My Memories of Tenbuck

The first time I went to Tenbuck was when our family came back from Germany in 1953, grandpa and grandma took mom, Steve, and I up to the old cabin. all I remember was that it was very dark inside with large wasps and the water in the sink ran constantly. There was a crane pump next to the sink and when it was pumped the water came out of the spout at a 90-degree angle and into the sink. the normal sink fixture ran constantly because the water came from the artesian well.

My dad (Robert Lyons) liked to hunt so my grandfather (Robert Armstrong) would invite him up during the second week. Many of the members stayed in camp for the full two weeks but guests could be brought up if a member left and some went home for thanksgiving. I remember my dad wanted a deer rifle and my mom wanted a new automatic washer in the basement. My father got a .300 savage 99, there were words, and shortly thereafter mom’s old wringer was replaced.

One of my father’s hobbies was refinishing surplus rifles and he sold several of them to other Tenbuck members. When Mr. Williams had a heart attack my father was called in as a consulting physician and they became friends. Occasionally after church on Sundays my dad and brothers and I would go up to Davison and my father would shoot trap and sometimes come home with a surplus rifle to work on. Twice I remember my brothers and I spent our time cleaning rifles wrapped in paper and grease. Mr. Williams gave us rags paper towels and mineral spirits and showed us how to remove the bolts and swab the barrels. The second time we were cleaning the guns he offered to sell us a gun at his cost. My father said OK, so I chose an 1891 Argentine Mauser because it looked like new and my brothers each chose a 98 Mauser. Mine cost $11 and he threw in 300 rounds of Egyptian armor piercing ammo. That was my deer rifle until the late 90’s when I gave it to my brother in Colorado.

My father became a member in 1960 and I think my first hunt at Tenbuck was the following year at thanksgiving. Some of the members stayed up for the entire 2 weeks but as members left, guests could be invited. I remember the some of the older members stayed in the cabin and read and smoked and drank and played poker for money. I tried understanding the games, but they changed games every time someone else dealt, I thought they were making the games up as they went. Some actually hunted. I remember Mr. Nicholie and Judge Adams and Mr. Clark and Mr. Compton were there.

When we came up in the winter our main activity was clearing trails and fixing the wire and shooting porkies. I remember work bees. Sometimes the only people who were there were Mr. Nicholie and my grandfather my dad and brothers, Mr. Allen, and his sons and sometimes Mr. Murphy and his son Mike.

One summer Mr. Allen brought up a bulldozer and they used it to clear off the rifle field. We had an Oliver row cropper tractor and they hooked up plow and plowed the field and then hooked up a gang of discs. Somehow, we managed to get the tractor running and we all jumped on and drove it all over the field. Great fun until we snagged a stump and nearly flipped the tractor on its back. There was low area on the back of the rifle field and another field behind that.

The next time we came up the members brought pallets with bags of fertilizer and seed and some spreaders that you strapped onto your chest and cranked like an organ grinder. The members would stay by the road and drink beer and load our spreaders. I think it’s called the “division of labor”.

Speaking of fields, there was a field off the east road where a sawmill had been set up at one time. All that was left was a large pile of sawdust and a pile of bark. There was also evidence of a sawmill in a clearing south of the road opposite where Mike Kinney goes into his blind.

When we came up in the winter our main activity was clearing trails and fixing the wire and shooting porkies. I remember one winter that we were up with the Allen’s, and it was decided that we were going to clear the “Miami” trail that went from my dad’s blind at the crooked cedar to the west wire and cut cedars for the deer to eat. The adults took axes and broke trail and we followed with the chain saw, and a 5 gallon can of gas. The chain saw had a large engine with two handles at one end and a 3-foot blade with a handle at the other end. It took three of us to carry it. We cut and cleared brush until almost dark and returned the next morning to finish. We stopped near the Tenbuck creek just past the old trapper’s cabin. The roof had collapsed, and it was only about two feet high. There was a franklin stove across the trail from the cabin that was sinking into the ground. We took a short cut through an area known as the “Cathedral”, an area of tall pines that shut out the light and with a floor of pine needles that stopped growth. There was a trail through a tamarack swamp then higher ground then the creek with the cabin on the other side.

I remember my grandfather taking me for walks around the club. He said that the property line went down the east side of the property about 10 feet east of the road and was marked by a page wire (sheep) fence that I remember seeing. The fence also ran along the north wire from the pole gate to the west. The fence also ran along the south wire to a big pipe that marks a section corner, about halfway to the west wire. There was also a page wire fence that ran along the high ground on the other side of the creek from the cabin to a corner post just a way south of the crooked cedar blind. There was no culvert there at the time but there were the remains of an old loggers railroad trestle only one side was standing. One year we cut a trail from across the culvert to the crooked cedar and followed the fence to the post then jogged left across the fence then continued to the blind. We blazed the trees to mark our trails. I seem to remember some fence at the southwest corner as well. The corner where we made the jog may be where the missing survey post is, someone should probably check that out.

It seemed to me that very few members came up during work bees during the 60’s. One work bee, one fall it was Mr. Nicholie, grandpa, dad, and my brothers.

One work bee Bill Fagan got the kids together to check and repair the wire that marks the property line. We took the axe, a new lighter chain saw, a roll of wire the lineman tool and large staples. It took the whole weekend to do the south wire. The next time we came up we did the west wire and that winter when the ground was frozen, we did the north wire to the creek. That was probably the last time the wire was up around the entire perimeter, although I always maintain the wire on the rest of the sides. We never did the north wire from the creek to the pole gate until Mike Kinney and I did it. After that I made it a point to maintain the wire and show the new members around the perimeter of the club.

I remember one hunt in the early 60’s when my brothers Steve and Matt and my dad were up for thanksgiving. It was Matts first hunt and he had restless leg syndrome and was sneaking through the north side of poplar ridge following a trail of juicy fruit wrappers left by Ralph Allen who was a still hunter. He joined Mr. Allen sitting on a log by the trail that runs from the cabin to the poplar ridge when they heard a shot. After a few minutes, the saw a buck walking about 75 feet off to the east. Mr. Allen told Matt to get ready to shoot as the deer approached and Matt brought the rifle to his shoulder and was hesitating so Mr. Allen said shoot now. Matt said Mr. Murphy was holding onto the deer’s tail trying to stop it and Mr. Allen said, “so what, do you have a clear shot?” We learned later that they had had a falling out which led to Mr. Murphy leaving the club.

One year at thanksgiving, in the evening, the door opened, and mike murphy and a friend walked in and said they had a problem. Mr. Murphy had gotten to drunk to drive so he told mike, who was not old enough to have a license, to drive the rest of the way to Tenbuck. After coming to the poll gate at the northeast corner, mike had run off the road and gotten stuck in a muck hole. Unable to drive out, he and his friend left the car and walked in and unfortunately forgot to turn off the lights. Mr. Fagan told the kids to sit down and have some food and they would get the tractor and pull the car out. About 2 hours later, Mr. Fagan had not even put his jacket on, and mike was really getting anxious, Mr. Murphy opened the door and started screaming at his son and threatening to beat him. Mr. Fagan and Mr. Allen took Mr. Murphy outside and when they came back Mr. Murphy was much calmer. I don’t think I ever saw them again.

During the winters when we would come to Tenbuck we would cross country ski and were thankful to follow the Heinlein since they had snowmobiles and cleared trails. Dick made a trail called the Heinlein bypass to get to his westside blind. Later, when I became a member, people did not hunt the west side because they couldn’t get across the swamp. During a work bee I tried to get members interested in corduroying the swamp trail and talked Mr. Porter into helping me cut logs and trees and we made fixed the first 50 feet or so. I got my buddy cash and brother Matt and another friend to come up on weekends and we managed to get all the way across the swamp and bury some PVC pipe for a culvert. Dick said he would give $1000 if we could get a car over to the west side and I drove my Toyota 4runner over when we took the original Fagan haven to the west side and I have pictures of it next to the haven. Dick changed his tune and said he really meant to his blind. The next trail we made was the trail along the west side of the creek to the south wire which took us about 3-4 long weekends. Dick changed his conditions again and said he had to be able to drive his suburban to his blind. Oh well, we were just happy to help Dick out and we enjoyed being able to bow hunt and come up on thanksgiving.

We cleared a trail all along the west wire to the northwest corner and then east along the north wire. After crossing the north end of the north-south tote road it was too hard to continue the wire because of the Robb creek so we cut the trail about 50 feet south of the wire until we were just north of the haven. We also cut a trail due south from the north wire down to the Miami. It came out where the ground starts to rise after you leave 4 corners when going toward The Haven.

I remember one year when Dick shot a big buck opening morning and brought it back and hung it on the swing poll. At dinner he noticed that his wedding ring was missing, and he was heartbroken and figured he lost it while dressing out the deer. I grabbed a flashlight and went out to his blind and searched through the gut pile until I found the ring. Anything to keep my roommate happy.

One year, BQ (Before Quads), when Dick shot a deer opening day, he left the deer at the blind and asked if someone would help him bring it in with the deer tote the next morning. Marv said he would like to hunt Dick’s blind in the morning and Dick would bring the tote out at noon. I volunteered to help and was to meet them there. I was hunting near the head waters of the Tenbuck creek where the water bubbles noisily out of the ground just west of the bypass. Around 11:00 when stood up to leave, I turned, and my leg went into a soft spot almost to my knee and there in front of me was a bear. My gun felt small and inadequate, and I was stuck. The bear stood made a noise and turned and ran in a straight line away from me. It seems we both were startled. I freed my leg and stood there for about 15 minutes and then started walking south towards Dick’s blind. When I got there, they said you won’t believe what happened. I said, “a big bear?” They said yes. Evidently a bear had picked up Dick’s deer completely off the ground and moved it quite a way west of the blind. Then they told me that Marv had shot a very nice buck, so we had 2 deer to bring back on the tote. I was on the front of the tote Marv was on the rear and Dick was carrying 3 deer rifles. My back still hurts, and I have not used the tote since.

One thanksgiving 1963 or 1964, we came up early and I shot a six point in the morning. I was sitting by the sawdust pile by the east road. The bullet was a Herter’s banana peel that I had hand loaded and it went through a small pine about 4 foot tall. Saw the deer go down, then get up and run off. I waited for 15 minutes as I had been told and went over to find just tracks. I noticed that the bullet had hit the small tree and I could find no blood or hair. When I came in for lunch, I told my dad and Matt what had happened. Later that afternoon I saw some movement in the brush, and it was close before I realized that it was my brother. This was before hunter orange was invented. Matt said he was hunting behind the rifle field and came upon a 6-pt buck laying down and when he pulled the trigger of his 30-30,the gun went click and the deer ran off. There was some blood where the deer was laying, and he followed the trail back to the sawdust pile to get me. We followed the deer’s trail in the light snow up to the center of poplar ridge. When the deer walked, it dragged a hoof but when it ran it used all 4. We were walking about 30-40 feet apart when Matt signaled that he saw the deer laying down. As he approached the deer got up and ran and I couldn’t believe Matt didn’t shoot. This was a bad luck day for Matt. Matt was using grandpa’s 30-30 which had a scope and his gloved thumb had become jammed between the hammer and scope as he cocked the gun. There was some blood where the deer was laying down. We followed the deer’s trail through the cedars north of poplar ridge and then it turned west and we heard it cross the creek about 100 yards north of the south wire. Matt stayed on the east side of the creek until I found the place the deer crossed and by that time it was too dark to continue so I blazed a tree, and we went back to the cabin. When we told dad what had happened, he laughed and said that he had noticed that Matt had put the rifle in the rack outside the door and had not really unloaded it, only opened the lever part way and he could see a shell on the bolt. Dad had removed the shell and put it back in the magazine and forgot to tell/chastise Matt.

The next morning, we picked up the trail and found where the deer had bedded down with other deer. The buck left a small area of blood where he laid down and since there were many confusing deer tracks, we circled out until we found the track with the dragging leg. We followed the track to the west wire where the north-south tote road meets the Baker-Compton trail. We discussed it and decided to follow the buck onto birch creek until the open field area. We were only about 50 feet when we heard noise and saw a deer off to our right heading back onto Tenbuck. After following the trail for a while, we were sure it was our buck. We followed it to area where the Tenbuck creek starts, and we were walking about 30 feet apart when Matt signaled that the deer was ahead of us. He kept his gun up and motioned me to go ahead. I saw some movement about 50 feet in front of me and saw the deer start to rise. I shot and the bullet went just below the jaw and the buck went over backwards.

Matt and I dressed the deer and tried to drag it but the ground was soft and we were sinking in too much so we decided to get the deer tote. We followed the creek down to the Miami trail then returned to the cabin for lunch. We told dad what had happened, and he told us that Mr. Fagan and Mr. Andress had arrived and were out hunting. We got the tote and headed back for the deer. Matt took his gun and I left mine at the cabin and Matt was leading in case we spotted a buck, and I was following at a distance. We decided that we would take a short cut to where the deer was and somehow, we missed it and came out on the north- south tote road so we decide to go back and follow our old track by the creek, kind of a big circle. We got the deer loaded on the tote and back to the pole barn shortly after dark. When we came in the cabin and put our guns on the rack Mr. Address said “doc you’ve got the most optimistic boys I’ve ever seen they passed me twice. One carrying a gun and one following with the deer tote. Matt said, “yea and we’ve got a 6-pt hanging in the barn.”.

Porkies
We always took a .22, when we went for walks, so we could shoot porcupines. They were very destructive animals and would girdle whole stands of young pines and kill the tops of very large white pines as well. During one winter in the early 60’s I remember my dad giving myself and my brothers and sisters about 5 shells each and the .22 rifle and telling us to go out and shoot porkies. The .22 was a Winchester autoloader that loaded through a hole in the stock. Dad removed the magazine tube before giving us the gun so that we had to shoot single fire. To load it, you pointed the muzzle down, dropped a shell into the hole and cycled the bolt. Dad didn’t consider that my younger siblings couldn’t hold the gun up while loading so they rested the muzzle on the toe of their shoe to keep the muzzle off the ground. Not the safest practice but that’s what we did. We took the dog with us hoping it would find the porkies, but it was a mutt and young and the snow was deep, and it was content to follow in our tracks. Porkies were easy to find. You find girdled trees then look for tracks, they drag their bellies. Also they smell. When shooting we rested the gun against a tree. If a tree wasn’t handy, we used someone’s shoulder. Always the right shoulder because the rifle ejects to the right. When we shot a porky, it fell out of the tree and the dog ran up to it so fast it couldn’t stop and ran into the quills on the tail. We managed to get the quills out but after that the dog seem live to hunt porkies. We carried pliers whenever we took the dog out after that. There’s a reason hunter safety classes are mandatory now.

In the early 70’s, a friend and his wife were guests at the family cabin in Northport and she noticed a small quill box, that my mother had that was made by some American Indian tribe. Sometime later my friend’s wife asked me if I could get her some quills so that she and her twin daughters could make some quill boxes. I said I had shot enough porkies and didn’t need to shoot any more. That fall the sportsman’s club that I belong to was asking for meat donations for the wild game dinner. Anything from elk to squirrels. They said they would be happy with porcupine. Next time we went to Tenbuck I shot 17 porkies, skinned, and dressed them, put the hides in two garbage bags and bodies in two more bags and brought them home. The club was very happy with the meat but my friend’s wife, not so much. My friend calls a few days later and said that I should not come over for a while. His wife and daughters had band-aids all over their hands and there was some infection going on. Seems she felt it was my duty to remove the quills from the hides. Don’t know where she got that silly idea. The only silver lining was that when she threw them out in the trash, the dog next door that craps in their yard decide it was a good day to raid the trash.

Someone at Tenbuck asked me about porkies throwing their quills, evidently that’s a common misconception. When I located a porky, I took them out and showed them that you must have contact with the animal. I took a punky stick and tapped the tail and when I pulled it off a dozen or so quills stuck into the stick. They grabbed a stick and tried it themselves. I placed the sticks on the mantel, and they were there for several years.

My mom had this idea that “if you kill it you eat it”. We had trapping lines at home and during the season we would get up early and run the line and, if we had time, we would skin the rats and throw the carcasses across the road. You grab it by the tail, you can get some real good distance and it was downhill. At some point our dog, same dog, Sheba, decided that it would bring a carcass back for a snack. Mom took it away from the dog and put it in the trash and a short time later the dog had another one. She warned us to dispose of them properly. Evidently, we did not. We had meat for dinner for almost a week before we realized what we were eating. Actually, muskrat and raccoon is pretty good. Porky not so much. Mom found one of our porkies when she took the girls for a walk so porky was on the menu. It’s palatable but has a rubbery consistency that makes it almost impossible to chew. We would chew and chew and then put it back on your plate. She only cooked porky once.

Blue Jays
The blue jays would come to the corn trough feeder by the front door and carry away corn at a tremendous rate. So, one day my father decided he had had enough. When my mother was out walking with the girls, he gave each of us a gun and we sat by the porch and waited for the blue jays. They kept coming and we kept shooting. After a while, they stopped coming so we found other things to do. That evening the cabin developed a bad odor and my mother served a plate of cooked blue jays, feathers, and all. It didn’t stop us from dispatching Blue Jays, but we got real good, real fast, at disposing of the evidence. We found some of the blue jay bodies near the road in front of the pole barn and one inside the barn. With no heads. We were told that weasels and owls do that.

One hunt Fred McCurdy couldn’t get his ATV, that he stored in the barn, to start. He said that there were small white weasels on it when he opened the barn door. Some suggested that they were mice and he said no, much bigger. I helped him and we found a nest inside the air cleaner box. Later that winter my brother was hunting partridge and saw two white weasels between the rifle range and the barn. We went behind the barn and sat down and after about an hour saw the weasels. They were white, about 8 or 10 inches long, and what attracts your eye most was the weasel’s eyes. They looked like big black flies because the body was almost invisible against the snow. They are called least weasels. We also have mink at Tenbuck that stay dark all winter.

Everyone was a little concerned when Freddie brought up the first ATV at Tenbuck. It was not entirely welcome, but everyone realized that Fred needed it to get around. The story was that it was used in a Shriners parade and Fred bought it from them. He became a social butterfly, going from club to club making friends and acquaintances. It proved it’s worth by bringing in deer that were shot and Dick borrowed it often to get over to his westside blind. The second year it met it’s end when the throttle stuck and Fred, thinking it was frozen, left it running with a blanket over it to keep the heat in. After an hour or so, the blanket was removed to reveal that all the plastic had melted down into the machinery. Story goes that insurance bought him a new one and Dick may have contributed since they seemed to share it. After Fred died, Dick bought Fred’s share from his widow.

Cliff Moore was the next one to bring up an ATV and he had made a trailer that was just wide enough to carry the ATV so that he could tow it through the woods. One work bee in the fall, after we had corduroyed the trail across the swamp, he decided that he would bring a blind that he had made to an area on the west side just off the Miami trail. Loggers had cut some of the large pines in the cathedral area and the area was now quite open. Mr. Fagan had brought a chair into the area, several years before, and had put a blue tarp around it as a wind block but had stopped hunting there since the swamp trail had been unusable. When Cliff Moore came up for the hunt Mr. Fagan praise Cliff and said that no one had ever done something so wonderful as building a nice new blind on his favorite hunting spot. He thanked Cliff repeatedly and I think he even managed a tear to two. I don’t know if Cliff ever got to hunt his blind, but we always called it “Fagan Haven”.

One thanksgiving, after dinner, Matt jumped up and said there was a bear at the feeder. We all looked out and we couldn’t see anything, so we sat back down. Matt was insistent and Judge Adams and Matt went outside to look for tracks. Next thing we knew we heard a yell, the door flew open, and Matt and the judge had wedged themselves tightly into the doorway. Evidently the bear was eating out of the trash can we put the corn in which was located to the left of the porch. The bear was probable as shock as they were.

On another thanksgiving, we were sitting around after lunch and there was a loud noise and the glass in the front door exploded with pieces going into the room. Mr. Doerr’s, who was sitting on the couch with his back to the door, was hit in the back of the head and his hat flew off. I was standing by the table and saw Matt , who had just gotten out of the service, go for the gun rack and we heard a noise from the kitchen. Goldy came out of the kitchen with a partridge in her hand and said we had to pluck it before she’d cook it. It seems partridge go into “blind flight” at times during the year. It’s nature’s way of spreading the gene pool.

They traded the “green hornet” in on a ford 9N tractor and it came with a two bottom plow and some old broken-down discs and spring tooth drags. I had a portable welding rig and had been repairing farm equipment for the farmers around Holly, MI., so Mr. Fagan asked me to bring my rig up to Tenbuck during a work bee. I repaired things as best I could. Matt worked on the tractor, and we plowed and planted the rifle range and ball field. Dad got on the tractor, hooked up the back blade and said he was going to work on the road and away he went. A couple hours later Mr. Fagan asked where the tractor was and when I told him he said we should go see what damage my dad did to the road. Just then dad came back, and Mr. Fagan got on the tractor and went to see what dad had done. About 2 hours later Mr. Fagan came walking back, came up to me and asked if I could use Mr. Truck to pull him out. He had gotten off the road by the pole gate and buried the tractor up to its axles. He was very embarrassed

That thanksgiving when Matt came up for the hunt, Mr. Fagan put him to work repairing the tractor. It seems that someone had started the tractor when the temperature was cold and had immediately operated the hydraulics. The thick oil had caused a link in the transmission to pop out of its coupling. The only way to fix it without disassembly was to go through the dipstick plate and although Mr. Fagan knew how to do it, his hands were too big. Matt was elected for the job. It was well below freezing and he was not happy. But the tractor got fixed. The next year, I brought the tractor down and rebuilt it and gave it a new coat of paint.

Bow Hunting
Only members and their families were allowed to bow hunt and even that was frowned upon.

Michael Lyons
November, 2021