Hunting Season Special: Growing Up Rickard

My Dad, Luther Deuwain Rickard Jr. and his cousin, Harold Rickard Jr. of Toledo, Ohio, traveled all over the country to hunt. One of their favorite places was the Westervelt Lodge in Alabama which featured them and Harold’s son, Sam, with their bucks in their advertising.

By Julie Rae Rickard

When I was growing up in Kellytown, the start of hunting season was a huge deal for my family which is full of men who loved the sport.

As a child, I didn’t think it was hard to kill a deer because the men left early in the morning the first day of deer season and were back home with bucks by 8:00 a.m. or earlier.

It wasn’t just deer they were interested in hunting. They hunted everything and they were

good at it. It didn’t matter if they used a rifle, bow or muzzle loader, they came home with game.

In my youth I ate venison, squirrel, rabbit, and moose. (I am a semi-vegetarian now.)

The Rickard family, descendants of a Native American woman, the legendary Mary Whitefeather, produced men who loved being in the woods and respected nature.

My brothers tell stories of how our grandfather, Luther Deuwain Rickard Sr., would take them into the woods in the early morning hours, leave them in a spot and tell them to stay there until he came back, which was usually after dark. This was part of his training program.

Nicknamed, “the Old Man on the Mountain”, my grandfather became a bit legendary in his own time for his knowledge of the woods.

He raised his kids in a different time, when people didn’t just go to the grocery store for food. They had gardens. They canned. They hunted to provide for the family. He also trapped, fished and in his later years was known for gathering ginseng.

Dad talked about using a groundhog’s bladder, filled with water as a ball when he was a child. They tried to use every part of the animal in the Native tradition.

As a girl, I wasn’t part of the male ritual of hunting and telling hunting stories but I did admire the comradery between my grandfather, his brothers, and my Dad with his brothers and then sons.

My father, Luther Deuwain Rickard Jr., who was a deputy with the former Pennsylvania Fish Commission in addition to working for Bayer Clothing, also had a reputation for being a great hunter and award-winning bass fisherman.

He once went fishing in his boat and came home with a turkey. Yes, we were confused too. Turkey was in season and after he spotted one on shore, he decided to kill it. Then went back to fishing.

Dad and his cousin, Harold Rickard Jr., of Toledo, Ohio, traveled all over the country to hunt. One of their favorite places was the Westervelt Lodge which featured them and their bucks in their advertising.

They also traveled to hunt turkeys and sometimes had trouble at the airport transporting them home. Because as much as my Dad loved to hunt turkeys, he loved eating them more.

My brother, Luther Deuwain Rickard III, known as “Rick”, is my generation’s great hunter. Over the years he has become more selective about which buck he shoots because he requires them to be big enough to join his mounted “herd”. The man has a whole room full of deer heads from kills with his bow.

(I don’t know how he handles sitting in his living room with all those dead eyes staring at him.)

Dad preferred preserving his turkey trophies and had numerous mounted turkey tails from all over that filled one wall of his large living room and one full-sized turkey.

In his last few years, hunting became more and more difficult for Dad, even with Rick helping and finding him the best spots. His eyesight was failing, and one day he watched what he thought was a deer for hours until someone pointed out that it was a washer, refrigerator or other appliance, accounts differ. This earned him the nickname, Maytag Man because in the Rickard clan, there is no mercy. Teasing is another big part of their hunting tradition.

Our younger generation has lost interest in this sport which is a bit sad. So, the only new hunting stories we get are from Rick, but he is getting older too.

This year, he was already complaining about missing a really big buck to my sister, Cathy, who commented that she felt the deer got bigger the more he talked about it.

But that is typical of Rickard men, who love telling stories almost as much as they love hunting and fishing.