It always seemed to me that many in my orbit looked at Thanksgiving as a day to get out of the way to usher in the true Potter County holiday - deer hunting season.
As the daughter of a man who made his living at a grocery store that catered each season to the hunters filling hundreds of God's Country camps, Thanksgiving was the chance to catch a breath before the seven-day-a-week madness that was hunting season. It seems to me the only time my dad missed church was the Sunday before Monday's deer opening when the store was open for the hunters.
Hunting also played a big role in the Metzger family with the senior Arthur guarding his days off from his government job so he'd have plenty of time to hunt with the junior Arthur. Later on, it was our son who carried on the tradition and still later, our crack-shot daughter-in-law.
Ask any of my generation about hunting season, and you'll hear stories of our normally sleepy town crowded with the guys in their red Woolrich hunting togs. It was a good time to be a waitress at one of the town's eateries for those men were often big tippers and the extra hours for early morning breakfasts brought more than pocket change for Christmas shopping. But at the same time, mothers and especially fathers cautioned us youngsters to walk the streets only in a group. As one mother put it "We don't want to be caring for a baby with a red cap next year."
It was common for folks to "take in hunters" each year, offering a bed - often bunk style - and serving two meals a day and packing bag lunches for the hunt. The movie theater had movies all through the week with westerns often the choice.
At the newspaper office, where my mother worked, the big push came just before hunting season as the "Sportsmen's Special" was prepared - each year adding more pages, more advertising and more copy. The genius idea of soliciting hunting stories from subscribers brought even more readers.
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| .... from 1960 |
At the paper, excitement continued throughout the two-week hunting season as the newspaper sent a photographer to capture each proud hunter with his/her prey. Thus the "dead deer" issue was born - usually published the week between Christmas and New Year's - when photos of each entry in the Big Buck contest were published.
It's hard to imagine for all but those of us who remember how to dial a telephone, but Bell Telephone set up special "message stations" in Coudersport and Galeton for several years in the heyday of hunting mania to accommodate the hunters and their need to communicate with folks back home.
And speaking of the newspaper, I leave you with this from my grandfather's weekly column in The Potter Enterprise, penned in 1954.
"This writer was surely glad Monday morning – sour, dreary,
foggy, dark – that he had not lost a deer.
Therefore he did not have to hunt for it."
He continues writing:
"Still it would not have been at all bad to be a member of a
hunting camp with a group of good fellows. Just because he
joins such a group does not mean that he has to ram through
the woods, with bramble and briar digging the cuticle from his carcass; he doesn't have to stand watch on a
runway in the rain and snow and chilling wind.
Nope.
At the camp there is warmth and good, and congenial fellows;
stories, song, wit and wisdom (?) and memories so pleasant
they will last for years to come.
Hunting is only part – a small part – of the pleasure
of a few days away back in the wilderness
with convivial companions.
There may be a thrill - there no doubt is - in leveling
a rifle, drawing careful bead on a prize buck and
seeing him drop while running a full speed.
Never having even shot at a deer, this writer does not know.
But even so, bagging a buck is only part of the
pleasure of hunting. There are scores of sportsmen who
have been coming to this famous hunting ground for years and years, and who have yet to get their first deer.
They come just the same each hunting season and the memories are cherished - so precious money could not buy them.
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