We did not have much big game in Brunswick County when I was young. There were no turkeys except at Orton. There were only a few deer left in the Green Swamp. No deer or turkeys were on our farm. We had squirrels, a few rabbits, about 9 coveys of quail, doves, and zillions of Red Winged Blackbirds that we shot and ate. They were yummy. I was in college when I saw the first deer on our place and almost retired before I saw my first turkey.
My uncle would take me up to the Green Swamp to hunt deer with the neighbors who had deer dogs. We would get there before dawn and ride the roads with our heads out the windows trying to see deer tracks on the dirt road. We would all meet up at the Mud Hole, at Bee Tree, or some other location to compare notes. There were no CB radios back then. Those in charge would plan out a hunt and assign stands to people. Standers would be positioned around a block at strategic locations to watch the road and to shoot any buck that crossed in range of a load of buckshot. One or two men would take the dogs into the block where the track entered to try to jump the deer. You could follow their progress and could tell quite easily if the deer jumped. A pack of hounds trailing a jumped deer is a sweet sound to a hound man. You never knew which way the deer would run, and only occasionally would anyone get a good shot at a buck. I have spent many hours standing on a cold dirt road in the middle of about 15,000 acres of nowhere waiting to hear some dogs. The group might actually kill one or two deer a week if we were lucky. All the meat was divided among all the hunters.
Things got a lot easier when we got CB radios, 4 wheel drive trucks, and a whole lot more deer. I have not hunted with dogs in decades because I have plenty of deer on my farm.
Everybody has their own hunting background that shapes the way they think about hunting. Mine may not be better or worse than that of another person, but it is mine. I would not trade it for the world.
😁 