November 11, 2009

JEFFERSON CITY–Nearly three-quarters of a century separate Brayden Dillon and Fred Schnelle. The two have never met. Yet they are united in their love of a pastime that is as old as Missouri’s hills – deer hunting.

Schnelle, of Grover, has been hunting deer since 1979 and has a lifetime of related tales to tell. Dillon, who lives in rural Callaway County, has only one deer hunting story so far, but it has a great ending.

When Schnelle was born in 1926, Missouri was well on its way to having no deer at all. The process of stripping marketable timber from the Ozarks was nearing completion. This destruction of deer habitat was compounded by unregulated hunting in the 19^th century, followed by poorly enforced, politically controlled deer regulations in the early 20^th century. It would be another 10 years before voters set up the independent Department of Conservation, and Missouri’s wild resources came under science-based management.

By the time Schnelle was in his 50s, the Conservation Department’s deer-restoration work had boosted the state’s deer herd from a few hundred to more than 100,000, and Missouri hunters were harvesting nearly 50,000 deer annually in increasingly liberal firearms and archery seasons.

"The first time I ever went hunting was with my next-door neighbor in Bridgeton," Schnelle recalls. "He took me up on one of those islands on the Mississippi River. We were hunting up there when I got my first deer."

Schnelle’s neighbor left him sitting on a log and took his own two sons farther up the island to hunt. They must have flushed a deer, because not much later a spike buck came bounding toward the first-time deer hunter.

"He ran past me and just happened to pause at the wrong time," said Schnelle. One shot from his bolt-action .30-06 brought the deer down and started a hunting career now in its fourth decade.

As his passion for hunting grew, Schnelle bought 120 acres in Washington County. He hunted there for several years, spending many happy evenings around the campfire with friends and family. He introduced his stepson to deer hunting there.

At first, Schnelle and his guests had no place to stay on the land and instead found lodging in Potosi. After a few years, he built a small, insulated shack to serve as sleeping quarters. When he added a 10-acre lake to his property a few years later, his wife started visiting the land and found she enjoyed the solitude and being surrounded by nature, so they installed a mobile home with heating, air conditioning and running water. Compared to the early, Spartan days, that was living in the lap of luxury.

Schnelle figures he has probably shot 18 or so deer over the years. One, a 10-pointer he shot several years ago, was what he considers a trophy, though he never bothered to have it scored.

His most memorable deer hunting experience involves the biggest deer he ever saw. He thinks the incident sheds some light on how sensitive deer are to human scent.

He was hunting in a tree stand on a warm, sunny day and got a little sleepy, so he prudently decided to climb down and hunt from the ground.

"I sat down with a tree to rest my back against," he recollects. "I had an orange with me, so I thought, ‘Well, I’ll eat my orange now.’ I peeled the orange and just threw the peelings right in front of me there, and after I ate the orange, I guess I fell sound sleep.  What woke me up was a big old snort."

Long-time deer hunters develop considerable discipline in avoiding sudden movements, and when Schnelle heard the snort, he opened his eyes without raising his head. He found himself practically nose-to-nose with a 12-points whitetail buck.

"There was this big old buck right at the tip of my feet, smelling those orange peelings," he says. "I had my gun across my legs, and I knew as soon as I moved he was going to go. I just thought, ‘There’s no way I’m going to get him, so I’m not even going to try.’ So I just let him go. That’s the closest I’ve ever been to a deer."

Schnelle says he enjoys deer hunting even more now than he did in those early days of spine-tingling excitement.

"It has never made any difference to me whether I shoot one or not," he says. "I enjoy the meat, and we eat venison all the time. But I just enjoy being out in the woods with nature."

Dillon got a considerably earlier start on deer hunting than Schnelle. His father, Gary, and mother, Tina, are long-time hunters, and his sister, Macey, 17, and brother, Derek, 14, both have trophy deer on the wall of their family room. A youngster’s first deer hunt is a rite of passage in the Dillon family.

The morning of Brayden’s first hunt, his mom went to another stand to bowhunt.  When he and his dad headed out to hunt that chilly, breezy Halloween morning, Derek tagged along, wanting to be there if his little brother shot his first deer. They climbed up into a 6- by 6-foot elevated box stand before first light.

Brayden admits finding it difficult to sit still – the first and one of the most important skills deer hunters must master. By mid-morning, no deer had appeared, and, like many a veteran hunter, Brayden got drowsy.

"I was kind of asleep when I heard my dad say ‘Deer! Be quiet. Don’t move much.’"

At first, Brayden could not see the deer, which had stepped out of some brush at the edge of a soybean field 150 yards away. When he finally spied the buck, he got it in his rifle scope and watched as his father grunted like a deer in an effort to get the buck to come closer. When the buck reacted warily, he quit, not wanting to scare it off.

"I could see it was a good buck," says Gary, "so I said, ‘Be calm. Take him when you are ready.’ He was breathing real hard."

Apparently, "breathing real hard" is an understatement. Moments later, Brayden whispered to his dad, "My heart feels like it’s going to jump out of my chest."

Brayden’s eyes widened as he relived the event, prompting excited laughs from his family. Raising an imaginary bolt-action .243 Winchester and squinting his left eye, he resumed the story.

 "I rested the rifle on the windowsill, and ‘Boom!’"

Even with a steady rest, a 150-yard shot is no piece of cake, regardless of a hunter’s experience. So it is especially impressive that Brayden hit both the deer’s lungs. It ran about 70 yards before collapsing.

"We had been practicing at 100 yards," said Gary, "and he had been shooting really good. But I don’t normally let them shoot over 100 yards at first.  As they get older, I let them get out there a little farther. But I didn’t want to spoil his day by not letting him get a shot, and if you don’t shoot, you can’t kill anything."

Gary says he didn’t care if Brayden’s first deer was a buck or a doe. Every hunter’s first deer is a trophy, after all. But Brayden recalls that his dad "just about cracked my neck" hugging him when they saw the deer was down and how big the buck’s antlers were.

At a Boone & Crockett score of 116, the buck won’t make the record books, but it will find a place on the wall of fame in the Dillons’ family room. Brayden says he hopes to help fill the family’s three freezers by killing a doe or two during the November Portion of Firearms Deer Season. He said he expects that to be nearly as exciting as his first hunt.

He has hunted rabbits and small game but says those activities are not that big of a deal, "Because deer are bigger, and with deer, you wonder about how they will score and how many points they have. You can walk right up on rabbits and squirrels, but with deer, if you take one wrong step or say one thing loud, (here he imitates the sound of a deer snorting) they’re gone. You hope you get a big buck or at least a doe, because then you’re going to be proud."

Days after interviewing Brayden, I learned more about the importance of the first deer in the Dillon family. On the morning that I interviewed Brayden, Macey took her first deer with bow and arrow, an accomplishment many hunters several times her age would envy. Though she must have been bursting with pride, she never said a word about her own achievement while I was there. This was Brayden’s day.

Brayden’s taste in venison cookery is simple. He likes it fried with lots of crunchy flour crust. He helped his dad field dress his first deer, and when it came time to slice the choicest cut – the loin – he reserved that honor for himself.

Although Schnelle does not judge the quality of a hunt by whether he kills a deer, he does enjoy eating lean, healthful venison. His favorite recipe involves a filet of venison back strap wrapped in bacon and grilled briefly over charcoal.

He shares a secret he learned from hunting buddy Marvin Behnke.

"Baste it with butter. You’ve got to use a lot of butter."