Remembering the perfect days of deer hunting

As hunters flock to the woods for gun deer season, their days will be steeped in tradition and contemplation.

For writer and forester Ron Weber, this time has always been about more than the hunt. He tells “Wisconsin Life” it’s about appreciating the world and the memories swirling around him. Here is his essay.

‘On Hallowed Ground’

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As the sun inched up the horizon on the second morning of the gun deer season, I leaned back against a foot thick white cedar, one of a clump of three on the edge of a mature aspen stand. The cedars offered me cover from keen-eyed deer and shelter from the light snow that had begun falling an hour or so before first light.

I had first come this way in 1979 at the age of 15. The area had been clearcut the previous year and by the following summer a sea of young 4 foot tall aspen sprouts had colonized the cutover up to the edge of an expansive cedar swamp. Deer sign was abundant so I searched for a likely spot to take up watch. The group of cedars seemed perfect so I took a seat amongst them. It was impossible at 15 to realize how the aspen and the cedars would weave themselves into the fabric of my life.

Over the years I would return to this spot almost every season. I watched the aspen grow from wispy sprouts to 3 inch thick saplings, 15 feet tall in a decade. As the years passed, the aspen continued their fierce struggle to get taller than their neighbor, ensuring they would get adequate light to live on another year. Those aspen that didn’t add height fast enough were doomed.

Snow-covered forest with bare and evergreen trees in winter, under cloudy sky. Thin layer of snow on ground and branches. — An aspen stand that Ron Weber has grown up with on hunting land in northern Wisconsin. *Photo by Ron Weber*

Sometime during the morning it dawned on me that I had been sharing this view with the trees for 45 years now. Over the course of the next few hours one memory after another played in my mind’s eye. One stood out though.

It was Friday after Thanksgiving in 2002. Members of my deer camp had spread out in the area. I volunteered to mosey around in the cedar swamp to try and move a deer or two past my campmates. It was a glorious day for hunting; blue skies, a 6 inch covering of snow and temperatures in the 20’s. After weaving my way through the swamp for an hour or so, a shot rang out. Eventually I made my way out of the swamp and came upon my brother Gary. He was sure it was our brother Jim who had shot so we made tracks to his stand, the clump of three cedars. There we found him with a beautiful 11 point buck.

A person in orange hunting gear kneels next to a deer with antlers on a snowy forest floor, holding a rifle. — Jim Weber poses with his 11-point buck on what his brother, Ron Weber, calls “a perfect day.” *Photo courtesy of Ron Weber*

In a lifetime, some days are simply perfect and that day certainly was. One wishes they could bottle such days and things would always be just so, but it is a foolish wish because life is far from perfect. So it was only a mere decade later that I returned to the cedar stand during deer season, not to hunt but instead to leave some of Jim’s ashes there, where for a moment life was perfect.

A pileated woodpecker hammering away on a punky aspen brought me back to the present. As I scanned the woods, I realized this aspen stand was nearing 50 years old, the age at which aspen are routinely regenerated by clearcutting. How many more years would the aspens be here? How many more would I? Those are questions a 15 year old does not bother to ask, but a 60 year old does.

A snowy forest scene with tall trees, sparse branches, and a thin layer of snow covering the ground and vegetation. — A treasured clump of cedar trees, which holds many memories for writer Ron Weber of Weyerhaueser. *Photo by Ron Weber*

The sun was gone now behind a gray veil of clouds and dark would be here soon, bringing to an end another day. Standing up to leave, I ran my hand over the smooth, stringy bark of the cedar. They seemed the same as when I was 15. The aspen had grown up and older as had I, but the cedar, with a life span of potentially 400 years or more, did not show it.

Someday, the aspen will be cut again and a new sea of sprouts will take root for the cedars to watch over. If it can’t be me to sit here in the clump of cedars, I could only hope some other young hunter finds their way here and senses how special this place is. Whether they realized it or not, they would be hunting on hallowed ground.

“Wisconsin Life” is a co-production of Wisconsin Public Radio and PBS Wisconsin. The project celebrates what makes the state unique through the diverse stories of its people, places, history and culture.