Deer Hunting 2017, Part 5

 

When I ended Part 4 I had just dropped the poor walking skeleton of a young buck I’d been trailing through the woods.

Our youngest dog, Buttercup, had alerted me to the deer’s presence.  When I saw how sick the poor animal was, I decided to put it out of its misery.  The dogs had joined me in the pursuit, but appeared puzzled by the buck. They seemed to lose interest in the little deer almost as soon as he fell.  I walked up to him to make sure he was deceased.

He was.

Moving his right foreleg exposed the disgusting wound that almost certainly would have ensured a long, lingering death, if he hadn’t died from exposure to the low temperatures first.

Instead, his life ended, mercifully, by my hand.

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I took a few pictures on my cell phone just in case the MDC (Missouri Department of Conservation) wanted them, and went back to the house to warm up and make a call.  Our county agent didn’t answer his phone immediately, which makes sense as it was, after all, Christmas morning.  He was probably celebrating Santa Clause’s visit with his kids and wanted to filter his phone calls.  Once I’d left him a voicemail I tried to reach the regional office, even though I figured nobody would be there that day.  They weren’t.  I left a message there too.

Since I’d exhausted all the places I knew of to report the unlucky animal, I prepared to telecheck my kill.  I didn’t intend to use any part of the young buck but I had shot him to assuage his suffering and was willing to give up one of my tags to keep it legal.

Within seconds my phone indicated that a text had come in.  It hadn’t rung so I’d missed the call.  It does that sometimes.  The text was from my conservation agent saying he’d call me again in a few minutes.  To keep from missing his call I held off on telechecking the deer.  It’s good I did because, after getting the details of the situation from me, he told me to dispose of the carcass and not to waste my tag.  I was glad to comply.

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Since the unfortunate deer was in the woods and about as far from our house as it could get on our land, I left it where it fell, but returned to place a game camera near it.  I wanted to get photos of any scavengers that visited the carcass.

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I had taken the week off from work to hunt the alternative weapons portion but a minor family emergency kept me from doing so until the third-to-last day of that season.  It was time for me to adjust my priority from the wall to the freezer.  Rather than continuing to hold out for a trophy, the pressure was growing to settle for just meat

That day the sun moved downward and deer wandered out into the open area to feed on our wheat.  With two days remaining in the alternative weapons portion of the season, I thought it might be a good opportunity to get a little video.

Not taking my eyes off the deer I reached into the pack to pull out the camera.  As I did so, my rifle slipped.  I clamped down on the weapon but it still clanked against the edge of the metal stand.

Nine sets of eyes laser beamed me for a split second as flags raised in alarm.  Seven deer ran southward and disappeared into the woods.  The twins moved that way but one of them stayed in the clearing.  Eventually all the other deer returned but it was too dark to get video, or for a safe sure shot.  I stayed in the stand until they all wandered away before I climbed down and went home.

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The next night I was in the stand with plenty of time before dark.  Within minutes I heard something in the woods behind me…something on four legs.  I instantly knew what it was.

Slo-o-o-owly I turned just in case I was wrong.

I wasn’t.

“Zorro, you idiot,” I almost said aloud.  The big Bernese Mountain dog who had recently come home to live with us again had tracked me to the stand.  I waited until he was in the gully directly below the stand.  As sharply as I could, I loud-whispered, “GET outa here!”  The big dog swapped ends so fast he seemed to turn inside out as he fled through the dry leaves.

I honestly don’t know if I had been louder than I intended or if it was the sound of the dog running through the woods that did it but I glanced back to the clearing which had been empty moments before, only to see two deer running away through the woods across from me.  I didn’t get a good enough look to tell if either was my buck but, judging by the one flag I saw, at least that one was full grown and big enough that, yeah, it could have been him.

“Dang it!” I said.

Or something like that.

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The extra layers of insulation I’d added to my hunting outfit after Christmas day did a better job of holding out the cold despite the fact that the mercury had sagged since the holiday.  The light waned but I could still see fairly well when the twin yearlings walked out and started grazing on our crop.  I had passed on shooting them for so long that I was in no hurry to do so.  They were soon joined by seven other slick heads so I waited for a clear shot, then lined up on a doe who looked like she would provide a good amount of meat.

My slow trigger squeeze was followed by a loud, “Boom!”  When the smoke cleared I expected to see the big doe waiting to be converted to venison chili.  Instead I saw the twins taking to the woods to my west and several others heading for the trees to the south.  The big doe and a couple others had moved off a few feet and stopped.  Stopped!  They didn’t even seem particularly scared!

What the…?!

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As I struggled to reload my front-stuffer without alerting the deer any more than the sound already had, I replayed the scene in my mind.  I remembered the front sight being right where it should have been.  I hadn’t jerked the trigger.  I had seen a puff of dust after the shot but figured either the bullet had passed through or one of the nearby deer had kicked it up when it jumped at the sound.

As I reloaded, the three deer stood more or less uncomfortably.  One of them started to graze but the doe I’d shot at decided it was time to go and they all raised their tails and trotted away.  That’s right, TROTTED away.  They STILL weren’t scared!

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It was getting darker so I called Patrick and asked him to bring the pickup and a couple flashlights.  Then I climbed down, finished the reload, and started looking for blood or any sign of a wounded deer.

Nothing!

When Patrick got there he helped me search.  We scoured the clearing as the light faded, then explored the woods.  We could find NO sign of a wounded deer.

Nothing!

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The next day I picked up my muzzle loader to go back out and search for any sign of a wounded deer.  As I did, I looked the weapon over.  The rear sight caught my eye.  Sure enough, it was much farther up the ramp than I remembered it being.

When the rifle had slipped as I tried to get the video camera out of the backpack, the sight had hit the side of the stand.  With the rear sight higher than it should be, the rifle would have hit high…right about where I’d seen the puff of dust after my shot.

Dang!  I had to be running out of bad luck!  I just had to!

It turns out I wasn’t quite out of bad luck yet.

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How did my 2017/2018 deer season finish out?  You’ll have to wait until I post the final installment of this year’s deer hunting escapades to find out.

 

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(below) I put a game camera up near the carcass of the unfortunate deer I put out of its misery.  This is one of the coyotes that made use of the disgusting flesh.  Sick deer equals healthy coyote.  Nature has a way of wasting nothing.