Day 6 - Finally, some excitement! (and a really long post)

Saw a buck today.  First thing this morning, in fact.  Sat along the Dinner Pail Road at dawn after pulling my camera card last night and seeing a nice 8-point walking by in the daylight yesterday.  Got in the stand at 6:55 - at about 7:10 I turned to the south (where you're looking in the picture below) to see a deer standing in our clover plot at the mouth of the trail.  Big deer, seemed like there might be more on its head than ears.  Pulled up my scope to get a good look and yes, there were antlers!  Not a huge buck, but a nice buck.  He started walking east along the fence line so I started hitting my grunt call.  He stopped and looked my way, then continued on his eastern trek.  I kept grunting, and finally he started angling towards me.  Still out of my accuracy range and blending perfectly with the grey saplings in the grey light of dawn he was really difficult to keep in the scope as he walked.  Eventually he entered the thick brush on the edge of the slash and disappeared.  I kept a close watch on where I thought he might come out of the brush into the open woods but after a half-hour decided he had walked out of my life forever.

The view from my first stand this morning.  When I saw the buck he was standing where the sunshine meets the shadows.

This is the stand I started my day in.  It doesn't have a name yet.  Yes, that is a spruce tree growing in midair.  My dad's idea of concealment.  Sigh.

The Dinner Pail Road, looking south from the north end.

 I asked some questions tonight about the history of our hunting country.  I knew most of what I needed to know but had to get some accuracy on the details.  For instance, my great-grandfather began hunting around here about 85 years ago.  In yesterday's post I mentioned the Hangman's Tree stand and thought it had been a hunting spot about 75 years - I was off by a decade.  I found out tonight it was his favorite spot.  Isn't it interesting that after 85 years it's still a really good spot to see deer?

I asked historical questions because I spent the day wandering around Memory Lane.  Rather than stay in a stand all day I sat for a while, walked for a while, sat, walked, and walked some more.  I headed up to the country that we used to hunt when I first started hunting and continued to hunt until it was destroyed by the paper industry.  The land is owned by Blandin Paper Company in Grand Rapids, and about ten years ago they clear-cut thousands of acres north of my folks' land, acres that used to be filled with a variety of mature trees and interesting landscapes.  Now it's an ugly collection of aspen (popple) saplings as far as the eye can see.

My writing this proves to you that I survived the Death Trap stand, pictured below.  I sat there to eat my lunch.  I didn't really hunt; the deer sign was scant and old.  And I was scared to move.  Yes, you are looking at a stand that is nailed to a broken-off ash tree that's barely connected to the trunk.  The ladder is nailed to the small ash tree because that leg of the ladder is rotten at the bottom.  It broke as soon as I stepped on it today, so nailing didn't do any good.  The stand itself has to be nearly 15 years old, which is pretty old for a stand.  I carried it to this spot from it's original home at a place we call Crockett's.

My great-grandparents used to run a deer camp on their homestead, which was right next to where my parents live.  They had hunters come from all corners of the state, paying for a place to stay, meals, and the privilege of hunting in the Great North Woods.  It was one of the biggest sources of income my great-grandparents had.  They hosted the hunters, who became like family, from the 1930's until the 70's when my great-grandpa died.  Each hunter usually had their own special spot to hunt, and many of those spots became our spots in the 80's until the country was logged.  Bill Crockett was born in Tennessee, moved to Minnesota as a young man, and was a direct descendent of Davy Crockett.  He was a yearly hunter in our woods, as were his sons when they became old enough to hunt.  His spot, Crockett's, became a favorite spot of my grandpa and is the spot my dad shot his biggest (by weight) buck ever....a really nice 8-point that walked by me before being shot by my dad. I didn't feel like I had a good enough shot on him, and as he walked away in the brush all I could see were his wide, heavy antlers swaying back and forth.  Ten minutes later my dad shot, and the 210 lb. brute was on the ground.

The Death Trap stand.  It seemed like a good idea at the time.

 After not falling out of the Death Trap I walked quite a ways to the west to a spot called Boning's.  Vern Boning was a hunter who never used a stand, he always just sat on the ground with his back up against a tree.  Most days he built a small fire.  I drench myself in scent killing chemicals, he sat next to a smoking fire.  Times have changed.  Boning's was a great spot due to the lay of the land; two swamps converged on either side of a narrow ridge, so if deer were on the move and didn't want to travel through a swamp they had to pass by Vern and his fire.  My family has quite a bit of history at this spot - both of my parents shot their first deer, an uncle shot his first deer, I shot my first good buck, and my sister shot her first buck, all at Boning's.  Today I decided there will never again be a deer shot at this spot, at least not by anyone in my family.  The swamps have dried up, the mature timber that offered cover to deer is gone, and there just aren't many deer in these woods any more.  As I walked out of the clearing where my nice 8-point went down I felt more than a twinge of sadness that the book has been closed on such an interesting hunting spot.

What's left of the stand my sister and I each shot bucks from at Boning's.

My plan for the day was to wander in the north until late afternoon when I would head to the west end of our northern hayfield to hide in our Jack Pine plantation and cover a clover plot we've seen deer on several times in the evenings this week.  I got there a little early, so I sat on the ground and leaned against a pine with a forked trunk, in honor of Vern Boning.  After visiting the "old country" I was stuck in the past, wishing I'd have been able to hunt a generation earlier.  Those woods, these woods, used to be filled with family each November - my parents, my two grandfathers, my great-grandfather, many uncles and some cousins, and even a few neighbors would walk or pile into a wagon behind a tractor and head north for a day of hunting.  The stories that have been told about those days....you can't imagine what used to go on each season.  I could fill a dozen blog posts with Uncle David and cousin/hunting buddy George stories alone.  Now it's just me and my dad...and usually just me.  Don't get me wrong, I cherish my time in these woods and the freedom to go where I want and be human-free all day.  But those stories...I don't have those.  I won't ever have those.  I take memories from each season, and an occasional doozy of a hunting story, but compared to the side-splitting antics that develop when a group of hunters goes stomping into the woods my stuff is blah.

My hunting partner (Dad), heading east to check out a couple of spots.

As I sat in the pines and watched another day slip away I couldn't figure out what was more frustrating about this tough week of hunting - the lack of deer or the lack of stories and memories I'd been able to create so far.  This thought, piled on top of the sorrow at not being a part of the greatest days of hunting these woods had seen, was the final nudge I needed to slide down in the dumps.  I work my tail off preparing for this activity and I'd waited two years for this week off, and for what?  Six days of horrible weather and even worse hunting.  I was sick of seeing cloudless blue skies, sick of getting too hot every time I move, sick of listening to the wind whipping through the trees, and sick of dragging nothing home each day.  It was a full-fledged pity party in the pines.

The shadows were growing longer (for real, not just on my mood) so it was time to get positioned for the stampede of deer as they headed for the clover....he said sarcastically to the pine as he grabbed his gun and stood by the fence.  A half hour of nothing made this idea look as bad as all the other ideas this week.  I took a look to the east across the hayfield, a view that looked like this (only darker):

That tiny white speck in the sky is the moon.  The woods on the right is The Sanctuary.

The wind had been howling out of the northwest all day so I wasn't very confident that deer would actually come out to graze at all.  I thought it more likely I could see a deer on the back side of The Sanctuary where I would have the wind in my favor and the deer would be more likely to eat close to cover.  And my 4-wheeler was there.  And home was that direction.  And there was a deer crossing the field.  Wait - what?!?  A deer had just emerged from the northern tip of woods in the Sanctuary and was heading north across the open field.  I pulled up my gun and threw myself against a fence post (tip: don't throw yourself against a metal fence post strung with barbed wire) to get a good look at this deer.  A buck.  Not huge, maybe even the same one from this morning, but a no-doubter even at this distance. He was nose down, zig-zagging, definitely on the prowl for a doe in heat.  I followed his path until he dropped behind an incline and into the woods.

A buck doing what he was doing won't stop until he finds a doe.  He'll also (usually) move into or across the wind.  There was a pretty good chance he might end up coming my way.  He was at least 400 yards away when I last saw him, which meant I might have about five minutes before he got to me.  I decided to get into the stand we have a little ways from where I was standing (Remember, 25 stands means we've always got one nearby....it's almost like Clark Kent always having a phone booth) so I could see him coming sooner.  It was 50 yard dash to the stand, so off I went.  As soon as I was in the stand I realized this was a mistake - I was now farther away from a good shot and I really couldn't see any better.  Climbed back down, dashed back to square one.  I didn't like my pine location, but there were young spruces along the route I thought he might take, so I moved into those.  Yes, that was much better.  Better sight lines, better concealment.  As I was patting myself on the back for my ingenuity (and great hustle) I heard a deer snort out on the field - I turned to see another buck, a bigger buck, looking at me from about 200 yards away!  He took two jumps, leapt over a fence and stopped behind a young Norway Pine, giving me a clear view of his antlers and nothing else.  He waved his rack around a little bit to make sure I saw it, then snorted again and disappeared over the hillside.

Now it was decision time:  Do I stay put for the first buck I saw that I'm hoping is coming my way, or do I go after the bigger buck whose location I know?  I was running again, this time back to the pines to grab my bag of gear (I just knew I'd be needing my knife soon) and then to the rock pile that overlooks the river bottom where all big bucks travel when they want to head west.  At this point I wasn't thinking very clearly so I'm not sure why I thought he'd head west.  The rock pile area was perfect - I could snuggle up with a young Norway Pine and see everything below me.  The wind was a problem, though - it was blowing right to where the buck had run to.  It was warm today and I had walked a lot - my de-scenting efforts had long since vanished.  After ten minutes I decided he probably wasn't coming my way due to the large nose-full of my stink he'd been able to suck in.  And then I saw my dad.  He was heading home, towards The Sanctuary, probably having no idea any of this buck stuff was going on.

I was running again.  Two years ago I ruptured the Achilles tendon of my right foot; I had not run a single bit in the 26 months since it happened.  In the last 20 minutes I had run two 50 yard dashes, a 200 yard sprint, and now was on a 400 yard gallop across the field.  Less than 100 yards in I ran out of gas; the old cardio-vascular system ain't what it used to be.  But I had his attention so he stopped and waited for me to stagger up and bring him up to speed between my gasps for oh-two.  We agreed that our best chance at seeing that second buck was to creep along the east edge of The Sanctuary with the wind in our favor, hoping he'd be on the move again.  About halfway along our path we heard a deer snort behind us; we turned to see a doe coming up the incline I had seen the first buck disappear behind.  She was out of range for a good shot but she kept taking single steps toward us; with this deer, too, the wind was in our favor.  She was nervous, though, and before she could step close enough to get herself shot she whirled and headed back towards the woods....where another deer started snorting, most likely the first buck I had seen.  We finished our walk along the Sanctuary and decided that we had been beaten.  Dad headed home, I headed back up to my 4-wheeler.

I stood on the field until dark, hoping for one more look at any one of those deer, knowing it wasn't going to happen.  What did happen, though, was my story.  Less than an hour earlier I was moping, now my heart was still pounding from the excitement (and all the dang running).  A season that was a dud suddenly had its moment, its memory, its story.  I didn't need to kill anything for it, I didn't need a crowd for it, I just needed to be present for it.  Had I not stood up, had I just sat under that pine tree and pouted, I'd be writing an entirely different, and ridiculously shorter, post.  And that's hunting; a whole lotta nothing creating a whole lotta frustration that gets all washed away by one lucky decision.  And suddenly, I can't wait to hunt again tomorrow.