Buck Season at Bear Meadow Transcript
Buck Season at Bear Meadow Sunset—Transcription
Edited by Daniel W. Patterson. Names of participants are given where known.
(crawl text)
Central Pennsylvania
Nov., 1982
Hunting camps dot the ridges
and valleys of northern Appa-
achia. Here families and
friends gather annually for
the white-tail deer hunt—a
major cultural event for the
men of the region.
This is a portrait of one camp,
one of the oldest and most
traditional. The men hunt the
old way: they drive the deer.
They keep the traditions of
their grandfathers’ camp alive
in the stories they tell and
the way they hunt.
(Men walking through fallen leaves in the woods, occasionally calling “Ho-oh” and listening for distant calls.)
DALE McCLINTIC (a man with a gray beard, wearing a red hat): If they're going to send any deer, they'll send them in here. This isn't where I thought I should have went. I thought I should have went down the hill farther, but this is where they want me, so. I ain't captain anymore, so.
(TITLE)
BUCK SEASON AT BEAR MEADOW SUNSET
© 1984 Documentary Resource Center
DALE: Got me a buck in '80. '79 was the last buck we killed, and we only had three shots in that time.
DON TRESSLER: I seen them going back through just as I pulled in. How many was there?
FRED TRESSLER: Three elk.
DON: I just got a glimpse of 'em going.
FRED: They come right down close to me.
DON: No horns?
FRED: No horns.
DON: I'm going out here and get Barry. Pick him up.
(A shot of Bear Meadow Sunset, the camp lodge in which the men sleep and eat and entertain themselves when not hunting.)
(The scene shifts to a card table inside.)
DALE: After all, after all you can only, you can only control yourself and a couple of other fellas. You can't control everybody. But I don't know how to tell you fellas, but you're just getting up too damn high. Because we just don't have enough . . .
DON: I never get up too high. I've always come out just above Mac, or right to 'im.
VOICE: You don't know where you are when you're up there.
DALE: It seems we're just getting too much width to our hunt. Our hunt's too wide.
JAKE JACKSON: Sure, it's too wide.
DALE: We just seem as though we're getting our hunt too wide. But lengthwise we've got it. (All laugh.)
NORMAN JACKSON: No, I know how to hunt the whitetail now. You got to go into the white section of the town. (Laughs at his joke.)
(Fred Tressler bustles about, laying a meal on the table.)
FRED: Okay, come and get it.
FRED (seated at the head of the long table): Lord, we are grateful and thankful for this food before us. We ask that Thou would lead us in Thy righteous ways, and feed our spirits with Thy truth. In Jesus' holy name we ask. Amen.
DAVID WEAVER: No juice?
BARRY TRESSLER: No juice.
DAVID: Ah well, we'll get some.
(The scene shifts to the card table where the men are playing poker.)
DON: Two, three, four of clubs played down below there.
NORMAN: Jacks. (shaking his fist) Luck. I can't touch it.
(A murmur of other conversation with a few clear remarks rising above others.)
“Come on, Mac, treat me right.” “Okay, there you are.” “Discard this.” “That ain't the one I needed.” “That goddamn…” “Now, wait a minute. Now, just wait a minute.” “Give me this.)
(Cuts to Norman Jackson, telling a “lie” from his repertory.)
NORMAN: I didn't know there was an open grave there, and I fell into the goddamn thing, see. Tried to get out but I couldn't. I just wait till tomorrow morning. I just sat there in the corner. I think it was Paul Gilligan. Somebody else come down through there, and he fell into the grave there, and he tried to get out. I told him, I said, "Hey. There's no way. You might as well wait over here on me. I can't get out either." Well, he, he got out of there in a hurry! (All laugh.) He left me there!
DON (to David, who is helping him behind the stove) Close the door there, a minute there. Close the door a little bit. Pull the brick out. You need everything pulled back before you put any wood in.
(Scene shifts to the poker game.)
FRED: Lost one there.
JAKE: I lost. All right, so I pay everybody?
FRED: No, you pay Don for everybody. ( Some comments back and forth.) Now, do you understand it now? Do you understand it now?
VOICE: Here, take a little sip of this, Jake.
JAKE (who already has some): Naw, this here's better.
NORMAN: Hey. Before you go to bed tonight, go over there and lay down on the couch. I'll talk to you. (Laughter.) Yeah. Then after I talk to you, then you get off the couch, and I'll lay down. And you talk to me.
VOICES: “And then you'll be as screwed up as you are now.” (Laughter.) “You're going to make a mistake!” “I believe.” “I'll bet he's got a winner. I got five cards.” (All start sliding coins to Jake, who is winning this time and beaming and sliding them into his pile.) “Again.” “Again.”
(Another shot of the outside of the lodge by daylight, and then early morning shots of the inside, with Norman asleep under a blanket on a cot by a window, as Dale sits in a chair nearby. Other shots of the inside and of fields and woods outside, over conversation.)
DON: All right, I'm sure of that. It's not rain. That's just water dripping off the trees there, I think. What is the temperature? (looking at two different outside thermometers) 38 on that'n. 40 on that'n. We'll buy it. Might get soaked once or twice. We will.
(Shots of various morning activities: one man tapping a morning bell, Don and David starting a generator motor outside, Fred frying eggs while Dale makes other breakfast preparations, and then of the men eating breakfast at the table and chatting casually.)
VOICES: “They wait till you walk away, and then they jump in there and really gets into your money.” “They’ll do that to you. Some people have—" “You walked away one hand too soon, Marlin.” “Some people have no respect.”
(Man pulling on his boots, preparing to go outside for the hunt.)
DON: Marlin and Dave and Freddy get down and bring that, bring that top in. Freddy knows how to come out on the top there. So he can pick you up. Yeah. He knows how to stay high enough, too, that you can hear him. Because if he gets down over too far, you can't--you can’t hear him.
DALE (outside, by the truck, explaining): Put your drivers like this, you know. Then you have stationers along the side—or flankers—and you have stationers on the end. So you got three. You try to cover three sides, and the drivers chase them out that way.
(Men getting dropped off from a vehicle moving along a wet road through the woods.)
DON: Once you get up there, Freddy, give them some time.
FRED: How much? We have about 15 minutes for it.
DON: Give them at least 15 minutes.
(Other men load their rifles, enter the woods, and start calling “Oh-oh”—close-up shots of a number of different hunters listening and looking. Then the scene shifts to the men at the end of the drive assessing the hunt.)
NORMAN: Didn't bring any out here.
DAVID: You know if there would have been four of us on that drive it would have come out right here. Because that would put me—
UNIDENTIFIED HUNTER: It went down the hole and got in the wall, and then I couldn't see it no more.
DALE: We could see it. It was a monster. It was over on the leaves. We could see it going up the leaves. I thought it would go to you up there. You or Larry.
DAVID (to Jake): The next thing I know you were so far, going out in front of us, I couldn't even see you no more.
DON: Fourteen of them went down over, and there was a spike in it. Yeah, he missed it. And some old guy down there missed it. He said, "Those babies, whoever drove up above there," he said, "they had them moving."
(Scene shifts to the road approaching the Bear Meadow Sunset Camp.)
NORMAN (voice over, in the middle of a yarn): Where's Larry, Sr., at? Where's he at? We don't know. We don't think he went to sleep on the watch, see. Anyway. There was another drive about ready to walk through, see? So he told me, he said, "If you see a guy up there sleeping, wake him up. He's 92 years old. He's still got two more good hunts in him. We gotta use him on the next drive.”
DICK WEBER (off camera, speaking to Joe Mitchell and Norman): We only made one drive on Monday, Joe. We made one drive Monday. It was pretty nasty. We drove the fawn. Then yesterday morning we hit north side and sunny side. Then we got the three-corner piece, which was quarter to three, and then that was that. That was the end of that. That was a good--they were wins. Three good drives yesterday.
JOE MITCHELL: I tell you, these people in there, they hunt hard. No kidding. But there's just nothing to hunt. That's my estimation. There are no acorns. There's no nothing. They're just not coming in here anymore.
VOICE: Is that because of gypsies?
JOE: Hunh?
VOICE: What’s killing them?
JOE: Mother Nature's what takes them.
DICK: That's right, Joseph. You're right there.
JOE: It don't make no feed for them. You got like lots of acorns, you'll have a deer. You don't have no acorns, you're not going to have any deer.
DICK: Yeah, right there, that's right.
JOE: Because they love acorns. And if there's acorns, they'll come and eat them. If there are no acorns, no deer. No deer. Whatsoever. You might find a few old does just wandering around, looking for a buck.
UNIDENTIFIED ELDERLY HUNTER: Got one down back of Coopersburg. And they say they only eat laurel in the winter.
DALE: No, no. No way.
ELDERLY HUNTER: And that had acorns, corn, and something that looked like maybe oak leaves.
DALE: Yeah, there'll be a hunk of laurel in there in the middle of their paunch about that big.
ELDERLY HUNTER: Take a good handful of laurel.
DALE: I'll bet you, I'll bet you today, if you killed a doe or anything in here and dressed her now, I bet you she'll have laurel in her paunch bigger than thunder.
ELDERLY HUNTER: That was right down around...
DALE: We haven't had cold weather to make them do it either.
ELDERLY HUNTER: Well, this wasn't cold there.
DALE: That's right, that's what I said. First one I ever saw was that buck that Johnny Clune killed over there I shot through the neck. Stood up. That son of a bitch looked as though he was eating sawdust. And I'd like to know what the hell he eat. I seen that paunch. It just looked like it was full of sawdust. I'm not kidding you. I shot that buck. I walked out, and John said, "There ought to be one layin' there." And I walked in, and it just stood up. He had it right across the kidneys here. It stood up on its front feet. Just stood there. I shot it through the neck right here with a .270, and the guys out there laughed like, "Ah, Dale missed it."
VOICE: But that buck didn't come out of that drive.
DALE: No, he come off the other drive. But he just stood there and bled right out. He stood there and bled right out. Both sides. And when he fell, he just fell. They claim that comes from-- the second shot has no shock.
DICK: Joe and I, we looked a little bit and watched and had another drink or two. So I gently went upstairs and woke the man, and Jerry started getting water there to put that out. Believe me, the camp would have burned if it wouldn't have been for Joe and I sitting down here watching that.
DALE: I thought all along they told you that asbestos wouldn't burn.
DICK: That's right. And we all had a little asbestos around there, didn't we?
DALE: It was packed. I packed it.
DICK: And we did, but we didn't have this tiling.
DALE: Hell, you didn't. Hell, you didn't have the tiling.
DICK: It wasn't cut out that way.
DALE: It wasn't cut out, but that tile was.
DICK: It got too hot.
DALE: That tile was put in when the chimney was built, buddy.
DICK: Well, maybe the tile was there, but I know it was too tight.
DALE: Damn right.
DICK: I know it was too tight.
DALE: But I had packed the asbestos around, you know, so it wouldn't get hot.
DICK: Remember we had to go to the outside and cut it out and all? And then we put that tile in there and so on. We got it all out of there. But that was one time it paid to sit here in camp and drink. Believe me, it really did. And they didn't give Joe and I any money for our drinking either. (Laughs.)
(The scene changes—Norman and Dale look out a window, watching squirrels.)
DALE: He's got a curl in his tail.
NORMAN: What's it eating, apples?
DALE: Apples.
NORMAN: Now he's going to shove under the leaves. He was eating one of them.
DALE: That's the first one I've seen in two weeks or more. There, he found something to eat.
NORMAN: Here comes the red squirrel too, Dale. Over by the tree by the spot.
DALE: He'll chase it.
NORMAN: You see him?
DALE: There he goes. He’ll chase him. Chase him away.
NORMAN: You see where he stopped at?
DALE: That gray one went up behind the bottom. Yeah. That's true. Hell, he's afraid of him.
NORMAN: He's just sitting there picking away. Like to see ‘im steal an apple again, and move it.
(Scene shifts to Dale leaning back in a sofa in another conversation.)
DALE: . . . had to dig you outta the wood pile.
DICK: Boy, that god-damn fellow you-- There's a fellow you sorta ‘minded me of—was George (unclear). He was a good old mountain man. He was a—what, woodcutter mostly, wasn’t he, Dale?
DALE: Thresherman.
DICK: Yeah, threshing. He would go to bed at night . . .
DALE: He run a steam-thresh—steam-threshing machines in the valley.
DICK: Before he went to bed at night, he would take and pour about this much whiskey in a glass and then pour canned milk in it, right?
DALE: Took one of those big, heavy—big heavy, those big heavy wrestler’s cups.
DICK: Yeah.
DALE: And he put his whiskey in, and then he poured it full of condensed milk, and he said, if that whiskey curdled, that was no good.
DICK: That's right, that's right.
DALE: He said if the milk curdled, the whiskey was no good.
DICK: But he said, George used to say, “Now if you want to eat ice cream, it’s no use in eating it unless you start on a quart.” He wanted a quart of ice cream. He liked his ice cream. But he wanted a quart. Hell, he didn't want a pint or something. He wanted a quart to eat. Oh, he was a great old mountain man, that George was. I'll tell you. Gentle fellow, very gentle, very quiet spoken.
DALE: And a real bad temper.
DICK: And yeah, but he had--he always was groomed well.
DALE: If you see anything that--who the hell do you see today that could put you in mind of George -- ?
DICK: Can't think right now.
DALE: How about our President?
DICK: Yes, by God, you're right.
DALE: By God, I tell my wife, every time he comes on the television, I say that's George -- upside down.
DICK: Yeah, Ronald Reagan, yeah.
DALE: He had sort of reddish hair.
DICK: Yeah.
DALE: Yes, sir every time I see the President, I say, there's my buddy.
DICK: But you couldn't have met a more wonderful guy than George.
DALE: But you got one curled up. He was bad curled up.
DICK: Oh, boy.
(Men doing chores—flattening beer cans, bringing in wood for the stove.)
NORMAN (telling another lie): “. . . Why don't you--why do you keep a pig with a wooden leg?” Well, he said that pig knew when there was chicken thieves out in his chicken coop. He said that pig woke him up, and he was able to chase the thieves away. “And even when my barn burnt down,” he said, “that pig went into the barn, chased out the cattle, saved the cattle.” And he said, “I still can't understand why you keep a pig with a wooden leg.” “Well,” he said, "When you got a good pig like that you don't eat him all at one time." (Laughter.)
DICK: Well, 1915 is when we booked the tar paper one, right?
DALE: Yes, the first one.
DICK: Yeah. The first camp, that L-shaped one, yeah.
DALE: Not the L-shaped. Just the straight jaw.
DICK: Yeah, and then they put the ell on it. All right.
DALE: Yep.
DICK: When was this burned--1937?
(Dale nods.)
DICK: They had the camp burn in 1937.
DALE: But they built the piece down, I think 1923, or something like that.
NORMAN: Going up the mountain, I took my glasses off. Put them in my pocket. Shep turned around. He said, "Did forget your glasses, or lose them?" I said, "No." Coming back, coming down over the mountain, Bob goes like this (reaching up to his eyes). He didn't have his on. He's sure he fell up there and lost them—never even noticed till he was clear back to the truck. Turned around, and they went back up, and they found it.
VOICE: They did?
NORMAN: Yeah. You know where the big rock is on the top?
VOICE: Yeah.
NORMAN: Right in there. That's where he fell. He was lucky, wasn't he?
DALE: I believe they built the other piece down, that big—the other piece down about '23.
DICK: When we built this one, Dale, I think you and I are the only two here now to help to build it, right?
DALE: I guess we're the only ones that are here.
DICK: The only ones here, I'm pretty sure.
DALE: Old Wayne Keller was in.
DICK: Wayne Keller, yeah.
DALE: We had a lot of guys help.
DICK: Well, I don't know how many which is dead now, but—and Jack Hartzog. Jack’s dead. Yeah.
DALE: Who was the guy that brings the truck? Todd Johnson or somebody?
DICK: Todd Johnson brought a truck in here a couple times. Well, Dad always had his pickup in here. You know, Dad always had trucks.
DALE: Yeah, but the guy who hauled the sand and stuff—that was?
DICK: That was Todd Johnson.
DALE: Todd Johnson. Wasn't there another fellow though?
DICK: Gosh, Dale, that's really taxing my memory.
(The rest of the conversation is mostly voices over a series of historical photos of hunters and their kills.)
DALE: They tried to start it in 1898. So that's how long they been hanging together. 1937, they burnt out, and 1938 we cut the logs, and '39 we built. But I wouldn't know what to tell you about these logs because you can see as much as I can show you. We just cut them in. Some of them are sawed in. You can see the—here, now, here's one. See there’s one that was maybe sawed, and that was evidently chopped up. That's all you—Well, you just had to do it by hand. We didn't have anything else. There was no power saws used on this at all.
DICK: My Dad said he was up on top of the mountain, up in the what we call the Big Flat up there that Meadows Road goes up around, and he shot a big buck up there in 1898 with a shotgun. Used to be you'd see eight or nine bucks. Well, I remember—I remember we'd get out on the drive, and we'd see a buck, we'd just, you know, try to single him out and shoot. But damn, you know, there's nothing like that to stir fellows up anymore. I don't know why. Well, you just ain't got the bucks anymore. In fact we hunted from '28 to '54. Missed a season with killing deer. Then ‘70 we missed. And ‘75 we missed. And I guess we missed two or three times since. We've missed two falls in a row. No, I shot my share, got my fun at it.
JAKE: '46, 1946. Came in here after I come out of the service. Been here since 1946, and hunted—every year since that time. Never missed a year. And I probably don't have too many more years to do for that. That's what it'll be. I don't have too many years to do for that. And we don't have the young men that are really interested in it anymore. And that's probably because of a lesser situation in game. You know, I mean, they're just losing the interest. We used to see as many as 50 and 60 deer to a week. Not counting the same ones. (hears a shot in the distance) That might be blood, but who knows?
NORMAN: Hell, I went for 33 years before I connected into Dale.
DALE: I killed bucks pretty regularly there for a while, but I haven't killed any lately. There just hasn't been any around.
NORMAN: It's not the idea of me killing anymore. With some of the young, I’d sooner see the younger guys get ‘em.
(Scene shifts to the start of a hunt.)
VOICE: Back down here?
DON: Yeah. You're going right up around, around the head of the kettle.
(A couple of men have climbed off the truck. It pulls away with Don and Jack sitting on the tailgate. Barry stands at the side of the road.)
FRED: Tell everyone I'm going down to the trail.
JAKE: This is going to be a rough one.
DAVID: Yeah, this is a rough one.
(Fred gives a hunting call and moves into the woods. Glimpses of other hunters.)
(Credits, over photographs and with the voice of Norman Jackson telling an anecdote)
(Over an historical photograph of a man with a rifle standing by a buck hanging by the side of a house):
a film by
george hornbein and kenneth thigpen
(Over a shot of two hunters in orange jackets examining a rifle.)
NORMAN: We'd been here hunting all week, and Murph was telling jokes. Boy, he's telling jokes all the time. We couldn’t remember. So we just give ‘em numbers.
photography george hornbein
audio tom keiter
paul bertalan
tom hesketh
mix tom keiter
(Over an historical photograph of three hunters standing between four strung-up dead bucks.)
NORMAN (continuing): And here come Monday morning after deer season. I walked in the Unemployment Office to sign up, and here comes old Murph walking in. I discovered Murph, and he discovered me.
this film was made possible by
grants from
the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts
grants from
the National Rifle Association
a grant from
the National Endowment for the Arts
and the American Film Institute
sponsored by Pittsburgh Filmmakers
(Over an historic photograph of four hunters seated at a table with cans of beer.)
NORMAN (continuing): and he said, “Hey, buddy.” He said, “Number four!” Boy, we sure did have a laugh like a son-of-a bitch. Everybody turned around and looked at us like we’s crazy.
(The scene shifts to clip from the film showing the men seated at their card game.)
NORMAN: I don’t know why. (Laughter.)
(Over an historic photograph of a man seated by stairs in a log building.)
production facilities
filmspace
produced by
documentary resource center
(Over a color shot of two men seated near a window in the log building.)
NORMAN (continuing): Hey, we had them all shook up over there at the Unemployment Office, didn't we! I hollered, “Number four, Murph.”
(The scene shifts outside to men loading their vehicle.)
NORMAN: Murph started to laugh, and I started to laugh. Everybody turned around and looked at us like we was crazy.
DAVID (packing his suitcase into the back of his car): “Yeah, I'll be back next year.”
thanks to
Leonard Tressler Dale McClintic
Norman Jackson Bruce Weaver
Don Tressler Dick Lindeman
Jake Jackson Dick Weber
Dave Weaver Joe Mitchell
Barry Tressler Fred McCellan
Marlin Sigel Fred Tressler
