Checking my Backtrail

I had not expected my birthday to cause me to become so reflective. However, I found a thread over on 24hourcampfire this morning. It was one of the usual conversations you see starting up this time of year: What is your favorite deer cartridge? I was about to jump in, and I found myself hesitating at the reply button. Why?

I’ve been on online forums, either as a host or a contributor since 1981. I have been outdoor-oriented forums for about half that time. There I was, sitting in the dark of my dining room, and I was suddenly compelled to turn and check my own back trail. There wasn’t much there—a few thousand posts scattered among boards that are mostly long gone. There have been a few articles, some serious, but mostly not.

I can remember a post I made many years ago that had me jumping in with both feet and defending the 30-06 as my favorite deer cartridge. In those days, I still liked 180 grain round-nosed, and I defended them. A few years ago, I switched to 165 grainers, and those killed deer too. Since then I’ve tried other calibers, and they’ve all killed deer.

This past winter I did an extensive computer analysis of most popular deer calibers and found out that, based on published data from the powder and bullet companies, there were a few stand-outs, but not by much. You can read about it over on my weblog or on 24hourcampfire. As I remember, one was the 280 Remington, another was the 300 Savage. The other was the 6.5X55 Swede. It was humbling that I had none of the three in my possession. It all depended on the criteria, and when I published my results everyone kept throwing new criteria at me and it always changed the answer. The only thing it proved was that you could kill deer with just about anything you wanted, and you did not have to punish your shoulder to do it well.

“ . . . and so Winne the Pooh put down the last of the rifles and turned to Christopher Robin and said, ‘ Yes, one of those will do quite nicely.’”

So here it is, another pre-season rush. Soon the newbies will be logging on and asking the immortal questions:

“Should I pick a 270 Win, or a 30-06?”
“Should I shoot sabots this year?”
“Which is better on deer: 300 Win Mag or 300 WSSSSSSM?”

I realize that there are probably no better answers than those that have already been penned. Most of those were written over a generation ago. What is needed are better questions. Here are a few:

Where is my time better spent: At the shooting bench, or scouting in the woods?
The answer is dependent on whether you are a shooter that hunts deer or a deer hunter that shoots.

How can I reduce the cost of my hunting? It is now pretty clear that for under $5000 you can fly somewhere and get a massive trophy buck to mount in your den. The TV shows are full of ideas. Why not take the reverse approach? If you are looking for a new challenge, try to see what the minimum it will cost to acquire a B&C point over 125, or just to simply acquire the cheapest $/lb venison for the table.

How close can I bag a deer? Archers and Smokepolers have been dabbling with this one for a long time, but every year I see the big topic on forums often seem to boil down to how to squeeze an extra 10 fps out of the projectile and try to take deer over in the next county. My personal best is on the ground at 5 yards on a buck with a bow while his sister was watching me from less than 3 feet away. If you think 243 Win is great at 220 yards, you ought to see what a 12 Ga Foster slug does at 10 feet!

What is the best no-brainer way for me to get my first deer? What is important? What isn’t? Now there’s a set of questions! Usually the answers are remarkably simple. Don’t get me wrong. Bagging your first deer can be hard work, but it need not be complex. That is the topic of the book I’m writing.



I guess what has my drawers all bunched up boil down to three things:

1) When you go anywhere or do anything regarding deer hunting someone is trying to sell you something.
2) When they can’t sell you something to make your life easier, they’re trying to sell you on the idea of making it harder to make it more of a challenge.
3) Way too many people have been reading way too much and they all seem to be believing 1 and 2.

When I turned 42, I started dumping stuff from my kit—scents, decoys, calls. It was getting to be that I had to arrive far to early at my stand to lay out my scent bombs and set up my decoy, and it was getting very hard to keep from strangling myself when the lanyards on my calls started getting wrapped up in my full body harness. It really bit the big one the day I’m trudging through the woods with all this plus a climbing stand and the belt on my fanny pack loosened down to my ankles, and I went sprawling in the dark. All that stuff stays in the shed now. I don’t want to die of heart failure in the woods some day, weighed down my cargo.

This year I turned 47, and I think it is time to begin lightening my load in a different way. I am going to streamline my opinions on what it takes to hunt deer, and I am going to unburden myself of the grip that technology seems to hold on the subject of deer hunting. Oh, I’ll still ponder the great issues. I will still venture an opinion on 30-30 vs 44 Mag when called on to do so. However, I think I want to burrow in on what makes me happy about hunting deer, and why steaming gutpiles makes my heart sing.