Evolution
If I can be permitted to wax philosophical for a moment, my hunting has been a process of personal and spiritual evolution. My passion for the activity has its origin in an innate appreciation for the natural world. Maybe this stems from an early childhood introduction to trout fishing in Massachusetts or childhood adventures in Mr. Pettijohn’s field trying to capture butterflies and grasshoppers or, perhaps, the origin is much earlier.
Our ancestral heritage as hunter/gatherers may be responsible for my unquenchable thirst for outdoor adventure. I have always enjoyed the wonders and mysteries of the wilds. As a youngster, I read “My Side of the Mountain” eight times in the fourth grade. The story of a boy who runs away to live off the land in the Catskill Mountains for a year was a portal to a different world for me. I imagined myself harvesting food, constructing shelter, and fashioning clothing, tools and even toys out of creatures and materials supplied by nature.
As a newly trained and licensed hunter, I could’t wait to make my first harvest. Dad, Brett and I were hunting grouse in the Chequamegon National Forest when I was credited with the taking of a fine red-phase grouse. I still, to this day, believe Dad hit that bird but he said I did and for me that was enough. I treasured that harvest which set the tone for my hunting days to come. The reverence we hold for game both before and after harvest may not be easily understood by some in today’s world. I have been asked why, if I love these things so much, do I kill them? My best answer is that I believe I am a part of the natural order of things and as long as I remember my place, the killing is as it should be.
Over the years I have hunted and fished all over the North American continent. I have been blessed with opportunities many only dream of. I’ve found that I value solitude, peace, purity, quiet, challenge, adversity and the spiritual lessons experienced in their pursuit. For this reason I have found myself gravitating toward things like canoe trips in the wilderness, archery, fly-fishing, game-calling, cross-country skiing and most recently muzzleloader hunting over things like speedboats, snowmobiles and shooting preserves.
This is not a value judgement of others but more a conscious decision, arrived at after careful consideration, of what feels right for me. It has become supremely important to heed awareness such as this. I find myself less in conflict when I honor my internal preferences.
All of this heady and perhaps overly sentimental jabbering brings me to this year’s deer hunt. Beginning with early archery season and concluding with the muzzleloader hunt, I spent probably 25 days actually hunting and many more days scouting and preparing stands. My goal, going into the season, was to concentrate my enjoyment on the process of the hunt rather than its natural conclusion of a kill. I have killed many animals in my hunting days. I have found that it is a bittersweet moment for me. I experience some remorse over ending a life, gratitude to the god of my understanding, joy at the success (even a modicum of pride), and some sadness when this signals the end of my hunt. With those thoughts in mind, I decided to hunt only for a large buck with any of my weapons this fall. I also purchased bonus tags for antlerless deer because we subsist on venison as our primary meat source. Therefore, it would be a doe in areas where herd gender ratios supported it or a large buck or nothing at all.
Archery season was the first to test my resolve. I was immediately faced with a decision when on one of my first hunts a sleek eight point buck offered himself at 15 yards. I watched, shaking and uncertain as he passed, made a scrape and moved on through the woods none the wiser. Bolstered by my success at passing an opportunity in favor of my goals, I continued to bowhunt every chance I got. By the end of the archery season, I had passed up 11 different bucks at ranges from 28 yards down to 5 yards. Three of these bucks were eight pointers at less than 10 yards. I enjoyed my bowhunting more this year than ever before and I never even loosed an arrow. I think I learned a lot more about deer behavior this way too. I’ll admit though that I was disheartened when rifle season came and neighbors shot at least 9 bucks. I’m sure there were many I never saw and are still many survivors now but my hopes of letting bucks get older and larger are being threatened by the entirely legal and ethical pursuit of hunting happiness by people with a different philosophical perspective than me. It is not for me to judge or criticize others for their perspective. In fact, I need to find it in me to be happy for their success.
For the rifle season, we elected to hunt the northwoods instead of our Jackson county home farm. We knew the chances of truly large deer, fewer hunters, and an overall more natural deer “hunt” as opposed to “shoot” were greater in the north. On the other hand, deer would not be as concentrated and would not be as pressured so deer sightings would likely be considerably less frequent up north. It is a trade off we all made willingly this year. Next year, who knows?
I passed up two smaller bucks during rifle season and did not choose to fill any bonus tags either. My beloved wife was kind enough to harvest a bonus deer so some meat for the winter was assured. Circumstances once again conspired to leave my brother Brett with an unfilled tag. Friends and owners of the property, Jeff and Suzy, harvested an eight pointer between them. Jeff also tagged a second buck taken by his friend Jerry. All told, four bucks were taken in gun season. I was left with an unfilled Hunter’s Choice tag for that unit entitling me to a muzzleloader hunt for buck or doe.
Jeff arranged for a friend of his to lend me a muzzleloader and off we went in search of a new type of primitive weapons hunt for trophy deer. With only one small deer in the freezer, I was interested in harvesting a doe for meat. I would only shoot a buck if it were truly large.
The first morning was uneventful. The woods were very quiet and no deer moved in our areas. Midday found us scouting and moving stands. I located an area that had some fresh sign the week earlier and found it to be in current, regular use. I placed a stand in a small opening surrounded by large areas of dense spruce and fir trees. After placing our stands for the following morning, Jeff and I moved to a different part of the property for the afternoon hunt. Jeff suggested I sit on a stand over-looking one of the many creek bottoms on the north end of the property. He was going to be scouting around one of the stand sites in the east central part of the property. Jeff had plenty of meat from bow and rifle seasons so he was not too urgent about shooting another deer. He milled about, checking deer sign, property boundaries and had just climbed up into an old stand left by a previous owner when he heard the blast of the .50 caliber smokepole.
I had just sat down and surveyed my surroundings when movement caught my eye, just downslope toward the creek bottom. The movement became a sizeable doe moving along a trail about 45 yards from me. She was passing directly downhill from me. I was considering taking her when I caught more movement behind her on the same trail. As the first doe passed into the brush, the second deer appeared. Noticeably smaller than the first, this deer too was a doe. I felt that she would be an excellent deer for the freezer and decided to try for her if a good shot presented itself. Moments later I was rewarded as she stopped between two spruce trees broadside to me. At the roar of the muzzleloader, I was temporarily blinded by smoke. I did glimpse the doe swapping ends, turning downhill and disappearing. I was elated at my apparent success but just to make sure, I reloaded the gun before going to retrieve my quarry.
Jeff had climbed down from his stand at my shot and made his way over to me. We stood admiring the doe. I told him about the first deer that had been considerably larger than this one. We realized that the deer in front of us was a very good-sized doe, later weighed at 115 pounds. We could only marvel at how large that first doe must have been. She dwarfed this one. We dressed the deer and made our way out of the woods and back to camp. I was very content in the knowledge that our winter meat supply was assured and that my first attempt at muzzleloader hunting had been a success. I was also excited that in the morning we’d be back out there, in the stands we had set prior to the doe harvest.
Jeff and I had scouted the property since he bought it the winter before and found it to be laden with sign of big bucks. We had yet to see any truly large ones but the tracks, rubs and scrapes were there as proof of their existence. I tend to be pretty optimistic, especially regarding deer hunting so I found it hard to sleep that night.
We had some work planned for later in the day so we decided to meet back in camp by 10:00 am. I drove my ATV down the trail and parked it about a quarter mile from my stand. I found my way in to the stand in the dark, grateful that I had put out a few trail markers the day before. It was very thick cover and a cloudy night made navigating a challenge. I settled in quietly well before shooting light. So calm that I could hear wing beats of small birds well over my head, the morning was slow in coming. The rumble of distant trains going to and from the rail yards in the twin ports of Superior and Duluth.
I was far from alone though. Numerous pine squirrels were very busily laying in their winter stores. Chattering, nervously leaping from tree to tree and several times climbing up adjacent trees to stare me down and scold me. I enjoyed their company but tired of their shrieking chatter.
Around 8:30 am I heard a deer snorting off in the distance in the direction of my ATV. I surmised that a deer had happened upon it en route to its bedding area. The deer continued to loudly announce its displeasure for several minutes. My only consolation was that the disturbance was about a quarter mile away. I dug my grunt tube out of my pack and decided I’d add a more natural and less alarming sound to the morning air. I grunted occasionally for several minutes. Not expecting any response, I put the tube back in the pack and continued to enjoy what I knew would be my last hunt of this muzzleloader season. I listened to the caws and croaks of crows and ravens for a while and then heard what sounded suspiciously like a deer grunt to the south and east of my stand site. Not sure that it wasn’t just another gravelly-voice raven, I got out my grunt tube anyway and emitted a couple guttural tones. With no response after a couple minutes, I convinced myself that it had been a raven and checked my watch. It was 9:00 am, only a few more minutes of my season remained.
With a muzzleloader, there is only one way to unload. As my time was winding down, I was choosing a small popple tree to be my unloading target. My ears then picked up the soft thuds, regularly spaced, of an approaching deer. Knowing the deer had to be close for me to hear it, I immediately stood and turned to face its approach. Slinking beneath the dense spruce and balsam branches, I glimpsed the movement of deer hooves. Cover too thick to see, I knew that I’d have to wait until the deer was nearly under me to see what it was. I eased the safety off and my heart skipped a beat, as the “snick” was much louder than I hoped. The deer stopped instantly. I froze and tried to control my heart rate as I prayed he’d settle down and continue. After a long minute he did. There! A glimpse of antler and WOW! It’s big! I said to myself, “ok, this is a shooter” and resolved not to look again at the antlers less I become unhinged. He was slipping quietly across the bed of pine needles and was only about 25 yards away as I brought the muzzleloader to my shoulder. To my horror, he heard the gunstock brush my cotton hunting vest and again froze!
To my good fortune, the heavy cover was making it difficult for him to assess the threat. He did not have any benefit of wind as the slightest of breezes was blowing my scent away from him. I was trapped in an awkward position, knees bent, hips twisted, gun halfway up. His building anxiety lasted two or three minutes but seemed an eternity to me. Legs and arms shaking, I was praying I could outlast him. I actually could shoot since I could make out his entire outline in the brush. I just did not want to risk a deflection of the slug. I kept telling myself that any second he’ll calm down and step into the two-yard opening for my shot. My psychic message apparently did not get through because he finally could not take the tension any more and turned quartering away and took two quick steps as if to break into a run. I swung the muzzle with him just as if he was a flushing grouse and fired!
Blue smoke totally obscured my view. I craned my neck to see what happened but only got a brief glimpse as he dashed away. I listened as he ran. Thuds of hoofbeats, leaves disturbed, twigs breaking…louder and louder crashing then silence!
He’s down! Dear God, let that be the sound of my trophy’s last moments…dear God, dear God, deer God. I smiled at the thought.
Certain that the sudden silence was his expiration, I began to shake in earnest. I still really had no idea how big he was, only that he was bigger than all the bucks I’d seen this fall. I quickly climbed down and hurried over to where he was when I fired. I was concerned that I didn’t see any blood. I could find his tracks in the needles and moss but no blood. I followed his trail, found where he’d torn up the ground, and stumbled but still no blood. I returned to where I’d shot. I crouched on the ground on his tracks and looked back up through the branches to my stand. I was horrified to see a large bullet hole in a balsam tree 4” in diameter. OH NO! I jumped up and ran to the tree. Sure enough, the bullet had hit the tree, blasted out a large hole and splintered the wood. I pushed a twig into the entry hole to see if the bullet was still in the tree. The twig went all the way through! Relief washed over me. I then tried to continue the bullet’s path to the point where I thought it would have hit the ground. There, I crouched again and looked back up toward my stand. I mentally drew a line from the stand to the wounded balsam and to the point on the trail where the buck stood. I looked down and found hair! Now I was certain that not only had the bullet passed cleanly through the tree, it had hit the buck as well.
Remembering my friend Jeff, I elected to hurry back to camp for his assistance and to include him in what I thought would be a pretty exciting moment. When I got there I held my arms up over my head like a big set of antlers and smiled. He said, “Did you see one?” I nodded. “Did you get him?" I told him I had hair but no blood but that I’d heard a lot of crashing and then sudden quiet. I said, “I sure hope we find him”. Jeff said, “We will, let’s go get him!”
With that, we hurried back to the scene. I quickly re-created the scenario. Jeff inspected the tree and just shook his head. We followed the same track I had before and Jeff found where the buck had changed directions. I picked up the track and followed it into another small clearing with several inches of snow in it. Then I just looked up and saw him, come to rest against a small tree with his regally crowned head upright. “There he is! Oh my God! Look at him…he’s huge!”
Several minutes of handshakes, backslaps, hoots and hollers were followed by a moment of quiet contemplation and thanks. We then shot a whole roll of film to record the moment for other’s pleasure. Jeff was kind enough to offer to dress the deer lest I slice off my fingers in my excitement. We completed our task and returned to camp with not a care in the world.
The culmination of my 1999 deer hunt was storybook stuff. I felt deeply grateful that I had so many wonderful experiences this fall. The badger that trotted proudly down a trail on my farm past my bow stand, the eagle that landed in a tree less than 100 yards away as I bowhunted in Buffalo county, the pileated woodpecker that landed not ten feet from me and eyed me suspiciously. And uncountable other moments in time that touched my soul and reminded me who I am. That is why I hunt. Because I have to. It is a matter of survival, both mental and spiritual.
