Successful start at new hunting spot

Fri, Nov 20, 2009    to del.icio.us

It's amazing how expectations change.

Over the past several years, any deer with even a hint of an antler that was unfortunate enough to wander in front of my hunting blind was in serious danger of finding itself hanging from our buck pole.

On heavily-hunted state land, there's just no reason to pass up on a buck, even a young one, because chances are, if you don't shoot it, the next guy will. Plus, when you only see one buck ever 2-3 years if you're lucky, then anything with a hint of a horn is fair game.

So when a small buck strutted in front of my blind a few minutes before 7 on Sunday morning — the opening day of Michigan's firearms deer season — I had to pinch myself to make sure I wasn't dreaming.

Then I passed it up.

That's right — a buck that any other year I'd have shot in an instant, I didn't even put my scope on. Now, to be honest, the main reason I didn't shoot that buck is because it was still dark — way too dark to take a safe shot, and too dark to see what he was wearing between his ears.

Still, in years past, I'd have had a hard time not pulling the trigger on that buck. But this year's dear season wasn't like those of the past decade.

Instead of battling the crowds for a chance to spend long hours watching nothing but black squirrels and chickadees at our long-time deer camp up north, my dad and I instead headed south. We hunted a beautiful piece of property in the southern part of the state, 60 acres of rolling soybean fields, a pair of small ponds, some grassy bedding areas and a small section of woods. My dad had secured permission to hunt the property through a friend, and doing so injected new life into our deer hunting hopes.

BLIND AMBITION

My wife and I celebrated the birth of our fourth child, a baby girl born on Nov. 5, and as a result, I didn't have a chance to get out and do any scouting of the property before the season, other than to do some virtual scouting using online aerial maps. The first time I got to actually walk the property was the night before the opener.

My dad, who had driven down and checked out the lay of the land the previous week, set up his tent blind on the top of a small hill, giving him a great expansive view of the property.

I placed my blind just inside the tree line on the south side of one of the property's cut soybean fields, and my pulse was pumping after coming across a half-dozen kitchen table-sized scrapes dotting the edge of the field. Obviously a buck had been patrolling this area regularly, and nobody had hunted the property since early October, so unless he'd been killed on a neighbor's property, I felt my chances of seeing a buck were pretty good.

I've always had a terrible time sleeping the night before opening day. I'm always terrified I'm going to wake up to find a truck parked where I walk in to my blind and a guy sitting a few yards from my spot. I'm never able to ease my worries until I'm secure in my hunting spot.

Hunting on private land alleviates those worries, and I slept like a baby before rising at 5:30 a.m. An hour later, I was settling into my blind, and a few minutes after that, I was watching a small buck following a doe just 50 yards away.

I could get used to this kind of hunting.

I passed on that first deer, but 15 minutes later, I couldn't bring myself to pass the next one that stepped out of the woods. This buck was also checking out a doe, it was still just a minute or two after 7 a.m., and it was still too dark to get a real good look at him. I watched the buck feeding in the field about 50 yards from me for a few minutes, trying to get a feel for what kind of headgear he was wearing, when he suddenly put his head up over the crest of the small rise behind him, giving me a great silhouette of his antlers.

The moment I saw that rack sticking outside the ears and reaching up toward the sky, I knew this was a deer I couldn't pass on. I put my scope on him, but he was facing directly away from me. I waited patiently for him to turn broadside, and a minute or two later, I was rewarded with a perfect shot, and the 300-grain Hornady slug fired out of a 12-gauge shotgun did its job, dropping the buck in its tracks.

I thought he was an 8-point, but closer inspection showed he was a 10, including a split brow tine on one side.

That was the only deer I killed last weekend, but not because of a lack of chances. In fact, over the next two days, I got a good look at a total of seven bucks. Most were little guys, and I passed up shots at a spike and a small fork horn. I watched a buck with three points on one side and nothing on the other pick his way across a field on Sunday evening, and later, watched a nice sized spike munching on soybeans.

I watched a small buck playing a game of tag with a doe in the neighboring property, and on Monday night, spotted a big buck strutting along in the field behind the one I was sitting on. He never crossed onto our property.

Having the chance to sit in seclusion and actually watch these deer interact was a great learning experience, in addition to being highly entertaining. I've never hunted a spot like this where the deer are fearless of walking across open spaces. Hunting in the thick swamps up north, you typically get a split-second view of a deer as it sneaks head-down through chest-high brush, or else comes through at a full-out sprint. Having a chance to watch these deer interact in their leisure was a blast, and it certainly pumped me up to get back out and try for another deer before the end of the season on Nov. 30.

I'd be lying if I didn't admit that, despite all this, I still missed heading up to our traditional deer woods. The nostalgia that lives among those trees is something I'll always long for, but when it comes to having a chance at harvesting a deer, there's nothing like heading south.