Published: October 15, 2009 11:18 pm      

A journey with an angel

(Editor’s Note: Fredy Reeves’ wife, Ann, was an avid hunter. She died of cancer in August. Reeves wrote this article to celebrate the years they had together in the outdoors and to document many of her pursuits)

 

Living at Bellamy, Alabama and being a forester, hunting was a way of life in earlier times when few ladies hunted. The Lockard Hunting Club held a ladies day hunt and the ladies came basically to eat. My wife, Ann, went with me on a deer drive. She slipped down a creek bank for about 10 yards and got mud all over her clothes. This was upsetting but she went on.

We dove hunted at Mr. Joe Ward’s farm. He loaned Ann his 12 gauge shotgun and placed her on his personal stand. When the first dove came over we all told her to shoot. Well, the gun kicked her down onto a cow pad. That ended her dove hunting.

As the children got older we took them hunting. Ann would not take a gun but she always went along. I remember taking them to the Naheola Swamp one time. She shot a squirrel dead center and declared that she was a good shot.

Once we sat beside a large white oak tree eating a picnic lunch. A giant eight-point buck came by and I shot four or five times with my 30/40 Krag rifle. I missed. Ann said I should have let her shoot it and she would have killed it. The only thing we got that day was one squirrel and a lot of redbugs.

           

Namesake

 

We had a hunting area at Whitfield, Alabama. We took a preacher hunting there one day. I put Ann on a deer trail and I walked on further into the woods. I heard her shoot my 12 gauge single barrel gun and learned that the deer was 120 yards away! No luck. A beagle dog with no collar came up to us so she took him home and named him George after the preacher. He fit well with our Chihuahua, Pee Wee, and our Walker hound, Brock.

One time Brock jumped an eastern cougar in our back yard and ran it for two days, finally baying it in a cave at Scott Mountain in Choctaw County. A man heard the dog baying, went to the scene and killed the cat. He took Brock to the local store and got the owner to call us to come get the hound.

A friend gave Ann a .243 rifle. She shot it at a target two times and hit the target dot at 100 yards. She told me she was not going to practice any more because the cartridges cost too much.

In those days we had family visiting us often and Ann would stay home and cook on holidays and other times. I asked her to start hunting with me. On Christmas Eve, 1973, I took her to Kim Pealer’s field at Whitfield. There were two spikes in the field along with over 20 does. I asked her to shoot one of the spikes. She wouldn’t. Two hours later a rack buck appeared 250 yards away.

I told Ann to shoot one of the spikes as I shot the racked buck. On the count of three we both fired and both deer fell and I quickly shot a doe to fill a doe tag I had. She said, “Well. Paw Paw, you killed the spike.” It took me some time to get her to admit that she had killed the spike. She took two more deer that season.

One year I planted 27 grass patches. The bag limit for deer was one a day. That year Ann killed 25 deer. We gave processed meat to many doctors and nurses. The majority of the processed meat went to Love’s Kitchen in Meridian. She missed a big buck on the last day of the season because I made her shoot too quickly. She said I was making her shoot “around a corner.”

           

Going West

 

We got a chance to go to Colorado mule deer hunting. She shot a large deer down. She and her guide walked it up and it jumped up and ran off. She wouldn’t shoot it in the rear and it got away. We went back out there six times. She bagged a cow elk and a 5X6 bull. She took three fine mule deer.

One year on the day after our guided hunt was over, we went out on our own. A doe entered a meadow followed by a fine buck. I told her to shoot and she did. The buck just stood there. I told her to shoot again and she said she had killed the buck. I insisted she shoot again. We walked down the slope to the dead deer. She then told me to look over behind a cedar tree. There was the other deer. We had been looking at two different deer. Well, I had to call the game warden. I told him what had happened and I took the blame for the mistake.

This was our last trip out west. Ann had enjoyed the hunts there because she could buy jewelry very cheap out there.

Ann bagged one whitetail buck at the Cottonmouth Lodge in Kentucky. She could not hold her rifle in 2006 because her arm hurt so badly.  She lost her right arm to cancer in May of 2007.

During the 2008 season she did not hunt although she felt fine. We had planned to fix her a gun rest in her shooting house this fall, 2009. But God needed her most. On August 21, 2009, He took her home. Thank you our God.