DEER SEASON IN SEVIER COUNTY
Opening of deer season was one of the most anticipated days of the year. It was to a hunter like Christmas to a child. in the 1920's through most of the century there was a season that opened in early November. Best of my memory it was around the first few days of the month. Some time it opened on Tuesday, But later in the century it started on Monday and closed on Saturday at sunset. There was another season in December. This one was usually the first week of December. As far back as I can remember it opened on Monday through Saturday. Some time we would go and spend the week with my fathers brother, George Jones. We would get a bunch of groceries and carry with us. My Aunt would fix meals and we hunted. We would get up by four in the morning and be on our stands waiting for daylight. We always used deer hounds to find and stir the deer up and get them to moving. I always used a semi-automatic 22 rifle, or a 12 gauge double barrell shotgun with #4 buckshot. Deer were not nearly so plentiful back in that era as they are now. Sometime you would hunt all week and not see a deer. Now they are over-populated. I see deer almost every time I visit Sevier county. A few years we camped out. We crossed Ladd bridge and took the first road left. Went about five miles north and camped out on a little branch. Put up a tent which we slept in. There was four of us which was my father and myself, Bodene Self and Kelsey Fautner. We cooked over an open fire just like the Boy Scouts. While camped here one night it came a storm. Rained so hard the branch got up to the tent. Thunder and lightning. The wind blew real hard and this got to be a concern because we feared it might blow a limb across our tent. We were happy things turned out all- right in the end. In later years we stayed at home and drove up there early in the morning. The roads were better and you could drive the cars a little faster.