Tantalizing Targets

Misty fog swirls, cool, damp and silent, among the hardwoods, vying to keep the sun at bay in the first hour of opening morning. Here and there come splotches and diagonal beams of brilliance as darkness loses out to the dawn. 

You know. As a whitetail hunter, you’ve been there. And you just know. The Magic Hour has, at long last, arrived. The Dark Ages between deer seasons have passed, and I’m back where I belong: up a tree, in camo and orange, rifle in hand. Seems it’s been years.

Over the last 40 minutes, I’ve moved less than Stone Mountain but can catalog everything going on within 50 yards. There are the usual bird chirps, telling me that it won’t be long now before I can actually see something.

Then comes the scratching and scampering of obnoxious squirrels, all of whom should be floating in gravy somewhere.

Soon, Daddy Crow tries slipping in the back door of the nest after laying out all night—and is met by a coal-black banshee! Mama’s been waiting, flapping up a mad since midnight, and she commences to put a cawing and screaming on him that should last until Christmas. Crow neighbors and kinfolk from three counties over soon join in.

But me? I’m in The Zone. Haven’t wiggled a freckle. Might as well be an oak. Waiting for that first glimpse of four-legged movement on the ground.

And with a back-flip of the heart, there it is…

A patch of dun-colored hide slips silently into a fist-sized burst of sunlight, and the Model 70 shifts itself into place. Eye moves to lens, thumb to safety, finger to trigger.

One last, just-to-be-sure look, and into the open steps… the neighbor’s donkey!

You know, I’ve come to the conclusion that, all in all, temptation is a terrible thing. So if you’re a trespassing wannabe mule, please don’t attempt to sneak up on me while that .30-06 is in my hands.

What is it with this “other side of the fence” thing anyway? And why does it always happen to me? I mean, I don’t ask for much; anywhere between 125 and 300 antler inches is perfectly acceptable.

Truth told, I don’t mind no antlers a’tall as long as she ain’t gonna taste like green chinaberry juice!

But a burro? There was a time when I questioned whether a donkey even had a single useful purpose on the face of the earth. Kinda like mosquitoes. I looked that one up and discovered that if not for clouds of mosquitoes hounding them and forcing migration, caribou herds would stand around and overgraze themselves into starvation.

So when’s the last time you saw a caribou in Laurens County? And can I get a license to hunt one? Well, at least the donkey didn’t require research.

The specimen that proved its worth kicked and stomped a would-be calf-killer into raspberry pancake batter in a cow pasture one afternoon. You don’t need to witness that but once to gain a profound respect for the working parts of a worked-up donkey!

The jack displayed not one iota of remorse upon hearing wails that the lately lamented was a free-running “pet” from down the road. Apparently, this particular donkey doesn’t possess a particle of PC. But he does know how to stay on his side of the fence.

Now don’t get the idea that donkeys have a monopoly on inducing bark-gnawing hissy fits among hunters. I was about three trees over a couple years ago when five of his low-IQ cousins—horses—came pounding through the creek bottom  like their tails were afire.

Only thing crashing louder than their hooves was my heart… And especially when I remembered that the Mini-Preakness was headed directly toward my sons, each perched up a tree some quarter-mile down this same creek bottom. All I could think of was a John Wayne western, and wonder if we were going to have a shootout to go with the stampede.

Fortunately, they were in the same state of Flabbergastedness as I was and held their fire…

That deer—when they’re not being hunted—can be equally as devious as their equine brethren became readily apparent while bear-chasing in the Okefenokee.

It was the older Knucklehead’s first trip, and the dogs were leading a rollicking chase right toward our laps. The din was tremendous: brush crashing, running, barking and yowling hounds whose pitches rose higher and higher in crazed excitement as they closed in from what seemed mere yards away.

We were both about to further irrigate the wetlands as I helped steady the big rifle in his hands and reminded over and over, “Make sure it’s a bear, make sure it’s a bear, make sure…”

The first five parade entries to come blowing past at less than 20 feet were does, including one mostly-white piebald that I would love to take out of the herd.

Next were a dozen or so hogs in 100-yard-dash mode, hustling as if their lives depended on it. Which was pretty much the case.

And the kid was swinging on and pulling off each group like he did this exercise three times a week.  

Finally, traipsing up one by one in abject failure, came the dogs!

I’m thinking the look on their faces was the same one I gave that original fence-clearing donkey. Just think back to Trig: X over Y equals Z minus Q times pi plus 32.
Yeah, that look.

And the bear? I think he hopped a freight to Folkston.

But The Kid, like Dad, was – and still is – hooked on the hunt. Come deer or donkeys.