A winter hike

This buck was photographed when there was little snow.

Soft, lazy flakes of snow drifted slowly down from a leaden sky as I decided to check out one of my hunting areas for some last-minutes bow hunting between Christmas and New Years Day. I may have bit off a bit more than I could comfortable eat.

I’d missed a few days with a tender back. It’s been broken twice years ago, and serves as a barometer of bad weather for me. And it can turn from good to bad in a minute or two, and hiking through thigh-deep snow isn’t the best thing for me to be doing.

I’d have been better served by donning one of the four pairs of snowshoes I owned. However, I chose to take the cross-country hike with only a ski pole to help me maintain some semblance of balance. I didn’t fall so it apparently worked/

My possibles bag had been forgotten the last time I sat in a pit blind, and I figured I’d check out that particular area, and pick up the bag with the black powder, sabots, bullets and the like while I was at it. So off I went in my shin-high rubber boots and my third leg, the ski pole.

Hiking was pretty slow going as I went from knee- to thigh-deep.

The first 10 steps was through snow that was up to my knees. The 11th step was almost up to my hips, and had it not been for the ski pole, I would have fallen in the deep snow. In and out of the knee- to thigh-deep snow, and after a quarter-mile of not seeing a track, I stopped for a break and to look around.

The fields were worse than the woods in one regards because the drifts were deeper. However, walking through deep snow is the woods is an interesting way to find out just how many ways there are to trip over things, get legs hung up in blackberry bushes, or finding slippery logs to slide down before catching a tree branch that breaks off in your hands.

I cut a trail angling through the woods, saw just one squirrel track from where a bushytail was scouring the woods in search of his stash of grub hidden for winter. The nearest corn field was almost a half-mile away, and I couldn’t see him going that fall.

Next was a pair of half-filled-in tracks traveling together. I followed them for a hundred yards, and they disappeared into another woodlot. They were probably looking for a deer away from it’s yarding area, but the tracks continue on a direction that didn’t coincide with my particular line of travel.

The next woodlot was eased into, and another trail through the woods was followed until it petered out in heavy woods before dropping downhill. I didn’t walk to go that way and have to climb out and up a steep hill in deep snow.

I kept looking for deer tracks in the snow but didn’t find any.

I kept looking ahead, and off to each side, trying to find any deer tracks. It was getting to be hard going, and I knew if it was tough on me, it would be worse for a deer. I kept circling back toward my car, and finally walked back out onto the road.

The hike felt good but my disappointment was hard to hide. If I’d covered that much ground, and not seen a single track, it tells me the deer pulled up stakes and headed for some thick cover that would provide some thermal cover for the animals.

I had picked up my possibles bag along the way, and had tested the ski pole with almost every step I’d taken, and had nothing to show for it except some good exercise. Perhaps in a day or two I take another hike in hopes of finding some deer but I suspect my deer hunting may be done for this year.

Posted via email from Dave Richey Outdoors

Some funny bowhunting errors

The sight of a nice buck in December can lead to mistakes.

Over the years, I've seen people commit some of the dumbest errors while sitting in an elevated coop or a tree stand or while hunting from a ground blind. Most are funny but some could have been dangerous or fatal.

The reason I write about some of these is there are things that can be learned. Benefit now from the mistakes of others.

One time I had a new hunter sitting in a ground blind. There was 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, and then silently slide it open, draw, aim and shoot.

Somewhere from spoken word to memory, he got lost.

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.

Cr-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, the buck crossed the window, and he shot. His arrow struck the sliding portion of the wood window, glanced off it, missed the buck entirely but the ricochet nailed the doe in the heart. It was a great shot, but it was 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 mother's life. This mistake has often happened, and it is the result to tunnel vision on the target animal and not watching to see what other nearby deer are doing. The venison was really tender, I heard.

It was bitter cold that day and the hunter got too cold.

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.

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 fortunate.

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 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, 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 first sound.

Loose nocks, too much clothes, heavy bow weight rolled arrows off.

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 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 got one ground blind with a low. 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 injury, banged his head when he left. He no longer likes to sit 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 hunter who can laugh and benefit from his mistakes.

Posted via email from Dave Richey Outdoors