Deer Season 2018 – Part 2

 

In Deer Season 2018 – Part 1 I told about some of the preparations I made earlier in the year: planting a food plot; clearing my shooting lanes; putting out mineral supplements; and checking my game cameras; etc.

Well that part was fun, but this is the best.

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Yes, the 2018/19 deer season has begun in earnest now.  With the September 15 opening of the bow season, Missouri sportsmen and women have begun to enjoy their favorite part of the year.

The day before the season opened I checked my game cams and the one on the bottom ground had a picture of one of the eight pointers I’ve “set my sights on” for this season.  The time stamp on the picture showed that it would have been legal shooting hours, if it had been the next day.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get out in the field for the first couple weeks of the season but I was lucky, I mean UN-lucky, enough to get sick last week.

I took a couple days off from work to recuperate.  The second day I was feeling better but it wasn’t until the third day, when I was off work anyway, that I felt well enough to shoulder my crossbow and backpack and make my way through the predawn darkness to my bottom-ground blind.

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As I sat in the blind waiting for the sun to come up and bring with it legal shooting hours, I caught a glimpse of a dark shadow ghosting through the dark night.  I could tell it was most likely a deer but I didn’t raise my crossbow.  Hey, the laws are set up for the good of all, not to cause hunters frustration.

Anyway, I glimpsed three different “shadow deer” moving back and forth across the cut-over corn before the sun peeked over the horizon.  I saw a few more slickheads after good light but they were well-outside my reasonable range.  So I sat quietly while the deer ate fallen corn and played in the field.

Yeah, I enjoyed that.

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I heard the tiniest fluttering and cut my eyes to the right to see a tiny wren perched on the screen hanging down from one of the blind’s openings.  I slowly turned and saw the bird look around the interior.  It seemed to meet the little bird’s approval of a future nesting place, so he peeped, jumped and turned, and flew back out.

I smiled at my tiny friend’s antics.

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After the deer had left and been gone from the field for a while, I went back to the house for some breakfast and some hot coffee to mediate the chill that had seeped in from the predawn cold.

Later in the day, after I’d gotten a few things done, I started back out to the field.  Our big Bernese mountain dog mix, Zorro, and our German shepherd mix, Sarge, wanted to go with me.  I had to get progressively more stern with him each time I told them to stay home until the message finally got through…I thought.

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I continuously scanned the field as I walked quietly down the field road.  Suddenly I was startled by a loud rustling in the weed-choked drainage ditch beside the road.  Loud enough to startle me but not loud enough to be a deer.  I was curious to see what it was but knew I was unlikely to catch sight of it.

Wrong.

A fat cottontail burst out of the undergrowth and bounded down the road ahead of me before diving back into the brush.

Cool.

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Speaking of cool, it wasn’t…the temperature that is.  Where I had gotten chilled in the blind that morning, I was already sweating by the time I got to the blind that evening.  With the heat came the mosquitoes.  They buzzed around me but I think seeing the dozens of little biters bothered me more.  I wanted to swat them but knew that, as sure as I did, the movement would catch the eye of some wary deer, probably the buck I wanted to get.  I hadn’t been able to find the odor-free repellant I bought last year and the bugs hadn’t bothered me much in the morning so I’d not been too worried about the evening.

Bad choice.

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Honestly they didn’t bite me en mass as they sometimes do; they mostly buzzed around.  The few that did bite weren’t ravenous and I was able to kill them before they were able to drill deep into my epidermis.  And I was able to do it without moving too much, too fast, or too loudly…the trifecta of deer warning signs.

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Suddenly, I heard something moving toward me down the field road.  My first thought was, “Dang it!”.

I was right. It was Zorro.

Through the weeds I could barely see the big bear of a dog coming toward me.  Not wanting to alert my prey, I waited until the black bruiser got right in front of my blind, less than a yard away from me, then loud-whispered, “gidoudahere!”

It worked.  The big, fluffy, cuddly dog seemingly turned inside out in his haste to get away from his master’s disapproving voice.

I smiled.

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More birds’ antics kept me entertained and I could see a squirrel climbing through the limbs of a nearby tree but the boughs were so leafy that I couldn’t get a good view.

Then I heard something moving down the field road toward the blind.

Again, I thought I knew what it was and peered through the weeds to see…not Zorro but Sarge, trotting toward me.

I gritted my teeth.  I couldn’t help but think I have to go through this every stinkin’ season.  The dogs don’t go with me when I head to the stand because I tell them, “No!” but one or another of them eventually makes his way out to me.  Usually, if I can startle them enough, they’ll finally get the message.

When Sarge got to the same spot as Zorro had, I again loud-whispered, “gidoudahere!”

Worked like a charm.  He did the “inside-out dog” trick almost as well as his like-minded friend.

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Calm and quiet returned and the shadows in front of me began to lengthen.  The minutes were ticking away as I caught a glimpse of movement through the weeds to my left.  This time I knew it wasn’t one of the dogs.

The sleek doe glided out into the field.  She ate and moved, ate and moved, but she was a couple hundred yards away and not getting any closer to me.

Knowing that I wouldn’t be able to hunt again for a couple weeks I had decided to try for the first deer I got a reasonable chance at that weekend.  If I was successful we’d have meat for the freezer.  Either way the resident deer herd would have time to get over the trauma somewhat before I went out again.

In one of those things you do without ever really believing it will work, I tried to mentally will the deer to come my way before legal light was gone.  The doe began to move with purpose…

…away from me.

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“Figures,” I muttered under my breath.  Then the doe stopped, turned, and started trotting my way.

I breathed, “Dang.”

Or something like that.

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As she got closer, she also moved generally toward the field road… the one my blind was set up beside.  If she kept going the direction she was, she would pass directly in front of me and about 15 feet away.  When she kept coming I quickly clicked off the safety and turned on the red-dot reticle in my scope.  The crossbow was resting on my leg and the monopod so I raised it and leveled it in the proper direction.  Amazingly, the doe stopped exactly where I wanted her to.  As she came to a halt she turned her head toward me so that her left foreleg was slightly ahead and her right was slightly back.

The deer was crouched slightly so I knew I had only a fraction of a second before she exploded into a run.  The top dot wobbled into the right area and I pulled the trigger.

I heard the “whump!” as the crossbow’s limbs straightened instantly and I clearly heard the “thwack!” of the bolt hitting home.

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The doe took off but I knew by her reaction that it had been a good hit.  She was still going strong as she entered the ditch separating our farm from the south neighbor, but my gut told me she was already dead; she was running on adrenaline alone.

Standard procedure among bowhunters is to wait at least an hour, or better, overnight, after losing sight of a hit deer.  It gives them time to bleed out or lie down and stiffen up.

As I sat and waited, my eye caught a familiar red and white pattern on the ground at the spot where the doe had been standing when I shot her.  The crossbow bolt had passed completely through the deer and dropped to the ground to lie there partially covered by cornstalks.

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I texted a couple of my sons who I thought might be able to help me look for the deer the following morning.  One was at work and didn’t answer, and the other begged off.

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Suddenly I caught movement out of the corner of my eye.  Another slickhead stepped into the field from my right.  It moved toward the spot where I’d shot the doe.  I knew I had just filled one of my bow season tags and I had another left.  For some reason my mind wouldn’t verify for me that I’d gotten two any-deer tags or an any-deer and an antlerless only tag.  I was sure but not positive.

Yeah.

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Anyway, I wanted to save a tag in case I get a chance at one of the bucks in the next three months.  So, since I already had my phone in my hand I raised it and, while still holding my crossbow to keep from making more noise by dropping it, I videoed the deer as it moved into easy bow range.  There it stopped and realized that something was wrong.  I was videoing through my crossbow as the slick pivoted and ran off the way it had come.

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Even though I couldn’t see my deer I was 100% positive that she was dead just across the line on the neighbor’s land.  I was sure enough that I called Annie and asked her to bring the truck so that I could look for my deer before all sunlight was gone.

When Annie arrived I asked her to wait while I searched.  She didn’t seem excited by the idea but agreed.  I put my bow and gear in the pickup bed and started trailing.

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I first went to the place I’d last seen the doe.  I found a couple little, pepper-sized drops of blood on a grass stem.  Down in the ditch I looked for the path of least resistance and moved that way, scanning for blood or a dead deer.  I found a couple more freckles of blood.  I ducked under a low limb and stepped out into a path the neighbor uses to ride his four-wheeler around to check his land.  I looked to my right.  Nothing.  I looked to my left and there, about ten feed off the trail, I saw a patch of white.

I knew what it was.

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It was obvious that she had died as soon as she got to that spot, less than 50 yards from where I’d shot her.

I had been right.

I stood for a moment, feeling those emotions that so many other hunters feel.  Awe at how beautiful she was; elated that I had collected that much food for my family; and, yes, a twinge of remorse at taking her life.

I bent, placed my hand on her flank, and said…

“Thank you my sister.”

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And thankful I am.

 

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