Adventures in Deer Hunting

(More accurately, Sitting in the woods, freezing my butt off)

I love to hunt! What an awesome experience! What isn't there to like about hunting? There are gadgets and accessories (I love everything to do with this), there are special clothes, scent control, camo tents, stands, blinds, decoys, RIFLES (a stick that goes bang, what's not to love), cold weather, beautiful scenery, excitement, adventure, mystery, being outwitted by a deer (or multiple), TRUCKS, friends, food, etc...

I guess the early morning part kind of stinks, but you do get to see the sunrise. And sitting in the woods 15 feet in the air with more clothes than should fit on you to the point where you look like the stay-puff marshmallow man, and it feels like you are as naked as a jaybird. I guess the part about sitting in the woods (which is what I usually do) and not the actual hunting part is a bummer as well. The part where you walk in for 15-25 minutes and you get so hot you sweat, and then when you sit down for a while you start to freeze isn't my favorite. Also, I don't like when the inside of your nose freezes, or your breath turns to icicles on your balaclava. Sometimes your toes freeze, or your nose...Actually it reminds me of the song.... Head shoulders, knees and toes, knees and TOES!

I wonder sometimes if you actually want to get a deer, because that is when the real work begins. You have to put your perfectly clean (and scent free!) arm deep in the belly of a big mammal that is so warm, all the red stuff (edited for soft in heart) flowing out and steaming as it hits the air, the intestines and other innards, warming you to your core, until you pull your wet hand out into the frigid air and you want to scream! I guess that part is not the best, nor is the part of dragging it out of the woods, hosting it into the truck, hanging it, skinning it, or butcher it (actually that part is pretty cool, but time consuming). BUT....I LOVE to pull a hot 3" thick backstrap off the grill and into the trap and chomp down. YES!!!! The amazing flavor of a steak that you did everything for, but help it grow. Now how cool is that. Instead of being a scavenger you are a true carnivor!!!! A hunter! Now what is not to LOVE!

Cousin Smiley and d on a cold deerless hunt

Part 2 How the hunt went today

Well, it is deer season now. Correct that, it is one of three rifle deer seasons. It is a precious commodity the time to hunt deer. You have 12 days to blast a big one, at the time of year when the rut (the make baby deer time) is over and they have already been shot at for around 2 months by people with arrows and quite a few have gone to the happy hunting grounds (or whatever deer call it). The deer are skittish to say the least. If they haven't yet, a lot will go to nocturnal venturing for food etc after the first boom stick goes bang. Well, today is the second day of the season. Yesterday I sat on the stand and froze. Shooting was all around me, and I ..... sat there freezing. Today however was different! I sat in a hunting tent blind in a soybean field with a good friend (you know he is a good friend if he gets up at 4 : "O" something to go become a popsicle with you on his land, when he is just there to watch and be a pack mule ) and watched out over two different tree lines in which a deer could pop his head out at any minute. Well on 6 hours of sleep and 4 and a half the night before, my eyes were sagging like Jane Fonda's work out weights. I was doing blink, blink, b l i n k, b l I n k, close........ blink, blink. They were watering profusely and I have major windburn. All the while my friend Stay Puff pencil neck, is over there sleeping in my oh so comfy chair, but not good to sit in to deer hunt in chair, sawing logs and dreaming of barking spiders. Oh to not be enthralled in looking for deer. Sleep for my eyes!

About 8:30am with our teeth chattering, we say I wonder where the deer are, it's only 10 below (with windchill it was really probably about 10 degrees). I wonder if there are deep in the cedars waiting for the sun to shine. Well actually the sun was shining, but as Stay Puff put it...I wonder if we should let God know he forgot to turn the heat on in the sun? I wonder if that is why I don't get a deer when I am hunting with Stay Puff. He tends to make me laugh out load, which is not a good thing unless you want to let the deer know your there. Anyway...We got up out of the tent and decided it was time to MAKE something happen. We started South upwind, since it was a COLD, COLD North wind and if you still hunt (yes I know this sounds weird as you are actually moving, but that is what they call stalk hunting) with the wind at your back, you will never see a deer because the wind carriers your scent and your sounds to the animals. We went down the creekbed as it would be the most quiet. Well, we weren't so quite, as you step on leaves and branches and get stuck by the occasional thorn bush. Stay Puff was in front of me, knowing his land better, and we had gone around 75 to 100 yards when we say a LARGE deer and his VERY LARGE brother streak through the woods like Absolom, except they don't get their hair caught in trees. I saw a glimpse of the rack on the back deer and there waving flag like white tails and tried very hard not to cry like a baby, as they were moving through the thick woods so quickly that I couldn't have got my gun up in time, so I didn't bother. Ok, now I am warm! The blood is pumping, and the circulation is back. We devise a plan. We will trick the deer! What a novel concept! I wish I had thought of that before. I would circle back and get north of the poverty, between to logical places for the deer to exit the woods these two finger streams with trees on either side. I am set up between the streams straining to see the deer as a white flash catches my eye on the west stream. A deer! A fast deer! Go deer go! Goodbye deer! I wonder if that is all I can think about as he runs by in the thickest part of the trees. No possible shot, not even a thought (well maybe a thought). Stay Puff comes out of the woods looking perturbed. I told him that I saw one shoot by. He said why didn't you "Shoot" it? We track into the creek and the thick woods behind the deer, checked a couple of open fields and then tried to "push" the deer north and out of the fingers.

We went about 200 yards and we saw more white flags! Deer, deer on! We came out of woods between two other fingers, and heading slowly northward. Again, more visible white tails and even some body, the deers pressed forward again. Again, further up we saw them again, for now it was both deer again. I ran forward (being very careful with my safety on and gun quartered away from me) with the intension of getting ahead of the deer as the woods were winding NW and then back NE. I made it about 100 yards and was huffing as Stay Puff says, there he is! A noble beast with a neck (as Stay Puff put it) like a football player and a rack like a chandelier trotted out into the field, I was pulling my gun up just as he walked behind a hill. I could see his massive antler's and the top 1/3 of this head, so I said to myself. "Self, shoot the stinking deer in the head, at least you will have a deer and you can always do a European mount, and you won't ruin any meat!" So self raised the gun, looked through the scope and .....

realized that running in heavy clothing in not the best shape and then trying to look through a scope is harder than you would realize. As my chest was heaving up and down the deer looked like a bobble head doll. Ok, now focus. This IS the biggest deer you have the pleasure to shoot, display and eat, so concentrate. Oh, I know, I will lay prone and shoot it from a resting position. Ok, top of the head is now barely visible. Up, down, up, down goes the scope (is that a song). Deer decides to lope away out of view. I jump up with the thought of another cutoff. I run another 100 yards to see the deer at 300-400 yards away. I know I am slower now, but that deer was moving! I flatten myself on the ground. Last chance ditch effort, prone shot, now or never. Scope is UP, DOWN, UP, DOWN, UP DOWN much faster with no control. Deer looks back at 400-500 yards as if to say, HA, HA! and runs up the gorgeous copper flecked chest high grass blowing in the wind and out of site.

Stay puff is wondering, "why didn't you shoot it!" "Well...puff, puff, puff....I, puff, puff, puff couldn't get a shot!, puff, puff, puff!" I am now hot in the -10 weather and completely sweating in my new 4 in 1 coat.

I would guess that I won't live this one down ever, just like last year when at 25 yards a nice 6 point suddenly appeared out of no where and I was so surprised that I yelled something and spooked it, it ran the opposite way and out of my life.

Deer....you can't live with them, and apparently I can't shoot them.

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