"The Evening Campfire" from
The Herald, December 16, 2007
Late-season deer hunt
delivers nice buck
It was 12 degrees out there,
according to my Jeep Cherokee temperature gauge, when we
pulled into the Warren County game lands parking lot at
6:30 a.m. on the last Thursday of deer season. A fresh
six inches of powdery snow kicked up around our boots as
we walked toward the fire trail gate, and there was
little wind. It was a perfect morning for hunting deer,
just the opposite of opening day, when heavy rains and
murky fog had made conditions miserable.
Our plan was for Billy to wait near the lot while Todd
and I headed west down the trail. At daybreak he would
hunt up the eastern face of the mountain and hike along
the high plateau toward Todd and me. I would go one mile
deep on the fire trail and then climb to the high bench
where nephew Tommy often hunts on opening day, while
Todd would hike back to the two-mile point and then hunt
back toward us along the edge of steep bedding ridge and
escape bench. I would be in the best position for this
first hunt of the day, with Billy moving toward me from
the east and Todd converging later from the west.
I reached the designated one-mile point on the trail and
began climbing the steep slope. My destination lay at
least 800 yards up the ridge, and getting there was a
challenge, due to the slippery, snowy hillside and the
hidden branches and loose rocks under the snow waiting
to trip up any misstep I might make. It took me 40
minutes to reach the crest of the high plateau bench and
approach Tommy’s boulder.
Just as I got there, I heard a deer snort in the
thickets to my left. I walked over and discovered a
large deer bed in the snow and fresh tracks running off
to the northwest. I had made too much of a ruckus
struggling up the mountainside, and the deer had spotted
me before I had a chance to identify it. The key to
success in late-season bigwoods deer-hunting, when very
few hunters are stirring up the hunting grounds and you
have to push out your own deer, is to move through the
woods with stealth and try to spot deer before they
realize you’re there. This time the deer had won, and I
had not even seen it.
I paused for a few minutes before I began my hunt, to
catch my breath from the climb and to look around at the
stark black and white winter scenery. To my left stood a
small village of large boulders, each one as big as a
house, and to my right lay a secondgrowth stretch of
forest with charcoal-colored tree trunks, rocks of
various sizes and shapes, and windfall logs in the snow
as far as the eye could measure. Everything in the deep
forest was touched by the silence and the whiteness of
the snow.
I started moving slowly, carefully toward the east,
facing into the slight breeze to prevent the deer from
winding me and straining my eyes in all directions for
the patch of brown, curve of neck, or horizontal line
that might be a sign of a deer.
A half hour later I spotted a small brown shape 100
yards to the north, and I stopped and stared in that
direction. Soon I made out the curve of an ear, and then
two ears, and I knew I had a deer in sight. I leaned
against a tree for support, put my scope on the animal,
and saw right away it was a buck.
I began scoping the antlers, and then something moved in
the right edge of my view. It was another deer, another
buck. I had two bucks standing within 100 yards of my
position, and both had high forkhorns at least, and
neither had spotted me yet.
Forkhorns aren’t good enough under the current antler
restriction rules, of course, so I kept studying the
antlers through the scope and — there! — a brow tine
appeared on the deer on the left. That made three on a
side, a legal buck, and I now ignored the second deer
and focused entirely on this one. He began looking edgy,
sensing something was wrong, and started moving,
laterally. I placed the scope sight on an opening just
ahead of the buck, squeezed the trigger on my .270
Remington pump, and dropped him in the snow.
Later Billy appeared on the scene and admired the deer
while I told the story. This was my fifth buck in six
years, my best stretch ever, all on public land, and
ironically it occurred during the time when the Game
Commission has drastically reduced the deer herd. I’d
rather get lucky later than never, I guess.
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