What's In A Name?

Charley Two Deer

Near the town where I grew up in there was an old recluse named Charley Two Deer who lived on a farmstead just outside of the town limits. Charley was old and reputed to be cantankerous and a person to avoid if at all possible. No one really knew where Charley's family had come from, some speculated far up North in Canada, others said maybe from the East when the French were in Acadia. No one was quite sure of Charley's ethnicity either, saying his name meant he was of mixed blood lines from numerous ancestors in a distant past. With a name Like Charley Two Deer it was not hard to believe anything about his past.

For a young boy itching to get out and explore the woods and hunt and fish this was the admonition told to me before I was allowed to depart, "Now stay away from old Charley's place cause he don't take kindly to people snooping around!"

I abided by this rule for several years as I hunted the huge woods known as "State Land" which extended beyond Charley's land for many miles. Finally, the time came when my wanderings took me into Charley's area and I inadvertantly stumbled onto his land without really knowing it until I rounded a bend in the trail I was following and ran smack dab into Charley!

I almost fell over and was shaking so bad from fright I must have looked like I'd seen a ghost. I don't remember how long I stood paralyzed with fear but it was probably only a few moments. Charley sized me up and down and looked at my old gun, a beat up old singlre barrel shotgun my uncle had given me.

"Had any luck with that old shooter, young man?" Charley seemed to have a glint in his eye that made me wonder if he was testing me or really just curious. I replied something to the effect that I was only scouting for good places to sit when deer season opened next month and he simply nodded. I immediately started apologizing for my tresspassing on his land but he waved me silent. Beckoning me to follow him he turned off the trail I had been on and led me through the woods to a new path which led out to a clearing of sorts in the midst of a grove of cedar and pine with a smattering of aspen here and there.

"This here's a good spot to sit come season and you're welcome to sit here if you've a mind to. I will show you an easy way in so you don't lose yourself in the woods trying to get in here before sunup. That's if you're not afraid of coming here!" I had settled down enough to realize he was offering me a place to hunt and graciously accepted.

That was many years ago and as I write this now I think back to the days and years that followed and my friend "Charley Two Deer". Charley was an old French Canadian, born sometime before the turn of the century, he must have been pretty darn old already when I met him, but he lasted a good many more years and taught me to really hunt and fish and enjoy the outdoors. His life of living off the land and surviving in a wilderness made a veritable encyclopedia of woodcraft and outdoor lore. His knowledge, of the animals and the cycles of nature as each year evolved into the next, was astounding. He was a recluse, but an amibale one who only avoided people to keep his way of life secure.

After I had gotten to know Charley for some time I finally got up the nerve to ask him how he got his name. He said it happened way back when he was young and his father was teaching him how to hunt deer. He was placed on a "post" and told to wait for a deer to come out and he would shoot it. Charley said he waited and finally heard a commotion and bounding into view was a huge deer with horns. Charley was excited but he shot the deer and it fell, but to his aastonishment, when he walked to the deer he saw there were actually two deer laying there dead! His father came up and Charley told him what had happened and his father simply shook his head and said "Charley, two deer?" From that moment on Charley became "Charley Two Deer" and the name stuck.

Happy Thanksgiving! Chris