Remembering the Monarch

The other day I was down at camp. There was not a whole lot to do. It was hot. I went in and sat in the recliner next to the air conditioner and tried to take a nap. I looked up and saw the mount of “The Monarch” and started reminiscing. As a coincidence the website stats put the story of that buck’s taking at the top of the chart showing what has been read on the weblog in the past 20 days. I guess after 10 years it is time to go back and revisit that story.

I re-read “The Savage Spoke . . .” and what hit me was how new and fresh that experience was. There have been a lot of deer under that stand since 2003. I can think a few larger bucks taken in that general area that surpass it. Two of them I’ve shot. A couple of seasons ago, I even passed on a shot at a larger 10 pointer during October Muzzleloader– I’m still scratching my head on that one. At the time, however, I just did not want to wreck the whole dynamic at camp with my buck tag burned before the Rifle Opener.

In 2003 it was a new stand, a new rifle, and a relatively new deer camp. I remember putting up the stand with Mooseboy, who was only 10 at the time. He drove out with me to the stand site, and at one point he got bored and asked me, “Dad, why did you bring me?”

“Well,” I said, pulling the straps out of the back of the truck, “You’re spotting me. That is, if anything happens, you can go get help.”

“But Dad,” said Mooseboy.”How can I run and get help? The truck’s here. It’d be a mile back to the road and I can’t drive. What could I do?” It was an astute observation.

“You’re right.” I said. I flipped him the keys. “You need to learn how to drive.” And so it was that my honorable #2 son came to be driving at age 10. He did all right. There is still an old rotted fencepost along the way that he took out on that trip. From then on, he began to heed my instruction about staying further over to the left.

Since then, I have spent every Rifle Opener perched in the stand at Campground. I have 4 Hunters View Buddy Stands. As far as I know Hunters View is no longer around. I purchased the last of them in 2006. In general, let me say that I have now spent hundreds of hours in tubular steel buddy-style ladder stands. Let me give you a quick brain dump on them.

They are roomy and generally comfortable, but they are cold– not quite as bad as aluminum. Carry a buttpad and use it to insulate your rump. Use another for your feet, or better yet, buy boot blankets. If you and your kid are normal sized, you will have a great time. I am a large man with large kids. After a given son turned 12 or so, the two of us were pushing the 500 lb weight rating and it was cramped.

As to the question of whether or not to take them down every year, I have left mine up. I found I did more damage to them taking them down and putting them up than just leaving them there. It’s okay. Some have been up for a decade. Replace the straps every couple of years. Spray paint them with good rust-proofing paint as needed. Use spray or paint-on Extend to deal with the rust. I’ve seen steel lawn furniture that has been out in the elements for a hundred years.

A fifteen foot ladder is all I have found I needed. This is from a reformed nosebleed cowboy. Extra height is not necessary. 15 feet is just fine.

A treestand skirt helps. I use 12 feet of camo nylap backed with black landscaping material. I pad the shooting rail with foam pipe insulation and use electrical ties to attach it to the rail. Additionally I have taken to cinching the bottom with clothesline. This sounds rather extravagant and complex, but I will explain.

Nylap: I have used die-cut leafy stuff, I have used burlap. The solid Nylap is the most durable. The burlap and the leaf-cut stuff are both toast in a couple of years. The straight Nylap can go 5 years or more. Put it up just before season and take it down right after. Otherwise it will be faded shreds in no time at all.

Landscape material: used as backing. It is there to keep the sun from shining through. It better hides your form. Burlap, with the sun at your back might as well not even be there.

Pipe Insulation: Padding on the rail does a bunch of things. It is warmer to the touch. It is quieter. It keeps you from marking up your rifle.

Electrical Ties: Cheap, quiet, secure.

The Clothesline: I figured out a few years ago that deer were getting wary of the stands not because of the occupants, but because the bottom of the skirts were blowing in the wind. I therefore run a bit of clothesline around the bottom and tie both end off to the back of the stand. When I go to get in, I undo one side and then pull it tight again once I’m in.

I use two ropes to get things in and out of the stand. One is a 25 length of 1/4″ cord that stays up all season. I use a carabiner at one end and clamp my duffel onto to that before I climb. The other is a 1/2 inch nylon web that winds up on a reel. It tie up the rifle and then clip the reel to me so the web pays out as I am climbing. After I am all settled-in, I bring up the rifle and put it on an old screw-in treestand step until the start of legal hunting. The hook keeps my hands free. I have also started using a large carabiner attached to the shooting rail to hold my rifle by the sling. That way I do not have to hold the rifle until it is time for a shot. My hands stay a lot warmer. Why both? Habit I guess. Sometimes I like the hook. Sometimes I use the ‘biner.
7) Get a treestand umbrella. Sportsman’s Guide has one for less than 30 bucks. Mine is big enough to hide two hunters in the buddy stand under in the worst downpours. It is well worth the investment.

Stand placement:

2003 was the first time I had put a stand up at that location. Over the years, it has paid off with a lot of good deer. Here is the tip that cued me to to it: There was a lot of rotten wood nailed in the trees. A lot of guys had used the trees around this spot and built treestands. Once I had a stand up, I could see why. For one thing, I can see over a hundred yards in several directions through the woods. That is a rarity in these parts. For another it has lots of different things coming together. A narrow pasture ends. An old logging road passes by. A ridgeline comes to a point and begins dropping elevation into a creek bottom. There is a saddle on the main ridge near by. It is on the edge of a cedar thicket and an oak grove. This connects with this connects with this. . . you get the idea. I had originally picked this spot out on a topo map before my first season. I made the mistake of situating my stand down the hill and hunting it mostly in the afternoon, and never saw a blessed thing. It turns out the action was all taking place at the top of the hill in the morning.

Buck Fever

I had never had buck fever prior to my meeting with The Monarch. The whole stand was shaking. I was frozen. I could not get the rifle up. I did, however, overcome it. Advice? Do whatever it takes. For me, it took talking to myself and calming myself down. It worked. I recovered enough to take the shot. It has never happened since. Go figure!

The Rifle

The rifle I took to the stand that morning was a new-to-me Savage 99. It was the first rifle that I bought sole on the advice of an online forum, namely the 24HourCampfire.com. I’d been thinking about getting something with a bit more “whump” than a 30-30. Everyone said I should get a Savage 99 in 300 Savage, but I was worried about the longevity of the cartridge. I opted for a 308 Winchester. Starting with “The Monarch” it has accounted for all my nice bucks. Since that 2003 Opener it has been my choice for Opening Day. It only shoots bucks and once it has been blooded for the year, it goes back in the case.

It is not a magic deer rifle. I built the rifle and load for what I saw as the conditions at the time. It is a handy rifle to have in the stand, shooting at extended archery distances. The load mimics a 300 Savage. In 2010, I took a nice buck from this stand at a distance of 150 yards ( See “The Shaman Bags and 8-Pointer”)The first shot caused no reaction whatsoever, even though it destroyed the heart and lungs. That does not make it a bad rifle, but it is not a 30-06.

For the first time since I got the rifle, I switched out the optics at the end of last season. I had an old 3-9X30 Simmons mounted on the Savage 99 on Weaver pivot mounts. I always liked the old pivots, and the rifle and the optics were contemporary to each other. It was also the first scope I ever bought, and it had been on three rifles over the years and taken a lot of deer. However, both the scope and the mounts had problems. In 2008, a boogered a shot on a buck at close range from Campground. I found out later the pivot mount had been knocked a kilter. A few years prior to this, I had a buck holding in the cedars just to the east of the Campground stand, and I could not make him out in the scope due to sun glare. This year I swapped out everything for a Bushnell Banner 3-9X40 and a Leupold one-piece mount. One thing I have learned is that a $90 scope is better than a $30, 30 year old scope. Another is that, though the pivot mount was cool, in 30 years of use on several rifles, I never found myself pivoting the scope off and using the irons.

Deer Camp

Deer Camp has changed a lot in 11 years. Back in 2003, I was just beginning to take #2 son out. #3 Son, Angus, was still too young to get in the stand. In those days Mooseboy and I fit fairly well in a buddy stand together. Most of my hunting was still alone. I remember that year well. Mooseboy and I had hunted Yute season together. Just before the Rifle Opener, he announced that he was going to sleep in. He decided that it was time to let Dad have at least one day to hunt by himself. It has since become a tradition. Now, Mooseboy fills a buddy stand all by himself, as does Angus– they do live up to their nicknames after all. They each fill up their sides of the dinner table. Since 2009, SuperCore has been coming to camp as well. My granddaughter, Mooselette, is now only a year behind when Angus first started coming to Deer Camp,and I hope to have her mother, MooseMama as well. The dining table is filling rapidly. It changes all too fast. Enjoy your sons and daughters in the buddy stand while you can. Soon they will be hunting on their own.

The one big thing that has changed for me in 10 seasons is my attitude to deer camp. A decade ago, I still thought of myself as lone hunter, and my focus in November was the hunt. Gradually, being the patriarch of deer camp crept up on me, and I now think of it as my prime directive.

The Hunt

I went back and re-read that piece. It pre-dates the weblog. In fact, the reason I wrote it was that I found writing stories like that the best way to document things for myself. It was not until later that I realized folks like reading my stuff. So much of what I think about that stand and the surrounding turf has changed. Some things have gotten clearer, some have not. For instance, in those days I was certain that there were other hunters on the property. We do. However, in retrospect the word got around after the first year and we stopped having the sort of incursions I envisioned with the drunken hunter. I have also witnessed a couple other buck fights since. It really does sound like a drunk thrashing about in the leaves, heaving his guts out.

As to the idea of the Orange Army with their thundering ATV’s driving the deer onto my property, I still see signs of that on the weekends. Over time, I have seen the number and use of ATV’s ebb and flow. I have hunted mid-week a few times, and watched what happens when the deer are not being disturbed. My conclusion is that two things are at work. First, the deer really do respond to an increase in ATV traffic. The effect is fairly localized and temporary. That is to say that every acre you ride, the deer are perturbed. However the effect is fairly short lived. I can run my truck through a field and bounce deer. A day or two later, they are back. In fact I have taken a deer out by Campground in the morning and seen deer grazing there in the afternoon.

The more important thing I think I have been seeing this past decade is the effects of the rut. The Rifle Opener in Kentucky is usually nestled somewhere in the midst of the rut, and a lot of what I see is the effect of the Seeking and Chase phases. What happens is that, when all this comes together, you have a lot of deer up and moving in daylight hours. They come into contact with the ATV traffic and this forces them to alter their movement. My point in making this distinction is that I believe the effect of vehicles on deer seems to heighten in the rut. Earlier and later in the year, there are going to be fewer times when an ATV is going to seriously change a deer’s behavior. My advice is, when faced with this situation, to go where the ATV’s are not operating, and given the choice, walk.

After I shot the buck, I found him dead at the bottom of the ravine. It is about a 100 yard slog up the hill from there to the truck. At the time I shot this buck I still felt like I was disturbing the area too much if I gutted him right there, so I dragged the buck up the hill, and brought him back to the house. Nowadays, I am going to gut him right there. As long as I can get the truck to the animal, I still wait and gut at the house. It is just easier for me. However, since 2003, I have had to deal with enough deer in enough ravines that I now keep a kit for gutting in place. I have hunted with recent kills and recent gutpiles close by. Deer are unfazed.

I have shot a lot of deer since that morning in 2003. God willing, I will shoot a lot more before I put my rifle down. When I take a grandchild up into the stand for the first time, It will probably be at Campground. There will be many days hunting and many Openers. I only hope any one of them is as good as this one.

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