Ducktales
Cadillacs, Crochet and a Six-Point Buck
My favorite hunting memory occurred shortly into my 30 year marriage. Still being new to the family I wasn’t sure of all the hunting protocol and pecking order of the clan. The members of this particular party were my husband and I and his grandparents, Grover and Maybelle. They were both in their seventies, in good health and with definite eccentricities. Grover rarely talked, Maybelle rarely stopped. Both were redheads before the aging process took hold. Grover’s hair was white, but Maybelle had decided to help out Mother Nature and sported a rather fuchsia shade of auburn. Just as Maybelle never stopped talking, she also rarely stopped crochet, tatting, and knitting. (She tried to teach me to tat once. Holding the tatting spoon in one hand and the thread in the other, she said, “Just watch close, it’s easy.” Her hands then flew at the twice the speed of light as she produced a long section of beautiful tatted lace. She stopped and asked, “Did you get that?” I just nodded dumbfounded and said, “Yes, Ma’am”.)
Anyway, back to the hunting story. It was a rather warm evening early in the Texas deer season and Maybelle as usual was dressed to the nines. She never wore pants or shorts and was always in full makeup with exquisite jewelry. When we got to the lease, Grover proceeded to drive his brand new 1974 fully loaded Cadillac across the pasture. My husband told me that when he had traded in his previous Cadillac for this one, the dealer just couldn’t imagine how the undercarriage had gotten so banged up! We drove (bounced) over to the edge of the pasture where the trees began and pulled in under them.
Grover, my husband and I got out of the car to discuss where each of us would be hunting. Grover told my husband and I to head over to a deer stand about two hundred yards away and he would be about that far away off to our right. He then turned to Maybelle and asked if she wanted her rifle. She said yes and he went to the trunk and took out a fairly old, but excellent conditioned .306 rifle (no scope, she said she didn’t like it hitting on her eyeglasses.) Wondering where she was going to hunt in her high-heeled pumps, I was surprised when he just handed it to her through the window. She propped it across her lap, with the barrel sticking out of the car window and picked up her crocheting and the needles started clicking as she worked on another one of the thousands of afghans she must of made. Grinning and shaking my head, I followed my husband to our stand while Grover took off for his.
We had been sitting in the stand for about an hour, without seeing a single deer, and dusk was almost gone when we heard a shot from the direction of the Cadillac. We looked at each other and immediately started making our way back to the car. When were almost there, we met up with Grover and when we were within hollering distance of the vehicle, he yelled out, “Maybelle, are you okay?” This very matter-of-fact voice spoke back, “Of course I am.” There was a pause and then she said just as calmly, “But this 6 point isn’t.” Sure enough, on the ground about 20 yards away on the passenger side of the Cadillac lay a pretty good sized buck with a 6 point rack.
The men never went out of their way to tell this story. It seems they didn’t particularly want people to know that the only successful hunter in our group was an elegant 70ish southern lady, in high-heels and makeup, who sat in her Cadillac and crocheted until the deer came to her! From that moment on, whenever I heard someone ask a child, “Who do you want to be when you grow up?” In my mind I always answered for myself, “I want to be Maybelle when I grow up!”
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