We got our water from the cistern in the back yard of the old deer camp house. The cistern had probably been dug and lined before the turn of last century, when the house was built. We would let a bucket on a rope down through an opening in the cistern’s cover, which was made of weathered, rough-cut boards, and fill it with the rain water collected from the tin roof of the house and routed to the cistern through open, rusty tin gutters.

One day I shined my flashlight down through the opening before lowering the bucket. There, floating happily in our drinking water, was a somewhat bloated rat. Shortly thereafter the deer club members began hauling water in from their homes.

Funny what things we remember happening at the deer camp; happy things, interesting things, inspiring things, sentimental things. And of course the humorous things. Often the memories are just tidbits that hold little meaning but that lie there in our minds waiting to bring a smile when they are recalled.

December was always deer camp time for me during those years when I moved around the country making a living for myself and my family. December is when we went home to Mississippi for Christmas. And Christmas, beyond its important central purpose, also meant deer camp.

In fact going deer hunting was only an unspoken but understood activity associated with the adventure of “going to the deer camp.”

“Where is Jack?” was a typical frequent question that would be asked of a family member of countless Mississippi hunters in the early days of emerging deer herds. “He’s gone to the deer camp, “was the standard answer instead of what might have been expected, “He is deer hunting.”

Practically all Mississippi deer hunters long in the tooth started hunting deer from “camp.” It took a group of hunters to be successful in bagging deer from the sparse herds of the 50s and 60s. And those early deer camps were the scenes of many a happening that provide lifetimes of memories for the deer hunting masses. Each hunter has his or her own favorites.

Mr. Jesse Burroughs provided a lasting moment of humor that I have recalled hundreds of times. One day the tales of missed deer and heavily hit deer failing to fall from multiple hits were flowing one after another. Complainers were lamenting the toughness of bucks that should have fallen having kept on running instead. Mr. Jesse was compelled to jump in with his story. “I saw a deer come by me that had so many holes in him that I could see the trees going by on the other side of him,” he told the group emphatically and with a straight face.

My father had false teeth and when he took them out at night to bed down in that cold back bedroom of the old camp house, he, out of fear of losing them, developed a simple way of keeping them from the numerous pack rats. He had a pretty little porcelain pan. He would lay his teeth on the old table beside the bed and turn the little pan upside down over them.

Only two men I knew of in the part of Kemper County where I hunted used rifles in the late 1950s. We were in the age of shotgun hunting. The discussions around deer camp of such potent and long range guns was lively and frequent.

I showed up with a rifle that had a telescopic sight on it. Somehow the scope turned the .308 rifle into a weapon of mass destruction in the minds of most hunters in the area. I didn’t know there was widespread concern about the danger I supposedly presented with my scoped rifle.

One day I had a buck hanging up on the front porch of the old camp house and two guest hunters were looking at it. I was just inside the door and could hear their conversation. “Who killed that one?” one asked.

The other man responded, “That guy with the elephant rifle.” It was my first hint that there was serious alarm in the minds of the other hunters about my odd and dangerous rifle.

Beyond the funny happenings at deer camp, a sad and moving incident happened one cold December day. A lovable old hunter I remember simply as Mr. McNeal had a passion for deer hunting that exceeded his physical abilities. His doctor had warned him that deer hunting was too strenuous for his heart and that he was risking a heart attack if he continued to hunt.

But his love of the hunt was too great. He walked with several of us to our stands that morning just as the sun was brightening the sky. We left clear tracks in the snow-like frost on the dead grass of a large pasture. We stopped for the old man to rest more than once as we crossed the field.

When we came to the first stand, he took it, having tired from the walk. As he opened his little stool and sat down slowly on it, he fell sideways and crumpled into the frosty grass. His eyes were closed as we stretched him out and loosened his collar during his last breaths. In a moment he was still.

Thereafter we called the stand “Mr. McNeal’s stand.” We were honoring a man who loved the hunt enough to risk his life for it. I never saw the man take a deer. But if he could speak to us today, I have no doubt that he would tell us he has no regrets.

There is more to deer hunting than just getting a deer, enough to inspire steadfast dedication like Mr. McNeal’s. And a lot of the extra happenings occur around the deer camp.