I made it to my chosen access point on the boundary of Goethe State Forest about 6:30, little more than an hour before sunrise. I probably was on the tree stand around 6:50. The forest slowly turned from greys to colors around me. I heard something like a deer call around sunrise, and attempted to answer using the rubber deer call thing I recently purchased. Nothing...for a while.
About 8:15 I heard a deer coming in from my left and froze stock-still. It was a small yearling! My heart jumped. It fairly pranced along, with its tail up, not in panic but in interest. It went directly over and sniffed the buck scrape. Then the yearling looked expectantly back over it's shoulder as I heard, then saw, two other deer approaching on the same path.
It was two older does, smart enough not to rush in. These old biddies were obviously sniffing the tracks I left the previous day, not overly nervous or excited, but curious, deciding what to make of the situation. Then they started looking back. My heart jumped into overdrive as all those stories I'd read in the hunting magazines raced through my head. A buck (well legal!) was trotting right up without a care, still in the last of velvet, maybe a 7-8 point in a basket configuration. He mingled in with the does and yearling (at this point another couple does had come in from somewhere while I was focused on the buck) and seemed to even be trying to single one out. All this was only about 30-40 yards away. My brain raced, man, could it be over this fast? And please let it! It seemed like it would only be a matter of seconds before the buck would pause in just the right place.
But no, those two old does...
The two old biddies already knew something was up, and, ironically, it was they who were now hunting me. With the legendary ears and nose of whitetails, they were triangulating my location, easing closer, stamping to get my attention. I froze as stock still as my racing heart would allow. They were circling downwind, one of them was probably not 15 feet away! I knew as soon as I moved a muscle they would be gone, and the buck with them.
Meanwhile that lust-stricken buck was still going la-la-la, smelling young doe tail and moving in and out of clear line-of-sight. Finally for a few seconds I had a good shot, well, would have had a good shot if I could raise the rifle without spooking these does! Then biddies had finally had enough, and with disgusted huffs they took off. The buck was all like "Cool! We're running now!" and followed after.
The woods were thus cleared, and I was left alone with my thoughts. In the post-game analysis that looped through my head the next couple hours I decided that I should have chanced it, quickly thrown up the rifle and drew down with one quick sweep. Oh well, didn't happen.
I forced myself to stay on the stand in the quiet woods until about 10 am, then as a consolation prize I treated myself to a nice mile of stalking on a loop around the island. I doubted I'd see a deer this way but I might scare up a hog since there was some sign of them near the marshes. In reality I saw no more mammals that day besides grey squirrels, technically legal game at the time but 1) I doubted I could hit one with open sights and 2) If I did I doubted a .45 caliber bullet would leave much usable meat. It was a beautiful circuit anyway (most of the pics in the previous post came from it).
 |
| Cat-faced pine stumps are the historians of the island. |
No comments:
Post a Comment