A Doe for the Freezer

It says over in the right column, “On this day nothing happened, ever.” That’s not entirely true. I just don’t write about it all that much. The Shamanic Deer Team woke up this morning with just 10 hours left of the season. They’re all out trying one last try. I slept in. No. I’m not tagged out. I’m just tired out. I’ve got a couple hours of packing ahead of me. Somewhere in there, I’ll pop the cork on the water and let it drain back into the cistern. We’ll lock up camp and go.

Out at Midway yesterday afternoon, I had just about given up hope. Normally there are herds of doe, 3-7 in number, and it is just a matter of sizing them up and picking the right one to top off the freezer. This season, I have been struggling just to see a deer. There has been one 4 pointer that has shown up at nearly every sit, both at Midway and at Hollywood. He just doesn’t seem to mind me at all. There was a little spike that showed up one afternoon. It took a long examination to determine he wasn’t a doe. There was a bigger buck, bigger than the one I shot that ended up in my crosshairs once. Nope. Then there was one pair of doe. They showed up once, early last week when I was still thinking a hat rack might show up. They showed up again at 1715, about 5 minutes before sundown last night.

I took the larger of the two with my Ruger Hawkeye. She ran off, I found her later in the cedar thicket at the end of the field. Angus and I brought her up to the top. We were back from the processors before 2000.

Way to get it done, Shaman!

No. No cheers. No huzzahs. Some years lasting out the season is enough.

This is my second season without Lily, my intrepid deer beagle. For 16 seasons, you could let Lily out of the car and tell her “Dead deer!” She’d find the spot you’d shot, and then take off in the direction the deer had run. You just followed Lily and eventually you’d find her sitting all proud and happy at the carcass. If you lagged behind too far, she’d come find you and bring you to the prize.

She learned this job from Barney. Barney just seemed to know where dead deer were. He seemed to do it by intuition. Lily seemed to do it by nose, but neither of the struggled. Barney died in 2006. Lily carried on until last year.

Last night, I shot a doe at sunset, and instead of dropping right there, this one decided to run a bit. As soon as she passed over the fence at the far end of the field, I took off in pursuit. As I was crossing the fence, it dawned on me there wasn’t going to be a dog to help, and it was getting dark, and I hadn’t picked up a bit of sign. However, I’d seen Lily find several deer in the woods above Left Leg Creek, so I decided that I’d just follow the route the dog had taken– about 1/4 to 1/2 way down the hill and heading down the creek, holding a view of the bottom and the top as she went. I’d gone through the thickest part of the cedar thicket and come out the other side and was beginning to despair when I spied a bit of white among the leaves. My first thought was Lily.

It was the deer. She’d made it about 200 yards after the shot.

God, how I miss that dog.

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