Good With The Bad

February. Yep; it’s that time of year again. And, alas, my deer season has been taken from me once more.

So what am I supposed to do now to replace piling out an hour and a half before first light, driving 30 miles to climb a tree, then watch fairly reasonable targets stroll past while deciding not to shoot them?

There’s something strange about this deer hunting stuff. Or maybe it’s me.

But I miss it. Already.

However, I learned long ago that such melancholy feelings among simple-minded people—you guessed it—are relieved by similarly simple methods.

Want to see me as happy as a sun-baked pig in a mudhole? Simply—there’s that word again—drop me off inside a large stand of trees that I’ve never even seen, place a large-caliber rifle in my hands and instruct me to go perforate something edible.

Bliss, I believe it’s called…

My son Myles is extremely adept at making me among the happiest folks on the planet. Always has been. So in the next to the last week of this past season, we’re sitting in a spot 150 miles from home, together in a two-man ladder stand. The last time we perched that way he was half his present age of 26, and I was 30 pounds lighter. And it was one of the more memorable hunts of our lives, as I can still see every moment of it in my mind’s eye to this day. His first really big eight…

But today? I didn’t care if there was a deer within three states; quality time like this is too, too precious and brief. The next morning, however, was a different story.

Myles, as well as his brother Dylan, inherited a massive dose of my predominant hunting gene. It truly is who I am and what I do, and they’re the same way. That said, quality time is copacetic; but today something needs to fall down.

Before daylight, we hauled in all the equipment we would need—our rifles—and set up on the point of a large head of hardwoods in the middle of a pasture, with another head some hundred yards out front. He’d seen deer crossing almost every morning there for a while, and the plan was to pick off a couple for the freezer. But after a half-hour or so, the uncooperative critters remained true to form. So, since this was the first time my boots had ever stepped here, it was up to him to make the decision that we’d take a strip of woods apiece.

“I know how you like to still hunt, so you hunt this one and I’ll take the other one,” he smiled through his face mask, then eased off.

In that instant, daily life as I know it winged right out across that pasture. If you’re a hunter, you—and probably only you—understand. I could literally feel my senses heighten as the predatory instinct locked in. Right now—it’s on.

Fluttering birds and squirrels on the ground were catalogued without conscious thought; now that I could see fairly through the gray mist of morning, it was time to move, to get a feel of what was around, including the lay of the land, flora and fauna.

S-L-O-W-L-Y.

In an hour, I moved roughly 100 feet, stopping to sit twice, with a better view each time. The third, I decided to stand and become one with a huge pine, heightening the vista.

Throughout, I’d been keeping a close eye on a wicked tangle of gallberry and shrubbery 50 yards to my left—a perfect bedding area. The trick with each move is to seek a new lane or two of sight through that near-impenetrable crud, as well as among the trees out front leading down to a creek bottom. All the while hoping to catch a glimpse of movement, or maybe an odd horizontal shape 3 feet off the ground.

Thirty more minutes hobbled arthritically by before that happened.

I don’t know where he came from; reasoning says that he had been bedded and just picked this moment to stretch his legs. But I’m reminded that “still” is at least as important as “hunt.”

What can you say about an animal that gives you the old flutter-guts and makes your heart pound in your ears merely upon sight? Even after 45 years and thousands of miles of hunting them?

This is Georgia, in case you’d not noticed, and not the hunting shows of the Midwest where we see 50 trees per square mile and you can watch a buck coming to a cornfield for an hour before he arrives.

Beating a bedded buck at his own game in the tangles of south Georgia hardwoods, pinpointing a round through the narrowest of lanes, then watching him fall without ever hearing the gun go off is about as good as whitetail hunting gets.

The boys were taught upon seeing a deer that, “If in doubt, don’t.”     Shoot, that is. If you must convince yourself that this is the right animal, it probably isn’t. And there’s nothing like the remorse of walking up on one that you suddenly wish was still on its feet.

But hunting on the ground is a world apart from climbing. There usually is little time to make a decision, and never do you get a better view than from a tree.

This buck reached overhead and glommed onto a leafy limb, rattling the entire bush; that’s what caught my attention. My eyes immediately focused on great antler mass and a belly like an offensive lineman—check and check! He fell at 33 steps, and with a total of 165 grains of Power-Point, the filling of my freezer was completed.

I tell you all this in the hopes that it helps us get through the brutal period between now and next season. Hey, it’s only seven months. Hang in there.