Today was the last day of early muzzleloader season. The weather hasn’t been very good the last couple of weeks. The wind was gusting up to 30mph tonight. I had planned on sitting in the area where I killed The Freezing Rain Buck, but the wind prevented me from doing so.
With the wind blowing as hard as it was I decided to do some more walking in hopes of learning a few things. I found a lot of sign in an area where my friend Sean killed his first deer with a bow many years ago. He was a young kid then and I was trying to show him the ropes. I set him in one of my favorite places and when I returned at dark he told me that he had arrowed a spikehorn.
I covered a lot of ground tonight. I found quite a few new scrapes. It appeared that they all popped up in the last two days. I got into an area where there were a lot of tracks and a few good runways. When I saw a really fresh scrape I had a feeling that the buck might be close by.
There was a rock outcropping in front of me and I knew that the woods opened up out in front of it. I figured I would sneak to the top of it and look across the opening. When I started to sneak around one of the large rocks a deer bolted down the hill. I identified it as a doe. As I was watching her something else caught my eye. All I could see was a deer’s ass and it was motoring. I’ve seen enough deer in the woods to be pretty sure that it was the buck that had just finished making the scrape that I was looking at. The back of the deer was extremely wide, but I never got a look at the head.
After the moment passed I stood there and swore at myself for a few minutes. I knew that I should have been paying a little closer attention to my surroundings. The wind was blowing so hard that the deer couldn’t have heard me. I’m pretty sure he spotted me.
When I got done cussing I continued on my journey. A few minutes later I jumped another deer. I quickly identified it as a doe. It appeared that she was bedded in some thick stuff.
The rest of the night was uneventful. I’m headed out in the morning for the opening day of our Northern Zone rifle season. Over the years I’ve killed a few bucks on opening day, but it’s pretty tough to do with all of the leaves on the trees. Here’s a picture of an opening day buck I took back in 1998.
Opening Day Buck