Somewhere Between Foy and Wisconsin, I Found My Dad Again

I was watching Band of Brothers again. Please don't ask how many times I've watched it. I stopped counting somewhere in the high dozens, which probably says more about me than HBO.

This time it was "The Breaking Point," the episode that follows Easy Company through the frozen forests outside Foy, Belgium. I've watched those men move through those woods countless times.

But this time, I saw my dad.

Wisconsin's gun-deer season falls around Thanksgiving every year. For generations of families here, Thanksgiving and deer hunting have been joined almost as tightly as turkey and stuffing. Wisconsin's regulated gun-deer tradition dates to 1851, and the history includes generations who hunted not simply for sport but to put meat on the table.

Dad was born during the Depression, and hunting helped supplement his family's food supply, and the men who taught him carried lessons of their own.

Some of Dad's lessons made perfect sense.

He taught my brother Dean and me never to walk through the woods at a steady human pace. Step, step, step, step announces to every animal within earshot that a person is coming.

Instead, Dad taught us to take two steps and stop. Look around. Wait. Take five steps. Stop again. Three more. Wait.

Break the rhythm.

I tried it years later while squirrel hunting. It worked so well that I could sometimes walk within about five feet of the little tree rats. Dad knew what he was talking about.

But there was another lesson I never understood.

During deer season, after you shoot a deer, chamber another round.

Immediately.

Even if you've filled your tag.

I remember asking Dad why. I don't ever remember getting much of an explanation beyond some version of "That's what I was taught."

Being approximately half a bubble off plumb, this bothered me.

If my tag is filled, I'm done hunting. I'm going to field dress the deer. What exactly am I preparing to shoot?

Then, decades later, Easy Company walked through those trees outside Foy again.

The episode takes place during the brutal fighting around Foy in January 1945. The men are exhausted, freezing, and being torn apart by German artillery before eventually attacking and taking the village.

Watch fictionalized soldiers in combat, and something becomes obvious. Readiness becomes instinct. Fire the weapon and make it ready again. Don't wait until you need another round to discover you don't have one.

Their lives depended on it.

And I started wondering.

Dad learned to hunt from men of generations shaped by war and hard times. Could something as simple as chambering another round have traveled home with veterans? Could a battlefield habit have crossed an ocean, entered deer camps, and eventually reached two boys walking through the Wisconsin woods with their father?

I don't know.

And I don't want to pretend to.

But I texted Dean, and here's where the story gets good.

Dean doesn't remember Dad telling us to chamber another round.

I do. Dean took my word for it. Then I asked Dean what he does after shooting a deer: he chambers another round.

Of course he does. So do I, and so does one of my sons-in-law who's an avid hunter.

Maybe that's how some lessons survive.

Eventually, you forget being taught, you forget the conversation, and you may even forget the person who first taught the person who taught you.

But your hands remember.

There are countless lessons like this one in the woods and on the water. How to read wind, how to move quietly, how to watch the water instead of merely looking at it, how to handle a firearm safely, and when to speak and when to shut up and listen.

Those safety lessons by Dad are deeply ingrained in my brother and me. Neither of us has a round chambered outside hunting hours. We'd walk through the woods to our stands, climb the tree, and, 10 to 15 minutes before legal shooting time, we'd chamber a round.

My brother recounted the time he led an ex-brother-in-law and our young, in-training nephew into the woods they weren't familiar with. When they reached their stand, in the dark, behind my brother, they each primed their weapons. Dean stopped and demanded they each unload their guns and wait until it was close to the legal hunting time.

Fortunately, they did, and my brother didn't have to worry about two armed men in the dark. I don't mean to imply that either man wasn't properly trained; they were, but it's simply a safety lesson.

My example is a little more dramatic. On a drive, my job was to shadow the drivers by walking through a clearing, giving me a chance to see a deer fleeing out in front of me. Unfortunately, a dad instructed his 12-year-old, first-time hunter to stand out in the open, directly in front of me.

Of course, a doe decided to run between us. I dived to the ground as I watched the young boy shoulder his shotgun, and I swear I felt the slug fly by my shoulder.

I nearly stopped hunting that day.

Fathers teach sons. Sons grow older, and eventually, somebody notices he's doing something exactly the way Dad did it.

I've watched "The Breaking Point" more times than any reasonable person should because it's my favorite one.

The episode didn't change this time.

I did.

For years, I watched Easy Company walking through those trees and saw soldiers. This time, somewhere between Foy and Wisconsin, I found my dad again.