‘Don’t let go!’
Adventures in deer-hunting Guest writer
It’s deer season again, and there are thousands of hunters out there trying to bring down that monstrous horned whitetail deer that we hunters claim as a “wall-hanger.” And there are also hundreds of deer camps established all over the state for the above reason.
Each one of these camps has probably experienced unusual experiences at one time or another. Here is just one of the many happenings that have occurred at the Zeno Hunting Club over the past 50 years.
It was some 35 years ago, and we had a medical doctor who was hunting as our guest. He was a great guy and a hard and patient hunter. He would get up at 4 a.m., fix his breakfast, and be gone to the woods before the rest of us got out of our beds. He also was the first to “hit the sack” after supper. After all, 4 a.m. came early to him, so he needed his rest.
This particular evening, after supper, we heard a commotion outside the camp, and it was a pickup sliding up to the camp with horns blowing and lights blinking. Upon stopping, the driver jumps out and yells, “Doctor! Doctor! We’ve heard y’all have a doctor hunting with you. We need his help immediately.”
I sent someone to go get the doctor up while the driver and a friend helped drag this poor fellow (I’ll call him “the victim”) out of the truck.
It seems the victim had taken a drink of cola out of a soda can in which a bee or yellowjacket had climbed down into without anyone noticing, then stung the victim on the tongue as he took a drink. Immediately, the victim developed an allergic reaction, causing his tongue to swell twice its normal size, and getting even larger. His skin was already a shade of light purple and getting darker by the minute.
The doctor took one look at him and said, “He’s suffocating; his tongue has closed off his windpipe. Get him in the kitchen where it is warmer.”
Instantly, the doctor grabbed a dish rag off the kitchen sink and wrapped it around the victim’s tongue and—I saw this with my own eyes—stretch this man’s tongue out 8 or 9 inches. The doctor told the victim’s friend to “hold this rag and don’t let go of it.”
The doctor, barefooted and in his underwear, went out to his vehicle and dug around in the back floorboard and came up with his doctor’s bag, still yelling, “Don’t let go!”
Getting back in the camp, the doctor got out a syringe, needle, and bottle of medicine and proceeded to give the victim an injection. I don’t know where ’cause I don’t like needles, so I didn’t watch that part. Then the doctor closed his bag, shoved it under the kitchen cabinet and went back to his bed.
The driver asked, “What about our sick friend?”
The doctor replied, “He’ll get better or die, but probably better. Let me know tomorrow. You can let go of his tongue when he can breathe easily through his mouth.”
Sure enough, after about 10 minutes or so, the victim’s tongue began to slowly recede from the excessive size it had been, and he kept saying, “I wannta pay tankful, I want to pay tankful.” We figured out what he was trying to say. They loaded back into their pickup and went back to wherever they came from.
My father once told me that whenever you have a chance to watch and observe something, always try to remember something about what you saw or heard. I learned that you can stretch a man’s tongue out 8 or 9 inches.