Breakfast is time for hunters to tell tall tales, jokes, secrets

For those of you who may doubt that much of the attraction of deer hunting lies in the spirit and camaraderie attendant to the sport, be advised that an appreciation of such can be realized without playing hide-and-seek with the elusive whitetails. Fact of the matter is, full helpings of the sociability associated with deer hunting are served at hunters’ breakfasts.

It’s no secret that the predawn meals prepared in school cafeterias, VFW halls, church basements, sportsmen’s clubs and the like would bring tears to a trencherman’s eyes. But a nonmember of the sporting fraternity surely will notice that the mounded plates of hunters heading for the woods are also heaped with portions of good-natured banter and ribbing – some of it, of course, more truth than fiction.

At a table crowded into a back corner, for example, the usual discussion involving deer rifles escalates to discourse when a hunter brags that he can drive nails at 100 yards with his .30-06 – with open sights, if you please. “Hell, you can’t see a nail at 100 yards with open sights,” says a hunter seated across the table.

” ‘Course you can’t,” replies the braggart’s hunting partner, “and neither can he. That’s why he’s got a variable scope mounted on that ’06. Truth is, he’d have a hard time reading that calendar across the room.” Realizing he had taken the wrong fork in the road, the braggart backtracked. Rising from his chair, he deliberately squinted hard as he scanned the opposite wall and said, “What calendar?”

The ensuing laughter ends apruptly when an old-timer named Howard announces that his ancient .35 cal. semi-automatic – it has a safety resembling a door latch on its receiver and a barrel as big as a broomstick – would outshoot all the rifles made nowadays. “She’s grayer’n I am,” Howard allows, “and she throws ’em end-over-end, but she’s dropped more deer’n you young guys’ll ever see.”

Holding a cup of scalding, blacker-than-bear-hair coffee halfway to his mouth, a young hunter – Jimmy, his name is – who lives a short distance from Howard says: “I don’t doubt that for a second. For some reason you old guys seemed to be able to see better at night.” When the charge of laughter subsided, Jim tossed his head toward Howard and fired another shot: “Anyone who thinks this character is going hunting this morning better think again – I’d be willing to bet he’s been hunting half the night.” Those who didn’t know Howard laughed aloud; those who knew him kept busy with their breakfast.

But the old-timer didn’t survive eight decades, The Great Depression and World War II without taking a few trips around the barn. So he cuts his eyes at his mouthy young neighbor and says, “Y’know, Jimmy, I have to say that wife of yours must be one hell of a hunter. She gets a license every year and usually manages to tag a deer without ever gettin’ any closer to the woods than the clothesline. How in hell does she do it?” While laughter rose to the rafters, Jimmy slurped his coffee and stared straight into the cup.

Right about then, somebody named Bill stands up in the back of the room. He stares incredulously at the doorway and his almost whispered, “I’ll be damned,” ends with a shouted, “Harry! For God’s sake! The last I heard you had one foot in the grave. I thought you were dead and gone.” Obviously brimming with life and glowing like a jack o’lantern in blaze-orange hat and jacket, Harry strides forward saying, “So’d my wife. She ran off with someone she met at a yard sale. Best thing that could’ve happened. Shortly thereafter I made one of those remarkable recoveries you hear about. Just call me Lazarus.”

That somewhat ribald conversation ends abruptly, though, when Bill says, “Get some breakfast, Harry, and come back and join us. Where are you hunting?” To which Harry, as serious as a sexton and in spite of the hearty welcome, replies, “None of your business.” Only a dyed-in-the-wool deer hunter will understand that – or duck hunter or bird hunter or trout fisherman. Accordingly, a table brimming with talk about areas dented with deer tracks becomes as quiet as a confessional when a stranger sits down.

For sure, the uninitiated would become lost in the thickets of numbers and terms tossed around at a hunters’ breakfast. Imagine trying to sort out the verbal tracks regarding “brush-buster” .30-30s, .32s, and .35s and swifter, longer-range ’06s, .308s, 7 mms and .270s. Not to mention in-depth discussions about 4X and 8X scope sights, 170- and 180-grain bullets, 0 and 00 buck. Those numbers would mean no more to an inexperienced observer than the terms “scrapes,” “hookings,” “rubs,” “pawings” “button buck” “spike horn” and “rocking-chair rack” mumbled, of course, through mouthfuls of beans and biscuits.

There’s no question, however, that after digesting the aforementioned plus humorous desserts aimed at snoring, outhouses, getting lost, “buck fever,” wet kindling, camp cooking and its cures: Rolaids, Pepto-Bismol and Kaopectate, anyone hungry for insights to the spirit and camaraderie attendant to deer hunting would be well-satisfied at a hunters’ breakfast.