DEC-A-2

 

THIS MESSAGE BEGINS FROM A TREE:

I AM TYPING IT IN A TREESTAND ON BILL WESTER’S FARM,

AFTER MY FIRST GLIMPSE AT PRE-DAWN OF A MAGNIGICENT TEN-POINT BUCK, BUT THE ONLY ACTION SINCE THEN HAS BEEN BY CELL PHONE IN THE TREESTAND!

 

DECEMBER 1, 2003

 

            I have a story to tell you from the period of dawn this morning, but I am in the unique position of typing this note from a treestand in deer season, so I should watch out what is happening around me.  Some of what is happening around me includes a return of the heavy wind, blowing dark clouds, so I will sign out at this moment and put the electronics away and see if the middle of the day doldrums in deer movement becomes more interesting than the hiatus I had filled by answering calls on my cell phone!

 

            I saw a very big buck this morning very early.  So early, in fact, that I think a buck this big and this old is probably cagy enough to be nocturnal.  I had settled into may box stand—the same one from which the “shot in the dark” last year had collected the ten pint buck that Bill had been watching early in the year who also was rather decidedly nocturnal during the season, and only allowed one glimpse of him in the last glimmering of the twilight, and now I saw a buck like him in the other end of the day.   We had got to Bill Webster’s farm in two vehicles since Craig had to go to work later and so did Bill after the dawn hour of the hunt.  They were each lined up down the fields from me as I crawled into the stand and pulled back the curtain and sat awaiting dawn.

 

            I sensed something or someone next to me—very close, next to me.  I barely turned my eyes and saw a brown body behind just staring up at me.  I could make out horns on his head, and also that he was intent on getting to know what this fellow was doing above him.  I sat as still as I could but also needed to take the sling off the scope on which it was caught.  I tried to pull the rifle up slowly, and then had to make one small sound—the click of the safety coming off.  As I moved that much, the buck that was too close to me at the start—about 24 feet—bounded off into the dark, as I put the scope on this fleeing form.  I did not touch off as he departed, since I was a bit concerned first that I had already scored a buck and second I was the one who seemed to be collecting the trophies.  This one should run straight in front of Craig and Bill.  Craig never saw him, and Bill watched him the whole distance out of range.

 

AN OVERABUNDANCE OF GOOD THINGS:

EXCEPT WHEN I AM THERE PREPARED TO COLLECT THEM

 

            “Why didn’t you shoot him?” they both asked.  OK, next time I will try to shoot first and ask myself questions .later.  But, I was admiring the magnificence of this big buck, who is the dominant male of the heard on Bill Webster’s farm this year, and I happened to have picked off by luck the dominant big buck last year.  So, I was planning to watch him and to hope that one of the others had a chance at him.  I know that there are a lot of deer in both the Webster farm and the Vo Tech School, but the high winds had so impaired their most acute sense of hearing that they were not about to move on the opening weekend. Of all the shots that I usually hear, this year’s shots were counted on one hand—and more than that number were fired at the only buck we saw on opening day, after I had hit it once well, and David put it down as it managed to make it as far as his tree stand.  I would learn more about that treestand once Bill had suggested we would go over to the VoTech School at late afternoon.  Don’t worry about being late, since I have seen these deer very often and they only come out at 5:20 PM. This is when there is almost no light to shoot by, but he has seen a lot of them at that hour. How many?  “Well last time I was out there just before the season to look over the big bucks in the herd, I stopped counting at 38 deer in front of me while they were still coming out of the woods and the light was fading.”

 

 The VoTech School has a soybean field that would have produced a bumper crop this year, except for the predation by deer which left them with about 20% of what might be expected.  Before this year, people had felt touchy feely warm fuzzies about the Bambis, but with the plague of deer overrunning suburbia, more and more people are pleading to control the pests.  Maryland’s answer has been to raise the limits, lengthen the season marginally, and to allow Sunday hunting in all the counties that will allow it—which just happen to exclude the counties I have used.  One other advantage they have given to the human predator—the only one left if you exclude cars—is to legalize crossbows during archery season—now for anybody, not just those with a doctor’s letter that says they are disabled.  

 

AN EASTEN SHORE ABOUT FACE:

A STORY WITH A SAVORY CONCLUSION

 

As I stopped by the house where Cindy White was making oysters and had just thrown out cakes.  So, I had a good lunch. Why?  This was the complements of her crazy family’s nephew, since a big feast had been prepared for the Friday wedding, the day after Thanksgiving.  The family with the groom had all come down from Wolling Maine, and the 20-year-old bride had come up with her family from Florida to meet half way for a big church wedding on the Eastern Shore.  The event was preceded by a big Thanksgiving dinner which was disrupted in the middle by a blurted out rejection on the part of the bride-to-be who announced that there was no way she was gong to b e married and had just determined that at that moment, and tomorrows’ wedding was off!  So, I was the lone celebrant of this event, and appreciated the castoffs (not to be confused with leftovers!)

 

It was pointed out by someone ungallant enough to remark that the bride was very interested in getting married, and it was a very good idea, concurred in by most of those present, since she happened to be four months pregnant in time for the event, but such circumstances do not always alter cases, at least in this case.  A woman does, after all, have a right to change her mind, early and often!  This waffling is a rather public about-face, and, as might often happen, there was only one beneficiary of this somewhat bizarre story, and he was the one scavenging the Chincoteague oysters and special celebratory cuisine!

 

THE SETTING SUN, ALSO IN A HIGH WIND,

FINALLY REVEALS THE SECOND BUCK OF THE DAY,

AND THIS ONE WAS ONE MINUTE BEFORE DARKNESS SET IN,

IN CONTRAST TO THE MORNING B UCK THAT WAS THREE MINUTES BEFORE DARKNESS WAS DISPELLED

 

Both Craig and Bill went off to work after the first hour of daylight.  Only the first and last hour of daylight are really predictably good for deer movement, since no one is hunting them and pushing them around to be on the move at any other time during daylight.  I had one other viewing that was spectacular.  I had seen a large flock of turkeys at the VoTech school farm, and even had them close enough that I took pictures of them.  In the large group that came out on Saturday afternoon, I spotted only a couple of young males, “Jakes” in the vernacular, among a lot of hens.  Bill had suggested that if I wanted a turkey, I might feel free to bag one.  I would not want to shoot a turkey with a deer rifle with a ballistic tip bullet, and would not want to shoot a hen if I had the luxury of choosing.

 

At Bill Webster’s farm, I had a flock of turkeys come out right under my treestand, and saw their magnificent bonze feathers get blown up over there heads like a cape in a strong breeze.  Of this grouping, they were closer and most of them were males.  In fact, among nine big birds only one was female.  Among the males were several long beards, one of which looked like it could be almost a foot long.  These were magnificent tom turkeys and I pulled out the .22 pistol and aimed at very close range.  But, I was admiring watching them more than needing one for the bag, and I wound up shooting them, all right, with every exposure I still had in the camera at close range as they preened and fed.

 

When Bill returned at three in the afternoon, we drove over to the Vo Tech School and he went up one side of the field and I to the other in the stand David had used on Opening day.  We were directly opposite each other, and I could watch him as he watched the field with our good binoculars, and shiver as the temperature dropped and the winds rose up higher.  We saw nothing moving except a few turkey buzzards being blown around in the high winds and an eagle circling around overhead   At 5:00  PM the sun had set and we were in deepening twilight.  I could see only with the Zeiss binoculars as I watched the edge of the woods.  At 5:19 (let the record reflect that this is a full minute ahead of Bill’s prediction!) a deer walked out with his head down and stalking across the field between us.  Only after looking hard at him did I see the horns.  I switched from the binoculars to the rifle scope, but could only see the dark trees and a shimmer of haze off the grass.  I then found him with a lower power setting on the Shepherd’s scope, and then turned the variable power up.  I knew that Bill was directly across from em, and figured he was waiting for the buck to pass between us, and after he had done so, I figured he might be waiting for me to shoot him, even though he was angling away from Bill at least 100 yards closer to Bill.  It was “fielder’s choice” for us, and I let the buck pass another fifty yards.  As it stopped to look back, I slipped the safety off.  As I watched through the scope, I saw the buck slump even before I heard the shot.  It had died instantly with a severed spine.  Bill had said to me “I know this buck, and he has a tendency to “bolt”, so I thought I should shoot him before he left both of us behind. “

 

We got this buck over to the weigh-in station and checked it for a transport permit.  My earlier buck was hanging in the cold at Bill Webster’s farm already field dressed and trimmed up for transport, and I gave the permit for his moving to Bill.  Bill’s friend Glenn, the former Crisfield ferry operator who is not able to hunt legally for several reasons last year had received the buck that Bill and I had watched and then collected to be given to Glenn. Glenn had visitors this weekend, a family from Mount Joy Pennsylvania—coincidentally the same place that our now-ailing deer hunting friend Don King is in hospice care in Mount Joy—a large family with nine kids.  They cannot subsist without the kind of support that comes along with venison, and BOTH of the bucks would set them up very well for the next year.  So, we bundled up the bucks after their dressing and transport tagging, and they are on their way to Mount Joy Pennsylvania, with the complements of the Eastern Shore.

 

I am probably too chilled out to make it back to Montgomery County tonight, but will stop at Craig and Carol’s where the replacement Christmas tree has just shorted out and blown the fuses we had replaced when we decorated it on Sunday night.  So, I will get up, again, in the pre-dawn and drive the A-4 to DC and GW, leaving early to rendezvous at Derwood where I will sign off on the “change orders” and watch big dump trucks arrive as I am purchasing two hopper car loads of 44 tons of “crush and run” for resurfacing the drive. 

 

I can now confess to a self-inflicted wound of my own.  I have caught a cold, coughing and sneezing with a runny nose.  The high winds of bitter cold air had whipped me around all weekend, and I had even had a chance to use the new Gore-Tex camouflage wind and rain suit that is my Christmas present from the Schaefers.  But, too much of a good thing is “exposure” and I will return to the Eastern Shore later in the week to see if I can spot this nocturnal beast for one more try at putting that head on the wall of the new Derwood Game Room, now all enclosed.

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