Mary Tillson: A Throwback New York Hunting Story by Big Woods Contributor CJ Meyers

This article is about my Grandmother, May Tillson, of Kingston, NY. She was an amazing woman. A taxidermist, a deer hunter and fisherwoman. I'm sure I inherited my love of the outdoors from her.

She killed many deer with her 35 Remington semi auto. One year rumors started surfacing about a big deer near the farm where she hunted just south of Albany, NY. The farm was rented by a man who was very poor. He gave her permission to hunt the farm and she gave him venison to feed his family.

4 years later no one had killed him and he had grown to legendary proportions. The farmer told her he came out into his orchard some evenings thru an opening in the hedgerow. She sat in the orchard and never saw him.

One evening after dark she walked to the opening and saw where his huge track had come to the opening, probably spotted her, and turned around and left. She waited a week and went back and sat downwind at the edge of the hedgerow. He came to the opening that evening and stopped to look into the orchard and she shot him in the neck and killed him.

That should be the happy ending to the story but sadly it is not.

There were a lot of people after that deer. The uproar that followed was off the charts. Hunters in the area felt the farmer had no right to give my grandmother the right to hunt there because he only rented the farm. They even harassed the owner of the farm to the point that he kicked the farmer off the farm.

Out on the street in despair with no way to take of his family he committed suicide.

My Grandmother carried the guilt the rest of her life blaming herself for what happened. She brought it up many times. I always told her it wasn't her fault.

When she was on her death bed I was holding her hand and she turned to me and said " I wish I had never shot that deer." Again I told her it was not her fault that she was a good person

A little while later she closed her eyes and was gone. I hope I gave her peace. I loved her very much. 

Remember folks no matter how big it is it's only a deer.

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