Deer hunting bug isn’t the only thing that is biting

In the soft, saturated light of an October evening, I was being eaten by the biggest, meanest mosquitoes I have ever seen.

They weren’t your garden variety Arkansas mosquitoes, those silk thin little wraiths that disappear with a mere quarter turn into the light. No sir, these things were almost the size of yellowjackets. They flew slow and attacked with the single-minded ferocity of gamecocks in a prize match. They had enough mass that when I slapped them in midair, I actually felt it. The impact made a subtle, satisfying “whap” that I probably really didn’t hear, but I thought I did.

Unfortunately, a swinging palm was no match for the squadrons that engulfed me while I made a final tour of my hunting grounds before Saturday’s opening of the antlerless deer gun hunt.

My f irst mistake was wearing shorts. Several of these mosquitoes landed on me and gorged within 10 seconds. They were easy to kill, but they streaked my legs with so much blood that it looked as if I tangled with barbed wire.

That was my first big mosquito swarm of the year, and certainly my first with these hummingbird-size skeeters, so I added a ThermaCell and a small bottle of Repel Lemon-Eucalyptus insect repellent to my day pack. I like the Repel because it doesn’t have DEET, but the label says it repels mosquitoes for six hours. It works very well, and its odor does not seem to alarm deer. Just make sure you’re upwind of the bottle when you spray it on because it burns if it gets in your throat.

Throw in another ThermaCell wafer just in case, and maybe a shotgun with some No. 8 bird shot, because these dang things are as big as starlings.

I’ve worked out here for most of the summer and most of September, and there is still so much to do. I have cleared shooting lanes and trimmed brush. I even took a weed whacker to a couple of overgrown lanes. I have pruned and groomed, and still the relentless creep of the forest is slowly swallowing my favorite stand.

With bow season in progress and the antlerless gun season about to open, cutting and lopping season is over. At least, it should be. There was one big pine limb dead square in my line of fire. I parked my four-wheeler under it, stood on the seat, reached up and snipped it out. Another one needed to go, too. That overhanging oak branch down the way also could be trouble if a deer were to come out on that trail.

Next thing I knew, I was knee deep in a project.

I filled two corn feeders, but I don’t know why. Acorns were falling steadily. In another week they would be raining down. As long as there are acorns in the woods, deer won’t mess much with corn, but it’s part of the routine.

Of course, we only have a fraction of the hardwoods on this place that we used to have, so the deer and squirrels will go through our small supply of acorns pretty quick. Add hogs to that mix, too. A few years ago, we saw hogs only occasionally in a small creek bottom on one corner of the place. Now, they are everywhere.That’s a lot of competition for a small and dwindling food supply, so maybe the corn will come into play sooner than I think.

Looking over the field broke my heart. Two years ago, it was the prettiest oak/ hickory flat in this part of the country. It was only about 80 acres, but it was also the last big patch of hardwoods on our lease. In a good mast year, a mid-October morning sounded like a hailstorm when the acorns fell heavy. As my friend Mike Romine said, you could walk through those woods and pick out the deer you wanted to shoot.

Now, it’s a grass field seeded with shortleaf pines. The only hardwoods are in a thin ribbon along a dry creek bed. I still love hunting here, but the memory almost brings tears to my eyes.

One of my trail cameras finally produced fruit. I checked the card on a camera in a promising location early in October. It had only two photos of the same buck, taken Sept. 27-28. One was taken at night, and one was a daytime closeup. Its eightpoint rack appeared to have an inside spread of about 15 inches, with what looked to be 18-inch main beams. The points were all very long. I shared the photo with friends who concurred that the buck was probably about 2 ½ years old.

I took a crossbow into the woods the first week of October in hopes of meeting him in person. Better yet, maybe one of my daughters will get him in the modern gun youth hunt Nov. 2-3.