Deer season opened Wednesday. Unlike years past, I wasn’t tucked away in a blind — albeit one that has sliding glass windows and a propane heater — before the first cock crowed.
For 50 years I arose between 5 and 5:30 a.m., until a couple of years ago when I cut back at work and could relish the opportunity to rise at a more civilized hour.
Besides, I’ll let you in on a little secret of deer hunting. Many of the wise old deer are much like me, they aren’t up and about at the crack of dawn. Instead, they’re curled up in tall grass or under the enveloping limbs of a cedar.
The best deer I’ve seen were spotted between 10 a.m. and late afternoon. I suspect well-antlered deer don’t get that way from being stupid and the best way to avoid hunters is to feed — the main reason they’re up and about when the rut is over — when folks carrying high-powered rifles are chatting with friends over coffee, wondering “where are they.” Maybe it’s a conditioned response from being shot at, a Pavlovian thing.
Just look at most videos taken near a feeding station. Granddaddy deer often show up around midnight, or the wee hours of the morning. Deer are cyclical, but not necessarily nocturnal. If one fills its stomach at 1 a.m., it’s a pretty good bet hunger won’t strike again until sometime in the early afternoon.
I’ve often seen dandy bucks while doing a little surveillance in my Ranger after coming off a stand in the morning — before I discovered the wisdom of sleeping in.
Yesteryear I thought I had to scout every day for a month before the season opened — also when gasoline wasn’t as expensive. One year I saw a beautiful eight-point every afternoon. He wasn’t the largest I ever toted home, but, I learned later, his rack was nearly perfect, measuring just two inches more on one side than the other. Its symmetry was as good as it gets.
Opening day I snuggled into a small fortress of hay bales I’d constructed days earlier on the edge of a cut bean field the deer in question frequented.
He didn’t come in mid-afternoon as I expected, probably because several hunters were banging away in the general area. I worried he’d fallen victim.
Late in the afternoon I noticed movement in the brush at the far end of the field. Moments later a couple of shots rang out nearby. The buck emerged, looked back to where the shots were fired and then pranced down the opposite side of the field. He stopped directly across from me, apparently deciding what to do next. I helped him decide.
A bit later I was loading him in my truck.
I’VE NOT taken a deer for a number of years. It seems like each time I see a nice one, I think of reasons to let him go — too late in the day, not a sure shot, too muddy to drive close to load … maybe anymore it’s that I’d just as soon watch magnificent animals than to end their lives.
