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Well,
here we are again. It is late August, it’s hot and the future holds
the promise of cold mornings, frost and deer hunting. We all should be
starting to think about our food plots all the while thinking about that
first cold morning of deer season and hoping that this year will yield
large racks and plenty of them.
I
myself am starting to pour over the latest magazines looking for that
one tip that will change the season. I tell myself that although one
dead deer pretty much looks like any dead deer, by looking at all of the
pictures I am actually sharpening my hunting skills. The more deer you
see, the easier it becomes to pick them out of the trees. You see I am
actually training my eyes to see the parts of deer so that when they see
these parts through the brush, they will know what they are looking
like. I am building an endless supply of images that my brain can use to
classify what my eyes are telling it and then it can help me see the
deer. Well, that is my story and I’m sticking to it.
I
find myself checking out deer hunting on the Internet, all the while
hoping that I will be able to hang another monster on the wall.
When
approaching a deer hunting philosophy, I keep three sayings in my mind.
The
first one is that no one ever killed a deer from his or her nice warm,
soft bed. In other words, if you are going to take a deer, of any size,
you have got to be in the woods, not on the couch or in bed. To me,
taking a deer is a matter of playing the averages. If you are in the
woods often enough, you will see deer. If you see enough deer,
eventually you will see one worth harvesting. If you see enough worth
harvesting, one of them is going to be "the big one." It’s
all about averages.
The
second saying I try to keep in mind is that I can sleep all I want to
when I’m dead. I have always been one of those "morning
people." It drives my wife crazy. When I was a kid, I was almost
always the first one up in the house. To me there is nothing as great as
watching the sunrise. I’ve seen the crack of dawn in the Rocky
Mountains of Wyoming, the plains of Nebraska, the Gulf of Mexico, the
Georgia woods and many Alabama forests and fields. I cannot imagine why
people would want to sleep when every morning such beauty is out there
just waiting for someone to see it and it’s free!
The
third and last saying that defines my hunting philosophy, and this is
probably the most important, is that it’s better to be lucky than good
any day of the week. There are people that say that luck is when
opportunity meets preparedness. Fooey! There are people out there that
say that you make your own luck. Poppycock! (I have always wanted to
use that word.) There are people out there that say, you don’t
need luck when you have perseverance, I say, "Hah!"
I
have been prepared for opportunity every time I have hit the deer woods,
but it took ten to fifteen years of deer hunting before I killed my
first deer. When I killed that first deer I had only my rifle and a
pocketknife. For years I had gone to the field with a hunting knife,
rope to drag a deer, twine to tie certain parts of the alimentary canal
closed and even knew where I would take the meat to be cut up. Never got
a deer. The day I killed my first, I started not to go, but the saying
about not killing one at home came to my mind, so I went. I got started
so late that I only had time to get my clothes on, grab my rifle and go
to the woods. I had never gone hunting so unprepared in my life. In my
opinion, that throws the old opportunity meeting preparedness right out
the shooting house window.
I
have persevered with the best of them. I have sat through twenty-degree
weather, rainstorms, lightning storms and mosquitoes have drunk gallons
of my blood. I have done all of this so that I could persevere and
harvest a nice deer, all to no avail. I have climbed down from many a
tree whispering to myself, well if you shoot one you have to clean it. I
have walked down miles and miles of dirt roads, trails and brush so
thick that a bull elephant would turn around all so that I could get
remote enough to find that spot where the Boone & Crocket bucks run
around like a bunch of idiots just asking to be shot. I have crawled
down 500 yards of mesquite-covered sendero in south Texas on my stomach
(I still have cactus thorns in my knees) only to find a herd of cows in
the food plot where there was supposed to be dozens of huge bucks. I
have sat for hours in that same south Texas sendero and seen dozens of
monster bucks that I was unable to kill because I was there to kill a
management buck. Talk about stress, I had a loaded rifle in my hands.
All perseverance will get you is frustrated.
The
last saying is probably the truest saying that has ever been. Let me
remind you, "I’d rather be lucky than good any day of the
week." Let me give you an example. Usually I suffer from a genetic
anomaly my dad called, "Ricks Luck."
Ricks
Luck is what made my dad back out of a real estate deal in Wyoming that
turned out to be one of the richest oil strikes in the history of the
state. Ricks Luck is what made my great-grandfather turn down as much
Destin land as he wanted, for twenty-five cents an acre, because you
couldn’t farm those "sand hills." He had the money to buy
only about five or six hundred acres.
Ricks
Luck is what made the military funeral team late for my dad’s funeral.
That is a story all its own, but suffice it to say that my late father
is probably still laughing about it. After the funeral was over, when
the military finally showed up, all the members of my family and
extended family looked at each other and said, "Ricks Luck."
I
have never considered myself a good deer hunter. And I certainly have
never considered myself a lucky deer hunter, except once. The first
"racked buck" I killed was what I call a nice buck. He wasn’t
huge but he wasn’t tiny. He did have eight points and his antlers were
wider than his ears, but he wasn’t a monster. While I still consider
him a trophy, he ain’t something you would write a magazine article
about, unless you wrote one on the type of buck to pass on. I’ll never
have to worry about Cabela’s calling me to put his horns in one of
their stores. But, when I got him, I was lucky, I didn’t have to
persevere, I didn’t have to suffer. As a matter of fact the longest
walk I made was going to him after the shot.
I
was dropped off not ten feet from the treestand. I loaded my rifle at
two o’clock p.m. and let’s just say that at 2:25, I was standing
over my eight point calling the camp for someone to come and get me.
They hadn’t even gotten the other hunters on their stands. It was a
prime example of pure, unadulterated, unashamed, uncaring LUCK.
Having
lived with Ricks Luck for more than forty-seven years, I have learned
not to depend on luck for such things and have learned that not every
hunt needs to end in a harvest. It makes you thankful for the things you
have and the opportunities you have been given. I am lucky to have seen
all those sunrises; I am lucky to have a wonderful wife, a great
daughter, a family that loves me, and I have a good education. I was
lucky enough to have a great set of parents and a fantastic brother.
I
guess "Ricks Luck" doesn’t necessarily mean bad luck, just a
certain kind of luck.
Ralph Ricks is the manager of Quality Cooperative, Inc. in Greenville.
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