Category Archives: hunting

deer hunting, hunting, whitetail deer

One Tuesday in November

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Standing on the damp front porch of the cabin, I took a deep breath of the November morning and the raw chill tightened my lungs into a sputtered cough.  I thumbed three cartridges into the underside of my Model 14 and worked the back and forth to chamber a round.  The action on the old pump rifle had seen at least four or five decades of work before it had found its way into my young hands, and the fore-end glided into position easily, almost of its own accord. Reaching under, I slid in a fourth shell for insurance.

I turned my head at the sound of another hunter opening the camp door, and saw my dad step out into what was just one more of an incalculable number of mornings he had spent chasing whitetails. This was my first deer hunt since 1997, and I was glad to get into the camp again after a four-season hiatus.

“You ready?” I asked.

He nodded perfunctorily and we started through the grass and up the trail. As we entered the tree line the hushed swish of our boots through frosty grass turned into a soft, rhythmic ‘crunch-crunch-crunch’ in leaves hardened by the overnight drop below freezing. We turned slightly north and headed towards an old beaver pond; the day before, just on the edge of my sight line through the hardwoods, the ghostly shape of a deer had bounded through that spot unexpectedly.  At the time, my gun had been laying comfortably across my lap.

That morning we were hoping to see the same deer again. I was planning to be ready, while not really expecting anything to happen.

We spoke not a word as we trudged determinedly through the gloom of the dawning of another November day, and when we arrived at my allotted space, dad told me in a low whisper that he was going to move some fifty or sixty yards to the west of me and cover off the area to my right where, as a right-handed shooter, I would not be able to swing my gun through.  He said we’d sit until 10am or so and then he’d get up and do a bit of a push through the surrounding area in the hopes of kicking a deer up.

I nodded, and with a little smirk, dad walked away to my right.  His feet in the leaves sounded uncannily like a deer’s footfalls, and I could see him find his chosen spot.  He had picked a flat rock under a broad maple as his stand, and he sat down, shifting his feet slightly.  For a minute or so after he had taken his seat, I sat in the all-encompassing silence of the woods.  Then, from my right, dad broke the silence with two soft calls from a grunt tube.

As if offended by the deer noises put forth by my father, the silence again took over in a heavy pall.  Not a puff of wind blew, and no other animal dared profane the stillness with their sounds.  I could very palpably hear my own breath in my ears beneath my blaze orange toque, and I peered intensely into the vertical lines of grey hardwood trunks, hoping against hope to catch the white flash of a deer’s throat patch or to spy the vertical grey line of my quarry’s backbone.

I heard it first though.  Through the silence, directly in front of me, I could hear the steady ‘crunch, crunch…crunch, crunch, crunch’ of something walking in the leaves, and it was getting closer.  Out of the rhythmic and hypnotic approach, there was a punctuated ‘crunch…thump, thump’ and then I knew that a deer had hopped over the low, moss-covered cedar rail fence to the north of my stand, a fence that had been there since the property was a homestead in the late 1800’s. No one in our deer camp was so spry as to make that leap so early in the morning and my heart thumped rapidly.  In moments I could see the deer, head down, winnowing its way through the trees. It was on a direct line towards me and I softly slid the safety on my rifle to the ‘off’ position. It barely made an audible ‘click’ as I armed the weapon.  Adrenalin had my right hand trembling ever so slightly.

As the deer passed behind a wide tree trunk, I shouldered the gun smoothly and began tracking the animal’s approach.  All the while it ambled forward with its head down, while my eyes were riveted to its front shoulder.  It would have to turn to my right or left at some point, otherwise it would surely step on my feet, and as if on cue, at twenty paces or so it turned broadside to my left, still walking slowly through the leaves.  The front bead of my peep sight glowed bright against the grey of side of the animal and with the aiming point hovering over the deer’s heart I let my hand tighten into a squeeze on the trigger.

“POWWW!” went the rifle and I worked the pump action automatically in the echoing aftermath.  To my shock the deer simply flinched, took two quick hops to my right, and stood stock still.  It was broadside and looking right at me by then.  For what felt like an eternity, but was in reality barely a fraction of a second, I could not believe that I had missed such a lay-up of a shot. The hunter’s primal instinct blared in my brain and I swung the bead back onto the front shoulder, while the deer coiled its internal spring to flee at the sight of such an obvious movement on my part. My front bead found the fur of a deer’s shoulder blade and I again touched off the trigger.

“POWWW!” once more just as the deer jumped.  This time I did not even recall cycling the weapon, while the deer went limp in mid-air and landed on its side.  Leaves flew as it kicked two or three times before stretching out stiffly.  Once again all was still in the hardwood bottom that Tuesday morning. I had been sitting for less than fifteen minutes.

I let out a long, quivering sigh and put the gun back to ‘safe’.  Bending down I picked up the two empty brass casings that glowed against leaves still white with frost, and feeling the casing’s heat I shoved them absent-mindedly into my coat pocket. I rolled my head from shoulder to shoulder and drew in a breath that was laced with spent powder. I was elated, embarrassed, bewildered, and frankly a little sad.

But then I always feel a little sad when I shoot a deer.

Our group is dispersed when we hunt deer, and I knew that more than one short-wave radio was going to be switching on at the sound of my gun barking that early into the morning. I flipped my radio on and softly announced that I had been responsible for the shooting and that I had a deer down.  A few affirmatives crackled across the airwaves and I switched my unit off.  Forty minutes later, dad ambled over to inspect my handiwork.  He asked if it was a buck or a doe and I frankly couldn’t recall.  I had not left my seat since the shooting action and since I had a tag covering either eventuality in my pocket I had not been really focused on the deer’s headgear.  As the deer having antlers didn’t really stick out in memories just so recently forged, I told him it was a doe.

“No, it isn’t” was all he said as stood over the plump, supine form of the deer.  I leaned my gun against a tree, walked over and saw the small, basket-rack seven pointer up close. Grabbing the one antler in my hand I picked up the deer’s head and noticed that the antlers were loose and the skull seemed disconnected from the rest of the deer.  Sure enough, on closer inspection my second shot had hit the deer at the base of the skull, just below the right ear.  Certainly not where I was aiming and the definition of a ‘lucky shot’ but given the multiple vectors of startled deer, swinging gun, bewildered hunter, and hastily fired bullet I was not one to complain.

All this embarrassment and panic could have been avoided had I not shot under the deer with the first round, a fact attested to by a gouged trough in the leaves and dirt at the site of my first attempt.

It was my first buck and just my second deer, and I have had many deer-hunting purists scoff and roll their eyes at this story, caricaturing me as some sort of ham-fisted, trembling mess of a deer hunter, incapable of hitting the broad side of a barn and completely ignorant of the workings of both deer and firearm.  To those people I say a gentle profanity and hear them no more.

What transpired all those deer seasons ago was certainly not my finest moment behind the gun, and at best it was a comedy of errors that ended with some venison in the freezer and a tale to tell.  Still it is not a story I share reluctantly, because every moment in the fields and forests has merit.  For the record, the next deer I shot was perfectly dispatched with one efficient, humane shot through the base of the neck using the same gun, but I say that only to illustrate the randomness of the events related above and not as some macho form of self-aggrandizing atonement. I have missed plenty of deer before and I will miss my fair share of deer again, I can assure you.

The misses and the hits are probably a metaphor for life’s greater meaning, but that’s not what this story is really about.  This is just about the thrills and emotions of a hunt that happened in the most unpredictable fashion, and the lifelong memory it spawned.

Which are, at the end of the day, the primary reasons that I hunt in the first place.

hunting, hunting ethics, turkey hunting clothes

In Defense of a Hard 40 Yards

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It is the doldrums of winter here and in the midst of February I cannot recall the last time I saw sunshine.  Dreary grey days followed by gloomy nights followed by more dreary gray days have become the norm as we hit the mid-point of winter.

To pass the time and to give myself the illusion that spring is really coming I have taken to the internet in search of turkey hunting equipment.  I do not really require anything in this area, but it is nice to look and fantasize about guns, turkey calls, vests, and ammunition; in undertaking this exercise I can say with some certainty that there is an absolute glut of frivolous gear on the market.

But two items that have become ubiquitous in modern turkey hunting are the ‘turkey-specific” choke tube and specialized ‘turkey loads’.  I’m completely fine with these pieces of equipment because they ‘tick all the boxes’ I look for in effective pieces of gear.  A choke is generally easy to install, both pieces are simple to use in tandem, and they promote clean ethical kills when used in appropriate situations.

However it is that last caveat that, ironically, makes an ideal tool for some modern turkey hunters an absolute nightmare in the hands of others.

Are extra-full, aftermarket turkey chokes and super-charged shells mandatory equipment to kill gobblers? Of course they aren’t.  Many gobblers have fallen to hunters in the years before custom chokes were de rigueur, and countless hunters in the modern age shoot fixed-choke shotguns by necessity or personal choice.  The broad, bronze tailfans of many, many wily gobblers adorn my father’s garage walls alone, and he has only ever shot them with simple copper-plated lead from the improved cylinder choke in his glossy, 1960’s vintage Remington 1100.   For him it is at least, in part, a fundamental belief that he does not need to buy species-specific shotguns.  I’m sure he’s not alone in this.

Hunters on a budget or with a traditionalist aesthetic aside, new loads and chokes are effective, without a doubt. At extended ranges (a nebulous concept I’ll attempt to define below) they deliver more shot on a turkey’s head and neck, and thus by extension more opportunity for a quick, ethical kill with minimal suffering to the bird.

I’m all for that.

But what of the nonsense I’m now seeing about regular and consistent 70 yard kills?  I saw someone online actually admit to killing a turkey at 110 yards using a certain choke/ammo combination; a feat made all the more miraculous given that this person was fortunate enough to actually witness a gobbler having a massive stroke simultaneous to their shot, because that is the only way I can connect the two events which are so obviously unrelated.

Or this person is a stinking, filthy liar.  The hunting community has its share of those too.

But overall that seems to be the mantra now.  Longer is better.  Take the long shot.  If he hangs up, bust him. Extend your capabilities, yada, yada, yada.  At the risk of being more unpopular than I already am, this is a generally stupid and occasionally dangerous.  Of course the entities marketing this all have their own disclaimers either stated explicitly or through their sponsored mouthpieces in the industry.

“Know your gun’s capabilities and practice often.”

“Know your ranges accurately.”

“If you’re unsure, don’t take the shot.”

“Don’t take borderline or risky shots.”

And other palliative pabulums meant to absolve them from any liability for actually manufacturing a product that emboldens hunters everywhere to practice less, take longer shots, and rely less on accurate ranging of their birds.

Now, I’m far from perfect and I’m well aware that errors in judgment happen, we are all fallible beings after all.  I once underestimated my range on a hard-gobbling jake by more than ten yards and without a doubt having an extra full choke bought me the margin for error that made that bird flop.  But my self-imposed threshold was 35 yards, when I paced off 44 steps I quietly swore at myself for having made an error.  Likewise, I was thankful for the wiggle room afforded me by the shotgun’s extra-tight constriction and the swarm of lead #6 pellets that went downrange.

But super-full aftermarket chokes and ultra-long range loads are not being marketed as ‘insurance’ against misjudged distances.  They are being actively sold and touted as a way to kill gobblers once considered hung-up, henned up, or stubborn.  All this to the detriment, in my mind, of the concept of ethical distances and ethical kills.

There’s a grace to calling longbeards in close.  There are nuances in turkey hunting that can be learned from having birds near you.  I would argue for all my days that the thrill of having a bird at ten steps outweighs the thrill of using aerospace-grade material to smash his brains in from another (figurative) zip code.

So is it the many-headed hydra of consumerism driving this?  Is it simple laziness?  Is there an element of chest-thumping machismo at reaching out like Thor himself and hammering a gobbler dead from over half a football field away?  Is it merely a fashion trend?  In truth it is all of the above to a degree.  So what can you do, other than just piss and moan on the internet like I’m doing?

Have some integrity.  Be patient.  Watch the gobblers and call them in close.  Shooting, wounding, and possibly not recovering a bird at unheard of distances is a far worse alternative than letting him walk and hunting him another day.  Shooting, missing, and educating a bird is not much better and just makes them more prone to hanging up at extended ranges in the future, creating a vicious cycle of warier birds and the perceived requirement for even longer range ballistics.

Frustration can make a hunter prone to wishful thinking around distances, skills, and equipment capabilities.

There is nothing to lose at holding yourself to a hard 40 yard threshold.  It cannot be legislated and it cannot be mandated, but it can be idealized and celebrated.

And it should be.

hunting, turkey and turkey hunting

One and Done

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A thunderstorm almost made me miss out on the bird that day, but before we get there, so much more can be said in the lead up to my encounter with a gobbler I nicknamed “One and Done”.

Years ago, a fifteen-year old version of me began my deer hunting career on the property.  It had a modest farmhouse on it and was a working cattle operation for most of the year.  By the time I started chasing gobblers we no longer hunted deer out of the farmhouse, but I made a point of asking the landowner if I could poke around the property one or two times in the upcoming spring turkey season.  There were small copses of cedar trees interspersed here and there through the pasture, a marsh bookended one piece of the property while a bush road marked the other end.  Hardwoods stands circled the perimeter and the large fields were cordoned off by a modern electric fence overlaid in front of an older fence of split cedar rails.  A Google Earth view of the property showed more than one spot that just felt like they had to have a turkey in it; narrow fingers of pasture surrounded by hardwoods tucked back far from the prying eyes and binoculars of ‘road hunters’.  In one spot the distance across the field was less than fifty paces.

I was early in my turkey hunting life and as I recall it was just my second full spring season. Success had eluded me in my rookie year but close encounters with gobblers had whet my appetite so much that in my mind I was picturing myself triumphantly killing a wary old gobbler in that exact, narrow, secluded spot.  I told no one about the spot, so sure was I of my success there.

The fact that I had not actually scouted the location did not enter my young, excitable mind as an impediment at all.  Such is the joyfully ignorant exuberance of youth and inexperience.

That morning my alarm buzzed in the predawn of an early May morning.  I heard rain on the rooftop.  Hard rain.  No matter, I told myself as I pulled on a camo rain suit.  I was outfitted with the newest, most modern line of waterproof box call and could run a mouth call more than competently.  All my readings had indicated that turkeys stampeded to open fields during rainstorms, and with the zeal of a converted fanatic, I went out the door.

Driving in the dark down an empty two lane highway at 4:30 in the morning gives a man pause for thought.  I shifted a mouth call from cheek to cheek and thought about how that morning was going to play out, while the rain picked up and my wipers slapped against the windshield.  I ran a few practice yelps from behind the steering wheel and turned off onto the county road; as I did so lightning sparked in the east.  A drizzle I can handle.  Thunderstorms, not so much.

At that point my 870 would have been less of a weapon and more of a lightning rod.

I pulled off the county road at the eastern edge of the property and then drove down a narrow dirt road to a point that gave enough berth for me turn around and pull over so as not to block the track.  Thunder rumbled again and wind-driven rain sheeted down, so I decided to give the storm a half hour to pass me by.  It was 4:55am.  I set a cellphone alarm and reclined the car seat, dozing and listening to the spring showers falling outside of my glass and steel cocoon.

My phone alarm buzzed and I jolted awake.  The earliest hints of powdery grey dawn was breaking and while the thunderstorm seemed to have passed, a fine mist with aspirations of becoming drizzle persisted.  I unloaded my decoy, my gun, and then slipped my vest over my raincoat.  With the cedars and hardwoods forming a protective bower over the road I stalked quietly down the trail to that secluded finger of pasture where I was sure that I had a date with a tom turkey.  I stopped and owl called half way to the field but received no response.  Further on a crow called and again met only the stony silence of rain-soaked branches and budding spring leaves.

I entered the field and dropped a hen decoy twenty steps away before stepping over the electric wire fence and nestling comfortably into a corner of the moss-covered cedar rail fence.  The cedar rails propped up my shoulders and supported my back so perfectly it was as though that spot was designed just for me to hunt out of it.  I slipped shells into my gun and waited a few minutes in the dawn light, absorbing the sounds of an awakening woods.

Eventually I started calling softly, mimicking the soft yelps and clucks of a hen turkey on a limb.  I escalated the volume into a fly-down cackle and ran a string of assembly yelps together with my mouth call.  The natural amphitheater of the narrow field surrounded on three sides by forest provided an acoustically perfect atmosphere.

To my “second-spring-of-turkey-hunting-ear” I sounded damn near perfect.

As is usually the case nothing answered me immediately, and given my total lack of scouting in this area in the pre-season, that result was less than surprising.  In time, I ratcheted up the volume and urgency, before throwing in some hard cutts and cackles.  The second time I ran some aggressive calling, he answered.

It was a gobble that was quite close, and it was a long, raspy, mean-spirited old gargle that made the hair stand up on the back of my neck.  And he did it only once.  Although the gobble had come from a spot directly across from me, I was not 100% certain of where I should be pointing my left shoulder.

I cutt hard again on the call, hoping he would betray his spot and give me a glimpse.  He remained silent.  My eyes scanned the undergrowth across the field, trying to key in on the blue and red of his head, or the white bars of his wings, or for him to move slightly and let me track him with my eye, since he seemed reluctant to give me anymore help with his voice.  At one point I was peering so hard through the trees that my eyes started to blur. I blinked hard and still could not make out his form, but I was certain he was there.  My heart was hammering and I was barely managing to keep my breathing steady.

For fifteen minutes this went on.  Me sitting there silent and still with my gun at the ready, and him standing somewhere across from me in the gloomy forest under grey skies, curiously wondering where the hen sounds had been coming from or perhaps even cautiously eyeing my decoy.  I was afraid to move or even call.  For a while I was afraid to even blink.  The brain of a turkey hunter can play some awfully mean tricks in that still, quiet fifteen minutes, and I was mentally scrolling through my (at that time very limited) turkey hunting playbook trying to come up with a strategy.  Finally unable to take it any longer I clucked, once, on my mouth call.  Nothing.

Emboldened, I purred and yelped softly.  All remained quiet across the pasture.

Taking this personally, and still absolutely sure that the bird was standing inside the far tree line, I yelped and cutt on my call, pleading for him to gobble again.  The silence, or was it indifference, that I was receiving was borderline insulting.

Slowly I reached into my vest and retrieved my box call.  It was damp, but waterproof and I sawed some sweet yelps on it.  Once again, nothing happened.

I exhaled slowly and my heart rate returned to normal.  I was fairly certain that the bird had seen or heard something he didn’t like and had just moved off, although I had never heard a putt or seen any movement at all.  I was crestfallen, and in an instant all my hard-won confidence and self-aggrandizing delusions of expertise went out the window.

And that’s the point of the story I guess.  A bird like One and Done didn’t care what the magazines said or how much proprietary modern technology I had in my hands, how promising a hunt looks, or how good I thought I was.  If a bird like him wants to go silent and wander off, that’s just what he is going to do.  Short of the very unlikely prospect of running him down and tackling him, he was not going to be killed that wispy grey morning, at least not by a hunter of my then-novice pedigree.

I never did kill him, or any other turkey that day, and when I went back the next day the woods were vacant of turkeys.  I wandered and prospected but it was as though he was never there at all.  I shot over the head of a bird later that season, bumped a couple of others, and it was not until the last weekend of that season that my comedy of errors ceased and I was finally able to put my boot heel on my first longbeard’s neck.  The lesson in humility that the One and Done turkey taught me was not forgotten though, and to this day one or two birds teach me something new every season.  Once in a while I get a predictable bird that does what I planned he would, but more often than not some ornery gobbler or his harem of girlfriends flips the script and I have to improvise.

I don’t mind though, because that’s the fun of it.

deer hunting, hunting, reflections, whitetail deer

Slowing the Game Down

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There is an expression in baseball circles that a key to success is being able to ‘slow down the game’. I won’t belabor the theory but it essentially points to techniques that bring a level of calm to a sometimes frantic sport.

In that respect, I see parallels between baseball and deer hunting, and since I am abjectly terrible at actually killing deer I had a lot of time to think about this over the past few weeks.

For the uneducated spectator, baseball can seem to be the height of tedium.  My lovely wife cannot stomach more than an inning on television and past attempts to get her to live baseball games have proven a mistake.  She is not alone, and a four-hour-plus day at the ballpark does not hold much appeal to all but the most fanatical of baseball fans.  So it goes with some types of hunting, but I find it most crystallized in a deer hunt, particularly when ‘on stand’.  I have had many people over the course of my still young lifetime ask me one pointed question over and over again.

“What do you do out there?  You mean you just sit? That sounds boring.” And to make a not-so-popular admission, it sometimes is cripplingly monotonous.

Of course, being on stand does not necessarily define deer hunting, or the men and women that do it.  In some regions a drive or push hunt is the norm, occasionally accompanied by the sweet music of hounds working a scent trail.  In other places, spot and stalk is the modus operandi.  Rattling, calling, and decoying play an increasing part as well.  Still, I would argue that if an informal survey were conducted, nothing defines or still serves as the default approach to deer hunting more than being 25 feet up a tree, or crouched in a ground blind, or leaned up against a stump or rock waiting for a deer to pass by.

Settling in for an afternoon sit.
Settling in for an afternoon sit.

Those are long hours, and depending on where you are in the world, they are sometimes frosty, wearying shifts.  I have on more than one occasion done all-day sits that lasted from dawn to dusk, and guys in camp just shook their heads at me. Non-hunters consider it insanity and to put a fine point on it, I don’t really like it either.  But I have to do it.  I do not move quietly through the woods, I do not have a preternatural ‘eye’ for deer and deer sign, and I do not have countless hours at my disposal to scout and pattern deer.

A hope, a comfortable cushion, and a likely spot are all that I really have in my arsenal.

I’ve seen many enriching things, though, so all is not lost. I’ve seen late autumn sunrises and sunsets that provoke a deep visceral response and could move you to tears.  I’ve walked out of a sit into the approaching nightfall while the big heavy flakes of a snowstorm fell fast on a driving wind, sparkling like stars in the beam of my headlamp.  I’ve seen a small group of ruffed grouse parade past me at twenty steps, oblivious to the fact that on another day with another weapon in hand I may have turned a few of them into table fare.  I had a pine marten climb the tree behind me and sit perched six feet over my head for a full ten minutes; he muttered and purred to himself the whole time while I slowly tried to get my camera out of my backpack for a snapshot. I’ve heard hundreds and hundreds of mallards chattering and trading over my head before settling into a shallow lake a short distance away, their wings whistling in a way that was harmony and cacophony all at once.  Songbirds have mistaken my rifle barrel for a twig and perched there for a time. A chickadee landed on my forearm once and a vole climbed across my boot top another time. I once watched a tree sway in a fierce wind and topple with a crash so exhilarating and violent that I felt the ground move from a hundred feet away while my hands trembled from the shock of it.  I’ve been privy to these moments and plenty more.

Infrequently, I see a deer.

A deer eventually crossed 400yds from me.
A deer eventually crossed 400yds from me.

There has been research conducted that found that people would rather experience an electrical shock than be left for long hours with only their thoughts.  I do not understand that rationale one bit.

On a deer stand I’ve considered whether proposing to my girlfriend was a good idea.  I thought about if I wanted to have a family. I’ve considered what kind of dad I’d be and more recently what kind of dad I am. I have had epiphanies about world affairs that I’ve long since forgotten, I’ve solved complex problems at my job, and I’ve thought a lot about the place hunting has both historically and in the modern sense.  I’ve written and rewritten dozens of posts for this site in my mind, and I’ve been inspired by the wilderness to write contributions to other sites. I’ve listened to voices in my head that echo the deer hunters that came before me, and I’ve remembered and forgotten more than clumsy clichés on a laptop can do justice.  I’ve napped with an autumn sun on my face and I’ve shivered through sleety afternoons where a warm fire and a deep whiskey were vastly preferable alternatives.

Perhaps if I had paid more attention, I’d have shot more, but it did not seem pertinent then and I don’t really care at this point either.  The game has always been slowed down for me when it comes to our deer hunts, so I guess, at least in the baseball definition, I’ve been successful to a degree.

Which is good because it feels like success to me.