A Slingshot and Marshmallows

Happy New Year and welcome to Norseman Creative’s first offering of 2026. Come along with me as I wax poetic about the fellowship of deer camp. Didn’t get what you wanted for Christmas? Check out the shop to pick up a book, a patch, some stickers, or whatever else grabs your fancy. Every little bit helps free me from the corporate grind so I can just grind out articles about the weird stuff I write about. If you’d like to support the blog in other ways, please share the blog with two friends so that they each share with two friends that share with two friends and so on and so forth like a pyramid scheme but instead of financial ruin, Norseman Creative provides entertainment.

Sunday evening is typically when most of the hunting party departs to return to their jobs, wives, and houses. Elliot, Max, Dad, and I still had another day of hunting before heading back to civilizations, so we joined the remaining hunters for dinner. We ate and drank together while swapping stories, debating about our favorite guns, knives, and other hunting equipment.

Passionately discussing our favorite rifles and other hunting equipment and debating their merits with each other is a favorite past time of many hunters. I had taken the opportunity to hunt with an old gun that afternoon, a Remington Model 81 “Woodsmaster,” an obsolescent rifle that has much more class and style than the soulless, mass-produced rifles of the modern era.

While one of my fellow hunters/gun collectors and I discussed some of our latest, most interesting firearm procurements, I looked around the cabin at my brothers.

Both of them arrived late Friday night before the season starts, well after dinner (we did leave them some stew). Elliot flew up to Minneapolis from Florida, and Max picked him up to drive the rest of the way up to the cabin. It was a full day worth of travel for Elliot, about four hours for Max.

More than any thing else, being back in the woods with my brothers again was my reason for flying all the way from Hawai’i to Minnesota. We had been planning on returning to deer camp together for over a year, and I put everything on hold to be there. It wasn’t much of a sacrifice, as there was nowhere else I would rather have been.

This season was the first time me, my Dad, and both brothers had hunted together in at least five years. Due to my Air Force duties, I hadn’t been able to consistently return to Minnesota for deer season. Even back in 2020, the last time we went hunting together, Elliot was neck deep in studying for Med School.

Earlier that morning, before I even got to my deer stand, I shot my deer, the first for the season for the whole camp. A few hours later during the afternoon hunt, Max shot a doe that was now hanging next to my buck on the meat pole suspended between two trees in front of the cabin. The cold temperatures meant we didn’t have to rush to process the deer. Nature provides the freezer most Deer Seasons in Minnesota.

I couldn’t see the two deer hanging in the tree from where I stood, retelling the story of my single point buck to one of the remaining hunters. He had, somehow, not heard the story during one of the many retellings earlier in the day. It was no bother to me to tell the story yet again, with only a few slight embellishments.

Elliot and Max busied themselves discussing their own pursuits. Elliot was nearly complete with his residency as a Navy Doctor, providing a few of the other hunters no shortage of fascination. Max started a job with a Twin Cities law firm that summer, and was busy swapping stories with some of the other lawyers in the hunting party.

I refilled my glass with a splash of whiskey, then launched into another discussion about the merits of hunting with “old” guns with my fellow collector. He hunted with his own old gun, a lever action Winchester, and we shared a love of collecting strange and esoteric firearms. He had recently procured a Finnish rifle that is extremely hard to get in the United States, a rifle I had once considered buying even though it would have maxed out the credit card in my wallet.

As he explained his philosophy for collecting firearms, I looked around the room. The cabin was lit warmly, tales of past hunts enshrined in pictures and through taxidermy on the walls. My fellow hunters were engaged in their own chatter, with full bellies and full glasses, comfortable from the cast-iron wood burning stove in the center of the far wall.

“This right here,” I launched into what amounts to my own philosophical discussion. “The camaraderie and fellowship, that’s why I do this. Coming up here, to share these experiences with my brothers and my dad, that’s all that really matters to me.”

My fellow gun collector agreed, and we clinked our glasses in toast. We sipped from our glasses quietly for a moment.

“You know,” I said, then took another sip from my whiskey glass. “I’d hunt deer with a slingshot and marshmallows if it meant I could experience this every year.”

Elliot piped up from his chair in the corner, “Now that’s something I’d like to see.”

Thanks for reading! Have a great 2026!