Thirty Years of Big Game Hunting: 1942–1972

By Roderick M. Moore and Bill Lovejoy

In Thirty Years of Big Game Hunting, Roderick M. Moore chronicles his big game hunting adventures. The stories cover the period from the fall of 1942, when he was a fourteen year-old freshman in high school, through the fall of 1972. During those thirty years, he shot thirty-one white-tail deer in Maine, and including a walrus, a whale, fourteen moose, twenty nine caribou, and a polar bear in Alaska.

A compilation spanning three decades, Thirty Years of Big Game Hunting
serves as a legacy for Moore’s family and seeks to help other hunters in their future endeavors.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Sep 29, 2021
• ISBN: 9781663228277

Roderick M. Moore

Bill Lovejoy is a lifelong outdoorsman who was taught by his father and grandfather, (who began hunting in the late 1800’s), the way of the woods since he was two years old. Bill began guiding at age seventeen, and has been a Master Maine Guide for more than 35 years. Between his grandfather, his father, and Bill, they have collectively more than 100 years of experience as outdoorsmen.

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MAINE DEER HUNTING

The following is a record of deer shot in Maine from 1942, when I was fourteen years old and got my first one, to the hunting season in 1951, just before going into the US Air Force and going to Alaska.

I shot a total of thirty-one white-tailed deer in those ten years. For some of those years, I can’t remember any details while for others I can only remember scanty details. But with the help of old diaries, I can account for all thirty-one of the deer. That’s not bad for twenty to thirty years later.

NUMBER AND DETAILS

1. Fall 1942. Between river and railroad with Laurie’s. .32 Special. 100-pound doe. Rusty Willis across river.

2. October 19, 1943. From Leeman’s barn in the moonlight with Laurie and his 16-gauge and chalk line. Big buck eating cabbages.

3. November 24, 1943. From hip with .32 Special and on snowshoes. Dinty was home on leave. Creased its neck. 150-pound buck. Between Leeman’s and railroad.

4. July 4, 1944. Leeman’s backfield after seeing it from Gram’s. 100-pound buck. Carroll got 16-gauge, and I had to go back for 12-gauge.

5. Fall 1944. North of ledge cut by railroad. Waited from early morning until noon. Heard in Beaver Bog. .32 Special. 125-pound buck.

6. Spring 1945. Back of Leeman’s house in garden. 100-pound buck. Don’t remember details.

7. November 15, 1945. Interval at Cal Weymouth’s after school. .22 semiautomatic rifle. Dinty and Carroll were hunting all day and got nothing. Hung deer in garage.

8. Summer 1946. 100-pound buck while answering call of nature. In Leeman’s backfield before sunset. .22 semiautomatic rifle. Carroll and Laurie getting ready to jacklight that night. Mary saw one during the day while picking blueberries.

9. November 9, 1946. Leeman’s backfield. 125-pound doe. .30-30. Carroll and I were banking Gram’s farm. Foggy. Carroll went home. I went to the backfield and saw two in the gap to the small field to the left. Knocked second one (buck) down, but it got up. No blood trail that night or the next day.

10. November 15, 1946. Cal Weymouth’s interval. 125-pound doe. .30-30. Shot a skunk in trap several times on top of the bank in Stan Weymouth’s pine woods just before shooting doe. Saw two deer right below me in the interval.

11. November 18, 1946. South of Guilford Mountain and north of Salmon Pond. 150-pound buck. .30-30. Hunting with Laurie. He had a broken toe and saw it right over his shoulder.

12. Summer 1947. 75-pound doe. .22 Woodsman. Stan Weymouth’s salt lick. West of Road I pasture. Book and fly dope. Model T with rugs and tires to Gram’s.

13. November 10, 1947. 75-pound doe. .30-30. South of Guilford Mountain, northwest of Salmon Pond, and west of trail. Leon tagged it. (Paul Ruksznis got big buck next day.)

14. June 4, 1948. 125-pound doe. .30-30. Coming home from Monson Dance. Foggs Field. Kip and I. Went home to change clothes and get back. Two, buck and doe, near road. Now way down by the river. Doe had two unborn fawn in it.

15. June 30, 1948. Worthen’s Field by Piper Pond (now Benard Bennett’s). 150-pound doe. .30-30 and light. Walked halfway to it from the road with a light on it.

16. July 9, 1948, 125-pound buck. .30-30. North of Blanchard in a grown-up field west of Piscataquis River. Pat Blethen-Kip’s jeep. One ran before I could get out. Went to edge of hill and saw nothing. Turned light off and took a leak. Heard a noise and turned light on. Shot it before I finished.

17. October 23, 1948. 150-pound doe. .30-30. Aimed two inches over its back at four thirty. In Barbara Whiting’s field. Knocked doe down. Buck got away.

18. November 6, 1948. 100-pound doe. .30-30. Wally, Carroll, Derwood, and I were at second buttermilk. Broken Finger. Wally got one with 10-gauge. 100-pound doe. .22 semiautomatic rifle. Alvah’s woodlot. Carroll took off. Gave to Dinty. Married.

19. 175-pound buck. 12-gauge shotgun in garden in front of Gram’s chalk line from upstairs window with Laurie. Snowed that night. Hid all blood in rough piece.

20. Carroll’s house. 75-pound buck. .30-30 and Jeep Universal. Early fall by Alvah’s camp on power line. Saw a big buck but worried about strangers at Alvah’s, so I dropped a small buck when it popped out closer.

21. 125-pound doe. .30-30. Near Alvah’s woodlot from Fitzimmons Road. Got ahead of it. Sat down. Shot it in the neck.

22. 150-pound buck .30-30. Wally and Derwood hunted with me. Shot it by northwest end of First Buttermilk Pond. Drug all afternoon. Covered with ferns. Wally’s Model A pickup.

23. 150-pound buck. .30-30. On a trail (Guilford Mountain, Buttermilk, or North Guilford.) Went by a brush pile twenty feet right of trail. Got fifty feet beyond and it exploded out from behind it. Ran about 150 yards and stopped. Bang. (I think these are the seven I shot the last year.)

24. (1) 150-pound buck. (2) 125-pound doe. (3) 100-pound buck.

25. Same day as the doe. Southwest of Shirley with Carroll.

26. Bob and Bob’s friend. All with .30-30.

27. 100-pound buck. .30-30. Walking out from Bessy’s lumber camp for chainsaw parts. To right of trail. Left it and carried into camp on way back. One week’s free board.

28. 75-pound buck. .30-30 in morning. 150-pound doe .30-30 in afternoon.

29. Stayed in at Bessy’s camp to do cooking. Alone in morning. Bert Knowles and Guy French with me in afternoon. Broke one rib going in. Went under two and broke fourth rib coming out on same side. Ran about 150 yards and stone-dead.

30. November 1951. 125-pound doe. .30-30. By Alvah’s camp on trail to southwest toward power line R.O.W. (See number 21.) Carroll and I circled swamp (he north and I south). McAllister followed us to Merrill’s store to tag it.

MY FIRST DEER (FALL 1943)

Fourteen Years Old

This was a couple of days before Carroll had shot a ten-point buck in Leeman’s small backfield after school. This day, a school day, Phil Clark, principal and coach at GHS, had asked Carroll if he thought he (Phil) could get a deer in the same area if he came up there tonight. Carroll told him no, as that was the only one he’d seen all fall.

That night after school, Carroll and I went to the same field. I went down the trail to the railroad tracks, and Carroll was going to drive down through the woods to me. Just after getting to the railroad, I hiked south to check around a curve since I thought I had heard a noise in the timber back that way. I rounded the curve just in time to see a doe cross over the track and go into the timber west toward the Piscataquis River.

I ran south a ways and then cut down to the river, coming out on a hill up above. I saw the doe ready to start crossing the river. I fired, and it humped up and turned south along the bank. So I let another one go. Still it wouldn’t go down. Then I heard a shot from across the river, and a man yelled that he’d drive it back up to me. The deer then started uphill for the track south of me.

I ran out to the track south of me and waited. Then I saw it reach the top of the bank and stop. I fired again. And down it went.

Rusty Willis, manual training teacher and a good friend of Phil Clark’s, and Carroll got there at about the same time.

Jesus Christ. How many times did you shoot? was all Carroll could say.

Finally Rusty said, For God’s sake, get it out before it gets up and runs away.

I opened it up and hit it twice in the paunch, probably on the riverbank and once in the chest, to put it down. There wasn’t a whole gut left in it.

Carroll took one look and said, You shot it. You gut it out.

I didn’t mind. It was my first white-tailed deer. I went elbow-deep into the guts, but I got it cleaned out.

Did Phil Clark give Carroll a bad time when he heard about it?

No more deer up there.

THE BEAN PATCH (AUGUST 1943)

Fifteen Years Old

Carroll, Laurie, and I hid his car and walked up to Eddie Thomas’s camp above Harry Kirk’s on the road from the Moosehorns to Blanchard. When we got there, we found the door to the camp broken in, but no one was around. So we went out in the barn, climbed up on the wood stored there, and proceeded to watch the bean field for deer.

Quite a while after dark, I put on the light, and we saw two sets of eyes in the bean patch. Carroll and Laurie both fired, with a 12- and 16-gauge, respectively. We then ran down in the dark, and they had gotten a small fawn. It still had spots. We gutted it out. Carroll wrapped it in his shirt, and we went home.

I was working for Eddie at the time, and on Monday he was full of the fact that his camp had been broken into. As a result, we walked out through the bean field, and he had it all figured out. He picked up a .30-30 box, so he figured the culprits were jacking deer. We hadn’t left it and figured they had probably snatched it from inside the barn. That was right. So he figured we would start hauling the wood to his house to look for shells.

So start we did. Only he figured the intruders had stood farther to the left than I knew Carroll, Laurie, and I had. So I was the one who found the 12- and 16-gauge shells and slipped them into my pocket. Then I wondered how I could get rid of them. I got them out of my pocket and had them in my hand hanging out the window, but I figured he might notice any movement if I threw them away.

When we were going by the potato field, I had a bright idea. Even though it’s dry, they sure look pretty good.

Sure enough, he looked left, and I threw the two shells.

Later I also found two flashlight batteries, which we didn’t leave, but I picked them up, pocketed them, and disposed of them when he was looking the other way.

IT’S TOO FAR (SEPTEMBER 1943)

Fifteen Years Old

Carroll and I were down in Leeman’s backfield and sitting up in the apple tree just into the field and a little right of where the trail entered the field. We were watching the northwest corner of the field, where there were more apple trees, and hoping a deer would come out to them. Carroll had Laurie Wainio’s .32 Special-Model 94 Winchester Carbine. I had Gramp Bennett’s Parker’s 12-gauge double-barreled shotgun.

Shortly after sunset, a big buck did show up under the apple trees in the northwest corner of the field. I’m guessing it wasn’t more than 150 to 200 yards away. Carroll fired once or twice while up in the tree and missed. Then the deer kept looking into the woods away from us. He could hear the bullets that missed hitting in the trees beyond.

After we got down on the ground, Carroll fired two or three times more and still missed.

Then I began to say, Let me try. Let me try.

No. It’s too far for a shotgun.

And finally the deer took off into the woods and got out of sight. We went over and looked, but there was no blood. I never did figure this out. Carroll was a pretty good shot.

The Fourth of July next year, I shot my fourth deer in the same field with the same shotgun. And while it was off to the left, I swear it was as far or farther away than the big buck that Carroll missed—and wouldn’t let me shoot at—because it was too far for the 12-gauge Parker.

KEEP YOUR EYES ON THE

DEER (SEPTEMBER 1943)

Fifteen Years Old

Carroll, Laurie, and I were out jacklighting deer. Laurie was driving. Carroll had Laurie’s 16-gauge shotgun (single), and I was handling the five-cell flashlight. Between Laurie’s garage and Tompkin’s house, we saw a deer under the apple trees right beside the road on the right.

Carrol and I jumped out, and Carroll loaded and fired. But the deer didn’t go down. Carroll, instead of letting me keep the light on the deer and looking at reloading, kept his eyes locked on the deer and tried to reload by feel. I don’t know how much time passed, but I’m sure he could have reloaded and fired twice more in the time. But he never got another shot off before the deer took off down behind Tompkin’s.

The next day I was searching for a blood trail. I had the 12-gauge Parker double-barrel under my right arm. It had big, external flintlock-like hammers on it. I walked by a beach tree and stepped into a hole filled with dry leaves. As my right foot went into the hole, my whole body shifted to the right as I was still moving forward. The right hammer must have hit against that beach tree because the next thing I knew, that right barrel fired. And there was a big hole in the ground, about a foot in diameter and only about six inches between my toes and the near edge of the hole.

BIG BLACK PARTRIDGE (SEPTEMBER 1943)

Fifteen Years Old

Carroll came back to Gram’s farm to get me and Laurie’s rifle one night after school. While I was doing chores, he had taken the 12-gauge and gone partridge hunting on his own behind Chester Brown’s.

As he got close to where he knew an apple tree was located, he heard this noise. And figuring that apple tree was loaded with partridge, he began to sneak up on hands and knees behind a fir tree that was right in front of the apple tree.

As he explained it to me, "I snuck up to and around that fir tree, and instead of a tree full of partridge, I was looking at an old black bear and two cubs right in the eyes. She gave a whuuufff and took off with the cubs right behind her. There I was with only a shotgun. Well, I tell you: there was a race there for a while to see who would get out of there first, me or the bears."

We went back that night and several nights thereafter but never did see any bear again.

THREE OF THEM (OCTOBER 1943)

Fifteen Years Old

I was hunting alone with Laurie’s .32 Special down between Leeman’s lower backfield and the B & A railroad tracks in the timber. As I was sneaking along, I looked ahead of me and saw what looked like the underside of a deer’s body and something projecting vertically downward that could have been the near (right) front leg. The first thought I had was that it was a deer, but because I could not positively identify it as such, I didn’t shoot. I froze and just watched it.

I could agree that it could be a horizontal tree that didn’t fall clear to the ground and that the front leg was just a sapling in the right location so as to fool me. I watched it for probably five minutes. It seemed like an hour. And nothing happened. I was listening all the time and just about ready to move on when it moved. It definitely was a deer, but it did not offer a clearer shot than what I had been looking at for five minutes, so I didn’t shoot.

Just as I was ready to start sneaking down there, I saw more movement, and a second one walked through the same place, showing me no more than the first one had. Again I didn’t shoot because I didn’t have a clear shot. Then the third one walked through the same place.

Finally I came unfrozen and started sneaking down that way, hoping for another look at them. I never did hear or see them again. How stupid can you get? Still I’m not sorry.

I’ve held my shots and let a lot of game get away, but even now (1972), I’ve never shot a man in a hunting accident nor had much wounded game get away from me.

MY SECOND DEER (OCTOBER 19, 1943)

Fifteen Years Old

Laurie Vanio and I went up to Leeman’s barn and were going to watch for deer coming to the cabbages. It was a clear night, and we knew there would be a moon shortly after dark. So we had put down a chalk line and the barrels of the 12- and 16-gauge shotguns. We weren’t going to use light.

After dark and in the early moonlight, two or three deer came into the garden south of the barn. But every time I would line up the 12-gauge, they would turn, and the moonlight would hit them just right so they would fade right out and I couldn’t see them. Only when side to and the near side shadowed could I make them out.

I finally got disgusted and went and laid down with Laurie. I must have slept, for all of a sudden I heard deer munching cabbages to the west of the barn. This could be closer and at a different angle to the moon.

In the dark I got Laurie’s 16-gauge but didn’t bother to change. I crept up to the door, which was open enough to shoot through. Every piece of hay I stepped on sounded like an airplane. I got right in front of the opening and froze. There were three or four deer out there, and a big buck had his head up and was looking right at the barn.

Laurie wanted to know what was happening, and I told him. My whisper sounded like a hurricane to me, and I was sure the deer would run. But the big buck finally lowered his head and started feeding again. I stepped by the opening, poked the 16-gauge out around the door, took aim, and touched off. Down he went. Laurie jumped up, and we both ran out to see if it would try to get up. Nope. He was dead.

Good, but he’s a big one, said Laurie. We better get him out of sight.

So we each grabbed an antler and started out. It didn’t move. It just jerked us back on our feet.

Christ, we need help with this one, said Laurie.

We heard a car start up over by Allison Richard’s by Piper Pond just after I had shot and figured a game warden was heading our way. We managed to get into the woods and out of sight and then went to get Carroll to help us. It was eleven at night. I told Carroll we should take the wagon, to which he just snorted.

After giving him all the details, we took a shovel and meat saw. Then we went up and dragged it way down to Leeman’s backfield and into the woods. We gutted it out; buried the head, guts, and legs; and cut it across in front of the hindquarters.

Laurie carried the front portion, Carroll the hindquarters, and I the heart, liver, saw, and spade. We had all we could carry. We went back to Gram’s cellar and hung it up. We skinned it out and sawed the two pieces down the backbone. We finished just in time to wash up and eat breakfast. Laurie went work; Carrol and I went to school.

It was the biggest buck I believe I ever shot and didn’t even weigh it. Carroll and Laurie both felt it would go well over two hundred pounds field-dressed. I don’t even remember counting the points, but it was an enormous rack.

THAT’S A GODDAMNED LIE

(OCTOBER 27, 1943)

Fifteen Years Old

Carroll, Laurie, and I were going jacking in Laurie’s car. We headed up the highway toward Monson. When we got almost to the old French place, we were getting ready to jack the apple orchard but were waiting for an oncoming car to pass. Laurie was driving. Carroll (in a rain outfit) sat in front, holding Laurie’s 16-gauge single-barrel shotgun. Gramp Bennett’s 12-gauge double-barrel Parker was on the floor in the back with me. I had a five-cell flashlight for which the switch didn’t work. I had to turn the front lens to turn it off and on.

As we approached the French place, Laurie slowed way down, waiting for an oncoming car to pass. However, it didn’t pass but almost stopped and flashed a light into our car.

Carroll said, What the hell. He’s jacking.

I looked at the other car and could see that the driver was shining a flashlight at us, but more, I could see that the person wore a visor cap with a badge on it. Jacking. Hell, that’s a game warden. Get out of here! I yelled.

Laurie stepped on the gas and took off. The car turned around behind us. Carroll put the 16-gauge on the floor in back with me and got out of his rain suit. I put the five-cell flashlight under the rear