First weekend firsts

Another Opening Day, and opening weekend, of rifle hunting season has come and gone.  Two beautiful days in the north woods filled with sunshine, mild temps, and very few deer.  As always, and I do mean always, my tag went unfilled on Opening Day; for those unfamiliar with my hunting exploits, I've hunted for more than thirty years and have NEVER shot an Opening Day deer.  So that "first" didn't come to fruition this year, but the weekend did have a couple of pretty special firsts.  Sit a spell, and let me tell ya' about 'em.....

****I had an extended opening weekend by taking Friday off to give bow hunting one final whirl before the bullet barrage began.  Friday, too, was absolutely gorgeous, but I didn't actually hunt until about 4:00.  As I approached the pines I planned to sit amongst on the edge of our radish food plot I noticed movement on the opposite end of the field - a deer, a big deer, was moving parallel to me towards the same pine grove.  I ducked into the trees and got my binoculars on it to discover it was High Rack, an 11 point buck that became a resident of our property last fall and has terrorized my parents' yard and gardens all summer long.  Deer #1 on my mom's "must shoot" list.  And he was headed my way.  Rather than stay on the large radish field I quickly moved into the small oat plot I have planted on the back side of the pines and into a ground blind I have set up amongst a half-dozen spruce trees.  As I entered the blind he entered the plot, 50 yards away and out of my shooting range. Long story short.....'cause there's no happy ending for me.......he eventually moved to within 20 yards of me but never within the shooting window of my blind.  Then he wandered out of the plot the same way he entered.  And that was that.  Twenty very exciting minutes, as this was the first time I had seen a buck while hunting with my bow.  Oh sure, getting a shot at him would have been terrific, but seeing him up close was thrilling and besides, I'd have two more days of the weekend to hunt him with a rifle.  However.....

At dark I headed to the house.  As I parked the four-wheeler and closed the garage door I noticed my dad walking into the yard carrying his crossbow.  "Well," he said, " I did it.  I put an arrow in High Rack."  After picking my jaw up off the ground I shared the tale of my tangle with High Rack (I was hunting roughly a quarter mile from where my dad was hunting), disbelieving that the buck I didn't shoot had just been shot.  However......

The deer wasn't dead.  Confirmed dead anyway.  Dad was positive he had hit the buck with his shot, but couldn't find a blood trail and hadn't heard the telltale crash of a dying deer.  So we had some tracking to do.  We ate a quick supper, put fresh batteries in flashlights, and headed out.  The night was black as coal, and temps were dipping fast towards twenty degrees.  Frost was already forming on taller grasses as we started searching the area where the buck had been standing.  Dad knew where the deer had disappeared but we didn't know which direction it went after leaving his sight, and with nothing but brown grasses in all directions finding a fresh track was nearly impossible.  However......

After about 15 minutes of bent over walking and squinting at grass in the beam of a light I saw it.  A quarter inch drop of blood on an eighth inch wide blade of grass.  How I stumbled upon that one grass in a sea of grasses I'll never know, but at that moment it was game on.  Ahead was a larger spot of red, then another.  Soon we found splatters, then the arrow.  We knew we were close.  But then we weren't.  The drops became smaller, the frequency less.  He walked through tall grasses, through brush, around trees, even crossed the fence into the field, but he never ran, never lay down, and never stood still.  At 9:00 we came to a small drop of blood that became the last drop.  Lights dimming, fingers and toes numbing, we stopped.  The hopes that arrived with the first drop of blood slipped away with the last, and as we trudged home our only hopes were for the deer to survive and not become a waste.

The next morning Daughter Two and I went hunting, Dad went back so the spot we marked as the end of our trail the night before.  He discovered the buck had doubled back at that spot, the blood trail we looked for ahead was actually behind.  He crossed the fence again, back into the spruces and tall grasses that bordered the field.  And then he lay down, once, and then twice, and then a third and final time.  Roughly 100 feet from where we had stopped, High Rack took his final breath.

It's not the biggest buck of my dad's hunting career.  Nor was it his longest or toughest tracking job.  But for the first time since the mid-90s he dropped a buck that will fit nicely on the wall alongside the other bucks he has shot that carried antlers worth mounting.  In the span of those 20-some years he's passed on some nice bucks, missed at least a couple, and more often than not set his sights on a tasty piece of meat rather than worry about antlers on a wall.  But this year he ended the big-buckless streak, and even though he didn't really show it I think he was pretty pleased to finally see a sizable rack of antlers hanging in the garage with his tag on them.  Well done, Old Man!

****My middle daughter is a hunter.  She loves the outdoors and has always been up for tagging along on a bird hunt or mushroom hunt or scouting adventure.  This is her third season as a licensed deer hunter.  Season one was full of bucks and opportunities but in the end she never was able to pull the trigger.  Season two was full of sickness and tough weather, so again she was unable to shoot her first deer.  With our hunting territory thrown into disarray this year by a logging operation, some resident timber wolves and coyotes, and a smaller than usual deer herd following last year's tough winter, year three of her career hasn't been shaping up as a banner hunting year.  However.....

There she was, by my side as we crunched across frozen ground on the opener yesterday on the way to a new stand I thought she might like (she didn't).  And there she was, quietly moving to my location when I called her to let her know I was watching a couple of deer across the field.  And there she was, sitting amongst the pines along the radish field all afternoon, hoping to see any of the deer that appeared on camera there every single evening at 5:30 (she didn't).  So her Opening Day was again a bust, her personal streak of deer-less openers pushed to three.

This morning we headed to the Bald Knob, a favorite spot of ours that holds some fun memories of close calls and dead deer.  After two hours, and absolutely no new memories, we moved off the Knob and towards the turnips.  Daughter made the call - she felt I should get back on the stand I was on yesterday while she sat along the edge of the turnip patch.  It was a good plan; between the two of us we could see almost an entire 40 acre parcel...not that we could shoot that far but at least we could see what we couldn't shoot....or something like that.  So I pointed out some spots she might want to set up and then headed to my stand.  Hadn't been there 15 minutes when KA-POW was followed by a phone call.  "That was me shooting," she said.  "A deer."  I was down the ladder and by her side in minutes.  Like a good hunter should, she knew where the deer was standing when she shot and where it was the last time she had seen it.  After a few nervous minutes of not finding blood...and a few flashbacks to the tracking job of two nights ago.....I looked ahead of me in the woods and saw the white belly hair of a dead deer.

I wasn't sure if Daughter Two had the gumption to ever pull the trigger on a deer.  I knew she liked to hunt but hunting and killing are two very different pieces of the puzzle.  When the time came she did everything exactly right.  She was too shaky when she initially aimed so she pulled the gun back and made herself calm down.  She shot well enough to make a clean kill with only one shot.  She knew where to look for the deer after shooting.  And she allowed herself to feel proud while also feeling a little sorrow and thankfulness towards the deer for giving its life to her.  Dead deer or not, she is one great young hunter.

And that's that.  Adventures galore amongst the sparsity of deer.  The old man and the young kid both made memories for themselves and were kind enough to share them with me.  Here's hoping I can return the favor next weekend.

Deer Farming 2018, Chapters 3, 4, and The End.

While trying to figure out how to get myself back into the business of blogging I realized I left a whopping 22 readers hanging on the edge of their seats back in June with this post I wrote about my early summer deer farming adventures.  At that time I was mowing weeds while making plans for what might happen if my dad and I ever got rid of the weeds.  Fast forward to right now and I'm happy to say the weeds are (mostly) gone, replaced by lush patches of deer treats that have thrived and, for the second year in a row, become a deer magnet in the midst of a much colder than usual October.

Again this summer we planted two big patches of turnips and radishes; last year we mixed the two, but this year we planted them separately.  In the June post I shared this picture of our Sand Flat plot with you:

Since then this same patch of land has transformed, first into this:

 And eventually this, our radish patch:

Mmmmmm, radishes.  Daikon radishes, to be exact.  An astute eye will notice as much or more weed as radish in some parts of that shot, as well as spots that still remained bare.  In time those bare spots filled in and the radishes began to drown out the weeds.  (side note: I haven't been in these patches since early September, so my knowledge of how they currently look is dependent on my dad's descriptions.)

On the hilltop to the north of the Sand Flat the same process played out - I mowed the patch of weeds that was to become our turnip patch, my dad soaked it with herbicide, we worked the soil, planted the seeds, and behold - turnips!

 With deer tracks!

We also planted some smaller plots of oats.  Three plots, two near the radishes on the Sand Flat and one near the turnips on the hill top.  This picture is of the early stages of mowing the largest of the three plots:

                             

Just like the other plots, once the mowing was done and the herbicide kicked in we could work up the soil and get all three ready for planting (same plot as above, viewed from the opposite end):

However, unlike the other plots the three oat plots needed to be planted later - last year's big mistake was planting oats too early, making them unpalatable to the deer during hunting season.  So this year we had to keep working the soil until mid-August when it was time to plant:

                                        

But once we planted it wasn't long before the former weed patch became an oat crop:

These pictures are of the same plot as above.....an arm of it that leads into a corridor of jack pines.

                                       

So that was my summer, off and on depending on how often I could travel north to work on these plots.  My dad did the bulk of the work on the turnip and radish patches; I did nearly everything on the oat plots.  As mentioned the oats were planted in mid-August...about three weeks after the turnips and radishes went in the ground.  Late summer planting is always a gamble because of moisture, or a lack of it.  The steady rains that had kept the vegetation lush all summer all but disappeared as soon as the brassicas hit the soil.  Life finds a way, however, and despite nearly two full weeks without any measurable precipitation both the young turnips and young radishes held on until a half-inch soaker in early August saved the day.

The oats were a different story - I got them in the ground ahead of a forecasted rainy stretch of days that never materialized, but there was enough moisture in the soil to germinate the seeds and keep them alive until the fall rains began.  From late August until now it's been rare to have more than two days in a row without a soaking rain, and as a result all of our plots are (according to my eye witness accounts) as productive as they've ever been.  Which is a relief - as mentioned in that June post a deer farmer does not farm with hopes of monetary income.  No, deer farming is an expenses-only venture. There are no subsidy programs or do-overs for the food plots that fall victim to drought or poor growing conditions.

I write this post now because I am (finally!) only a few days away from my first hunting opportunity of the fall.  The weekend activities of late September and early October have included everything but hunting, so all of my preparation work has been, thus far, for naught.  That changes on Thursday.  So ahead of what will surely be a memorable hunting season I needed to close the book on this year's deer farming and be ready to write about this year's deer harvesting.  I hope.