I haven't shot a deer with a bow for almost 30 years. I think the last one involved an epic tracking job where my brother-in-law and I followed a blood trail for a couple of miles before finding a little 6-point I accidentally Texas heart shot. We tracked it until 2am. It involved a flying squirrel that my brother-in-law swears tried to attack him, a little bit of trespassing, and a barbaric ending where we played rock, paper, scissors for who would have to walk up and cut its throat in the dark. Todd held the knife while I held the flashlight so technically, he's the Barbarian.
It's not that I haven't wanted to take a deer with my bow, I just haven't put in the effort recently. Life got busy with college, grad school, traveling and since I've moved to Montana, if I'm not guiding on the river during archery season, I'm usually chasing elk. But this year, after blowing my chases on a couple bulls, I decided to revert back to my roots, buy a tree stand, and spend some excruciatingly boring time hanging 12 feet off the ground, waiting for something to happen. It's no wonder why fewer and fewer kids are getting involved in hunting. Of course, with Verizon putting towers up in every nook and cranny in the country, you'd think sitting in a tree stand doing nothing, watching a screen would be the perfect recruitment strategy for today's youth. (Yeah, yeah, yeah, get off my lawn kid.)
Here's the deal, I did spend a lot of time in the mountains this archery season. I had some cool encounters with elk and should have punched my tag, but time ran out on the rut, and I felt the need to validate my Bear bow purchase. Whitetails are plentiful in Montana and not sought out like mule deer or elk. To be honest, I'm not sure why because I would much rather eat a whitie than a mulie, but I'm guessing it has a lot to do with the trophy aspect of the mule deer, i.e., the size of their horns. Plus, mulies are much easier to find on public lands because they aren't relegated to the river bottoms and agricultural plots that are usually inaccessible. And if I'm going to be completely honest, mule deer aren't very smart so if you're just looking for a legal buck, it's much easier getting a shot on a mule deer. When you jump one, get on the sticks and get ready because they will more than likely take a few bounds and then stop and look back over their shoulder at you giving plenty of time to aim and pull. When a whitetail gets jumped, they are gone. When it comes to archery hunting, however, whitetails are much easier to pattern and figure out where they are going to be as long as you are willing to put in the time.
I found some public land along the Blackfoot where I know there are whitetails. For my first outing, I grabbed my bow and rubber boots and headed downstream. I constructed a small ground blind next to the river and sat there for three hours watching a nice cutthroat trout rise to the top of a pool every eight seconds to grab an emerging caddis. I looked at my bow and took inventory of my pack trying to figure out how to turn that bow into a fly rod. It helped pass the time. No deer came by and as the sun went down below the cover of the mountains, the trout increased its frequency of eating to every three seconds. I stood up and started my short hike out.
As luck would have it, 100 yards into the walk back I caught some movement. It was a nice whitetail buck within about 60 yards. He spun and flagged and my initial response was to whisper one word to myself, "fuck."
The deer stopped 74 yards out and looked back at me. I could see the white outline of his eyes and face but the antlers he possessed that glowed in the dim light were certainly more memorable and got the wheels in my head turning. He never really figured out what I was but was convinced I wasn't something to mess with. He bounded off with flag up, waving back to me as if to say, "not today, dude. Not today."
"If I only had a tree stand," I thought.
So, a few days later, I bought a stand. I have to say, there was much trepidation that went into the decision to pull the trigger on the purchase. I remember growing up in the Midwest, spending hours and hours of wasted time, sitting in a stand without seeing a single deer. But I also remember shooting a few deer that way and realize sometimes, that's your only option. The thing is, spending time in the West, doing the spot and stalk thing for the past 20 years, is like being your own boss for all that time. There is no way in hell I could ever take a job working for someone else now and was also convinced I would never find myself sitting in a tree stand again. Well...
The next chance I got; I went to that same spot where I saw the big buck. The plan was to get in early, set up, and wait it out. On my way in, I jumped that buck in the same exact spot as the hunt before. I had the same reaction..."Fuck."
I went along with the plan and spent the next four hours contemplating life from that 30-inch platform. No deer walked by.
The Blackfoot is a long drive from my house. It's a commitment getting there. It costs money and time and that all gets compiled into an equation where money plus time minus deer equals frustration and subsequently, lack of motivation. The offset is the money spent on gear, which brings obligation into the equation, which will eventually drive the internal dialog that guilt's me into getting out there and doing it again just to justify the purchases and previous effort. By the way, these are the things I think about while hanging 12 feet off the ground in the woods.
I make a concession with myself on my next day off. I will go out again and put that stand up and I will spend three hours in it, but I won't drive all the way to the Blackfoot. I'll go to a piece of block management along a creek that is halfway. I know there are whitetails in there. I don't know if there are big deer in there, but I have a B tag along with my general tag that is only good for a doe so if I get the chance to put venison in the freezer, I'll take the doe.
I park the truck off the two-track getting into this little piece of woods along the creek. I grab my gear and walk into a stand of trees. It's only about 300 yards from the parking spot. Trees are ripped up from species of the deer family much bigger than whitetails, which gets me a little more excited. I see elk droppings on the path as I walk in. I also have seen moose in there and although I know I can't shoot one, it would be very cool to get them on video. Maybe this will work out better than I thought?
I pick out a somewhat straight aspen and mount my stand; again, about 12 feet up. I get set up with my release on, an arrow nocked, and prepare myself for the three hours I will have to run through every conversation I've had with family and friends and clients that I think I've screwed up and wonder how I might fix what I haven't been able to fix for the past 53 years.
Spending time in the outdoors is supposed to be healthy, right? So instead of dwelling on past failures, I find gratitude in the fact that I'm still able to climb a tree at 53 years old, I'm experiencing the beauty of Montana wilderness, and I might actually get to shoot something tonight. But how would life be different if...and how would my relationship with "x" be different if I had...
An hour and a half into it, I wonder if I should get down from the stand and do some recon for future hunting trips. I didn't want to get too far into the stand of trees as to not spook deer out of there that might make their way my way. Was that a mistake? Is there a better spot to set up in? Would I have a better chance if I was on the move? I tell myself I will give it another 45 minutes. That would give me about 45 minutes to take a quick hike up the ridge and maybe see something or find a better vantage point for next time.
"Crunch, crunch, crunch..."
I whip my head around to where the sound came from, to see a small buck running down the path I walked in on. His mouth open and breathing hard, he puts on the breaks 15 yards from the tree I'm in and cuts into the brush. I stand up and get my release on the bowstring, picking out a clearing he should pass through. My heart is pounding. I wonder what it is about whitetails that does that to me.
I've shot plenty of elk and mule deer. I get excited but not to the level of buck fever. The second I saw this deer, my body jolted as if I flipped the wrong breaker when installing a new light switch and realized my error a millisecond after touching the black wire. Maybe it has to do with growing up hunting whitetails and the pressure we put on ourselves through living the stories of our fathers and grandfathers and our desire to be like them. Maybe it's the fact that our chances at taking a deer in the Midwest were so fleeting given the pressure from thousands of other hunters and that gets generalized to these experiences. Maybe it's a physiological thing that happens when you sit completely still in a stand for hours and then you get startled by an animal you had no confidence you were going to see or maybe it's more primal in the sense that we feel the weight of an entire species relying on our ability to kill for food among other things. Regardless, when this deer showed up, my heartrate shot up like the time Heather Smith actually talked to me in the 7th grade and when it was all done, I was left trembling thinking back to what I should have done differently.
In this moment of adrenaline induced panic is where most of us screw up our chances for harvesting game or for getting that first date and this was no different. I'm sure this buck saw me jump up out of my seat on the stand and quietly disappeared into the thicket. The irony here is he also probably felt the same adrenaline rush only he used it to his advantage. Maybe that's the difference between the hunter and the hunted. The flight response in the hunted helps avoid the inevitable. Keeping calm under distress is key for the hunter's success.
What I was also a bit perplexed with is what brought this deer in, in the first place? He was obviously being chased by something or he was chasing something. It's way too early for the rut and he wasn't that big of a deer. Something got this deer moving and because of this encounter, I decided to remain silent and on stand for the duration and fought the temptation of getting down and scouting out the area more.
It was about an hour and fifteen minutes later when I decided to stand up from my seat. I only had about fifteen minutes left before sunset, and I wanted to be prepared. It's usually in these last few minutes when I see most of the deer I see in a stand. Within a minute or two of standing, I heard the crunch of something heavier than a squirrel stepping on crispy fallen leaves directly behind me on a similar path to where the buck came from. I resisted the urge to jerk my head around and instead, slowly turned my body.
Three does snuck in on me and were slowly making their way down the path twenty yards away. Before I could turn my body completely around, being hyper-aware of my movements and where their eyes were fixed, they had made their way from an opening to the path to behind a clump of brush. They stopped and I could tell they were assessing the situation. One of them lifted her tail, which is not a good sign for the hunter. Not completed busted but knowing I'm teetering heavily on the side of a full-on alert from the one doe, I keep calm and motionless. She looks directly up at me through the twigs and sparse leaves still hanging on to the underbrush giving just enough cover so that she can't make me. I make a conscious effort to breathe.
The three deer take a couple steps in the direction of where they were initially heading, and I pick an opening and get ready to draw back the bow. As one of the does enters the gap in the brush and I begin to lift the bow to draw, they all stop. I stop. Again, the doe looks up at me and actually starts walking towards my tree, stomping her feet--another sign that this hunt will soon be over and again, I force myself the slowly breathe.
At this point, something very unexpected happens. Not fully sure what is making them nervous, the bigger doe decides she would rather go back to where they had come from. She turns and walks right into the opening I had hoped she would have stopped in a few minutes before and this time, her head is down, and she is not paying attention to me. I draw my Bear bow back, find the 20-yard pin through my peep on the string and settle it behind her front shoulder. My forefinger finds the trigger on my release and I'm a little surprised when I touch the trigger off. With a "thwap," the arrow is sent and there is no taking it back.
My immediate thought was, "Holy crap that arrow was fast!"
It passed through her like it was going through a paper target, not even slowing down a foot per second and almost simultaneously, as I heard the hollow thud of it passing through her body cavity, I also heard the crack of the arrow slamming into a log on her pass-through side. Because it was so fast, there was no way to completely process the shot as she kicked back her hind legs and took a few bounds before slowing back down to a walk only now her tail was up, holding stiff as she walked out of sight. The two other deer, one an adult doe and the other a yearling, bounded after her, also slowing to a walk as they approached her. It was only then I could replay the shot in my head and regret for taking the shot consumed all my thoughts.
I'm not sure if it was because I hurried the shot or if I was compensating for having to shoot around the tree I was in or if I just pulled my hand as I released, but I remembered seeing the arrow pass through the doe well back from her shoulder, right through her guts and I was now over-come with the thought that I had made a huge mistake. It's that initial thought of buyer's remorse I always feel when I drive a used truck off the lot after signing the paperwork. With the sun now set, and darkness quickly claiming any and all shadows that had stretched out through the stand of trees, all I could think about was how long this night was going to be, tracking this deer and even worse, how this deer might suffer during that time.
I waited a few minutes and climbed down and walked over to find my arrow. The smell coming off it confirmed what I had feared. If you smell bile from a deer once, you know exactly what you're dealing with if you ever smell it again.
"God..." I thought to myself. "How stupid..."
I walked a couple feet up the path the deer took. I found no blood. There was a ranch-house on the other side of the creek, which was also a no-hunting area, and I thought about this deer winding up on their lawn. I thought about how much time I would give towards finding her knowing she could go onto the private land, and then would I have to go knock on their door and ask to keep looking? I also thought about the coyotes and other animals out there that would benefit from me not finding her and I engaged in a weird strategy of cognitive dissonance where I justified the killing for offering food to the other animals that also needed to eat. All these thoughts and I was only about thirty seconds into tracking.
I walked the path, keeping my eyes on the ground and plants and grass, hoping to start finding globs of blood that might tell a more encouraging story. Still nothing. I walked about fifty more yards when the snort-wheeze of a whitetail startled me into a frozen sculpture. The deer snorted again.
I stood there a moment contemplating my next move. Three deer had walked up to me. Three deer headed out the same direction they came from. If I walk towards them, and if all three deer were alive, I should see three flags waving as they bolt out of sight, right? And if there are only two, one of them is down, right? I take a few steps.
I hear the brush crunch as the deer take off. Only two flags bound out of sight.
I wait.
Then I hear something that turns my stomach. It sounds like belching. "What the heck?"
I assumed it was the deer I shot but it kept getting further and further away, which was obviously not good and thought I probably just pushed that deer out of sight as well. I took another two steps.
In the grass only 15 feet in front of me, I see movement. A deer is getting up or trying to get up. She falls back down. "Holy crap," I think.
I back away from the deer as to not put any more stress on her. She is going to die, and it will be soon. It's been only about 10 minutes since I shot and if she can't get up at that point, that tells me it's not going to be long. I wait two minutes and walk back over to her. She has expired. There's no joy. There is relief. There is remorse. There is also a sense of urgency now as I know I will have to get this deer back home and rinsed out before the bile and other contaminants ruin the meat. So, I get to work.
Understanding this story has taken a gory turn already, I'll spare of the rest of the details. I was able to get the deer out in a timely manner. On a normal successful hunt, I would stop at the Grub Stake on the way home and celebrate with a burger and a beer. I didn't really feel like celebrating though. Plus, I had to get this deer home and taken care of. It was cool enough that night to hang the deer in the garage and the next day, I broke it down to be able to get it into the refrigerator in the processing room. From there, I will take the back straps and loins and some other steaks. The rest will be used for sausage.
I share this story, not to brag or entertain necessarily, but for a few other, hopefully more important reasons. One is to update people who have shown an interest. I only think it's fair to those who have invested the time to follow, to fill them in. The other is to help build an understanding of the process for folks that might not have had these experiences and don't understand why we hunt, although I understand that if you haven't had these experiences, you probably wouldn't have the interest to actually read this. That's ok. More importantly, to me though, is to share these feelings with other hunters and let them know it's ok to have these range of emotions. Hunting isn't all about pumping the chest and celebrating the kill. Sometimes there is ego that gets involved and we feel pride for the accomplishment. Sometimes we feel guilt when it doesn't work out perfectly and animals suffer. Sometimes, there's regret, frustration, and a lack of gratitude for these opportunities and I'm definitely not above it or immune to it. Knowing these feelings are common and somewhat normal allows us to deal and hopefully find gratitude and get back to feeling good about the accomplishment.
The hunting season is still going on out here, although it will soon be hunting with a rifle versus a bow. However, there are those areas that are archery only areas that have some really good deer in them so the Bear might not be put into storage just yet. I hope you keep following along and if you know someone who might enjoy these posts, please share. Keep 'em where they live...
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