SO I just returned from my deer hunt, unsuccessful as usual. Still, after 4 decent tries (one of them aborted) I have yet to bring down big game. On three of the four I saw not one of my prey. This hunt was a return to the one area I really thought had potential because its the one area I really have seen a lot of deer. (My hunt buddy and I were pleased to hear that others have recently sighted antelope and oryx there as well! We, however, appear to be an allergen to all cloven hoofed animals).
What am I doing wrong?!? Did I not pray hard enough to the horned God Cernunos? Did I forget to wipe? Perhaps it was the fault of Burritos Al Instante and its deleterious effect on my digestive system? Am I a lot more noisy than I thought? Too many hours in front of guitar amp speakers I'd wager.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not completely discouraged and I am already looking forward to applying to the next set of hunts. In fact, I had a lot of fun on this trip, courtesy of my new hunt buddy, who turns out to be one funny dude (see photo). Laughter is hard to contain in a ground blind but we managed. I laughed more this trip than I had laughed in months. Still their were hardships as one might expect from a 6600 ft elevation hunt in early January.
It wasn't the coldest night I'd ever spent, but the fact that there were not one, but two nights of appendage freezing conditions made up for the relatively balmy 24 degrees Fahrenheit in my tent. Yes. that's right, I said tent, not camper, RV, camper shell, fire-fed tee-pee or pop-up anything. Hunt buddy and I slept in a tent rated down to, I estimate, 50 degrees at the coldest. The design of this tent is appropriate for only one thing, star gazing on a summer's night. The rain-fly was an afterthought. We even modified ours with a tarp over top to try and hold in a little more of the heat. More of the heat? WHAT HEAT!?! The first night the wind picked up in bursts that took our tarp on a wild and noisy ride for hours on end. And we know because we were awake for every last shuddering flap. Many times in the night our paranoia got the better of us and we seriously considered that there might be an agitated bear, a hungry cougar or even a sizable mob of angry peasants with pitchforks and torches threatening to tear down our makeshift summer shelter and rend us from our bones. Alas it was only the bone chilling wind, thoroughly venting our nylon cave with a windchill of Cernunos knows what and making us long for the comforts of our fire places and families of four.
Needless to say, we didn't sleep a lot that first night. But we dutifully drug our frozen carcases out of our popsicle sleeping bags at 5:30 sharp, forgoing coffee for fear of missing an early rising deer, so that we could finish the frost-bite of our toes sitting in an east facing ground blind over looking the only watering hole for more than a mile radius.
No one came. No one with four legs that is. Several parties of road hunters passed by and thoroughly destroyed our already dim chances of sighting a deer. That was our first awkward lesson. During the opening days of the season, it's best to get off the road, even if you have seen deer at that incredibly convenient location. They are likely offended by the wafts of diesel, gasoline and possibly even biodiesel. By our third day we had finally learned our lesson, forsaking that formerly glorious blind for a nearby saddle and the less accessible rolling hills of pinion and juniper west of the water hole. Yet our four mile plus day in the hills was cursed further by a cold, hard wind preceding a storm system churning further West. The deer, if there were any, were in deep cover and not likely to answer the orders of Cernunos and show up for the slaughter.
When I was once describing my weapon of choice, the bow, someone asked me rhetorically, "and what weapons do the deer have?" Apart from sharp pointy things on their heads with which they could choose to run a man through (but don't really, as flight is much more a part of their personality make up than fight) they have the most remarkable defensive weapons. How, in such open country with hundred mile vistas they remain hidden from our prying eyes, enhanced with the magnifying power of binoculars, is a skill that forces reluctant respect, reminded all the more of it by sore feet and glutes. They say the more you hunt something the more you respect it, and it always seemed like such a load of rationalizing hunter romanticism that it was easy to dismiss until you experienced it. Yeah, I do respect an eight hundred pound, seven foot long oaf who can stay one step ahead of me regardless of how doggedly I track him, avoid my ambush and live to see another hunting season, adding point after point to his rack, like marks on a bedpost. When he finally does fall to the ambitious archers arrow, it's only because he was drunk off his own hormones, raging in response to the estrus that promotes the continuation of his species.
Pray Cernunos that I might one day be that ambitious archer, poised and ready to feed his family for the better part of the year. Pray, and pray, but it will have to wait for another day.
What am I doing wrong?!? Did I not pray hard enough to the horned God Cernunos? Did I forget to wipe? Perhaps it was the fault of Burritos Al Instante and its deleterious effect on my digestive system? Am I a lot more noisy than I thought? Too many hours in front of guitar amp speakers I'd wager.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not completely discouraged and I am already looking forward to applying to the next set of hunts. In fact, I had a lot of fun on this trip, courtesy of my new hunt buddy, who turns out to be one funny dude (see photo). Laughter is hard to contain in a ground blind but we managed. I laughed more this trip than I had laughed in months. Still their were hardships as one might expect from a 6600 ft elevation hunt in early January.
It wasn't the coldest night I'd ever spent, but the fact that there were not one, but two nights of appendage freezing conditions made up for the relatively balmy 24 degrees Fahrenheit in my tent. Yes. that's right, I said tent, not camper, RV, camper shell, fire-fed tee-pee or pop-up anything. Hunt buddy and I slept in a tent rated down to, I estimate, 50 degrees at the coldest. The design of this tent is appropriate for only one thing, star gazing on a summer's night. The rain-fly was an afterthought. We even modified ours with a tarp over top to try and hold in a little more of the heat. More of the heat? WHAT HEAT!?! The first night the wind picked up in bursts that took our tarp on a wild and noisy ride for hours on end. And we know because we were awake for every last shuddering flap. Many times in the night our paranoia got the better of us and we seriously considered that there might be an agitated bear, a hungry cougar or even a sizable mob of angry peasants with pitchforks and torches threatening to tear down our makeshift summer shelter and rend us from our bones. Alas it was only the bone chilling wind, thoroughly venting our nylon cave with a windchill of Cernunos knows what and making us long for the comforts of our fire places and families of four.
Needless to say, we didn't sleep a lot that first night. But we dutifully drug our frozen carcases out of our popsicle sleeping bags at 5:30 sharp, forgoing coffee for fear of missing an early rising deer, so that we could finish the frost-bite of our toes sitting in an east facing ground blind over looking the only watering hole for more than a mile radius.
No one came. No one with four legs that is. Several parties of road hunters passed by and thoroughly destroyed our already dim chances of sighting a deer. That was our first awkward lesson. During the opening days of the season, it's best to get off the road, even if you have seen deer at that incredibly convenient location. They are likely offended by the wafts of diesel, gasoline and possibly even biodiesel. By our third day we had finally learned our lesson, forsaking that formerly glorious blind for a nearby saddle and the less accessible rolling hills of pinion and juniper west of the water hole. Yet our four mile plus day in the hills was cursed further by a cold, hard wind preceding a storm system churning further West. The deer, if there were any, were in deep cover and not likely to answer the orders of Cernunos and show up for the slaughter.
When I was once describing my weapon of choice, the bow, someone asked me rhetorically, "and what weapons do the deer have?" Apart from sharp pointy things on their heads with which they could choose to run a man through (but don't really, as flight is much more a part of their personality make up than fight) they have the most remarkable defensive weapons. How, in such open country with hundred mile vistas they remain hidden from our prying eyes, enhanced with the magnifying power of binoculars, is a skill that forces reluctant respect, reminded all the more of it by sore feet and glutes. They say the more you hunt something the more you respect it, and it always seemed like such a load of rationalizing hunter romanticism that it was easy to dismiss until you experienced it. Yeah, I do respect an eight hundred pound, seven foot long oaf who can stay one step ahead of me regardless of how doggedly I track him, avoid my ambush and live to see another hunting season, adding point after point to his rack, like marks on a bedpost. When he finally does fall to the ambitious archers arrow, it's only because he was drunk off his own hormones, raging in response to the estrus that promotes the continuation of his species.
Pray Cernunos that I might one day be that ambitious archer, poised and ready to feed his family for the better part of the year. Pray, and pray, but it will have to wait for another day.
1 comment:
Blind? f the blind. get out and walk my friend. that's what our West is for. I'm doomed to sit in trees here in the East, armed like some chimp terminator.
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