No Meat on the Pole

There was a lot that happened this weekend. Saturday was one of my all-time successful hunts. However, I did not end up with any meat on the pole. I have often said that a day in the field hunting teaches me more about myself than a year of doing anything else. This was one of those days.

This was the last weekend before rifle season begins in Kentucky. The first weekend in Novemeber has been historically and active weekend here in the Ohio Valley. This was no exception. It was unseasonably warm, but it did not stop the deer. I was out on my stand at first light and started picking up activity almost immediately. As the light came up, I found myself with a dilemma.

Around 7, a nice mature gobbler came out. I was not licensed for turkey with a bow, and there was no open season on them. However, I did want to see if it was possible to at least get a draw on the bird. He first appeared about 80 yards out and worked his way slowly up a hill towards my stand, nestled amongst some fruiting oak trees. When his head went behind one large oak, I stood and got my bow ready. At about 40 yards, he ducked back again and I brought the bow to full draw. Probably if a game warden had happened by, I would have had a hard time explaining my situation right about then, but my heart was pure. I am sure he could not have seen that I was aiming in the dirt just below his feet. I held long enough to be certain that I could have made the shot and then let it down. I congratulated myself quietly, knowing that I had finally bested a gobbler with a bow. That, in and of itself, was a lifetime achievement. The turkey came on, oblivious.

Then I heard a noise over my left shoulder. I managed to turn ever so slowly around and was met with a very nice little 8-pointer coming out of the cedars. The buck was walking slowly towards the gobbler, and the two were eyeing each other, and were not paying any attention to me.

You must understand that I bagged my lifetime-best buck two years ago next weekend. After that, I vowed that I would keep the freezer full with does until I saw a better one appear—sort of a personal version of QDM. So far, I have passed on a couple of youngish bucks, and so far I have not wavered. Then this guy showed up on my downwind side.

He had a nice rack—certainly not the smallest I have ever shot. It had been a few years since I’d bagged a buck with my bow. When I started out this year, I had decided that I would let myself take a buck with a bow, and then Girlfriend gave me that wonderful Remington 7600 in 35 Whelen. I realized then that what I really wanted to do was wait for rifle season. From that point on bow season had become sort of an exercise of scouting-with-weapon-in-hand. Still, that was a nice buck—eight points with a lot of character. He was certainly better than some of the racks I had seen up on the wall at Meyer’s in Lennoxburg. For some, including my buddies in Pennsylvania, this would have been a lifetime trophy. If it was just a bit larger I would . . . no, this guy could definitely stand to go another year.


On second thought, if this buck were reduced to possession now, no one would fault the old shaman for that kind of bow kill. That was a handsome rack, even if it was a bit small. Taxidermy? Hmmm. Maybe something a novel -- no that would be expensive. It would be better to do a simple European mount. . .

All the while, the buck and the gobbler kept getting closer. I was standing, ready to draw again. My mind was off in an endless reverie. On and on and on. Finally, the buck was approaching the optimum presentation—just past my stand at 15 yards with a slight angle leading away. I drew, I blatted. The buck stopped, stared at me and stamped his foot.

It was hard to say what happened next. I would like to be able to tell you that I deliberately chose not to shoot, or that I put my bow down and blew a raspberry to the buck. I would also like to tell you that it all ended with a good feeling.

It didn’t. I did not shoot. The buck silently bolted and ran for the trees. The turkey realized the game was up and blew out too, clearing the low limbs less than twenty feet from where I stood. I felt lousy.

Buck Fever? Maybe. The bottom line was that I had too much rolling around in my head, and I had gone into the woods without the firm commitment to kill. How it ended was for the best. The cause was simply that the buck was walking that thin line between shoot-able and passable, and my brain just could not get a fix one way or the other. As an epilog to the story, a larger buck must have been lurking deeper in the woods, because less than twenty minutes later the young buck I passed on came blowing past me at full steam away from where he had gone. He went up an adjoining creek. Shortly after he left I heard a barely-audible grunt come from the cedars. It was a long low guttural grunt-- highly aggressive. That big boy never showed himself.

Along about Ten, I packed up and left. I went the long way back, taking a couple of hours to scout an area I had left untouched during bow season. Along the way, I encountered a doe at forty yards, just off my property. She was milling about the woods, looking for acorns. She never seemed to notice me, even though I was directly upwind of her. Score one point for quiet stalking and another for scent control. I let her wander away, and walked the fence line down to the bottoms.

I found a major deer highway as soon as I set foot in the bottoms. A lot of deer had been pounding down the grass and it all seemed to be leading from beds near the creek to a funnel at the mouth of Hootin’ Holler. I scouted a nice point that overlooked the trail head-on for about 200 yards of visibility and a perfect view of the mouth of the Holler.

If you had asked me if I was hunting that day, I would have replied in the affirmative. If I really had been hunting, I would have seen the doe come up within 20 yards of me. As it was, I was down on the ground, methodically picking hawthorn twigs out from the grass so that I would have a good spot to sit when I came back during rifle season. The doe did give me a clue, before she swapped ends and bounded back along the trail. That was that even though I was fairly concealed by the cedars, my head was just too visible. She had seen my blond hair in the sunlight and that had been what cued her to my presence. A flame-orange hunting cap would have done the same. It also cued me to the fact that she had come down my own trail and not given a thought to any scent I might have left. That was confirmed a bit later. I had moved my position somewhat and found a place further back in the cedars that afforded a nearly identical perfect view of the bottom, but with a bit more overall concealment. I was surprised when another large doe came down the same trail as the first, came just as close as the first and finally caught on that I was behind the tree. This time, however, my bow and gear were back at the first spot. All I could do was sit and watch. It was still fun waiting for her to come up on me and the look in her eyes when the formless forest litter finally resolved itself into a bald-faced fatman in camo.

“Boo.”

Once the doe went crashing back the way she had come, I walked over to my gear and headed back to house. I pulled out one of my die-cut turkey blinds, sprinkled it with some baking soda and sealed it up for next weekend. If things do not go perfectly on opening morning, I’ll take the blind and a chair down to the bottoms and hide out. With 200 yards visibility down that trail, I’ll have something coming along that way. As to the other part of the morning, Girlfriend was taking her late-morning constitutional with the dogs and happened upon a huge rub near the campground. It had not been there as I was leaving that morning, so something tells me that whatever made that low, threatening grunt is still lurking back in the cedars and might very well show himself.

As to the buck fever—that is what it was—I had to admit it. I kicked myself at the time for not having a clear idea of what I was up to before drawing. It did not cost me a buck. In the end, it probably saved me from years of staring at a rack on the wall on which my heart was not fully set. However, fever is fever is fever. All it ruined was possibly watching the buck and the turkey interacting, or possibly the big bruiser coming out of the cedars and cruising by just out of my bow range. Oh well. Next time I will hopefully be a bit wiser. Opening weekend is approaching, and I now have a new hunting venue perfect for the new Remington 7600 in 35 Whelen.