Doing the right thing

Sometimes all we see is a glimpse of a big buck. It has to be enough.

Ever have a hunch? Or a premonition? Or a gut check? How about a lucky guess while bow hunting whitetail deer?

My hunch or whatever it was almost made me vibrate in my elevated stand. I was all a'jangle, and only one thought bounced around in my head.

Here it comes. I thought. Tonight is the night.

I could feel the buck behind me. I don’t know how but I knew he was there.

I sat as still as possible, was downwind of where the deer travel, and was in my tree well before 4 p.m. Everything was set up, and only a faint breeze blew.

The longer I sat, the stronger this feeling became. It was so strong that my neck hairs were lifting up. Jolt after jolt of adrenaline was coursing through my body, and even though I felt jumpy, there was no motion or noise. I learned many years ago how to control those feelings.

The minutes passed with all the speed of a moving glacier. Time dragged by on tired legs, and soon it was 5:45 and I had yet to see a deer. As the minutes passed with dragged-out slowness, the feeling seemed to intensify.

Shooting time ended where I was hunting near Cadillac at 5:59 p.m., and that gave whatever was coming just 13 minutes to get on the stick and come down the trail.

I heard a twig snap behind me in a tag alder run. Deer? Perhaps some large animal? A buck?

Possibilities seemed endless, and yet the feeling persisted. There was something behind me, but what?

It was one of those situation where I had to wait for the buck to move.

With two minutes to go I checked my watch again, noted the shortness of remaining shooting time, and still nothing moved. There seemed to be a hush, and had I been bear hunting it would have meant a bruin was up and moving nearby.

But this location isn't noted for bears. I've learned to believe in these feelings, hunches or whatever they are. Such thoughts have kept me alive when trouble was brewing in some bad areas over the years, and it has alerted me to approaching bears. My eyes kept flitting to the trail, and then the magic minutes and hours combined to force me to remove the arrow from my bow.

I stowed my bow, put the arrow in the quiver, and waited for my ride to pick me up. I didn't want to move from my stand until I was picked up, and was content to let the vehicle spook the deer rather than me.

Five minutes after legal shooting time ended, the vibes grew even stronger, and out walked a nice buck. His antlers were outside of his ears on both sides, and although the brow tines were short, the main beams were heavy and each points was nearly 10 inches long.

I didn’t move, and never did poaching this buck occur to me. I play by the rules.

This beautiful 8-point was the first buck I'd seen in several days, and what continues to amaze me, was that I could feel the animal's presense  nearby. My body, for whatever the reason, is attuned to such things, for which I've been very happpy.

The same feelings occur when bear hunting, and this buck had established his presence on me two hours earlier. It just took him until dark to make his move down the trail.

My binoculars focused on that magnificent rack, and I studied him with a calmness that even surprised me. You see, I knew I couldn't shoot and so I did the next best thing. I studied him.

His body was long and thick between the  backbone and belly, and his neck was rut-swollen, and he had tufts of hair missing here and there. He had fought some rutting wars, and was very alert.

He didn't move fast at all. One or two steps, stop, lift his head, and with the binoculars I could see his ears swiveling back and forth for any strange sound. I could hear that buck sniffing the breeze, and there I sat in my Scent-Lok suit being treated to one of the greatest shows on earth.

He eventually moved on down the trail and was out of sight when my ride showed up. I loaded my gear into the vehicle, jumped in, eased the door shut with an almost inaudible click, and away we went

I muttered: "What a buck!" He asked about what I;d seen, and listened to my story, and I'd been blessed tonight. No arrows were shot as rain threatened all night, but I saw the buck that would have made my day or that of any other bow hunter.

I could have cheated and shot that buck, but that is not me. I told the story to another hunter, and he said he would have shot in a heartbeat. Who would have known?

Only me, I said. I would have known that by taking a shot that I was no better than a common poacher, and whenever I would look at that buck, I would have known that I cheated and broken the rules.

Seeing that big buck was good enough for me. And tomorrow, when I look in the morning mirror, I'll know I did the right thing. That is the most important thing to me.

Posted via email from Dave Richey Outdoors