A bit of background for this mini-saga, not for sympathy, but to set the stage for my quandary and questions to my brothers/sisters of the bow: Been a tough year. Dad’s my last living family member and at 88, had a mini-stroke in March. Looked like he was coming “back” from it and then he spiraled down and is now in a nursing home. Congestive heart failure looms, fluid builds up, incontinence follows due to the water pills…you get the picture. I have to close his apartment at the retirement village where he’s now in nursing home…work and travel back and forth takes 55 hrs of the week, I get home late, wolf food and visit Dad daily…so I’m plumb wore out emotionally and physically. But that is no biggie… hunting is coming. Time to rejuvenate!
I ended up with some malaise a few weeks back. Doc now has me on a 2nd round of new antibiotics that are kicking my butt! Almost feel worse from them than the sinus infection or whatever… I make a decision to hunt the ground… just don’t have the energy to put up a stand and take down each day… I have to travel 3 hrs to where I hunt and stay with friends. I made a home-made ghillie string suit last winter and want to try it out anyway…so I stay out of the trees this year. Never had any luck on the ground before, but read all these neat stories on “Gang” so I’m psyched to try… The heavy winds in the area predicted for all day helped make the choice to stay out of trees!
Found a ground set up 2 weeks ago during our opener near where I had luck last year. I only saw 3 deer and they busted me coming in through open hemlocks. I moved and that was it. I left the woods early due to a call from the nursing home in case I had to make a wild run home, but Dad stabilized and I continued my visit, but the hunt was over.
This week, I return. I see 2 deer on the logging road early AM but some distance off… I feel “exposed” without anything to break up my outline, so I quietly move some blow downs around me, add some dead oak tops and a few hemlock boughs…that’s better! I can see around, but I have some cover to break up my visage front and back and to one side… ok.
I have a “bambi McNugget come in about 9am… I move my foot and she hears it scrape a root and nails me at 12 yards… I freeze and avoid eye contact… she relaxes and I had a shot broadside, but I’m not shooting a fawn of the year… I convince myself its ok cause’ there is as much work to a tiny fawn as a big deer that will feed me all winter…so I pass. I draw on it undetected. This ghillie stuff might be ok… but it’s a dumb fawn!
Mid-day I rendezvous with a friend for a short visit, cat nap and lunch…and more danged meds! Back into the woods and sneak about scouting and still hunting and end back at the blind. From another angle, I see I need a bit more “cover” and add to it and settle in.
About 5:00 my butt is numb from the Nifty Seat. Love that li’l thing…for an hour or so…then hate it. Promise myself I’ll stand at 5:30…I didn’t. I start to feel the recurring nausea that follows taking meds … I’m sick and tired of feeling tired and sick! But it’s a beautiful day, even with the wind… and I’m just content to be there… but I stayed sitting.
…and then I see deer moving toward me from the front quickly… the lead deer is a doe as are the 3 fawns following.
Greed, stupidity, or what? I assess the deer moving toward me quickly and feel she’s still pretty small…probably last year’s fawn…but I don’t often encounter deer on the ground at close range…so my perspective is off compared to sizing deer from my normal tree stand view.
I hesitate…keep looking back at the other 3. The lead doe is angling up hill to my left…good shot for a right hander…but I just don’t commit. I just watch…she stops at under 20 yards.. (probably an honest 15) and is perfect slight quartering away… onside front leg opens up, but the switch in my brain doesn’t trigger… I have the bow up…but the string doesn’t come back.
She jumps a small blowdown… and moves through several other shooting lanes… and now is upwind…. And doesn’t make me…that highly arguable “scent blocker” clothing might do something as the wind is strong directly to her…
I turn and she catches movement and hits full stare mode. I avoid eye contact and she gets hinky and bolts 10 yrds back down the way she came. Stops and relaxes and there is a small window. I hit full draw, but the window is small and I’m tired and stiff…I decide if I didn’t take the peep shot in full view before I wasn’t taking a marginal one now… we again do the stare down as I ease down my draw. She never really bolts but moves back toward the fawns and back the way they came, kids in tow.
I sit there wondering what the heck just happened. I had a beautiful shot at 15+ yards…perfect alignment, open lane… and I couldn’t/didn’t commit?? Why???
Greed? Did I want a bigger animal to justify the work? Soft headed? Too sick and nauseas to make the effort seem worthwhile, knowing what follows of tracking, gutting, dragging and then processing at my guest quarters till I head home Sunday and drop off at a friend’s walk in cooler to age?
I just sat there befuddled and bewildered. I was stoked and grinning to have had a close encounter. My ghillie suit seems to have worked better than I’d ever expected… I got away with some movement and wasn’t picked off…even though visible…
ALL I could think of was that it was neat to have had that experience but in an hour, I could just pick up my gear and walk out, go back to where I was staying and have a hot meal and not have to do all the work. The thought of the effort involved in the killing of an animal seemed more than I wanted to embrace.
Why am I putting myself through the hard work to get there, get up early, sit long painful hours and endure back pain and numb butt to then pass a shot?
I recall years past when there was a lot of stress, I seemed to ‘loose’ that ‘killer instinct’ until things improved. This year, all the sadness, all the pain of watching my father decline weekly feels to be in perspective and managed… closing the apartment is an overwhelming task that makes me wonder if I should be home Saturdays doing that instead of going hunting, but everyone tells me to “take care of the caretaker” and this is MY TIME! Archery season!!! It is what drives me all year!! And yet, something is missing…the drive…the passion…I can’t quite figure it. It is almost as though I am now more of an “observer than a participant.” I don’t fully understand and feel bewildered…but not terribly upset.
With so much work to be done at home, I’m questioning my motives to even be out there if I’m not going to “make meat” and capitalize on opportunities given to me by my Creator? I love venison and I love processing and butchering deer.
What has or is happening?
Anyone else experience the ebb and flow of the killer instinct when things are in turmoil in their personal lives?
Topic: A Decision (?) NOT to kill?? (Read 432 times)
