Yesterday morning I awoke down at my parent’s in Red Wing around 430 am. My dad had filled the coffee maker up and all I had to do was turn it on which was really nice of him. They always have Gevalia coffee on hand for the B&B and it is so nice to start the morning with real coffee. An hour and a half of making sure I had everything ready to go, a nice shower, and I headed up the trail to my stand which is 20 feet up a big white pine, about half way up the bluff. Last year I had a nice buck walk up to me 5 minutes into the season there.
This year was a little different.
30 minutes into the season, about 75 yards below me, what looked like a nice sized doe came into view. The gun came up (my Remington 870 12 gauge with a rifled slug barrel) and I was about to shoot it, then thought I should check and just make sure it was not a buck. Second year of antler point restrictions down there. The binoculars told me it was not a doe. Sticking out of his head were a pair of 4″ spikes, stained dark brown and not obvious from that distance without magnification. I held still and just watched him.
It took him about 15 minutes before he saw me, and then it took him another 15 minutes to decide I was just part of the tree. Then he bedded down in some buckthorn only about 20 yards from the base of my stand. That did not thrill me. It is hard enough to not be seen by deer walking into range. Now I had a deer I could not shoot taking a nap just below me.
After about a half hour I heard a twig snap and I slowly twisted around to see what it was. There was a fork horn buck walking in. He could smell or see the spike buck and apparently he was displeased with the smaller deer. The antler point restriction is that the deer must have at least 4 points on one antler, so all I could do was sit still and watch. The fork horn rousted the spike buck out of where he was bedded, chasing, charging and kicking the smaller deer for a few minutes before he lost interest and simply went on his way. The spike buck went back to the cover of the buckthorn and laid down again.
A half hour after that, I heard another deer coming in. This one was much large and the antlers were obvious and large. I watched it through my binoculars and was about to set them down and shoot the deer when I realized something annoying. The deer had no brow tines. Just heavy wide main beams and 3 points on a side. Could not shoot this one either. It did much the same as the fork horn, charging into the buckthorn, kicking and charging the little buck for a while until losing interest and continuing on his way.
The little buck settled back in the buckthorn, seemingly none the worse for wear. What were the chances it would happen again? Well, pretty good apparently. At about 1045 I heard a twig snap higher up on the bluff than I was, and when I started to stand and turn to see what was coming I saw that just 30 yards away was a nice high basket racked 8 pointer. All of the points were obvious and though it was not as big as the wide-racked 6 pointer that had been there previously, I was perfectly happy with this one. It also was zeroed in on the little buck bedded on the other side of my stand, and as soon as his head was behind a tree so he could not see me when I finished standing up, I dropped him with a single shot.
The little buck was startled, but did not get up out of his bed until I got out of the stand. Then he seemed quite distressed that I was there, running about 100 yards away and then “blowing” an alarm for all deer to hear for a couple of minutes.
One of the nice things about hunting down there, is dragging the deer out of the woods is a downhill affair. The body was big and heavy, but I managed the 300 yards out of the woods in about 15 minutes, leaving it under some apple trees at the bottom of the bluff. I went to get my dad to help me finish dragging it out in the field so I could field dress it, haul up to the house to rinse it out, and then down to the garage to hang it up until it was time for me to go.
My parents never heard me shoot. They used to, but I think their hearing has gone to the point where unless they are outside they do not hear the shots up on the bluff. They were busy getting lunch ready for themselves too, and my dad didn’t want to help with it all until he was done with his lunch. Not a problem. I was hungry too.
Silly thing: When we went up to where the deer was, maybe 100 yards from the house, there was a doe standing under one of the apple trees, not more than 20 feet from the dead buck. Of course, my gun was back at the house. The doe trotted into the trees and I hightailed it back to the house for my gun. When I returned she had retreated far enough into the trees that I could not see her. Oh well. If I had thought to bring the gun with me I would have had two tags filled and not just one.
I gutted out the deer, then my dad brought his little mowing tractor and a trailer down. We loaded it up, drove the deer up to the house, rinsed out the inside of the deer, I cut out the tenderloins, and we hung the deer up in the garage. Big enough so that his head was tight to the rafter 10 feet up, and toes were just above the floor. Back at the house I changed into some clean clothes, put the clothes I had been wearing into the washer (don’t want bloodstains to set up) and I headed back out to the stand to sit until dark.
The sit until dark was spent watching squirrels. Lots of squirrels. No deer moved and I heard no shooting either. Winds had picked up and it was quite warm. There had not been a lot of shooting earlier either. Oh well. With dark I walked out of the woods, cleaned up for dinner, dropped the hanging deer into my dad’s pickup and drove home. Just bonus antlerless tags for me to fill the rest of the season so I think I will concentrate on hunting closer to home. I will be back down there when it is Patti’s turn to hunt second season down there. Then I watch the kids and she has a chance for some quiet time in the woods.
