In New Jersey: Venison and Bloody Fenders

By Peter Stoler

Fred Carlson is a stocky, sandy-haired man whose yellow rain suit gives him the appearance of a fire hydrant. He is standing in the doorway of the deer-checking station at Clinton, N.J., watching a cold rain that has fallen intermittently throughout the day. As a pickup truck driven by a man in a bright orange cap and jacket pulls up to the station, he puts down his soft-drink can, slips on a pair of heavy rubber gloves and steps out into the wet to watch while the team of state employees swing into action. The routine, already practiced a hundred times since sunup, is simple, though a trifle ghastly. Two burly men lift the dead whitetail deer out of the back of the truck and drop it on the bloody plywood platform of a large scale. Carlson's blond son Craig, 9, steps in, weighs the deer, calling out its weight in a clear, childish voice to three women sitting like the three Fates at a table behind the scale. As the hunter approaches the table to fill out a 15-item deer killer's form, an assistant clips a metal tag to one of the deer's hind legs while Carlson picks up a metal bar, wrenches the animal's jaw open to examine its teeth and then, grasping a small caliper, proceeds to measure the base of one of its antlers.

"Nice buck, about a year and a half old," he comments, straightening up to watch his helpers heave the carcass back into the pickup. "And well nourished too," he adds with a gesture toward the deer's six-pointed rack of antlers. "Antlers don't tell you anything about a deer's age. But they'll tell you how well he eats. A deer doesn't grow a rack like that unless he's getting plenty of food."

Carlson is assistant chief of New Jersey's wildlife management bureau. Because 130,000 licensed hunters may be loose in the New Jersey woods, he and his crew are not the only fish and game officials working. The state, which estimates the New Jersey deer population at an astonishing 100,000, runs 76 such check-out stations. But the Carlson & Co. post, located in rural Hunterdon County, is one of the busiest. By the time Carlson peels off his gloves and heads for home and supper at 8 p.m., the kill figure will have reached 209.

Ten years ago, even in a crowded state like New Jersey, Deer hunting was still the province of rugged individuals who bought their licenses, blasted their deer out of the woods and lugged them home on car fenders without too much supervision. For many of them, the deer season was the only chance each year of really getting free of feminine domestication to hunt, drink and rough it, a combination of Boy Scoutery and male blood rite. In New Jersey, for a brief period, deer hunting also became a form of semi-legalized mayhem as unqualified hunters, often as loaded as the weapons they carried, took to the woods with buckshot, and, along with their deer, managed to kill a fair number of cows--and fellow sportsmen.

In the declining years of the 20th century nothing stays simple. In New Jersey deer hunting has been bureaucratized. Any hunter caught with liquor on his breath by a game warden is likely to lose his license. Applicants for licenses must show that they have passed a course in gun safety, during which they are drilled in such elementary but often overlooked things as unloading before climbing a fence and holding fire when they cannot clearly see the quarry. Hunters in New Jersey must wear at least 200 sq. in. of bright orange material on their clothes; they may not hunt within 450 ft. of a dwelling or school playground. They may not fire across any road, and during the regular season they may use only shotguns, whose limited range somewhat reduces the chance of accident. Finally, they must bring their deer to a checking station so officials can keep a record that includes the age and weight of every deer killed, the size of its antlers, the time and place of its death and the type of weapon used.

"Most people complain about the paper work only if they don't get a deer," says Frank Fennesz, 19, of Union City, as he hefts 113 Ibs. of venison-to-be back into the bed of his pickup. Fennesz's only complaint is the rainy weather, not be cause he minds getting wet but because rain turns dry, rustling leaves into a soundless carpet of mush. "If you don't see the deer, you can't hear them in weather like this." Chatting with one an other as they stand around in the glare of headlights and the harsh light of a gasoline lantern, most of the waiting hunters seem honest as they describe their kills. One young man, bringing in his first-ever buck, admits the kill was far from clean. "My first shot knocked him down, but he got right back up," he recalls. "My second blew one rear leg almost off, but he still get back up. He was trying to get up again after my third shot. I had to hit him with a fourth to put him down." Asked how he got his deer, Curt Morse, 26, of Union Township, laughs. "You want to know the truth? I was sitting in the car eating my lunch when this deer just walked right up to us. I just got out of the car and shot him."

Most hunters coming to the Clinton station are hankering for a taste of the venison the day's efforts have brought them. Says a man as he lashes his deer across the rear deck of a Ford sedan and wipes some blood off a fender: "I like the ones I shoot myself even better." But some admit that eating is not a significant factor. "There are cheaper ways of putting food on the table," an elderly man explains as he and a friend unload a pair of deer. "Hunting is one of the few things you can do these days that'll get you away from women," says a plaid-clad man who calls himself "just Charley." "Yeah," concurs his companion, a mustached, bandoleered desperado manque who identifies himself (unnecessarily) as "Red." "Opening day is when we go off into the woods and talk dirty."

Their laughter is cut short by the arrival of another pair of hunters. Patrick Hulbert, 14, of Pittstown, slides down out of a van and watches closely as Carlson checks his deer. So does his companion, an ardent deer hunter and gun-dog breeder who has been taking him hunting for the past four years and who, it turns out, taught him how to shoot. But not, presumably, to talk dirty. Most New Jersey hunters may have spent opening day with the boys. Pat Hulbert went gunning with his mother.

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