Dumb mistakes that deer hunters make

Richey with a nice buck taken with a Thompson-Center Contender.

 

Over the years, I've seen people do some of the dumbest things while sitting in an elevated coop or a tree stand or while hunting from a ground blind. Mfost are funny but some could have been deadly.

The reason I write about some of these is there are always lessons that can be learned. Benefit now from these mistakes of other hunters.

One time I had a new hunter sitting in a ground blind. It had a sliding Plexiglas window in that coop, and when I dropped him off, I suggested he keep the window closed until a deer got close enough for a shot, and then silently slide it open, draw, aim and shoot.

It pays to remember and pay attention to advice.

 

He did some of it right and failed on other parts. He saw a small 8-point walking toward him, and he waited until the deer stopped, quartering-away at 12 yards, and he drew back and shot.

C-r-a-c-k! He'd forgotten to slide the Plexiglas window open, and shattered it. The buck obviously disappeared, and probably never walked past that blind again.

Another time, another guy was sitting in a ground blind with a sliding wooden window. He saw a buck and doe coming, and when the doe walked past the window, he waited for the buck to pass, and he shot. His arrow struck the sliding portion of the wood window frame, glanced off it, missed the buck entirely but the ricochet nailed the doe in the heart. It was a great trick shot, and a killing hit on the wrong deer.

Then there was a time when another hunter drew down on a doe, studied the animal as it walked in front of him and stopped. He held his draw until she started to turn, and he aimed for the heart and lung area. He made a great hit, but again, on the wrong deer.

A doe fawn, standing out of sight, darted in next to its mother, and saved her life. This mistake has often happened to several hunter friends, and it is the result of tunnel vision on the target animal and not watching to see what other nearby deer were doing. The venison was really tender, I heard.

Once, during the December bow season, a bow hunter was sitting in a pine tree near an alder run. He'd shot several bucks over the years from that tree, and sat out in hopes of seeing another one. The air temperature was about 10 above, and a strong north wind was blowing.

Toughing out a cold day with low wind-chill figures isn't fun.

 

He toughed it out until shooting time ended. He lowered his bow to the ground, shrugged his shoulders several times to restore circulation, and rubbed his hands together. He'd lost most of the feeling in his hands and feet, and tried to get warm and limbered up before starting down.

He took the first two steps, and then one of his feet slipped on a snow-covered ladder step. He had three contact points -- two hands and one foot  -- but all were too cold to respond when his foot slipped. He knew he was going down, and pushed himself away from the tree and tumbled eight feet off tree limbs and into the snow. He wasn't hurt from the fall but was a bit disoriented for a moment until he figured out what had happened.
Anytime a hunter can walk away from a tree stand fall is indeed lucky.

Then there was the gent who felt nature calling. He looked around, didn't see anyone, so he gave the tree trunk a good shower below him. That had been one of my best tree stands, and after he told me about his aerial spray job, I enjoyed it so much I let him hunt the same stand the next day. He never saw a deer but I doubt if the object lesson resonated with him.

Another time a hunter was in that same tree, and it was a cold day, and suddenly a nice buck appeared. He normally had a 60-pound draw weight, but had forgotten to crank it down a bit to compensate for the cold, still muscles and bulky clothing.

A buck came walking slowly by. Our hero started his draw, and the arrow fell off the rest. He was shooting with fingers at the time, and the extra effort to draw the weight when cold and over-dressed, caused him to roll the bow string. It flipped the arrow off the rest and it fell, tinkling, to the ground as the buck looked up at the sound.

The buck stared upward, and the hunter didn't move, and eventually it went back to its business of checking an old scrape. He nocked another arrow, tried drawing on the buck again, and again the arrow rolled off the rest and tumbled off branches to the ground.

The tinkling arrows bouncing off tree limbs scared off this buck.

 

The hunter, sat and stared at the curious buck, but finally common sense apparently set in and the deer raced off through the snow as the hunter looked down at the red nocks standing upright in the snow.

I've had a ground blind with a low door-way. A sign tells people to watch their heads, but one person managed to smack his head going into the blind. And, to add insult to past injury, banged his head when he left. He no longer  sits in that stand.

Deer hunting is mighty serious business for most of us, but some of these things are a bit too funny to ignore. And it's a wise and good-natured hunter who can laugh and benefit from his mistakes.

And to prove that I'm not immune to doing dumb things, it was me that banged his head twice on the door-way. It still makes my head hurt to think about it.

I'm Not Very Handy With Tools

OK, folks. It's true confessions time.

There are many things I may or may not be, but a handy man is not one of them. My tolerance level for all things mechanical is very low. In fact,  I detest machinery that doesn't work.

Mind you, me and tools are a dangerous combination. The height of my anger and frustration levels are off the charts when things stop working for no apparent reason.

Same boat and motor as mentioned below. Good thing the fuse didn't go with the kids aboard.

I buy a car, and it's expected to run. We do our part by getting oil changes every 3,000 miles. We take our rides in for scheduled maintenance, and put new tires on long before the need-to-do-so phase arrives. That means I expect the thing to work.

So this morning I jumped into my fishing car or hunting car (as the seasons dictate) and expect mt battered old ride to move out of the way of the snow blower, and it wouldn't start. So what if it hasn't been started in a month. I demand reliability.

I seldom really get angry but a personal weakness is when an expensive item stops working for no apparent reason. You've seen those film clips where a person takes a sledge hammer to his vehicle.

That could be me but I'm smart enough to realize this problem, and control my anger. But, the frustration level is there. I've never done anything really stupid, but the temptation is always present when mechanical item prove obstinate.

I have an outdoor-writing buddy in Colorado, and he'd had enough of a recalcitrant portable computer. He propped it up on the back side. drew a red bulls-eye on the cover, and shot three rounds from his elk rifle throught it. It didn't help it run at all but now he knew why it wouldn't.

Never had the urge to be a shade-tree mechanic or a person who makes a living wrenching. I know what hammers and screwdrivers are, have a minor working knowledge of a hack saw and wood saw, but beyond that, my knowledge level about using tools falls apart. I suspect my knowledge level is on the same plane as my want-to-know level.

Fortunately, only a buddy was along on this trip.

Once, far from port on Lake Michigan, the motor conked out. My buddy didn't even know what a screwdriver was so he was of no help. We'd boxed a number of chinook salmon, and all of a sudden the motor died.

I was smart enough to have two batteries aboard. One to start the outboard, and another for my marine electronics and downriggers.

I knew it had to one of two things (I hoped): it was either electrical or we'd run out of gas. The gas was no problem, and the gas line from tank to motor was fine. I was getting a spark, but still it wouldn't start.

Stupid me, I ran down one battery trying to start the engine. Failing that because the battery soon ran out of juice, I switched batteries. That other battery soon ran down without turning over the motor.

Now, I had a 50 horsepower Evinrude on the stern, and decided to try hand-cranking the motor. Ever try to start a big engine with a starter rope by hand? No?

Well, don't. I was in my 30s, in good shape, and began pulling. Then the rope would be wrapped around fly wheel (at least that's what someone told me it was), and it would be pulled again. Nothing happened.

We drifted aimlessly along on a soft breeze as other boaters steered clear of us, apparently assuming we were fighting a fish. The engine sat idle, and we drifted some more. I thought about putting a line out, but we weren't moving fast enough to make even a FlatFish work.

No power meant the marine radio wouldn't work. Several hours into our drift, a buddy's boat was spotted and I waved him over. He came along side, and I explained our predicament. He asked about a fuse.

Fuse? What fuse? Boat motors have fuses? He explained that engines indeed have fuses, for what reason I've forgotten, so he jumped aboard my boat, pulled off the engine cover, and showed me my fuse. You got it. It was blown.

It never occurred to me that a boat engine would need fuses. I've learned that lesson.

He jumped back into his boat, located his spare fuses, and came back aboard. He took out the bad fuse, put in a new one, and then he took something out of his boat I'd never seen in any motorized vessel.

A pair of jumper cables were attached from his boat battery to mine. I turned the key and the engine roared to life. It was all rather amazing.

This business of engines was all rather baffling to me. The lessons learned from that episode forced me to have the right fuses aboard, and when all else fails, check the fuse. And to carry jumper cables, and not be stupid.

There have been times when I could put a capital S on the word stupid. And some of those dumb stunts of mine cost me plenty of fishing time.

There are other examples of mechanical things in my life that have gone wrong but I refuse to belabor my ignorance any further. I buy a car, and put gas in one end, oil in the other, and when the ignition key is turned, I expect to hear a running motor.

My boat problem was solved by someone else, and I suspect the car problem also will be fixed by someone else once we get it started and take it in for service. Chances are the problem is one of those head-slappers where I should have known what to do but didn't.

Duh!

Posted via email from Dave Richey Outdoors