I awoke that morning bright eyed and ready to go, despite the fact it was a good half hour before my alarm was to go off. As always, I had awoken early on the first day of the Oregon Black Tailed deer bow huntin’ season. No sense in goin’ back to sleep, and far to excited and restless to lie in the soft warm bed, I got myself into the shower and cleaned up. I put on my freshly laundered huntin’ clothes and checked my fanny pack one last time. There was my flashlight, surveyors tape, anti-histamine, an extra knife, knife sharpener, water, book, and camera. I strapped it on, put on my “war paint” to camouflage my face, put my quiver over my back, picked up my bow strung it and I was ready.
I walked out into the clear cool darkness. After I got into the field edge a ways I stopped, listened…not much to hear really. There was a slight breeze rustling the leaves and the soft rattle of dried wheat stocks brushing against each other. The wind, that’s what’s important to the hunt, which way is the wind blowin? I checked and it was perfect. Once I get in my stand, I should be down wind of any deer coming to the bedding. I walked again. I tried to be as quiet as I could, but the dried leaves still in the field from last years fall crunched louder then an alligator eating Captain Crunch! Still I got to my hidey spot without spookin’ any deer that I know of.
It was still dark so I set myself down, closed my eyes and let the darkness envelope my senses. Not sure how much time passed like that, just sitting there with my eyes closed and my ears open but it was a good little while to be sure. That’s what happens when you get up to early you sit. Still, you can never be to early for a shot, only too late.
As I do at the beginning of every hunt I sent up a prayer and just as I finished the dark silence was shattered by the obnoxious honk of Canada geese as they proclaimed to the world where they were and that they were coming! I opened my eyes and saw the world in that dark gray light that happens just before true sunrise. I felt a surge of excitement return; this is the time when the deer head back to bed after their nightly robbery of the locals’ decorative shrubs, trees, and flowers. This is the morning rush hour for deer…THIS is huntin’ time.
I stood up sloooooowly in case a deer had snuck in on me and was close at hand. Looking around slowly I saw nothing. Good. I relaxed a little and checked the wind…it was good. I began my methodical search pattern done mostly with my eyes. Starting at my left I scan the field, then the woods in front of me then the woods to my right, then back the other way keeping my body absolutely still and my head movement to a bear minimum. No matter how many times it happens to me, it always surprises me how you can look, look away, look back cause there was a tickle in the back of your head, and the deer are right THERE where just a few seconds ago there was nothing. Well there they were. Across the field about 80 yards out a doe in the lead and headed my way. They were following the tire swath cut in the winter wheat by the farmer’s truck that he made as he drove through the field to go fishin. That would lead them right to me. Behind that doe was a buck I had never seen before. I’d been watching this heard of deer for weeks now and I thought I had seen them all. I was wrong. This buck was BIG. Not just his body neither. His spread was well past his ear tips and his tines were tall. As he got nearer, he got bigger, and bigger, and bigger. This buck went from big to HUGE! His neck was like a tree stump, his body bigger then a pickle barrel. He made the mature doe in front of him look like a fawn. He wore his antlers like a crown and he had a confident step to him. He had know doubt he was the biggest baddest deer in these woods, and I was convinced as well. Often, bow hunters only get one shot at a deer in a season, and a deer like what was coming to me now, once in a lifetime.
It was about this time that the protective aura called buck fever that surrounds big bucks hit me and I began to shake like a caffeinated Chuahua. It took all I had to control the shaking, regardless my knees refused to stay still and they wobbled as if this buck had magically pulled all the bone and muscles out of them. I was firmly in the grasp of buck fever. The world slowed down or at least it seemed the deer did, and it took them a painfully long time to get to me. I let the doe walk down the trail in front of me. She passed at about 8 yards. My heart raced even harder with the thought that this tank of a deer was going to pass by me at only 8 yards. Even I can’t miss that shot! I was as still as a man whose knees are shaking something fierce could be. As the big ole’ boy came to the forest edge he stopped short, sniffed and looked at me. “COME ON” my brain screamed out to no avail. He sniffed, checking the air. He wasn’t sure, but he knew something was amiss. He stood there for a long moment feeling uneasy but seeing the Doe walk by unharmed. There he was 15 yards out in the open staring at me and I had no ethical shot. Bucks don’t get to be that big by being dumb, but this one seemed to have preternatural powers of detection. After all, I was down wind of him, well camouflaged, the doe passed right by and I was undetected, yet some how he knew a predator was there. He quickly turned and took another path that didn’t give me a shot, but would still allow him to go where he was headed. As I watched his crown of antlers bob away in the forest I felt as if some one had ripped the rug of anticipation out from under me. I was caught in an emotional midair for a brief moment then wham! Just as suddenly as he had appeared in my life, he was gone. Never again to be seen by me. As for my knees, well, it took them another 30 minuets before the bones came back.
Derek
Topic: Biggest black tail I never killed (Read 707 times)
