Well...it finally happened (spoiler alert!). I got to channel my inner Davey Crockett and paddle my canoe down the river with an archery buck draped over the bow.
There, now that I gave away the ending, I offer you fair warning. What follows is the looong story. If you want to make it short, just scroll through the pics – it pretty much tells it better than I can. But if you want to read my ramble, you’ve been warned… At your peril.
In 2010, while grouse hunting with my dearly departed yellow lab Ruby, I stumbled on a little patch of mature oaks sandwiched between a dense spruce thicket on one side and encircled by even more dense alders the rest of the way around. Deer entry and exit points through that dense cover were fairly well defined, and the oak stand itself is only 30 yards wide and about 100 yards long. Access was by a long hike and wade, or by canoe, depending on water levels. In this case it was a dry October, and I had waded across the river and was hunting with wet boots in the warmth of Indian summer. Although I hunted the spot a few more times for birds, it was not until my last grouse hunt of the year on New Year’s Eve that I really saw the deer hunting potential of the spot. A fresh wet snow had fallen on wet ground, just perfectly so that anywhere that there was a deeper and wetter deer trail the snow had melted into black earth. So what was left for me to see was a white map, #####-crossed by a network of black deer trails through the snow. My attention quickly shifted from feathers to antlers, and I followed the various trails into the alders, noticing many buck rubs along the trails. I named the place The Glen, and began immediately to make a plan to hunt deer in there. I would try to take advantage of the narrow width of The Glen for good bow shots, and its apparent high deer traffic, to learn when and where deer might be there, and kill one. There was something about the idea of paddling out with a buck in my canoe that felt so old school “Davey Crockett” that I joked with hunting buddies that “Someday, I’ll do a ‘glory float’ out of there with a buck in my canoe”.
I hung my first trail camera in there in 2012 and enjoyed checking it periodically, especially so because the canoe access meant that I had to leave it for quite long periods between card-swaps. So it was a bit of a “time machine” – wondering what was waiting for me after what were sometimes 3-4 month deployments. Sweet anticipation… Aside from thoughts of killing deer, I saw an abundance of wildlife in there. Snapping turtles, beavers, porcupines, racoons, coyotes, bobcat, foxes, rabbits, pheasants, grouse, woodcock, wood ducks, deer and bears, just to name a few!
Many deer used the glen in daylight hours – moving from dense bedding areas to and from two main seasonal feeding areas. So over time, the trail cameras, coupled with studying deer trails, rubs, scrapes and hunting there taught me a lot about which ways the deer approached the glen, and on what winds it would be a good hunt at different times of day and seasons. Of course, I learned the most of all from my screw ups.
My first attempt to hang a stand was humbling. It revealed to me that there was an entirely separate deer movement pattern that I hadn’t detected in all my study. With my back to the dense spruce, I got busted again and again by deer moving through what I thought was “impenetrable” spruce. My cameras and my own scouting had failed to detect them, but they busted me on nearly every hunt – blowing from behind me and crashing off into the woods, leaving me alone with my heartbeat and disappointment. I moved my stand after a while, but a big fall flood and my preference for bird hunting kept me out of there for the rest of the season.
It would take too long to detail each and every hard lesson that I learned in there, but suffice to say over six years there were many failures and adjustments, re-adjustments and re-failures. And they will continue of course, as these are wild animals and nothing about it is a perfect science. I certainly don’t pretend to believe that I know their every move before they make it, but I have learned a bit about when and where and how they move in general. And last week, that little bit that I have learned, coupled with a very healthy dose of good luck, was enough to allow a decent 8 point buck and I to converge in space and time. But before I get to that, if you’ll allow me (and even if you won’t!), I will recount one lesson I learned that is relevant to this story.
In 2014 I began to see a nice 10 point using The Glen quite regularly. By the time it got cool enough for me to bowhunt in there, where it might take me a while to get a deer out, it was mid-October. He was coming quite regularly in the evenings, so I planned my hunt accordingly. I paddled down and got into my stand. The wind was good for where I was sitting, but when he came, he walked right in on the trail I had come in on (from upwind of my stand), instead of the spruce trail that I thought he’d use. He was nervous right from the get go. It was all over his body language. He came within range and held up facing me, head down, tail down, on high alert. I was waiting for a broadside or quartering away shot. He was not in one of my clear shooting lanes, but rather way over to the left (and I’m a lefty shooter). So I slowly turned way around on my stand just as be began to turn to go back where he came from. I’m not proud of what I did next, but it is what it is, no-one is perfect. If I could have had it to do over I’d have let him walk, but in the heat of the moment, I wanted that buck. So as he turned broadside and put he put his head behind a screen of trees I crouched down on my stand and drew my bow in a very awkward position (I’m wincing just writing this!). So obviously my form went right out the window. I released the arrow and both he and the arrow were never seen again. I searched that night will into the darkness, then returned the next day and never found a single hair or drop of blood. I went home at lunchtime and got the dog and we tried again until dark. To this day I don’t know if he ran off with my arrow in him high in the body, or if the arrow clattered off somewhere into the alders and the long goldenrod beyond and I never found it, but I lost a lot of sleep over my decision to draw that bow that day. I never saw him again.
The winter of 2014-15 was catastrophic for deer. In the seasons that followed I continued my scouting and bird hunting, and always hung a stand, but I barely hunted it. For one, I had a new gun dog to work with, and I remain a bird hunter at heart. But the fact that I could recognize the half-dozen deer on my cameras, as opposed to the dozens I used to see, was enough for me to pass on any does and not bother much with chasing the few spikes and the odd fork who showed up. I did shoot deer most years, but in much easier settings where deer remained abundant.
This year, when I went to renew my access permission, the landowner told me that the deer were back, and in a serious way. My trail cameras confirmed this, good numbers of does and little ones, and a number of bucks including a decent 8 point. This is a good time to re-iterate that I’m not really a passionate deer hunter (although that may have changed last week!). I kill deer mostly for meat, often does when legal, so that I can get back to bird hunting as soon as possible. I only killed my first deer about 10 years ago, in my mid-30s. My best buck to date was a small bodied forkhorn (you might call him a 5 point if feeling generous!). So while the buck I was seeing would not raise the eyebrows of a serious trophy deer hunter, he sure as heck got my attention!
The river was low enough for most of September that I could wade across, so I checked the cam quite frequently. I hung my stand early, and of course cleared all my shooting lanes including the one that cost me the 10 point. Especially that one… On a recent pheasant hunt I waded across to look for grouse. With no card with me to swap I didn’t bother the camera, but I did notice a thick alder that was heavily rubbed, very near where the 10 point had come out. I took a few minutes to pivot my stand on the tree a bit to face the rub tree before I resumed bird hunting. I’m glad I took the time…
Various things, mostly a moose hunt to Quebec, pheasant hunting and hot weather, kept me from starting deer hunting until last week. The wind was very strong from the northwest, exactly the right direction for sitting, but requiring a long walk in waders instead of a short paddle to get to the stand so as not to make the same mistake as I did with the 10 point. The wind was a quite a bit stronger than I would like for sitting in a tree, but the season was getting away from me so I went for it. I was sweating like a pig in my waders on the hike. The water level at my crossing spot had come up quite a bit and was well above my waist in daylight, so it was going to be tricky getting out in the dark. I held my bow and pack high on my head and crossed in two trips, then took the time to wade back and put a reflective pin in a tree marking the exact spot of successful crossing. I slipped out of my sweaty waders and into my hunting boots then began the slow process of sneaking into my stand with the wind in my face. I resisted the temptation of messing with the cameras to see what was on there and got quickly and quietly up into my stand. The trees were still holding much of their leaves, so the strong wind was very noisy. The stand tree was waving a bit, but it’s a big one so I was happy with the stability overall. With the wind noise I knew I’d see any deer before hearing them, so this was no time for lack of attention. With only a few hours of hunting light I forced myself to stay out of daydream mode and focussed on the slow swivel of eyes and head to look for ears, eyes, hooves… I couldn’t believe my luck when only 25 minutes later, I saw a deer coming from well upwind. Who do we have here? Yup. It’s himself. Holy CRAP!
He was coming exactly as the 10 point did, down the trail I would have walked on had I paddled over! If it hadn’t been so hard to hold a nocked bow and pat myself on the back at the same time I would have done so. The wind was perfect. I picked my moment when his head was fully hidden and slowly stood and folded my stand seat up out of the way. Then began that checklist we all have, mostly based on things that we’ve screwed up before. I carefully looked down to see where my size 12s were to avoid squeaking rubber boots against stand cables before turning my feet to get my body facing the right way. At the top of my checklist was “They’re only antlers. You don’t NEED to shoot him today. Perfect shot or he WALKS. Remember the 10 point? Remember the sick feeling? Perfect clear broadside or he WALKS.”. Then my own personal stand-shooting weakness of failing to bend at the waist, resulting in high shots, so mentally singing the “I’m a little teapot” refrain to remember proper form. He came. Just like the 10 point but calmer. He was in range but facing me. Then quartering towards. I could see lots of his side. Shot? No. Remember your promise. I didn’t draw. Then he was broadside for a split second and he turned and walked off into the alders. Why didn’t I bleat? It works on TV! Throat too dry. Happened too fast. Then for some bizarre reason my left knee betrayed me. Remember how Elvis used to dance flailing he knees around? Well that’s what my left one did. I had to lean my left shoulder against the tree to take some weight off it. I chuckled inwardly – never too old for a little buck fever. I took a big quiet breath and slowly let it out. Oh well, I said perfect shot or he walks, and he walked. Mixed emotions of having done the right thing and of having missed a chance when he was quartering towards. I ‘probably’ could have killed him. Hmmmmmm…..
Shaking my head I rolled my shoulders to relax tensed muscles.
Wait now.
What’s that?
He’s coming back!
And just like that he walked out, turned 180 degrees so that he was broadside to me, put his head down, and started rubbing his antlers on the tree!
Draw. Anchor. Level. Pick a hair. I’m a little goddam teapot. Breathe…….. Release.
The lumenok disappearing very close to the hair I picked. That hollow THUNK of chest cavity. The arrow buried in the ground below him. But oddly, he made a tiny hop, tail down, and walked calmly off into the alders! Seemed too calm. No mule kick. No panicked dash for safety. Did I shoot too low? Dammit!
I sat down and checked the time. After 10 minutes I quietly hung my bow and got my pack. Quietly spent 10 minutes getting out headlamp, flagging tape, license, small flashlight, knife, compass, GPS and put them all in my vest pockets. After 20 minutes I lowered bow and pack and climbed silently down. Went to the arrow. Looks good.
Got out my flagging tape and started looking for blood. First drop a yard away. Not much compared to what I’m used to with the mechanicals. This is my first fixed broadhead shot. Will it be OK?
A few more little drops, then a few yards further. That’s more like it!
As I unravelled another piece of flagging tape I remembered another old lesson, and looked ahead into the alders. There he was, 8 yards away, stone dead. That’s the exit wound, by the way.
Relief, disbelief, happiness, gratefulness that things came together and that it all went right. A quick and awkward “selfie” trying to balance my phone on my backpack. Not happy with the pic, but the guts need to come out of this thing and I need to get him safely strung up and away from bears/raccoons and coyotes for the night.
With fair bit of grunting and swearing, regretting not having a better pulley system and a pair of gloves to make the parachord easier on my desk-job-softened hands, but eventually I got him strung up out of reach of all but the tallest bear. A tarp “diaper” to keep the coming rain out of most of his body cavity, a cut tag on his antler of course, and a morbid wind-chime of arrows dangling off of flagging tape to further discourage any scavengers. As a last thought I wrapped my coat over his rack, leaving a last human-scented repellant to keep him safe. Happy with my work I packed up my stuff and made tracks for the car, being especially careful in the deep, dark water crossing – shuffling my feet a bit at a time as I went.
Back in the car with the heat on, I sat for a minute and scrolled through pics on my phone before I hit the road for home. I still can’t believe my luck! Should I get a mount? Nah, he’s not big enough. But man, six long years! Then I had a thought… What about some really good pictures? So I gave a local guy I know who takes really great wildlife pictures a call (Take’em on CGN). After he congratulated me we worked out a mutually acceptable arrangement and plan for the next day! Sweet!
I didn’t sleep very well worrying about my deer. That parachord is no match for raccoon teeth. Maybe I should have come for the canoe right away and brought him out in the dark. Next morning I loaded up my smallest canoe (to make the buck look big!) and hit the road. I met up with Take’em and pointed out where I’d be coming to the riverbank and then went to my canoe launch and paddled down. Greatly relieved to find my deer safe and sound, I set to work bringing him out to where the paparazzi awaited!
There, now that I gave away the ending, I offer you fair warning. What follows is the looong story. If you want to make it short, just scroll through the pics – it pretty much tells it better than I can. But if you want to read my ramble, you’ve been warned… At your peril.
In 2010, while grouse hunting with my dearly departed yellow lab Ruby, I stumbled on a little patch of mature oaks sandwiched between a dense spruce thicket on one side and encircled by even more dense alders the rest of the way around. Deer entry and exit points through that dense cover were fairly well defined, and the oak stand itself is only 30 yards wide and about 100 yards long. Access was by a long hike and wade, or by canoe, depending on water levels. In this case it was a dry October, and I had waded across the river and was hunting with wet boots in the warmth of Indian summer. Although I hunted the spot a few more times for birds, it was not until my last grouse hunt of the year on New Year’s Eve that I really saw the deer hunting potential of the spot. A fresh wet snow had fallen on wet ground, just perfectly so that anywhere that there was a deeper and wetter deer trail the snow had melted into black earth. So what was left for me to see was a white map, #####-crossed by a network of black deer trails through the snow. My attention quickly shifted from feathers to antlers, and I followed the various trails into the alders, noticing many buck rubs along the trails. I named the place The Glen, and began immediately to make a plan to hunt deer in there. I would try to take advantage of the narrow width of The Glen for good bow shots, and its apparent high deer traffic, to learn when and where deer might be there, and kill one. There was something about the idea of paddling out with a buck in my canoe that felt so old school “Davey Crockett” that I joked with hunting buddies that “Someday, I’ll do a ‘glory float’ out of there with a buck in my canoe”.
I hung my first trail camera in there in 2012 and enjoyed checking it periodically, especially so because the canoe access meant that I had to leave it for quite long periods between card-swaps. So it was a bit of a “time machine” – wondering what was waiting for me after what were sometimes 3-4 month deployments. Sweet anticipation… Aside from thoughts of killing deer, I saw an abundance of wildlife in there. Snapping turtles, beavers, porcupines, racoons, coyotes, bobcat, foxes, rabbits, pheasants, grouse, woodcock, wood ducks, deer and bears, just to name a few!
Many deer used the glen in daylight hours – moving from dense bedding areas to and from two main seasonal feeding areas. So over time, the trail cameras, coupled with studying deer trails, rubs, scrapes and hunting there taught me a lot about which ways the deer approached the glen, and on what winds it would be a good hunt at different times of day and seasons. Of course, I learned the most of all from my screw ups.
My first attempt to hang a stand was humbling. It revealed to me that there was an entirely separate deer movement pattern that I hadn’t detected in all my study. With my back to the dense spruce, I got busted again and again by deer moving through what I thought was “impenetrable” spruce. My cameras and my own scouting had failed to detect them, but they busted me on nearly every hunt – blowing from behind me and crashing off into the woods, leaving me alone with my heartbeat and disappointment. I moved my stand after a while, but a big fall flood and my preference for bird hunting kept me out of there for the rest of the season.
It would take too long to detail each and every hard lesson that I learned in there, but suffice to say over six years there were many failures and adjustments, re-adjustments and re-failures. And they will continue of course, as these are wild animals and nothing about it is a perfect science. I certainly don’t pretend to believe that I know their every move before they make it, but I have learned a bit about when and where and how they move in general. And last week, that little bit that I have learned, coupled with a very healthy dose of good luck, was enough to allow a decent 8 point buck and I to converge in space and time. But before I get to that, if you’ll allow me (and even if you won’t!), I will recount one lesson I learned that is relevant to this story.
In 2014 I began to see a nice 10 point using The Glen quite regularly. By the time it got cool enough for me to bowhunt in there, where it might take me a while to get a deer out, it was mid-October. He was coming quite regularly in the evenings, so I planned my hunt accordingly. I paddled down and got into my stand. The wind was good for where I was sitting, but when he came, he walked right in on the trail I had come in on (from upwind of my stand), instead of the spruce trail that I thought he’d use. He was nervous right from the get go. It was all over his body language. He came within range and held up facing me, head down, tail down, on high alert. I was waiting for a broadside or quartering away shot. He was not in one of my clear shooting lanes, but rather way over to the left (and I’m a lefty shooter). So I slowly turned way around on my stand just as be began to turn to go back where he came from. I’m not proud of what I did next, but it is what it is, no-one is perfect. If I could have had it to do over I’d have let him walk, but in the heat of the moment, I wanted that buck. So as he turned broadside and put he put his head behind a screen of trees I crouched down on my stand and drew my bow in a very awkward position (I’m wincing just writing this!). So obviously my form went right out the window. I released the arrow and both he and the arrow were never seen again. I searched that night will into the darkness, then returned the next day and never found a single hair or drop of blood. I went home at lunchtime and got the dog and we tried again until dark. To this day I don’t know if he ran off with my arrow in him high in the body, or if the arrow clattered off somewhere into the alders and the long goldenrod beyond and I never found it, but I lost a lot of sleep over my decision to draw that bow that day. I never saw him again.
The winter of 2014-15 was catastrophic for deer. In the seasons that followed I continued my scouting and bird hunting, and always hung a stand, but I barely hunted it. For one, I had a new gun dog to work with, and I remain a bird hunter at heart. But the fact that I could recognize the half-dozen deer on my cameras, as opposed to the dozens I used to see, was enough for me to pass on any does and not bother much with chasing the few spikes and the odd fork who showed up. I did shoot deer most years, but in much easier settings where deer remained abundant.
This year, when I went to renew my access permission, the landowner told me that the deer were back, and in a serious way. My trail cameras confirmed this, good numbers of does and little ones, and a number of bucks including a decent 8 point. This is a good time to re-iterate that I’m not really a passionate deer hunter (although that may have changed last week!). I kill deer mostly for meat, often does when legal, so that I can get back to bird hunting as soon as possible. I only killed my first deer about 10 years ago, in my mid-30s. My best buck to date was a small bodied forkhorn (you might call him a 5 point if feeling generous!). So while the buck I was seeing would not raise the eyebrows of a serious trophy deer hunter, he sure as heck got my attention!
The river was low enough for most of September that I could wade across, so I checked the cam quite frequently. I hung my stand early, and of course cleared all my shooting lanes including the one that cost me the 10 point. Especially that one… On a recent pheasant hunt I waded across to look for grouse. With no card with me to swap I didn’t bother the camera, but I did notice a thick alder that was heavily rubbed, very near where the 10 point had come out. I took a few minutes to pivot my stand on the tree a bit to face the rub tree before I resumed bird hunting. I’m glad I took the time…
Various things, mostly a moose hunt to Quebec, pheasant hunting and hot weather, kept me from starting deer hunting until last week. The wind was very strong from the northwest, exactly the right direction for sitting, but requiring a long walk in waders instead of a short paddle to get to the stand so as not to make the same mistake as I did with the 10 point. The wind was a quite a bit stronger than I would like for sitting in a tree, but the season was getting away from me so I went for it. I was sweating like a pig in my waders on the hike. The water level at my crossing spot had come up quite a bit and was well above my waist in daylight, so it was going to be tricky getting out in the dark. I held my bow and pack high on my head and crossed in two trips, then took the time to wade back and put a reflective pin in a tree marking the exact spot of successful crossing. I slipped out of my sweaty waders and into my hunting boots then began the slow process of sneaking into my stand with the wind in my face. I resisted the temptation of messing with the cameras to see what was on there and got quickly and quietly up into my stand. The trees were still holding much of their leaves, so the strong wind was very noisy. The stand tree was waving a bit, but it’s a big one so I was happy with the stability overall. With the wind noise I knew I’d see any deer before hearing them, so this was no time for lack of attention. With only a few hours of hunting light I forced myself to stay out of daydream mode and focussed on the slow swivel of eyes and head to look for ears, eyes, hooves… I couldn’t believe my luck when only 25 minutes later, I saw a deer coming from well upwind. Who do we have here? Yup. It’s himself. Holy CRAP!
He was coming exactly as the 10 point did, down the trail I would have walked on had I paddled over! If it hadn’t been so hard to hold a nocked bow and pat myself on the back at the same time I would have done so. The wind was perfect. I picked my moment when his head was fully hidden and slowly stood and folded my stand seat up out of the way. Then began that checklist we all have, mostly based on things that we’ve screwed up before. I carefully looked down to see where my size 12s were to avoid squeaking rubber boots against stand cables before turning my feet to get my body facing the right way. At the top of my checklist was “They’re only antlers. You don’t NEED to shoot him today. Perfect shot or he WALKS. Remember the 10 point? Remember the sick feeling? Perfect clear broadside or he WALKS.”. Then my own personal stand-shooting weakness of failing to bend at the waist, resulting in high shots, so mentally singing the “I’m a little teapot” refrain to remember proper form. He came. Just like the 10 point but calmer. He was in range but facing me. Then quartering towards. I could see lots of his side. Shot? No. Remember your promise. I didn’t draw. Then he was broadside for a split second and he turned and walked off into the alders. Why didn’t I bleat? It works on TV! Throat too dry. Happened too fast. Then for some bizarre reason my left knee betrayed me. Remember how Elvis used to dance flailing he knees around? Well that’s what my left one did. I had to lean my left shoulder against the tree to take some weight off it. I chuckled inwardly – never too old for a little buck fever. I took a big quiet breath and slowly let it out. Oh well, I said perfect shot or he walks, and he walked. Mixed emotions of having done the right thing and of having missed a chance when he was quartering towards. I ‘probably’ could have killed him. Hmmmmmm…..
Shaking my head I rolled my shoulders to relax tensed muscles.
Wait now.
What’s that?
He’s coming back!
And just like that he walked out, turned 180 degrees so that he was broadside to me, put his head down, and started rubbing his antlers on the tree!
Draw. Anchor. Level. Pick a hair. I’m a little goddam teapot. Breathe…….. Release.
The lumenok disappearing very close to the hair I picked. That hollow THUNK of chest cavity. The arrow buried in the ground below him. But oddly, he made a tiny hop, tail down, and walked calmly off into the alders! Seemed too calm. No mule kick. No panicked dash for safety. Did I shoot too low? Dammit!
I sat down and checked the time. After 10 minutes I quietly hung my bow and got my pack. Quietly spent 10 minutes getting out headlamp, flagging tape, license, small flashlight, knife, compass, GPS and put them all in my vest pockets. After 20 minutes I lowered bow and pack and climbed silently down. Went to the arrow. Looks good.
Got out my flagging tape and started looking for blood. First drop a yard away. Not much compared to what I’m used to with the mechanicals. This is my first fixed broadhead shot. Will it be OK?
A few more little drops, then a few yards further. That’s more like it!
As I unravelled another piece of flagging tape I remembered another old lesson, and looked ahead into the alders. There he was, 8 yards away, stone dead. That’s the exit wound, by the way.
Relief, disbelief, happiness, gratefulness that things came together and that it all went right. A quick and awkward “selfie” trying to balance my phone on my backpack. Not happy with the pic, but the guts need to come out of this thing and I need to get him safely strung up and away from bears/raccoons and coyotes for the night.
With fair bit of grunting and swearing, regretting not having a better pulley system and a pair of gloves to make the parachord easier on my desk-job-softened hands, but eventually I got him strung up out of reach of all but the tallest bear. A tarp “diaper” to keep the coming rain out of most of his body cavity, a cut tag on his antler of course, and a morbid wind-chime of arrows dangling off of flagging tape to further discourage any scavengers. As a last thought I wrapped my coat over his rack, leaving a last human-scented repellant to keep him safe. Happy with my work I packed up my stuff and made tracks for the car, being especially careful in the deep, dark water crossing – shuffling my feet a bit at a time as I went.
Back in the car with the heat on, I sat for a minute and scrolled through pics on my phone before I hit the road for home. I still can’t believe my luck! Should I get a mount? Nah, he’s not big enough. But man, six long years! Then I had a thought… What about some really good pictures? So I gave a local guy I know who takes really great wildlife pictures a call (Take’em on CGN). After he congratulated me we worked out a mutually acceptable arrangement and plan for the next day! Sweet!
I didn’t sleep very well worrying about my deer. That parachord is no match for raccoon teeth. Maybe I should have come for the canoe right away and brought him out in the dark. Next morning I loaded up my smallest canoe (to make the buck look big!) and hit the road. I met up with Take’em and pointed out where I’d be coming to the riverbank and then went to my canoe launch and paddled down. Greatly relieved to find my deer safe and sound, I set to work bringing him out to where the paparazzi awaited!
