Yes, I had a very short season this year... Here's an excerpt from my hunting log.
Lunenburg County, September 29, 2012
Well, the forecast was not great for this weekend’s opening day of bow season for deer, but all arrangements were in place already, so and I headed down on Friday evening. We prepared our gear to hunt on Saturday morning, in our two stands on the hillside behind Our host’s cottage, just a 10 minute walk from the back door. I had been SCUBA diving that day – three boat dives in fairly deep water – so it only took a few beer before I stumbled off to bed.
Usually, the night-before-opening-day-jitters keep me from a good night’s sleep, but not this time. I had set the coffee machine to go off automatically, which it did, promptly at 5:45, waking me to the pop and gurgle of hot water on the element, followed shortly thereafter by the rich smell of fresh coffee. By the time it was done brewing, I had my bowl of oatmeal ready to eat, and I sat on the front porch looking out at lights twinkling on the bay. The steps of the porch were wet from recent rain, but none was currently falling, so I made some final preparations to go out.
Rob stumbled down from his bunk, iPhone in hand, to report that the Environment Canada radar showed that the skies were going to open up in a half-hour, and he suggested that I was nuts to go out. Well, the fact that I’m nuts was established a long time ago, so he was not surprised when I just grinned and said, “Yup, I might see you back here in a half hour then”. He shook his head, wished me luck, and headed for coffee and the couch. I grabbed my bow and walked up the familiar trail towards my stand, with my headlamp inside my closed hand, letting just a few rays of light through to illuminate my footing without disrupting my night-vision. A few of the apples that we had dumped the night before still remained, but I dumped the three pounds that I was carrying anyways, just to freshen things up, and carefully climbed up into my treestand.
I allowed myself a bit of noise to get prepared for a sudden dump of rain – getting my pack cover and my poncho out and tucking them into the pouch under my treestand seat, where I would be able to get to them in a hurry. Before settling down I checked the wind direction and sprayed a mist of doe pee downwind and let it carry off into the woods. Knowing that we had a few bucks around, I also rattled a short sequence in the hopes that I might attract some attention. I was settled down quietly by the time the green glow of my watch face showed legal shooting light.
As the woods brightened, I could see that the sky was grey, but not threateningly so, and the rain appeared to be holding off. I allowed myself to be hopeful that I might get somewhat longer than a half-hour to hunt before the rain that Rob and his iPhone had predicted would arrive. At about 7:45, just as a few light drops started to fall, I spotted a small deer coming from my left, calmly picking her way through the open oak forest, nose to the wind. My scent was blowing well uphill of her, so she came in without hesitation, followed soon after by her twin brother, and then their mother. The two youngsters started nibbling a few apples while the doe stood off to the side. I considered taking a few pictures of these deer (none of which I intended to shoot), to show Rob upon my return to the camp that I was not nuts to go and sit in my stand. Just as I turned towards my pack, which was hanging on the tree beside me, I caught sight of another deer. It was the forkhorn that I had decided beforehand would be the top candidate of the dozen or so different deer that I had seen on my trail camera in the past few weeks. Most were fawns, yearlings and does. My short-list for opening day included, in order, the forkhorn, a large doe with a few piebald markings on her side who was usually accompanied by two yearlings, and a beautiful dry doe. The forkhorn had never been seen eating apples; he tended to just walk right on past them and down the well-worn trail that crosses the hillside. That morning was no different. He walked up beside the doe, sniffed her for a quick hello (this was well before the rut) and walked towards a blazed oak tree that I knew was 14 yards from the base of my stand. When his head went behind the tree, I drew my bow and began running through my mental checklist: full draw right up to the stop, level the bow, relaxed fore-grip, sight housing centered in the peep, pick a spot on the deer and put the top pin on it, account for downward angle, BREATHE... I was about halfway through that list when his body came out from behind the tree, quartering perfectly slightly away from me. I gave a quiet bleat like they do on the redneck TV-shows. It came out of my dry mouth slightly more strangled-sounding and girly than I would have liked, but it stopped him nonetheless. I slowly squeezed my release and was pleased to see the lighted nock fly true and disappear into his vitals, reappearing stuck deeply into the ground where he had been standing. I watched him bound off into the woods and listed for thrashing of his fall, but did not hear it.
I checked my watch (8:05) and looked nervously up at the now-darkening skies. As much as I would have liked to march back to the camp, triumphant with my deer in tow, I thought that this was not the day to insist on independence – four eyes would be better than two to get the tracking done before the rain washed the blood it away. I called Rob on my cell phone and informed his slightly disbelieving voice that I had just shot the forkhorn buck. He said that he would be right there, but from the tone of his voice I could tell that he half expected to find me laughing at him for having been so gullible as to fall for my prank (certainly, this kind of behaviour from me is not outside of the realm of possibility). I took note of the time, and took a bearing with my compass from my treestand to the last place that I had seen the buck. I turned on my GPS, and while I waited for it to find satellites, the first few larger raindrops began to fall. I decided that it would be unwise to wait a full half-hour before beginning tracking, as is my usual practice, so I quietly got down from my stand after only 12 minutes. Taking only my bow and my tracking kit, I padded quietly over to where the arrow was stuck into the ground, and was pleased to see that the entire shaft was coated with bright red blood.
I began quietly tracking, joined within a few minutes by Rob. He offered his congratulations, but I declined to shake his hand until we had found the deer, given the increasing rain. Between the two of us, we moved quite quickly along the blood trail. Given what I remembered of the shot, and the blood on the arrow, I was surprised how light the blood trail was. We lost it a few times, but combined our efforts to regain it each time – a tiny drop here or there. After 50 meters or so, we found a deep hoofmark gouged into the ground where the buck had obviously stumbled, and a bigger splash of blood sprayed across the ferns, likely from a cough. My buck lay a short distance away.
The shot had been a bit higher than I had thought, likely because I jerked my release a bit when I rushed the shot before he began moving again (at that distance with a fast bow, he did not appear to have ducked the arrow). Nonetheless, the arrow has still caught the top of the near lung, and passed solidly though the other. I gutted him as the rain began in earnest, and then called my butcher to ask to borrow his garage to do the skinning, rather than getting the carcass wet (which would be an unforgivable sin, according to him). By lunchtime, I had my still-warm deer hanging in his walk-in cooler – his first of the season. We shared a few good yarns, and then I headed back to the cottage.
On the way back to the cottage the rain really started. My wipers could barely keep up, and I had a long, slow drive alongside the runners in the annual Rum Runner’s Relay from Chester to Mahone Bay. They all looked quite happy to be sloshing along the shoulder of the road in the downpour, although I was happier to be sitting in my car, smelling the funk of dead deer mingled with Tim Hortons coffee and feeling pretty pleased with myself. By the time I returned, the rain had stopped and Rob’s iPhone reported a long window of clear skies, so he managed to fit in 5 hours in the stand, where he was revisited by the two fawns, but no deer that were candidates for a shot. It was only a few day later when I got the call from him, but that’s another story…
-Croc
