My First Day of Hunting

I was born William Robert Helms, Jr. on August 21, 1947 to William Robert Helms, Sr. and Clara Willine Helms of Niceville Florida. I was born in the back bedroom of our house on Allen Street in Niceville, which was named after my Lawrence Allen who lived just down the road. My Father moved to the Niceville area in 1922. My Mother is from Opp in Southern Alabama. As my family lived in Niceville, my life has been centered on my Father's family. I grew up surrounded by Uncles, Aunts and Cousins. Although my Father had only four brothers, I had an untold number of Uncles. Niceville had only about three to four thousand people but it sometimes seemed that everyone in town was related to me in one way or another and everyone else was a friend.

Security was a closed screen door to keep out the mosquitoes. We had no TV or air conditioning and we didn't know the difference.

My Father and his four brothers were great hunters. When they first arrived in Florida from Alabama they lived by a creek on what is now Eglin Reservation Range Road 212. I'm telling you they knew every nook and cranny of the reservation.

As a child I wanted to go hunting with them very much. They took me along but said I couldn't hunt with a gun till I was twelve years old. Deer was bountiful on the reservation and we had venison often. It seemed that every man in Niceville was a hunter.

Finally I grew to the age of twelve and it was my year to go hunting with my Father and Uncles. I didn't own a gun so my Father made arrangements with my Uncle Jack Helms to borrow his twenty-gauge shotgun for me. This shotgun was a single shot affair and had the most delicate of hair triggers. You could just breathe on this trigger and the gun would discharge. I was cautioned to be extremely careful and instructed in the skill of a hunter.

Oh, the pain of getting up that early. They had to get up at three in the morning to go hunting. We drove out to the woods in pickup trucks. Everyone had pickup trucks. I don't remember anyone having a car. And it was cold too. Hunting season runs from November to January. Going out to the woods to sit under a tree before daylight in the depth of winter seemed kind of crazy to me. I thought, "Why can't we wait till later in the morning." But it was beautiful sitting there waiting for the forest to wake up.

There is little doubt in my mind that they had conspired to run a deer past me on my first day if they could. They put me on a two-rut road close to what they called the "slingshot pine". It got it's name from a pine tree that was split and two trunks continued upward so it looked like a big slingshot. I sat there in the dark and cold listening to the forest. I could hear squirrels squawking, crows cawing and the wind swaying the treetops. The sound was so clear. The forest was so quiet that you could hear anything that moved. As I sat there I went through thousands of emotions. I didn't want to mess up in front of my Uncles. I wanted to bag a deer. I wanted to be a man and show my abilities as a great hunter like my father and Uncles. But I was a mere child in the woods with a loaded twenty-gauge shotgun in my hands.

In what felt like and eternity or at least hours, I stood there and got to know every leaf on every tree around me. I watched the swaying of every leaf in every puff of breeze. I became intimately accustomed to the sounds that surrounded me. I was intently searching and waiting for my first deer. Then "CRACK, SNAP"! What was that? Surely it was my imagination. I listened more intently than I had ever listened to anything before. My entire consciousness was so intently focused to the sound of the forest. I didn't dare turn around. My movement would surely alert whatever it was and scare it away. I stood motionless. Then "crack, snap, thump, thump" something was moving behind me. Was it coming? Was it going to cross the road? What was it? Come on out I thought to myself. "Thump thump, snap, snap, rustle" and then I saw the deer. It was coming from behind me and was moving out to the road only about 30 feet from where I stood. I cocked my gun.

I cannot describe my fear and excitement. I was more scared at that moment than I had ever been before in my life. Maybe even since. I didn't want to fail. It meant everything to me to bring down this deer. I could already see the expressions of pride from my Father and Uncles. They would no doubt consider me one of the hunters if I could only bag this one deer. My big chance to be a man was upon me.

I could see before the deer even got to the road that it was a buck. It had two spikes coming from the top of it's head. Two horns only about six or seven inches long. That made him legal and I knew it. He moved with the greatest of ease. He was strong and quick. His eyes were black but shiny. His coat was the softest brown with white lining his throat and tail. It was a Whitetail Deer of maybe eighty pounds.

He continued till he was in the road. He saw me but probably didn't know what to think of me either. My big moment was here. I began to move my borrowed shotgun up to fire when, "BANG". I had prematurely touched that hair trigger. My single shot went up into the tops of the pine trees and one little branch suffered the consequences. My deer bolted like lightning on across the road and disappeared instantly into the woods.

Well there was no hiding what had happened. My Uncles heard the shot and by the sound knew that it was my twenty-gauge and not a twelve-gauge like everyone else was using. Everyone descended on my stand in a moment. Everyone wanted to hear the story. We walked off the distances, looked at the tracks and surmised the scene in general.

I did bag a deer with that same hair triggered single shot shotgun the next year. I did hunt for years more with my Uncles. They taught me about more than just hunting. I learned about all manner of being a man from them. One thing I learned is that you don't always succeed, especially on your first try.

There were many deer in the forest in those days. There are not nearly as many now. I no longer hunt. But I will never forget my first day of hunting with my Father and Uncles on the Eglin Reservation.

copyright William Robert Helms 2003