Wilbur Stoen: Transcript

Farmer and hunter
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I’m Wilbur Stoen from Decorah, Iowa. It’s up in the northeast part of the state. I live about thirteen miles northeast of Decorah. I don’t have the family farm. The family farm is right next to me. But, my great-great-grandfather homesteaded there in 1850 on the family farm. What’s kind of odd is, he was, him and his wife were nearly 60 years old when they came over and they had three sons with them that were in their 20s. Most of the people that came over were young people, you know, in their 20s or like that. [music]

They had a daughter that drowned in the fjord over there— was one of the reasons, a contributing reason probably. And I think times were tough, and they wanted to move. And a lot of people had been coming over to America here and sending messages back telling the people how great it was and all of that. And I think you just add it all together, and the boys wanted to come, so they came along with them.

What’s kind of odd is that a homestead is a hundred and sixty acres, you know. I was telling people that my great-great-grandfather’s homestead is six hundred and forty acres. And they said, “Well, how’d he do that?” Well, I says, “I never thought of it before.” So, then I stopped to think, oh yeah, he had three sons, 20 years old—they’d each be eligible for a hundred and sixty acres. Between the four of them, they had enough to get the six hundred and forty all in one piece.

I’ve been hunting, hunting all my life, ever since I got out of high school. The deer now don’t have any natural predators, so that if you don’t hunt them, why, they’re going to multiply and they’ll get all diseased or something so that—. And the deer meat is good. Our children would sooner eat deer meat when they were growing up than any other kind of meat. For one reason, there wasn’t much fat on it, and they didn’t like fat in their meat. And they just liked deer meat.

It was twenty below zero. My brother-in-law came over from Mason City, and we went hunting deer together. The place that I wanted to hunt was about a half a mile down through the woods. Because I knew some other hunters were coming in at the other end of a 40 acres at 8:00 eight o’clock. And I knew if I get there at a quarter to eight, if there was anything in there, they’d chase it out, see? So, 20 below zero now. And I left my brother-in-law by the pick-up, and he was going to stand and watch there. And I walked down half a mile in there. And I stood there for fifteen minutes, and sure enough a deer came through. He came running toward me real fast. I missed with the first four shots. And then I waited, and he stopped, and I got him with the last shot. But, my fingers were so cold that I couldn’t reload my gun. I couldn’t get any more bullets. So then I just walked back to the pick-up.

I got back there, and my brother in-law had gotten cold. I left the keys in the pick-up, and I had a full tank of gas there. But he went in and just hit the key on the ignition to run the heater, and then he’d shut it off again, and then he’d go out again. Well, when I got back there, the battery was dead. Twenty below zero and I’m a mile away from any farmhouse. And luck was, it was on a hill. And it was a straight stick, so we got in it, and I let it roll, and I threw her in gear, and I was just able to get it started. We drove out of there and drove around to where—see I could drive around on a dug road on the backside to get the deer. I didn’t have to drag it out that half a mile that I’d walked. Anyway, I drove around there, and I was going through a gate. And then I wasn’t careful, and I killed the motor, and it wouldn’t start again. So I had to go over to a farmer there and borrow a tractor from him and pull the tractor, the pick-up to start it. And then we went down and got the deer and picked it up and went home again. So that was our forenoon’s work. Twenty below zero—that’s cold!