MIKE GILES: Ralph Morgan’s 88th birthday surprise

Published 4:01 pm Wednesday, February 16, 2022

Ralph Morgan started hauling logs at 13 years of age and hunting deer when he was 12 years old, and he’s still doing it at the age of 88! Recently, Morgan celebrated his 88th birthday with an outdoors bash in the woods near Lauderdale. Morgan went to the woods with his good friend and hunting partner of many years, Larry Muse. Muse drove Morgan to his deer stand and helped him get situated up in the stand for an afternoon hunt before going to another stand.

Now Morgan didn’t celebrate his birthday with a bunch of folks that afternoon, but he did spend a quiet afternoon in the outdoors with a herd of deer. This time he wasn’t roping steers or riding bulls but looking for that trophy buck during the final days of the gun season.

Morgan surveyed the area from a stand 14 feet high, and he could see for a long ways.

“I started hunting back when it was rare to see a deer, and if you saw a track everybody got excited and wanted to come see it,” Morgan said. “I remember one time I saw a fresh deer track and told Mr. Don Allen of Kewanee, and he promptly came over with his dogs to hunt that deer. Back in those days, if you found a deer track, the hunters would put the dogs on the track, and the fun started.”

Morgan watched does come by his stand during the afternoon hunt, and then a few small bucks joined them. He’d been looking for one buck in particular, a beautiful buck that had appeared on his game cameras recently.

One shooter buck came in looking for a hot doe, but it wasn’t the one for which Morgan was looking, so he just kept watching and waiting for the King of the Woods to appear.

“I enjoyed watching the deer activity and the small bucks, too,” Morgan said. “All of a sudden, a large buck with a tall rack charged out and ran towards the others. He meant business, and he wasn’t going to let the smaller bucks get in his way.”

The veteran hunter took a fine aim, put the crosshairs on the buck’s vitals and squeezed the trigger like he’d done so many times before.

“Tic-Boom!” Morgan’s rifle roared, and the buck with the rocking chair rack collapsed instantly. After Muse heard the shot, he came back to Ralph’s stand, and they went to the buck to see what he’d killed.

Astonishingly, he’d killed a buck that sported a 13-point rocking chair rack that had a double brow tine on one side and kicker off of one of the main beam tines. The buck had a trophy rack that rose up high above its head, but his body weight was down due the rigors of the recent rut, and that made his rack stand out even more!

“It was a really good deer,” Morgan said. “It’s just a great feeling to harvest a buck like this because not too many people get the opportunity, and it was great to do it on my birthday while hunting with Larry, too.”

Said Larry Muse, “I moved out here in 1985. We’ve been best friends over 40 years, and I worked with Ralph for about 25 years before I retired. Ralph’s probably one of the oldest deer hunters left in this part of the country, and he started in a time when there were few deer and even fewer hunters.”

Morgan hunted with a few local deer hunters at the Lauderdale Hunting Club land back when he was young. They had a few deer there at the time while more places didn’t have any deer to hunt.

“I used to hunt with Bryant Raley, Giles Padey, Duggan Johnson and Don Allen at the club,” Morgan said. “We really had a great time and killed a few deer in the process. There were so few deer that you had to run them with dogs or you’d have never seen one back in those days.”

Morgan celebrated his birthday in fine style, while harvesting a trophy buck. This week, Morgan is celebrating his 40th year to put on the Harper Morgan Dixie National Rodeo, and he plans to be there each day as well. Just imagine harvesting a trophy buck on your 88th birthday and then getting to spend time at the Dixie National Rodeo put on by your own company!

Call Mike Giles at 601-917-3898 or email mikegiles18@comcast.net.