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Note: Tony loved to hunt and fish. He said that Dan Polacci took him on his first fishing trip.
EXCERPT FROM A LETTER WRITTEN BY TRACY DEVAULT IN 2018
I would like tell you a little about the family you're about to marry into. I thought I might start by telling you about Judy's father (Katie's great-grandfather). Judy's dad was Anthony Joseph "Tony" Vergilio. (Tony died in 2012.) As his name might indicate, Tony was from an Italian family. These people were not just Italians in name only, these people were very proud of their Italian heritage. When I started going with Judy (we were high school sweethearts and went together for five years before we were married) I became immersed in her large Italian family. Someday I will share a little more of Judy's Italian family history. Judy's grandfather was born in Italy and her maternal great-grandparents were both born in Italy. These families immigrated to the U.S. in the early 1900s. However, Katie tells us that you have an interest in guns and hunting. I thought, in this letter, I would tell you a little about Tony Vergilio's lifelong interest in hunting and fishing. Tony was about 45 years old when I first met him. He had been hunting and fishing most of his adult life. Other than his family, hunting and fishing were his primary interests outside work. All of Tony's friends shared his interest in hunting and fishing. Tony had worked for the Douglas Aircraft Company during World War II. Later he went to work for the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) which later became the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). He was working for the FAA when I first met him and his government job gave him lots of annual leave that he used to indulge in his hunting and fishing hobbies. Tony was involved in all aspects of his hobbies. He made his own fishing lures and even invented a small, portable scale to weigh fish. Hunting, however, was where he really spent most of his recreation time. Tony hunted all over the western United States, Canada and Alaska. Tony reloaded his own ammunition and even converted several military rifles to "sporterized" hunting rifles. Two of Tony's custom rifles were given to me. One was a sporterized M1903 Springfield chambered for the Springfield 30-06 cartridge. This was the most beautiful rifle I had ever seen. It had a blond thumb-hole stock and all traces of the original iron sights had been removed. Tony did most of the customization himself. The barrels were turned smooth in a lathe. The barrel and action parts were polished and then blued in wooden trays that Tony built. Unfortunately, the M1903 Springfield was never much of a gun and even with Tony's improvements, it felt like a piece of junk. I eventually sold it for a lot of money. The second rifle that he gave me was a sporterized rifle with a Mannlicher action. I will have to do some research to determine the model and origins of this particular rifle. Tony picked this particular action because it is really strong. This is a nice looking rifle, although not as pretty at the sporterized M1903 mentioned above. Tony had it chambered for the 300 Winchester Magnum cartridge. This is a really flat-shooting rifle and the cartridge will knock down anything I ever expect to shoot at. I'm going to tell you about the first time I went hunting with Tony. Let me say that it took me a long time to get a college degree. I had gotten off to a very rocky start and Judy and I were married before I had very many college credits. By the time I graduated (with a degree in mechanical engineering), I was almost 30 years old. We owned a house, two cars and had two children. That was in 1971. Prior to graduation, I did not have the time to go off with Tony on one of his week-long hunts. Tony usually hunted with his friends. Four of them would go in together to get tags for certain hunts. This year they had been drawn for elk and deer hunting in Colorado and antelope hunting in Wyoming. He asked me if I wanted to come along. I had not been part of the group that put in for the tags. Tony said that I could use his tags and he would show me what he could about hunting. I would do the shooting and Tony would watch. Sounded like a great idea to me. It was kind of a reward for sticking through eleven years of night school. The first hunt was for cow elk. Tony and I met the others at a packer's ranch in Colorado. The packer provided horses for Tony, the others and all of their gear. I backpacked in with my gear. I had been backpacking for years but this was luxury camping. The packer provided a large tent with a stove for heating. All sorts of heavy gear was packed in on the pack animals. The following morning was the first day of hunting season. We got up about 4:00 a.m.. It was really cold. Tony and I went off by ourselves. We hiked for at least an hour. It was absolutely pitch black. I have no idea how Tony found his way through the forest. We eventually stopped and sat on a couple of downed logs. I was carrying the 300 Winchester Magnum. The minute we stopped walking I got really cold. I was excited about hunting but I don't think I have ever been that cold, before or since. Finally it began to get a little lighter. Still really dark but I could just make out that we were sitting behind some fallen trees at the edge of a very large meadow. Ten or so minutes later I realized that there were 30 or 40 elk bedded down in the meadow. All at once they all got up and started to move out. I picked out a large cow and tried to see it through the scope. As soon as I could see it moving in the scope I took my shot. The elk dropped and the rest immediately took off. Tony and I spent the morning field dressing the elk. This was a big animal we were going to need the packer and his horses to move it. When we finally got back to camp the others were already there. I was the only one that had had a shot. The next day Tony took me out to get a deer. We had a buck tag. We did not get up anywhere near as early. About 9:00 a.m. we got to a place that Tony had scouted out on some previous trip. Again we hid in the trees at a spot where we could look out across a meadow. Eventually this big buck with a great four-point rack began to move through the trees on the far side of the meadow. I eventually got a shot and we had our buck. Time for my second lesson in field dressing a large animal. A couple of days later we needed to move on to an antelope hunt in Wyoming. None of the others had even taken a shot. The first day in Wyoming we all hiked a long ways. Eventually we spotted a small herd of antelope a long ways off and moving away. It was decided that we could hike around a hill, up a canyon and come up on a ridge on the opposite side of the antelope herd. An hour or so later we very carefully crawled on our bellies to peek over this ridge. The herd of antelope had stopped well short of the ridge. They were estimated to be 400 yards away - way too far for a shot. It was decided to move to somewhere else. I asked Tony if I could try for a shot. He said that at that distance I would have to aim about five inches high. I laid my jacket on the top of the ridge and laid the 300 Winchester Magnum across the jacket. (It was still Tony's rifle.) I could not bring myself to aim above the antelope so I aimed for the very highest point of the shoulders of one of the animals. Boom! Tony always took his game meat into a local butcher to have it cut up, packaged, frozen and packed in dry ice. This took two or three days. Eventually we were headed back home. Out of the five of us, I was the only one that had fired a shot and I had three kills. This was really a testament to Tony's skill at getting me to a spot where I would have a shot. Over the next few years I went with Tony on a couple of more hunts. These were all deer hunts. I had learned enough that I could get a deer on my own. We always got our deer. I have one more Tony story to share. Well, one more in this letter. When I first met Tony, he and Ione (Ione was Tony's wife) had this huge Ben Hur chest freezer. I think it was capable of storing 25 cubic feet of frozen food. When Judy and I moved into our first house, he decided to give us the freezer. They bought a much smaller and easier to use upright freezer. Whenever Tony came back from a hunt, he would store some of his game meat at our house in his old freezer. For the first ten years of our marriage, Judy and I and our kids ate mostly game meat. Judy can give you lots of guidance on how to fix moose, elk and venison. (We have eaten antelope, javelina and bear but I would not do it again On one of Tony's trips he went to British Columbia for moose. He shot this enormous cow moose. I think he told me that dressed out and packaged it weighed around 450 pounds. He brought it over to our place first and we filled the almost empty freezer to the brim. He was careful to tell us that he was just using the freezer to store the meat. We could have a couple of packages but the rest was his. (Moose is better eating than most beef you get in the market.) Tony took the rest home and filled his upright freezer plus gave some of it away. Two years later he came over to get some of his moose. I was pretty embarrassed. There were only a couple of packages of it left.
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