November, 2010
Well, for 2010 at least, the first opportunity for deer hunting has come and gone. Again this year my father has decided that he just didn’t have the ‘want to’ to get out and go. Not to be deterred I was able to find a last minute hunting partner. Having property suitable for deer hunting is somewhat similar to being rich. You are never without ‘friends’ wanting to tag along for the hunt. But as it were, my friends really are just that. True friends that would make sacrifices for you. This time he sacrificed a good portion of his monthly income so that we could all eat this weekend. Of course, we could simply eat what we shoot but I made a promise that I would start that diet next week, so the security of knowing we would have food was a welcome treat. When Mike brings the food it is usually enough for an army and packed with home made things like extra large pans of enchiladas, made my his wife of course. But we would not have enchiladas this trip. More on that later…
And as is usual I left the homestead not having everything I needed. Speaking of ‘homestead’, I could write volumes, but that is well beyond the scope of this article. Suffice it to say that these days I stay confused about just where the homestead actually is. Anyway, I always forget something and this year was no different. Normally I do not use any of these fancy calls or rattle bags, or what have you. Of course I do use a grunt call that aids in stopping a wary buck in his tracks giving a hunter an opportunity to take his time while leveling his gun for a steady aim. But this year I thought I would give those artificial calls a try. Although I had a puny set of horns I cut off a little 6 point a few years back I decided to purchase a set of rattle horns from an online distributor. The price was right, and if it called up even one unsuspecting buck from out of the woods I would consider it a worthwhile investment. At the same time, in order to meet the minimum purchase on the site I purchased a doe bleat call. You know what that is…it’s a little box about the size of a ring box that when turned over it makes a sound like a doe bleat. Good for other things too. Like frightening the UPS driver that delivers to me. I’m sure he believed without a doubt his truck was haunted. Getting on with it, I left that box of rattle horns and that doe bleat back in Dayton. There must have been more that I forgot. Two items just does not seem enough. More on those rattle horns later…
I was sure I got an early start this year. After all, my sister surprised me with arriving early to take over my parent sitting duties and I was able to leave much earlier than expected. Still, it was after dark before I arrived at ‘The Bodine.’ And for those of you not all that familiar with my family history, ‘The Bodine’ gets it’s name from the original land owner, J. Bodine, of Abstract 1283 of the survey of Texas land completed by the G&BN Company in Leon County, Texas, and where my family put down its Texas roots. Somehow the name has stuck and the entire family knows the property simply as The Bodine. And I only own a small portion of it, having purchased it from my uncle on my fathers side some years ago. The trip up was quite boring as is the norm, with the highway congested with hunters on their way to their own deer leases. En route I spotted about ten or twelve deer within rock chucking distance of the road. As it turned out it would be the most deer I would see on the entire trip. More on that later…
Having arrived I proceeded to get the utilities on and the cabin somewhat cleared out so we would have room to move around. I seem to store things inside in between trips so that the locals don’t relieve me of any extra things left outside. As it was rather dark, the first of the utilities was the outside lighting. I have one of those lights that when you turn it on it takes a half hour to warm up before it is bright enough to put out more light than a key chain flashlight. While it was warming up I proceeded to unload my personal things from the back of the pickup. You know, the usual things. Ice chest, suitcase, boots, gun.. where’s my gun? My gun was here. I know I put it in the truck before leaving. Let’s see. I stopped to get gas. That was the only stop. I used a credit card at the pump to pay so I never left the side of the truck while filling up. But the gun just was not where I put it! So, here I am thinking, could someone have lifted it out of my truck while my back was turned at the Valero? At a long red light? It was a nice Remington 700 synthetic with a Nikon 3x9 50mm scope on it. And in a hard case too! I really liked that gun and was really ticked off about losing it and could only hope that I just somehow forgot to put it in the truck and it was resting comfortably back in Dayton. After that I had to rest a minute and allow the nerves to calm a bit, so I went in and ran the water some. If you have ever done any hunting at all you are very aware of the requirement to get the water running through the pipes before you expect to use it. Not only to get the stale water out but in my case to simply make sure all the air is out of the pipes before I turn the electricity on to the hot water heater. There wouldn’t be much else that I would hate to have to do than to have to change out the heating element on that hot water heater. It's situated up above the bathroom and has quite a bit of tools and left over materials from the cabin construction all around it. It would be a major event just to gain access to the thing. Well now that the water has run sufficiently smelling up the cabin with putrid water and the electricity to the heater is on I decide to vacate the building and resume unloading my truck. Now that the area light has warmed up it is finally bright enough outside to see around and finish unloading and getting stuff inside. Satellite box, couple of gallons of extra drinking water (remember the pipes?), heaters for the deer stands, gun, extra batteries and flashlights. Wait a minute. Gun? That wasn’t there a while ago. Where did that come from? As it turned out the gun, in its hard case had migrated from near the tailgate to come to a final resting place up under the gull wing tool box on my truck. I’ll never know how it was able to navigate the rest of the gear in the bed of my truck, but it did. I’m just glad I’m going crazy and some thief is not a couple of hundred richer as a result of some unsuspecting pawn broker. At least now I will be competently armed in the morning. No way I am going to miss with my trusty 7mm. More on that later…
Mike and his son were going to be running late due to an evening baseball game and I didn’t expect them to drive up until morning. And he was right on about the time. About 4:30 am I see the lights of his truck coming up the road. He didn’t bring his Gator this trip so we would double up and all ride in the Mule, which I hadn’t even bothered to unload the previous night. His first order of business was breakfast. At least he has his priorities right. For some reason deer hunters must have breakfast. Ignore the fact that we have a total of five occasions throughout the year we even have breakfast (and those seem to be for the spouses benefit, not ours,) when on the deer lease it is just a requirement that you eat breakfast. It must be something along the lines of never go grocery shopping when you are hungry or something. You just don’t go deer hunting unless you have had a good breakfast. Often though, a good breakfast is defined as a tortilla with a link of venison sausage topped with spicy mustard. I guess men and women just have differing ideas about what constitutes a ‘good’ breakfast. Today, however, it was bacon and eggs with biscuits. And the requisite coffee, naturally. I don’t do milk, and Mike’s son does not do coffee, so he was content with a Dr. Pepper for breakfast. Or was it a Diet Coke? It doesn’t matter, really, it only serves to remind me of one more thing I forgot this trip. More on that later…
After breakfast we had plenty of time to check on the weather, temperature, and to choose which deer stand we would each occupy this morning. Now, you have to understand something about deer hunters. They would rather have a root canal than to use a different deer stand than the one they shot that trophy buck out of last year. So, it was a short discussion. Transportation was another matter completely. While Mike and his son (Ok, yeah, he has a name) Jordan was cleaning up the breakfast dishes I went out to unload the Mule and pack it for the short trip into the woods. Now, my cabin sits atop a hill. Not much of one mind you, but a hill nonetheless. It is probably a quarter of a mile to the road and no more than a fifteen foot rise in elevation, but it is gradual all the way from the road up to my cabin. And when I parked the truck was situated facing uphill with the trailer behind. You can probably see where this is going already. Unloading the Mule I simply let off of the winch a little allowing the Mule to be move aft just enough to remove the rear restraints. Then I set the parking brake and let off the winch a little more in order to unhook it from the forward tether. Are you with me yet? Then I simply let off of the parking brake and give it a shove and let it gently roll off of the trailer. The slight tilt of the trailer hitch on the bumper gives it just enough of a slope for me to be able to get it rolling by hand. And roll it did. I never knew just how much area that slow-to-warm-up light illuminated, until now. I can tell you without a doubt it does not reach beyond the distance traveled by a rouge Mule in November. I hear the door to the cabin open and Mike asks if I am ready to go. "In just a minute," I say. "I’ll be right back…"
The short trip to the first stand was uneventful. Well, as much as can be with two big adults and a twelve year old on a two seat Mule. Fortunately I would be the first off and Mike and Jordan would continue on to a stand about three quarters of a mile distant. I can’t speak much to the events that occurred with them. Suffice it to say that Jordan was not happy that he was not able to take a shot at that doe. After all, it was just last week that he could shoot at the does. What difference does one week make? So they pass on the does and have to watch as several groups of hogs devour all the corn distributed for the deer. I mean, they were not hog hunting, right? Over in my area I hear a few gunshots just barely after day break. I don’t mean one over there; another there; and finally one over there. I mean three very closely spaced shots where the marksman (sic) was either operating that bolt at the speed of a scalded jackrabbit or using an AR-15. Just how many shots does it take to kill a deer? Was it running? Who in their right mind shoots a deer on the run? Never mind. I forget this is Leon County. It must have ran in front of three other hunters with ARs because those rapid shots in succession seemed to happen several times. Oh well. Much stranger things happen here. I decide it is time to try out my rattle horns in hopes of drawing out one of those running bucks. Yeah, I did forget the new ones obviously made out of some polymer or something, but I still had the authentic short horns of that small 6-point from a few years back. Better than nothing I thought, and began what I assumed would be the rhythmic sound of buck fighting despite never having heard it in person. They were small and quite difficult to get the small horns to click together effectively. After about an hour of not seeing anything I decided that the sound I was making must not be right so I gave it a rest. Figured it was time for a nap anyway. Well about a half hour into my nap I see a huge shadowy figure moving about in the trees beyond my feeder. Soon, a rather large black boar hog can be seen moving about as if to decide if it was safe to come out into the open. It took quite a while before he consumed the corn on the ground that had found its way into the edge of the woods and was forced to either give up or come out in search of more of that golden candy. But he would be safe. Not because I was deer hunting but because old boar hogs are just not fit to eat. He would stay there for the better part of an hour eating away like a pig. I finally decided to find out how the hog would react to my technique of the rattle horns. Not more than a millisecond after that first click of the horns that hog left a dust cloud that obscured my view of the feeder. Almost at the same time I finally get to see what I came here to see. From my right, coming up a road, well, trail, was a lone doe making her way towards the feeder. Apparently the hog had left a generous amount of corn on the ground because I watched that doe feed for more than an hour. Soon mother nature took charge and I have to disturb that doe with my movements. To take care of business I would have to stand up, open the door of the stand, step outside, then relieve myself off the steps of the stand about seven feet to the ground. There would be no way I would be able to keep from disturbing that doe while she snacked under the feeder, but I was willing to give it a try. Choosing my times carefully I was able to stand up and open the door to the feeder, which by the way, provided a nice wall between myself and the doe, and step out onto the top stair without being seen. I removed my gloves which generally gets in the way of doing what I was preparing to do. It was at this time that I noticed the damage that those rattle horns had been doing. Being a rather small set of horns they were generally clumsy to operate and I often found myself rattling my fingers into the horns rather then rattling the horns together. The cold weather basically prevented me from feeling the horns as they clanged against my cold fingers leaving a plethora of bruises on and about both hands. But I couldn’t be concerned with that now. My main objective was to take care of the business at hand, so to speak. Occasionally I would peek back to that doe, surprised to see that she was not paying me any attention at all. Sparing you any further details I completed my assignment and began the arduous task of returning to my seat undetected. I leaned over ever so slowly to have a peek one last time through the space between the door and the stand. Although I was amazed that she was still there, she was looking in my direction. Or staring in my direction like she had just seen the first human in her life. It’s not like I was walking around or anything. I was well hidden behind the door and only my boots could be seen. Knowing that I could not move my feet without taking the chance of her running off I remained still peeking only occasionally to see if she had given up on me and resumed her feeding. It took several minutes before she decided that I was of no threat to her and continued feeding. I then eased around and started a graceful dance to return to my seat within the confines of the stand. I was just about there and was reaching for the door to again secure it closed when I saw him. Off to the left, where I had least expected to see anything, there was a fine 8-point buck watching me as I moved about trying to get back into my stand unnoticed. Of course I froze thinking this would fool this buck into, I don’t know what. Thinking I was a limb or something? Right… So I said to myself, “Hello Mr. Buck. How about you stay right there while I get my gun? Are you ready? “ In just a minute," the buck says. "I’ll be right back…"
Although the cloud of dust left by that buck was a might smaller than the one left by the hog, it hurt worse. At least I learned not one, but two things this hunting session. Rattle horns make for an excellent hog repellent, and Neil Shulman just made up that scene in the movie.
Copyright, 2010. All rights reserved. This article may not be reproduced without advanced written authorization from both the author and Google.
No comments:
Post a Comment