I have written several times that I no longer hunt. My body just can’t do it any more, but that
doesn’t stop me from thinking about it.
One of the things I often think about is my last deer hunt.
It was a simple affair in the mountains above San
Bernardino, California many years ago.
I had two tags, one for bear and one for deer, and I had set up a small
camp where I could spend a few days if I found it necessary to stay that long.
I arrived in the late afternoon to set up my camp, and later
I grabbed my rifle to do some exploring.
I walked around for a few hours, returned to camp, ate dinner, and
crawled into my sleeping bag. By 6:30am
the following morning, I was about a mile from my camp looking for deer. A bear would be bonus, but even if I saw
one, I don’t believe I would have taken it.
When the light became bright enough to distinguish the
details of my surroundings, I slowly shifted my position for a better look
around me. There was a small clearing a
few yards away, and just beyond that was a small flowing stream. I waited.
And waited.
By late morning, I gave up and moved a few hundred yards
uphill and a few hundred yards to the east.
From this position I could see down a long brushy slope to a grove of
trees about 250 yards away. It was a
good spot, but the weather was a little warm, so I guessed the deer wouldn’t be
moving around for another few hours. I
dug my lunch out of my pack and enjoyed the scenery for a while before taking a
nap.
I awoke about 4pm to the faint sound of cracking twigs. It wasn’t a big noise, but it was not the
sound of a branch falling from a tree.
It was the sound of something being stepped upon, and I started searching
for the point of origin.
I used my field glasses to examine the landscape around me,
and I saw some movement in the shrubs about 200 to 220 yards downhill near the
trees. I focused in as sharp as I could
with those 4x glasses, but I just could not tell with certainty what it was
that was moving about. I could tell
from the movement of the vegetation that it was big.
I watched it for about 10 minutes before I could finally see
a set of antlers moving about. At first
I thought it was just some twigs, but they were closely matched and moving in
tandem. It had to be antlers.
I exchanged the field glasses for my 30-06 and watched the
movement through the scope just waiting for a clear shot. After a few minutes the antlers began to
sway side to side, and then they turned around as though the deer’s head was
spinning 360 degrees. Something wasn’t
right.
I zoomed my scope to its full 10 power and looked as closely
as I could at the deer. Now I was
really confused. No deer I had ever
seen was the golden color of dyed buckskin leather. I made sure the safety was in place on the rifle, and exchanged
it for the field glasses again. I
watched for maybe 15 minutes before the deer stood up on its hind legs, reached
up with its front legs and pulled off its head revealing a man with a beard
bushier than my own.
What was he thinking?
If I had possessed less patience and had decided to go ahead and harvest
the deer I was seeing, the man could have been severely injured or dead. I could go on a rant for many pages here,
but I won’t. I’ll just say that
dressing up in a deer suit and running about in front of other hunters during
deer season isn’t the smartest thing I have ever witnessed.
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