The gamiest day
Magnetic pull leads to striking buck
Monday, December 14 was the “gamiest” day I’ve experienced in a long time.
I felt it the second I awoke, and I said so when I sent a text message to a friend that invited me to hunt his farm.
“This is the morning we need to be on a deer stand,” I wrote.
“Well, come on, then!” he wrote.
My friend is a generous soul that believes deeply in balance. He cultivates soybeans and rice, but he has also invested a lot of time, money and land in creating wildlife habitat. He believes it’s worthless if he doesn’t share it, so he welcomes a few people to hunt deer and ducks.
“We kill some really nice bucks out here, but people have these unrealistically high expectations,” he said. “It really bothers me when somebody kills a nice one and there’s no celebration. There’s no happiness. It’s like they’re disappointed because they didn’t kill a Boone and Crockett buck. If it’s not at least a 160 [Boone and Crockett], it’s like they’re ashamed of it. It takes all the joy out of it.”
We had tried to organize a hunt for a couple of weeks, but our schedules didn’t mesh. He was wrapping up his fall harvest on his farm in Jefferson County, and I had one thing after another. We finally planted our flags in the dirt and declared that we would hunt the weekend of Dec. 12-13.
“You need to stay overnight so we can hit it morning, afternoon and evening,” my friend texted. And then he texted me a video of a big-bodied whitetail buck with an enormous set of antlers. Of course, life happened that weekend, as well. One thing and another kept me from traveling, and then came Monday. It was a hunter’s day. It was sunny and cool, with a slight breeze. There was nothing overtly special about it except in the way that it felt.
I checked the solunar tables published Dec. 13 in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. They showed a minor activity peak on Dec. 14 at 4 p.m. That meant that deer should be active between 3 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. Not only that, but my records show that I kill more game on minor activity peaks than I do on major peaks.
“It’s going to happen this evening,” I wrote to my friend in a text message.
He replied back with an assortment of disclaimers about what deer have and haven’t been doing, and when and when not they’ve been doing it.
“They’re in the post rut now, so it’s pretty hit and miss,” my friend texted.
“None of that matters today,” I replied. “This evening is the deal.”
“LOL” was his reply. I’ve had other days like this. There’s no reason to hurry or get anxious. I took my time, but I watched the clock. I got a pulled pork sandwich from a barbecue truck in Sheridan. I wanted a brisket sandwich, but the owner said she had sold the last of her brisket minutes before I arrived. It didn’t matter. The pork was delicious. I ate it in my truck in the parking lot, but I watched the clock.
I met my friend at his place at about 3:15 p.m. He gave the option of four stands.
“You’re the guide,” I said. “It all sounds good to me, so I’ll just follow your lead on that.”
A big buck has been coming regularly to one stand across the lake, he said. The giant buck on the video was at another stand, but that was a chance daylight encounter that was unlikely to be repeated. A third choice sounded best. It’s nestled against heavy cover between two fields, and it overlooks a green field.
“I’m pretty confident you’ll see something there,” my friend said.
When we got there, my friend said that deer often enter the far end of the field and drift back toward the stand. There’s also a lane that runs through the woods that deer often cross.
“Your best chance of seeing a buck is in there, but they usually cross it pretty quick. You’d better be ready.”
“I don’t see the kind of deer you have in the piney woods where I hunt, and my eyes tend to get big,” I said. “Is there anything you don’t want me to shoot?”
“I have two young 10-points. I want to let them get older,” he said. “Otherwise, it’s your choice. If you see a mature buck without any brow tines, I definitely want to cull those.”
The wind was perfect, blowing out of the woods toward open fields where deer don’t approach.
“They’ll start coming out about five or so,” my friend said. “If you’re going to see a buck, it’ll probably be in the last minutes of shooting hours.”
I sniffed the air and felt the electricity of ions firing my synapses.
“It isn’t going to take that long,” I said.
My friend gave me a skeptical sidelong glance and said, “If you get one, text me and I’ll come help you drag it out.”
I entered the stand at 3:40 p.m. I settled into a comfortable chair and scanned the field. I checked e-mails and text messages and replied to the most urgent. I looked down the wooded lane and saw antler tips poking out of the thicket. They looked like a bush initially, so I did a double take. The head holding the antlers followed, followed by the body. A beautiful buck stood wide open and broadside.
Through unaided eyes his rack looked enormous, narrow but tall with a chocolate hue. Through binoculars I wasn’t so sure. Magnification seemed to shrink the rack, but it also compressed them out of scale to the head. Back and forth I went, looking through bare eyes and binos. This continued as the buck turned and walked toward me.
He crossed standing water that marked the 60-yard mark. The rack grew and grew. I counted eight points, and then nine. Maybe 10. Was this one of my friend’s forbidden bucks? No. He said they would be obvious.
“What are you waiting for?” I asked myself. “The only legal buck you’ve seen all year is walking right into your shirt pocket, and he’s a damn sight bigger than anything you’ll ever see at Old Belfast Hunting Club. He’s a gift. Take him!”
At about 55 yards I centered the crosshairs at the back curve of the shoulder and pulled the trigger on my Winchester 7mm Magnum, sending a 150-grain Sierra ProHunter powered by 64.5 grains of Re22 on a short, straight journey. The buck hesitated, then hurtled into an impossibly tangled thicket. I thought I heard a crash.
The time was 3:54 p.m. I’d been in the stand for 14 minutes.
“Was that you? Talk to me!” my friend texted.
He arrived a few minutes later. We found the buck 20 yards away. The shot was perfect and left an exit wound the size of a ping-pong ball. The rack had nine solid points, 10 if you count one knurl that could hang a ring. His inside spread was 141/2 inches wide. Both main beams were 183/4 inches long.
My friend grabbed my hand and pulled me close for a back-slapping bear hug as the air erupted in happy chatter. It was the shortest deer hunt of my life, but it was one of the best. Top three, easily, if for no other reason than the quality of the companionship.
As we drove away from the field, snow geese and speckle belly geese swarmed in for their evening feed. Small flocks of ducks winged into the sloughs. It was a gamey day, indeed.