Monday morning of the second week started at 3:30 am. Rather than staying in The Park I was traveling up daily from home. It’s about one and a half hours from home and another thirty minutes down MacKenzie Lane to the area we hunt. I had plans to hunt Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday mornings with my Dad, my brother and his wife and do some work in the afternoons. We decided to concentrate on the same general area we hunted in week one as we’d seen plenty of deer.
Although the weather was nearly perfect that Monday morning, crisp and quiet, we didn’t see a single deer. Thinking back, that might have been the first morning we hadn’t seen a thing.
At around 11 am, I decided to “push” through the bush on a line towards the others rather than walking back out the trail. I hadn’t moved 100 metres from my watch before I heard a deer crashing away from me in the bush towards my Dad’s watch, but as it turned out it didn’t go out to where he could see it. Sometimes if the deer aren’t moving much, “pushing” through some bush that you suspect may be holding deer can bring some excitement and success. To be effective, you’ll want to have some “blockers” on the opposite side of the area you’re going to push. Keep safety in mind here as the “pusher” or “dogger” is moving through the woods towards the “blockers”. It doesn’t hurt to make lots of noise when pushing through the bush to get deer moving, it spooks the deer and lets the “blockers” know where you are. I’ll try barking like a dog, sounds real enough to the deer and your group can hear where you are.
Not far from where I shot the buck in the first week I’d found an even better spot. It’s basically a hump pines a few acres in size that sits above a large wetland complex. There is a convergence of 4 different deer trails in the centre of the little clearing in this spot. The wind direction on Tuesday morning had me sitting on a cushion on the ground with my back to a cedar tree on a small knob of conifers that faces the clearing. Around 8 am I suddenly heard galloping hooves coming in my direction, just out of sight around my left shoulder. By the time I’d figured out the sound was running deer there was a doe climbing the knoll I was sitting on, 10 metres from me. She was being chased by a buck and both of them should have just ran out into the clearing where I could get a clear shot but the doe had decided to climb up onto the very knoll I was sitting on for some reason. The doe was almost over the hill behind me (I didn’t even have time to get the rifle up) when I noticed the buck had stopped just below the knoll and was about to reverse course. He didn’t come up the knoll but he was going to follow her back in more or less the same direction they’d come from, but I couldn’t see back there at all. It all happened very fast and my feeling was this was the only look at the buck I was going to get. He was quartering towards me at about 20 metres and although I couldn’t see his legs I could see him from the chest up and the shot looked clear enough at that moment. At some point I’d managed to get the rifle up and I squeezed the trigger when the bead was on its mark. The buck immediately ran off back down the trail. There are certain reactions you look for in a deer when you take a shot and I didn’t see any good reaction (more on that later). I let the others know that I’d taken a shot and went to have a look.
Once I’d found where the buck was standing, I followed every imaginable route he’d have possibly taken after the shot, but there was no blood. Being such a close shot, I didn’t think a complete miss was possible. I went back again to where he was standing and took a hard look at where I was sitting and noticed this…
That little poplar was 7 metres from where the deer was standing.
Despite the fact that they refer to these old lever guns as “brush guns” or “brush busters”, there is no magic bullet that can hit a little tree and hold its trajectory. The deflection off that little poplar was enough to cause a complete miss. In my excitement and the confusion of that moment I didn’t see the little tree between me and the deer, but I was thankful for the miss rather than a poor hit.
We had an interesting Wednesday morning. Scott and his son Casey joined us that day and it was Casey’s first sit on a watch with his Dad.
Around 7:30 am Scott heard something crunching through the frozen leaves towards them from behind. It sounded like a deer but you never really know until you can see what’s making the noise. Eventually a black shape materialized behind some little balsam firs. Scott’s first thought was moose, but it wasn’t big enough. After another step or two they could see it was a black bear, probably just as surprised to see them as they were to see it!
His experience was a little unnerving. He gave the bear a little shout and it didn’t move, just continued staring at them from about thirty metres. He then gave the bear a growl and took a couple of steps towards it and the bear took off in a hurry. Pretty cool for Casey to see on his first deer hunt! We know they’re around, we get them on camera frequently enough but we rarely lay eyes on them.
The first three days of week two were eventful, but we didn’t add to our harvest. That was the end of my planned hunts until the weekend and I was ready to sleep past 3:30 for at least a morning or two. I had work to catch up on and not having hunted many late afternoons by this point in the season I decided to do just that on Thursday and Friday.
My Thursday hunt was quiet, however I had one of the most amazing experiences I’ve had in The Park on Friday afternoon.
This was my first time sitting in a new spot and there hadn’t been anyone hunting this part of The Park. The daylight was starting to fade, it was around 4 pm. I kept hearing faint noises in the direction of the big wetland just out of sight to the north of me. A rustle here, a soft snap there, a louder snap, plus a “clacking”.
At first, I was excited at the prospect of a big swamp buck coming out to cruise around for does in the last hour of daylight, but it was taking too long to materialize and starting to make more noise than any deer should. The “clacking” started to sound a lot like antlers smashing together. It had been a while since I’d heard it… but moose antlers on brush and on each other have a distinctive sound. For lack of a better way to describe this, I’d say they sound “hollow”.
Probably 10 minutes after hearing the first sounds, I saw a bit of movement. It looked too light-coloured to be a moose until I realized it was the face and snout of a cow moose. Slowly but surely a cow, calf, and 2 large bulls stepped into view less than forty metres in front of me. As they walked, the bulls would casually turn towards each other and lightly “spar”. They weren’t putting much effort into it, just kind of play fighting. It was surreal to watch.
At that point they all stopped and just stared at me. For nearly 15 minutes, these four moose just stared at me. I took plenty of pictures and videos, none of which turned out anything close to the actual experience. At some point, a puff of breeze or something brought my scent to them, and as one they all moved away. They never panicked or bolted though, they just decided they no longer wanted to be in my presence.
The more time you spend in the woods the more special experiences you’ll have. While the focus is on deer during those twp weeks in November, the abundance of wildlife in The Park means that an encounter like that can happen any time. Sitting still for hours at a time in the woods makes you part of the woods and the natural life carries on around you.
On Saturday morning, a couple of the guys (Scott and Drake) from the first week came up to hunt. We hadn’t been back to our main area near the creek for a few days so we figured that giving the area some rest might help us out this morning.
I went to the spot where I’d missed the buck on Tuesday morning, but with the wind direction, I sat on the east side of the clearing rather than on that knoll. It was a calm, clear morning, one of the best deer hunting mornings we’d had yet.
Around 8 am I was looking down at something near my feet for a few seconds and when I looked back up there was a buck halfway across the clearing! He came out on the same trail as the one I’d missed earlier in the week and judging him at that moment he looked to be the exact same buck. He was quartering towards me on a line to cross fairly close to where I was sitting so I knew I had to get the rifle up now or he’d be too close.
At this point, he was about 40 metres.
I felt way too visible to the deer to move but I had to if I was going to get a shot. Somehow I got the rifle shouldered and the bead on him just as he stopped, turned slightly back the way he’d come from and started smelling the air. The angle was pretty extreme, quartering towards me, but it was the best chance I was going to get because it appeared as if he got my scent and was about to bolt. At the shot he jumped straight up in the air, his hind leg kicked towards his front shoulder, his tail went down and he ran back down the trail. I shot twice more as he was leaving the clearing but I was pretty sure those had missed.
My feeling is even if you think you made a good shot but the deer is still within sight and running, shoot again. As seen with the shot poplar earlier in the week, you can never be 100% sure.
After sending the guys another shaky text about what just happened, I crossed the clearing to where the buck had been to look for blood. There was none. I walked 20 metres on the path he took, still none. Something didn’t seem right, his reaction after the shot looked right. High jump, tail down, leg kick, stumbling run… I was pretty sure I’d heard him crash too. After another 20 metres and still no blood, it wasn’t making sense in my mind. There were a few different routes it looked like he could take, and after following each of them a short distance I caught the smell of rutting buck on one of them. It’s distinctive. After looking down this trail another 20 metres or so I could see something white and brown that looked out of place about 40 metres ahead. Slowly and cautiously I approached the shape, and sure enough it was him.
There wasn’t a single drop of blood on the ground in the 100 metres he ran after the shot. This has happened to me before, and it seems to be with quartering shots without an exit wound. A double lung broadside shot leaves a very good blood trail. Despite having a bullet hole through the top of his heart, this deer left no blood trail. A deer hit in the heart/lungs will almost always run some, but they usually expire within 100 yards or less.
While waiting for the guys to arrive with the toboggan and the tag, I wedged the camera in a little poplar and took some pictures.
Drake and Scott arrived and I notched another tag, took some more pictures and field dressed the deer. We repeated the toboggan drag from the previous week and without a 17 year old helper it took us a little longer.
What a finale to the 2 week rifle season! Sometimes luck runs more towards one group member than others and this year it was my turn. I haven’t had a multi-deer season for quite a few, so the extra luck was welcome.
Our three deer from the first week were already at the butcher and I had some time on Sunday, so Dad and I butchered that buck in about 5 hours Sunday afternoon. We use the boneless method and butcher the deer entirely with knives. No fat or bandsaw fragments in the meat makes for great table fare. Unlike beef fat, venison fat does not help in a flavour sense. Quite the opposite. The more fat and “silver skin” you can remove during the butchering process the better your venison will preserve in a freezer and taste when it’s cooked.
With two weeks of rifle season in the books, it was time to get back to real life and a regular routine.
We had venison in the freezer and had made another season of great memories, but I still couldn’t help but look forward to the upcoming black powder season. I still had my antlerless tag despite having shot two deer myself.
One of the perks of “party hunting” is you can manage your tags as a group so the members most likely to hunt beyond rifle season can be the last to use their tags. I was looking forward to the prospect of snow, and attempting to track and shoot a buck with the muzzle loader. We hadn’t gotten any snow in the two weeks of rifle season, but by the December 2nd opener of black powder season I was betting on snow and tracks to follow.
Greg Waudby
Greg is our operations Manager and his group has been trialing the Big Woods Hunting program for two seasons in the Park.