The buzzsaws cranked up at 7
a.m., a solid 45 minutes after first shooting light. True to
current form, those three-quarters of an hour produced not a single deer
sighting. I’d long since come to the conclusion that I’m a deer hunting hack –
not a single strategy of my own had paid off this season and now I was relying
on the Deer Gods to shine on me in Sampson County, North Carolina. As I put
forth no effort whatsoever in placing this stand or scouting the land or even dumping bait piles, I would be at the whim and mercy of forces beyond my control
– including the loggers.
We knew there would be a crew chopping trees. As the story
goes, the lady who owned the land ran into health problems and resulting money
problems, and the banks were threatening to foreclose on the property – quite
frankly, it’s a depressing backdrop on which to highlight my misfortunes with
something as silly as deer hunting. To help settle the debt, family decided to
sell the timber rights on this several hundred acre tract. Since the woods would be gone in a matter of days, it was decreed in camp to hang the antler rules and
restrictions and any deer could be shot from this area, so long as it was legal
by NC standards.
Gene had sat here the previous morning and spotted an assortment
of does and a young six-point. He had his mind on bigger things and passed on
the chances. The din of the work crew was distant enough so as not to rile the
deer up too much. I pounced on the opportunity to abide by the “Brown is Down”
mentality when it became available and sat coiled, ready to strike at any spike
or doe that slipped out of the woods. But by the time those blades started
striking pine bark, only a few hen turkeys had visited.
The stand was really a Porta-Potty on a raised platform.
Gutted on the inside minus a swivel chair and an assortment of whiz bottles and
spit cups, it was a comfortable perch on the border of the timber and a
cut cornfield. The one problem with being encapsulated like that was it muffled
noise from the outside. While the terrible, irritating drone of the saws was clearly audible, it was difficult
to realize that they were drawing closer.
But the hens didn’t seem to mind, so I held out hope. Around
8, though, all dreams were dashed. I distinctly heard the snap of a splintering
pine trunk and listened as the tree top bullied its way through vines and
underbrush and crashed to the floor, shaking the entire stand. I slung the door
to the stand open and could now clearly hear and see the crew in the treeline
behind me, maybe 100 yards, and more pines waving in the air and disappearing
to the ground. Deer be damned, I didn’t want to be crushed by a felled conifer, especially in a Porta-Potty.
But that about summed up how things had been going for me
this year – galactic forces beyond my control pulling me further from my goals
of antlers and venison. Desperation had already taken hold. The evening before
in a different stand I tried shooting a doe at 450-500 yards, rough guess. She
and four others bailed into a gigantic cut cornfield at sunset. They milled
about in the open as I fumbled with the odds of actually cutting hair. I figured I never get a chance to
shoot this far, why not? No Lead, No Dead. The bullet fell way shy of the
animal, exploding in the dirt and mushrooming small plumes of dust as it ricocheted
across the field like splashes after a rock is skipped across water. Needless
to say, she got away and they were the only deer I saw in nearly 8 hours of
hunting that area that day.
In that very stand the following morning while I was
listening to the saws, Dave shot an ancient 6-point, wide of the ears by a
couple inches. He’d also seen another 8 and several does within shooting
distance. Why didn’t they show when I was there 24 hours earlier? It is things like this that’ll
drive you nuts because when luck is not
breaking your way but seems to be favoring everyone else, you begin to question your Karmic standing: "What have I done wrong? I'm a nice person!" Dave does a
bunch of work on this land year in, year out and deservedly took a nice buck.
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| Dad's cull buck |
Well, it was also a little bit more than work ethic that
contributed to Dave’s buck. A cold front was quickly approaching and it
switched the deer activity wide open. Dad – on his first trip ever hunting with
us here – shot an interesting cull buck out of what is known as the Jerry Mack Stand. This animal, too, had been on the scent of a hot doe. Dad had seen
several other big-bodied deer before shooting light that he was convinced were
bucks. I just needed to lay claim to that stand for the evening hunt.
Camp protocol states that the man who has not killed a deer
gets his first chance at choosing a stand. That put me in the driver’s seat,
but only barely. Tim had shot and lost a cowhorn the night before. I offered
him my bid on Jerry Mack’s out of the shear kindness of my heart. He
deliberated hard, but the issue became moot. Travis had gone out on a feed run
and found Tim’s deer thus rendering his claim on JM’s null and void. Things
were lining up for me.
And don’t feel bad for Timbo – no one else ever would –
because his evening hunt was a hard lesson in Hunting Destiny. My boy E-Man had been hunting the Dennis Stand for a couple days. He
hunted morning to noon, would come
back for lunch and return for the bulk of the afternoon. He’d put in an
unspeakable number of hours in that stand that neither I nor any other member
in camp would and it just wasn’t paying off for him. E-Man decided he required
a change of scenery, if only for an evening. Tim decided he’d hunt the Dennis
Stand.
If you’ve ever spent any amount of time deer hunting, you’re
probably wincing and already know what happened. Yes, Tim killed the biggest
buck we have taken on that property in the years I’ve hunted there, a gorgeous
8-pt. He was in the stand only 15 minutes. There was some muttering and
name-calling later and a notable shortage of bourbon by night’s end, but
all-in-all, E-Man handled it well.
Back at Jerry Mack’s, I’d settled in as the wind started
whipping up with gusts in the 20-30mph range. I’ve had zero success in my life
when the conditions were like this and lacked confidence that this evening would be any different. Jerry Mack’s is a large elevated box blind situated
on a grass pasture surrounded by blocks of thick ash, pine and oak. If you were
to take a running start into the woods, you’d make it maybe 5 feet. It’s more
of a brick of woods than a block, pervasive in coastal North
Carolina. But the deer love it. The only way to
reliably get them out of this mess is with dogs or bait piles. This isn’t land
for lock-ons or ground blinds set way out in the weeds; you must motivate these
deer.
A light drizzle started around 4
p.m. as the light already started to fade. From across the field
ahead of me a spike emerged from the tangle, nose to the ground seeking a hot
doe. He circled the bait piles for 10 minutes or so before finally wandering
into the woods to my left. Entranced by the spike, I failed to mention the buck
standing in the field on my right. The Nikon Monarchs showed him to be a young
8-pt; the Nikon rangefinder said he was at 292yds. Now it was a matter as to
whether I could hold the Nikon scope in the right spot with the distance and
wind.
 |
| North Carolina 8-point |
I’m supremely confident in my Savage 110 Tactical in .300
Win. Mag. Shot a few hogs at such ranges – and missed plenty more – but this
would be my longest crack at a deer. Shooting 180-grain Winchester XP3’s
sighted in 1.5 inches high at 100 yards, I could hold at the top of his
shoulder and we’d be in the money. The only problem was that wind.
The buck was doing the same as the spike, though with more
patience. He was seeking the trail of a doe around the corn piles. He’d pace
around with this nose to the ground as the wind and rain no doubt hindered his
senses. I got comfortable in the stand and nestled the rifle in the corner of
the railings and the roof support for a solid rest and tracked him as he turned
broadside. At that time, the wind gave me the break I needed. I squeezed the
trigger and, after the report, caught the sight of the white belly flipping
upwards and still in the grass.
292 yards is a good shot. I raced down to make sure he had
expired and to snap a quick pic. You know that’s a decent distance when it
takes almost 10 minutes to walk from the stand and back. He was what I thought
he was – no surprises like being a four-point or something that'll earn lectures at camp. No giant trophy
but my first decent buck after several failed attempts over the years. The next
buck that walked in, while I was texting pics to friends and family, I thought would be a wall-hanger.
This buck, certainly more mature, carried a belly and
swagger and an impressive right side of antlers for this area. He strolled up
to his fallen brethren to size him up before he started his own search for
love. That’s when he turned his head my way and I saw his left antler didn’t
match – it was a forked brow tine, almost exactly like the one my father had
shot that morning.
 |
| North Carolina Cull Buck |
We needed to do something about this gene pool, but I
strongly contemplated what would be the results of my action. One, he was at
307 yards. Could I pull off that shot again? What if someone else wants to hunt
here? An act of unselfishness would weigh well with the Hunting Gods. Should I
push my luck this far after being graced just minutes prior?
Well, I made the shot. Get rich or die trying. He dropped
like a sack of potatoes. This time I abandoned the stand and called Dad and
Uncle Dennis to help me load the deer. As it turned out, the weather only got
worse and the deer movement across the property slackened by the next day.
Time
will tell if there will be any cosmic repercussions, but I was certainly proud of
these two bucks and more than a little thankful. Truth be told, I celebrated a
little harder that night, surely contributing to the whiskey shortfall. Plus, someone had to selflessly stay up to console E-Man and wish him luck for the next day.
.JPG)
