Sacred Ground: The Lay-Silcox Cemetery
Plus: Examining the evolution of deer hunting and the unfortunate obsession with antler sizes
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Lay-Silcox Cemetery dates back to 1902
During the 19th century, the Lay family spread westward from Elk Valley and other areas of western Campbell County, across the mountain and into the Rock House area of eastern Scott County.
At the time, long before S.R. 63 was built as the modern highway system was developed, an old wagon trail through the Rock House community was part of the main travel route between Jacksboro in Campbell County and Huntsville in Scott County, then on through the Big South Fork region to Monticello, Ky.
The Lays in Scott County — which later included Oneida business owner Arlie Lay and Oneida Mayor Jack E. Lay, as well as Scott County Road Superintendent James D. “Headin” Lay — trace their ancestry to John Michael “Missouri Jack” Lay (1790-1874), who lived in Elk Valley.
With time, the Lay family became quite prominent in the Rock House community, and several cemeteries in the community — which is located off Sugar Grove east of Huntsville — tell that story today. One of those is the Lay-Silcox Cemetery, which dates back to the turn of the 20th century.
The Lay Family
John Michael “Missouri Jack” Lay was the son of Jesse “River Jesse” Lay and Catherine Bradley. He was originally from North Carolina, but his folks moved to the Elk Valley area in the early 1800s. He married Rachel Foley (1789-1879) in 1810. They had nine children: Spencer Lay, Jesse Lay, Jane Lay, Moses Lay, James Lay, Michael Lay, Winnie Lay, William Dandy Lay and Thomas Lay. Several of their sons were Baptist preachers.
Although Missouri Jack lived in Campbell County, several of his children moved to Scott County. One of them, a Baptist preacher named Michael Lay, was the first person buried at Allred Cemetery in the Straight Fork community in 1879. (Michael Lay’s brother, James A. Lay, was also a Baptist preacher. Headin Lay descended from him. Arlie Lay descended from James’ and Michael’s brother, William Dandy Lay, while Jack E. Lay descended from another brother, Moses Lay.)
Family legend has it that John Michael was given the nickname “Missouri Jack” because he made several trips across the Mississippi River to Missouri, but was never satisfied and always came back home. He met Rachel while living in southeastern Kentucky, not far from Williamsburg, as a young adult. He had moved back to Campbell County by 1813.
Among the children of Missouri Jack: Spencer, also a Baptist preacher, and William Dandy stayed in Elk Valley; Jane and Thomas moved to Missouri; Winnie moved to Kentucky; and Moses, James and Michael moved to Scott County.
The Lay-Silcox Cemetery
Not all of the Lays who settled in Scott County did so in the Rock House community. Michael settled in Straight Fork, while Moses and James wound up at Buffalo, which is a stone’s throw from Rock House. In time, though, the Lays became quite populated in the Rock House community, and some remain there today.
The Lay-Silcox Cemetery began in the summer of 1902, when 26-year-old James Lay was buried there. He was the son of Rev. Greenberry Lay and Martha Jane McKinney, both of whom would later be buried at the cemetery. His paternal grandfather was William Dandy Lay — who was an ancestor to Arlie Lay, the founder of the Lay-Simpson brand of furniture stores. Although William Dandy remained in Elk Valley his entire life, his son, Greenberry, moved across the mountain to Rock House.
Greenberry’s wife, Martha Jane, was one of many children of David McKinney and Nancy Wade. Her parents were part of a broader move from Campbell County to Missouri in the late 1800s, which also included two of Missouri Jack’s children — Greenberry’s aunt and uncle. David McKinney served several terms as a county judge in Texas County, Mo.
Greenberry and Martha Jane had eight children: Nancy Lay Cooper (1870-1933), Sarah Jane Silcox (1872-1938), William Alford Lay (1874-1955), James Lay (1875-1902), Margaret Irene Sharp (1881-1928), Rachel Louana Dupuy (1885-1959), John Crittendon Lay (1888-1975) and Michael C. Lay (1892-1979). It was William Alford who was the father of businessman Arlie Lay.
Following Martha Jane’s death in 1914, Greenberry remarried to Connie Barron of Elk Valley. She had previously been married to William Sexton. They had one more child together: Wymer Lay, born in 1915.
James Lay, the first person buried at Lay-Silcox Cemetery, married Sarah Botts (1877-1952). They had two children together, Elgin Monroe Lay (1899-1975), and Nancy J. Lay. Nancy was only a few months old when her father died, and she died in January 1903, six days short of her first birthday. She was the second person buried at the Lay-Silcox Cemetery.
Sarah and her remaining child, Elgin, left Scott County for Oklahoma, where Sarah remarried to John F. Glenn in 1906. He would later die in 1917, and she married again.
Another child, one-year-old Elra Johnberry Lay, was buried at the Lay-Silcox Cemetery in April 1903. He was the son of William Alfred Lay and Margaret Collins — the younger brother of Arlie Lay.
Following Elra’s death, William Alfred moved his family to Oneida, near where the Scott County Fairgrounds is now located. He had another son, Elmer Richard, who died in 1923 at age 19 of tuberculosis. He was buried at Coffey Cemetery, which is where William Alfred and his wife would later be buried, as well.
The Silcox family
Another family that lived at Rock House in the late 1800s and early 1900s was the Silcox family. This was really an extension of the Lay family, because Greenberry Lay’s second-oldest daughter, Sarah Jane, married James Mountville Silcox of Elk Valley in 1891 and they settled at Rock House with her folks.
James M. Silcox (1869-1927) was the son of Joseph Franklin Silcox (1847-1880) and Emily Arene Boshears (1849-1892). Emily was originally from Scott County, the daughter of William Riley Boshears and Elizabeth “Sadie” Adkins of the Straight Fork community. They’re buried at Fairview Cemetery. However, Emily and her husband settled in Elk Valley, and it is believed that they are buried in the Turley community there.
The fourth person buried at Lay-Silcox Cemetery was William A. Silcox, son of James Mountville Silcox and Sarah Jane Lay. Called Willie by his parents, he was just 10 years old when he died in August 1905.
They had another child, an infant daughter, who was buried at the cemetery in 1908. Seven other children survived to adulthood.
The cemetery grows
The only person buried at Lay-Silcox Cemetery between 1908, when James and Sarah’s infant daughter died, and 1923 was Martha Jane McKinney Lay — Greenberry Lay’s wife — in 1914.
In the 1920s, however, burials began to increase in frequency at Lay-Silcox Cemetery.
One-year-old Leon Lay was buried there in 1923. He was the son of Michael Lay and Emma Ford, a grandson of Greenberry Lay and Martha Jane McKinney. Just four days later, his two-year-old brother, Hubert, died and was buried beside him.
More babies would soon be buried at the cemetery, as well.
The Loyd family
In 1926, an infant child of Benjamin “Ben” Loyd and Myrtle Silcox was buried at Lay-Silcox Cemetery.
The Loyd family was another extension of the Lay family. Myrtle was a daughter of James Mountville Silcox and Sarah Jane Lay. She married Ben Loyd in 1913. The Lloyd family was an expansive family in western Campbell County and eastern Scott County.
Ben and Myrtle had another infant buried at the cemetery in 1932. They also had a number of children who survived to adulthood, including Odessa Mae Cross, Ada Pearl Robbins, Amos Mountie Loyd, Irene Byrd, Hurstle Esau Loyd, Velma Inez Chambers, Mildred J. Owens and Jeanetta Meredith.
The cemetery today
The Lay-Silcox Cemetery remains active, with the last burial occurring there in March 2024: Loretta Sue Lay Vick.
Loretta was the daughter of Arnold Lay and Iona Inez Lay — a great-granddaughter of Greenberry Lay. Her parents are also buried at the cemetery, as is her husband, David Vick, who died in 2007.
Prior to Loretta’s death, Geraldine “Jerri” Marcum Gagne was buried at the cemetery in 2022. Her husband, Donald Gagne Sr., was buried there in 2016. She was another descendant of William Dandy Lay. Her great-grandfather, Michael C. Lay, was a brother to Greenberry Lay. His daughter, Susanna Lay, married Emerson Marcum.
Nettie Evelyn Lay was buried at the cemetery in 2020. She was one of the Lay family who continued to live in the Rock House community into the modern era. She was a granddaughter of Greenberry Lay.
Other burials at the cemetery within the past 10 years include Addie “Lou” Lay Comer in 2018. She was the daughter of George Flemon Lay and Bertie Arvilla Silcox, who are buried at the cemetery. Her husband, Everett “Gene” Comer, is buried there, too.
Eula Ellen “Boog” Lay was buried at the cemetery in 2017. She was Lou’s sister. Lou lived to be 101, and Boog lived to be 99. They have several siblings buried at the cemetery, including Nancy Collins (in 1994), Jim Lay (1989), Ollie Navarro (1994), infant James William Lay (1927), Lloyd “Bucky” Lay (2013), infant Joseph Prior Lay (1937), and 7-year-old Larry Ray Lay (1951).
Claude Allen, 1900-1945
Lewis Allen, 1873-1950
Dorothy Lay Byrd, 1930-2003
Manerd Byrd, 1928-1995
James M. Chambers, 1910-1927
Mary Haney Chambers, 1872-1942
Thomas R. Chambers, 1869-1955
Nancy Lay Collins, 1920-1994
Raymond Collins Jr., 1950-1951
Addie Lay Comer, 1917-2018
Everett E. Comer, 1918-2002
Donald R. Gagne Sr., 1937-2016
Geraldine Marcum Gagne, 1941-2022
Arnold Lay, 1932-2013
Bertie Silcox Lay, 1897-1992
Bobby L. Lay, 1936-2012
Brittian Lay, 1929-1931
Elra J. Lay, 1901-1903
Emma Ford Lay, 1898-1972
Eula E. Lay, 1918-2017
George F. Lay, 1891-1987
Greenberry Lay, 1851-1933
Hubert Lay, 1920-1923
Iona I. Lay, 1925-1997
James Lay, 1875-1902
James A. Lay, 1923-1989
James W. Lay, 1926-1927
Joseph P. Lay, 1937-1937
Larry R. Lay, 1943-1951
Leon Lay, 1921-1923
Lloyd G. Lay, 1931-2013
Margie Gipson Lay, 1935-2011
Martha McKinney Lay, 1850-1914
Michael C. Lay, 1892-1979
Nancy J. Lay, 1902-1903
Nannie Brooks Lay, 1924-2007
Nettie E. Lay, 1935-2020
U.W. Lay, 1926-1927
William D. Lay, 1949-2011
Willie L. Lay, 1946-1970
Susan Marcum Kline, 1948-2011
Infant Loyd, 1926-1926
Infant Loyd, 1932-1932
Gladys Clark Marcum, 1917-1980
Horace M. Marcum, 1916-1994
Nathaniel Muse, 1922-1998
Joseph R. Navarro, 1922-1978
Ollie Lay Navarro, 1925-1994
Margaret Lay Sharp, 1881-1928
Audrie Silcox, 1938-1938
H.B. Silcox, 1899-1989
Infant Daughter Silcox, 1908-1908
Infant Son Silcox, 1929-1929
James L. Silcox Sr., 1931-1987
James M. Silcox, 1869-1927
K.D. Silcox Jr., 1939-1939
Kelly D. Silcox, 1907-1987
Lillian I. Silcox, 1927-1937
Lula Allen Silcox, 1905-1994
Nellie Silcox, 1934-1934
Sadie Byrd Silcox, 1909-2002
Sarah Lay Silcox, 1872-1938
William A. Silcox, 1895-1905
David D. Vick, 1949-2007
Loretta Lay Vick, 1955-2024
Elmer P. Yaden Sr., 1907-1986
Hoyle G. Yaden, 1937-1937
Ina Silcox Yaden, 1913-1974
See past Sacred Ground features on the Encyclopedia of Scott County.
The Game Warden’s Corner: What’s it score?
By DUSTIN BURKE
If you know me, you know that deer hunting is something I obsess with, it’s something that I find myself thinking about at least a dozen times a day. This may sound like a problem to some, but it’s the one thing that has always been a constant to me since I was a boy. When it wasn’t deer season, my dad would buy a North American Whitetail magazine from Walmart. I would read those magazines cover to cover. Just as Ralphie Parker daydreamed about a Red Ryder, carbine action, two-hundred shot range model air rifle from The Christmas Story, I was daydreaming about killing a deer like the “Minesota Monarch.” My grandpa had found a non-typical shed when he was younger and “deer were bigger,” as he always explained. Like a dog with a prize bone, I carried that thing everywhere. Matter of fact, I still have it today and display it on my kitchen counter. There was always just something about deer antlers that kept me mesmerized.
On the weekends, my sister and I went to our dad’s house. A perk of going to dad’s during deer season was, just as a kid waking up and hoping Santa Claus came, we would wake up to my grandpa or Uncle Dale beckoning us to come look at the deer they had killed, laying in the back of the truck. I knew one day this would be me. It just had to be!
Fast-forward to 1993 and Dad decided I was old enough to not only go hunting, but old enough to give it the respect it deserved. He signed me up for the hunters’ education safety class, and I was a nervous wreck. Hunting was something I had dreamed about since I could remember and passing this class was the only thing that stood between me and hunting.
I passed the class and deer season couldn’t get here quick enough! As it got closer, Dad would come home from working all day and try to scout places to hunt. My grandpa, uncle Dale, and Dad schemed and threw out ideas. A few weeks before juvenile season, we made a trip to Walmart to get my first set of hunting cloths. We got some Walls coveralls and a pair of boots. The excitement was hard to contain. I talked about it at school, and I talked about it at home.
The Friday before opening juvenile season, we rushed home so we could make sure the gun was “sighted in.” For some reason, Dad was adamant that I was to only use the “iron sights” on the rifle. At the time, it confused me, because it had a scope on it. Looking back on that and having kids of my own now, he wanted to make it as simple as possible!
That morning, the day of November 6th, the year of our Lord 1993, Dad wakes me up and I immediately smell fried bologna being made in the kitchen. He is making us fried bologna sandwiches. To this day, every time I smell that smell, it reminds me of hunting with my dad. I wiped the sleep from my eyes and walked out on the porch — well, wait, I just opened the front door and the cold hit me. My excitement turned immediately into “can we wait until it gets warmer?” That was not an option.
So, I layered up like Ralphie’s brother, Randy, on The Christmas Story. We made it to our spot, get out of the truck and Dad sprayed me with some stuff that smelled like dirt. We took off walking to “the spot”. I remember carrying his Marlin 30-30 and walking behind him, just trying to step in all the same places as he did. I don’t think I looked up a handful of times. I was so afraid to make any noises, and each time a twig would break, my muscles would tense up a little tighter each step.
By the time we made it to “the spot”, I was worn out from the adrenaline and the excitement. Dad had made a natural ground blind under a group of cedar trees overlooking a small grown-up field. We didn’t have fancy shooting houses, didn’t have pop up blinds, and weren’t hunting out of tree stands. We were just sitting on the ground.
The sun came up and I was visualizing how this would even work and where a deer would come from. Every sound had my heart racing and asking Dad, “what was that?”. After an hour of sitting there exhausting my eyes and tapping him on the leg asking what sound that was, Dad decided to take some antlers and rattle them together. I had seen this stuff on some Roger Raglin videos that he had rented from the video store. As soon as the antlers went together, my heart was leaping out of my chest, and my head swiveled like a turret on a WW2 tank! I remember Dad stopped rattling and grunted three short grunts and one long one.
Suddenly, the distinct sound of running and leaves crashing is getting closer. As I look to where the sound was coming from, a deer comes running down the hill and straight towards us. It’s definitely a buck, because I can see white antlers moving up and down with its head. The buck comes straight to a small tree that was 30 yards in front of us, where Dad had hung some Tinks 69 from a scent rag he made before we left.
As this deer stood there for what seemed like eternity — but was just 30-40 seconds — all I could do was just stare in amazement. I was starstruck! I had waited my whole life for this moment. Imagine being the biggest Peyton Manning fan ever, and one day he is standing 30 yards in front of you! This was the exact same feeling. I had watched hunting videos with bucks. I had read article after article about bucks. Hell, I had dreamed many nights about this very moment. Ironically, I was frozen like a deer in the headlights.
The deer turns and walks back the way he came, and Dad says, “are you going to shoot it or what?” The rest is history, literally! My very first hunt, within the first two hours of my first hunt, I have not only just seen my very first alive buck, but I had my very first buck in my hands! It was nothing that would get my picture in the North American Whitetail magazine, but it was a very respectable non-typical 8-point. The excitement building up to that moment, the excitement while in the moment, and to this day the excitement of that day still makes me smile. I told the story at school, and I smiled the rest of the year. I couldn’t wait to get the deer back from the taxidermist and that deer still hangs on my wall proudly to this day. From that point on, I was hooked! I was addicted! No, I have not received counseling or attended AA classes, not one single time! Matter of fact, killing a “monster buck” has consumed me since that day!
The chase for that “monster buck” has caused many issues in personal relationships — to the point that at 43 years old it’s common knowledge that “deer hunting” isn’t far behind my children on my list of important things. I have been blessed, more than blessed to be honest. I have harvested some nice deer from Tennessee and been lucky to have hunted a few years in northeast Ohio.
I went to Ohio in 2017, when a really good friend said “come up and spend a few days hunting, it will help you get away!” I took him up on the offer, and drove to New Philadelphia, Ohio. Each and every day I spent hunting those four days, I felt like a kid again. I was excited to get to sleep! I dreamed about one of those “Ohio giants” that you read about in North American Whitetail. I woke up each morning just as excited as the morning before. I got in the tree stand, and every rustle of leaves, every pop of a twig, had my heart racing out of my chest. That same feeling that I got when I was a kid was back again! In my heart and mind, the odds of a huge buck stepping out had to be better up here! Well, for 3 days, the biggest buck I had seen, was a little basket-racked 7-point. At home, I would have been discouraged, but not in Ohio! The third night, coming out from the tree stand, we saw a really big 10-point chasing a doe in the field. We watched it for a little bit and on the way home, we devised a plan. On the last day I had to hunt, I ended up shooting a 146” 10-point that field dressed at 263 lbs.! That means, this deer alive, would have been over 300 lbs. Each and every feeling I had at 11 years old came back again!
After that trip, I constantly dreamed of hunting in Ohio. In 2021, the same buddy asked me if I would want to get on a lease with him and another guy. I jumped on it quicker than a fat kid on a Snickers bar! The next four years, I watched my cellular trail cameras and was hooked to my phone like glue. I was a trail camera crackhead! It kept my excitement all year long. I got to spend some great trips with my friends Dave and Shon. I got to enjoy many memories with both of my kids. I had some very memorable hunts. One time I shot at the same deer not once, not twice, but three times with a bow! I missed all three times to be exact. My son and I once sat in the pouring rain of a hurricane and lucked up killing two deer within 15 minutes. One hunt, I rattled in a deer from across the river. The deer literally dove in the river, over its head on a mission to get to me and my son. I got to see him make an amazing shot on that deer. I got to not only see my buddy Dave harvest some good deer, but we laughed each and every time we were together.
The last year, the phone rang at 3:30 a.m. because of a horrible OHV accident had happened on the wildlife management area. Since I’m not only a game warden but also a sergeant, that meant I needed to answer that call. I helped the best I could to coordinate people and machines from my hotel room in Carrollton, Ohio so they could reach the patient. I felt helpless in Ohio and it honestly left me not wanting to do anything. Plus, it was supposed to rain around 9 a.m., but it was our last full day to hunt. Being up since 3:30 a.m., and pending rain, I was on the fence about even going hunting because I hadn’t seen much on camera nor seen much from my tree stands. My buddy Shon convinced me to go hunting anyway. By 9 a.m., I had put an arrow in an awesome 143” buck and was Facetiming the guys working the accident to share it with them. The short of the long, I made some absolute amazing memories! Memories with family and memories with friends. Memories that hang on my wall and the rest I tell in stories!
I say all that, to explain this. Deer hunting has changed so much in my 43 years. Some of these changes have been great, and some of them have been less than favorable. I have seen some black and white pictures of some really, really big bucks killed when my grandpa was in his 20s and 30s. Do you think those deer were hanging on the wall when I was born? Nope. Memories, stories, and some black and white photos are all that existed of these big deer. Killing “monster bucks” was not a thing back then. I am sure they bragged about killing a big deer, but it wasn’t what the sport was about. I wasn’t around back then, but I like to believe they did it for all the right reasons.
Some say the best days of deer hunting was in the late 90s and early 2000s. I couldn’t agree more, for many reasons. Around the mid to late 90s, Bill Jordan, founder of Realtree and Toxey Haas of Mossy Oak started televising shows such as Realtree Monster Bucks, Realtree Road Trips, Mossy Oaks Hunting the Country, and Remington Country. This really started the full-steam-ahead commercialization of the hunting industry. On one hand, it brought attention and popularity to a sport that desperately needed it. It brought better equipment to the table, better weapons, and evolving technology in the forms of trail cameras, scopes, and range finders, just to name a few. It created the idea that if you didn’t have the best camo, the best scent blocking clothing, the fastest bow, the next best rifle cartridge, or the most expensive tree stand then you couldn’t kill a “monster buck”.
Today, archery companies will change one little thing from the previous year model bow and sell it as the new best thing for $1,200 to $2,000. Camo patterns have seemingly started coming back around to the original patterns from the early days, except now they sell them on the most expensive scent-blocking, UV-blocking, fancy-named clothing, and you will pay anywhere from $500 to $2,000 for a set of hunting clothes you wear a handful of times throughout the year. The rest of the time, these expensive comfortable hunting clothes will reside in a fancy scent-blocking bag after you have washed them in scent-erasing laundry detergent and dried them with dirt-scented dyer sheets.
While we are on the subject of erasing scent, we now have fancy little wind-blowing machines we can hang above our heads that apparently can take human scent out of the air — for a price, of course.
I am not one of the guys that has to buy a brand-new bow every year, but I do have a 5-year-old Mathews bow that I got used. I haven’t bought new hunting cloths since 2009 but have thrown around the idea a few times over the years. I take a little trip to Bass Pro Shop and realize the old Scent Lok that I have is just as good. I do have quite a few of the fancy cellular trail cameras. In the quest to kill “monster deer,” this has been one of my “have to have” pieces of equipment. It’s almost more addicting than the hunting itself, to be honest. But, ironically, three of the five bucks I killed in Ohio I didn’t have on camera one single time. Trail cameras have been an invention that have helped but also hurt. More times than I would like to admit, I have chosen not to hunt a spot or not go hunting because I had no activity on my trail cameras.
All of this talk about the commercialization of hunting with the great technology hasn’t hurt hunting as much as harvesting “monster bucks” or “trophy deer”! Ironically, the title “trophy deer” isn’t based off each individual’s trophy, but off what everyone else’s “trophy deer” is. I have harvested quite a few 110” to 125” bucks and been happy as can be about them — until I compared it to someone else’s deer or got caught up in the score.
So that brings up the question: “What is a trophy deer?”. I think you could ask five people and probably get six different answers. No, I know my math isn’t math’n, but I assure you someone will change their mind once they hear what everyone else’s trophy is! As I grew up, a trophy was measured by points. You might have harvested a basket-rack 10-point, but it was still a 10-point! Then at about age 19 or 20, I became an avid bowhunter and the trophy was anything that would make Pope & Young at 125”. This was also still in the early 90s. Somewhere along the way, the trophy went from 125” to it was only a monster buck if it was 150” or more. And thanks to those shows I mentioned earlier, along with quite a few more since, if you don’t harvest a 150” or more deer every year, then you aren’t even a hunter! You can post your 125” to 140” deer on social media and be as happy as a deer hunter could be — until the “trophy hunters” come along, telling you how you “should have let that one walk”, or that it is “not a bad deer for a 3.5 year old”, or “that deer would have been a lot bigger next year.” Those people will have you thinking that maybe you shouldn’t have harvested that deer and will almost having you claiming it was a “management deer.”
While we are on the 150” subject, let’s toss around some numbers. There are an estimated 9.1 million whitetailed deer hunters in the United States, give or take a few. Out of those millions, only 40 to 50% are even successful each year. Actually, we are going to lean more towards 40% than 50%. It is said or believed that less than 5% of bowhunters ever harvest a deer bigger than 125” — in their entire lifetime! The number of deer that grow to be that coveted 150” or more are a lot less than 40%. Actually, it is somewhere below 10%, and getting a deer that is 170” or more is less than 1%. I am not trying to discourage the “monster buck” guy but rather put it all into perspective. It makes perfect sense, because all the factors it takes a whitetailed deer to make that benchmark of 150” aren’t plentiful (i.e. genetics, age hunting pressure, health, etc.). These stats can really open your eyes. It almost shows you that the “trophy hunter” is in the minority … almost.
The bigger picture is, as a whole, the growing standard on judging other hunters by how many inches of bone they have in their hands. (We are talking about Boone & Crockett and Pope & Young scores on antlers — get your mind out of the gutter!) How many times have you seen a person on social media in a picture holding their “trophy deer” in their hands and they don’t even have a smile on their face? One thing I can say, whether it was a 5-point or a 14-point, I have always had the biggest smile on my face! Or you see them posting a celebratory picture of accomplishment, to just downplay in the description that it wasn’t the big one they was looking for, but it would do? I’d say I’ve even been guilty of this one myself.
Deer hunting has started down a path of being a “wealthy game” instead of an activity that brings us peace, joy, challenge, accomplishments, and memories. A game of if we don’t harvest a 170” buck than we should be ashamed.
I circle back to my hunts in Ohio. This year, the farmer sold the farm we leased. He bettered himself and you can’t blame him for that at all. No doubt, the commercialization again has played into this . Trying to find a place to hunt in about any state that has been sold as having “monster bucks” is like winning the lottery. You either have money to buy land yourself, have family with land or connections, or be ready to pay $3,500 to $5,000 a person to lease a property. Even in states that aren’t known for “monster bucks,” you will still be hard pressed to find a lease that is less than $1,500 to $2,000. Here in Scott County, TN, we are blessed with close to 200,000 acres or more of public land with the North Cumberland WMA and the Big South Fork Recreational Area. With that being said, “monster buck” hunting in these places will take some realistic expectations or otherwise you will finish almost every hunt discouraged.
Aldo Leopold, who was an avid lifelong hunter and author of Sand County Almanac, saw hunting as a way to understand the natural world and connect with nature in a way that it wasn’t just a sport. I will take it one step further and say hunting is about making lifelong memories with family and friends. As sure as I am that we are all guilty of getting caught up with the Jordans, Lakoskys, and Waddells” and thinking you must have the best of this and the best of that in order to harvest a trophy animal. I still strive to harvest a 150”-plus deer with my 5-year-old Mathews (and if someone wants to give me a new bow, I wouldn’t turn it down) and my 16-year-old Mossy Oak Treestand Scent Lok! I have found killing a nice, mature 5-point gives me the same sense of accomplishment, and getting to share that with a friend or even better family is icing on the cake. Yes, I still daydream about big deer and I now have a subscription to North American Whitetail. I periodically draw or paint whitetailed deer as a coping mechanism when it is not hunting season. Yes, I come home some days and just sit on the couch to look at my deer mounts, just to remember each memory with them and smile. Now I find just as much joy when one of my kids harvest an animal and I’ve noticed I get “buck fever” worse with them than I have ever gotten by myself.
If you harvest a deer, I will be your biggest fan and help you anyway I can. On the whole, we need to remember the feelings we got when we first went hunting. Remember the time we first harvested our first deer. The feeling when we harvested our biggest deer. Or we could get a little deeper and appreciate a crisp morning, watching the sun rise over the horizon. As the sun rises, and the thermals rise in the sky, you get to hear those precious sounds of morning and the life pouring back into the forest. You remember how to have fun again — how to appreciate each other and the memories we get to make with each other … getting to teach someone the “ins and outs” of hunting and nature … and remembering that everyone’s trophy is different, whether it’s a “Kentucky 11-pointer” or a 135” 10-point!
Harvesting a deer will always be an accomplishment. We are stewards of this sport we call hunting and of this land we call home. Let’s respect one another. Let’s raise each other up. Let’s do better about protecting it as a whole!
Sgt. Dustin Burke, of Oneida, is a wildlife officer with the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency.
Thank you for reading. Our next newsletter will be The Daybreaker bright and early Monday morning. If you’d like to update your subscription to add or subtract any of our newsletters, do so here. If you haven’t yet subscribed, it’s as simple as adding your email address!
◼️ Monday morning: The Daybreaker (news & the week ahead)
◼️ Tuesday: Echoes from the Past (stories of our history)
◼️ Wednesday: Threads of Life (obituaries)
◼️ Thursday evening: The Weekender (news & the weekend)
◼️ Friday: Friday Features (beyond the news)
◼️ Sunday: Varsity (a weekly sports recap)
REMINDER: We’ll be live tonight on the IH Sports Network with the Oneida vs. West Greene playoff game, beginning with the Rogers Group Pregame Show at 6 p.m. Postseason live video is presented by First National Bank.