A sentimental deer season for longtime Missouri hunters

When Terry and Bonnie Mason climb into their deer blind Saturday, they will get a bit sentimental.

This will be the last time they will greet the Missouri deer season from their two-story enclosure. And it won’t be easy to say goodbye, they say.

They have already sold their house and land near Holt, Mo. They will close on the deal soon and have to move by Dec. 11.

One last deer season. Then they’ll walk away from years of memories.

“We’re going to cry when we walk away,” said Terry Mason, 72. “Tears are going to roll down our faces. But that’s the way it has to be. We simply can’t take care of our place anymore. We have to downsize.

“But we’re sure going to miss this ol’ place.”

The Masons have owned their land near the Clay-Clinton county border for almost 40 years. They started by putting up tree stands in the timber out back from their house. And they shot big deer there.

When a tornado came through about 10 years ago and inflicted big damage on their house, it also destroyed the tree stands. But the Masons never wavered. They were going to stay and rebuild.

They bought a camper and stayed on their land while their house was being put up. And they decided to build a deluxe deer blind to accommodate Terry Mason’s failing health.

“I have COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease), and I couldn’t sit out in the cold anymore,” he said. “So we decided to build this big blind that was easy to get into and had a lot of the comforts of home.”

What they came up with is a deer hunter’s dream house. The first floor is made up of comfortable sleeping quarters. Take the stairs up a flight and you’ll finding the hunting headquarters, complete with swivel chairs in front of sliding windows, a refrigerator, a large TV, a microwave and stereo.

The blind overlooks a large opening surrounded by timber — a perfect setting for deer. White markers with the distances from the blind are arranged out the front window, giving shooters a way to gauge their shots.

“We generally have a lot of family and friends in and out of here during deer season,” Terry Mason said. “Last year, we took three bucks and one doe out of this stand.

“We usually take at least a few deer every year. This is just good land. Our neighbors usually put in crops, and with all of the timber here, deer will show up.

“This year, a lot of the farmers weren’t able to get their corn in because of all the rain, and we haven’t seen as many deer. But I’m sure they’re still around.”

And for years, as long as the deer were around, so were the Masons during hunting season.

“I remember one year when we got up here and were tromping around getting set up,” said Bonnie Mason, 71. “I got Terry a cup of coffee and we slid the windows open. Before we even had our rifles loaded, we looked down and there was a deer standing right under our stand.”

There are traditions that have to be followed. Bonnie Mason always sits on the left side and keeps watch for deer approaching from that side. Terry Mason sits to the right, watching for deer on that side.

Between them, the antlers from a large buck Terry Mason shot years ago hang on the wall. There’s a story to that deer, as there are to most of the other items in the deer blind.

“We watched 26 does going up a hill in a line,” Bonnie Mason said. “I shot at one of the does, and the scope came back and broke my nose.

“Well, there was a huge buck trailing those does, and Terry shot and hit it. We loaded the deer into the truck and then took me to the emergency room.

“Once the doctor and the nurses heard about this huge buck Terry had in the back of his pickup, they all went out to look at it and left me lying right there on the bed.”

Both Terry and Bonnie Mason say they hope to keep hunting, maybe on friends’ land. But it’s not going to be the same, they say.

“It’s not going to be easy, saying goodbye to this old place,” Terry Mason said. “But that’s part of getting older.

“You just have to move on.”

This story was originally published November 11, 2015 at 12:29 PM with the headline "A sentimental deer season for longtime Missouri hunters."