Life Lessons Learned the Hard Way
Part I
Setting the Scene
In the far northwest corner of Oklahoma lies the Oklahoma Panhandle. This area is widely considered to be No Man’s Land. It first received this name because it was not officially part of any organized state or territory. The truth is however that the areas extreme conditions and wild reputation as a hideout for outlaws, who were outside of any official jurisdiction, made it a place where hard working honest people would not want to live. This is the place of my youth.
I first came to No Man’s Land in the early 1970’s, long after the area was finally settled. Settled is however, a relative term, because the land and the people still had a reputation as being wild and unruly. To this day the area is still thought of as being full of people that march to a different beat. I had moved here with my family, who were in the cattle ranching business. This is where I first met up with the group of friends, that would go on to terrorize the people and wildlife of a three state area.
The characters involved in this misadventure are Henry; this would be me, the Maphet brothers Speedy and Earl, Eric Bond, Kelly Childress, and Richard Dunn. What I am about to tell is true; however the names have been changed in order to protect the guilty.
No Man’s land in the seventies was a land of few rules. The ranch that I lived on was sixteen miles down a dirt road from a town that had a population of 150 souls. Our nearest neighbors were the Bonds, who lived about 7 miles from our place. The next closest were the Maphets, followed by the Dunns. Childress and his family lived the farthest away, that being about twelve miles. Being raised in a very rural area has a lot of advantages for a young boy. One of these is that all of us knew how to drive a truck with a standard transmission by the time we were thirteen. We were often “let loose” with the truck to travel to just about anywhere we wanted to go.
Another advantage of this lifestyle was that we got to use guns. We were all taught from a very early age how to safely handle firearms. I don’t know what this says about our parents, but knowing what I know now, I don’t know how wise it would be to turn loose a bunch of thirteen and fourteen year olds with trucks and guns; however this was just what our parents did. Add beer to this mix and the problem only gets worse. Everyone knew about Limroe Felkins, the local bootlegger. It was never a problem to get beer. Since we were so young he would not sell us any kind of hard liquor, only a small amount of low point beer. This was however enough to power us into some wild and completely insane activities.
Part II
Never Put a Live Deer in a Volkswagen
As fall was approaching that year our collective attention was naturally drawn toward deer season. This was the first time for all of us to hunt deer. I do not know why, but we were never taught anything about hunting by any adults. I guess that it was something that was supposed to be learned by doing. We did learn several valuable lessons by doing things this way; however I would not recommend this technique.
The day before deer season started was a dreary cold and wet day. This had absolutely no effect on our spirits. We were looking forward to the next days hunt. For reasons that I cannot remember the only person that could come up with transportation for the next day was Dunn. He was somehow able to talk his mother into loaning us her Volkswagen Bug. I am not sure what he told her, but I am sure that it had nothing to do with deer hunting. Dunn made the rounds the next morning picking everyone up. This was well before daylight. Try to imagine six boys with guns inside of a V.W. Bug. Space was of great value inside of that car.
With everyone finally loaded up, we headed for our hunting ground, which was up on the Cimarron River. We arrived at our destination just before sunrise. Since this was our first deer hunt, we were not to sure what to do next. Since Dunn was driving he said “why don’t we just drive around and see if we can see some deer?” Since it was so cold and wet out side, Earl, who was not one to expend energy without a really good reason said “sounds good to me.” We all agreed and we spent the next hour and a half driving this Volkswagen through places where a Humvee could not go. In several places we would bottom the car out on a high spot, but this was no problem. We would all get out and simply lift the car up out of the ruts, move it over, and sit it down on level ground.
After driving around for what seemed like forever, Speedy hollered out “I see some deer!” Upon hearing this, Dunn slammed on the brakes and sent everyone crashing into the front seat of the Beetle. When we finally got things sorted out, and got outside of the car we saw several deer that were at least 500 yards away. We were not at all deterred by this distance. Everyone leaned over the top of the car and began firing at the deer. It is at this point that Bond shoots the radio antennae off of the car. This only slows us down for a fraction of a second and we resumed our shooting. It must have sounded like a young war was starting. We paid no attention at all to what we were shooting at. We were just concerned with putting lead down range. It was at this point that I saw one of the deer go down. I screamed “we got one” to which Childress replied “sure as hell did”. We all loaded up into the beetle as fast as we can and raced over to where we saw the deer go down.
When we got to the downed deer we noticed that we had shot a fat doe. The only problem with this is that it is highly illegal to shoot does. At this point we realized what we have done. Childress exclaims “lets get the hell out of here before the game warden shows up” to which we all agreed. Speedy and Earl grab the doe and throw her into the back seat of the car and we all piled in to make our get away. Speedy, Earl, Bond and I are sitting on the deer in the backseat, Childress is riding shotgun, and Dunn is speeding away from the scene of the crime. We are not exactly sure what to do next. It is at this point that Earl says “did you feel something move?” to which bond replied “I think I did”. We started to examine the deer and noticed that she was still breathing. Speedy and I started to look for the bullet hole when we found that she only had a slight crease right between her ears.
I looked at Dunn and noticed that he had a horrified look on his face. He slamed on the brakes again and throws six boys, six guns, and one deer in to the front of the V.W. It is now, that all hell broke loose inside of that car. The deer was only knocked unconscious. The deer was frantic, and so were we. She was trying desperately to escape, and we are only too happy to oblige her, only problem was that no one could seem to find the door handle. Childress yelled “somebody shoot this thing” to which Speedy says “I would if only I could reach my gun”. It was total hell inside of that car. Earl is finally able to reach the door handle and finally provide everyone with some much needed relief. One of the last things that I noticed is the deer speedily leaving the area. After somewhat gaining my composure I started to look around. I noticed that everyone was standing outside of the car in various stages of nudity. It seemed that the sharp hooves of the deer had ripped our clothes to shreds. This does not even compare to what was done to the interior of the V.W.
I am not sure what kind of explanation that Dunn came up with to tell his mother about what happened to her car, but I do know that it was a long time before we ever had the opportunity to use any of the Dunn’ s vehicles. For months after that episode, anytime that Dunn needed to go anywhere, he had to ride with someone else.
Part III
What is it with Animals and the Inside of Automobiles?
With one valuable life lesson under our belts, we decided set our sites on various other outdoor adventures. That same winter we decided to earn some extra money by running a trap line. This money was needed to keep us in good standing with Limroe Felkins. Once again the only problem we had was that none of us had any experience whatsoever in running a trap line. We solved this problem by allying ourselves with the best trapper in the country, an old drunk by the name of Ed Simons. We affectionately named him Dirty Ed, because you could smell him coming for miles. Dirty Ed could catch anything, and he agreed to teach us how to trap if we would give him part of our take. We readily agreed to this arrangement.
After several weeks of riding the trap lines with Dirty Ed, he decided that we were ready to strike out on our own. He set us up with traps, scents, baits and everything else we would need to be successful trappers. We first set out our traps along the Beaver River just south of where we lived. It was not long until we began to catch coyotes, bobcats, raccoons, and possums. We were doing very well with our venture. We were happy, Dirty Ed was happy, and so was Limroe Felkins. This is when we caught the ringtail cat. We had never seen a ringtail before, and were not sure about what we had caught. It was Dunn’s idea to keep it alive. “What if it is some kind of rare animal” he said, “it would be a shame to skin something that might be more valuable alive”. We agreed with him, but we were now faced with a dilemma. How do you get a ringtail cat out of a trap alive without him ripping you to shreds? I don’t know if any of you have any experience with ringtails, but the best way that I can describe it is as a tornado disguised as a cat. These animals are wild. Childress finally comes up with the idea to use welding gloves, which come up above the elbows, and are made with heavy leather, to release the cat.
Although this was his idea, he was smart enough to talk the Maphet brothers and me into being the guinea pigs. Armed with their gloves and with me holding a toe sack we approached the trap. The cat went wild. Earl was finally able to grab a hold of the cat and somewhat subdue it, and then Speedy grabbed the cat by the back of the neck. With them holding the cat, I was able to release the trap. After a long session of cat wrestling we were finally able to get the “cat into the bag.” What happened next is kind of hard to explain. Dunn said “boy I sure would not want that thing loose inside of a car” when you could just see everyone’s mind beginning to work. Bond said “I wonder if we could get it into someone else’s car” because we sure didn’t want it loose in ours. It was then that we came up with the plan.
The plan that we devised was to put the cat inside of a suitcase. This is much easier said than done. The operation of transferring a tornado from one container to another is very complex. We first had to “let the cat out of the bag” without letting it loose. Childress, wearing welding gloves first grabbed hold of the cat while it was still inside of the bag. After opening the bag Dunn and I, also wearing welding gloves grabbed the cat. The Maphet brothers and bond were standing by with the suitcase. We carried the cat over to the suitcase and very quickly made the transfer. It was shortly after this that we realized that all that we really needed to do was to open the bag and put everything inside at once. The cat would have gotten out of the sack and still been inside of the suitcase. As they say hindsight is 20-20.
With this part of the operation complete, we went to phase two. Phase two consisted of transporting the suitcase to a suitable location in order for us to spring our trap. This was done with the Maphet brothers truck, as any transportation from the Dunn family was still strictly off limits. About fifteen miles to the north was U.S. highway 167. We thought that this would be a perfect location to implement our plan. We found a good spot with lots of trees and brush that provided cover and also a good view of the highway. We placed the suitcase by the side of the highway and took cover in the brush and waited to see what would happen next.
Several cars passed by the suitcase and slowed down as if they were considering grabbing the case, however none of them did. We were about to give up on our plan when a big Cadillac with Mississippi license plates came flying by. The car went past the case by about fifty feet when the brakes locked up and the car came to a screeching halt. Tires began squealing and smoke was billowing from the wheel wells as the car reversed directions. The car came to a stop next to the case, and the back door came open and a hand reached out and grabbed the suitcase. Once again tires began to squeal and smoke was billowing from the wheel wells as the car accelerated down the road. It did not get far.
I did not see any attempts by the driver to stop the car. The car was only going maybe fifteen miles per hour when all of a sudden all four doors flew open and bodies began to exit the vehicle in a frantic way. The car went into the ditch and came to a rest undamaged about 200 feet away. This was the last that we saw of that ringtail cat. It was all that we could do to keep quite so that we would not be detected. After a quick check to see if anyone had seen what had happened, the men remounted their automobile and headed off into the sunset. At this point we could no longer contain ourselves and had to bust out with laughter.
It seems that right after this episode that the affected parties reported the matter to the local law enforcement. The next day “Crazy Ray” the district game warden went out and rounded up all of “the usual suspects.” The “usual suspects” only included our bunch. It seems that we were considered the only people crazy enough to put a ringtail cat inside of a suitcase, but due to a lack of evidence (the suitcase was abandoned by the side of the road) they were unable to pin this one on us.
Part IV
Why do Shotguns Need Plugs?
The start of dove season was always a big event for us. The season always started on September first. This was the first chance that we had to legally get out into the field and hunt after a long hot summer. The very best location in all of No Man’s Land for hunting doves was only about a half of a mile from my house. It consisted of a pond with several acres of sunflowers surrounding it. Doves were drawn to this location like a magnet. There is no way that anyone in our group would miss the first day of dove season. Everyone would gather at my house usually in the afternoon, as this was always the best time to hunt. My mother would always feed as a big meal right before we would hit the field.
One regulation that we had a hard time of following was the regulation to plug our shotguns. What a plug does is modify the gun so that it will only hold three shells, instead of five. This was way to cumbersome for us as we did not want to waste time always loading our guns. All six of us had unplugged shotguns. As the afternoon progressed we were getting really close to bagging our limit. This was when “Crazy Ray” the game warden decided to pay us a visit.
The very first thing that Ray did was to count our birds. He was very surprised to find that we were under our limit. Had he waited another fifteen minuets this would not have been the case, as we were not known to let something like a bag limit stop our hunt. The next thing that he did was to check our guns for plugs. As I mentioned previously none of us had our guns plugged. He was very happy to find this out, because now he finally had something to charge us with. Don’t take me wrong here. Ray was always a very fair man and would always give us the benefit of the doubt. This being said he was always willing to issue a ticket.
When ray checked our hunting licenses he found that Dunn and Bond were under the age of sixteen. If he were to issue a ticket to them, this would require them to report to juvenile court and basically cause a lot of trouble for them. He told them that since this were the case that he would not issue them tickets. He asked the rest of us to follow him to his truck so that he could write us our tickets. While Ray was issuing us our citations, we hear Dunn and Bond open up shooting. This goes on the whole time that ray is busy with us. Ray knows that with this extra shooting that we would now be over our limit. He runs back down to the tank and finds that Dunn and Bond had killed ten more birds. This did in fact put us over our limit. Ray asked “what in the hell do you boys think you are doing?” to this Dunn replies “well you already said that you were not going to issue us a ticket, so we thought we should just keep on shooting.” This was not the right thing to say to Ray. He took all of our guns, all of our birds, and left us fuming mad. He was still a good sport about it and did not pursue the issue through the courts. He gave us our guns back the next day and hoped that we learned our lessons. The very next week all of the game wardens in the district were over to Ray’s house for a big Dove dinner, complements of us. Another life lesson well learned.
Part V
Conclusion
Many years have past since my days in No Man’s Land. The life lessons that were learned during those formative years have served me well. Our old group has dispersed and went our separate ways. Eric Bond is still living in his family’s old ranch house. He has taken over the family ranching operation. Earl Maphet is working in the oil field, and has been married and divorced three times. His problem is not that he can’t stay married; the real problem is that he can’t stay unmarried. Kelly Childress is the High School principle at Wakita Oklahoma. Speedy Maphet teaches History at the University of Central Oklahoma. We buried Richard Dunn at the ripe old age of seventeen. He was killed while driving drunk. Another life lesson that we all had to learn.
I left Oklahoma shortly after we buried Dunn. I had always wanted to live in Texas and now I had my chance. One thing that people need to learn from all of this is that actions have consequences. The most important thing in life is to always learn from your mistakes.