# Back to Basics



## DM1791 (Oct 6, 2014)

It has been a slow deer season in eastern NC. A bad run of "blue tongue disease" has made a big impact on the herd, and hunters who have regularly seen double digit groupings of deer in years past are now finding themselves straining to find even lone bucks and does on most days. Couple that with weather that has kept the acorn crop edible longer than normal, and the result is corn piles that have gone uneaten, and frustrating hours of sitting patiently in the woods only to watch the odd squirrel and wild turkey, if you're lucky.

After hearing horror stories like this for months, and having several abnormally unsuccessful hunts myself (even when don't take a deer, I used to at least _*see*_ them on a regular basis), my hopes for this season were not high. I live in a very urban setting (Charlotte, NC) and I don't often get the chance to make it back to the old homestead and hunt on my family's 400 acre farm. With regular and very experience hunters coming up dry, I wasn't going to get my hopes up, to say the least.

Over Thanksgiving, we flew my oldest son up from Florida. I went hunting two days for deer, and only saw a couple of does late one evening as I was on my way out of the woods. After that, I took my two boys (11 and 13) squirrel hunting, and we picked what seemed like the windiest day of the year, unfortunately. The squirrels all decided that they would be safer in their nests, and we didn't see a single one.

So, since the tree-rats were hiding, I decided to take the opportunity to teach the boys about wildlife tracking. We walked carefully and quietly through the woods, and I pointed out the many deer and game trails that criss-cross our family's property. I showed them how to spot entry points where trails open into fields, and how to determine which way deer are walking by the orientation of the tracks.

Then, as we were walking along a ridge line next to a dry creek bed and valley, we came across a strong scrape and rub line. I showed the boys how the buck will scrape the ground with his feet underneath a low hanging branch. Next to the scrape line was a straight shot line of trees that had been rubbed almost slick by antlers. I pointed out to the boys how you could stand at one tree and see the next one down the line. I showed them how to determine the direction the buck is walking when they make the scrape by the direction the dirt is pulled back.

We went over all of these basics, and I began to remember what attracted me to hunting in the first place.... the connection with nature and with the primitive part of myself that is in tune with things like the stalk and the hunt. It awakened that deep sense that resides down in the toes and the souls of every hunter I've ever met. The sense that makes a dry twig snap in the depths of the woods release a rush of adrenaline.... the sense that makes the soft grunt of a buck carry through the tree trunks better than the loudest bull horn.... the sense of being connected, intimately and personally, to that awesome and amazing web of life that surrounds and permeates us every waking moment, but to which we have become voluntarily oblivious.

I decided to abandon the corn piles and the carefully choreographed dance that we as hunters so often fall into of baiting, enticing, and ambushing our prey. I wanted to get back to the basics of the hunt. I wanted to test my knowledge, my planning, and my foresight against the instincts of my quarry, and let the best man (or buck) win.

I scouted the area for two days and found a pine tree that was tall, suitably straight, and free of branches for about the first thirty feet or so of height. I oriented the stand so that I would face down the ridgeline, the dry creek bed offset to my left and an open field of harvested corn up the hill to my right. I was in old-growth oak and pine with a 10 year old cutover at the bottom of the ridge-line on the other side of the dried creek bed. I got into the woods and up the tree at about 6am, a little more than an hour before sunrise.

The weather was ideal for hunting. It was cold, but not painfully so, with a very slight breeze in my face. The sky was shrouded with a thick blanket of steely gray clouds that, given another 10-15 degree drop in temperature, would have dumped buckets of snow. Daylight came slowly to the woods, and more than hour past official sunrise, the shadows stayed long and dark. Squirrels came down from their trees and gorged themselves on acorns, eating more than their fill and then burying as many as they could get their paws on. Crows circled overhead, calling to each other in strident voices and rasping coughs. The woods were writhing with life.

Around 9am, I heard the tale-tell rhythmic crunch of a deer walking through dry leaf litter. I stilled myself, and pulled my .270 to my shoulder so it would be ready. Through the dense underbrush on the other side of the creek, I spotted a hefty 4-pointer, walking cautiously, but steadily up the run. I let him pass and a cow horn followed close on his heels. I could hear more deer coming though, and I am a patient man by nature.

After about ten minutes, I caught the first glimpse of a nice six-pointer as he made his way up the line of rubbed saplings. He stopped every thirty feet or so to give a tree a shake with his antlers. A spike buck followed close on his heels, carefree and oblivious to the world, as the young often are.

The six pointer followed the path I had pointed out to my boys a week before, cautiously eyeing the woods around him with the experience that only years of cautious living can impart. At the junction of three different paths, the buck stopped, his nose high in the air as an unfamiliar scent drifted intermittently to him. He turned his head, trying to pinpoint its source.

I carefully raised my gun and set the crosshairs for a shot just behind his left shoulder. I breathed in slow and deep, then let out half the air in my lungs and held the rest. Slowly, steadily, I squeezed the trigger until the shot sounded.

The deer jumped up, and sprang forward. He leapt over a fallen log and sprinted straight away, up the opposite bank of the dried creek. I sat as still as I could, listening.... a few seconds later I heard a solid thump, and then silence.

I sat in the tree stand, my hands shaking slightly, eyes wide. I was breathing fast and shallow, and I could feel my pulse in my kidneys. I knew it was a good hit and that the deer was likely already dead, but the small voice of doubt and fear that all hunters know in the moments just after a shot is hard to ignore.

Then, I noticed something strange....almost comical. The spike buck that had been following the six point was still standing at the bottom of the ridge. He was looking around with what I suppose is the deer form of a look of mild confusion. He sniffed the ground where the six point had been standing, gave a twitch of his ears that passed for a shrug, and walked lazily along his merry way, following the steps of the other three bucks before him. I watched the spike through the scope and couldn't help but chuckle at the safety and security that ignorance provides. I let him walk on, hoping that he will one day gain the experience, the knowledge, and the points to make him a worthy prey one day.

I found the blood trail as a light drizzle began to fall. It started as a small droplet on a leaf here, a smear on a briar vine there... but it grew. Soon, there were small puddles and large swaths on trees where the buck had stumbled into them. Fifteen yards up the opposite bank, I found the buck lying on his side, motionless. I tapped it on the rear flank with my rifle barrel just to be certain, but it never twitched. As I was cleaning it later, I saw that my shot had pierced both lungs and the heart, as clean a kill as it is possible to make.

I know hunters today use blinds, baits, corn piles, salt licks, grazing plots, pheromone drips and sprays, grunt calls, antler rattles, doe decoys, and a host of other methods to entice deer to them. At one point or another, I have used many of those "tricks of the trade" myself, and to varying degrees of success.

Sometimes, though, all that you really need is a reminder and a return to the basics.

Happy hunting!


----------



## Cotton (Oct 12, 2013)

Thanks for your post, enjoyed it. Tracking basics, much has been forgotten. Your post reminded me of a couple of books I've read several times but it's been a few years. This morning I dusted them off and moved them to the shelf by my chair! The first is Tracking & the Art of Seeing, you might enjoy them. I just posted them in the book review section.


----------

