Not one of his parishioners wanted to take preacher Enoch Thaddeus Larsen deer hunting on opening day for fear his bad heart would give out in the woods.
Larsen’s wife, Ruth, told the story to her grandson, Clyde Blakely, who believes it happened in the mid-1950s or early 1960s when Larsen was the preacher at the Baptist Church in Canyonville, Ore.
Mrs. Larsen said she had a deer tag and agreed to take her husband hunting. They drove to a small hill where his friends were hunting. Taking a breather as they hiked up the hill, they looked down and spotted a buck deer calmly walking down the road toward their parked car. Dropping the deer right behind the car’s trunk, they thanked the Lord and had started back down when they saw another buck approaching the fallen deer. They shot it, too.
As his hapless hunting friends drove home empty handed, they were surprised to see their “weak hearted” pastor, smiling as he dressed out two deer strung up on the church’s entryway.
One wonders if that Sunday’s sermon was titled “Deer Friends are Hard to Find.”
Source: Larsen, Ruth A. Personal interview with the writer