Grandson Sir (Sean Robert Irwin: in monograms, the last initial is in the middle, hence “sIr”) turned 4 years old right before deer gun season opened. He had already been introduced to dove hunting with his BB gun (shot one, too) so it was natural for him to ask to be included on a deer hunt. His Uncle Adam assumed the leadership role one afternoon last month.

I had already been introduced to the newest (as far as I was concerned) quirk that the younger generation has come up with for hunting: cell phone texting. While I don’t have the capacity, mental or technological, to return text messages, I can get them. So Adam had earlier suggested that I take my cell phone, on meeting ring, to the woods with me so he could “warn you if a buck’s coming your way.”

I put the thing in my shirt pocket and had forgotten about it, when I got a slight buzz on my chest. I wasn’t seeing any deer right then so I dug it out and looked at his message. He was watching four deer coming from my direction toward him. I listened for a shot, but got another buzz in just a few minutes.

“Misfire! Clicked, & ran when I pumped gun. Primer hit by firing pin, but didn’t go off, durnit!”

So, the afternoon we were readying Sir to deer hunt, we took our cell phones again. I didn’t want this to become a habit, but agreed that this was a special occasion. We split up headed to our stands, Sir bundled up and clumping along behind his “Unca Adimal,” chattering away about the sights he was seeing. I had taken Adam hunting when he was about this age, and don’t remember him being so vocal. Matter of fact, I had taken Sir with me on an earlier hunt, and he was quiet until we topped a bluff bank, the bottom spread out before us, at which point he exclaimed in a shout, “Oh, Wow! DOOTS! DOO-OOTS!!”

Doots is Betsy’s grandmother name, just as mine became Grunk (short for Granddaddy Uncle Bob), and was her nickname as a child. Her father’s parents had emigrated from Germany and called her after their homeland, “Deutsch,” which became “Doots,” so she reclaimed it for the grandsons. Betsy was nowhere around, ‘way back at the house at Brownspur, so I have no idea why Sir called her.

At any rate, the chatter faded as the distance between us increased, until I could no longer hear my companions. I got to my stand, settled in, and not a half hour later felt that buzz on my chest. I extracted the phone and clicked on the message: “N case U havn’t heard us, we B on stand: chatter chatter.”

Within another half hour, I got another buzz: “I gotta com up with a better word for futile.”

I thought about that one for a few minutes, grinning and recalling when Adam and The Jakes used to spend the nights at our house, and the noise level upstairs late at night would gradually rise to the point at which I’d step to the bottom of the spiral staircase and bellow, “Shut the hell up, or go the hell outside!”

That worked for a few years, but then one night I heard Birdlegs exclaim after a brief pause, “Let’s go outside!”

I had to find a better way to shut them up.

Uncle Adam was having those type thoughts himself now.

“There is NO way U cannot be hearing us!”

Turned out that Sir had discovered the joys of sliding down the steep bluff, to the point at which his Unca Adimal would grab his coat collar and haul him back up. Of course, I’m a little hard of hearing myownself so I really had not detected any commotion, although I did not see a deer — or any other game, for that matter — that afternoon.

Finally, just before dusk, I got a final buzz: “He’s had enuff; we headed in.”

I chuckled and got up to meet them on the trail, which was the occasion for a brief silence. At first, when Sir saw me, he exclaimed “Grunk!” Then as he surveyed the camo-bundled figure approaching through the dusk, he drew back and reached up to clasp his Unca Adimal’s hand.

“Is that Grunk?” I heard him stage whisper.

Ah, the joy of breaking in a young hunter, improved by modern technology!

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Robert Hitt Neill is an outdoors writer. He lives in Leland, Miss.