Last week I shared some (there are many more) of mine and my family’s fishing stories. I omitted some as I ran out of space per my usual. I have of course newer ones with my kids that may not have as many whoppers in them but I’m not kidding that I grab the net almost every time they get one on. I’m not taking any chances. Probably my most prevalent memory with them is when we were in Minnesota on vacation, I had a very large walleye on and I’m looking at a 6 and an 8-year-old thinking over my options to netting this fish. It was the first time I was using my grandfather’s old pole after finally getting a new reel on it. Well, this thing is as long as a cane pole so the smarter play would have been to take my chances with one or both of the kids manning the net. I second guessed myself and tried to do both, you can imagine how that went. It’s not a bad memory, I actually think it is a good one as I know it sticks out to my kids. It’s one thing to take (or make) your kids along on things, it’s a whole other that its memorable.
If you haven’t guessed, my favorite thing to hunt is deer. I still like to hunt other things, but deer are where my mind goes. I’ve just always had pheasant hunting in the bag. It’s something I probably have more hours into by the time I was in high school than most get in their lives. Outside of chasing albino, or partial albino birds for the taxidermist (got one), there isn’t a lot that stands out for me and bird hunting. I know many of you it’s the connection to the dog and watching them work. Deer hunting as I wrote about a couple weeks ago was always a family affair, it was our thing. In the in-between of those years and waiting for my kids to get older I had some time working alone. I prefer a group effort but I definitely get a lot out of playing the wind and reading the cover to get into position for a shot.
I know the Gravity Wagon Highrises are very popular, to each their own, but I prefer to go and seek rather than wait. Which of course you can do both as the way I hunt you can’t do anything until deer stop moving anyway but when most everyone is taking a midday break is when we are just getting warmed up. I know the vision of an old fashion deer drive can get into your mind when thinking how do you hunt CRP, cattail sloughs, or trees. That isn’t at all what is going on. To start with, the walkers aren’t trying to spook deer and drive them to choke points. The walkers have deer tags too and don’t want some blocker getting all the action. If you are a walker you are trying to stay down wind, follow trails, or zig zagging to cover as much ground as you can. While there can be a blocker or two at spots that make sense. I always want to walk. Back in the days of 100% Switchgrass CRP it could be a workout especially after a blizzard or freezing rain and the wind blowing the grass the opposite way you want to walk it. It didn’t matter because the results were great.
Of course, the trophies are amazing but even in years that I don’t get one, I still have wins. That feeling of getting right up on a deer, sometimes so close I could hit them with a rock, is the best. I mentioned a couple weeks ago things were tough this year, that didn’t improve much before the end of the season. I still had wins though that helped ease the frustration. My kids get frustrated too, not by the physical exertion, or by not getting a deer. It’s the lack of seeing them. The “could have,” by being in position to take a shot if the deer is right is all I’m after and it is seeming that I have instilled that in my kids.
It might be surprising to some of you how in a sea of grass you can come face to face with deer so often. Just to give you a clue, I have and have had on my rifle since I was 15, open sight rings under my scope. When a deer is 10 yards from you, a scope isn’t much good. No time was I more thankful I had them when I was down wind from a 3 ½ year old rutted up buck. I didn’t want to shoot him as he had a couple more years to get bigger and he was a nice prospect. But when cursing and waving my hand didn’t stop him from stepping towards me and snorting, I decided he had gotten close enough. I’d rather have a European mount for the year than chance getting gored. The point of this story really is how effective walking can be, I stay short of calling it stalking as we don’t try to be completely stealthy. We can’t see the deer so we have to make them uncomfortable enough to stand up.
This year was a bust for filling my tag as I never even raised my rifle but as I said earlier there were wins. As I was waiting for my kids to comb through the Nanny Berry Forest (too long of a story) I was walking slowly through the grass leading up to where the kids were walking to. This means trying to walk so my scent doesn’t carry into the “forest,” walking short distances, and pausing. After doing this for about five minutes a buck finally popped up 30 yards away, got to the break and stood broadside. Just a youngin’ so I just said hi, and let him skip away. It was still such a relief as we had only seen a doe and two fawns up to this point. After another few minutes of doing the same walk and pause, another bigger buck hopped up from the same spot and did the exact same thing only 20 yards away. Bigger still wasn’t big enough but getting that close is something special that you can only get by walking. When I got up to where they were bedded down, I could see that they had been lying together. The older deer would have entirely let me walk on by had I been in cruising mode but doing something out of the ordinary made him uncomfortable enough to get up and see what creature was in his space. Learning of this behaviors existence as a family has led to deer on the wall and I will talk more about it next week as of course I went down some rabbit holes today that’s going to extend my hunting stories into another week!