An Evening With Deer.

John invited me to come up and sit in "the bunker" (as we call the stand carved into the side of the dirtpile) this evening, provided he was done with work early enough to go.  Of course, this morning one of his crew members didn't show up so that complicated matters, but it turns out he had an easy assignment so he still got back in time. 

Its amazing sometimes how busy a place the rural countryside actually is.  The stands are not more than 300 yards from a county road, and there is a sort of rush hour that goes on.  Random noises intrude from the distance in all directions.  Cows, dogs, roosters, saws, what have you.  The wind was blowing our way from the river, so the voices of some kind of crazy party was actually carrying all the way to us (its about a mile away, very unusual).  About when everything settled down John's wife's young cousin started target shooting with some kind of .22 on the property next door.  An annoyed text message took care of that.  Its amazing the deer can edit it all out.

Shortly after sunset I could hear a deer approaching from behind me (I can't see that direction because of the way the blind is made).  She must have detected me in some way, because she paused and barked (or whatever the proper term is) at me.  I've read that's basically a way to try to bluff something into moving, which I did not.  A few minutes later the doe and one of her girlfriends walked right in front of me.  They were close enough that I caught a few whiffs of their musty odor and could hear their teeth crunching.  Its still antlered deer season, so they were in no danger from me, but I have to admit that after a while I began using them for aiming practice with the safety on.

I probably shouldn't say this so I'm not jinxed into not seeing another deer all year, but they lingered to the point of being annoying.  I didn't want to climb out the stand while they could see me, and they were in no hurry to leave.  Finally at very last light they took off across the field and I was able to sneak back over to the shop where John was waiting.  He had seen nothing from his stand.

Two Saturdays from now is anterless season, if this luck holds up we'll have some meat to split up that day.

On another note, I've got an inspiration for two venison meals that I want to try really soon, I'm about to take the cut of Ms. Catalina that I have in mind out of the freezer to thaw.