DOE, A DEER, A FEMALE DEER...

Well, the Wisconsin regular gun season has closed for another year and it's time for the Buck Report. We have one buck to report. After seven days of the nine-day season passing, with Mark only seeing a couple does, he finally got his buck on Saturday morning. A really nice nine-point. We were all pretty happy, but none more so than Mark, as he'd been getting a little discouraged.

He'd gone out alone that morning, as Taylie wanted to sleep (those 5AM revelies were catching up to her) and Ramsey had to work. It was about 14* below zero (yup!) and Mark said by the time he walked in 400-500 yards he had to stop to catch his wind. Sucking in that cold air while trying to hurry to beat the sunrise was making him feel an asthma attack coming on. As he rested, he surveyed his surroundings in the filtered early morning light and couldn't believe his eyes when he saw, to his left, a picture-perfect buck at about 80 yards. It was standing facing away from him, but looking back over its shoulder at him. As Mark put his rifle up the deer turned its head to look at the doe it was following, giving him only the back of the neck to shoot at. And that's where he hit it, with the shot coming out the buck's cheek. He dropped in his tracks. Nice shot.

Then came the drag back out to the road (puff, puff). As he struggled to load that big guy in the back of the truck by himself a vehicle stuffed with Blaze Orange clad hunters went by honking and giving him the thumbs-up. Thanks, guys.

Taylie's first deer hunt was a bit of a disappointment to her as she never got an opportunity for a shot. But she learned a lot and had some quality time with her Dad. And there's always next year!

Ramsey hung two deer on the "buck pole"; both does, a smaller one taken during the regular season, and one really big doe taken today during the Blackpowder season. Yeah, he's not done yet. Blackpowder goes for ten days, Michigan gun season goes til the end of the month, and late bow season goes until the end of the year. With the six-point buck he took earlier this month during bow season his count is three and he has a few tags to fill yet. He's only slightly obsessed. We've nicknamed him Mini Ted "Whack 'em and Stack ''em" Nugent.

For those who may wonder at all this "slaughter", it is not just done for sport. It is the mainstay of our diet. I buy very little meat from the store; a little pork and chicken once in awhile for variety. We clean and butcher our deer ourselves. Mark de-bones it all, we wrap and freeze the tenderloins, steaks, and a few roasts. We grind a lot of the meat for burger and also make jerky and sausage. We always give my folks a completely processed (cut, wrapped, ground) deer for their Christmas present. None of it goes to waste. We are very thankful for God's provision.

Many people say they don't like venison but I'm convinced they tried meat that was not handled properly: if it hangs too long in warmer weather, if the tallow is not all removed, and if it's butchered with the bones in; all these can give venison that "gamey" taste that turns many people off. Our meat has no such taste. We've had people eat it, not knowing it was venison, and give sincere compliments specifically on the meat. They're shocked when they learn it's venison because they didn't know it could taste so good. And it is very healthy; very little fat and no cholestrol.

We've raised our family on venison, grouse, duck, and fish. The kids get to choose what they want for their birthday dinner and it's almost always venison or fish. Many years ago, when Ramsey was about a year and a half old, we were visiting one of my sisters over the holidays. My sister, Tara, prepared a wonderful pork roast with mashed potatoes, gravy, and all the extras. It was a delicious meal. I fixed a plate for little Ramsey and set it on the highchair tray in front of him. He looked at it and said, "Where's the venison?"

That's my boy.

COUNTING MY BLESSINGS

What many regard as the first Thanksgiving took place in December 1621 as the religious Separatist Pilgrims held a three-day feast to celebrate God's provision and a bountiful harvest. The day did not become a national holiday until 1863 when President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday of November a national day of thanksgiving. Later, the ever economy-minded President Franklin Roosevelt declared that Thanksgiving should always be on the fourth Thursday of the month to encourage holiday shopping; never on the occasional fifth Thursday.

I find counting my blessing and looking for things to be thankful for can really make a positive difference in my mood and outlook; not just today, but every day. God has so richly blessed me. Everything I have, everything I need, comes from Him.

MY TOP TEN THINGS TO BE THANKFUL FOR

1) Jesus Christ loved me and died for me before I loved Him.

2) God's grace is sufficient for me.

3) He promised He will never leave me nor forsake me.

4) His strength is made perfect in my weakness.

5) His mercies are new every morning.

6) He has given me a godly husband who loves me, is a good provider,

and a great dad.

7) He has given me four healthy, beautiful children.

8) My children all know Jesus as their Savior.

9) I have everything I need.

10) We enjoy good health.

Those are just the top ten; I could go on and on with big and little things. I hope you all can say the same. Let's make it a point to be thankful everyday; not just on this national holiday.

PARENTAL IDIOMS

It can be rather dismaying to find yourself spouting forth nonsensical things to your children that your parents spouted at you. You wondered where they came up with these odd expressions and idioms. Now you are hearing them echoing down the ages out of your own mouth. Maybe it's genetic; maybe they got them from their parents.

Maybe not. I'm pretty sure my mother's exclamations of "Oskamalochy" and "Bulshevacky" were original to her. (Is it possible to misspell a non-word?) "Oskamalochy" was her primary expression of extreme alarm upon encountering any spider, snake, or putrefied potato. I've found it rather fitting on similar occasions. "Bulshevacky", I'm pretty sure, was her good Baptist upbringing way of not saying "bullshit". Dad used that term liberally enough for all of us. Personally, I've not found the substitute as safisfying as the real thing.

Most of us have heard the threat, "I'm going to knock you into next week!" But my dad took that one to another level with "I'm gonna hit you so hard you'll wear out rollin'!" or "I'll knock you so hard your kids'll be born dizzy!" I spent a fair amount of time as a youngster pondering that one. Now my kids do.

I'm sure Dad's "Take all you want, but eat all you take" and "Yours is not to question why; yours is but to do or die" came directly from his Marine boot camp experience. And he enforced them like any drill sergeant worth his salt would. I never needed any further clarification on those two and my kids have never asked for any either.

One of my dad's that I never got a handle on was, "This is going to hurt me worse than it hurts you." .....Really?! Eighteen lashes with a wooden spoon on the bare butt later. Thankfully, that's one I've never heard come out of my mouth. And though we did spank our children in their formative years when needed, it was one or two smacks on a clothed bottom.

And there's the dire consequences ones: "You're gonna fall and break your neck", "You're gonna slip and poke your eye out", "You're gonna get the bends and drown", "You're gonna inhale that and choke to death", and last, but not least..."You can drown in two inches of water, ya know!" Unbelievably, I heard that last one come out of my mouth not too long ago.

You know what they say..."The nut doesn't fall too far from the tree!"

TEST RUN

Testing...testing...one, two, three...check, check, check...

(I'm not investing a whole lot of myself in this post)

BLOG RANT

OK, so you would NOT believe the problems I suffered trying to publish yesterday's post! I began composing it at around 6AM and did not actually semi-successfully publish it until 7PM (with generous breaks to eat, get another cup of coffee, go to the bathroom, bang my head on the computer desk, and attend a friend's jewelry party).

First, about 3/4 of the way through composing, we had a power outage -- GONE! Power came back on minutes later and I started over only to have the power flick off for a few seconds -- GONE AGAIN!! AAARRGH!
Yes, I tried to save my work but was not able to.

After starting over for the THIRD time, typing quickly and not stopping to proofread, I finished and clicked the SAVE AS DRAFT button. Whereupon I received an Error Message: Your HTML cannot be accepted: Tag is broken Huh? I know nothing about Web page technicalities (for years I thought HTML was an abbreviation for Hotmail). I checked my saved drafts and, guess what? Not there!! 'Bout this time my mind is bordering dangerously close to a psychotic break.

I searched through my saved drafts and eventually found it but could only view it in HTML form. I saw typos needing correction and the spacing and font size was all messed up, but I was unable to change any of that. I went to the BlogSpot help sites, read all the current issues, and known problems. No help there. I emailed Blogger support and received a generic email listing topics that might help and found one that had a tutorial about HTML. This quick crash course gave me enough extremely limited understanding to go back and monkey around with a "tag" at the end of my post. This allowed me to finally be able to publish, but not correct errors. When I tried to edit the post I lost it for a while again in cyber neverland. When I finally tracked it down and got it published I had to just suffer the typos, improper spacing, and unwanted font size changes.

I'm telling ya, it was enough to make me give up blogging for good. Obviously, I haven't, but if this post gives me any guff I'm outta here!

MY BUCK STORY

I don't blow the dust off this story too often, but watching my teenage daughter head out early this morning for her first Opening Morning deer hunt flashed me back 29 (!!) years. It goes like this:

The year was 1976 and I was a junior in high school. I had been out of town the two days before Opening Day with fellow thespians at the State Drama Competition. I don't remember the name of 3-act play, but I do remember I played a very pregnant, ditzy woman named Maizy and we won second place. We arrived home around midnight and my dad shagged me out of bed around 5 AM.

Dad had taken me down in the valley below our little farmstead earlier that week and had me shoot his .308 Remington Mohawk at the Ace of Spades he'd tacked to a tree about 30 yards away. He only gave me four rounds and I placed all four on the card with two rounds actually in the spade. "Good enough," he said.

It was COLD Opening Morning with about ten inches of snow on the ground. This was before the days of Blaze Orange so one wore something somewhat red. My get-up happened be a quilted, nylon jacket and pants that made an annoying whish when you moved. Dad hammered into my head what good ears deer have and that I had to be absolutely quiet. We headed out in our old Ford Falcon station wagon to what is known as the Haymeadow Creek area about five miles from our home. We drove in on an old logging road, left the car and walked in about a half mile where he left me sitting under a huge old spruce with branches that hung down to the ground forming a sort of tent. I sat on the hump the roots made and leaned against the trunk, completely screened from view. There was a deer trail passing right by this tree and I could see quite a ways in either direction on it. Dad told me I was not to leave my stand for any reason and he headed off into the woods.

It was crackling cold in the last moments of dark and early dawn. I was freezing within a half an hour. As the woods began to lighten with the coming day the squirrels started stomping around in the dry leaves under other trees. It's unbelievable how loud those little critters are. They kept me on edge as I was sure it was a deer heading my way. The chickadees were almost as bad. They would flit in among the branches of my spruce, perch and check me out with loud dee dee dees.

By 7AM my hands were buried deep in my pockets and I was feeling like a frozen turd. As I was wiggling my toes in my Sorels, trying to get some circulation going, I saw snow falling from some tag alders up alongside the trail. More squirrels or chickadees, I supposed. Suddenly, the alder branches were moving vigorously and then what appeared to be heavier branches pushed through the alders and, without a sound, an 8-point buck stepped out onto the trail. He looked left, right, left for traffic, just as his mama taught him, and then proceeded down the trail toward me and my tree. At this point my hands were in my pockets, the .308 across my knees, and all I could think of was the whish my jacket was going to make if I moved. So I didn't. I watched as the buck walked until he was alongside the spruce I was under and there he stopped. He seemed to sense something was there and he peered through the snow-ladened bows. Then, much to huge dismay, he pushed his antlers, head, and all but his hindquarters through the branches and into my space under the tree! I could have reached out and scratched him between the ears, he was that close. His head was lowered and he just looked me in the eye. I don't think I blinked and I don't know if I was even breathing. He was 'cuz his breath was curling from his nose.

INTERMISSION

(Ya'll can take a potty break 'cuz this saga's not done yet.)

I don't know how long we were like that, me looking at him looking at me with my hands in my pockets, rifle across my lap, and my mind a blank. Then he calmly backed out from under the spruce, flicked his tail once, and walked on down the trail. He did not run and did not seemed at all disturbed by our encounter. Only my eyes moved as I watched him disappear 40 or 50 yards down the trail until he hung a right around some small balsams. Then I suddenly unthawed, both body and mind. I can't believe that just happened...good thing there's tracks in the snow, 'cuz Dad would never believe this...I can't believe I didn't shoot...I just let him walk away! I turned around and knelt on the side of the root hump and looked in the direction the deer had disappeared. All of a sudden I saw him in an opening between the balsams. I quickly shouldered the rifle, put the crosshairs of the scope right behind his shoulder, took a breath, let it half out as I took up the slack on the trigger, held my breath and squeezed off the shot. Not being solidly positioned on that hump, the recoil knocked me off balance and I tipped back on my rump. I ejected the empty casing, put on the safety, dusted myself off, and sat back down on the hump to wait for my dad. Well, at least I can say I shot at the darn thing.

I didn't go look to see if I'd actually hit the deer because I really didn't think I had and, besides, Dad told me not to leave my stand for any reason.

About 20 minutes later, I could hear him whistling, "The infantry, the infantry, with the dirt behind their ears! The infantry, the infantry, could drink their weight in beers! The artillery and the calvary and all of them engineers could never lick the infantry in a hundred million years!" He'd heard my shot and asked what I'd seen. I told him what has happened and showed him the tracks. He told me to sit tight and he followed the trail of the deer. I was busy wondering if we were gonna get to go home for lunch when I heard him call, "Lo, you better get over here!" I trudged through the snow figuring I might have winged this deer and we were going to have to track him. I came around the balsams and there was Dad standing over the buck who had taken one leap and piled up in the snow. My shot had entered right where I'd aimed and come out the opposite shoulder passing right through the heart and lungs. He was dead before he ever hit the ground.

I was stunned. Dad was just grinning and shaking his head. I started to run around squealing and he told me to pipe down or I'd have ever hunter in Vilas County showing up. As he proceeded to show me how to gut it, the awful truth hit me like a ton of bricks. He trusted me and I shot him! To Dad's dismay, I began to cry.

"What the hell's that matter with you?"

"He trusted me and I SHOT him!"

Dad just looked at me like I'd gone loco. He had never shot a nice buck in all his years of hunting; though he'd always put meat on the table, if you get my drift.

I pulled myself together and we dragged that buck out to the Falcon, loaded him up and it wasn't until we ran into the first group of local hunters that I started to feel a little better. They were quite impressed with my kill. When we stopped at my grandparents' on the way home, I thought my grandpa was going to burst with pride. Mom was very proud and my younger sisters were amazed. During the course of that winter I felt a growing sense of pride in my accomplishment overshadowing my remorse for my betrayal of the deer as his meat fed our family.

So there you have it. My buck story. I hunted for another nine seasons and never got a shot at another deer. I was nearly shot by another hunter one year and another year I was run over by a herd of deer. The last year I went out I was four months pregnant with my first child and decided the blood that should have been in my extremities was collected in my womb nourishing that baby and it was too dang cold to pee in the woods every half hour.

AFTERWORD: When we butchered that deer my dad cut off the rack and put in the loft of the horse barn where it stayed most of the winter. In the spring I noticed it was gone and Dad said it had maggots on it and he got rid of it. I was bummed because I'd wanted to mount it somehow. The following October I turned 17 and we had my birthday dinner at my grandparents'. The best gift I received was from my proud grandfather: he had soaked the deer skull in a lye solution and mounted the rack on a piece of oak he'd cut from an old pew from the Catholic Church that was torn down a few years before. He used to be a tool-and-die man and with his tools he'd stamped these words onto a brass plate he affixed to the oak:

TAKEN BY

LORA CORSER -16 -

WITH ONE

SHOT

NOV -21-1976

VENISON FOR A VETERAN

A couple weeks ago I informed the four kids that they were all going to be responsible for planning and preparing one supper a month. I said they had to keep the cost under $10 and that included dessert, if they wanted it. Ramsey, of course, dug in his heels and objected to this idea, but the other three enthusiastically started looking at cookbooks and in the freezer, pantry, and cupboards. Wylie was the first to pick his day to cook and claimed today, Veteran's Day. I asked him if we should invite Papa (my dad) to join us for the meal and he liked that idea as well.

Wy wanted to learn to cook fish, venison, and duck. We have plenty of duck, thanks to Ramsey, but no venison as of two days ago. So Wy was going with duck. Tuesday evening I checked messages on the answering machine and heard a twangy, redneck voice say, "Venison. It's what's for dinner." Couple hours later there was a nice six-point hanging in the garage. And Wyler switched gears on his dinner menu: tenderloin, mashed potatoes, and corn with cranberry-apple cobbler for dessert.

My dad is coming down from Ontonagon to participate in the Veteran's Day ceremony held every year at the school, then he'll go to the nursing home to visit the vets who reside there, and also go spend some time with a fellow Marine and Korean vet who is slowly dying of cancer.

Dad did his part in serving his country and now he's doing his part in remembering, honoring, and encouraging fellow veterans. I'm glad to do my part and teach my children to never forget the sacrifices made by their grandfather and so many others. Are you doing your part?

WHERE IS THE TOLERANCE?

I find myself growing increasingly intolerant of the intolerance I see among the proponents of tolerance. Allow me to share here something written by Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham, which aptly expresses what I have been thinking and feeling:

Tolerance has become the new watchword of our times. It is heralded as perhaps the highest virtue in Western culture that glues people of differing backgrounds and ideologies together for the sake of promoting cultural unity. And why shouldn't it be? It sounds good, right? In fact, it sounds so good that anyone who would dare talk negatively about this sacred cow of civility would almost be considered immoral. But that's just the point. The media and the governmental bureaucrats tell us to be tolerant of everything and anything except the Gospel of salvation, all in the name of political correctness. It seems almost ironic that Christians are not being tolerated by such a "tolerant" society.

So I admit, I get frustrated and a bit defensive when I encounter intolerance toward the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ. In Western societies these days, just about any viewpoint, religion, or behavior is exempt from criticism in the name of "tolerance". It is "politically incorrect" to give anything but reverent respect to the most off-the-wall ideas that come from individuals. All of this is done in the name of "tolerance".

But such tolerance is not universal. One of the few loopholes in the "law of tolerance" involves followers of the Name of Jesus Christ. If you are a born-again Christian, don't expect the same tolerance that others enjoy -- the playing field is not level as it relates to other beliefs. For decades now, Christians have been on the run over issues like prayer in public forums and Nativity scenes erected on public property.

To illustrate: Since the September 11 attacks, there has been heightened interest in America concerning Islam. For instance, one California school district went so far as to require seventh grade students to learn the tenets of Islam, study important persons in the history of the religion, learn verses from the Koran, pray "in the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful," and chant "Praise to Allah, Lord of Creation."

Can you imagine the lawsuits that would raise their ugly heads if a teacher commanded students to memorize Bible verses, recite the Lord's Prayer, or pray in the Name of Jesus? Any teacher that would allow this would be fired, and the school district sued!

Christians are increasingly not tolerated because they are viewed as intolerant! In the past, "tolerance" in matters of faith meant respectful acknowledgment of different ideas. It did not mean that all such ideas were granted equal validity as truth. It makes me wonder why other religions are able to promote their theology in public forums. Even our government seems to bend over backward to give them a hearing. But these days if you mention the Name of Jesus or seek to discuss Christian ideas publicly, you risk being labeled by the media-created term "the religious right" and are considered a dangerous threat to the doctrine of the separation of church and state.

An FBI analysis show that Thomas Jefferson's views on church and state weren't what we've heard -- far from it. When Jefferson penned his now famous phrase, "a wall of separation between Church and State", in a letter dated January 1, 1802, to the Danbury Baptist Association in Connecticut, did he expect it to be memorable? Maybe. A 1998 FBI laboratory analysis of the letter showed that Jefferson labored over that portion of the letter, perhaps fussing over its political impact. But did our third president expect his words to effectively drive religion out of the public square? No. Jefferson's initial draft reveals his understanding that the federal government simply lacked jurisdiction over religion. So who gave us the wall of separation that renders prayers at graduations and in public parks unconstitutional? The author of that wall was not Jefferson, but U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, appointed by Franklin Roosevelt in 1937 and who served until his death in 1971. In a number of rulings he helped write, Black used Jefferson's language, but not Jefferson's meaning. Black's separationist leanings became more aggressive over time, resulting in rulings that ordered the removal of religious instruction, prayer and Bible reading from public schools and bans on graduation prayers and the posting of the Ten Commandments.

One of Jefferson's greatest achievements was the passage of the Virginia Statute of Religious Liberty, which was passed in 1786 after a long and heated debate in the legislature. This piece of legislation provided the basis for the constitutional guarantee of religious freedom as found in the First Amendment of the Constitution...Jefferson's wish had been turned into law: "An Act for Establishing Religious Freedom...that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintaiin, their opinion in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities."

The painful irony is that it was our Christian roots in America that created an environment supportive of free thought and behavior that has resulted in tolerance, as it is now understood. Regardless of what the media movers and shakers think about Christians, the truth remains that their very freedom to express such opinions is a result of this nation's Christian heritage. Our democratic system did not spring from Hindu, Buddhist, Shinto, or Moslem traditions. The Bible -- not the Koran, Vedas, Tripitika, or other so-called holy books -- is the source of our nation's philosophy on the value of mankind and how they should treat one another and be governed. Even today, men and women are laying down their lives to preserve our Bible-based freedom.

America is infatuated with this false understanding of tolerance. To be truly tolerant is not to give every idea equal standing or to compromise the truth in the interest of keeping the peace and making everyone happy. Being tolerant does mean accepting the fact that every person is created in the image of Almighty God and that we each have a soul that will live for eternity. Jesus Christ paid the price for our eternal salvation through the shedding of His blood on Calvary's cross for all men -- equally.

As American citizens, Christians have the same constitutional rights as everyone else. I am offended when others display intolerance when I take my stand for Jesus Christ. Such intolerance should not totally surprise me either. The Lord Jesus Christ warns that His followers cannot avoid being hated for His "name's sake".

The Name of Jesus Christ is a lightning rod because Jesus Christ represents the division of life between good and evil, God and Satan, light and darkness, righteousness and sin, heaven and hell. The Name of Jesus shouts out a choice: "Whom will you serve, give your life to, depend upon?" Rebellious, self-willed people want to retain the right to decide for themselves which way they will take. Jesus denies this option. Speaking on His behalf, the Apostle Peter said, "For there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved."

Jesus is gentle, but He is not weak. He loves the sinner but is absolutely intolerant of sin. He is not a negotiator. He is Lord. It is this bristling truth that invites intolerance toward Christians. Jesus did not say, "Do your own thing; all roads lead to God." That would have made Jesus "politically correct", but Jesus is not politically correct. He is Lord.