You ever hear of a group called “Da Yoopers?”

Ya?  Then you must have spent time in the northern deer hunting realm, and you might even know where to find Ishpeming, Mich.  That’s where Da Yoopers live, and they deserve all the credit for the lyrics to their smash hit:  “The Second Week Of Deer Camp:”

It’s the second week of deer camp,  I got a swollen head.

I’m lying with the dust balls, underneath my bed.

An icy breeze is blowin, through the tongue and groove.

My pants are frozen to the floor and I’m too sick to move.

I didn’t drink too many, only 30 cans of beer.

It must have been that last shot that put me under here.

It’s the second week of deer camp and all the guys are here.

We drink, play cards and shoot the bull but never shoot no deer.

Da only time we leave the camp is when we go for beer.

The second week of deer camp is the greatest time of year!

I remember playin’ poker, that Weasel musta won.

He’s wearin’ my new swampers and sleepin’ with my gun.

He’s snorin’ like a chain saw and the camp smells like a dump.

Someone’s dirty underwear is hangin’ on the pump.

Paco’s in the woodbox. Weiner’s passed out on da floor.

His flannel shirt is smoking, I wonder if he knows.

Vito’s crawlin’ through da door,

I think he got frostbite.

He passed out in the outhouse and he been dere since last night.

Goofus stumbles through the door, he says he got a buck.

He was coming from the wayside and he killed it with his truck.

Moostie cracks a beer and says it’s time to celebrate,

Goofus got our first buck since 1968!

You can find Da Yoopers’ most famous tune on every juke box in every bar in the northern states like Minn., Wis., and Mich.  Those are states where the deer camp is a way of life.  That culture creeps south into northern Indiana, Ohio and Illinois.

In Indiana and Illinois, white tail deer were all but exterminated by the 1950s.  There were no deer to hunt, and traditions like the deer camp never thrived.   Nobody even spoke about deer hunting when I was a boy.

We have been left to build our own traditions since the big come back of the white tail here in the lower Great Lakes states.

There are all kinds of deer hunters in Indiana nowadays.  It happens that the most dedicated of them tend to hunt alone, often with a bow or muzzle loader, then later in the season, with a firearm as the law allows a second deer per season. 

There are serious fellows who wear treebark camo or that new computer pixel stuff.  They use unscented soap, never wash their hunting clothes and keep them sealed from stray scents during off season.  Deer can sniff a fly in the wind at 100 paces is what one of them told me years ago.  These fellows live and breathe for deer hunting.  They study it, read on it, practice what they learn and always have a hunting license.

This is not the deer hunter stereotyped and immortalized by Da Yoopers.  The hard-drinking, poker-playing deer campers are still out there, but they are the not nearly as visible in Hoosierland.

What you do see in Indiana a pair or a trio of hunters who participate in the short firearms season every year.  Over the years, I have interviewed lots of trios that feature a dad, a son, and an uncle or close friend.

I came across a deer camp while quail hunting a couple of weeks ago.  There was a stack of firewood, a couple of makeshift plywood tables built on tree stumps, an aging hammock and a set of horseshoe pits.  An aging tree stand near the camp provided a perfect view of  a corn field.  I could close my eyes and hear the ring of the shoes and the hiss of a Coleman lantern, the laughter and friendly teasing that accompanies such gatherings.  

These days, when we know we don’t have to kill a deer to feed the tribe, the draw of the deer camp has less to do with hunting than with having a good time with close friends and relatives.  Like so many things humans do, deer camp is a bonding ritual with deer hunting as an excuse.

It is our nature to do so. It refreshes us somehow.  Hunting hits some harmonic frequency in the human psyche.  That’s where our delight in and the mysteries of hunting’s pleasures dwell and always will.

Note:  Interested in Da Yoopers musical offerings?  Write Da Yoopers, 490 N. Steel St., Ishpeming, MI 49849.