OneCam
Well-Known Member
There’s nothing like the sound of a buck charging across a freshly cut cornfield on a deathly still November morning. I turned towards the snapping of cornstalks to see the buck of my dreams running right to me. Sitting twenty feet up a cottonwood in the creek bottom, I watched in amazement as the huge buck ran effortlessly down the steep terrace. A few bleats with my doe call had preceded this sudden turn of events. I only had a few seconds left to act. I grabbed my bow and stood up, trying to anticipate his next move. He burst through the trees at the field edge and made a wide circle down wind. I tried to stay calm as he surveyed the area from behind some brush. He was a tall and heavy tined perfectly symmetrical eight pointer, and the tip of his right main beam was shaped like a lobster claw. I couldn’t stop staring at it. Here he comes, just a few more feet...
I became interested in hunting nine years ago, and not having grown up around hunters, learned everything on my own. Books, magazines and television shows were my guides, not to mention lots of trial and error. It took five years of hunting before I killed my first deer. Or shall I say it took five years of letting does and small bucks walk by while I waited for the big one. Since my ‘teaching’ had been done mainly by trophy hunters, I put pressure on myself that any lesser deer would somehow not be “respectable.†Despite this, I always cherished my time in the woods, feeling closer to nature than I ever thought possible. A new and exciting world had been opened to me.
My first deer was a beautiful seven point buck I took with my bow. Even though I wished he were bigger, as I grasped his antlers and touched our foreheads together I knew that my life would be forever changed. A kinship had been formed, a bond that could not be broken. Butchering the deer myself only strengthened these feelings, as though completing an ancient circle of predator and prey. And while I had enjoyed venison before, it had never tasted as sweet.
Still, the mystique of a big bodied, heavy antlered buck drew me to the woods like a magnet. I couldn’t wait to wrap my hands around the pair of massive antlers and feel the weight tug on my arms as I lifted his head. What would it be like? My daydreams were filled with the monster bucks I read about in magazines.
The next year I didn’t fill my bow tag, but took my first shotgun deer, a two and a half year old eight point. As happy as I was, the nagging disappointment crept in once again at not shooting a trophy.
The following archery season brought the thrill of shooting my first doe with a three yard bow shot. Afterwards I became even more obsessed, trying to field score every buck I saw. It didn’t help matters that there were three different giants roaming the woods that year. One buck was so wide I don’t know how he got his antlers through the trees. This brings me back to the buck that came tearing through the corn field… It wasn’t meant to be. He turned and continued on his way, looking for the unseen doe with the alluring voice. I hunted that buck the rest of the bow season, but as mature bucks do, he seemed to disappear without a trace. As I also hunt the gun season, I traded my bow for a shotgun and hoped for better luck.
On the first evening of the five day gun season I watched as some nice bucks entered a corner of the field several hundred yards away at sundown and fed until dark. If I didn’t get a deer in the morning I knew where I would be sitting in the afternoon! The next day however, as I walked up to my stand in the pre-dawn darkness, a voice made me jump out of my skin. It turned out to be a man who’d been hunting this farm for years, though I had never met him as he always hunted the second gun season. (Iowa’s shotgun seasons are separated into two – the first is 5 days, the second is 9 days.)
He asked if I wanted him to move (it was my stand after all), but feeling generous, I told him to stay. I would hunt down the creek a couple hundred yards. Before long he decided to come over and chat. There would be no deer this morning. We talked about hunting and big bucks, and before he left I told him where I would be sitting in the corner of the field in the afternoon.
I went home later to eat lunch and when I came back, as you can guess, there was blaze orange where I planned to sit and also in my stand down by the creek. The anger was rising fast. Unsure about any ‘first come first served’ hunting etiquette, I backtracked a few hundred yards and climbed to the top of a sixteen foot terrace which paralleled the woods fifty yards away. I just knew that a buck was going to walk the field edge towards the corner. But he was going to have to walk by me first. “I can play this game too,†I thought. Unhappily I clung to the edge of the steep terrace with only my gun and the top of my head peaking over for almost two hours. Too stubborn to move, I thought about the strange turn of events. “This is not why I hunt,†I said to myself miserably, but felt as though it was a matter of pride that I stay and not let anyone take what was “mine.â€
Sure enough, right before sunset the buck with the wide rack casually walked the edge of the field. And there I was, ready to intercept him. I watched him through the scope, but didn’t feel the strange calm that always takes over right before I shoot. Nevertheless, he was walking broadside at fifty yards, and if I didn’t shoot now, in five seconds he would be over the hill and in my rivals lap. I quickly took the shot. His muscles jumped as he took a great leap forward, and then stopped. He looked in my direction then ran across the field, gunshots following him as he came into view of the man in the corner. We both watched him cross the creek and run over the distant hill. We searched until we became separated by darkness, finding only a few small blotches and drops of blood where he crossed the creek.
I returned at first light the next day and resumed the search, following the sparse blood trail from the beginning until the drops quickly became the size of a pinhead, and then disappeared. I kept going in his direction of travel, searching every bit of cover, every water source, stood at the top of every bluff and looked into every valley. Nothing.
Heartbroken and exhausted, I finally sat on a hillside and cried for the beautiful buck that might never be found, who, if he was alive was in pain because of me. I could only hope that he would recover, or that one of the shots I kept hearing on the neighboring farms was for him. I knew that I never wanted to feel this way again. I kept thinking that if I did get a deer I wouldn’t deserve it. I even thought about not hunting again. But how could I give up hunting? I might as well give up breathing. I looked at my watch. If I left now, I could make the twenty minute drive home, shower and change, and have one hour to hunt before dark. I hurried home.
Sitting back at the field edge I watched two does come out of the woods to feed. I watched the bigger doe through my scope. It was about the same distance as before, a fifty yard shot. I couldn’t do it. Everything was still too fresh in my mind, and all I could think was “what if I lose this deer too..?â€
I couldn’t even go back out the next morning. A big part of hunting is mental focus, and I had to get my confidence back. But the sadness remained. Would it ever go away? The afternoon was waning. I had to make a decision. There was only one more day left to hunt. Four words kept going through my mind: “Get back out there!†Finally I sat down and cried, asking God, and the buck, and the Spirit of the Deer to forgive me, and that I would accept whatever they wanted for me.
Suddenly a feeling of peace wrapped around me like a blanket as I remembered why I hunt and I knew in my heart that the outcome of this hunt would be in Gods hands. I would shoot the first deer that came to me, for it was to be a gift from the Spirit: of the deer, of the Earth, of all the hunters before me, of the wild, of the Creator and Father of all life, and of Love. On this day, the hunt had become sacred. Although I’ve been connecting with this force more and more over the years, I lost it two days before, when I wounded the buck. The hunt had become a competition to get a big deer before the other guys who were hunting there did. It felt as if they were trying to take MY deer. No wonder everything went wrong!
I needed to get back to the basics of what I really love about hunting. I needed to be close, to reconnect with the spirits of nature. I went to one of my bow stands deep in the woods around 4:00 pm. I had only seen does and small bucks from this stand, and that’s all I expected.
The squirrels kept me company for an hour. The sun set and dusk settled in with no sign of any deer. I was happy just being there, trusting that whatever would happen was meant to be. There was only about 10 minutes of shooting light left. Suddenly, from out of nowhere, footsteps…here he comes, straight at me. Lobster Claw! He stopped for a moment fifteen yards away, head on. If I raise my gun, he’ll see me. Maybe he’ll go under my stand and I can get a shot as he’s quartering away down the trail. At five yards, he turned broadside and stopped with his head behind a tree. I am forgiven...
This buck means so much more than scores and numbers. You can use all the latest gear and the most proven tactics, but each deer is ultimately a gift; Spirit gave me this buck. Of this I’m certain. These deer are not just ours to take. They are ours to receive. I would have been humbled and moved to tears by any deer. I was given my dream buck. How do you score that?
Don’t get me wrong, big mature whitetail bucks will always fascinate me. Maybe it’s the wildness that they represent, and the fact that they are such beautiful creatures, like snowflakes...no two are alike. And every time I see one I can be part of these things. But even if I do harvest a bigger buck, I now understand that all deer are of equal worth in the eyes of God and nature. And mine.
I became interested in hunting nine years ago, and not having grown up around hunters, learned everything on my own. Books, magazines and television shows were my guides, not to mention lots of trial and error. It took five years of hunting before I killed my first deer. Or shall I say it took five years of letting does and small bucks walk by while I waited for the big one. Since my ‘teaching’ had been done mainly by trophy hunters, I put pressure on myself that any lesser deer would somehow not be “respectable.†Despite this, I always cherished my time in the woods, feeling closer to nature than I ever thought possible. A new and exciting world had been opened to me.
My first deer was a beautiful seven point buck I took with my bow. Even though I wished he were bigger, as I grasped his antlers and touched our foreheads together I knew that my life would be forever changed. A kinship had been formed, a bond that could not be broken. Butchering the deer myself only strengthened these feelings, as though completing an ancient circle of predator and prey. And while I had enjoyed venison before, it had never tasted as sweet.
Still, the mystique of a big bodied, heavy antlered buck drew me to the woods like a magnet. I couldn’t wait to wrap my hands around the pair of massive antlers and feel the weight tug on my arms as I lifted his head. What would it be like? My daydreams were filled with the monster bucks I read about in magazines.
The next year I didn’t fill my bow tag, but took my first shotgun deer, a two and a half year old eight point. As happy as I was, the nagging disappointment crept in once again at not shooting a trophy.
The following archery season brought the thrill of shooting my first doe with a three yard bow shot. Afterwards I became even more obsessed, trying to field score every buck I saw. It didn’t help matters that there were three different giants roaming the woods that year. One buck was so wide I don’t know how he got his antlers through the trees. This brings me back to the buck that came tearing through the corn field… It wasn’t meant to be. He turned and continued on his way, looking for the unseen doe with the alluring voice. I hunted that buck the rest of the bow season, but as mature bucks do, he seemed to disappear without a trace. As I also hunt the gun season, I traded my bow for a shotgun and hoped for better luck.
On the first evening of the five day gun season I watched as some nice bucks entered a corner of the field several hundred yards away at sundown and fed until dark. If I didn’t get a deer in the morning I knew where I would be sitting in the afternoon! The next day however, as I walked up to my stand in the pre-dawn darkness, a voice made me jump out of my skin. It turned out to be a man who’d been hunting this farm for years, though I had never met him as he always hunted the second gun season. (Iowa’s shotgun seasons are separated into two – the first is 5 days, the second is 9 days.)
He asked if I wanted him to move (it was my stand after all), but feeling generous, I told him to stay. I would hunt down the creek a couple hundred yards. Before long he decided to come over and chat. There would be no deer this morning. We talked about hunting and big bucks, and before he left I told him where I would be sitting in the corner of the field in the afternoon.
I went home later to eat lunch and when I came back, as you can guess, there was blaze orange where I planned to sit and also in my stand down by the creek. The anger was rising fast. Unsure about any ‘first come first served’ hunting etiquette, I backtracked a few hundred yards and climbed to the top of a sixteen foot terrace which paralleled the woods fifty yards away. I just knew that a buck was going to walk the field edge towards the corner. But he was going to have to walk by me first. “I can play this game too,†I thought. Unhappily I clung to the edge of the steep terrace with only my gun and the top of my head peaking over for almost two hours. Too stubborn to move, I thought about the strange turn of events. “This is not why I hunt,†I said to myself miserably, but felt as though it was a matter of pride that I stay and not let anyone take what was “mine.â€
Sure enough, right before sunset the buck with the wide rack casually walked the edge of the field. And there I was, ready to intercept him. I watched him through the scope, but didn’t feel the strange calm that always takes over right before I shoot. Nevertheless, he was walking broadside at fifty yards, and if I didn’t shoot now, in five seconds he would be over the hill and in my rivals lap. I quickly took the shot. His muscles jumped as he took a great leap forward, and then stopped. He looked in my direction then ran across the field, gunshots following him as he came into view of the man in the corner. We both watched him cross the creek and run over the distant hill. We searched until we became separated by darkness, finding only a few small blotches and drops of blood where he crossed the creek.
I returned at first light the next day and resumed the search, following the sparse blood trail from the beginning until the drops quickly became the size of a pinhead, and then disappeared. I kept going in his direction of travel, searching every bit of cover, every water source, stood at the top of every bluff and looked into every valley. Nothing.
Heartbroken and exhausted, I finally sat on a hillside and cried for the beautiful buck that might never be found, who, if he was alive was in pain because of me. I could only hope that he would recover, or that one of the shots I kept hearing on the neighboring farms was for him. I knew that I never wanted to feel this way again. I kept thinking that if I did get a deer I wouldn’t deserve it. I even thought about not hunting again. But how could I give up hunting? I might as well give up breathing. I looked at my watch. If I left now, I could make the twenty minute drive home, shower and change, and have one hour to hunt before dark. I hurried home.
Sitting back at the field edge I watched two does come out of the woods to feed. I watched the bigger doe through my scope. It was about the same distance as before, a fifty yard shot. I couldn’t do it. Everything was still too fresh in my mind, and all I could think was “what if I lose this deer too..?â€
I couldn’t even go back out the next morning. A big part of hunting is mental focus, and I had to get my confidence back. But the sadness remained. Would it ever go away? The afternoon was waning. I had to make a decision. There was only one more day left to hunt. Four words kept going through my mind: “Get back out there!†Finally I sat down and cried, asking God, and the buck, and the Spirit of the Deer to forgive me, and that I would accept whatever they wanted for me.
Suddenly a feeling of peace wrapped around me like a blanket as I remembered why I hunt and I knew in my heart that the outcome of this hunt would be in Gods hands. I would shoot the first deer that came to me, for it was to be a gift from the Spirit: of the deer, of the Earth, of all the hunters before me, of the wild, of the Creator and Father of all life, and of Love. On this day, the hunt had become sacred. Although I’ve been connecting with this force more and more over the years, I lost it two days before, when I wounded the buck. The hunt had become a competition to get a big deer before the other guys who were hunting there did. It felt as if they were trying to take MY deer. No wonder everything went wrong!
I needed to get back to the basics of what I really love about hunting. I needed to be close, to reconnect with the spirits of nature. I went to one of my bow stands deep in the woods around 4:00 pm. I had only seen does and small bucks from this stand, and that’s all I expected.
The squirrels kept me company for an hour. The sun set and dusk settled in with no sign of any deer. I was happy just being there, trusting that whatever would happen was meant to be. There was only about 10 minutes of shooting light left. Suddenly, from out of nowhere, footsteps…here he comes, straight at me. Lobster Claw! He stopped for a moment fifteen yards away, head on. If I raise my gun, he’ll see me. Maybe he’ll go under my stand and I can get a shot as he’s quartering away down the trail. At five yards, he turned broadside and stopped with his head behind a tree. I am forgiven...
This buck means so much more than scores and numbers. You can use all the latest gear and the most proven tactics, but each deer is ultimately a gift; Spirit gave me this buck. Of this I’m certain. These deer are not just ours to take. They are ours to receive. I would have been humbled and moved to tears by any deer. I was given my dream buck. How do you score that?
Don’t get me wrong, big mature whitetail bucks will always fascinate me. Maybe it’s the wildness that they represent, and the fact that they are such beautiful creatures, like snowflakes...no two are alike. And every time I see one I can be part of these things. But even if I do harvest a bigger buck, I now understand that all deer are of equal worth in the eyes of God and nature. And mine.