I got back to the 80 this Thursday around noon. It had rained for two days and it was drizzling still when I climbed into the tree stand. The tree and stand groaned in the wind and rain like a boat at sea. Then the temperature dropped, the rain stopped for the first time in 36hrs, and an hour later it was snowing lightly. This morning it was about 20F and windy, gusting to 25mph. The leaves were frozen and covered with a light dusting of snow. It is expected to be below freezing for at least the next five days.
I have many layers of wool and down and plenty of hot coffee, and I am comfortable if not precisely warm.
After not having seen a deer opening weekend, I saw four Monday. First around 830am, a fork horn, 4-point buck walked behind me and then straight west up the hill. Just as he was out of sight I saw a six point buck walking from the opposite direction toward the smaller buck. They had to have met but I didn't see or hear it.
I could have shot one, but I have told myself I’m not going to shoot any bucks. Deer are populated enough in this region to raise concern about the spread of CWD, chronic wasting disease, which is a problem in the SE of the State. So I want to help limit the herd, and give more of these juvenile bucks the opportunity to become big bucks.
Midday Monday I hiked through the wetland tall grass and willows, where deer like to bed down this time of year. I came within ten yards of two doe hiding opposite the tall grass and willows at the edge of the cattails, before they jumped up and took off in opposite directions, disappearing into the cattails.
I kept walking south. One of the doe layed back down less than a hundred yards from where I first spooked her up, and I was within five yards of her when she sprinted in a low crouch back the way she had come, bounding then across the floating grassy bog before disappearing in the cattails on the other side, where I could hear her shloshing through the muck. Not really where I would want to drop a deer, necessarily, anyway. Nor am I keen to shoot at a deer on the run, as I don't care to wound it and have to track it. If I am going to shoot at a deer I mean to kill it. In this tall grass, willow and cattail wetland there is generally about a 3 second window to take that shot.
I didn't see anything Monday evening, Thursday afternoon, nor this morning, Friday. Thinking I had seen more deer in this woods hiking with my dog (in the past 15 hunts I have probably seen seven deer a day on average and as many as 30 in a weekend), in the afternoon I saw another juvenile buck, 150yds to the east. It was walking toward me but backed up and headed north behind me. As he crossed into the open between this and the neighbor’s woods about 50yds north, I had the kill shot in my sites but I did not take it.
That is two deer I have passed up. I have hunted four and a half days, it is now the last weekend, and I don't have a deer on the ground. We have some left over from last year, my Dad accepted a deer from a neighbor (after I didn't come home with one after the first three days), but this year more than ever I want to be flush with venison, and dammit my middle name is Hunter.
I’ve harvested at least 30 deer from these woods, since I started hunting here 35 years ago. I have dressed most of those, I am still learning how to process them, and I’ve never been squimish about any of it. I have always felt reverence about the whole of the process, and it has always been about the hunt and the sustenance and not the kill. It brings me no joy to kill such a beautiful animal living such a life as this.
But I didn't come here to just sit in the woods and take pictures and screw up videos. This is that 6-point buck. You probably have to enlarge the video, if you care to.
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There is one day left to take my latest poll if you haven't, or if you would like to see the results thus far. I will have a post about the results sometime soon.
Good thanks I looked it up. So much water . The only place I ever had shoes on the ground in Minnesota was Red Wing > off the Amtrak Rail in 2009. The people were actively friendly. The word got around that this hill billy from New zealand was wandering wround the place and soon I couldn't walk anywhere. I had an entire group of people who wanted to drive me places . It was surreal . Things like that enamour you to the entire country for .life,
Ah, but your name is not Wolf.
A report on the work done by wolves in Yellowstone:
https://twitter.com/fasc1nate/status/1587779455983960070
h/t Thinking Points substack