Early Season, It Happens: An Ozark Mountains Deer Hunt

      The morning started like many others. A heart full of anticipation and hope. Every step as careful as the one before it. Sneaking into the whitetail woods well before daylight. Using only the glow of the moon to slip my way through the woods. It takes an act of will not to push the button on my flashlight and disturb the otherwise perfect darkness. Taking my time, pausing every few steps. Moving like a predator that has all the time in the world. Doing my best to sound like a deer. Even going as far as using a walking stick to break up the rhythm in my human sounding steps and impersonating a deer slowly feeding it’s way back to bed. With vision impaired, my ears and nose are working overtime. Suddenly a deer blows to my right, hops and runs what sounds like only a few yards in the leaves then silence again. As my stomach tightens, I imagine a mature doe spooking and stopping to look back through the darkness puzzled at what sounded like a three-legged deer. I can imagine her ready to turn inside out and run crashing down the ridge several hundred yards away alerting every other deer to my presence and possibly ruining my morning. Suddenly without giving it a second thought I “stomp” my walking stick on the ground twice and made a mimicking snort (I think I read that somewhere). All was silent again. I make myself wait seven minutes before continuing on to my stand. The cold, metal climbing sticks feel good against my bare hands as I inch up the big white oak tree. Moments later I’m perched 20 feet up. The woods are perfectly silent again. With a few minutes until first light I let the muscles relax in my back. A smile slides across my face as I debate with myself. Was that the perfect, undetected entry into this deer sanctuary? Or do I seriously need mental help? Only time will tell. I sit there now, trying to become one with the bark and branches. I nock an arrow and stroke one of the five- inch white feathers as I let the recurve bow come to rest on the hanger. Enjoying the morning sunrise and feeling blessed to be here, but all the while not losing concentration. Soon the thermals started to rise and as I felt the warm air my mind began to wonder. Thinking of the work day ahead. Re-playing conversations with my son from the night before. Enjoying the gray squirrel wrestling match to my left. I can remember these thoughts filling up my mind, but what I remember most was the feeling when I realized the woods had gotten erie quiet. I tightened my grip on my recurve that now lay across my lap as I got a tingling feeling behind my ears. That feeling you get when you can almost sense another animal’s presence in the woods. I slowly turned to my right and there he was. Had all my antics and planning paid off? He wasn’t walking. He wasn’t spooked. It was like the big, heavy horned 10- pointer just appeared and there he was standing 28 yards broadside. Out of my recurve range. As the buck walked quartering away from me up the hill I knew he was headed towards the fresh scrapes I had found just days before and the early buffet of acorns. At that particular moment I would have given a kidney to be holding my Mathews. My stomach began to knot as I thought of what a chip shot it would be. In desperation I grabbed my grunt tube and urged him to come back. The buck stopped and looked down through the woods at me. Beyond me. I froze. As he put his head back down and started walking off again I got turned in my stand and grunted at him once more. He stopped, looked in my direction and started angling down towards my tree! Instincts took over. His angle was quartering to, I would have to let him walk under me at ten yards and shoot him quartering away. I was about to make Saxton Pope and Arthur Young very proud. I focused on his chest. On his shoulder blade. On anything but his antlers. Twelve steps...now fifteen. The muscles in my back tighten and I can taste the deer skin shooting glove in the corner of my mouth. If there was ever a time I wanted to slip a broad head through a whitetail’s rib cage it was in this moment. I stopped the deer at 17 yards and sent the razor tipped shaft on it’s way. However, thinking back on it now, I can’t remember if the last thing I instinctively pictured was my broad head cutting a brown hair just above his heart, or if it was his tall symmetrical rack hanging on my wall. Either way it didn’t matter to the old buck as he turned on a dime pulling a matrix like move and dropping just below the nail that would have closed his coffin. It would have probably felt better to just unbuckle my Hunter’s Safety Systems vest and swan dive off my platform than to sit down and replay what had just happened over and over in my mind. I couldn’t believe after such a well orchestrated morning, after all the planning that went into that stand placement and all the practice, I had just blanked a Pope’r. After I calmed down a bit I came to the realization that season was just getting started and I was down but definitely not out of the fight. I felt good knowing that all the carefulness and obsessive behavior leading up to that shot had at least placed me in a position to shoot a great buck with a stick and string. One thing is for certain, I will be back. I may have even had a grin on my face as I picked up my walking stick and headed back to my truck..

JT