Gobbler Tales

Gobbler Tales A collection of stories from my personal experiences in the great outdoors!

Into The Abyss10/01/19We rolled into Torrington, Wyoming bright and early on Monday, September 30, 2019. It was the day ...
10/01/2025

Into The Abyss
10/01/19

We rolled into Torrington, Wyoming bright and early on Monday, September 30, 2019. It was the day before the antelope hunting season opened, and we had been driving all night so that we could do a little scouting before our hunt started. There were 5 of us with tags, my two older brothers (Clint and Junior), our dad (Ray), Junior’s daughter (Lexie), and myself. Our goal for the day was to find a few groups of antelope that we could hunt the next day, and then head back to our hotel so we could catch up on some sleep. We had been to this particular area hunting a couple times before with some pretty good success, so we were confident that we’d be able to use our past experiences to find some antelope and make a game plan for opening morning. We topped the truck off with gas, grabbed some snacks for the road, and took off on the 45 minute drive north to the property we’d be hunting.

This part of the High Plains region is primarily cattle grazing country. The rolling hills are covered in prairie grass, and the sandy soil does not produce much in terms of agriculture. There are some irrigated alfalfa fields, but aside from those it’s just grassy hills separated by big valleys with sandstone bluffs. The sandstone does not stand up well to erosion, and over the years all the wind and rain has shaped out some steep and jagged cliffs with little crevices scattered throughout them. This area is not for the faint of heart when it comes to survival. The animals are exposed to the elements at all times, and the cover is very limited. I have a new level of respect for the animals and the people that call this place home, compared to Iowa they have some extremely harsh living conditions. The ranch we were going to be hunting was filled with these grassy hills and sandstone bluffs, and little did I know how familiar I’d become with that landscape over the next 24 hours.

We turned off the highway onto the long gravel lane that led back to the rancher's house, and we were greeted by the rancher’s son and his dog as we pulled up to the house. We were stopping by to let them know we’d made it in, and we wanted to say thank you for allowing us to hunt again. The boy told us that his dad and his older brother were off elk hunting in Western Wyoming, and that he’d stayed back to help his mom tend to the livestock and keep up with the ranch. While visiting with the rancher’s wife she told us that they had suffered a pretty big loss earlier that fall, and she wasn’t sure how much luck we’d have this time out. She told us about a hail storm that had rolled through with softball sized hail, and when they were out checking their cows they found dozens of antelope that had been killed from the storm. She told us that the majority of the antelope they’d found were does that had huddled over their calves trying to shield them from the hail, and it was a very somber reminder that Mother Nature has no mercy. Pulling out of the driveway that morning I couldn’t help but feel bad for those animals. I knew that I was out there to take an animal’s life, and while it may seem somewhat contradictory, I knew that if I did my part I would give that animal a much better death than any that Mother Nature would give.

We drove a few miles down the road from the house to a section of pasture that we’d hunted in years past. This particular property spanned several hundred acres and had lanes called two-tracks that led throughout the property. We followed the two-track for about half a mile before we saw our first critter of the day, a lone coyote that was cutting across a hillside towards a big valley. Every hunter knows that regardless of what you’ve set out to find for the day, the second you see a coyote it’s now a coyote hunt! I threw the truck in park while Clint grabbed our rifles and bullets, and we took off towards the valley to try to get a shot. Unfortunately the coyote was keen to our plan and had already put enough distance between us so that we couldn’t get a shot, but it was a great opportunity to stretch our legs after spending so many hours crammed in the truck. We loaded back up and continued on the two-track until we reached an area where the hills dropped down into a large valley with steep and jagged sandstone bluffs that seemed to continue on forever. Clint and Junior had both killed antelopes in this area before, and we knew it would be a good spot to find some more. We parked the truck and all got out to start glassing the area and try to get an eye on some animals that we could potentially hunt the next morning.

Clint and I decided to walk to another hillside about 200 yards south of our truck to get a different vantage point of the large valley. With so many nooks and crannies throughout the valley an antelope could easily be hidden and go completely undetected, potentially giving a false impression that none were there at all. We had made it about 50 yards from the truck when two giant mule deer jumped up not 20 yards in front of us! We had seen a handful of mulies in this area before, but they had just been does. This was not an area with a big population and it was definitely not known for producing big mule deer. Now, standing right in front of us, were a pair of trophy class bucks that were pushing 30” wide with huge splits on each side. As they bounced off into the valley we looked back to the truck to see the rest of our crew standing there just as shocked as we were! Clint and I continued on to the hillside we wanted to scout from and were able to spot a few antelope bedded down on the opposite side of the valley. We walked back to the truck to make a game plan with everyone on where to hunt the next morning, and then we loaded back up to make the trip back to the hotel.

We were cruising down the highway past some neighboring ranches on our way back to town when we spotted a large group of antelope out on a hillside. The land they were on happened to be a small piece of public hunting, but it was so small that we had never bothered to stop and check it out. There was a driveway off the highway that was only big enough for one truck, so we pulled in and hopped in the bed of the truck to take a better look. There were around a dozen antelope altogether and a couple of nice bucks that were definitely worth hunting. Clint and I decided that the next morning we would have Junior drop us off there while he took Lexie and our dad to the ranch we’d scouted earlier. We figured if nothing else we could spend our morning hunting that piece of public land, and if we were unsuccessful we’d go back to the ranch after lunch. We cruised back to Torrington, grabbed some food, and hit the hotel to get rested for the next day.

Our alarms went off at 4:30 that next morning, and we awoke to temps in the low 30’s with a light freezing mist coming down. This was not the most ideal scenario to have with a 45 minute drive and a hunt that relied heavily on being able to see long distances, but we were there to hunt so we had to play the hand we’d been dealt. We made it to the piece of public land about 30 minutes before legal shooting light, Clint and I grabbed our rifles and packs, and we agreed to meet up with Junior, Lexie, and our dad back at the parking spot at noon. We set off into the unknown as their tail lights faded out of sight, and little did we know our adventure was just getting started.

Clint and I had walked about half a mile across a large valley to the hillside where we’d spotted the antelope the previous afternoon and sat down behind some rocks to glass another valley below us. It had only been legal shooting light for a few minutes when we spotted a couple antelope coming down the opposite hillside into the valley we were overlooking. One of the antelope was a pretty nice buck, and Clint immediately got his rifle set up to take a shot. The antelope worked down the hillside in less than a minute, but he had also spotted us on top of the hill in the process. Their ability to pick out the smallest movement is sometimes unimaginable, but it’s also the biggest key to their survival in an area as vast as this was. The antelope stopped at roughly 400 yards, and we knew it was now or never. Clint had been practicing long range shots for several months and is a bit of a sharpshooter, so I was not surprised a bit when he executed a perfect shot. He hit him perfectly behind the shoulder, and we watched the buck run a short distance before falling over at the bottom of the valley. We couldn’t believe that within 10 minutes of the season being open we already had one antelope down, and after a short celebration with some high-fives and sailor talk we grabbed our gear and took off down the hillside to go check out his speed goat.

We had only made it about 75 yards when Clint motioned for me to get down. When you’ve grown up hunting with someone your entire life you operate like a well trained team, and sometimes all it takes is a hand motion for the other person to know exactly what’s going on. I knew he had spotted more antelope, so I hit the deck and got my rifle set up and ready to take a shot. In nearly the same exact spot that Clint had just shot his antelope another pair of bucks had appeared. We were close to 500 yards from them at this point, but I was confident I could make the shot. I shouldered my rifle to find that my scope was so fogged over that I could barely see. I’m not quite the shot that my older brother is, and when I squeezed the trigger my bullet hit just below the buck. He took off running up the valley towards the antelope Clint had shot and stopped at roughly 470 yards, but by the time I’d chambered another round my scope was so fogged over I could not see a thing. Clint handed me his rifle, told me where to hold, and when I squeezed the trigger off on the second shot I dropped that antelope right in his tracks. Two antelope down, within 100 yards of each other, and all within the first 30 minutes of the season. We could not believe our luck!! We celebrated, went and took a look at our harvests, took some pictures, and got them field dressed so that they could start cooling off and prevent any meat from spoiling. It was barely after 9, and we had nearly 3 hours to kill before the rest of our group would get back. Clint and I are both pretty gungho, so we decided we would just cut across country to the ranch where Junior was hunting with Lexie and our dad. The rancher’s property happened to border the far side of the public land we were hunting, and after looking at the map on our phones we figured within an hour we’d be able to find them. Let me preface the rest of this story with this, you should only rely on your phone maps if your service is great and the land is flat. While some people may believe in a flat earth, I can promise you that is not the case in Wyoming.

We’d been walking about 45 minutes when Clint asked me to check my phone and see how far we’d made it. The fog had set in and cut our visibility to maybe 150 yards at best, and we’d been walking up and down hills the entire time. I opened my map to discover that I had no idea where we really were, but judging by our last known location we had only made it about a mile. We had quite a ways left to go, and we’d gotten off track on our cross country trek and wandered on to one of the neighboring ranches instead of onto the ranch we’d intended to be on. We continued on for another 30 minutes and could finally make out some windbreaks that the rancher had for his cattle. We recognized these windbreaks right away because you could see them from the highway that we’d driven on the day before, and we then realized that we were a couple miles off course. By this point turning back was no quicker than continuing on, so we adjusted our route and kept trekking. We picked up the pace and were really hustling across the countryside trying to make up for lost time. Although we were essentially lost with no real idea where we were going, the fog had started to lift and we were being treated to some truly remarkable views. There we were in the middle of nowhere, with absolutely no sign of civilization as far as you could see in any direction, and with nothing but time to enjoy it. We carried on for the next two and a half hours crossing over hills and valleys, climbing bluffs, and visiting the entire way. What we thought would be a short hour long hike turned into a four hour cross country trek spanning several miles.

We finally got cell service when we were about a half-mile off the gravel road that we’d taken to the ranch the previous afternoon, and I called Junior to let him know where we were. They had driven to the public land driveway to pick us up, but when we weren’t there they drove back to the ranch thinking that maybe we were still hunting. Lexie and my dad had both filled their tags, and shortly after meeting up with them we spotted another one that Junior ended up getting. We loaded up their three antelope and then went back to get the antelope that Clint and I had killed. Our antelope were almost a mile off the road, and there was no way to get closer to them with a vehicle. Junior had built a game cart out of an old harness racing cart using some mountain bike tires and a large plastic game tote, so Clint, Lexie, and I took off across the hills to gather out antelope. Lexie was only 14 at the time and barely 100 pounds soaking wet, but she is as tough and determined as any human I’ll ever meet. She insisted on pulling the cart, so we quartered the antelope, loaded them in the cart, and took off back towards the truck. She pulled it across the valley we were in, several hundred feet up the next hill, down through another valley, several hundred feet up two more sets of hills, and did it all without taking a single break. I kept telling her to rest or to let me have a turn, and finally about 200 yards from the truck she set the cart down. I can still picture the smirk she had when she said “It’s flat, I think you can probably handle it now.” I’ve always been proud of her, but I’ll guarantee you that there was not an uncle on earth that was more proud of their niece. We got our antelope loaded in our coolers, situated all of our gear in the back, and took off on the trip back to town.

We arrived back at the hotel a little before dark that evening and iced down all of our antelope for the long trip back home the next day. My dad was worn out and decided to hang out at the hotel while the rest of us went up town to get some food. We shared stories of the day’s adventures, told Lexie stories of our young and wild years, cracked jokes, and laughed the entire night away. To this day we still laugh about that night and some of the inside jokes we made while some folks were probably trying to enjoy a quiet and peaceful supper. It was the first hunting trip she had joined us on, and it was one of the most fun experiences of my entire life.

I look back on that trip and can’t help but smile. We had some amazing success on the hunt itself being able to fill all 5 tags on opening day, and we filled our freezers with some great wild game that most people will never have the chance to try. The horns from our antelope are on our walls to serve as a lifelong reminder of the memories we created as well as to pay tribute to the sacrifices those animals gave so that we could provide for our family. I think back to what that rancher’s wife told us about the antelope dying from the hail, and it makes me respect the life those animals live even more. I think back to the cross country trip that spanned almost 7 miles that I shared with my brother, and I appreciate the hours we spent just living in the moment God gave us that day. It is hard to sum up in words what it means to be a hunter, but the experiences it allows us to live are truly irreplaceable. I have a picture saved on my phone from Clint and I walking through the fog that day and it’s captioned “We’re walking into the abyss.” Looking at that picture, looking at my antelope’s horns, and writing this story put me right back into that moment. It is a great reminder that hunting and life in general go hand in hand. You may encounter some unexpected obstacles, it might take you on a path unintended, and it may not be the result you’re after, but in the end the experience and memories that it gives you are the things that matter most.

I believe in Heaven. I was lucky enough to grow up there. When we were just little whipper snappers my cousins and I wou...
06/13/2025

I believe in Heaven. I was lucky enough to grow up there.

When we were just little whipper snappers my cousins and I would ride our bikes down the road and down the big hill to the old coal mines that filled Grandma and Grandpa’s farm. There were dozens of them, some towering over 100 feet tall, and some that ran for several hundred feet. We’d spend hours climbing up and down those old mines, falling and busting our asses, just to get back up and do it all over again. As we got older the bicycles were traded in for four wheelers and dirt bikes, and we went from climbing them by hand to riding all over them on the machines. My older brothers had already carved out some paths and built ramps with their dirt bikes, and we burnt thousands of gallons of gasoline following in their footsteps. When the time came to have those old mines reclaimed it was pretty heartbreaking for all of us kids to lose the playground we’d all grown accustomed to having.

Then came the new pond. We quickly turned that into our new hangout spot. We put a small dock in, set up a fire pit, got an old pontoon boat to put on it, and stocked it plum full of fish. Going down to the pond became a new weekly tradition. It got to the point that if I had a free minute, I’d walk across the road just to throw a line in. It’s where my nephews learned to fish, where my buddies and I would sneak away and drink too many beers, where memories were made and tears were shed, and where the dogs loved to swim. It was home. I’d hate to know how many hours that Zach and I spent down there, but looking back now I can say that it wasn’t enough.

The night I took this picture I was fishing off the old pontoon and had been catching some really nice bass. The bite had slowed down, and I was watching my two dogs Shack and Gracie swim and chase frogs around the bank. I sat back and took in the sunset, waited until it got dark, and then trolled the boat back over to the dock and lit a fire. I sat down there until almost 3 a.m that morning just hanging out with my dogs and enjoying the peace and quiet of grandma’s farm. As the years went by life got busier, and I spent less and less time down there. Shack and Gracie have both passed, the land has traded hands, and my chances to enjoy the place I once called home have came to an end. When this picture popped up of the old pond today it brought back a lot of fond memories, but it also served as a grim reminder that we are all just temporary stewards of the places and lands that we call home. I was beyond blessed to have the chance to be a steward of that place and create so many great memories over the years. It truly was Heaven on Earth. If Heaven doesn’t have some old coal mines to climb and a pond to fish, I’d rather just go back to Grandma and Grandpa Jones’s farm.

To the World’s Greatest Dad, Thank YouI can remember standing in the doorway in my un**es and watching my dad come down ...
04/23/2025

To the World’s Greatest Dad, Thank You

I can remember standing in the doorway in my un**es and watching my dad come down the road in his old Datsun pickup. It was early October, deer season had started, and I was about to join my dad for an evening of bow hunting. I was only 4 years old at the time and had been coyote and squirrel hunting dozens of times prior, but this would be my first deer hunt. My dad got his stuff around while my mom corralled me just long enough to get some camo clothes on, and then we headed out the door to load up in the pickup. We drove a couple miles up the road to a farm that my dad’s best friend Wayne owned at the time, parked in the driveway, and walked a short way back towards the timber along a fencerow.

We sat down in some tall grass along a gate opening on the top of the hill and leaned up against a couple of wooden posts where the gate was mounted. I don’t know how long we’d been sitting there before it happened, but out of nowhere a doe and her two fawns came walking along the fencerow right towards us. I can remember my dad saying don’t move and to stay quiet as she kept walking closer. She kept coming closer and closer, and before we knew it she was within a few yards of us. I assume that she finally heard my heart about to burst out of my chest as she got to the end of our feet because she stopped dead in her tracks and looked right at us. We locked eyes with each other for what seemed like a lifetime, and when she stomped her foot and snorted I tried to take flight. Had my dad not grabbed my arm I might still be running! He burst out laughing as she took off over the hill with her fawns, and then explained to me that deer do that when they see something that makes them nervous. We packed up our stuff and headed back home early that evening with one heck of a story and a little boy who had been bit by a deer hunting bug in a big way. That was a little over 28 years ago, and to this day I could show you right where we sat that evening. It will always be a special spot for me for that reason, but that spot held another memory for my dad that had taken place over a decade before our hunt that evening.

My dad has been deer hunting for well over 50 years and has managed to stack up quite a few trophies in the process. It just so happens that the largest buck of his lifetime came from the same area where he took me for my first hunt. It was a giant 14 pointer with split G2’s that were pushing 16” long, two small kickers off one of the bases, dark brown in color, and pushing 200”. A true once in a lifetime caliber whitetail that most deer hunters only get to dream about. It’s the biggest deer that anybody in our family has ever killed, but I’ve never seen the antlers in person. Nobody in our family has laid eyes on them since the late 1980’s. You see, my dad was a single dad with 3 boys at home when he killed that deer, and he did whatever he had to do to provide for them. He worked long hours on the road doing construction, but that wasn’t enough to ever get ahead and have extra. He had sold several of his trophies already, but the chords on his truck tires were starting to show and the antlers weren’t doing any good sitting on the wall. He ended up selling them to buy a new set of tires so that he could get back and forth to work and keep a roof over his family’s heads. It was a sacrifice that he made for his boys, and it’s a testament to the kind of dad he’s been to us. He has never once put himself or his wants before us, and he’s worked his ass off his entire life to take care of us. I know there are lots of great dads out there, but you’d have a hard time convincing me that any are better than him.

As I got older and we shared more hunts I’d often ask him about the big ones he’d killed before I came along. We had several racks hanging on the walls in our house, but none as big as the one in the picture in his gun cabinet. I knew that was the big one he’d sold, and any time I’d bring him that picture he’d look at it for a while and say that’s the only one that he regretted getting rid of. For years I wondered if I would ever see it, but the person he’d sold it to had parted ways with it shortly after buying it and we had no idea where it had ended up. We’d heard some rumors that someone in Texas bought it, but nobody really knew for sure. It wasn’t until January of 2024 that I decided to make a Facebook post asking for some help in trying to locate it.

All I had was the picture of the antlers on a plaque and that old photo from his gun cabinet with him holding it in the barn. I made a post on January 18th asking for some folks to please share the photos and knew I’d have better luck winning the lottery than actually tracking them down. It was my way of saying “I tried” and getting that thought of “what if” off of my mind. I really didn’t have much hope at all, and my expectations were pretty low, but I figured it was worth a shot anyways. The next two weeks turned into a blur. It started off with all of my hunting buddies sharing the post, and it quickly exploded into hundreds of shares. Within a couple days I had over 1,000 shares, and within a week it surpassed 10,000. Facebook sent me a message saying my post had reached over 1,000,000 people, and I had folks from all over the country messaging me saying they were keeping an eye out. I was truly blown away that so many people took the time out of their day to help out a complete stranger. My hopes were through the roof and I knew that if those antlers would ever be found this would be the time. I started calling all of the major retail stores to see if they happened to have them on display somewhere. The folks from Bass Pro even sent me to one of their senior taxidermists and he emailed all of the stores to have them check all of their inventory to see if they’d ever displayed it over the years, but we didn’t have any luck. Throughout the course of those first two weeks several folks mentioned a company called Classic Racks that made replicas from old photos, but at first I just ignored it because I wanted the originals. As time went on and the leads started to diminish I circled back to those comments and checked their site out. They had made some outstanding replicas and I was impressed with how identical they were to the originals in the side by side comparisons. I thought there was no way they could use the old Polaroids we have and actually make something off those without a score sheet and all the measurements, but I decided to give them a call and see what they had to say.

When I called I talked to a gentleman named Mark and he immediately said that he’d seen the post on Facebook. He went on to explain their process and said that they could in fact use those pictures I had, and that he was confident he could make a replica to match. By this time I was determined to put those antlers back on the wall for my dad by whatever means necessary, but it wasn’t until after the paperwork was signed and I’d paid the deposit that I asked my brothers to split it with me. Paige and I talked it over at home, and even though we had an upcoming wedding to pay for that fall, she was all in and said we had to do it. It was early spring, and with a year's lead time I thought it would be perfect for a surprise 70th birthday present. Our excitement was through the roof, but it would soon be hindered by a dark cloud that was about to hit our family.

Not too long after signing the contract and getting the replica process started my dad went to the doctor for some health issues he’d started experiencing. We found out that he had some spots that concerned the doctors, and after several tests he was diagnosed with non-hodgkins lymphoma. I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t scared to death for him, but we knew we had to be strong and stick together so he could fight it and beat it. I knew that cancer had picked the wrong fella this time because my dad is tougher than a pine knot and would give every last bit he had if that’s what it took. The doctors had a pretty positive attitude and were very confident that their treatment plan would work, so with their encouragement our hopes started to rise again. It would turn out to be short lived by another tragedy that was about to hit, one that would change our family forever.

It was July 4th weekend and I was at the lake with my fiance for the long holiday weekend. I’d gone to the local rodeo with my family on Friday evening, and by some stroke of blind fate my cousin’s husband and I found ourselves in an inflatable rooster costume as part of the clown’s main entertainment. As we looked over to the bleachers where all our friends and family were sitting we saw grandma in the front row bent over and beat red from laughing so hard. We looked absolutely ridiculous racing across the arena and tackling each other in the middle, and I went over to her afterwards and asked if she knew that a rooster could move so fast. I had no idea that would be the last time we spoke. Sunday morning I woke up to a call from my cousin that said she’d been life flighted to Iowa City. In the blink of an eye our world had changed. The woman who’d raised us all, loved us all, taught us all of life’s greatest lessons, and was the matriarch of our family was now fighting for her life. It was a shock to everyone’s system, and after two long weeks my aunt convinced the doctor’s to let her come home where she wanted to be. We rearranged her house so they could bring in all of the necessary medical supplies on Friday afternoon, and on Saturday my aunt brought her home. That evening, in the house where she raised and loved all of us for so many years, she went to be with the Lord in Heaven. It sent a shockwave through our family that I know none of us will ever completely recover from, but I know that we all gained the most resilient and loving angel that Heaven has ever seen.

Throughout the next several months we all found ourselves going through the motions of grief and learning to live without the glue that had held our family together for so many years. We had to clean up grandma’s farm and gather the items for an auction and list the farm so that it could be sold. It’s still difficult knowing that a place that was once all of our home is no longer a place we can go, but I also understand that it was her way of looking out for all of us one last time. My dad started his treatments shortly afterwards, and I know that grandma was there in Jesus' ear the whole time telling him he’d better answer our prayers or she’d whip him into shape like she’d done with all of us. After 6 months of treatments, with a guardian angel who never waivered, our prayers were answered. The doctors gave my dad the news that the treatments had worked and the cancer had vanished! This instantly picked our hopes back up and lifted a huge weight off all of our shoulders, but most importantly it gave my dad that extra pep in his step that he’d always had before.

Shortly after getting the good news of being cancer free, my brother Junior and I were on the phone talking about our upcoming hog hunt. During our conversation he brought up surprising our dad with his replica this spring. It had kind of fallen to the back of my mind with everything else our family had been dealing with, and I had no idea when it might be done. Classic Racks had sent us a miniature model back in October to make sure everything looked right for the life size model, and we’d given them the thumbs up and said everything looked great. That was the last time I’d really focused on it. I called to check in with Mark around the middle of March, and he told me he had just finished it up and was painting it the next day! He asked when my dad’s birthday was, and when I told him April 16th he said no worries you’ll have it by the end of the month. My excitement went through the roof! The next week he sent me some pictures of the finished product after it had completed the drying process, and shortly afterwards it was on its way! I had forgotten to change the shipping address so that it didn’t go to my dad’s house, so the night before it was set to arrive I got on UPS and had to change it to a pick up location in Ottumwa instead. That delayed the arrival by another day adding to the anticipation of seeing it in person even more. I sped over to the pick up location after work the following day, picked it up, and brought it home. I waited for Paige to get home before I finally opened it, and when I did my heart hit the floor.

I opened the box to find it full of the shipping popcorn, and I could see the tip of one of the tines sticking through. I grabbed it to pull it out, and out came the right side. I had a small heart attack and for a moment thought that it had been broken in the shipping process! It wasn’t until I looked at the skull plate that I realized it came as separate sides that you stick together, and after several laughs with Paige I finally calmed down enough to really take it in and check it out. It was absolutely incredible. The detail was unreal, it felt like I was holding the real antlers in my hands! The size was like nothing I’d ever seen, and all those memories from my childhood of looking at that picture in the gun cabinet started to flood my brain. I had her take pictures of me holding it and sent it to my brothers to show them how great it had turned out. We all knew that in a couple weeks my dad would be very shocked about the present we’d gotten him!

His birthday was on Wednesday, April 16th, and we decided to have a surprise party for him on Saturday the 19th. I bought a plaque to mount the antlers on similar to the one my dad had mounted the original ones on, and after Junior got the two sides glued together I attempted to put it on that plaque on Friday evening. I ran into a bit of a curveball, because the antlers were too big to fit the plaque. This led to some last minute scrambling on Saturday, just a few hours before the party was set to start. Anybody that knows Junior and I very well knows that this is about par for the course for us. We like to push things to the edge and get them done just before time runs out. It hasn’t failed us yet, and we weren’t about to let it happen this time either. Junior spent the better part of Saturday morning shaping a plaque out of some wood he had laying around his shop. Paige and I got there Saturday afternoon around 2 p.m, and after a couple hours of debating and trying to figure out how in the world to get the antlers secured we finally had a gameplan figured out. Gary and Grace, two of our closest family friends, showed up right in the knick of time and helped us get the antlers secured about 20 minutes before our dad was supposed to get there! We quickly covered them up with some coats and went inside to wait for our dad to show up.

You’d think that with all of this being planned out for a couple weeks we’d have a rock solid plan on how to get our dad to show up at his own party, but that proved to be a bit of a chore in itself. He’d decided he wanted to work at our river lot that afternoon, and even with half a dozen grandkids trying to rush him out of there he still wouldn’t leave until the work was done. We were all at Junior’s waiting for him to show up, but we knew he wasn’t leaving the river until he was finished doing whatever it was he had set out to do. Luckily the grandkids had convinced him to come home, but when he got to Junior’s house he stopped out in the shop instead of coming inside where the rest of us were waiting to surprise him! Junior had to go out and tell him to come in, and when he walked through the door we all yelled Happy Birthday! His face got red and we could tell he was surprised even with all the cars in the driveway. Little did he know, this wasn’t the big surprise we were waiting on. We all ate supper and visited for a little while, and then Junior told me to go out and get the antlers.

I walked out into the shop and grabbed the plaque and antlers, and we told my dad to close his eyes before I came back in. He was sitting on the couch next to one of his best friends with his hat over his face when I walked inside. I sat them down on the armrest next to him and then told him “Okay, they’re yours.” When he opened his eyes I instantly saw the shock and surprise, and I knew right away that he recognized them. It had been almost 40 years since he’d seen the original set, and when his eyes started to fill up I had to walk away. Up to that point in my life I had only seen my dad cry twice, once at my grandpa’s funeral when I was 10 years old, and last summer at my grandma’s funeral. This was the 3rd time in over 32 years that I’d seen my dad shed a tear. As he sat there holding them and shaking his head in disbelief the emotion hit everybody in the room.

You see, they aren’t just a set of antlers. They’re a testament to a man who spent the better part of his life sacrificing for his boys to give us the best life we could have. He’s never not been there for us when we needed something. He’s provided for us every day and still does now even though we’re all adults and out on our own. Sure, they may not be the original set, and while the original set would be awesome, it wouldn’t have the story that his replica has. We could have given up when the original set didn’t turn up and said we tried. I remember my dad saying last summer after hearing about my facebook post, “Oh heck Peewee, those things are long gone. It means a lot to me that you’re trying to find them but I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it. I knew when I sold them that I’d probably never see them again but I’d do it again in a heartbeat to take care of you boys.” We weren’t raised to just give up though. My dad raised 4 boys that are as stubborn as he is, and I was determined to put those antlers on his wall one way or another. Thanks to the amazing team at Classic Racks, we were able to make it happen and give back to the man that’s given so much to us over the years. Here’s to the best man I’ll ever know, and the greatest deer hunter there’s ever been. Most folks know him as Ray Jones, but I’m lucky enough to call him Dad. ❤️

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