Buck Tales

What did people do during the Great Depression to make life easier?

Buck with a northern from his fish house.

Fairview Cabin

Cutting ice on Round Lake

According to Buck, they did what many of us are doing today. They hunted and fished to put food on the table. Dad looked on hunting and fishing as sport, but make no mistake, the family ate a lot of the bounty of the lakes and forests. He often told tales of the lakes he explored. One time he told of coming across some fancy, black Model T sedans. Some smartly dressed but tough-looking men warned him away from the hide-out cabin. Dad was sure they were big city gangsters, cooling their heels in the wilderness.

Another often told tale had to do with his faithful Chesapeake Bay retriever, Lucky, who sat patiently waiting for a duck or two to retrieve. When Dad felled a couple, the dog sprang out of the metal canoe with a yelp! It seemed that the poor dog's nether parts had frozen to the canoe. That was a particularly good hunt, according to Dad, because he had just that morning had a son, my brother, Bruce.

It was in the depth of the Depression that my grandmother, Verna Belle, and my grandfather, Thorlief Johnson who were Buck's parents, acquired some property on Round Lake in Minnesota. They got it through a sort of trade from good friends who were down and out and needed to repay my grandparents for helping them out of serious problems. In 1933, Buck was 14 and he helped in the construction of a simple cabin along with other helping hands. Many days were spent at the property fishing, hunting, swimming and visiting with the always-welcome friends who enjoyed the Round Lake hospitality.

Today the Johnson family has expanded to include four families, and we still use the cabin at Round Lake just like my grandparents and parents did. George harvested a fine buck there in 2009 that he made into over 50 lbs. of delicious sausage and some nice roasts. We plan to find some of the wily walleyes in 2010. The cabin may be 77 years old, but the place still brings out the kid in everyone who cannonballs off the raft or catches her first fish of the season. Our 10 year old grandson, Alden, put it best in the cabin log we keep each time we visit he wrote: "The cabin is just like it always was---everything is just as it should be."

We believe that old times can teach us a lot. Even in the worst of times, we can find a way to make our fun and feed our families. Remembering the old ways can help us make "everything just as it should be."

We wish all of you better times ahead and hope that our product helps your hunt in 2010.

By Gail Johnson Huschle
Buck's daughter and George's wife.

HELPFUL HINTS:

How do I get that big buck onto the bed of my pickup when I am hunting alone?

This came from one of our customers, James Everson. Bring an old ladder along and leave it in the truck bed. When you get that big deer to the truck put the ladder on the ground and put the deer on top of the ladder. If you think the deer will shift when lifted you may want to tie it to the ladder. Now lift the end nearest the truck and position it on to the rear tailgate. Go to the other end and lift and slide the ladder with deer on to the truck bed. It really does work. Thanks James.

If you have a story to share about Buck Deerscent please send it to our email address as a Word attachment or as text within the email.