The last day of rifle season for deer this season set me up with a brief encounter with a buck who could be king. It could have been my nemesis buck, the Grey Ghost, but this contact was in a different swamp and in a different area.
It was a cold, snowy, and frosty morning. The frozen ground under my feet echoed with loud crunches of my boots attempting to move me along, in stealth, along grandpa’s road toward the pond. My journey down this aged logging road would be about 15 minutes as I would walk a few steps and then stop to listen to anything that may ‘bolt’ during my approach to the backwatch. The backwatch was a portion of a ridge that we would stand on to cover the route deer would usually take to evade a ‘driver’ (a hunter walking through a particular portion of bush to force deer toward other hunters). As I walked along I had to step around several FRESH deer scrapes on the ground. In some spots along the trails there were two scrapes side by side. All had been done within hours, if not minutes, of my walk down to the watch. I sprayed each one with a squirt of my bottled doe urine and kept my finger close to the safety on my gun.
It looked very encouraging.
Eventually, I came to the point in the road where I would head up onto the high ground that overlooked the road and these fresh scrapes. I scented the last two scrapes with my bottled magic and sprayed some neighboring trees as well. It was important that I draw some attention to this location.
As I looked up the hill, where I needed to go, I took one step into the bush and then I heard the spine tingling sound of a ticked-off buck snorting. Three times that buck snorted and stomped before I heard it crash away from me. It had been standing just out of site past the spot on the ridge we like to watch. I needed to be here 1 hour earlier and this scenario could have been different.
His snowy track was huge. His leaps were few. I gave up tracking close to grandpa’s pond but made sure to remember the direction they were heading. Just past an old pine tree, in view of the pond, waits the lair of the Swamp King.
Bill Anderson
Muskoka Outdoors
Bill,….with that last comment…Ithink you are on to something.Emotion trumps science every time ! And….as we often see from government…. so does stupidity !!!!!
alphamale
I wonder if we could get the government to allow all year hunting? We could base it on emotion (which it would be) and not science. They would be sure to listen then right?
That buck is one of a few that hang around that pond. One day one of them will be yours. I just hope I can last another 25 years !!!!!!!!!….
alphamale
that’s my kind of story!
Great story! I hope it continues.