There was quite a bit of activity all season on the game camera. Most of it was when I wasn’t there. This one photo always cracks me up. |
Regular deer season has come to an end here in Texas. I went out on 4 hunts and managed to bring home two deer: one 10 point buck and one 90 pound doe.
The first hunt was the 1st Annual Hog Hunt (can it be annual if it’s the first one?) with Bryan and some of the crew from ITS Tactical. Although it started as a hog hunt, it became a deer hunt when the landowner graciously allowed us to harvest a doe or buck should we have the opportunity since it was opening weekend for deer season. It was a good thing too, because nobody harvested anything except for Rocky who tagged a young 6 point buck. In fact, only one hog was spotted at all by myself, but it was moving fast about 150-200 yards away and I didn’t have time to line up a shot before it disappeared into the thick brush.
Most of the guys who went out on that trip had little or no hunting experience, although everybody was experienced with firearms and most had prior military experience. Despite the lack of hunting experience, it turns out that many of the skills learned in the military are also useful when pursuing hog and deer.
Since Rocky, who bagged the small buck, had no experience field dressing, skinning, or quartering a deer I offered my expertise and instructed while he worked on the deer with a friend. In return I got to take home the skin, which has now been tanned (a process I will discuss in a later post).
The next week I spent out hunting Caddo National Grasslands, public hunting land which is very difficult to hunt since it is besieged by over a hundred hunters on opening week. Public lands in Texas are walk-in hunting only, and Caddo National Grasslands is a broad stretch of land, with the area I hunt covering more than 10,000 acres. This means that I often have to hike for a couple of miles into deep heavy cover to get to where the deer are. Unfortunately, I came up empty. But, that’s why they call it hunting and not shooting.
A few weeks later I took my wife, Dreamer Dez, out hunting for her first time ever. She didn’t know if she’d have it in her to “shoot Bambi” but she does enjoy the outdoors and has no problem helping me process the deer that I bring home, so we went out to a friend’s ranch in Central Texas for Doe Day weekend. Doe Days are designated dates set by the Texas Parks and Wildlife in areas with very large doe populations. This was definitely the case where we were hunting. A census done the year before counted more than 75 does on less than 700 acres. That’s quite the population!
Dreamer Dez scans the underbrush for any signs of movement. |
To her credit, Dez shot at a little 50 pound piglet with my 6.5×55 Swedish Mauser but missed low, sending up a fountain of dirt and scaring off the herd. Myself, I managed to harvest a good sized doe that would put a dent into refilling the deep freeze with venison.
Later the next month I would head back out in search of a monster buck we’d seen while hunting antlerless during Doe Days. This buck was a monster: he looked like he had a damn tumbleweed on his head. There was no way to estimate the number of points on this massive atypical deer. I spent the better part of the weekend stalking this buck. Deer of that age are like ghosts. Spooky. Silent. Cautious, even during the rut.
While stalking one morning I spotted a small 8-point trailing after a doe about 300 yards across a property line. I lay down prone and waited patiently as they made their way down a clearing towards the fence where I would have a shot. As I watched them make their way towards me, suddenly the massive buck came crashing out of the trees and into the side of the smaller 8-point. The smaller buck quickly wheeled around to face his challenger, but both of them soon crashed into thick heavy timber nearby. I never saw either one of them again.
In fact, I didn’t see another legal buck until the very last morning. Having seen the two bucks in full rut the day before, I decided to break out the doe bleat call I’d purchased before that trip. It was an impulse buy. I don’t usually use calls, but figured what the heck. After a brief walk through the predawn frost I entered the clearing where my blind was set up and startled two does who were feeding along the treeline. They both sneezed and bounded off and I made it to my blind where I got set up and waited for thins to quiet down.
After about 30 minutes I sounded 3 short doe bleats and sat back to wait. Incredibly, not 10 minutes later, a large (well, large for Central Texas) buck came trotting into the clearing. He was in full rut, head up and ears alert, looking around for the doe he thought he’d heard. I counted 8 points on his head, 3 on each side with brow tines. His main beam stretched just beyond his ears, making him a legal buck in Texas.
The shot was good and dropped him in his tracks. I waited a while and text messaged my buddies in nearby blinds to let them know what had transpired. When I got up and approached the deer I noticed that the brow tines were actually split, with two points long enough to make him a 10 point buck. His pedicles were wide in diameter, marking him as being about 3-4 years old.
That was the last buck I would take this year. I’ll still be out in the woods though. There’s a peace that can’t be found anywhere else but far out in the wilderness, where cell phone signals can’t reach and the roar of traffic on nearby highways cannot be heard. There are squirrels and rabbits to hunt in the off season, and there’s room in the freezer for another feral hog or two that I find while out scouting and hiking.
The woods and meadows that remain in our increasingly urbanized world call to me, and I long to be out in them. Among the leaves.