Whitetail Deer
As a trophy the whitetail leaves nothing to be desired. Cannily outwitting all but the best (and luckiest) hunters—many times, it seems, by divine guidance—when finally taken he should be highly prized.
LAWRENCE R. KOLLER
SHOTS AT WHITETAILS (1948)
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These are the names of the places I hunt: Buck Hill, the Water Gap, the Burned-Off Hill, Camp Creek, the East Side, the Back Side of Buck Hill, and Turkey Hollow.
RICK BASS
THE DEER PASTURE (1985)
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The deerskin rug on our study floor, the buck’s head over the fireplace, what are these after all but the keys which have unlocked enchanted doors, and granted us not only health and vigor, but a fresh and fairer vision of existence.
PAUL BRANDRETH
TRAILS OF ENCHANTMENT (1930)
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The serious here are of two kinds. Those who hunt deer and those who hunt turkeys. By far the overwhelming number of disciples that follow either of these two religions follow that of deer hunting.
TOM KELLY
TENTH LEGION (1973)
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They are likely to die in March. And they die unmourned, untended, unnoted.
CURTIS STADTFELD
WHITETAIL DEER (1975)
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It is generally agreed that anyone who can successfully hunt these wily animals will have little trouble with other game.
FRED BEAR
FRED BEAR’S WORLD OF ARCHERY (1979)
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He is alone, his eye, focused on the track, follows its threaded imprint out through the hallways and blow-downs ahead, as far as his eye can see. His eye searches for an ear, an outline—a suggestion of gray-brown where an animal stands motionless … watching.
JOHN RANDOLPH
“HAWK WHO WALKS HUNTING” IN
SEASONS OF THE HUNTER
EDITED BY ELMAN AND SEYBOLD (1985)
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… there’s little manhood in killing a doe, and that, too, out of season.
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER’S NATTY BUMPPO
THE DEERSLAYER (1842)
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Whether or not I really want to kill the buck, I am not yet willing to forego the company of men who hunt.
JAMES KILGO
DEEP ENOUGH FOR IVORYBILLS (1988)
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Hunting must be a love affair when, beyond all other emotions, the desire to possess rules. One must reach out for what one cannot quite understand. Whatever animal becomes ordinary must be allowed to pass by. The sight of a magnificent buck I want to feel at a close range. To want to kill him with any less intensity seems murderous to me ….
HARRISON O’CONNOR
“HUNTING ON THE FARM“ IN
GRAY’S SPORTING JOURNAL (1984)
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The first American is not really a Puritan, Thanksgiving notwithstanding. He’s not really a Christian with starched collar and blunderbuss. And he’s not a Thomas Jefferson, the Fourth of July notwithstanding, with his intellect and his words. He’s a [deer] hunter with a Kentucky long rifle and a long knife, and he’s gone more or less native. And he first comes to us fighting with a judge over a carcass of a Christmas deer.
CHARLES BERGMAN
ORION’S LEGACY: A CULTURAL HISTORY OF MAN AS HUNTER (1996)
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Deer stands have a magnetic attraction for any deer hunter. He learns from his pals that many deer have been killed from Patterson’s Rock or the Twin-Oak Stand or Skunk-Gully; he swells mentally in anticipation as he approaches any of these hallowed spots, knowing that when the drive comes through, his chances of killing that whitetail buck are better than those of the unfortunates who may be watching less favored areas. Every deer club has these sacred spots, and sacred they are, indeed. They have achieved reputations simply because deer favor these places for moving from hideout to hideout.
LAWRENCE R. KOLLER
SHOTS AT WHITETAILS (1948)
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I crave no cloth better than the skin of a deer, nor any meat richer than his flesh … Well may you call it strong! … Strong it is, and strong it make him who eats it!
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER’S NATTY BUMPPO
THE PRAIRIE (1827)
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No species of wild animal inhabiting North America deserves to be regarded with more interest than the common Virginian Deer; its symmetrical form, graceful curving leap or bound, and its rushing speed, when flying before its pursuers, it passes like a meteor by the startled traveler in the forest, exciting admiration, though he be ever so dull an observer.
AUDUBON/BACHMAN
THE QUADRUPEDS OF NORTH AMERICA (1848)
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I stalk through life like a deer.
A GERMAN DEERSLAYER CALLED “MILLER” IN AN UNPUBLISHED LETTER (OCTOBER 16,1838)
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When we came within sight of the deer, the canoe was allowed to float down with the current, and the steersman laid it in a position the most advantageous for those who were in the bow with guns. The deer would generally raise their heads and stand looking … until the canoe came within a few yards of them.
PHILIP TOME (EARLY 1800s)
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Whether he swam the Combahee, as he had before he swam the Chee-ha; whether he here escaped from the hounds, or was devoured by them; whether he was a deer of flesh and blood, or the phantom buck of legend—we cannot decide.
WILLIAM ELLIOTT
CAROLINA SPORTS BY LAND AND WATER (1846)
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For durability, buckskin is as important as it is to the hero of a sporting romance.
T. S. VAN DYKE (1882)
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The deerskin on our sturdy floor, the buck’s head over the fireplace, what are these after all but the keys which have unlocked enchanted doors and granted us not only health and vigor, but a fresh and fairer vision of existence?
PAUL BRANDRETH
TRAILS OF ENCHANTMENT (1930)
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Although being lost in the woods is, at best, an unpleasant experience, thousands of deer hunters contrive to do it every year.
NELSON BRYANT
“FINDING YOUR WAY IN THE WOODS”
IN OUTDOORS (1990)
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In the American South, deer hunting in particular verges on an organized religion…. It is a hobby that often borders on an obsession, and is particularly entrenched in the Mississippi Delta.
ALAN HUFFMAN
TEN POINT: DEER CAMP IN THE MISSISSIPPI DELTA (1977)
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Then the buck was there. He did not come into sight; he was just there, looking not like a ghost but as if all of the light were condensed in him and he were the source of it, not only moving in it but disseminating it, already running, seen first as you always see the deer, in that split second after he has already seen you, already slanting away in that first soaring bound, the antlers even in that dim light looking like a small rocking-chair balanced on his head.
WILLIAM FAULKNER
“THE OLD PEOPLE” IN
HARPER’S MONTHLY, (SEPTEMBER 1940)
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Alone in the mountains I hunt,
Wandering amazed at my own lightness and glee,
In the late afternoon choosing a safe spot to pass the night,
Kindling a fire and broiling the fresh-kill’d game,
Falling asleep on the gather’d leaves with my dog and gun by my side.
WALT WHITMAN
“SONG OF MYSELF” (1860)
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The whitetail deer is now, and we hope always will be, the big game of the common man.
LAWRENCE R. KOLLER
SHOTS AT WHITETAILS (1948)
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I’m a jeep man. The deer pasture is a jeep place.
RICK BASS
THE DEER PASTURE (1985)
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I think if you’d like to renew your acquaintance with yourself, you could do worse than spend time on a deer stand. Sometimes the hours go quickly, and you become part of the scene. Sometimes each half-minute is torture …
DAVID MAMET
“DEER HUNTING” IN
MEN’S JOURNAL (1994)
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The whitetail is the most beautiful and graceful of all our game animals when in motion.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
THE DEER FAMILY (1902)
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To go deer hunting, the archer should seek a country unspoiled by civilization and gunpowder.
DR. SAXTON POPE
HUNTING WITH THE BOW AND ARROW (1923)
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By the time a buck is truly mature and therefore possibly in the trophy class, his habits and patterns of movement have become so different from those of ordinary deer that he evades common hunting methods effortlessly.
JOHN WOOTERS
HUNTING TROPHY DEER (1997)
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The whitetail is the American Deer of the past, and the
American Deer of the future.
ERNEST THOMPSON SETON
LIVES OF GAME ANIMALS (1929)
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In discussing deer hunting as a sport, it seems to me that we must never lose sight of the fact that its interest is due chiefly to the nature of the game pursued … I hope to be a stag follower as long as I can see a sight. This feeling I attribute to the character of the deer—that noble, elusive, crafty, wonderful denizen of the wilds, the pursuit of which is surely the master sport of the huntsman.
ARCHIBALD RUTLEDGE
DAYS OFF IN DIXIE (1924)
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Orange is the color of November in Michigan. Not the soft orange of aspen or maple, for the leaves have already fallen. I mean the harsh fluorescence of blaze orange that glows along the country roads and in the little towns up north on the fifteenth of the month.
JOHN MITCHELL
THE HUNT (1979)
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I will always be impressed by the species’ ability to survive such unbelievable hardship at the northern edge of their geographic range.
JOHN OZOGA
WHITETAIL COUNTRY (1992)
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The deer hunter of experience wastes no time in watching barren ground.
LAWRENCE R. KOLLER
SHOTS AT WHITETAILS (1948)
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The alarm clock goes off at 4 AM after a long Friday night of poker and reacquaintances at the Coventry Gore Liar’s Club, a hunting camp in the hills behind town. My body moves sluggishly.
JOHN MILLER
DEER CAMP (1992)
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Unbelievable. My [six-year-old] son had found the antler of the buck I had hunted, unsuccessfully, all season. The big 10-pointer I had seen the day before deer season, the one with the wide spread and thick beams.
JAY CASSELL
“THE RACK” IN
SPORTS AFIELD (1992)
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No mammal in the world has likely attracted more attention, stirred more controversy, or has been so intensively investigated as the adaptable white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus), a species that has not only survived in the wake of modern man’s devastation, but has thrived and greatly expanded its traditional range in the Americas.
JOHN OZOGA
WHITETAIL COUNTRY (1992)
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I’m invisible. At least I hope so. I’d better be, since I plan to get within arrow range of a whitetail deer.
JIM HAMM
BOWS & ARROWS OF THE NATIVE AMERICANS (1989)
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Halloween brings us closer.
RICK BASS
IN THE LOYAL MOUNTAINS (1995)
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Use common sense when hunting deer. The most successful whitetail hunters constantly apply heavy doses of good ol’ common sense about deer to their deer hunting strategies.
PETER J. FIDUCCIA
WHITETAIL STRATEGIES (1995)
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Any sportsman who can kill his deer without the tingling spine, the quick clutch at his heart, the delicious trembling of nerve fibers when the game is finally down, has no place in the deer woods.
LAWRENCE R. KOLLER
SHOTS AT WHITETAILS (1948)
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