Every so often, you run into a person who is an absolute inspiration. Eben “Ben” Thomas of Winthrop is one of those people.
Ben has already shot his doe this year from his treestand at a favorite hunting spot on the 160 acres of land his son Eben Thomas owns in Winthrop. He and his wife Susan live in their own home and he drives around in his Chevy Silverado 1500 pickup truck — a Maine staple.
Sounds like a pretty normal life, but there is a twist. Most people his age are in senior living, memory care, assisted living, a nursing home or living with family. Not Ben. He is just too busy living his life to act his age.
The 90-year-old Master Maine Guide and retired teacher, guidance counselor and insurance agent is still teaching people about the hunting, fishing and outdoor recreation he loves.
When he retired from teaching U.S. history and Problems of Democracy and being a guidance counselor at Winthrop High School at age 52, he thought he would guide a few days and golf a couple others. Instead he joined the real estate and insurance company his wife had started in Winthrop. Susan and Ben retired from Thomas Agency in 1998, leaving it to their son.
Ben has a sharp memory for details.
He recalled that he traveled via train from New Jersey to Maine alone as a child and one time caused his mother terrible worry because he was at the wrong station in Boston and missed his train. He got on the next one and soon put his mother’s fears to rest.
“I traveled alone on trains a lot in the 1940s,” he said. “It was safer then.”
His father taught him to hunt ducks in New Jersey. But his father died in a hunting accident when Ben was about 11 years old, he said.
His father was hunting crows, going from field to field. He apparently hadn’t unloaded his gun between fields and he did the thing he always told Ben not to do — he grabbed the gun by the barrel to take it out of the vehicle. The loaded gun went off, killing Ben’s father.
“That rocked my world,” he said.
His mother eventually married his father’s best friend and the family moved to Maine where his stepfather bought Yarmouth Boathouse. Ben graduated from Yarmouth High School. He had attended Boys State at the University of Maine while at Yarmouth. It was his only experience with college so he chose to go to UMaine for his degree.
Ben was a canoeist in the 1960s when it hadn’t taken off yet as its own sport. When the canoe racing circuit started up, he traveled around the state participating in each race. He has written three books on whitewater canoeing, the first of which was “No Horns Blowing, A Guide to Canoeing 10 Great Rivers in Maine.” He has written four fictional adventure/romance novels on a treasure hunting theme. “Scuba Gold” and “Code Breaker” are two of them.
Ben also guided trips on the Allagash Wilderness Waterway and was one of the first canoeists to paddle it after its state designation. He is an avid fly fisherman and fishes for stripers as well. His license plate says “Flyrod1.”
He just liked to help people enjoy the outdoors and never used his guide training to make a living, Ben said.
Ben usually hunts within a gunshot of family in case he needs help, but he hunts alone. Arthritis in his back makes it difficult for him to walk any great distance so he uses walking sticks for stability and rides his four-wheeler to his treestand.
He has a rope system for raising his unloaded 30.06 single-shot lever-action Ruger and his hunting pack with all of his extra items to the top of the 15-foot treestand he has used for the last 15 years or so. Then he climbs up the ladder, taking his time.
One time, he was in a hurry and didn’t use the rope system to lower his gun and pack, he said. He slung the gun on his shoulder and started down the ladder. The weight of the gun put him off balance and next thing he knew, he was on the back side of the ladder instead of the front and hanging on by one hand. He finally got a grip and climbed carefully down the back side.
The incident scared him a little so he uses his rope system all of the time now.
The ATV and the rope system are really the two biggest adjustments he’s had to make to accommodate his age. He also needs help loading his dead deer onto the truck.
His son, Eben, said the family, including Ben’s grandson ,Eben Thomas II, has tried to convince him to sit in a ground blind so that he doesn’t have to climb the ladder anymore. But Ben just shook his head when Eben talked about it Friday.
In this year’s hunt, Ben was watching the field for deer from his treestand. He looked to his left and saw a doe standing about 100 yards from the woods. He hadn’t seen or heard it come into the field. He shot the doe and it jumped twice before dropping.
Ben lowered his gun and pack from the treestand, then rode the four-wheeler toward where the deer fell. He couldn’t find it after looking for a bit, so he called his son.
He almost ran over it. It was nestled in the tall, brown grass out of view. He said he didn’t dare leave it until his son got there because he would never find it again.
They hooked the deer onto the ATV with a rope, which was old and broke shortly after they started pulling. They finally got it into the truck and took it elsewhere to gut it so they wouldn’t attract coyotes to their hunting grounds.
That’s meat for the freezer. Now it’s time to find a big buck.
Ben said he uses a single-shot rifle out of his sense of fairness in a hunt.
“I figure if I am in a treestand but only have a single shot, it evens things up” between him and the deer, Ben said.
