Fun with Poachers, Trespassers, or Whatever

True story – I killed my 1^st deer ten minutes after a pair of poachers passed in front of my stand. It really wasn’t even a “stand.” It was 2X4’s stuck in the crotch of a scrub oak that required grappling up the couple of branches sturdy enough to hold a 90 pound 14 year old. It was even dubbed “The Sore Foot Stand.” Had Mom seen it, Dad probably would have been hauled to court.

Anyway, we were hunting a 1000 acres of private land that bordered a county-owned piece of public ground, and the Sore Foot Stand lorded over the boundary between the two. About 8 in the morning, I caught movement to my right and witnessed two camo-clad, fully-armed gentlemen emerge from the oak hammock, sans the orange vests required to hunt the public piece. Maybe calling them poachers is incorrect because they weren’t hauling an 8-point out of our woods, but they were certainly guilty of armed trespassing. Private property signs in both English and Spanish could in no way be ignored.

The second guy was just clearing the barbed wire fence when his accomplice elbowed him and pointed at me up in the tree. Instead of doing what I would have done, namely haul butt into the woods, they actually had the audacity to wave at me like a child would wave to his mommy as she looked out the window of an airplane about to lift off. I did what any young hunter would do – I emptied my .308 on those greaseballs.

No. The signs didn't say trespassers would be shot. They – and this still boils my blood – just slowly walked off, making sure to retrieve their game cart they’d concealed in the palmettos. I sat there a little shaken, not real sure what to think or do. But, I just stayed put because in those days, being anywhere other than where Dad left me was a mortal sin. Good thing, too. Ten minutes later I glanced behind me at a large doe that would become my first deer kill of what’s been a fairly productive, almost famous hunting career.

Save for my first experience with howling coyotes in South Carolina a couple years later, not much has ever really unnerved me in the woods quite like coming across folks that just shouldn’t be there. One, it’s a gross safety issue. My bullet-proofness has worn off through the years – I'd hate to take a .270 to the torso because some trespassing swine is too eager to shoot at movement in hopes of felling an eighty pound sow. Two, you can never be at ease with the intentions of a fellow willfully breaking the law.

Case in point, I had undressed to my skivvies to cross a chilly creek to hunt an oak hammock that had become synonymous for dispatching large boars. This was on a piece of phosphate property we had exclusive rights to, but the engineers and electricians and janitors made no beef with carrying equipment in their trucks so they could hunt on the job. Well, luck had nothing for me that morning, so I stripped back down to ford the raging rapids, carrying my boots and pants and jacket over my head like a real clown. On the other bank, I sat down to re-appropriate my wardrobe.

When I stood and made the first couple steps back to camp, I looked up and saw a man in a red flannel shirt smoking a cigarette and clutching a lever action .30-30. I paused for a minute trying to figure out whether I was about to have a shoot-out with this guy or if this was a hallucination from the early onset of hypothermia. Being only 19 and wishing to maintain exclusive rights to this property, I cowardly sidled away instead of confronting him. Never been too confident of grabbing a poacher by the tail – best let the men in charge deal with that. Plus, I was more than a little startled at the thought of this guy standing there long enough to watch me dress.

My worst encounter – by a long shot – happened back at that 1000 acres, almost ten years after my first doe. We were camping there for a weekend Spring Turkey hunt. Me being the selfless guy I am, I volunteered to go down alone early Friday morning to set up camp and potentially bag a tom. The trouble was, it was pouring rain. It had been all night and stayed true to form in the predawn hours. Thunder, lightning, buckets of rain. It was the kind of downpour only a freaking lunatic or turkey hunter would be in.

So I drove the property in my old white Dodge Ram, listening to tunes, guzzling diet coke and pounding gas station donuts, just waiting for the weather to clear for a minute or two of turkey calling. Around 7:30 I was granted the reprieve I’d been waiting for. I pointed the truck down the trail that would take me to the Sore Foot Stand. I could quietly slip into that area and settle in without spooking any toms that were probably still roosted in the drizzle.

Now, how can I keep this PG and not be too gross? I parked the truck a few hundred yards from where I was going to pitch my decoys. As I was putting on my vest, the old stomach took a pretty evil right turn on me, quite possibly due to the mass consumption of diet cola and sugary glaze. Panic-stricken, all thoughts of turkey hunting were placed aside as I snatched a roll of hockey tickets from the glovebox and half-ran, half-crouched my way to largest palmetto head I could find, feverishly stripping myself of clothes and equipment to where it all left a breadcrumb trail of gear a blind person could follow. (God, these last two stories have me half-naked in the woods – I’m one with Nature, I guess.)

After atoning for my sins and regaining my composure, I ambled back to the truck and an irregular tan color in the tall grass grabbed my attention. Thinking it was a fawn or a bilingual Private Property sign some interloper tossed out there, I grabbed my Nikons off the dash for a closer gander.

In hindsight, I consider myself fortunate I did not walk up for a closer gander. The tan color was a baseball cap, which wouldn’t have been so unfortunate had it not been attached to a head. I focused my binoculars and noticed sideburns. Behind that I could make out the outlines of two more bodies prone in the grass. I ran back to my truck and racked a shell very loudly into my shotgun, hopped in and gassed the Ram to the gate. Had there been any dust on that road after the rain, I’m sure I left a trail of it. I wasn't looking back to check.

My immediate thought was murder, that these were bodies left to rot, because, again, no one should be out in weather like this. And that scared me more than the realization that I was pants-down not 60 yards away focused on a completely separate life-threatening issue. It’s not that I minded dead bodies; it was “Who killed them and where is that person?” that spooked me the worst. There was a migrant camp that bordered the property, and there were always reports of violence and robbery and other shenanigans coming from that joint – we’d see them all the time wandering through the scrub. So it wasn’t too hard to jump to this homicide theory.

I left the 1000 acres and wheeled down to Lake Manatee Fish Camp where I had better cell reception. I contacted the head honcho of our place who called the police. I met the sheriff’s deputy about 30 minutes later back at the gate, and we drove down to the scene of the crime completely sweating bullets, if you’ll pardon the pun.

The bodies, thankfully, were gone. The only evidence of them being there – and exonerating me of tall tales – were perfectly formed human depressions in the wet grass. There wasn’t much for the deputy to do other than kindly help me gather my belongings that were still strewn about the woods. He said he’d go check the migrant camp to see if anyone had been missing that morning. I never did hear back, and I’m fairly certain he didn’t bother. The weekend never really improved – the next morning I botched a chance at one of the largest gobblers I’ve seen in Florida.

It’s been a long while since I’ve dealt with poachers or trespassers or whatever you want to label them. I hunt WMA’s a lot these days, and the leases I have been on are typically far from public lands or colonies of field laborers. It’s never a fun thing to have these encounters.

Still, when I think back on that first doe, it is a wonderful story to tell. 

A Few Things About Treestands

I hung my stands a couple weekends ago. To say they are in precarious positions would be an understatement. Unfortunately our lease consists mostly of scrub oaks, trees not well-suited - with their twisty trunks and reaching, Dark Forest branches - for treestands. I managed to place a Gorilla lock-on in a young white oak of some variety. It took creativity. The ascent is a combination of swinging and climbing up branches like said primate with two Ameri-Step Rapid Rails filling in the gaps. The foot platform rests at a 70-degree angle. It’s a herniated disc waiting to happen. My other one isn’t much better. Nearby I hoisted a generic 16-ft ladder stand that is situated on a thin scrub oak. At that height, it waves back and forth to the point I may need Dramamine to sit in it if there’s more than a gentle breeze. This may be the season of safety harnesses.

Treestands are traps and should be treated as such. And if you know anything about trapping – and I don’t care if we’re talking about a line of lobster pots or a cardboard box propped up with a pencil and kite string trigger – you have to a) put them where the game is b) give them time to work without disturbance. I don’t recall any episode of Deadliest Catch where Captain Sig said, “This bottom sucks, but let’s drop our gear here and hope the Opilios come to us. When we’re done with that, just for fun, let’s go check the cages we just dumped out. Maybe we’ll pick up Edgar while we’re at it; he’s probably getting cold.”

I recall, with very mild amusement, a group I hunted with in Georgia a few years back. They hung stands in early November having never seriously pre-scouted the property, would finish their morning hunts with little deer activity, and proceed to move them for the evening hunt. This would repeat itself several times over the course of a few days. They only came to camp for lunch and prepare to move stands again. I’m convinced moving stands was their sole purpose for joining a lease – it was their hobby. Needless to say, they didn’t kill a thing, darn near ran everything off before Thanksgiving, and spent the rest of the season walking…I’m sorry, “still-hunting” the place. They weren’t bad guys or anything, just novices with all the gear and no patience.

So the stands I hung aren’t exactly ideal if comfort is your measuring stick. But the fact remains they are located in areas where the deer travel. The lock-on lords over a major trail that leads from the scrub into an open pasture. It’s the last finger of woods winding from thicker cover towards the field and bordering orange groves, places with more browse than the scrub. Several trails converge in this general area. It’ll be my bow stand as the deer will continue using this trail through the early fall to feed.

The ladder stand is directly behind the lock-on by no more than 40 yards, shielded from view by an oak and vine canopy. But, I’m able to look at something different from this vantage point. While the bow stand pinpoints where trails come together, this stand guards the trails as they fan out through the scrub. It’s much more ideal for rifle hunting during the rut as bucks roam different paths for hot does. Why so close to one another? Well, there are three other folks on this small property with plans and agendas of their own. This is one spot of deer activity I liked. No need trying to cram stands in between everyone else’s business. Done properly, it’s all the space I’ll need.

I get married to stands. I’ve never hung more than a two or three on most places I’ve hunted. You can only hunt so many spots and trying to cover them all is betraying your scouting efforts. Detail your strategy, hunt it as such, and know when not to hunt. I have lived and died in this manner for a long time. As such, I also get very jealous and paranoid about how stands are hunted. I used to hang a decoy stand to lure other hunters away from my honeyholes…or maybe I still do…

I only begrudgingly permit use by others – unless they are community stands or something like that – and have to pop Seroquel to prevent nervous breakdowns when I know someone else is in there. I figure everything I do when around my stand is ruining my own chances at Big Buck. I constantly feel as if I'm screwing up. Absolute paranoia. But paranoia has helped me shoot a lot of deer.

The factors that will kill a stand location are as follows – weather and curiosity. There’s not much you can do about the weather. If a wind is bad and alternate stand locations are limited, forgo the sit if you know a big buck is in the area and you have more time in the season to hunt – that’s kind of a moot point on quota hunts or if you only have a weekend or two a year; by all means, stay out there. But if you’re actively hunting a particular buck or quality of buck you know to inhabit your land, you are only hurting yourself hunting swirling or otherwise bad winds, not toughing it out or fighting the elements. Rain is a different story. Big bucks often move in the rain – it’s not something I like to do, but I’ve seen enough hunters pull in nice bucks during a soaker that I believe there is merit to the theory. Rain plus wind – not unless I’m in a covered Cadillac stand with plenty of juice on my iPhone for entertainment.

Curiosity, though, is the biggest preventable factor in ruining a stand location. My dad is culpable of this. We’ll hang stands one weekend, and he’ll spend the next few checking back to see if acorns have fallen, to add one more strap to the tree or adjust it just perfectly on the trunk, check on rubs, add tarsal glad misters and scrape drippers etc. Before hunting season starts, my SOP is to hang them way beforehand and leave them the Hell alone, best of my ability. It’s hard when running trail cameras and corn feeders. I wear rubber boots at all times and avoid contact with vegetation as if I’d catch cooties by brushing against it.

Also, when the season does start, be wary of Stand Burnout. No matter how hard you try, you’ll never completely eliminate scent. It may not be a big deal if you hunt a stand every few days, but a morning-and-evening slog back and forth several days straight will foul up the area, no question. It may not even be scent; it could be the noise you make while walking in or unseen deer seeing you and spooking. I don’t plan on hunting my lease but maybe once a week so it doesn’t concern me to have those two stands so close – given more land and time to hunt, I’d certainly spread out my efforts, having different set-ups to adjust for wind, time of the season, time of day, etc. Again, I’ve never been partial to Musical Stands and only place 2 or 3, but there is something to be said for options.

Again, a treestand is essentially a trap. It must be kept fresh and kept in one spot long enough to work. If everything goes to plan, you’ll be the one springing it, and the planning and cultivation and successful execution of that area is the highlight of deer hunting.

Country-Fried Venison

I love country-fried steak. I want it written as the Cause of Death in my obituary – not “Congestive Heart Failure” or “Myocardial Infarction.” “Country-Fried Steak.” I want people to know I crossed over Jordan on a slick of white gravy. Whether at a Cracker Barrel or a Greasy Spoon in the middle of nowhere, CFS is my go-to order breakfast, lunch, or dinner. Add some form of potato in there to mop up the goodness….Dig It!

It’s also easy to make, and cubed venison steak is the golden-fried ticket for a great home-cooked meal.

What you need:

2lbs. venison cubed steaks or about 8 steaks

Vigo Italian Breadcrumbs

Flour

3 Eggs

Garlic Salt

Canola Oil

Packet of White Gravy Mix

Defrost the cubed steaks in the sink with warm water. When thawed, drain the water and re-fill with cold water and ice cubes to draw out blood and any gamey taste. After 30 minutes or so, remove from the water and pat dry. Season steaks with Garlic Salt and set aside.

While the venison is thawing, set up a little prep station. In one shallow bowl, dump flour seasoned with garlic salt. In another bowl, beat the three eggs into a wash. And a third bowl will be used for the breadcrumbs – yes, this is fairly dish-intensive, and yes, you’ll probably be too full and suffering from gravy shakes after dinner to want to mess with it, so clean as you go. When the steaks are ready, press them into the flour, rinse through the egg, and press well into the breadcrumbs. Set aside the breaded cutlets while the oil heats.

There are two ways to go about frying the steaks. I prefer an electric deep fryer. Get the temperature to around 365 degrees and cook for about a minute or until golden brown. These thin cuts don’t require much more than that. The other option is pan-frying in a cast iron skillet. I suppose it is more traditional, but I always have trouble with loose breading burning and ruining the second and third batches of steaks. Heat about an inch of canola oil over medium heat and cook for a couple minutes, flipping the steaks once or twice.

For the gravy, I just buy the mix that comes in whatever packaging looks more Old-Timey. I suppose I could make the gravy from scratch – or the breadcrumbs for that matter – but for $0.99, who cares? It’s worth saving the time.

When everything is ready, slather the steaks with gravy and serve with mashed potatoes. A little A-1 never hurts, either.

So there you go, one of my favorites, Country-Fried Venison. The reason I’m sweaty, a little dizzy, and out of breath from typing this.

Roast Duck

The last time I roasted a duck, I stuffed the cavity of a mottled with apples and celery and onions, seasoned the skin, and basted it with melted butter every ten minutes or so. Turned out pretty tasty, as I recall.

72 hours later, I was in Bartow Hospital having my appendix removed.

Now, I don’t think there was any real correlation between the two. I actually believe the Grilled Chicken Sandwich I had the night prior to surgery at the local sports bar may have done me in. Or maybe it's because one night I slept on my stomach funny, who knows? It’s one of those chum markers of life – roast duck and appendectomy in the same week. Sticks with the brain.

That was in 2003. Why have I gone 9 years without tossing another bird in the oven other than the thin threat of internal surgery? Well, I didn’t really start duck hunting with any level of seriousness until a couple years ago, so supply was limited. When I did splash a few, I donated the corpses to others to cook (and clean). And the ones I did hold onto were typically woodies that ended up in breakfast sandwiches or pan-fried.

Last week a buddy arrived at the house with an assortment of packaged ducks for an intended cook-out. He was called to leave and left the ducks with me to do as I pleased. Well, he had an assortment of teal and pintail and mallards. I took one of the larger bone-in breasts and thought, “What the Hell?”

I cleaned the remainder of the feathers and detritus from the meat, patted dry and sprinkled with Old Bay Seasoning and Garlic Salt. After this, I wrapped the duck in bacon to keep it from drying out and to add flavor. I placed the bird on a roasting rack in pan filled with a 1/4-inch of water and set the oven for 350 degrees. 

The duck roasted for 50 minutes as the kitchen filled with that wonderful bacon aroma. I pulled the pan out of the oven and let it cool for ten minutes before carving the meat from the breast. I’m leery of over-cooking duck and was a little concerned I had – but it turned out just on the shy side of medium. Better, though, it was tender, almost enough so a fork could cut it.

Wild duck breast is typically going to possess a stronger taste than other gamebirds, but this was certainly not gamey – which says more to how it was handled in the field than anything. Duck lends itself to a variety of dipping sauces. I rinsed the bites of breast through sriracha and various BBQ sauces. Sticky Fingers Smokehouse Carolina Classic was my favorite.

Obviously, I have a small sample size to work from, and you’re welcome to take this with a grain of salt, but this should work with your larger ducks, mallards, pintails, whistlers, etc. If you have any roast duck recipes, please share; this was pretty easy and I was pleased with the results.

And I didn’t lose an appendix this time, either.

Velvet Bucks

If I were a less law-abiding citizen, I’d probably spend the better portion of July camped out over a corn pile with my .300 Win Mag on a Harris Bipod. There’s a gorgeous buck who’s been hanging around the area. Being that it is only early June, those horns are in their infancy – hope to see them come October, but you never can tell. While he’s a daily visitor now, it’s possible he’ll be a memory by then. A mainframe eight and quite a prize for this area, those antlers would look great on the wall. Even better covered in velvet.

I shot one velvet buck when I was 17. I missed the first several days of my senior year to hunt the traditional August 15^th South Carolina rifle season. He was a young six-point that took just too long crossing a road before the aforementioned .300 caught up to him. A few more steps and he’d disappeared into the swamp bottoms of the Salkahatchee. As it played out, he’s a unique mount in my collection.

I returned a few days after my 21^st birthday – you have to about be young and dumb to participate in these brutally hot, humid, and flat-out mosquito-infested hunts. I hunted the very same area I’d killed the six 4 years prior. The deer action was nearly constant in the mornings and evenings – the Low Country of South Carolina has some deer, I’ll clue you. At the time I had a handheld video camera that I purchased right before everything went digital and captured wonderful footage of does and lesser bucks feeding and fighting, but nothing big enough to satisfy camp rules.

One evening, a gentleman arrived at the shed with a dandy eight-point. It was nothing that would grab the attention of a far-gone Midwestern antler crank, but he was a stud for those parts. The guy had shot the buck as he fed in a wide-open soybean field with two or three other bucks. I’ve personally seen and taken larger deer, but this was about the most handsome whitetail I can recall. That summer red coat contrasted so perfectly with the darkening fuzzy antlers, it became my mission to find a trophy like that.

Unfortunately it’s still on my dream list. The fellow who hosted us passed away. I was invited to the same area in 2004, but Florida had a pesky hurricane problem that August which prevented any travel. By the time I did return to South Carolina that September for a guided hunt, the bucks were off their summer feeding pattern preparing for the rut, and had shed their velvet. Invites that never panned out and dueling financial realties have pilloried any chances of return, but I still have that urge to find that trophy velvet buck.

So it’s with great interest that I watch this buck. He and a younger, far less impressive six-point are mowing through my corn. I’m trying to decide which child of mine will have to cut back on their feed so I can continue to keep this guy around.

When a hunter thinks about whitetail bucks it is often about how crafty or intelligent or adaptable they are. The more you study them the more you realize how inefficient they actually are as an organism. Imagine working out and taking supplements constantly for a few months over the spring and summer pumping up the guns, chasing women through the fall, and then laying around exhausted and gaunt through the winter – actually, I believe most gyms rely on this very model.

Deer antlers are the fastest growing bone in the animal kingdom and each year they drop them and grow new ones. That velvet is actually a vascular system that transports blood and nutrients to the growing antler. It takes a great deal of nutritional support to grow those things and can be seen as an indicator of a deer’s health or ability to gather nutrients from its environment. This is why black soil bucks will grow larger racks than a deer around parts of central Florida with sandy soil and palmettos, put simply.

As they mature, they quite literally flower out from the bases or pedicles. The velvet carries supplies to the tips of the tines while the cartilage that forms behind it converts to bone. Once growth has peaked the bone dies and the velvet is shed leaving that classic All-American Whitetail antler. All of this takes place in a span of 3 to 4 months.

Fun side note, antler velvet has long been considered by the Chinese to have medicinal value. It is believed to function as an anti-inflammatory, boost immune systems and fight cancer. As you can imagine, this has created a market for antler velvet, but the main contributors are elk and red deer farmed on ranches. I believe I’ll continue to ingest backstrap and venison in the form hamburger for my own health.

So whitetail bucks are locusts, eating machines during the offseason. It’s why I take only small stock in their patterns right now. It’s helpful as can be to have trail cameras around feeders and food sources to appraise the deer population. But once that velvet is shed, it signifies the start of the challenge of deer hunting. Obviously a buck still has to feed throughout the fall, but that drive is overshadowed by a much more powerful one and the reason bucks even grow antlers – the rut. The bucks that so reliably dine on feeders throughout the summer will start traveling far and wide to find as many ladies as possible. This is when we’re in the woods and realize he’s not the dumb creature that’s been stuffing his face in the heat of the year.

I’m still not sure how I’m gonna go about hunting this buck. It’s nice to know he’s there, but the property is small and there aren’t too many deer to start with. He could be a mile away by pre-rut. Or maybe not; always hard to say with these things.

I do know for certain that velvet will be discarded and a fine set of antlers rests underneath, and I’d love to have a crack at them. May turn out, though, that these trail camera pics will be only tangible mementos of this buck.

Which is more than OK, too.