Bow Journal- An Aside- Photos Until the Next Hunt

During this time when I’m forced to stare at the four walls of my office and the computer screen, I can’t help but wonder what’s walking by Joshua Tree, The Hole, or the Ground Blind. So until I’m able to again report back to the more serious matters in my life, I have to look at photos to remind me what a deer actually looks like, both alive and on the ground.

Enjoy.

Sarpy County buck

Cass County doe

Douglas County buck

I-80 Velvet Buck

Cass County buck taken 2 years ago

Bow Journal- Hunt #10- Answers and Questions

After my 10th hunt this morning, I have a few tallies to share:

1) I’ve seen 10 deer in 10 trips, including 2 bucks. Two of these deer I saw walking to my hunting spot.

2) On 5 hunts, I have not seen a single deer.

3) I have hunted 3 different spots, and have seen 6 of my 10 deer in “The Hole.”

4) I have had the opportunity to take shots at 2 deer, 1 of which I did shoot. The other was the small basket-rack I passed up.

Now, questions:

1) I don’t feel like I’m seeing a lot of deer. On your hunts, either public or private, are you typically seeing more deer during this part of the year? How about this year?

2) Have you noticed that you see more or less deer before, during, or after harvest?

3) Are you seeing more deer hunting near beans or corn?

4) Do you typically see more deer in the morning, in the afternoons, or in the mid-day?

5) How long are your hunts typically?

6) How much does the moon phase affect your bowhunts this time of year?

Those are my questions for now. Hopefully some of you out there are curious about others’ hunts as well. I know I am – especially on those ‘perfect’ mornings, like today, when I’m not seeing any deer.

Bow Journal- Hunt #9- Not-so Quiet Time

It’s been a long week. After having a friend try to commit suicide, a cousin being found on his kitchen floor after drinking himself to death, and hearing that another close friend’s newborn daughter may be developing severe neurological problems, I needed some time alone. So I chose Joshua Tree to spend this time, kicking up my feet as I overlooked a cut corn field, not always paying attention to what I was looking at. Needless to say, my thoughts were elsewhere.

There is a passage in an essay that I recently wrote entitled “Demons” that talks about these mornings. It reads: Sweat gets a hunter from 6:30 AM until he climbs into the deer stand until 6:45. Adrenaline as he watches a cut bean field lasts until a 7:15 sunrise. The warmth through his body, resonating to his toes, gets him until 7:30. And a steadily lighting field gets him to 8:00. By that time, the body has cooled, then warmed again, and it is settling in for the rest of the morning. If he has confidence in his location, the type of spot found in the deciduous forest bottoms along the Wolf River in Ashland, Mississippi, or the upland terraces of Louisville, Nebraska, he feels as if a buck will walk out at any moment and time marches fast. Yet if his confidence is low then his thoughts keep him in the stand. The more he thinks, the longer he can wait for a shot, despite the harm that can be caused to the soul if the hunt lasts much past sunrise.

Shortly after sunrise today, however, the day was mentally warmer than the past several days have been. And despite only seeing two deer nearly 300 yards away, three coyotes, and the same very curious and social squirrel, it was a new day. The demons, if ever so briefly, had subsided.

Yet the longer I hunted, the more I thought about the little girl, the more times I heard my mother call my cousin “a weak person” for not being able to control his drinking, and the more times I wondered how our friend was ever going to take care of herself when no one was there to hold her up.

So I opened John Grisham’s Theodore Boone, a kid’s book about an Encyclopedia Brown-type character who will inevitably save the day by page 260, just in time to give Grisham a few more pages to wrap up this case and set readers up for a future Boone story.

Yes, I was reading a kid’s book in the deer stand today. Yet I needed a few minutes to feel like a kid before the long, re-acclimating walk back to the truck forced me to be an adult again.

And that was my deer hunt today.

Bow Journal- Hunt #8- The Ground Blind

The Ground Blind

The ground blind was built out of necessity. When gaining permission to hunt on a farmer’s land, you take what you can get. Tuesday and Thursday mornings before 10 AM- I’ll take it. Only if you drive up and no one else’s truck is parked at the land- I’ll take it. And ¼ of 1 acre of woods without a tree adequate enough to hang a stand- I’ll take it.

The last place is where my nephew Jonathan and I built the ground blind out of wire mesh, cattail look-alike, an assortment of twigs and corn stalks, and spray paint. It overlooks either a bean or cornfield, a regular scrape spot less than 10 yards away, and a game path easily seen in the dead of night.

From this spot, I have killed a nice buck with my rifle less than 10 yards away, missed 2 does with my bow, lost 1 small buck with my bow after failing to get a pass through after hitting a front shoulder, and drawing back but being unable to get a shot off at 2 other does. Needless to say, in a very short time period over the last season of hunting, I have seen my fair share of deer from the ground. As well as squirrels, possums, and a very curious number of raccoons who I believe one day will walk right into my blind with me, leaving parts of Mr. Jeff all over the corner of these woods.

The distance of last year's buck from the ground blind

This morning, however, I survived the raccoons, as they remained on tree limbs the entire time. I also dodged deer, having seen none during my short hunt that had me back at the truck by 8:00 AM.

Yet during this limited time I did have a chance to set up my remote camera, which I have experimented with before in an effort to capture a still shot of me drawing down on a deer. With a camera and remote device behind me and the receiver in a small wooden contraption at my feet, the plan is to trigger the shutter with a step of the foot while the camera photographs from behind me at an approaching deer.

I’ve gotten my angle right, and I’ve gotten my focal point correct. All I need now is a deer. Which failed to provide itself for my very short hunt this morning.

Bow Journal- Hunts #6 & #7- To Pass the Time

What does one do to pass the time while sitting in a deer stand? It is a question that must be answered by anyone spending any significant amount of time living in a tree. For there will be days when nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing, is happening.

For the past two hunts, I saw two turkeys and one squirrel in nearly eight hours in the stand. The area was so barren of life that my heart skipped when I saw the squirrel, a bit of nervousness reminding me I wasn’t the only living soul in the woods.

So I had plenty of time to think while I watched corn to my left, green space in front, beans to my right, and woods behind me. Plenty of time. Here are a few thoughts that passed through my mind, probably very similar to what some of you are pondering while up a tree (unless you’re much more concentrated than me).

I counted deer from past hunts; wondered how many ears of corn are in this field I was watching; thought about The Hole, The Blind, The 10-acre Field, Joshua Tree, Wanza’s, The Widowmaker, and all the names of all the other stands I have hunted through the years; questioned when I could start taking Madeline with me turkey hunting, when she would be ready; hoped Madeline and her mom were safe during their Sunday morning travels; pondered if the Yankees have enough good bats in their lineup to get through the Phillies if they get to the Series; cried about Notre Dame’s game versus Stanford; recounted deer from past hunts; estimated how many steps it takes for me to walk from the truck to Joshua Tree; prayed that my wife will be to help a friend of hers out with some of her serious, personal problems; evaluated if my nose is larger than most, for I can close one of my eyes and still see a significant amount of it; wondered how long our high school lunch periods were when I was going to school; hoped Rob was seeing deer over the ridge; and tried to figure out how I have become a Nebraska Cornhusker fan after despising them for so many years.

Well, the last thought I had a definite answer to: Pelini.

All the others, I’m never sure I came up with the right answers to satisfy me. So I continued to think, peering to my left and my right the entire time, mainly wondering where in the hell all the deer went.

And when I met Rob back at the truck, looking at my friend who I’ve known since birth, I couldn’t help but know what was coming. “Hey, Jeff,” he started, “maybe later this year I can take you hunting so we can see some deer.”

An obscene gesture later, we were riding down gravel roads laughing about the morning, comparing notes on all that we had figured out while we were up a tree.