Dear Diary:
I was lost.
It was dark.
The woods had repeated for miles by the time I came to a fork in the two-track. I’d been in the area last year to do a story on the very deer camp I was headed to. I should’ve known where I was going, but I didn’t.
Right or left, that was the question. One would get me to Chisler’s Lodge, where there was the promise of a barbecued buck and some beer. The other possibility could have taken me off the map, off the edge of the world for all I knew. I chose my way and, soon enough, electric lights were visible in the darkness of the woods. I could hear the deliberate sounds of humans. I pulled into a clearing, where a row of pick-ups were parked outside a well-lit cabin. I heard men laughing. I saw their heads through a window.
This must be it, I thought. It just looks a little different during the night. I’ve made it!
But, like that other explorer, Chris Columbus, I was wrong. What I took for the land of Chislers was actual the land of Linkes.
It didn’t dawn on me until I was out of the car and walking up to the door: I didn’t see one familiar face through the window as I went up to knock.
Still, the fellas waved me in.
“I think I’m lost. I’m looking for Chisler’s Lodge,” I said.
I explained who I was and what I was doing out in the woods that night with a camera dangling around my neck and a notepad in the back pocket of my blue jeans.
“Well, this is the Linke deer camp,” someone roared. “Come on in and have a beer.”
So I did.
LINKE DEER CAMP
Inside the cabin is what one would expect from a deer camp. Logs flaming in the fireplace, radiating hypnotic heat. An old Olympia beer mirror hangs on the wall. The furniture is about the same caliber as a college dorm room’s. A couple guys throw a game of euchre at a table. Opening Day isn’t until Monday and it’s only Saturday. Time to have some fun.
There is, of course, enough beer to go around.
“We used to have some parties out here, but we’ve scaled it down the last few years after our dad died,” Rick Linke said.
From what I could gather, Dickie Linke, Rick and Brian Linke’s old man -- the family that owns Linke Lumber Co. -- started the deer camp on 120 acres in the 1930s.
The dozen or so guys there that night were starting new traditions.
“This group is just starting to get together,” Rick said. “Stragglers from all over the place. Delvey’s always been around. And Brian, of course.”
Delvey Lindeman points to a picture on the wall taken around 1973 in front of the “old cabin.” There are about 10 or so guys clad in black-and-red. Four bucks are roped up behind them.
“I’m one of the ‘last of the mohicans’ in that picture,” said Delvey.
He was just a teenager in the picture. But, he explains, many of the other guys have died off.
A new cabin was built, mostly with whatever materials the guys could get their hands on.
“The lumber was torn off the walls of our (old) cabin and that’s what was used to do the walls in this one. We used whatever someone had laying around and brought up,” said Rick Linke.
Now, in the cabin, were friends and family from as far away as Pennsylvania up for the hunt.
“We eat, drink, play cards and get in a little hunting when we can,” one of the fellows said.
I ask if they get bucks.
“Usually there’s always a few hanging there Opening Day,” Rick Linke said.
DELVEY’S MISSING GUN
Delvey did the math of how long he’s been coming to the Linke camp.
“This is my 43rd year,” he said.
He’s inherited the duties as camp cook. That night, I had missed a feast of roast elk and mashed potatoes by about a half an hour. Bad timing. Delvey has a fairly elaborate menu planned out for the rest of the week that includes turtle soup and homemade sauerkraut.
Delvey has also inherited the role of camp storyteller. He tells me about the time Dickie Linke made off with his rifle in the 1970s.
“I ended up in a nice blind that had a roof on it and straw on the bottom,” he said. “I was sitting there. The sun was out. I peeled off my old wool clothes. I put the strap of my gun in my hand. I woke up, and there was no (cussing) gun.”
At this point, I have to interrupt.
“So, you fell asleep?” I asked.
The rest of the gang in the cabin -- drinking, watching TV, playing cards -- laugh.
“Yeah,” said Delvey. “And then what happened, he came up to me, and he started whistling like a buck, and blowing and snorting and kicking the ground. He said I never broke a snore.”
Dickie then slipped the gun out of Delvey’s sleeping hand and caught up with another guy from their camp who was out in the woods.
“Here they come over this little hill and I’m walking back and forth like a tin soldier,” Delvey said. “Here comes Dickie and Bob. They got their heads real low to the ground. They said, ‘Delvey, did you see that big buck? I wounded one.’ I said, ‘Dickie, if I would have seen him, I would have thrown a knife at him, because someone stole my (cussing) gun.’ That was it. They fell on the ground laughing.”
DELVEY’S REVENGE
But Delvey had his own fun playing pranks on both his own father, Delvey Senior, and Dickie Linke.
The first trick gives new meaning to the term “killing time.”
As Delvey tells it, Delvey Senior was hunting in a tree on the edge of a quiet swamp one year. Delvey sent one of the kids from camp to sneak into the stand with a surprise.
“I put a Big Ben (alarm clock) out there, wound it and set it for 8 o’clock in the morning. It was all quiet. You could hear a mouse squeal out there. Everybody’s looking up there. Pretty soon it’s 8 o’clock and ‘ring-a-ling-a-ling-a-ling-a-ding-a-ding-a-ding-a-ding’ And then, all of a sudden, ‘BOOM!’ It stopped. He shot it,” Delvey said.
Sidenote: when Delvey BOOMS he really BOOMS, filling the cabin with his large sound effect for mock rifle fire. The guys look up from the card game and howl with laughter.
But it wasn’t the first time Delvey made his old man shoot at an inanimate object. At least the other time, he thought he was shooting at a buck.
“I put a deer head up on my dad’s shooting lane,” he said. “It was one of these old ones that were over a fireplace. In the evening, he went out there, he wouldn’t see it for awhile. Pretty soon, he saw it, and it looked like a buck turned at him. But it was just a neck mount. It looks like a big buck staring at him. ‘BOOM’ I heard him shoot. ‘BOOM’ I heard him shoot again. ‘BOOM’ The third one knocked the stuffing out of it.”
For his other stunt, Delvey used a resource he collected while in the food and beverage industry: a life-sized cutout of Bartles and Jaymes.
One year, he put it in Dickie Linke’s deer blind.
“So, he’s going to his stand with his flashlight in the morning on Opening Day,” Delvey recalled. “He’s coughing at them, but later he said they kept smiling at him. He coughed again. And they kept smiling at him. He got a little closer and spit, and said, ‘Sir, that’s my stand. And, furthermore, you’re trespassing. This is private property.’ He was talking to them until he got up there.”
Delvey seemed to have gotten his revenge.
And, as I sat listening to him and to all the other stories the guys had to share with me, I realized that I was glad I’d gotten lost and ended up here.
I wasn’t so lost after all.
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