This commemorates an event that happened to my nephew, John, some years ago. I thought it somehow fitting to bring it to your attention.


                        John's Deer


                It was mid-November of ninety-two --
                Deer season, opening day --
                John was sitting on a southern slope
                With Ralph fifty yards away.

                Ralph's my brother's oldest
                And John is squeezed between
                Ralph and niece Elizabeth --
                Someday John may be fourteen.

                Yes, Ralph's John's older brother.
                And I wasn't there to see
                When John dropped his first buck deer,
                But Ralph told it all to me.

                "Dawn broke nice and quiet
                It barely brushed the sky with pink
                We'd been on stand for half an hour
                Or thereabouts, I think.

                "Suddenly shots were all around!
                It sounded like a heckuva fight!
                But when I poked my head up I found
                They were fifty yards to the right.

                "Those shots just kept on coming
                But when I looked around I saw
                John putting shot after quickly aimed shot
                Downhill, into the draw!

                "And then he tossed away his weapon,
                And in the early morning light
                John lit the fuse and tossed downhill
                A stick of dynamite!

                "It exploded and I started toward him.
                He was yelling to beat the band!
                And then suddenly he jumped off of the ridge
                Clutching a knife in his right hand.        

                "When I got to the ridge I saw him
                Crouching in the blasted wood,
                Stabbing and cutting a little spike buck --
                John saw me, waved, and stood.

                "'I got him, Ralph!' he hollered,
                But I think he's still alive!'
                And over the cliff John tossed that very dead deer
                In a two hundred fifty foot dive.

                "When we finally got down to him
                That buck was as dead as dead could be.
                He carried a rack of two or three points,
                But John swore thirty-three!

                "To get that deer out of the creek
                Was a job and a half, I'd say!
                It took us all day and half the night
                And my back still aches today.

                "We stuck two four wheel drive pickups
                Broke a winch and an ATV.
                Finally Dad brought in a D-9 Cat
                And moved the hills away.
        
                "We had to build a road to that old deer
                We built three bridges and filled in two bogs,
                Leveled mountains and drilled four tunnels
                And lumbered out five thousand logs.

                "We butchered at last that old deer up
                (John wanted to mount the head)
                We got seven pounds of meat from it,
                And eighty pounds of lead."

                Now, I don't believe Ralph for a minute!
                He stretches the truth some, you know --
                'Cause I've seen John's venisonburger,
                And the bullet holes hardly show!