If you had told me twenty years ago that I would be sitting here, the week before Thanksgiving with 5 deer taken off my property, and a 188 lb  buck of my own in the freezer I would have been ecstatic.  Here it is, the Monday after season, and I am feeling quite a bit less so.  If this was going to be just a lot of belly-button gazing, I’d shut up and just start cleaning deer rifles.  However, I think it is worth sharing. For starters,  I set out this year to get two deer myself. I only got one.  Basically, my season was done and over in its first hour.  Granted, it was a nice buck.  I’ve stopped hunting some years with a buck taken the first hour of season.  However, this was different.  Looking back on what happened the rest of the year, I should have been happy with what I got. It was much better than the goose egg I managed last year.  Still, I feel a little robbed, and it just goes to show you how bittersweet this whole process is.  I remember thinking as I was angling for a shot on that buck– he was darting in and out of the cedars and I was trying to follow him with the binos.  “This is going to be IT,” I thought as I put the binos down and picked up my rifle.  “Your season is going to end here.” Funny, but I had passed on an much nicer buck and a much easier shot the year before on the same stand.  That decision had caused me to go deer-less last year, and I do not regret either deer.  Still it was funny how passing on the one last year kind of forced my hand this year.  The year before that, I had a buck-of-a-lifetime come through just at the edge of my range, and I had held fire, because I did not want to risk anything but a good shot on such a fine animal.  You string enough of those passes on your belt, and you start getting into Buck Fever territory.  That is another subtlety of the sport they don’t teach you.  You can only be picky for so long before you and the rest of camp stop thinking of you as the ultimate sportsman and start thinking of you as Nervous Nelson.

Then there was Angus.  He got a nice 4 pointer less than an hour later.  He felt good about it.  He pulled it out of the woods himself and he cleaned it himself.  I’m impressed, but fate kicked sand in his face the next weekend.  I had not mentioned this before now, but a huge buck walked past him on Saturday #2. I stepped it off– less than 10 yards from where he was sitting on a downed tree trunk.  Fate was out there this season, making us all yearn for something bigger.  He had a bunch of other marginal opportunities that he passed up.  That was good too.  He is learning discipline.

It was good, but still a little melancholy for Moose this year.  He was back out after a year’s hiatus, but he still has not bought a license, and was just going out to sit with Angus this year.  He wants back into the game, but I also understand his job and family and all the rest.  I’m proud he wants to do this all on his own too.  It should feel good, but it still hurts not seeing him in his stand at Virginia taking shots for himself. Moose Mama has been too busy at work to make it down much, but I see that changing too.

SuperCore finished his 5th year as a hunter, and it was quite a year for him.  He got shots at 5, brought 3 to the pole and overall had as good a year as anyone could dream. Still, I know he’s kicking himself for the ones that escaped. When you run into a coyote-gnawed spine in the woods it always makes you wonder if that was your “clean miss.”  I had one like that last year. You could still see the shot, and it was the wrong side and the wrong angle for what I had mucked up.  Still. . .

Then there is the little stuff.  I spent every moment afield after The Opener with O.T.’s custom Mauser.  I wanted to show him it had been equally lucky for me as it had been for him.  It was just not to be.  We still do not have the kind of resident doe population we had up until 2 years ago.  At that point we had three distinct groups.  The Garbage Pit crew, The Left Leg Crew and the Hootin Holler Crew.  Their numbers ebbed and flowed over time, but they had remained intact over several seasons.  This year, I believe I saw the remnants of The Garbage Pit crew running through after sundown.  The other two have dispersed completely.  What we have now are individual doe coming and going, and it shows how the legacy of last year’s drought continues.

Deer Camp?  Deer Camp ran about as well as a patriarch could hope.  Everyone came home safe.  Everyone hunting got a deer.  The vehicles ran.  The steaks that SuperCore brought were great. The S-10 made a great deer wagon.  The winched worked.  Do you mind if I takes this moment to gnash his teeth and declare that as it was in the beginning, it is now and forever shall be a rather hard thing to pull off being a deer camp patriarch?   This is no bitch at the crew, but now that I’ve become the Grand Poobah, there are days I’d like to be a damned ranker like Moose or Angus. Moose had the sense many years ago, when he was just a wee yute to declare that Dad (me) had Opening Morning to himself.  That was the year I bagged my first Monarch, and the custom as stuck.  At least one day a year, after all the prep and all, I get to hunt like just another orange-clad clown. Thanks Moose.  You don’t know how much that has meant.

I did make some progress this year toward that end.  In the past everyone has felt obliged to report their movements to me on the walkie-talkie. It’s a safety thing.  Nobody wants to get shot. We are very tight on that.  The last thing you want to do is fire at a deer and get a bad bounce and find you have bagged one of your own family.  Still, it gets a little absurd when you have a nice herd of deer and you have your eye up to the scope, angling for a shot and somebody calls in to say they are leaving the blind and wanting to know if you want a pickup at the usual place and time.  We have instituted a new code for that.  “Sierra-Uniform” is now the radio code for ” I got a deer in the blind. Stop chattering. I’ll call you later.”

Hammond North and Lazy Boy have both proven themselves as stand sights.  The question now remains how to develop them.  Ground Blind?  Ladder Stand?  Luxury Sky Box?   We’ll just have to see.  I think we can pull Westwood down.  It has been of no use in a couple of seasons.  We have not hunted out of Newstand either in a couple of years, but frankly Newstand is useless unless there are acorns falling.  The trick here is moving out and exploiting more of the property.  I did some calculations out on the stand this year.  By my wild-as-can-be guessing, I figure that there is about one hunter per 20 acres in our part of the county on The Opener.  There is one successful hunter per 80 acres.  I figure as the season ended we were hunting about half of our 200 acres effectively.  We need to build out from the knot we have made for ourselves.  Moose, Angus and I are hunting in a triangle about 500 yards on a side with The Garden of Stone in the middle.  There are good areas elsewhere on the property and Angus will be coming online as a new adult hunter next fall.  Next year we will begin breaking out.

Reloading projects this year were mixed.  I finally got hold of some H4350 (Thanks Supercore!) powder for O.T.’s  25-06.  That looks like a good combination, and at the moment I have it shooting at 257 Roberts levels. I like the 117 grain Hornady SPBT bullet.   I’ll probably crank it up a little for next year. I really wish I had the chance to take a deer with it. The 8mm Mauser was an abject failure. So far all I have is a spray. I will be looking for a different bullet choice next and that Trashco scope has to go!

Angus will be receiving my Winchester 670 to start off next season.  I will start him off with 150 grain  Rem Corelokts over H4895– same recipe as Moose.  I am looking to replace the 670 with a Ruger Hawkeye in ’06.  This will be my “the Last 30-06”.  I’m 55.  I have had a bunch of 30-06 rifles.  Looking at all my contemporaries, I see a general turn towards lighter recoil as they get older.  I figure now is as good a time as any to start that trend.  When I’m 95, I want to roll the wheelchair over to the window and plug a 12-pointer with a .223 REM.  Now is the time to start planning.

Coyotes.  Did I mention the coyotes?  Things have been so bad with the coyotes, that I made the patriarchal decree that all folks going afield needed to be armed. There have been stories from the neighbors that indicate these 4-legged poachers are getting fiesty.  I had a 357 Magnum Marlin Lever that seems to be a good fit.  I will also bring the Mini 14 online for this purpose.  Of course, during turkey or squirrel or deer season we are all pretty well armed anyway, but there will be times KYHillChick or Angus will go out hiking alone.  So far we have not been attacked, but all of us have been tracked by the boogers.  The dogs have been attacked. So far, Jay, the collie, has gotten the upperhand. However, going about armed is just the safe thing to do.  A long standing goal I have had is to take the fight to the dogs. So far all of our encounters have occurred while doing something else.  It is time we deliberately started putting the hurt on them.  Up until now, it just has not been a high priorty.

Well, one more weekend at Camp, locking up, and then it will be down to the Shamanic Reloading Cave for the winter. I’m making sure KYHillChick has a big enough Thanksgiving turkey that I can bring a good sized plate down to Ed, the Guard.

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