Outdoor Adventures

[trkyhntr]

The Haloween Buck

With surgery to remove the fingertip of my left hand index finger pending, I decided to give archery deer season a bit of effort this past week. I suspect that following this, my hunting will be quite limited for several weeks due to doctor’s orders. I went to camp Tuesday evening, October 25, planning to stay until Monday. Nobody else showed up until my buddy Dave came in on Sunday, October 30.
I hunted Wednesday AM in the stand we call the mini condo. It is an elevated box blind with a roof, which seemed to be a sensible choice with rain scheduled to arrive later in the day. About 8:00 AM, a smaller buck entered the scene from the hollow on my left and freshened a scrape next to the driveway, not twenty yards from me. He is probably the six point I have been getting game camera photos of, and while he is a legal buck, I decided to hold out for one of the larger bucks we have been seeing, at least for a few more days. My patience seemed to be rewarded when a few minutes later a nice eight point walked within 10 feet of the stand. I made a bit of noise while moving to get into shooting position and game was over. He exited at a stiff-legged trot, stage right, and disappeared into a dense stand of mountain laurel.
That afternoon, I hunted out of a double ladder stand we call the laurel stand. It is located about half a mile distant from the cabin along a hillside above the creek named Alex Run. I saw two does a short time before dark, neither of which was close enough to shoot at had I had an antlerless tag. Mine had been filled on Saturday October 15 with a nice doe which has replenished our hamburger supply.
Thursday it rained most of the day. I don’t hunt in the rain anymore. As I am fast approaching the ripe old age of 75 like a runaway freight train, and having survived a bout with pneumonia the past spring, it makes no sense to me to tempt fate in that way. I fully realize that deer are active on rainy days, and some of my best hunting days in past years have been wet ones, but enough is enough. I spent the day in camp, relaxing and reading a Dan Brown book.
On Friday I hunted from the bear stand. This is a comfortable ladder stand, also about half a mile from the Cabin, along an old roadway named Harbaugh Lane. This roadway used to lead to a homestead, abandoned many years ago during the great depression. Some locals still remember the name of the road. The only deer I saw was about 8:30 when the wierd ten point in the photo below (a 6 X 4) passed by at 50 yards in the mist without giving me any sort of shot. Bummer! Obviously the photo found at the link below was taken much earlier in the year when he was in velvet, but I think the reader will agree that this buck is distinctive.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v440/patrkyhntr17252/8%2018%20three%20at%20salt%20lick%20-%20Version%202.jpg
The above buck and a doe with what I presume were twin fawns of the year were the only deer I saw that morning. I returned to camp for lunch shortly after noon, took a nap, and returned to the bear stand for the evening hunt. I saw no deer that evening, but a decent sized single bear did pass the stand within crossbow range, reaffirming why we named that stand as we did. The history of this stand began in 2008, the first year in which we hunted bear from what was then our new camp, Camp Rip-N-Tear. On that first snowy day, I was sitting beneath a hemlock tree roughly thirty yards from the present location of the current ladder stand. A sow bear with four cubs came past me early in the day. My rifle missfired and I lost a shirttail in the process. In 2012, I made the first bear kill for our camp, taking a young sow bear with my crossbow during the archery bear season from this ladder stand. It was named “The Bear Stand” after that event.
Saturday morning, I sat in another ladder stand we call the Front Stand. It sits almost within sight of Back Road, some 200 or so yards distant. That morning, I saw three bucks, all small ones, and did not shoot, but I got a wild idea. Why not put up a stand across the road from the scrape menytioned above? The more I thought about this, the better I liked the idea and the less wild it seemed. I returned to camp to watch the Penn State game in which they had a great second half to beat Purdue, and while watching, I continued to formulate my plan. After the game, I went out to our storage shed and picked out a spare ladder stand which I carted to the chosen location and erected, with the idea of hunting it Monday AM, which would be my last hunt before finger surgery.
On Sunday, Dave arrived, bringing with him a supply of moose baloney and some streaks from his harvest of a young moose in Newfoundland just a few weeks earlier. Eating will be a high quality endeavor in camp this year. We seldom go hungry.
Dave decided to do a walkabout Sunday afternoon, set up a pop up blind, and put up one more ladder stand. He had just finished putting up the stand we call The Brown Stand (that is its color) when it began to thunder. He hustled the 3/4 mile back to camp, but still arrived soaked to the gills. We ended the day discussing things as they are but should be over a few foamers and retired to dream of big bucks and sunny days. The next day, October 31, would be Haloween, and a Haloween buck was on my mind. Thinking this might be the last opportunity I would have to hunt deer during archery season this year, I resolved to take the first legal buck I saw on Monday.
The temperature dropped as we slept, and Monday morning it stood atabout 40 degrees. What slight breeze there was came from the North, which was perfect for my recently erected stand. I left the cabin in total darkness, as we were in new moon phase. By 6:45 I was seated in the stand, waiting for daylight which came shortly.
It is interesting to be out in the woods on a quiet morning and listen to the woods come awake. Since I have major hearing loss in both ears, that requires that I have both of my hearing aids in, which I did that morning. The first notable event was the hooting of a great horned owl, which alerted me to the fact that Dave and I were not the only hunters out and about that morning. Several birds signaled that they were awake and their daily chores about to begin, and a squirrel made his way up a white oak tree in search of one more acorn. Nothing much happened for half an hour or so, but then a couple of does emerged from the woods edging the sand mound where we have planted a patch of turnips and brasica. A few minutes later another deer appeared. This one sported antlers. I got out the binoculars and gave him a good look. He had three points on each side and was walking slowly on a path where he would cross the cabin driveway some twenty yard to my left. I had a good broadside shot as he stopped at the edge of the road. When I squeezed the trigger, I had a perfect sight picture so I knew the shot was a good one. The buck ran less than fifty yards and it was over. My buck tag is filled. I called Dave on his cell phone to report the news. He said, “I’m on the way!”
After tagging and gutting him, Dave and dragged the buck to camp and began the process of skinning and cleaning the carcass in preparation for our Butcher, Darrell Grove. I left camp later that morning and delivered it with instructions for butchering the way Ms. Doris directed. Hopefully the surgery will be successful and I will be hunting a few more years. A link to a photo of me and my Haloween Buck follows.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v440/patrkyhntr17252/IMG_0244.jpg