The Meat Harvest Continues

WARNING  Graphic photos, so if dead animals bother you, don’t scan down.

I was back deer hunting this weekend, and I suppose I should presage this story with a bit of back story from last weekend.  On Monday last, I shot a large doe early in the morning.  That was not the first deer I had shot at.  On opening morning I had missed a nice 8 point buck, which rattled me a bit.  Either I was too excited and muffed the shot entirely, or I had clipped a branch with the shot.  I was hoping it was the latter of those two things.  I did not have another shot at a deer until two days later when I got the doe.  The year before I had missed a deer a well, and my confidence was shaken.  The doe restored some of that confidence.

Thursday evening Patti drove me and Nell to my dad’ office (where I worked before the accident, and hopefully again soon) to go down to stay at my parent’s for the weekend and to hunt again with my brother Matt.  He would not be there until Saturday morning, so Friday was just me and Nell.

The alarm went off at 5 am, but Nell was unrousable.  She actually growled at me when she turned over and pulled a pillow over her head.  My computer was next to the mattress she had slept on and I would later learn she had stayed up to the wee hours of the  morning watching movies and talking with cousins (who also should have been asleep) on Facebook.  Oh well.  I geared up and headed out to my stand up the bluff.

Although there was frost on the ground, it was quickly obvious that I was very overdressed for the hike up the bluff.  The previous weekend had been cold with temps Monday morning in the low teens.  This morning temps were probably just below freezing, and the long johns under jeans, under coveralls, and t-shirt, under sweater, under sweat jacket, under coveralls), and blaze orange jacket over the whole bit (oh, and warm socks and pack boots) had me sweating so much that my glasses were steaming up by the time I had just got to the pines at the base of the bluff, and there was still several hundred yards to go, and a few hundred feet of elevation.

As I entered the pines, the surrounding woods seemed to explode with noise.  There were deer running everywhere and I swore to myself.  I always try to get into my stand without rousting anything.  Now I just wanted to hurry and get there.  By the time I got to my stand I was soaked with sweat and my glasses were unwearable as they rendered me completely blind behind a sheen of condensation.  I got myself up and strapped in, then checked my phone for the time.  It was just 610 am and sunrise was not for another hour.

The sounds of deer moving through the woods at paces varying from slow walks, to crashing runs, did not stop with my elevation in the tree.  Under the low light, and lack of glasses, I was left guessing as to what sex or size the deer were.  They ghosted everywhere through the woods.  Some sounded like bucks, as when they went through brush I could hear the ticking of branches in the tines of their antlers, and I began to discern a pattern to it all.

The greatest amount of noise was on the very top of the bluff, where there is heavy buckthorn undergrowth choking the areas between large aspen.  It sounded as though there was a running battle going on up there, with only short breaks between the battles where you could still hear animals running.  The deer I could hear moving around me were more bucks, coming down off of adjoining ridges, crossing the ravines to get to the battle going on directly above me.  Circling the whole area, and passing by me every few minutes, were small bucks, which, once my glasses would not fog up (45 minutes later, well into shooting light, and just before sunrise) were easy to discern.  Spikes, forks, basket 6s and 8s.  None of them interested in actually going up to the fighting, but wanting to be near it.

At 710 (yes, I kept checking the time) I heard another deer following the same trail I had missed the shot on the previous weekend.  I put my binoculars up, and about 150 yards away I saw the same buck I had missed just 6 days before.  I had a clear shot at about 30 yards from my stand, where the brush was clear, there was a scrape in the middle of his trail, and if he kept on the same track, very shortly I would have a second shot at him.  Easy enough I figured.  I just trained my gun on that spot so I would not have to move, and waited.

He walked at a steady pace, while I watched him out of the corner of my eye, until he was about 50 feet short of the spot, and then he stopped.  Immediately my mind was thinking he had somehow winded scent of me.  There was almost no discernible wind, and although all of my hunting clothes had been washed in unscented detergent, I had sweated up everything with my hike in.  All I could do was watch while he started to walk backwards with an odd stiff gait, then turn and head back down the trail.

I dug my binoculars back out and watched him as he worked his way back into the woods, but then he turned and took another trail that led to the top of the ridge above me.  I could still hear deer moving around up there.  Suddenly my despair turned to interest as it became apparent that whatever scent the scrape contained, combined with the noises up on the bluff, simply had drawn him up to investigate the ruckus.

I watched him until all movement was lost in the tangle of buckthorn higher on the bluff.  Shortly the noise levels escalated to a level I had not heard before.  Breaking branches, thundering hooves, crashing brush, it seemed like it would never stop.  Then a deer was running, and it sounded like it was coming right towards me.  Before I had a chance to get ready the same buck dashed past me as though hell itself was on his heels.   With no chance for a shot I watched him cross the ravine below me and head up to the ridge across from me.

Now I was kind of depressed again.  Checking my watch I found that only 10 minutes had passed since he had gone up the bluff to check things out.   Before I could slip my phone back in my pocket I saw movement coming down the bluff.  I fumbled the phone, nearly loosing it to gravity, before getting it back into my pocket, and brought my gun up.  A nice doe came into view and as I steadied myself for the shot, I second guessed myself, lowered the gun, and brought my binoculars back out.  As she was emerging from the brush, right where the scrape in the trail is, I saw a much larger deer making its way through brush well behind her, and obvious antlers which kept getting caught in the brush as he tried to follow her.

The doe stepped to the middle of the scrape and pissed onto it.  I could not believe what I was watching.  She moved away from the scrape, and stopped just 30 feet to my right.  I had my gun steadied, safety off, as the buck stepped out of the brush and stopped to smell what she had done.

It took a half hour for all of the other deer to leave the area.  With the shot, the doe had moved to the bottom of the ravine, and eventually I would see 11 more bucks, none of them as big, follow her to wherever it was that she went.

With my cell phone I called down to the house, and my dad, bless him, interrupted his breakfast and coffee to once again drag a deer off the bluff and down to the house.  Next year my new spine should be strong enough that once again it will be me dragging everyone else’ deer off of the bluff, but until then I remain dependent on the kindness of family and friends.

This deadfall is at about the half way point.

Here he is getting near the top of the pines.  Maybe another 75 feet in elevation and 150 yards to go.

I got Nell up, fed her breakfast, and we took photos of each other with the deer.

She did a better job with the camera than I did but she is still better looking than I am.

On Saturday I filled Matt’s tag with a nice doe, and we butchered the deer down in the garage.  It is much easier having a deer suspended on a gambrel.  We did discover something I have never run across before.  This buck may have won all of the fights at the top of the ridge, but it was not without taking some huge hits.  He was covered with just horrible bruises, which upon close examination, are all from antler hits.  Some had even broken the skin.  His left side had, by far, taken the worst of it.  If I had not heard all the fighting I would have guessed, on first glance, that he had been hit by a car.

As bad as all of this looks, I was able to save all of the meat on the ribs.  It is not often that I find a deer is worth dealing with the layers of fat on their sides to get at thin layers of meat.  His layers of meat were not thin, and he had no fat anywhere on his body (remember how much was on the doe I butchered?).  There was a lot of blood bruising to remove, but other than about a half dollar size of meat at each antler impact point, it was fine, though it was very time consuming.

So I ended up with two large coolers, and one smaller one, completely filled with gallon bags of meat.  Only once have a shot a larger deer, which was 16 years ago, and it certainly did not come with a story as good as this one.