Deer Hunt 2016

Deer Hunt 2016 Opening Day 10/15/16

I decided to write this experience down because it was, for me, one of the more typical deer hunting experiences I have had. Opening day of deer season started with the lights out. There had been heavy rain Friday and the winds were heavy at times near Concrete. The wind had been heavy enough to take down a large cottonwood across Hwy 20 and the powerlines at Van Horn. I had heard the power was out to Lyman but the lights were on in Marblemount as I went through.

I decided to go to Birdsview to get gas because it was cheaper there and the tank of my pickup almost empty so would need a lot of gas. Cars were backed up at Van Horn until the tree was cleared. I almost didn’t make it to the hardware store in time to get a headlamp to replace my missing one. I got to the bank in plenty of time. The lights were on in Concrete so figured they should be on in Birdsview too. My gas tank read empty. I headed for Birdsview but as I got to first gas station (Grandy Creek) I saw that there were no lights on. Many gas stations have generators so you can still pump gas even if the power is out. Evidently they didn’t have a generator. I headed for the Baker Lake gas station, hoping they had generator. No Luck.

I crossed my fingers again and hoped to make it to Concrete without running out of gas. I had my rifle in the pickup for hunting season the next day and I didn’t want to leave it alone in there. There was a big line for gas at Concrete. After putting gas in my pickup, I went to the grocery store and got a week’s worth of provisions and headed home. I gassed up our generator and got it going after a lot of pulls. I had hoped to run it every two weeks or so during the summer but this had fallen by the wayside.

The lights were off all night. I was up at a little before 5:00 a.m. and off. It was raining heavily. This was good hunting weather as long as it didn’t get super windy, which forecasts had indicated was a possibility. I went to area where I had seen nice 3-point year before but didn’t get shot and smaller spike which I passed up. There was a lot of deer sign in this area last year and on a short scouting trip I cook earlier this year.

I arrived at the gated road about half an hour early and dozed for a bit before getting out of my rig. There was a break in the showers while I put on my rain clothes. I walked a little short of a mile in the dark. I hit the first logging unit right at dawn.

The rain started to pick up and the wind seemed to be swirling. Swirling wind sucks for hunting because it is impossible to get upwind and anything in the area has a really good chance of smelling you before you lay eyes on it. I finally decided main bulk of the wind was coming from the west so I took a road up to a small ridge overlooking some big flats. I saw a nice 3-point here previous year but didn’t get shot. I followed this ridge from east to west. There was lots of newer sign but nothing from the previous day or night.

I continued through the unit on a southern tack. I crossed a road and went through more flats. I was seeing lots of deer beds and sign, a few tracks, probably from night before. I slipped really badly once and landed flat on my back. The rain was beginning to soak into my clothes. I continued around a rocky knob on an eastern tack. The wind was now at my back, which was bad, but it was fairly calm. The rain was steady.

The hamstrings in both my legs were beginning to feel like they were getting ready to cramp. I had been taking lots of high steps through brush and fireweed and my long underwear, rain clothes and fireweed and brush constantly resisted the movement of legs. And I was still trying to stay as quiet as possible on top of all that. This all put a lot of strain on my hamstrings.

I have begun to consider changing my hunting tactics. I had been doing a lot of still hunting the last several years. You don’t have to work nearly so hard and quite often you see a lot more stuff, usually birds like sparrows, chickadees, kinglets etc. I saw a few small birds, sparrows and chicadees this day but everything was pretty much hunkered down in the steady rain I think. I continued on into an area where I had seen a smallish spike that I passed up the year before.

Just as I was getting out of the logging unit and onto a road, I saw doe and this year’s fawn. I tried not to spook them too much. As I walked past, the two deer made a perfect picture. They were standing side by side looking over their rumps at me with heads and ears at exactly the same angle. You don’t see that very often.

I checked out a newly logged area. I could see most of it from the road but there were several ridges and swales lower down that could hide something so hiked down into the unit. There was lots of sign but no deer.

I decided to take a route through some timber around rocky knob to get back to the road. It turned out to be lots of steep slick sidehill. The sword ferns were thick and hindered my movement. I was pretty tired by the time I got back to the road at about 9:30 a.m. The rain had been pretty steady up to this point and my clothes were pretty well soaked through. I was really tired and hungry. Slight dizzy spells kept coming and going. And my right hip and knee hurt.

I walked out to a large old-growth fir stump by the road. Several hemlocks growing tightly together there offered a little shelter from the rain. Just as I was crawling in under the hemlocks I saw a grouse. It flew up into a tree from the ground. I was a perfect shot. I couldn’t get one like this earlier in the year while I was grouse hunting. When I am deer hunting and see a grouse it is always a debate. Do I shoot at a grouse and risk scaring off any nearby deer? I finally decided to take a shot at it but when took my eye off it while fumbling with the safety on the rifle I couldn’t find it through the tree limbs. I finally spotted it the instant before it took off. Didn’t get a shot.

I crawled under the hemlocks and had something to eat. Then I dozed for fifteen minutes or so. My clothes were soaked through and a little cold and clammy. I had long underwear on though and my rain clothes insulated me quite well so wasn’t too worried. I was still warm enough to get a decent snooze in. After my nap I headed back out. There was another logging unit on the way out where I had seen lots of sign the year before. I kind of dreading hunting this because I would have to climb a hill but I was feeling much better and decided to go for it.

I noticed new gravel on the road and wondered if there were any new logging units in the area. I could probably see any new units from the top of the hill. I saw deer tracks on my way up the hill. They were probably from earlier on that morning but headed in the opposite direction from my travel. I didn’t follow them. Past experience told me that it takes lots of time and work to track animals and quite often you lose trail. It can be done but, in my experience, it is quite often more trouble than it is worth. I have found that I am usually better off to keep going in the direction I am going unless I am almost right on top of an animal. I wonder if sometimes I don’t actually end up seeing the same animal I didn’t track as they or I circle around.

The rain was steady and a heavy mist made it hard to see any great distance. The mists cleared away by the time I got to the top of the hill. I saw a new logging unit not too far away below me on the hill. I decided to check that out even though it would be an uphill hike out. My legs were beginning to get really tired. I had probably walked 3 or 4 miles by this point, a lot of which was through logging units uphill and downhill on slick, unstable ground and sticks while trying to be as quiet as possible.
Placing every footstep to try to be as quiet as possible is very hard work. It requires constant balancing so you can shift your weight before stepping on sticks or brush that will snap loudly. And, while my clothes were keeping me warm, they also hindered my movements.

There was more fresh deer sign in the new unit but no deer. I followed a road down for about a quarter mile, looking out into the unit until I realized that the road switchbacked. There was timber below switchback and not much ground between the upper and lower parts of road. I figured that there probably wouldn’t be anything there but I looked down and, lo and behold, there was a deer. I was surprised. I looked closely. No antlers. I started looking around a little more and there was another deer. This was bigger than the first deer. It was a doe and the smaller one was probably her fawn from this year. I looked some more and saw yet another deer, a small one, just in front of first deer I had seen.

Both of these deer were bedded down on an old old-growth log. The bigger doe was bedded down on ground not too far away. So it looked like a doe with twin fawns from this spring. I looked more closely at the little deer and saw that they were tow-heads, little bucks so called because the tops of their heads are light colored where the nubs of their antlers are starting to break through. These ones were not legal to shoot because their antlers weren’t long enough. There weren’t even visible, only the light spots on their heads where antlers would sprout the next year. Even if these little guys were legal, they were too small anyway.

I started to walk away but went back. The deer were a little spooked by now, and had gotten out of their beds. The little deer took off, then the doe. I looked to see if there were any more deer that I might have missed that would move when these deer started moving. Nothing. I started back up the road. I would go back up through another unit to a higher road and, hopefully, the way out. My legs were feeling very heavy at this point.

I walked through a flat on the next unit. Lots of sign again but no deer. I had seen five deer up to this point which was pretty good for me. I probably walked by at least a few more without seeing them. I walked uphill through the next unit. Again, lots of fresh deer sign but no deer.

I got to the road at the top of the unit. I was hoping to take this one out to the main road but I discovered that it dead ended at an old landing. I started uphill through some timber next to small, recently logged strip between timber patches. The road that I was on originally was just above.

I was thinking as I went along that there were lots of deer in area. I had seen lots of fresh sign and five actual deer, which is a lot in one day for me, just hadn’t seen any bucks. The towheads I had just seen didn’t count. Though they might have been technically legal to shoot, they were way too small.

I stopped to take a breather and looked over. There was another deer in the logged strip. Another doe. I looked at her through my rifle scope to verify no antlers. My scope had lots of rain drops and it got foggy from being near my face which was hot from exertion. I cleaned it up as best I could so I could see again. At this point, I was very tired, soaked through and figured that if I hadn’t seen a buck by this point, I probably wouldn’t today, but you never know. I would definitely be back in this area before the season was over. The doe was still standing there but getting antsy. Finally she moved off, not all out running and jumping as if spooked, more like steady retreat from something that was making her uneasy.

I looked around to see if there any more deer with her. None. I started back up the hill. When I stopped to take my next breather I looked up and there was another deer. I kneeled and flipped scope cover off. A quick look through the scope showed that this one had antlers. Finally. I didn’t know if it was a spike or a two point but spikes were now legal to shoot and this deer was good sized. Not large but definitely big enough to make it worthwhile to take. I didn’t debate passing it up.

Though I definitely like poking around and exploring in different areas where I wouldn’t go unless hunting, I had a lot of other things this year that needed my attention. I also didn’t get a deer the year before and Sacha wanted some venison. So it would be good to get the hunting season over sooner rather than later. Also, the season gets weird for me if I pass up an opportunity of perfectly good meat. I did that the previous year and even though I continued to hunt and explore, I felt weird the whole time.

My decision to shoot was made in split second. I hardened heart, flipped rifle safety off and aimed. A slight flinch as I was about to fire. Stop that. Adjust aim. Crosshairs solid behind shoulders. Fire. Smooth. I could see that it was a good hit. The deer took off running. I stayed in the same spot and followed its path, through trees and brush, ready to fire again if need be. Deer can be hard to find in brushy areas so if I am pretty sure I got a good hit, I like to keep an eye on them as far as possible and mark last place I saw them so I can find them more easily. Once or twice in the past I thought I had scored a good hit and the deer ran off and I wasn’t able to find them but this is pretty rare.

I followed the deer through the trees and brush for about 10 to 20 yards then everything stopped moving. I couldn’t see the deer any more so either it was dead and fallen or it had gotten away. I was pretty sure it was dead. I took note of the last place I saw movement and made my way there over several windfalls and around some brush patches. Sure enough, there it was. It had fallen with the head underneath the body. I had a slight moment of worry. Had I screwed up? Maybe it was a doe. I pulled the head from underneath the body. Sure enough there were antlers. It was a spike.

This was a good kill. It wasn’t instant but it took less than five seconds from the time I shot to the time the deer was dead. I took a few moments to reflect on the act of killing the deer and how it was sad for the deer but also part of life and how the venison would feed my family. I thanked the deer and the higher powers for the resources I had gotten.

Now the work really began. I was about a mile from my rig. It was about two thirty in the afternoon. I had enough time to get it out before dark. I would have to drag the deer up to the road that I had been  heading for. Then I would have to drag it up that road a quarter to half a mile, then down through a newer logging unit to a road below and then about half a mile to my rig. This had been my intended route out before I got the deer. If I walked the road system out instead of taking the short-cut it would probably be two miles or more.

I scouted the route to the first road and left my rifle there. It was only about 20 yards from the deer. I field dressed the deer. I took off my rain coat and vest to keep them from getting blood all over everything. Of course one of heaviest downpours of day then commenced. I was already pretty wet so this was not too bothersome and there is something about having meat to take care of that helps one deal with wetness and even tiredness. I got a small cut on my hand while gutting the deer. There were lots of other scratches and cuts on hands anyway.

I kept the heart for use in Sacha’s science class and kept the liver for some friends who like liver. I don’t like liver but there is no need to waste it if I know someone who does like it (of course nothing is a waste. It would feed some bird or critter or another if I left it). I dragged the deer up to the first road. Its antlers made good handles for dragging the carcass. It was very brushy below the road and I got scratched several times and stung numerous times by stinging nettles. I got it up to road, retrieved my rifle and started up the road dragging the deer.

I immediately ran into a pretty steep uphill spot and had to stop to rest every ten to twenty yards or so. I looked in my day pack to see if I had been smart enough to bring rope. I found a dragging strap. I had tried this on several bigger deer previously and it hadn’t worked as well as a regular rope but it was all I had and better than nothing. I tied the rope end of the strap around the deer’s antlers and threw the strap over my shoulder. It worked pretty well with this smaller deer. I still had to stop pretty frequently to rest though.

I was very tired but now had my second wind and was probably amped up a bit from the success of the hunt. And a promise of being able to sleep in and rest the next day helped deal with tiredness. I wasn’t close to exhaustion, just very tired. I finally got up the hill and hit a flat area. I thought it would be easy going and relatively flat from here out but I discovered another hill and a switchback in the road just around the corner. This was disappointing but there was no help for it.

I worked my way up this second hill and around the switchback dragging the deer. From the top of the switchback the road was relatively flat to its end at a landing. It was a short distance from the landing to the timberline below and the road where my rig was parked wasn’t too far below that.

I took the dragging strap off the deer and dragged it by hand through the logging unit. The carcass flopped around occasionally twisting the antler I was using for a dragging handle and my hand. I had to heave the deer over several logs.

There was a nasty mass of blackcaps on the edge of a small drop off at the timberline. I pushed the blackcaps away as best I could to keep them from snagging and ripping my rainclothes even though the rainclothes were pretty beaten up and holey already. I got my left foot caught in a blackcap vine at a weird angle while going over the small drop off. It took a minute for me to extricate myself. Fortunately I didn’t break or strain anything.

I heaved the deer over and into the timber with only a few small blackcap snags on my rainclothes. It was relatively easy dragging the carcass downhill through the timber. I avoided downed logs as much as possible but I still had to heave the carcass over a few. I left the deer behind a bushy hemlock just above the lower road.

I got bearings on road so I knew where to come back to before walking to my rig about half a mile away. I had a kind of wheelbarrow contraption that my great-uncle had built for wheeling game carcasses out on a road. I decided that this would be a good test for it. When I got to my rig I hid my rifle under some spare clothes and a coat and locked the rig. I headed back up the road with the wheelbarrow.

It was hard to get the deer carcass to stay in the wheelbarrow. It probably would have been easier to pack quarters instead of a whole carcass in it and maybe that is what it was designed for. However, I got the carcass on it well enough to wheel it down the road. The wheelbarrow was loaded lopsided with most of the weight on my right arm which quickly got tired. But the whole setup was definitely better than dragging a carcass.

As I started out, I realized that the tire was flat. I had only glanced at it when I loaded it up and had assumed that it was a solid rubber tire. The process of wheeling the deer carcass out would have probably been much easier if the tire had air in it but it was still better than dragging.

I got back to my rig without incident, loaded up and headed home. I stopped to show Sacha and kids before taking it up to mom’s house to hang in a shed overnight. I skinned it the next day.

If I hadn’t gotten the deer that afternoon I probably would have gone to another place and sat down to still hunt until dark. I would have probably been a little miserable, wet and clammy. If I didn’t get anything, I would have been up early on Sunday, stiff and sore from the day before, to do it all over again.

There have been a few years where I did this all three weekends of modern firearm deer season and still ended up not getting a deer. Last year was a case in point. On an interesting note, several people told me that they had seen a nice two point around mom’s place at Diobsud Creek. One guy saw it in our pasture on Monday less than a hundred yards from where the deer I had gotten was hanging in the shed. He said the two point was after a doe.

This kind of illustrates how strange life is and how much is determined by luck, or statistical probabilities or some higher power, however you want to look at it. I spend a lot of time near Diobsud Creek working on the farm and walking the dog and walking with my family and, while I had seen a lot of deer in the area, I had never laid eyes on that two point. Yet at least three different people had seen him over the course of the last several months. I know that I crossed paths with that two-point many times. If our paths had crossed during hunting season it probably would have been an unlucky day for him (and a lot less work for me). In contrast, it was an unlucky day for the deer I did get. If the road I had planned to take out hadn’t dead-ended, I wouldn’t have taken the route I did when I saw him. Conversely, it was a lucky day for me. I hadn’t planned to go that way and it was mostly luck that I ran into that deer though I will take a little credit for moving through the woods in a manner that didn’t scare everything away and being alert enough to spot him before he ran off.