America was really coming of age by the time the calendar flipped to November in 1958.

As a test, Bank of America mailed 60,000 California residents a small plastic credit card with a $500 limit. The experiment was successful.

An Evening with Fred Astaire, the first TV show recorded on color videotape, was broadcast on NBC.

President Dwight D Eisenhower uttered his famous quote: “What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight – it’s the size of the fight in the dog.”

And American sportsmen were eagerly buying new guns, ammo, and clothing in anticipation of relatively new activity — a deer-specific hunting season. Not just “big game,” but deer — namely white-tailed deer.

It sounds far-fetched to imagine modern deer hunting is only 65-ish years old, but it’s true. And, let me tell you, these were trailblazing times. It was well before tree stands. Way before food plots. Decades before scent-elimination products. And even before modern bowhunting (unless you count the 1,700 deer that were shot by traditional bowhunters that year).

Back then, it was a few days in November. Working-class guys turned their station wagons north (if they were lucky to have something other than a sedan) and headed to the Big Woods for a few days.

My dad was one of those guys lucky enough to partake in those landmark deer hunting days.

Deer Hunting in the 1950s

My dad, Dan Schmidt Sr., turned 23 in 1958, and although he grew up shooting cottontail rabbits and wild pheasants on the family farm in Waukesha County, Wisconsin, he had never gone deer hunting. In fact, merely seeing a deer was a big deal back then. Some counties didn’t even have deer seasons.

Two of his brothers had gone deer hunting, however, and he wanted to experience it. So, he worked hard that summer to save up $100 (equivalent in purchasing power to about $961.76 today) so he could buy a Winchester Model 70 Featherweight in .308 from his friend, Emmett Green.

“It was a beautiful gun,” he recalls. “Included a leather sling and a Lyman Alaskan Scope. I traded it years later to your Uncle Clarence for $100 and his old Remington bolt-action .30-06. That Remington had problems. Clarence had to use a rubber band to keep the safety on. It was one of those push-ahead safeties. Not nearly as nice as that Winchester; that was a beautiful gun. Goll dang.”

With the deer rifle secured, his next order of business was to get a deer license ($3), a box of Remington Core-Lokt ammo ($3.85) and pair of rubber boots ($4). The deer season forecast called for steady rain. It should be noted that back then a deer license was merely a “big-game license,” and it allowed the hunter to shoot a black bear if they saw one. Few guys ever saw a bear, but it’s neat to think that it was just included in the license.

“I didn’t have much money, so I went with the cheapest pair of boots I could find. I bought them at Wendt’s Shoe Store on Main Street in Menomonee Falls,” he recalls. “They were ugly, and cold as Hell, but they were rubber. I got them so my feet wouldn’t get wet.”

1950s Deer Camp

The 1950s was just the start of the recreation boom in Wisconsin. Whereas today’s North Woods is littered with second homes, cottages and cabin getaways, most folks were content with just visiting the forests and lakes toting meager camping gear. That included the frigid weeks of Wisconsin’s traditional deer season — in mid-November.

“We all followed my older brother Eugene,” Dad recalls. “He loved to hunt and had previously deer hunted in the Black River Falls area. We left his house the Friday before the opener (November 15) and had his Mercury station wagon packed with pole tents, supplies and a cooler full of beef steaks he had cut at the Sentry Foods meat market where he worked in Menomonee Falls.

“There were several of us. Me, Uncle Eugene and his friends George and Harry Youngbauer. I also remember someone by the name of Timmy. He came along and was shooting a 2-22. It was such an odd caliber to be using for deer. That’s why I remember his name,” he said with a laugh. “We met the other guys when we got there and set up near the Big Bear Creek campground.”

This wasn’t just my dad’s first deer season. It was really the first time he had done anything for himself. He started working full time for his dad when he was 14, married my mom when he was 18 and already had three kids at home in 1958. He had also spent the previous five years serving in the National Guard. Life was sure different back then.

Once at camp, all the guys gathered around to sight-in their rifles. No one had a target, so they picked out a 6-inch-diameter tree. Dad proudly pulled his .308 Win. out of its case, but his excitement dimmed when his older brother Eugene took one look at it and quipped, “This is Thirty-Five Rem country!”

Sibling rivalry? Probably. But when all was said and done, the .308 was the only rifle that shot clean through that hard maple! It was all in good fun, though, and the guys got their guns sighted in and then settled in for a night of grilling steaks, telling tales, and getting pumped for opening day of deer season.

Who would see the first deer? Would anyone get a buck? Perhaps most exciting: The group had two of the state’s new party permits that allowed for the harvest of antlerless deer. Seeing this was Dad’s first year hunting, the guys agreed to let him have first crack at a doe if he saw one on opening morning. If he didn’t, then the tag holders (the Younbauers) would get to decide who got to shoot after that.

Opening Day of Deer Season

Few of the guys knew how to hunt deer back then, but those who did were tough-as-nails dudes. One thing my dad learned right away was that he needed to be persistent, sit still and not give up.

That deer season was one of the turning points in Wisconsin and the Midwest. It was the first year the state allowed 16 days for deer hunting (Nov. 15 to 30), and also the first year that harvests were recorded by deer management units (in northwest and northeast only). Party permits were introduced the previous year, and gun-hunters registered 95,234 deer at check stations, of which 44,987 were taken by party permit. More than 335,000 hunters bought big-game licenses.

It wasn’t particularly cold (58 degrees at sunrise), but it was foggy and rain was in the forecast.
“They took me out and told me to sit in this one spot,” Dad recalls. “I had no idea where I was. I just remember sitting there, waiting quietly for daylight.

“When daylight finally came, there was a deer just standing there in front of me. It couldn’t have been more than 30 or 40 yards away. I never heard it. It was just there.

“Slowly, I raised my rifle and saw its throat patch through the scope. I pulled the trigger. Bang! The deer was still standing there, so I chambered another round and shot again.”

The other guys were hunting nearby, so Dad sat patiently for a while. Eventually, he couldn’t take the suspense, so he got up and walked over to his first deer.

Um … make that his first two deer.

“I had no idea there were two of them, but I dropped a big doe and a yearling doe right there in their tracks. It was OK, though, because we had those two party permits.”

Getting Some Grief at the Deer-Check Station

The Younbauers were happy for my dad, even though he filled both of the party permits. Hey, they got some deer! That’s how everyone in my family’s camp viewed it back then — it wasn’t my deer or your deer … it was “our” deer. Everyone shared.

There was a problem, however, when the boys went to tag the deer. In the spirit of helping her husband prepare for deer camp earlier that week, Harry Younbauer’s wife took the two metal party permit tags and locked them together so he “wouldn’t lose them.” The tags were made in such a way that once affixed to the deer, the metal tag locked in place. Only thing is, you were supposed to do that after killing a deer, and certainly not with two separate tags!

“The warden at the check station was understanding, but he did give Harry quite the look” Dad recalls. “He registered both deer but added, ‘And say you’ve been hunting how long?”

The guys had quite the laugh over that one.

Heading Home from Deer Camp

The rain started late in the morning on opening day and never stopped. Despite my dad’s insistence that they cover the deer on the meat pole, some of the guys told him not to worry about it. Sixty degrees and steady rain? Yeah, you can guess what happened to those deer by the time they got home Sunday night.

On the way home the boys stopped at a tavern to celebrate. My Uncle Clarence and his crew had been hunting farther north and were a few hours behind Dad and his group. The two hunting groups didn’t know how each other had fared, but Clarence was excited to get an update. When he stopped at the same tavern, he asked the barkeep if another group had stopped by earlier that day.

“They were driving a Mercury station wagon,” he told the barkeep. “Did my brother get a deer?”

“Don’t know,” the barkeep replied. “But if he was the one wearing those bright yellow boots, yeah, he got two of them.”

Conclusion

Dad will be 87 this March, but his memory of that first hunt is as vivid as the first time I heard the story when I was a kid. It warms my heart to know that the details of our hunts never fade, and it also gives me hope that future generations will be able to experience the same excitement, albeit in different versions, with their kids and grandkids.

 

Editor’s note: Dan’s Dad remembers every deer he ever shot. Here’s a brief video of him recalling his biggest buck ever (from 1969):