Years ago when I was just a kid my parents had a difficult time making ends meet in the daily grind of caring for a large family.

Being resourceful and not afraid of hard work, my mother got us into the Christmas tree business. Each Thanksgiving week found us heading for Indiana, Pa., to purchase 100 pine trees to sell for the holiday season.

We would get my uncle’s pickup truck and pile into it for a cold drive into the steep hillsides at the tree farms looking for some fine scotch pines to place on our tree lot.

This was also the same time of year that every country boy was thinking about deer hunting; and the idea of choosing between having a Christmas for the family and the start of deer season was a mighty tough decision for a couple of teenage boys.

Mother called the shots and we worked hard to pick out, cut and drag trees down to the truck to be loaded.

The tree sales lot was along our property on a busy rural road and business was usually brisk.

To help survive the daily cold weather we had to round up fire wood that my father had cut from the fallen trees on the hillsides. Amongst the fallen logs many spruce trees grew as well, they weren’t as popular as the scotch pine but at times we had special requests for the bushy spruce.

As it turned out my parents were also pretty practical about deer hunting as well and counted on the venison a successful deer hunt might afford to add to our table fare.

Sometimes my wife and I have the discussion around sport hunting versus subsistence hunting and it always ends up with the final comment, “if you depended on it to live.”

Back then it did fill a niche in our daily meals, not so much these days, but at one time it was very important.

My mother thought over the tree business and the hunting business and came up with her solution to our needs at the time. We would alternate each day in the hunting season and Christmas tree sales and make the most out of the time after school and with only a few hours of daylight to work with it seemed to be a good plan for my brothers and me.

The Sunday after Thanksgiving found us stock piling logs for the burn barrel and stacking trees on the make shift racks for the trees to be shown in all their glory. The trees were modestly priced from $2 to $5 and we had the low overhead of a buck apiece back then. We laugh now at the worry my parents had over floating a hundred-dollar loan as a holiday investment. They also worried about the price of ammunition for our old 870 pump 12 gauge. That shotgun did the duty of being our all-around meat gun until my brothers and I bought our own deer rifles a few years later.

Smooth bore 12 gauge and ‘punkin balls…it wasn’t that unusual up on the ridge.

It was up on that ridge while gathering logs that we came upon a large deer bed up in the spruce and tree tops.

It was a sure sign to us that a big deer was calling this home as he sat on the ridge top watching us each day.

We needed a plan and being young and healthy we decided to climb up the steep ridge and bury ourselves deep into the spruce stands.

Little did we know that we had stumbled upon our first deer blind concept and it was perfect cover from the swirling winds.

The spruce masked our scent and blocked the winds from pushing our human odors all over the hillside.

The slugs always came in a box of 5 shells and when I took out the plug all of them could be loaded into the shotgun.

Five shots at 40 cents each was all we had and if I missed that was the end of the show. So as the first light of dawn came and I could hear faint traffic in the river valley as the highway wound along the Loyalhanna Creek.

Some birds started chirping and I heard a clump as a heavy deer jumped over a deadfall near me.

I then saw brown movement and the flash of antlers, it was a buck and back then that was good enough. The deer was the big one that we had scouted and his antlers looked thick and large to me.

I raised the bead of that old shotgun barrel and aimed for the shoulder and fired.

The buck reared up and crashed down the hill towards our Christmas trees. He stopped short on the edge of the hill and by the time I made my way to my family they were all admiring the eight-point buck and cheering our good fortune.

Over the years our hunting has changed and our fortune for the better as well, but there will never be a finer appreciated and more needed deer than the Christmas Tree Buck.

Until we meet again be safe, good luck hunting and may all of you find your Christmas Tree Buck!

Jay Hewitt is an outdoors columnist for the Butler Eagle