Today is Columbus Day. It’s a holiday for a lot of people, but not for me. When I was in college I hunted on Columbus Day before I headed back to school. I grunted in a really nice 8-pointer. I was on the edge of a swamp and had climbed up a fallen tree and stood where the tree was hung up on another one. It wasn’t one of the smartest things I’ve ever done, but it was a truly unique experience.
As soon as it got light I grunted on my grunt call. Instantly I could hear a deer coming down the runway along the edge of the swamp. Within seconds he was in front of me and closing ground. I looked out in front of him to find a place where I might be able to get a shot and everything slowed down as he stopped. He became fidgety and started high-stepping around the bowl in front of me. Once I got to full draw I let the pin settle behind the shoulder and released the arrow. I saw it hit and the deer bounded up the hill. I was sure I killed him.
By afternoon I realized I wasn’t taking him home. Instead, I was driving back to college with a lot of unresolved feelings floating around in my head. I hated wounding the animal, but I had determined that I hit him right on the shoulder. A few weeks later when gun season opened the buck was killed on opening day and the broadhead was lodged in the shoulder bone. The person who killed the deer was excited and I was happy to know the deer wasn’t suffering.
When I got home tonight my father wanted to go hunting. He actually wanted to put a stand up, so I told him I would go along. I wanted to check a few cameras I put near feeding spots. Feeding spots usually get the most pictures for me and I almost always get bucks in these places. Since I haven’t gotten much on camera so far I didn’t expect too much. The first camera I got to didn’t have one picture on it, which surprised me. The second camera had a lot of pictures. As I flipped through them I spotted a nice buck, with a broken main beam. He’s nothing special, but he’s still a nice little ADK buck. The picture was taken yesterday morning and it came from the place I had planned on sitting if I could have crawled out of bed in the morning. I guess that’s what happens when you don’t get up and get going. In my younger years that buck would have had an arrow shot at it. I guess it was his lucky day yesterday and I was pretty happy to see him on my SD card when I pulled it.
Dad aimlessly wandered around the woods tonight. He put his tree stand down, so he could look for a place to put it. Since the leaf cover is so heavy he couldn’t locate it. He knows about where it left it, but the woods got dark and he decided to go back tomorrow. In the process of this I lost my phone. I didn’t realize it until I got home, so I had to drive back up and look for it. Fortunately I found it next to where I had parked the truck. I’m pretty lucky. It was like finding a needle in a haystack. Here are a few pictures of a doe visiting the mock scrape I made; a coyote urinating in the same scrape; a small buck cruising past the camera.
