Bill Cochran is a Roanoke Times outdoors columnist.

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Bill Cochran's Outdoors

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Along about this time of the year, deer hunters have to make a choice. Would they rather hunt from a camp enjoying the comradeship of their buddies even when the opportunity to kill a deer is less, or would they prefer hunting alone, closer to home, where deer -- particularly big ones -- are more likely to be encountered?

More and more hunters are choosing the lone-wolf approach of spending a couple hours in a treestand on the early side or the late side of day. They still get to work long enough to fool the boss, and they sleep with the one they love under clean sheets in a mouse-free house.

There are fewer of us hunting from camps, be they cabins, lodges, tar-paper shanties, RVs or wall tents pegged into the black earth of the national forest. The question: are we losing a tradition, not to mention missing out on a bunch of fun?

The fact that deer camps may be easing into folklore is most evident in the western part of Virginia. No longer do gangs of hunters set up housekeeping in the national forest. They can find more and bigger deer flashing their white tails near urban areas and on easy-to-reach farms than in the distant deep woods.

In the east, where dogs are used and hunters are compelled to work more as a team, camp life appears less fragile. But even in the Piedmont and Coastal areas there is growing interest in treestands, still hunting, muzzleloading and bow hunting, which are terms for hunting alone.

When I was outdoor editor of The Roanoke Times, for nearly 40 years, I made it a goal to write a feature about a deer camp every opening week of the firearm’s season. I still run into people who will unfold a yellow newspaper clipping containing a story I wrote and pictures I took of their deer camp.

“Remember this,” they will say. Sometimes I do.

I visited all kinds of camps. I stayed in crowded pickup campers and in drafty Army surplus wall tents that had a tall smoke stack pointing skyward, a sure sign there was a smoky, barrel-size woodstove inside that would burn you up on one side and freeze you on the other. On the opposite end of the scale, I remember one posh lodge with beds like at home and a gourmet chef -- yes, chef -- wearing a white uniform.

All were different, yet much alike, teetering between what is wild and what is civilized, involving weeks of planning and months of anticipation, and remembered more for the comradeship than the kill.

Most lacked showers. They were equipped with outdoor privies having seats that felt like a block of ice, which sharply cut down on how long anyone fingered the pages of the tattered Playboy inside them. There was throw-away furniture in the main room and beyond that wall-to-wall bunk beds where the snoring was close and loud and the smell of fried onions and wet boots was inescapable.

Occupants of deer camps are businessmen, doctors, lawyers, farmers, factory workers, truck drivers; fresh-faced boys eager for their first kill and old-timers returning to the same stand they’ve occupied for 30 years, maybe for the last time. Aldo Leopold, William Faulkner and Teddy Roosevelt occupied camps. Roosevelt was hunting deer in the Adirondacks when he got word that President McKinley had died, which meant he was the 26th president of the United States at a youthful 42.

It doesn’t matter how famous you are, whether you wear a suit or Carhartt to work, or how many zeros are on the bottom line of your Edward Jones account. Status doesn’t count for much in a deer camp. Guy bonding does. From what I’ve read, Faulkner was just another good ol’ boy in camp. He rolled up his sleeves and washed dishes like the rest. When the ceremony scheduled to present him the 1949 Nobel Prize for literature clashed with deer season, he chose deer camp.

Probably the most treasured member in camp is the guy who climbs out of bed extra early to fix breakfast and who gives up enough hunting time to put a Thanksgiving-size dinner on the table every night. Chances are he isn’t a professor, poet or president.

Most camps harbor at least one accomplished hunter. He is the best woodsman; the best shot. He wins the camp pot for the biggest buck of the season. He is a predator. He is the first out the door in the morning and the last to return after sundown. He probably is the only one who knows about the ghostly old 10-pointer rutting on the most distant edge of the property.

Camps are places where more bull is shot than deer; yet, their purpose is to provide opportunities to kill a deer, to lug it back to camp, to brag about it, to put it on the meat pole, then to take it into town, to butcher it, wrap it, share it, freeze it, mount it and maybe hang it on the wall. It is a snug feeling to have a buck on the meat pole with your tag on it, meaning you can sleep in the next morning.

If your camp abuts the national forest, chances are there aren’t as many deer as there once were. The woods, like the people in camp, are growing older and becoming less productive, but regardless of success members come back anyway, year after year, because it is deer camp, and they belong. It probably is where their dad hunted and where their grandkids will hunt.

They’d rather be here than anyplace else; well, most anyplace. There is one major exception. Many camps pretty much shut down by noon on Thanksgiving Day, as the occupants faithfully trudge home for a meal with their other family.