I am the worst deer hunter in the world. There are a couple reasons for this, among which I never took it seriously. I thought that it was really about dumb luck, and not about skill. I tended to buy a license the night before, and sort of throw together some gear. This changed somewhat as I got to know skilled hunters, and I shot a few deer over the years. But never a decent buck. The one buck I took in a late season hunt was a running shot at 50 yards, and by the time he went down he had shed his antlers and there was no finding them in the deep snow.
I moved back to Michigan in 1998, and promptly shot a doe the first time out because I was hunting with my fried Mike B., who is a wildlife biologist and set up our strategy. He then moved away and I went deerless for years. Fast forward to 2010. I vowed that this would be the year, but the night before the opener my stepdaughter decided that she wanted to try deer hunting. We actually saw three, but she became frozen solid by about 1000 and that was it for the opener. I hunted pretty diligently that season but saw nothing. When it was over, I was not ready to quit, and vowed to get a muzzleloader to extend the season into December. In Michigan our firearm season is November 15-30, and muzzleloader starts on December 2 and runs almost to Christmas.
The 2011 opener was the antithesis of my prior hunting. I had gotten to know Dave D., and he is one of the best hunters I know. He can find game anywhere and anytime he hunts and became my guide. I had a tack driving shotgun, excellent gear, and I had learned how to pick a stand that deer liked, and not one that I liked. And best of all, I had a muzzleloader. It was a lightly used Thompson encore that I had picked up over the summer, and it would be my fallback if the firearm season did not pan out. I even got load data and some sabots that looked like the gun should have been advertised in a field artillery forum rather than the "used guns for sale" website.
The 2011 firearm season was a bust. We hunted public land in SE Michigan. The opener had too few hunters to push deer, and fog. No one saw deer, but there was enough pressure to push them into the puckerbrush, unharvested corn on private lands, and the odd places that no one could get to without spooking them from a hundred yards out. We did stands, swamp hunts, ridge hunts, pincer movements, still hunts, and every other trick known to deer hunters to no avail. We did see one buck that jumped into the swamp rather than moving in one of the any other directions that would have offered a shot, and I missed a small buck that popped up in front of me as I was huddled in a fetal position in the rain trying to stick it out for just a few more minutes before throwing in the towel. The season ended with a whimper, and not even a sighting during the last week.
The muzzleloader season started the following Friday, and of course I was back at work trying to catch up from all the time I was not in the office. And there was another issue: despite my best intentions I had not done a thing with the muzzleloader other than go to Cabelas and have the helpful hunting guy point to stuff I needed. OK, I did have some powder charges weighed out, but had never even loaded the thing. I decided to sleep in on Saturday, but woke up at 0400 out of what had become habit. I thought about the muzzleloader sitting on the workbench and decided that it needed to be used otherwise my wife might start to question its purchase. The following timeline is true and accurate, and the events will be reported with integrity as they actually happened.
0500 decide to load the gun, and wonder how hard to actually push the sabot into the barrel. Is it all the way in? How hard are these things supposed to seat?
0600 breakfast, coffee, sloth, stumbling around trying to find gear. Take muzzleloader jiggery pokery out of shopping bag, look at it, etc.
0700 arrive at the state game lands. Note that the woods resemble a sea of blaze orange and there are more guys out with muzzleloaders than on the opening day of firearms season.
0705 Arrive at the one place where I had seen deer, only to find it filled with pickup trucks and guys with muzzleloaders.
0715 Legal shooting time begins. I am, of course, driving around aimlessly.
0730 I am still driving around looking for a pulloff that I can get the little fish car into without getting stuck in the 4 inches of new snow.
0745 Find a bare spot that I can pull into. A place I had never hunted.
0800 Finally start hunting after figuring out the primer thingy, reorganizing pack, locating accoutrements and possibles, and deciding which way to head in.
0801 Set off car alarm as I try to lock the car, letting every deer within miles know that something is up.
0802 work my way about 150 feet into the woods, get tangled in a mass of autumn olives. Really cloudy and dark, so decide to stand there for 15 minutes until it gets light enough to look for a proper stand. Only shooting lane is a narrow keyhole between two giant cedars down at the edge of a wooded swamp.
0802:30 Totally wishing I had not had that extra cup of coffee. Decided to wait it out a bit longer.
0803 Hear a noise, and turn to see a squirrel. Immediately notice a 6 point buck walking along the edge of the swamp behind said squirrel. Realize that buck may walk between the cedars. Gun up, hammer back, deer sashays into the dark opening about 30 yards away.
At this point, it was the strangest thing. It happened so fast that I had no chance to get buck fever. I squeezed the trigger, there was a recoil, and I see the deer go flying sideways and crumple into a heap. But there was no smoke! I thought that the primer had not ignited the charge, but there in front of me is a dead deer. I had not realized that Blackhorn 209 is a smokeless propellent.
0803:30 Violate every rule by not reloading and charging down to the now dead buck. It dawns on me that this is a nice buck, and my days of patterning my life after Escanaba in the moonlight are over. Pretty much have to sit down and stop hyperventilating for a couple minutes. A true 6 point with no brow tines and a big body. Not bad for the most heavily hunted public game land in the State of Michigan.
Tag deer, field dress deer, drag deer 75 feet to the road, and get the car which is only 100 feet further down the road. At this point it dawns on me. The little fish car is VW sportwagen with a panoramic sunroof and a teeny roof rack that can support about 150 lbs. This deer weighs more. I had honestly never considered that I would get to this point. Call wife for assistance and a big drop cloth, she is game but prefers to have nothing to do with this unless all other strategies fail. Finally realize that I can boost it in upside down with the old mouse-chewed vest put into service as a sacrificial garment to prevent leakage. Drive home in triumph, then on to deer processor. Call everyone on my cell phone, post to facebook, etc.
1200 Dogs enjoying boiled deer liver. Big mistake, they followed me around for weeks after.
In restropect, it was a strange thing. As I dragged the deer out to the road, I saw its tracks and realized that it had been probably been standing there watching me screw around for 10 minutes. It could have gone anywhere, but took a path to the one spot where I had a shot. It was dumb luck, but I did not get buck fever, remembered to cock the hammer, I followed it in the scope until it stepped into the one good place for a shot, I squeezed, and remembered to aim low. And I had put in my time and paid my dues with many hours in the field. I have decided that deer hunting is not about luck, it does require some skill, but it is really about being worthy enough to receive what is sent to you by the Great Manitou.
The venison salamis were greeted with joy at many Christmas parties, and saturday morning backstraps and eggs have become the breakfast of choice. And I find myself haunting the crossbow counter at Cabelas so I can start hunting the bow season on October 1 and not have to wait until November 15.
Time for bed, the mystery of spring turkey season starts tomorrow at 0605. I suspect it will require more than two minutes ...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment