Uncle Howard - Funny & True

No one has posted since the close of hunting season, so I thought I would break the boredom by telling a funny, but true hunting story.

Up until a few years ago, any deer killed in Kentucky had to be taken to a Fish and Wildlife check station to be registered.  In the early 1980s, I was invited to hunt with my partner, David and his brothers. David's family had always lived in rural Kentucky and since it is farming country, they knew dozens of farmers. David and his brothers had eight farms they regularly hunted (before the farmers realized they could make money leasing their land for hunting).  Since they drove deer the way we do in the Adirondacks, I felt right at home hunting with them. Kentucky has a large population of farmland deer and the farmers were losing a lot of money in crop loss and damage, as they still are. The farmers, whose land we hunted on, wanted us to kill all the deer we could.

The first year I hunted in Kentucky, David and I took the whole 10 day season off from work. Opening morning, I was placed on a watch and told to kill anything that came out to me. The boys drove a large 10 pointer and a doe past me and I killed them both. Altogether on that first drive of the season, we killed two bucks and three does.  Most of the guys were going to sneak their deer home without registering them, but I was not going to take a chance of getting caught and losing my job. I thought my hunting season was ruined since I  had no tags to hunt the rest of the season.

David said that he had the solution to my problem. He said that for a case of warm Sterling beer (real rot gut stuff!) his uncle Howard would tag the deer. We loaded the deer and went over to Uncle Howard's. David went into the house and came out leading this old crippled, 90 year old man whose eyes were white with cataracts. Uncle Howard was blind as a bat!  I gave David one of those, "What kind of shit is this?" looks and David whispered, "Trust me."  We loaded Uncle Howard into the Blazer and headed to the check station. I was certain we were all going to end up in jail with David and me fired from our jobs to boot.

We got to the deer check station and David led Uncle Howard in with me following.  The conservation officer greeted us and Uncle Howard told her that he had killed a couple of deer.
She replied, "Lucky again this year, huh Howard?" Uncle Howard said that he surely was.
The lady went out, checked the deer and came back in and filled out the registration form for Uncle Howard.  She had to place his hand on the form where he had to sign and he signed with a X because he couldn't read of write. After we dropped Uncle Howard at his house, I asked David how in hell  he managed to pull that one off. David asked me if I had noticed the bulge in the back pocket of Uncle Howard's bibs. I hadn't. David said that the bulge was Uncle Howard's .32 and no one messes with Uncle Howard when he's packing his .32.

A while later I was having breakfast with the captain of our local State Police post. Since we were pretty good friends, I asked him about Uncle Howard without telling him about the deer. Capt. Mort told me that Uncle Howard had been notorious when he was young. The captain said that he had been told that Howard had been involved in several shootouts in the old days which was not at all uncommon in Kentucky. He said that the old timers who knew Howard said that he was no one to "trifle" with.