Big buck but no shot

Big bucks require more patience than many hunters think

The big buck appeared like a ghost from a bad dream. One minute there was nothing nearby, and the next found me looking at a 150-class whitetail buck.

This was three years ago, and he was 75 yards away, moving in my general direction through the fringe of a swampy wooded area. He moved slowly and cautiously, the way big bucks do once they've been shot at.

This big boy was an old buck, and I saw him once the year before but such thoughts often leave something to the imagination. My guess was he was 5 1/2 years old, and had survived this long by being smarter than the average buck and the average bow hunter.

OK, so it’s almost summer; I still relive some of my big-buck dreams

He tested the wind constantly, stood for long minutes checking things out before committing to a move, and I knew where he was heading. A nearby corn field had been half picked, and the owner hoped to get all of the field harvested before the predicted weekend rain fell.

The buck nosed the ground, following the track made by an unseen deer for 10 yards before turning back on his course toward the corn. At this pace, it would reach the dinner table just after dark.

The question was whether he would reach me or pass out of range through marsh grass and scrub brush before shooting time ended. A doe came squirting out of the marsh grass, moving away from the buck. The rut was in full-drive; she was nervous; but he didn't pursue her.

His intentions seemed quite clear: reach the corn field right at dark, feed, terrorize the younger bucks and young does, and be back bedded down before daylight broke across the land.

He kept coming, and was soon 60 yards away.  I've shot many bucks over the years, but this one was too grand an animal to try such an unwarranted shot in fairly thick cover. I never shoot at a buck that I'm not 100 percent confident of killing.

My bow was in my hand, and this was the largest buck I'd seen lately, but he would either come close enough for a slam-dunk easy shot or he'd continue on about his business out of bow range.

He eventually reached the edge of thick cover, and would move through more open upland woods ... if he stayed his course. He would move out of the heavy cover and into the open, and then duck back in the cover, zigzagging ever closer to me.

He minced along like he had sore feet, and stopped every few steps. He was now 35 yards away, but still in heavy cover when his heavy white antlers could be seen. In fact, it was one glimpse of white antlers going up and down as he rubbed a tree that first caught my attention.

Patience, it’s been preached, is one key to autumn success

The wind was swinging a bit from north to northwest, and then he turned and seemed to move closer toward me. That turned out to be an illusion as he walked around a wind-toppled tree.

My watch showed there was  but 10 minutes of shooting time left, and he was now at 30 yards but still five yards inside thick cover. The suspense continued to build with each step he took, and the big question was whether he would start sliding toward the more open part of the funnel or stay back where it was thick.

I'd shot a number of bucks from this spot, and all of them had walked into the thin part of the cover. One spot offered a 20-yard open shot but he was still 25 yards from it.

The clock was ticking, and even though I've shot bucks at this distance over many years, each one is a new adventure. Honestly, the wait is an adrenaline-filled rush. He stepped forward, almost to the edge of the thin cover, and I'm glancing at my watch.

There was five minutes left, and two more steps would put him into the natural opening where I'd have an easy broadside shot. He put his head down, rocked on his feet, but didn't move forward.

My bow was up, and I was ready to draw, but still he stood, rooted in one spot. And he was still standing there, two steps from a clean shot, when shooting time ran out.

He was so close, and yet so far away, and he stood there for 10 more minutes before moving on toward the corn field. It was a wonderful hunt, filled with heart-pounding excitement right up until the end, and after he moved off, I headed home.

Knowing that buck is there was important. I never shot him, but I never heard that anyone did shoot him. I will hunt him again. He is too big to ignore but one wonders. Bucks in this area are like circuit-riding preachers from the Old West, and there is always the troubling thought of never seeing him again.

We never know when a big buck will appear but we must be ready

Time will tell. If I never see him again, I'll feel blessed to have seen him once on one snowy November day. And sometimes, as hunters, we must be content with these little teases.

Now, it's important to wait for the next one. And that, my friends, is one big reason why hunting big bucks is fun. We don't always connect, but to have these experiences tells us we're doing something right. Now I must reposition a tree stand a bit closer to the heavy cover in hopes the deer decides to move just a bit earlier.

One can always hope.

Forget the deer: let’s find some bunny habitat

Two or three snowshoe hares used to be common but no longer.

It's almost Christmas, and my back deck has already been shoveled a dozen times. That's right, that often so far this weekand it’s coming down hard as this is being written.

Folks, if you want snow to slide off your metal roof and save you a laborious back-breaking job, get a day of 35 degree temperatures and combine that with 20+ inches of wet snow on the roof, and shoveling becomes more than an ordeal; it can become an adventure in knowing when to duck your head and body under the eaves.

Ice sometimes forms under the snow pack, and as everything begins to warm and wet snow falls on the present load, things begin to happen. Gravity exerts its inevitable force on the snow, and it slowly begins to move.

Snow always moves downhill slowly, and then builds quickly into an avalanche.

Snow doesn't move up-hill. It comes down, and quite rapidly at times and with very little warning.

There is little time to think about falling snow coming off the roof, but know this: the one place you do not want to be is under the snow and ice once it begins plummeting toward the deck. The force of the impact literally shakes the house.

The avalanche begins with a faint creak or two as the metal roof flexes a bit under the strain, and next is a barely audible hiss. If you hear the hiss, you best be ducking for cover fast because the snow will come crashing down in one or two seconds. That's all the warning you get, trust me.

There is very little warning with snow on a metal roof. Creak, creak, hiss and here it comes. If you snooze, you lose this one-sided race. If you get hit by a 50-pound jagged piece of ice on the old noggin, your shoveling days may be over.

Seriously, this year's early snowfall has put a snuffer on my local deer hunting. I shovel every day that it snows, and since my measuring device is attached to my house, I can tell how much snow we get.

We are at between 45 and 50 inches of snow so far.

Mind you, it may not be exactly accurate because some of it may be drifted snow, but I use my back deck railing as a guide. Each morning I look at the railing, and if there is a noticeable amount of white stuff, I measure it before starting to shovel it off.

Since mid- to late-November, we have got 46 inches of snow. I don't care if it all falls straight down out of the sky or blows in sideways, what is on the railing is counted daily in inches. I usually keep close track until we exceed 100 inches of snow and to continue counting is a waste of my time.

One hundred inches of snow is too much of a good thing. By the way we are going, unless the snow slows down, we may be close to that rediculous number before we usher in Christmas.

It's almost too much now right now to easily get around. Me and deep snow, make for a major problem for someone with poor vision.

It has a tendency to cover fallen logs, brushpiles, stumps and other things that continually jump out in front of me, and I manage to entangle my feet in them before falling to the ground in a might splash of snow.

That’s why I love to hunt snowshoe hares. I let hounds circle bunnies to me.

It's one reason why I used to hunt snowshoe hares as often as possible. You'd walk in the cedars, find a single track, sic the beagles on the track, and wait around for the short-legged hounds to circle the hare within shotgun range.

Well, I don't know about you, but the last 10 years has been tough on snowies. They seem to be disappearing rapidly, and finding a spot where it sometimes is possible to shoot one of the ghost hares, has become almost as difficult as walking easily in 30 inches of snow.

All of my old hare hotspots have cooled off, and we're lucky to find one or two hares each winter. In some cases, we head into the cedar swamps without a firearm. We'll let the dogs run the occasional bunny, but shooting the hare is almost a criminal act.

And that, my friends, is a rather sobering thought as hare numbers continue to spiral downwards.

Posted via email from Dave Richey Outdoors