Deer Season 2018 Part 7

The John Doe

One of my dreams has always been for my sons grow up and want to hunt with me.  I took all of the boys hunting with me when they lived at home, according to their level of interest.  Some of the best days of my life were spent walking in the woods or “busting brush” to scare out game.

But, as life moved on and they grew up, their interests went in other directions.  For a couple seasons I hunted alone, after Patrick, the youngest, moved out.  I still enjoyed hunting, but not nearly as much as I would if I had my sons to share it with.

Then I got a phone call.

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Travis is the father of my oldest grandson, John.  I don’t know if John had been showing an interest or if Travis had remembered some of the good times we’d had during his childhood, but he told me he’d like to start coming home for deer season and bringing John.

I thought long and hard before answering.

OK, maybe I thought for half-a-second.

“Sure!  Yeah!  Come on!”

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That had been earlier in the year, but now, as the rifle season progressed, Travis called to say they were coming home for the last weekend of rifle season.  He didn’t have a license and, at three-years-old, John was too young to hunt legally anyway, so they didn’t even bring a firearm.  They just wanted to enjoy some father/son time and give the younger fella a little taste of what it was like to sit in the blind and watch nature.

I figured the popup blind at the edge of the cornfield where I had shot the doe with my crossbow would give them better cover while allowing John a bit more space to move without scaring deer, so I offered it to them while I would sit in the ladder stand. out of sight and uphill of them.

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The morning was cold but not bitterly so.  They bundled up and made the walk out to the blind by flashlight. 

It was the next-to-last day of rifle season so I wanted to let John experience success.  Problem was, the deer didn’t want to cooperate. I heard and saw a few deer but that was before legal shooting hours.  I hoped Travis and John were seeing some too.  Once the sun started to illuminate the clearing, all the deer vanished from my vicinity.  They didn’t run off, they just wandered away.

A text came in from Travis.  “John’s been quiet as long as he can so I’m taking him to the house.”

I responded, “K.”

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A few minutes later my phone vibrated again.  “There are five deer on the other side of the trees from you,” T said.

I responded, “Wow!”  I knew that John was getting to experience the excitement and pleasure of seeing deer.  I didn’t climb down because I thought the deer might move my way to get away from the two blaze-orange-clad humans.

They didn’t.

I could have tried to make my way through the intervening trees and attempt to get a clear shot, but I knew the deer might see me climb down, and avoid the area for the rest of the season.  I was concentrating on staying alert in case they came my way so I didn’t ask for more details.

The deer weren’t coming and I missed a perfect opportunity to harvest one with a grandson involved.

That afternoon Andy, Madison, and Harper came up from Jonesboro, Arkansas so Travis decided to go with the rest of the family to Lambert’s restaurant, world famous home of the “throwed rolls,” instead of going back out to the blind.  Besides the good food I figure he thought he had tested John’s ability to sit still and be quiet enough for one year.

While the rest of my family enjoyed delicious food, I sat in my ladder stand, watching deer wander out into the clearing.  Does, yearlings, and small-antlered bucks grazed and looked around for danger.  They didn’t see me.  I waited and waited, hoping one of my bucks would come out.  I wanted to take a deer that last night Travis and his family were there.  Even if they weren’t there to enjoy this part of the hunt, they could experience the camaraderie of hauling the deer to the butcher.

No buck came out but a pair of does entered the open space, one of them a plump young one.  It was a couple hours before shooting hours ended.  Unfortunately, neither doe was my talkative friend, Suspicious Sally, who I really would rather have taken out of the hunting equation.  The doe who had been limping a few days before seemed to have healed, so she was off the list of preferred freezer fodder.

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I raised the .300 Winchester Magnum and put the scope on the plump young doe’s chest.  She turned to angle toward me so I moved the crosshairs near the point of her right shoulder.  She stopped walking and continued to graze.  The sight-picture steadied and I squeezed the trigger.  At the explosion the young doe swapped ends and ran directly into the woods, disappearing from my sight.  The older doe with her ran back the way they had come.

A lot of hunters like to wait an hour before trailing a wounded deer.  The idea is, if the wound is not quickly fatal, the hour will give the prey time to stiffen up, or lie down and die before running a long way.  It makes sense.

But I chose not to wait.  I knew that tracking light would disappear soon, and that the doe was hard hit, both by where I had aimed and her reaction to the shot.  I wanted to find the blood trail.  A hunter can often tell a lot about a wound by looking at the blood sign.  Bubbly blood is lung blood, which almost always means a dead deer is nearby.  Bright red blood means arterial blood and, again, usually a quick death.

I couldn’t find blood.

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I found the gouges in the soft earth where the doe had leaped and changed directions, as well as where she had hit high gear within just a few feet, but no blood.  It’s always a bit disappointing when no blood is instantly visible, but doesn’t necessarily mean a miss. 

I moved toward the woods and, just before I stepped into the trees, found a tiny speck of blood.  No more.

Sometimes prey doesn’t bleed outwardly much, at first.  They can bleed to death internally but the skin and hair can stretch over the entrance and exit wounds to stop leakage.

Once in the woods I still didn’t find blood and the leaves were all stirred up by the many deer, so it wasn’t immediately clear which way the doe had gone.  Wounded deer usually don’t run uphill and, instead, turn downhill.  Directly downhill would have been back into the clearing, so I turned toward the gully to the north, expecting to find her piled up in the bottom of it.

No such luck, and no sign.

I went back to where she had entered the woods and scanned the leaf-litter again.  I walked south this time.  Suddenly, I saw several drops of bright red blood, then more.  Then there were great gouts of blood on the fallen leaves, enough that I could look ahead and easily follow the trail by sight.  I looked forward about thirty yards and saw a white patch of hair.  There she was, dead as a bag of rocks.

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Some people argue against the use of bows for hunting, citing the idea that they are not nearly as quickly fatal as a bullet.  Well, I had shot my first doe of the season with a crossbow.  The bolt had entered her right shoulder, ranging back, through her heart and left lung, and out the left side.  She had travelled about 75 yards to where I had found her.

The doe I had just shot was with my .300, which many hunters feel is way too much rifle for deer.  The soft nosed bullet had entered her right shoulder, passing through her heart, and traveling through her left lung before exiting out her left rib cage.

Yep, it had taken almost exactly the same path through the deer as the bolt had.  And this deer had run almost exactly the same distance, 75 yards, as the first one.

Just wanted to make a point.

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Anyway, I dragged the young doe out of the woods and texted my sons a picture.  I got several quick replies including light-hearted chiding about the shot placement.

I got my truck and picked up the doe.  Back at the barnyard, I gutted the pretty animal and rinsed out the body cavity with cold water from the freeze-proof hydrant.  Once Travis’s family returned from their night out, T, John, and Andy came out to admire my deer.  It was a cold night so I didn’t feel the need to bother the slaughterhouse with a late-night call to meet me for a drop off. 

We took my doe to the butcher the following morning, just Andy, Travis, John, and me.

I felt like it was a good, bonding experience for us all.  During the drive we shared stories about our experiences on past hunts, successes and failures, fun times and not-so-fun times.  Once we got to the butcher’s I was in for more light-hearted ribbing about how small my doe was compared to the buck another customer dropped off.

It was a big part of what I have always wanted to happen…what I hope will continue to happen in the future, as my sons decide that it might be fun to come home and hang out with old Dad during deer season.

Will it happen?

Only time will tell.

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