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Deer Hunting Stories These are the kind of stories that your children, grandchildren and buddies will ask to hear time and time again. Run like a Deer Ghosts in the fog Who's sneaking up on whom Submit
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It was late in the fall of 1974 and I was living in a replica of an Indian tee-pee not to far from Bloomington, Indiana. The tent was about 3 miles from the nearest road and and was isolated from all the "comforts" of civilization. My camp was in a Y where 2 creeks met and there were hardwood covered hills on either side and a third one running up the crotch of the Y. Just about as nice a place as anyone could ask for. I had been living on dried foods and noodles for some time now while studying theology. My food situation was getting desperate and knew I would have to get some additional food soon, as winter was rolling in. I had come prepared to go hunting but always seemed to be too busy. It took the encouragement from a friend of mine who walked in to check on me, to actually decide the time had come. We rose early in the dark cold of the following morning and gathered our licenses, a small survival kit, our choice of weapons. He a long bow and I, my 243 lever action. The woods were riddled with game trails but it was all new territory to me, so we just picked a trail along the ridge of the central hill and in the early morning light began to apply our best soft footed walking method as we picked our way though the twigs and fallen leaves. Fortunately the trail was so well used by game, that there was very little debris on it. We traveled in tandem for a time along this well defined trail, looking for rubs, tracks and dropping. Plenty of these; it was encouraging for the first hour or so. After a couple of hours it was obvious that we were not likely to stumble on the buck who left the rubs. Halting, we decided to split up and to get off of the trail and see if we could find where they were bedding down as the sun was getting high which meant it was rest time for the deer. We both went down into the valley to the North of the trail. I chose to stay in the valley and make my way along it. My friend with the bow went on up the side of the opposite hill making terribly loud crunching noises as he trampled leaves underfoot. There was no way that I could be making that much noise, was there? Nah. Plodding along and beginning to let my mind wander off of task, I only half consciously monitored the progress of my buddy along the ridge of the hill. I was just about to call out to him and suggest making a day of it when the rustling from him multiplied five fold. I felt inclined to holler at him to keep it down, but realized that his steps seem to be splitting into two different locations. "They're coming your way" hollered my friend. Just what was coming my way I couldn't tell, but from the sound of it, it may have been a herd of elephants. It was obvious that they were going to come down at an angle into the valley. Somewhere maybe as much as 150 to 200 yards ahead of where I was standing with the rifle to my shoulder, looking at nothing but brush. This wasn't going to work. Remembering the heavily traveled path on the top of the ridge that we had been on, I realized that this was where the crashing beasts were heading. With the sounds still coming down from the hill where I could hear my friend hollering "Do you see them" I began to beat feet up the side of the hill we had originally been on. I threw all caution to the wind and tore up the side of the hill. Fortunately it was not nearly as high of a hill as the one the crashing noise was coming from. I am sure I was also crashing, but because the noise I was making was drowning out the rest of the sounds and I could no longer hear their sounds, I theorized that there was a good chance they wouldn't hear mine either. Reaching the top of the hill, I got on the path I took off running full out as hard as I could up the path , with the hope of catching a glimpse of them as they came on to the path. With my rifle slashing back and forth in front of me like a hockey stick for momentum, I ran like never before. When it seemed like I had run a few hundred yards allowing for their angle of travel I stopped to listen for the hoof beats. I fully expected to hear them plowing their way up the trail in front of me. Just imagine my surprise when I realized I was ahead of them and they hadn't reached the trail yet. The mashing of leaves and snapping of small branches indicated they were barreling right towards me. I raised my rifle just as a big doe burst through the under brush and onto the trail not more than twenty five feet down the trail from me. The motion of my gun raising must have caught her eye because without missing a beat she whirled off to the right and headed for the valley again. Poor thing she must have thought it was raining humans. We were everywhere. No sooner did her rear flank leave the trail and I saw the rack of a six point buck pushing through the brush. I was standing still and not targeting the doe as it was against my principles to kill a doe. The buck was blundering right into me. Having been taught to never shoot at an animal, but rather a particular kill spot, I was unable get a fix on him. Fearing I was going to get nothing more than a good trampling, I whistled. The buck stopped, stock still, about fifteen feet from me and turned his head to the left to get a good view of me, fully with one eye. No time for buck fever. Seeing a kill spot cradled in my sights I squeezed off a shot. He dropped to his knees and stayed there with his head resting on the ground. In the distance I could hear the crashing of my buddy heading this way and and the doe as she fled to the East. Somehow the shot seemed to have violated the peace that I had come to know in these woods. But I had meat. By the time my friend reached the path I had started to bleed the buck and cut out his musk glands. We chose a stout tree branch to hang the carcass from to complete the bleeding and opened him up to cool the meat off. I fielded dressed the deer while my buddy started a small fire, and in keeping with my tradition, cooked the still quivering liver. That night before he left for the city, we feasted like kings on venison cooked with noodles in a green pea gruel.
The new years hunt in northern Florida had been promising, but that was all. Everyday was just another nice day in the woods with nothing but Does showing themselves and regardless of whether it was Doe season or not I wasn't about to take a Doe. It just doesn't sit right with me. After several morning of fog so heavy that it was near impossible to see much farther that maybe 30 yards in any direction, I had began to wonder if maybe I should concentrate on the evening hunts. It's just so hard to stay in bed when out in the woods so why not strap on a rifle and get out there in the mornings, fog or no fog. On this particular morning, I was walking and stopping, hoping to glimpse the flicker of an ear or smell a big buck. The fog was so thick and the particles so large, that I could watch it flow past me and unfortunately in the same direction the I was heading. Any deer ahead would know I was coming so I resigned myself to accepting that this was just going to be another early morning stroll. Fully believing that there was no chance of spotting a deer before it knew I was coming I began to let my guard down. I strolled down an old logging path and was just enjoying the cool air and wondering if you could drown from breathing to much fog. About fifty feet in the bushes off to my left a flock of white egrets gently rose into the air and began doing this crazy weaving and bobbing sort of flight. They didn't seem to get any higher than 4 or 5 feet above the ground as they were slowly swallowed by the fog. It wasn't until I realized egrets didn't fly that way, that I surmised that they were really deer behinds. Lots of them. There were so many that at least one of them must have been a buck but who could tell, I thought they were birds. Even if there was a buck in the group I would have had to shoot him in the butt which I won't do. The fog was so heavy that the deer must have gotten separated from each other, because just a minutes or so afterwards, I could hear the wheezing call of the buck as he called his does to him. Knowing that I had been so close to and yet unable to take one home with me, was frustrating. Well
one more day of breathing fog and I had to go home, but I now I know that deer
can disguise themselves as egrets so it wasn't all for naught. Deer hunter all have their favorite methods. Some like to still hunt but I like to stalk my animal. Seems more like the word itself, "hunt". It can involve a lot of walking and stopping to listen and smell the air and out of habit of having hunted in grizzly country I always look back where I have been. Well there are no grizzlies in Florida but old habits die hard. About half way through the morning hunt I was walking along a survey cut trail and surveying the tracks there just in case I didn't get a buck I could collect tracks for "Track Soup". Nah really I was just verifying that there was sufficient traffic in the area to ensure that my chances were fairly good, and it seemed to be promising. The area was filled with good cover for the
deer to bed down in and a sufficient amount of grass growing in the survey
trail. Food and cover, two good reason for deer to hang around. The trees and
shrubs makes it difficult to pick out a rack, und unless your stopping spooks
them just enough to make their ear twitch you might never see them. How
many time have we walked right past a bedded deer just to have it leap up and
take flight as soon as we were a safe distance away?
Submit
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Vicariously Boating Articles
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