My husband has been hunting on his own this year since I am unable to do so. Today he shot a big deer with his bow (and arrow, of course!). It's a good thing too since we're out of deer meat! He let the deer bed down before he went looking for it - as usual when he bow hunts. That gave him time to come home, change clothes, and grab something to eat before heading back to the woods. He had no problem following the blood trail to where the deer had bedded down. Unfortunately, but typical in the area where he's hunting, it had bedded in a tangle of undergrowth, downed trees and lots of multiflora rose bushes. By the time he walked in, field dressed the deer, dragged it out of a ravine through briars and brambles, over downed trees, and lifted it into the truck, it took him 4 hours. He was so tired by the time he got home! My poor baby! He just looked at me, made a face, and said "Deer hunting is easy!". It's a running joke between us that he will never let me forget.
That sentence, "Deer hunting is easy" always takes us back to the first time we went deer hunting together. My husband kept asking me if I wanted to go hunting with him, but I refused. He knew I had learned to shoot when I was young. My dad, his brother and I would go hunting but, instead of letting me shoot the deer, my job was "being the dog" and "scaring up the deer". My dad and uncle did the shooting and I was okay with that. My husband knew I had also been shooting with friends and family. He just didn't understand why I wouldn't go hunting. To tell the truth, I just didn't know if I'd be able to shoot a deer. Well, one day I finally agreed to try it, so before I could change my mind, he took me to pick out a muzzleloader and had a scope added to it. Then he bought ammunition and took me target shooting. He even loaded and cleaned my gun. Finally, we went to purchase my first hunting license and deer tags for muzzleloading season.
My husband had been hunting on farmland that was across the fence from a state park. It wasn't far from where we lived. We had depredation tags from the farmer who owned the land. I worked at the bank that day, but when I got off from work, I quickly changed into hunting clothes, and off we went - my first hunt.
We parked in a field on a hill. We climbed under a fence that ran perpendicularly to the state park's fenceline and walked quickly about 50 yards downhill to a tree. We knew we only had an hour to hunt before shooting hours were over. When we stopped, my husband told me to set up there. The tree was beside the park fence which ran in an east/west direction. The fenceline angled up the next hill to the east. My husband then tells me,"Don't shoot that way", and points uphill to the south where I noticed a barn. Well duh! Any idiot knows you shouldn't shoot toward a building or people. Then he tells me the deer usually jump the park fence to eat alfalfa in the paddock area near the barn. While I got into position, he left to go to his stand. We knew there was no way that we could accidentally shoot each other from our stands. I stood by the tree, facing east and watched the fenceline. About 30 minutes passed before I saw 3 deer crossing the fence in two different places. The closest deer was about 60 yards from where I was sitting. It was near the top of the hill, but headed towards the alfalfa. I waited for it to move away from the fence, but knew I had to take a shot before it got too close to the barn. I slowly moved to rest one knee on the ground. I rested my elbow on my other knee to balance the gun and looked through my scope. The doe was grazing closer to the barn but still broadside to me. I was nervous but I placed the crosshairs on the deer, took a breath and pulled the trigger. "Boom!". The deer ran a short distance to the top of the hill and fell. I was shaking but felt sure I had made a good shot since the deer was down. My husband showed up a little while later. He had passed by the deer on his way to me. After he congratulated me on a successful first hunt, we grabbed our stuff and headed back to the truck. My husband was able to drive right up to the deer. He field dressed it and we loaded it into the back of the truck. As we were going home I said, "Wow! It only took an hour to kill a deer! What's so hard about this? Deer hunting is easy!"
Of course, that was back when I was young and foolish. I am waaaay more mature and knowledgeable now. Since then I've learned several lessons:
1) Deer do not always come from the direction you expect. Sometimes they don't show up at all.
2) Deer do not always position themselves for good kill shots.
3) You may hear a noise and think a deer coming to your stand. You get prepared to shoot, but find it's a squirrel, possum or turkey rustling the leaves.
4) You may hear a noise and think it's a squirrel, possum or turkey coming to your stand. You aren't prepared to shoot and it's a deer - which sees you and promptly runs in the opposite direction!
5) After you shoot a deer with an arrow, it may take you forever to find your arrow and a blood trail.
6) It may even start raining before you find your arrow and the blood trail and you may wander for hours looking for the arrow and deer before finding it or you may never find it.
7) You can set up your stand so the wind is coming from the perfect direction and the deer can't smell you but the wind will change, the deer will smell you - then it will snort or stomp (or both) and warn every other deer in the area to where your stand is located before it runs away!
8) When you shoot a huge deer, you are more likely to find it fell as far away from your vehicle as it can be than where you can drive right up to it. It's also at the bottom of a ravine between two really high ridges and in the densest brush you can find. After you and your husband have hauled the deer to the top of the ridge one of you will lose your grip on the rope and it will slide back down to the bottom of the ravine. Then you learn that once one of you gets to the top of the ravine you should wrap the rope around a tree. Then one person can push while the other pulls until you get it to the top of the ridge and you take a long break. It will take you and your husband five hours to haul the deer to the truck and an hour to drive to a 24 hour Wal-mart, buy a winch, and drive back so you can pull it into the truckbed. You sleep well when you get home, but aren't able to move the next day.
9) The minute you use your climbing tree stand and get up the tree, you will drop something on the ground. You have to go all the way back down to get it or you drop it twice and have to go back down the tree and up again twice (it is probably one of those days where the wind chill is 20 degrees below zero and now your sweating!) That's when you get smart and buy a rope with a treble hook at one end of the rope (to fish around and hook the object you so desire) and a carabiner on the other end to hook the rope to some part of your climbing stand - and this works great to pull said object up to you - unless you forget to attach the carabiner to your stand before you toss the treble hook to the ground. I've done that too; you don't feel so smart then :-(
10) The minute you have your pants around your knees and your bow is next to the tree is when you will see a deer - and it will see you. You then play the game to see who wins "who can hold a gaze the longest without blinking" and you wonder "do you think the deer will notice my hand is getting closer to my bow? all the while asking yourself "can I do this with my pants down?" The answers: I always lose, it does and of course notI!!
When I think about what I've learned in the years since my first hunt, I realize: Deer hunting is easy - NOT!!!!! But it's worth it!
Outdoor Woman