Deer Season 2018 Part 5

The Bad Luck Buck

A lot has happened since November 5, 2018, which was the day I posted Part 4 of Deer Season 2018.  My changing work schedule greatly reduced my free time for writing and put me in the unfortunate position of often emphasizing posts I could write quickly rather than the posts I needed to think more about or, in general, spend more time on. 

Thus, I am just now getting around to part five.

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I’m glad to finally return to it because the 2018 season was a good one.  I had lots of fun, relaxation, and even put some meat in the freezer.

The fall colors expanded around the farm and gained intensity.  The quiet time I spent on stand was so pleasant as I enjoyed the blazing beauty.  The days also cooled as they shortened which, generally, made them even more comfortable for me.

A-a-a-ah.

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I saw deer just about every day I went out.  Fawns, yearlings, mature does and bucks, all came around to visit me.  I left them unmolested since I had filled my antlerless-only bow tag with the doe earlier and was still hanging onto my any deer tag and holding out hope that one of the shooter-bucks I’d seen would get within range.

Oh, I did see the shooter-bucks during bow season, but they always stayed just out of range of my crossbow.

Well, not ALL-ways.

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One day a deer walked a-a-a-all the way across the lower 40, a full ¼ mile, just before the sun peeked above the horizon.  The way he walked told me it was most likely a buck, but, in the low light within the legal ½ hour before sunrise, I just couldn’t make out any antlers, so I fished the video camera out of my backpack and aimed it at him.  Looking at the viewfinder I still couldn’t see antlers.  Thus I never raised my crossbow.

It was only later that I looked at the video on my computer and saw that the buck was indeed an eight pointer and, while on the small side, would make an acceptable last-minute tag-filler and, probably, a tasty addition to my freezer.

I’d keep him in mind.

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One morning, again in the low light of pre-dawn, my peripheral vision picked out a shadowy figure trundling toward me on the field road.  It was way too small to be a deer and clearly smaller than a bobcat.  Was it a raccoon?  No, it didn’t have the quick light-footed glide of that little brother to the bear.  Nor was it narrow like an opossum of the same height.  There were no hops like a cottontail and no stop-n-go pacing of an armadillo.

It drew closer.  Not a fox or coyote.  Not a dog.  Not a cat.  A few steps closer and it was within a few feet of the spot where I sat.  And that’s when a narrow beam of light from the moon cut through the cloud cover to illuminate the little animal.  The body was pitch black with two narrow white stripes splitting it in half lengthwise.

Skunk.  Skunk?  Skunk!

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Skunks are beautiful and harmless to anything bigger than a bullfrog…unless…unless they perceive a threat.  Then they spray a stream of strong-smelling, eye-watering musk with pinpoint accuracy.  The liquid is strong enough to turn most predators away quite effectively.   Even the skunk doesn’t like the smell so he uses it sparingly, reserving it for life-threatening danger.

I wasn’t planning on bothering the little mustelid so I enjoyed watching him for the couple seconds it took him to get right in front of me.

Then he turned and trotted directly toward me.

Di-rect-ly to-ward me!

Then the skunk disappeared below my sight.

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You see, I usually leave the entrance to my pop-up blind unzipped to keep from making any unnecessary noise as I enter or exit, so it was completely unzipped and just wide enough to allow a skunk easy access to the back-side of my hiding spot.

A million thoughts flashed through my mind even as I heard something lightly brushing the side of the tent.  Had it claimed my blind as its winter den?  I hadn’t noticed any skunk smell all season so far, but that didn’t mean it hadn’t checked the place out the previous night, intending to come back tonight.  Was it smelling the mouse who had investigated me a few days before, and was looking now for a meal of rodent ratatouille?  More to the point, would it enter my blind only to find itself in tight quarters with a massive, camouflaged beast just the right size to gobble down a poor helpless skunk?

I mean almost-helpless.

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Just as I was debating whether a sedentary middle-aged fat man could dive safely through a window hardly big enough to aim a bow through, I barely made out the sound of the skunk making his way through the dry weeds behind my hidey-hole.

I breathed a quiet sigh of relief.

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A few mornings after my close call with the stink-weasel, I was walking back toward the house when I heard our dogs making a ruckus in the woods across the road from me.  I knew instantly what it was.

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The maximum speed limit on the road in front of our house is 45 MPH, according to a sheriff’s deputy I once asked.  Anybody with any sense should have no trouble understanding that a pair of blind curves through woods and fields is NOT the place to drive even THAT fast.  The stretch of road from below our house to the top of the hill is a veritable killing-ground for animals and, sometimes, very nearly, people.

Last summer I was walking with a few members of my family to see the northwest corner of our property.  I had voiced my opinion that it was a dangerous walk for little ones.  Despite my warning, I was outvoted, and went along just in case I could make a difference in a bad situation.  It was a good thing I did.

We were walking back downhill at one of the curves and the road-ditch was too close to walk off the side.  A man was driving uphill toward us and doing so slowly and safely enough that I felt comfortable not spouting my usual, “stupid idiots drive WAY too fast on this stupid road.”  He even waved and nodded as he approached.

The woman flying downhill in an SUV behind us didn’t do any of that.   When I say flying, I MEAN FLYING! 

I tried to herd my family off the road and into the ditch but they couldn’t move fast enough, so I stepped toward the SUV and raised my arms for visibility.  The speeding woman, instead of hitting her brakes to slow down, swerved over to the other side to fly past me, who she could see, and into path of the oncoming pickup, which she couldn’t see.

Being in the other lane luckily brought the pickup and my family into view and the woman slammed on her brakes and slid sideways to a halt within feet of me.  The pickup driver stopped quickly and easily and my family had stepped off the side and into the ditch, and I got to voice my famous, “stupid idiots drive WAY too fast on this stupid road!” 

From the words she mouthed and the hand-signal she flashed at me, as well as the way she hit the gas and drove between my family and the stopped pickup, I don’t think she agreed.

Anyway, I shared that story with you to illustrate that stupid people do, indeed drive way too fast on the road in front of our house, thus thinning our deer herd way more each year than my hunting neighbors and I do.

So, yes, I knew what my dogs were barking at.

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I grabbed my pistol from the house and walked across the road and into the woods, where I found three of our dogs barking at a little form on the ground.  It was surrounded by blood and gore.  The little, young-of-the-year, button buck was lying still.  Only the wide-open mouth and horrified eyes showed the slightest sign of life.  The impact with the vehicle, I would later find, had broken both back legs and his pelvis.  Worse, his abdomen was burst open spilling out its contents into the leaves around him.  His diaphragm, too, had burst and his lungs were collapsed.  His gaping jaw tried to suck in the air he could never actually inhale.

I quickly called my local conservation agent and was given permission to put the little guy out of his misery.  Eric, my agent, gladly granted permission and asked only for a photo for proof.

One shot from my pistol and the poor creature’s needless suffering was ended.

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Due to his diminutive size and all the damage, I was only able to salvage a little undamaged meat.  The rest I left for the dogs, coyotes, and other animals to clean up.

Nature doesn’t waste anything.

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In part 6 I will tell about my favorite part of the 2018/19 deer season.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjzXiO30v9U&t=14s

I had to include a link for 2018 Deer Season 01(above). For some reason I couldn’t imbed it, like those below. I’ll keep trying. Sorry.