I began to learn about deer slowly, but when I did the world of the hunt was opened up for me. It is not a mysterious thing; it could be said that buck deer are predictable, just like all other things in nature. There is a season and a time for them, just as for birth and decay. The mating cycle might go on three or four good weeks, during the colder weather in November. The buck marks out his territory, telling other bucks and doe a bit about who he is. This also provides information to the hunter. The buck will come back around to check these marks at given intervals to see if the doe have called. They will do this in enclosed ground, like black spruce or fir, so that they might walk right up to you. (One deer I shot was no more than fifteen feet away when I first noticed him, and he noticed me.) But they will do this in wide-open spaces, too, like hardwood ridges, or in querulous territory, along ragged chop-downs, where man’s machines have pulled roots and all from the ground and left nothing embedded except the remnants of a forest.
On a large chop-down once, waiting on a buck I knew was making its rounds there, I had no idea another hunter was waiting on another buck some three hundred yards up the chop from me. He did not know I was there, either, so blended we were. I have long worn deer musk during the hunt (I actually think it works, so more fool I), so even though he now and again smoked a cigar there was no way I could have smelled it, even if he had been close enough. Then, as darkness began to encroach upon me, and with no sign through my scope in any direction of any deer, I stood to leave. Just as I did, the fellow sat up and trained his rifle on me. I turned and realized I was in the crosshairs of a .308 semi-automatic, up on Urquhart Road, and that this might be the last breath I ever took. It happened that fast—and there was nothing I could do, for I was afraid to wave lest he fire. Except the fellow stood to get a better look, and lowered his rifle in a kind of apology. But as I left the chop, in the dark, shouldering my rifle, I dropped it. I picked it up, examined it, and believed it to be no worse for wear, which was a silly mistake on my part.
The next day I went back to that chop-down. This might have been twenty years ago now, and I doubt it is there any more—I believe the forest has once again claimed it. It was a cooler day and I was alone, except for the jays that now and again bobbed about near me looking for bread. I had my scope and field glasses, and I began to survey the corners of the chop at early morning, and periodically throughout the day. The one thing the day can be up in this quiet is monotonous, and it is patience that counts there. It was sometime after four o’clock in the afternoon when all of a sudden (and it certainly seemed like all of a sudden) I noticed something far across the chop that hadn’t been there a minute before. I leaned slowly ahead, and raised my rifle, and looked through the scope—it was a buck, about ten points, standing face on two hundred yards or so away.
There were two things I should have done. The first is, I should have sighted in my scope that morning after having knocked my rifle the night before. That was just common sense, but I was too impatient to take the time. The second thing I did wrong was to lack patience in the shot. I could have waited until the deer turned sideways. But the last thing I have ever been accused of is logic. So I trained my sights on the small portion of the deer I could see and squeezed the trigger. I missed it. I leaned forward more, brought another bullet forward, and fired again. I came very close, but missed again. The deer turned and fled, without my being able to get another shot. I had been very foolish. I am certain I would have taken that buck if I had waited until it turned broadside. But then I remembered having dropped the rifle.
The next day I went out to the gravel pit near my mother-in-law’s home and checked. That knock had jarred the scope, so it was firing very high to the right. I sighted the rifle in, and prepared for the next year’s hunt.
Peter McGrath, just driving along in his truck, can spot game in a chop-down a quarter of a mile away. It is a location that he has been very successful in, and he likes the chop-down (as do many others) because it gives him both a place to blend in with the torn-up ground and a fairly open shot when the game comes. In fact, a chop-down is a very inviting place for a deer or moose hunter, and some hunters I know spend their entire hunt in one chop-down or another and do not go beyond them into the woods proper. In a way—as strange as it might seem—it is a romantic place to hunt, with its deer avenues between huge mounds of thrashed and torn earth. On the cold days, after a snow, tracks are everywhere.
Another place Peter and other people I know like to hunt is along power lines stretched out for miles through spruce and bog. Deer will cross these places steadily, and many hunters wait on the top of a power line ridge to watch across this opened space (sometimes about a hundred yards wide and miles long) for those deer. Sometimes, however, they see deer too far away for a practical shot, and many times they are interrupted in their hunt by someone else staking out the power line and aiming back toward them. Then it is best to move.
The power line is undulated, with valleys and hills, overgrown by small maples or poplar, and distance can be deceiving. You might think a deer is closer or farther from you, depending on where you are situated. Peter McGrath, hunting one day along the line near his camp, with a bit of raw snow down, saw a doe and fawn cross far down the line and decided to get closer, because the buck would be handy. He quickly and quietly moved down along the line, and realized the deer were about two hundred yards farther away than he had initially thought. Still, he walked until he could see the doe and fawn tracks in that raw November snow, and he moved into the woods to wait for the buck. Facing the woods along the deer trail he sensed something behind him and, turning, saw the buck walking toward him, coming from the same side at which the doe and fawn had entered. Peter believes another hunter had spooked this buck to unwittingly come toward him.
Still, chop-downs or power lines are not the hunt I prefer. To get into the woods far enough and wait on a rut mark is the way I am best able to “control” the hunt (if anyone can do that). I have no qualms about saying that I would be a poor tracker overall, but I am not a poor waiter. I can wait on deer for hours without moving a muscle—I have done this along the Fundy coast and the south branch of the Sovogle, and along the Norwest. If you are in the proper spot, the deer will come right out in front of you sooner or later. I do not use deer calls or bring deer horns with me to rattle. For some reason I always believed that these things weren’t that effective, and that one should wait upon the deer in its natural environment naturally. If you believe something is not going to be effective, I will guarantee you, most likely it will prove ineffective. That is, belief in the divining rod brings the water.
But I have been with lots of others who use deer calls and rattles and they seem to work just fine. David used a call up on the Sovogle with me one year and had a buck coming to it. The buck moved away before we got a look at it, but it was no more then twenty-five yards or so away, in the thick alders.
His antler rattle has brought deer to him as well. Not only buck but doe will respond to a rattle of horns—imitating two bucks in rut fighting, or a buck scraping horns to mark territory.
To use a call or rattle during the bow season is probably effective, for most killing shots are taken at about thirty to fifty yards, and you have to bring the deer to you. My cousin has hunted with a bow successfully for years. The bow season starts earlier in the fall—leaves are still very much on the trees, and it is a close hunt. Much like Wayne Curtis hunting partridge with a slingshot and smooth stone, a bow hunter must get close to his quarry in order to take the shot. To start the arrow back on a 120-pound pull might be difficult, and requires a strong arm, but once the pulley action takes over, it becomes more diplomatic, and one can hold it on his quarry a much longer time, and spring it forward with tremendous force.
Of course, stands are now the thing, and people are mostly in trees, with their bows, waiting on the deer to travel beneath them. The killing shot with a bow is usually below the fore shoulder, between the upper rib cage and the heart. The deer runs after the arrow strikes, and weakness and loss of blood force it to lie down. The bow hunter usually does not follow it immediately but waits for fifteen or twenty minutes or more for it to weaken. It is easier to find then, and stillness is more beneficial to the meat. One man shooting a deer with an arrow, following it quickly, was on a desperate chase through the Black River area for acres, and lost sight of it a dozen times. If he had waited, the problems he faced may not have arisen.
Usually, though, deer taken by bow tend overall to be smaller animals. I am not saying large deer can’t be taken by bow; I am saying it is essentially the time of year that just might allow the smaller buck deer to wander more than the larger, dominant, and rutting buck.