Sling a 2X4 in a tree if it stuck we called it a stand. Bury an old coke case and fill it with corn. Bow stand we got an old cultivator seat and a 2' piece of 3/4" all thread and nutted the seat at top and bottom. Used a 3/4" brace and bit to bore a hole in a horizontal limb close enough to the trunk( Live Oak) to lean back against and we had our bow stand...We used a third nut on the all thread to set the height of the seat and feet went on the limb, really comfy.

I can remember back in the early 60's when spikes and does were not legal to kill. It was a time when bucks were killed and first thing someone asked was how much it weighed, then they might ask about how many points it had or how wide was it. It was also a time when the first day of deer season started on a weekday and there was no school that day. Phones were still new at this time and many did not have one in their home. You answered on your number of rings. In many rural areas it was a party line that was shared with several other farms or ranches. Everyone on the party line listened to your phone calls and you did to theirs. It was a form of social media back then.

Times sure have changed and so has the deer numbers.

I was thinking "is this really hunting" as my son and I watched 40+ deer Saturday morning at various locations (three feeders in a 300 yard span and the 400 yard road I corned on the way in)

Sitting in my Ranch King blind texting my wife who was back at camp on WiFi:

Wife: Seeing anything?
Me: Too many to count
Wife: Any bucks?
Me: Yea 22 bucks last count
Wife: Any shooters for Connor's first deer?
Me: 3 cull 8 points for sure, but the season is young


Learned a few things. It's hard to judge age and/or score with so many targets to look at

Great memories guys. With hunter numbers decreasing, maybe the activity does not do that anymore; make memories, and that is why so many aren't continuing. The magic might be gone. It does seem that it is a bit competitive now; you see it on our forum. It seems that many have to outdo everything; feed, shoot, score, age, etc. It seems that if you shoot a deer with a Fudd gun just because you haven't tasted gravy on a slice of skillet fried backstrap for a year, something is wrong with you.

to me the camp experience is what I miss the most.


Trust me, after hunting in western states humping it and not seeing very much game coming home, sitting in a box blind and seeing lots of deer at a feeder is welcome. But the camp experience has been sacrificed for work schedules, school sports, deadlines and commitments. ( ok I stole that from a Bob Seger song) I miss a group of guys getting together, around a fire, having a few drinks and telling stories. then you go out and hunt and try and kill a big deer or a cull.


That kind of experience just isn't a common anymore

It's the one's that are gone that I miss the most;
Uncle JB - took me on my first deer hunt with dogs in Mississippi. He would let everyone else get up at (in his words) "the butt-crack of dawn" and head to their stands. About sunrise, he figured the dogs were being let loose and we'd load up in an old jeep and drive past the other hunters to go to our stands.
Uncle Bill - taught me enough about hunting mule deer and elk in Idaho. Always took me out fishing and taught me how to fly fish.
Uncle Russell - taught me the fine points on fly fishing and was quite the hunter himself. I don't think his family ever went a year without at least two mule deer and/or an elk.
Finally, Dad - got me hooked on shooting 22's when I was 3. Took me hunting that year and the next. I got to carry a gun on my first hunt when I was just turned 5 (season opened on a Wednesday then). and I shot a little doe with that 30 carbine.

I'd love to have all of those men and more sit around a campfire one more time. I think I'd happily give up all but one of my guns to experience that.

While I would not change the early days and memory of freezing on a two by four on a tree limb, never seeing deer I would never go back. Better hunting I like my Kubota and my travel trailer double slide.

I can remember back in the 60's - 70's sitting on the side of a big hill behind rocks stacked for concealment in Palo Pinto County outside of Gordon. My dad loved long range hunting and would sit for hours looking thru binoculars for deer. My first deer, a doe was taken in a canyon below one of those hills. Deer camp was always something special to me. We had an old metal shack with dirt floor and a pot belly stove to heat it. Dads hunting buddy had two kids who were always there with us and us kids were free to run and explore the woods around camp. Our blinds were the same as yalls, a couple of 2x4's nailed in the crotch of a tree except for when one of the hunters figured out how to haul an old, striped out Renault car up in a couple of trees and blocked it into place. We took a lot of deer off of that place but more importantly we made a lot of memories!

I grew up hunting on the east coast. Nobody baited with corn but some guys ran dogs. If you heard dogs running, you always tried to get in front of them, even if they weren't your group's dogs. Our "lease" consisted of paper company land where you paid like $10 and could hunt all of the land that company held in the whole state. We'd hunt for a long weekend and could count the number of deer we saw on one hand sometimes, and if someone actually killed a deer it was big deal. We never had stands. We'd usually pick a likely spot and get up under a bush or just sit against a tree, or maybe build a brush blind. Sometimes I'd get board and just walk for miles on the logging roads, not knowing that I was moving too fast and out in the open to really see any deer doing that, but it was better then freezing my butt off sitting on the ground. I remember one spot that was the ruins of an old farm house. the only thing left standing was the chimney. My brother and I got so cold we built a fire in it late one morning to warm up and that old chimney still pulled up the smoke. We went by that spot once when we were out scouting and there were still iris flowers growing there, left over from someone's old flower garden. Those are some cool memories from a different time and different hunting, I kind of miss it, but I also enjoy seeing more deer!

Perhaps the best memory of the old days is that no one ever thought of an animal as being “their deer”, much less having gone so far as to give a deer a name.

I grew up hunting east Texas in the early 70's. There weren't a lot of deer around there then. There were a few seasons that I never saw a single deer that was legal to shoot. I don't miss those days.

I started hunting deer in 1980 at 12 years old. To get around the ranch, we had a 1972 1 ton Datsun pickup truck, standard shift. I remember pushing that truck with the help of Dad and uncles just to get down the wet, muddy roads. If it didn't start then you had to "pop" the clutch. We did have the "Weaver" scopes that were only 4 power so we didn't shoot past 200 yards. Cold, rotten deer blinds with broken ladders. And, back then, everyone worked and had jobs and family life so they could only come out maybe 4 weekends all season! Every stand either had 1 feeder only no no feeders. Now, everything is exactly opposite!

there was one old guy i remember, bought a pawn shop rifle of some kind every august-september, sighted it in,
used it for the season to kill his one buck that you were allowed, then sell it right back.
did it every year and got his one allotted deer every year without spending several thousand and change to do it.

one other- does anybody walk to their hunting spot anymore?

I’m gonna have to tonite because the wife will have the buggy.


I’ve found walking to the blind spooks far more deer than driving.

We walk everywhere for hunting.

I guess im too young for the "good old days" I started hunting when I was 10. We had crank up timed feeders and box blinds. The majority of the hunting we do is still similar, but I also enjoy sitting tripods over trails and hand corn, bush blinds etc. I used to walk the edges of the corn fields by my grandparents house and pick up corn cobs the combines missed and save them for deer season.

I grew up hunting very old school as none of these modern conveniences were dreamed up that we were aware of. Our stands were hollowed out brush piles, a few boards nailed into a tree with a flimsy ladder for climbing, there were no such thing as feeders other than planting food plots or tossing out some corn somewhere we could see. It was a harder time hunting but still enjoyable to me.

Over time, make shift feeders using a 5 gallon oil bucket with a hole drilled in the bottom with a sawed off broom handle passing thru the hole with a stiff wire cut off coat hanger inside, usually attached a cedar branch to the broom handle so the wind would blow allowing some corn to come out (the deer figured this out and could empty it in 10 minutes) Or the old wooden coke crates with pieces of rebar driven into the ground to keep the cows/hogs from moving, filled with corn Or the old 1 quart glass coke bottles filled with corn that the deer would paw at to sling some corn out (but once they figured it out, they got to breaking the necks off the bottles leaving shards of glass).

Moving on a few more years out came the photo eye 5 gallon bucket feeders that would go off about 30 minutes after first light (or sunup?), then again 8 hour later. These didn't work too well on heavily overcast days and the coons figure them out pretty quickly too. We started seeing plywood blinds being made/sold, so we built a few of those too, the plexiglass sliding windows were the bomb.

Feeders became more readily available in various sizes up to 55 gallon barrels up on legs instead of hanging out of a tree. Then more advanced timers where you could set multiple settings and durations, HCR were the first of these that I recall and were built in my hometown, so really easy access but were kinda pricey relatively speaking.

Throughout the years, there are more and more advancements (and gimmicks) that become available and the price continues to climb. And most are willing to pay for the nicer things and latest technology to make it easier (maybe?).


when I started a lease was a set fee for the use of the property and you could typically put as many hunters on it that you wanted to even out the price, the deer were a nuisance to the landowner taking food away from their livestock. I still recall my dad had 10-12 buddies that had hunted together for years before I was born, they stuck together from lease to lease when they found something bigger or better. Each of the paid hunters were allowed to bring their immediate family (wife & kids) out to hunt after opening weekend (which used to be the first Sat. after Nov. 16). Landowners provided doe tags and if it had antlers, shoot it because of the limited number of doe tags provided ... the landowners were protecting the baby producers mentality. The price of a lease was like a $1 per acre, split between paid hunters. Yes this was 50 plus years ago, but also a different mindset and much simpler time, providing food for the family. No one asked what the score was, but how wide and how many points, field dressed weight if a really big deer.

times have changes, some for good, some not so much. We typically see much bigger deer where the herd is managed properly, fed properly and let them grow up. I've been practicing this for close to 30 years now ... but likewise, the prices have gone up exponentially.

main thing is do what you like, have fun, teach someone new to love the outdoors and safety in hunting. Not every scenario fits us all, so no need to slam someone if they do something different than you ...

sorry for rambling, this has been over several hours between meetings when I have a few minutes and something new popped into my head.

All of us do. Part of the adventure.

Same here, although I am considering a bicycle. Mainly so it will be a bit quieter than my big ol feet.

Started hunting in 1960 at 12. I remember sleepless nights or the dreams of shooting my limit of rabbits and or pheasants. My dad and my uncle John wre my mentors and i’d Give anything to sit at the fire with them again and listen to the stories that the dreams wre made of. Deer camp in the Catskills of NY state with cabin filled with smoke from the fire place and those cigars floating above the poker table the awesome site of those bucks hanging outside the cabin the day after the opener Sure miss that time in my life

I see you spend time near Dickens. I love that country up there. Had lots of good quail hunts up there years ago.

Man..Takes me back to a better day..late 60's my brothers would take me with them to their lease in Ozona 10k place..they paid $1.00 an acre..NO camo..just blue jeans..coveralls..open sight 30/30..no feeders..etc..greatness!

Activescrape my place is 6 miles north east of Dickens and I also love it here. Been here since 2011 and quail were scarce until 2015 when they exploded last year and this has seen a drastic reduction. Overall I am blessed to have such a place to finishout my tour on this wonderful earth!!!!!!!

I remember a lot of these "good old day" things also. And a lot of them are still true. What I wonder is if everyone misses them so much, why not still do them? Miss sitting on a log? Go sit on a log!!! Build that brush blind!!!! Miss not knowing what if any thing will poke it's head out? Quit using the game camera!! Miss sleeping in a tent or the back of a truck?? You still can!!!! You had to build your own feeder or nor use one??? YOU STILL CAN!!!!

Most of the box blinds on our place are plywood and we build them ourselves. Yes, we use feeders, and it is by choice.

Hunting is one of those sports where you can get as advanced or stay as basic as you want. I personally use a good mix of new and old. I am going to be sitting in a homebuilt box blind this weekend overlooking a top of the line BossBuck feeder. I will be hunting with a 100+ Savage 99 in .303 Savage with iron sites.

On the other hand, I took a deer during Archery Season with a compound crossbow shooting close to 370 FPS.

Don't just reminisce. Go back and enjoy. Leave the phone in the vehicle. Sit around the fire instead of the TV.

I remember we used to use the Sweeney clock timers that you put pins in the holes when you wanted the feeder to go off. Also you could stand under the feeder and listen for the tick-tock to make sure your timer was working.