100-Year-Old Woman Still Hunts Deer
Russ Chastain 01.17.19
This article from a year ago documents a little bit about the life of Bertha Vickers, a 100-year-old woman who lives on her own in Mississippi and “mows her lawn, keeps house, cooks, and raises a vegetable garden.” And that woman had just recently gone deer hunting and got herself a deer.
At. Age. 99.
As we sit and talk I can’t help but think how strange our conversation is becoming. After all, it’s not every day I talk with women about Browning shotguns, deer hunting, and wading in rivers while fishing. It’s also the first time I’ve had that conversation with a woman who will celebrate her 100th birthday in a few days and harvested her most recent deer only a couple of weeks ago.
‘It’s just over here across the creek about three or four miles,’ Vickers said. ‘One of my neighbors invited me to come sit in a (shooting) house.
‘I got to watch birds and squirrels until nearly dark. The first evening the deer came out and I was getting the cross-hairs on the deer and his dog barked. He let out a howl and the deer took off.’
But Vickers was in the stand the following afternoon.
‘The next evening two came out,” Vickers said. ‘They were getting close to where I wanted to shoot.
‘I was sort of shaking until I got ready to shoot. I didn’t think it was all going to go right.’
Fortunately, everything did go right. Vickers touched off her 243 Winchester rifle and her shot was perfect.
Pretty great! But all the attention she got from it left her a bit confused.
I don’t know why everybody is making such a big deal about it. If I’d killed a big buck I could see it, but it was just a doe.
She makes me smile, especially as I recall my grandmother, who also lived on her own and took care of her yard until she passed away just shy of her 99th birthday. But Granny wasn’t a hunter. Bertha is most certainly a hunter — and she has been most of her life. In the lean times during the Great Depression, hunting kept meat on her family’s table. And when survival became easier, she did plenty of “sport hunting.”
By the 1960s, Vickers said, she and her husband had fewer family responsibilities and they began to hunt more. More opportunities came as well. Vickers said deer and turkeys began to flourish in the area due to stocking efforts by the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Parks.
‘We turkey hunted a lot after that,’ Vickers said. ‘We hunted every spring.
‘He called the turkeys up for a good while, but I started calling and I killed two. There’s a thrill to calling them turkeys.’
Deer hunting also became a tradition for Vickers and her husband.
‘We used to ride around on Sunday evenings and look for tracks on the side of the road,’ Vickers said. ‘When we started getting them, Bert got some dogs and we hunted with dogs.’
In 2001 her husband of 66 years succumbed to cancer. Although she lost her hunting partner and love of her life, she didn’t lose her love of the outdoors.
‘Just to get to go and the thrill of catching or killing something is so exciting,’ Vickers said.
With a passion like that, Vickers’ goals for her 100th year come as no surprise.
‘I’m going to do just what I want to do,’ said Vickers. ‘I’m going to fish more than I did last year.
‘I would love to kill a buck. I can’t hunt in this cold, but it will warm up.’
Here’s hoping she got to kill that buck — and that she’s still hunting at the ripe old age of 101. Update: She is! At age 101, she bagged two deer with one shot. Read about it here.
