MINNEAPOLIS — When the Minnesota firearms deer season opened early Saturday morning, Sheldon Weston toted a Marlin lever-action .30-30 rifle to his stand.

Also along, like memories he couldn’t shake, were recollections of long-ago hunts with his dad and brothers near their Roseau, Minn., home, on the Minnesota-Canadian border.

Now 63 years old, Sheldon was 14 when he bought the Marlin, a true brush-buster.

As a boy, he killed a nice buck with it, an 8-pointer, and on this 2026 opener, as daylight gathered through the aspens in central Minnesota, with the temperature hovering in the low 30s, he hoped to shoulder the rifle one more time, and squeeze its trigger.

He also hoped his son, Dallas, and daughter, Stevie Lee, who were on stands in opposite corners of the 40-acre plot they hunted, would see deer, and perhaps shoot one.

Whether they did or not, at breakfast later that morning, they would have stories to tell. Perhaps Dallas would see the bobcat that roamed the property. Or Stevie Lee would spot a bear or a timber wolf. Or a wild turkey or a ruffed grouse.

However exciting it might be to swing a 10-pointer from a meat pole on this first day of the season, this was why Sheldon bought his property — for the camaraderie, and the stories.

“We haven’t dragged any really big bucks off this land, not yet,” Sheldon said. “But there are a lot of good times we share around the campfire, talking. To have your own place, and to be able to look up at the stars at night, is great. It’s a feeling of gratitude that you have a piece of the pie you can call your own.”

Now retired from teaching in Sauk Rapids-Rice schools, Sheldon coached hockey for 31 years, the last six in Monticello. He had skated for Roseau in high school and for St. Cloud State in college, so the transition to coaching came naturally.

Six years ago, he realized a longtime dream and bought his own hunting land. Privacy was one reason. But more than that, he wanted a place where friends and family could gather, especially in autumn.

And not necessarily during the autumns that poets rhapsodize about, in which chromatic leaves cascade gracefully to a forest floor, backlit by October’s low sun.

Minnesota’s firearms whitetail hunters often experience autumns quite different from those. Neither, as Albert Camus professed, “a second spring when every leaf is a flower,” nor “the year’s last, loveliest smile,” as William Cullen Bryant claimed, Minnesota’s November deer seasons often transpire beneath steel-gray skies while chilled north winds curl and bluster through bare-limbed trees. Foretelling the cold months to come, the season’s last ducks, buffleheads and bluebills, along with tundra swans, arrow overhead.

Immerse a 14-year-old Roseau kid, or any kid, in this environment, and he, or she, might spend a lifetime trying to relive its sights, sounds and smells.

And try to relive as well the feeling of a knife pressed against a deer’s belly, the animal still and dead.

Meat for the freezer. A story for the campfire.

And a memory for a lifetime.

“Until my dad passed away seven or eight years ago, I kept going up to Roseau to hunt,” Sheldon said. “After that, it wasn’t long before I said to myself, ‘It’s time to buy your own hunting land.’ ”

First on Sheldon’s to-do list was clearing some of his 40 acres. Next, for sleeping quarters, he bought a 40-foot steel shipping container.

“Shipping containers aren’t as difficult as you might think to cut windows and doors into,” he said. “I spray-foamed insulation into it and covered the insides with plywood. Two years later, I bought a second shipping crate, this one a 20-footer, which I use as a garage and storage area.”

An outhouse was next. Then, knowing the size and shape of the larger crate wouldn’t provide an ideal eating area, Sheldon built a 12-by-16-foot cook shack and gathering place, complete with a table, chairs, heat and, as a bonus, a shower.

For electricity, he installed solar panels, batteries and an inverter, backed up by a generator. Last summer, he upped the ante and brought power in from the nearest road.

He also built a guest cabin and a sauna.

“If you’re up there for a week, you want a sauna and a shower, and I’ve got both,” he said.

For deer stands, Sheldon used garage doors a friend gave him that had been damaged in shipping. Spacious and comfortable, one stand overlooks a 7-acre field. Two others are perched in opposite corners of the property.

“YouTube was where I learned how to plant food plots for wildlife, and that’s been a lot of fun,” Sheldon said. “Killing weeds and planting food that deer and other wildlife will eat really isn’t that hard. Winter rye works well.”

The first year he and his son hunted the property, they were blanked. Stevie Lee has since taken hunter education and joins them on opening weekends.

In recent years they have taken one good buck off the property, and a mix of younger bucks and does.

On Saturday’s opener, Sheldon, Dallas and Stevie Lee were in their stands by 5:30 a.m., an hour or so before shooting.

The morning was crisp, with low-hanging fog, and the three were optimistic. Bucks had been chasing does on their trail cameras for a week.

At 7, to the north, off their property, three rapidly successive shots rang out.

Pop! Pop! Pop!

Sheldon thought, Three quick shots, three quick misses.

An hour later, from a different direction, three more shots followed.

Then, save for the restless chirp of a black chickadee, and the leaf-rustling of a squirrel light-footing it across the forest floor, silence returned to the woods.

Breakfast was at 11, bacon, eggs and hash browns, with Sheldon presiding.

Another day in deer camp, with more to come.

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