Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, November 14, 1993 TAG: 9311140136
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C-10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BILL COCHRAN
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The camp is a ring of RVs parked where Patterson Creek trickles through a valley in the Jefferson National Forest with tall mountains reaching skyward on either side. The Perkins family has celebrated the deer season in this Craig-Botetourt area for 29 years.
With the visitors gone, "it will be just our guys," said Paul M. Perkins, a tractor-trailer driver from Elliston. "Our guys" mostly are Roanokers and include Perkins' father, his uncles - Dewey, Herman, Jackie and Walter - and until this season, his granddad, who always provided the mandolin music for the pre-hunt celebration. Granddad died a couple of weeks ago. He was 97.
"We will pack our backpacks, pack lunches, clean our guns," Paul said. "The next morning the alarm clock will go off, and my uncle [Dewey] will be the first one up and he will knock on all the campers. If you aren't ready by the time he gets ready, he is going up the mountain without you."
The mountain is Patterson. There are easier places to hunt, now that deer seem to prefer the lowland farm country, where their tails flash around the corners of barns and through hay fields and orchards.
But the Perkins family prefers the mountain.
"Over the years, I have found that the harder you work, the deeper you go into the mountains, the bigger the game," said Paul.
He pauses to count the deer he has killed atop Patterson. Eight eight-pointers. His dad got a 10-pointer; Dewey a 13-pointer. All of them came the old-fashioned way: Getting out of bed at 3:30 a.m., climbing hard for as much as 90 minutes, pulling up into a tree stand 45 minutes before daylight, feeling your heartbeat fall back to normal and your sweat turn to chill. Waiting.
The first day holds the most promise for spotting a trophy buck, Paul said, one with a thick neck and antlers that are so tall and wide they rattle on the bear oak branches. The bucks will have moved low to feed in farm fields under the shroud of darkness. When the guns of opening day begin to boom at dawn, the sleek animals will scurry back into the high country. It's prime hunting until about 10 a.m.
"As the days go along, the chances for the bigger bucks dwindle because they find areas where they can hide from hunters," Paul said. "They are a little wiser. They do most of their moving in the darkness. By the time it breaks daylight, they are in their bed. Unless someone actually steps on them, they are not coming up."
Past opening day, there aren't many other people on the mountain to spook deer.
"You have a lot of road hunters or roadside hunters. Then, you have hunters who are pathfinders. They just walk a path or trail all day long," Paul said.
His is a family of bushwhackers. "We go straight up the ridge," he said. "Our family has just virtually worn a path up that mountain."
At 43, Paul is the youngest of a graying deer camp, of men who feel their age and the slope of the mountain climb in unison. On occasion, the family talks about moving camp, but not for long.
"It is hard to turn down a place you always have had results," Paul said. "Plus, this is the only place I feel freedom.
"We are just about the last of a dying breed in our family. The younger guys would rather be in town partying with some girl."
by CNB