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A Father's Legacy!

A Father's Legacy By: John Coit Date: 9/21/2000 Family traditions disappear each day, but new ones take their place. We may not today even know which ones will be relevant in years to come, but every now and then we realize, without a doubt, that we will remember THIS with gratitude until the very last.

The family tree spreads its heavy limbs far out and over the small creek flowing through our front yard. For over a hundred years this great live oak has shaded the forest floor.  Its acorns have fed squirrels and deer over all those intervening years, and now they sustain as well the wild turkeys that only recently have returned to inhabit these woodlands. Even more recently, this tree has supported my family as we pursue whitetailed deer.

Yesterday, I settled down into a substantial crotch some twenty-five feet up into this tree, while my son waited silently before me in the stand we have attached to its great bole. As I sat there, I thought about all the hours I spend in these woods and how nice it is to have a tree large enough to support the two of us. I love to deer hunt, but having my son perched right there in front of me increases my enjoyment of the experience that much more.

I wonder just what would I do if the Big One sneaks around our tree and my boy doesn't see it? Would I shoot it and share the harvest? Or would I let it walk, hoping the buck reveals himself to my son so my boy can experience the joy of harvesting a trophy? Similar questions flash through my head, and each time a twig snaps, hope is renewed that this time a buck will appear. This is how the minutes and the hours pass while I wait in the tree, silently sharing time and the goodness of nature with my son.

There was a time when deer hunting meant just one thing for me. I trekked to the woods for peace, serenity, and if I were lucky, food for our table. I was a lone hunter from the very start, always choosing to slip far away from camp, to wallow through an extra swamp or wade another creek so that I and I alone might savor this experience. Because I hunted in this manner, my wealth of personal experiences were rich, I'd proven time and again my oneness with Mother Nature, and my ethics had become mine alone. This had suited me.

My son has watched and waited during three consecutive season of not harvesting a deer.  He once vowed to harvest a nice buck - and only a nice buck - but when the time is right. Opportunity had walked beneath his tree time and time again, but each time he has let it pass.

At this moment, though, here in our family tree, an amazing thing happens.  I watch several does ease from a thicket and then out into shooting range. A few minutes later, two small bucks appear. They join with the does and together the deer set to munching the ripe acorns scattered about beneath our tree.  By this time the evening light is failing. Even with modern optics the bodies of the deer are blending and darkening and blurring. I think to myself will he take the buck ? The rifle was up, the scope and hunter ready.

Then slowly he lowers his rifle. He turns his head slightly as if to say, 'are you ready to go?' We unload our guns, and prepare to lower them. This is the start of the ritual of climbing down from the family tree.  My son and I do so once more knowing full well there is no buck to tag lying somewhere on the fertile ground beneath our family tree.

Once down, my boy says, "Dad, they just wouldn't present a clean shot. I was afraid I might hit the wrong one." That's when I realize that although I know I will head out alone into these sheltering woods again, never would I be truly hunting alone.  For my own ethics and my morals and my own deep and abiding appreciation for this forest and all its creatures go with my son each time he walks to any tree to sit and wait for whitetailed deer.

But it is in the family tree, this tree that has set roots deep into the earth, that the two of us join together to share these things that mean so much to us, and to polish off that which is good so that it might shine bright in our memories for as long as we both shall live.