Day number three of this 2016 hunting season found me back at the Bald Knob, but today in a different stand. Two days of staring at the same trees starts to affect the sanity just a little, so I moved a few hundred yards east to sit on the edge of the slash and cover a lot of territory. A lot of open territory. A lot of deerless territory. Two days ago I referred to the Knob as a "deer magnet"; somehow the magnetism seems to be repelling the deer instead of attracting them. Five more hours today and not a single deer to be seen or even heard. Did I mention the howling wind? The heavy grey clouds? The morning was so bad that I sat thinking about politics for a long time....I HATE POLITICS!!! Plan A for this season had been to spend three days hunting the Knob before commencing with Plan B. At 11:30 a.m. I flushed Plan A down the toilet (where it had been floating since midday yesterday) and headed back to the house to collect my thoughts for the afternoon. (Remember, I almost never leave the woods in the middle of the day, and I've now done it twice in three days. That's how frustrating the beginning of this season has been.)
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| A mediocre panoramic view from today's Bald Knob stand. |
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| Lush clover, hand planted on the trail I raked by hand last spring. Deer love clover. See them eating?!? Me neither. |
An hour of couch therapy - staring at the ceiling, dozing a little, munching cookies - brought clarity to my afternoon plan. It was time to head west to my Slaughterhouse stand. My dad was heading west, too, so we thought we might stir up a little deer movement between the two of us. The Slaughterhouse was to be my destination for Day 4, but desperate times...
The Slaughterhouse was a red-hot location for about five years about ten years ago, and then it cooled off. The last couple of years it's been heavily traveled by deer again so last year I resurrected a stand. The sign was even better this year - several scrapes and a lot of chopped up deer runways. The stand site is about a quarter-mile off the northwest corner of the Sand Flat field. An old logging road, one of the two original trails on our property when we moved here 30 years ago, provides a nice walk for two-thirds of the distance; I've cleared a smaller trail for the last third.
As I walked the logging road I was kicking up grouse left and right. Walk with a shotgun, see no birds. Walk with a rifle, birds galore. The fourth grouse I saw took off out of a tree, so I started checking the treetops for more birds....even though I was hunting for deer. Note to deer hunters of all skill levels: You'll rarely spot deer hiding in the upper branches of trees. I know, I was stunned by this news, too. After rounding a corner while still staring at the tops of trees I brought my eyes back down to earth and found a deer standing in the trail 50 yards ahead of me. I didn't have a clear view of it, though; someone (ahem) purposely left several willow trees hanging over the trail so bucks would scrape under them...which they did, but now those trees were blocking my view of this deer. I dropped to a knee, and then to my belly, but with a guffaw and a jump the deer was gone. Towards my stand, though. So I continued, much slower, and spent much less time looking up.
After spooking several more grouse and one more deer I never saw I arrived at the Slaughterhouse. Deer tracks everywhere. Two fresh scrapes. I quickly changed the cards in my trail camera (I've got cameras everywhere, by the way. Don't stop for a pee break anywhere in my woods.) and got in the stand. 2:35. About three hours until sundown. The sky had cleared since morning, the wind had switched, I had seen one deer and heard another....I had a really good feeling about this spot.
I faced east for a couple of minutes until it dawned on me that east was downwind now. So I turned to face west. After a couple of minutes facing west I peeked back to the east in time to see a deer move through an open lane in the trees. 24 hours on stand at The Knob with zero deer sightings; six minutes at the Slaughterhouse and I've got a deer in my back pocket. I was turned with gun up in time for the deer to stop behind two big popple trees. I could see its nose and its tail. I was pretty sure I was looking at a doe, but possibly a small buck; I'd seen enough of its head to know it didn't have a big rack. I was also sure it could smell me despite my de-scenting efforts over the past couple of weeks; its tail was twitching and it was bobbing its head up and down. I found its nose in my scope and was now ready for it to move.....which it did.....rather quickly for about two steps. It stopped and gave me a clear view of its chest so I lined up the crosshairs and pulled the trigger. It flinched, ran for three jumps, stopped and shuddered, and fell over.
And then things get worse....
I stayed in the stand for about ten minutes, hoping the giant buck that was sure to be on her trail would show up. He must have gotten lost. So I climbed down and walked back to where "she" had fallen. My steps were light - two and half days of frustration are washed away when the first hunk of meat hits the ground. Frustration made a quick return as I approached the deer, however, due to three obvious problems. Problem one: This doe's head was awfully small....and her body sure looked bigger when she was standing. Ugh - I've shot a fawn. Problem two: What are those little knobby things on her head? Double ugh - I've shot a buck fawn. (Full disclosure: I said something other than "ugh" both times.) Problem three: Why are some of its insides on its outside? Triple ugh (Again, not "ugh.") - I've gut-shot it. I said not "ugh" a few more times before beginning the least fun part of deer hunting.
My dad arrived just as I finished gutting my not-so-great deer. I shared my story, got info on his travels, and headed back to the field for a rope and a 4-wheeler. I drug my little deer by hand up my short trail, threw it (literally) on the rack of the 4-wheeler for the trip home, and headed out of the woods. At home I hosed it off to get rid of the gut yucks, hung it in the garage, skinned it and split it and left it to cool overnight. In the end it's a decent sized fawn, nice and fat, and will be really tasty. All seven-and-a-half pounds of it.
So, a deer hangs in the garage and a tag is filled. A buck fawn is not what off-season dreams are filled with, but as always I am thankful to nature for allowing me the opportunity to take one of her creatures for my own survival. The kill was quick if not as "clean" as I would like. But that was my "something new" for today: I've never gut-shot a deer before. And as those kinds of shots go, this one was pretty mild. I've heard horror stories about badly hit deer and the mess that awaits on the inside.
There are many unanswered questions here, I'm sure. What's the terrain at the Slaughterhouse? How about its history? No pictures? Why so upset about shooting a fawn, and more upset about a buck fawn? Really - you looked in the tops of trees while deer hunting and stood facing downwind once you got in the stand? Hey, I've never claimed to be good at this activity - I only claim to love doing it. And everything happened too fast to take pictures. Maybe tomorrow.
And with that I wrap up Day 3's adventures. Thanks for reading. Good night.
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