, his skin had begun to deteriorate and the taste on my lips was shocking and almost unbearable. I felt embarrassed and shameful as I went to the restroom in the hospice to wash off my lips.

I spent that night sleeping on a bench in the chapel of the hospice. Later the next day I decided I should go back to my house and get some rest. It was that evening when my sister called to tell me we were losing him. In the 20 minutes it took for me to drive back he passed away. It was the end in some respects, but for me the end had come months ago.

We all knew dad’s memory was getting worse, but my sisters and I really had no idea just how bad it had become until one night when I had to go take care of him. His wife, Rosemary, had to be rushed to the hospital for chest pains. I got a call from the fire department down the street asking me if I was his son and could I come and pick him up. As it happened Rosemary drove herself and him to the fire station since it was only a couple of blocks from their house. The paramedics there checked her out and decided to put her in an ambulance to take her to the emergency room. Which essentially stranded my dad there.

My dad had no idea what was going on. He was incredibly upset and disoriented beyond measure. When I arrived, he was in the parking lot yelling at everybody. He had no idea who I was. I was just a strange man who came out of nowhere to drive him back home. The next 26 hours would be a surreal existence of him with a stranger he could not trust, but somehow was willing to go along with, and me with a man who was only a faint shadow of what was once my father. In all reality, for me, that is the night my father died.

I spoke with him calmly and with compassion throughout those 26 hours. I knew he had no control over his thoughts and emotions, so the only thing I could be was kind. He never slept. My job was essentially to keep him from wandering out of the house, or if he got outside, into traffic, which I later learned had happened before. In all that time he never recognized me. Shortly before it was over, I began talking to him about his days as a semi-professional baseball pitcher for the factory league in Atlanta. Though he didn’t know me he began to smile a bit at those thoughts. Finally, Rosemary returned with her daughter and things went back to normal, but it was now obviously time to find a memory care home for dad where he could be properly looked after.

But still, I never cried.

When I was a little boy, I thought my dad was the greatest superhero of all time. And in all honesty that never really went away. I followed around in his shadow everywhere he went. Lucky for me he took me nearly everywhere he went as well. I was raised in hunting camps and fishing boats.

I never had a rebellious teen period where I lost respect for him, but as I grew older and my personality developed it was obvious that I was not really a hunting/fishing type of guy. I know this probably made my dad a little sad, but he never let it bother him or our relationship. All of my years hunting and fishing weren’t because I loved to hunt and fish, it was because I loved to be with my dad.

I caught lots of record-breaking fish and appeared in media occasionally thanks to my dad. He was once the president of the Georgia Wildlife Federation and a professional bass fisherman just to name a few things. I was a champion archer by the age of 17, and though I caught plenty of fish I had never killed a deer. The very last time we went hunting together was when I was 20 years old. I had an eight-point buck walk up near my stand. He was completely broadside to me with a clear and easy shot at approximately 20 yards, which was my most practiced distance. I did not have buck fever, which is common to young hunters who begin to shake from adrenaline before drawing their bow. I was calm as a cucumber. I raised my bow and carefully took the shot. By some miracle I missed. Probably because I aimed low at the chest focusing on the heart and not at the center mass of the deer. The arrow quietly flew under the deer, then he looked up and calmly walked away managing to keep trees between him and my ability to take a second shot.

I tell this story because it took me a few years reflecting back on it to realize a certain truth about what happened that day. You see, I never had any interest in killing a deer. I was there that day to be with my dad. Sure, I was willing to kill that deer that day, not for me, but for him. I knew how proud he would be if I had taken down that beautiful eight-pointer. It would have been a proud story for him to tell back at the hunting camp. And surely, I would have been proud as well. Not because I managed to kill a deer, but because I did something that meant so much to my father.

I never hunted again after that, and my dad never loved me less for it. He was always proud of anything I did, no matter what it was. Even though I would have loved to see his excitement that day, had I bagged the deer, I never felt doing so would have granted me some kind of acceptance that I didn’t already have. I think that both the deer and I were quite content with that outcome!

Not too long before my dad passed completely into the irreversible darkness, we were having dinner at a barbecue establishment near our homes. The subject of hunting came up and somewhere in mid-conversation he interrupted and said, “I can’t do that anymore.” I stopped and asked, “What exactly?” He said again, “I can’t kill a deer.” I looked at him and nodded, then began to say, “That’s understandable. I guess we all reach our limit at some point.” Then he grabbed me by the wrist and leaned in, looking intently at me with those icy blue eyes of his and said, with a bit of assertion, “I can’t take a life. Never again.”

There was other conversation going on around the table, so I’m pretty sure the intensity of his statement went unnoticed by most of the others there. As for me, it was one of the most profound things he ever said to me. He had come full circle from the young man who once dreamed of being an artist for the Mark Trail comic strip. As a youth he had written a letter to its creator, Ed Dodd, asking what he needed to do to get a job as an artist on the Mark Trail team. To my dad’s excitement Ed wrote him back and he kept that letter for the rest of his life. I’ve read it myself.

Ed, of course, recommended dad attend an art school, so eventually he enrolled at the Atlanta College of Art. Unfortunately, after a few quarters he became disheartened with the “business” of art and left, never to pursue an art career again. Dad never stopped loving nature though. His ink drawings of deer, bears, and squirrels are still in a box at his home to this day. He treated hunting like a sacred ritual and had no patience for those who broke hunting laws. When he was president of the Georgia Wildlife Federation, he launched a campaign against poachers. Not all of his friends were as staunch as he was about obeying certain laws, but he never budged. Even though I stopped hunting all those years ago, it was his world and his high standards that informed my understanding of wildlife management, and I am forever grateful for that.

That night at the barbecue restaurant, I felt I saw him in an enlightened state unlike I had ever noticed before. It was at once beautiful and at the same time a window he opened allowing me to see into his own fear of mortality. That brief conversation passed mostly unnoticed by others at the table, but when you’ve lived your entire life with a man you’ve looked up to, who’s greatest passion was hunting and fishing, it rang loud in my ears and in my heart.

Not even since then have I cried.

I have cried for my dad before though. Two particular times I can recall. As an adult I lived in multiple cities away from Atlanta for a number of years before finally moving back home. I lived in Virginia, Maryland, Ohio, and Tennessee. Each time when I came home to visit along with my wife, and later with my son, we would split time between my dad and my mom, who lives on the other side of town. I still remember clearly one occasion when we were leaving after a visit. Dad was not really a huggy kind of guy, and I’m not much of one either, so it was always a little awkward whenever I left. We would walk out into the front yard, have a few words of farewell, and eventually even embrace a bit. But it wasn’t his words or our embrace that telegraphed his love for me. It was written all over his body and even more deeply in his eyes. I cried, probably more than once really, as I drove away and looked in my rearview mirror at the man who stood there watching until my car would disappear over the hill. That love was so present and authentic it could suck the air right out of your lungs.

Another time, the first time, came on a summer afternoon before my seventh-grade school year. I went on a hike that day into the woods across the street behind the old Conley Hills sandlot. I was pretty proud of myself as I packed my own lunch. I hiked in, set up a place to sit down and pull out my food, and basked there in the tranquility of that summer afternoon as I watched a squirrel play nearby. It made me feel kind of grown up for some reason. I finally packed my stuff, careful not to litter, and headed back home.

I was passing through the dining room at home when my mom stopped me to break some very bad news. My parents were getting divorced. Now in this day and age that might not seem like such a life changing thing, but to an adolescent boy, who only seconds earlier believed he lived in a perfect home, a boy who loved both of his parents dearly and never saw this coming, it can be equal to experiencing the sudden death of a loved one. I had never heard my dad cry before that night. So yeah, I cried, I cried a lot. I may well have used up half of the tears God provided me for a lifetime.

Don’t fret for me too much. Life got better. Time heals things, and kids grow up fast after events like that. My parents eventually remarried, at least for a while. The next time they separated I stayed with my dad and we eventually moved to another part of town. Somewhere in that haze he met Rosemary and I met my future ex-wife.

I am now happily married to my best friend for coming up on 33 years and have a son who lives on the other side of the country. So, now it’s my turn to endure the bittersweet parting of a son after a visit. My dad was fortunate enough to live to see his grandchildren grow up. The last time I saw my father quietly crying was at my son’s graduation from college the same year he would pass away. He was at that place where, for the most part, he had no idea where he was or who most of the people around him were, but he was also at that point where tiny bits would come to the surface and briefly give him clarity only to pass as quickly as it came. I know at least on that day he knew his grandson was graduating. Then very likely, only minutes later, knew he was somewhere important, but struggling to remember what it was or who it was about.

Yet for all of that, not since I looked in that rearview mirror as I pulled away from his home in Douglasville to take my family back to Ohio, or Tennessee have I cried for the loss of my dad.

I will admit that some tears have formed as I write this reflection. I’m not sure it counts as the type of cry I always expected to have on the fateful day that I would lose my father, but I’m okay. My dad hated to cry anyway. He was very much a man’s man after all, and crying would be unseemly to him, I say to myself.

Perhaps one day the crying will come, but truthfully, I have little to cry for, because I am the luckiest man in the world. Because I had a father who loved me deeply. Deeper than any fancy words I can make up now as I write this. Life has been terrible and beautiful. Would I prefer to write a different ending for my father? Absolutely. But as my dad slowly felt his life fall apart as a darkness moved in to take away from him everything he knew, I hope he understood one thing clearly before it all went dark. That he was a success. The man who never had a father of his own was the greatest dad any boy could ever ask for.