Fall Bow Hunting

                There isn’t a more exhilarating adventure for a hunter then a late Fall Bow Hunt.  Bow hunting Whitetail Deer is not a simple nor inexpensive hobby either.  There are many concepts to be grasped through experience and equipment to purchase that goes along with it.  Late Fall for Whitetail Deer means the deer are in Rut, or their mating season.  This means that the bucks are sexually aggressive and will respond well to calls and scents.  One thing my father and I liked to use is Tinks #69 doe in rut buck lure.  This is a little brown glass bottle filled with estrus gland fluid naturally produced by the does when they go into heat.  On the opposite end, the bucks produce a secretion from a gland called the tarsal gland which is located in two locations; around the mid section of the back legs and between the ears on the skull.  Dad and I put these scents around our tree stands to try to attract the bucks close enough for a shot.  If you want to imitate two bucks fighting one would make use of rattling antlers.  Take a matching set of antlers from a previous years kill and crash the antlers together.  Last year I rattled in one of the nicest ten point bucks I'

ve ever seen in my life.  I first noticed him over one hundred yards away and when he heard me rattle he became angry and ran strait for me.  A more popular form of calling would be the grunt or doe bleat.  The grunt imitates a buck and bleat imitates a doe in heat.  My favorite type of bleat call has always been The Can Call.  It is a small, black, plastic cylinder that fits in your pocket and is a very close imitation of the sound a doe makes.  I have had good success using these.  The grunt call come in many shapes, sizes, and brands.  I have had so many over the years I couldn’t even tell you which one I currently am trying. 

                To hunt whitetails late in the fall has many advantages.  By this time the soft woods like maple and poplar have already lost all of their leaves.  Most of the forest floor is covered with delicate watery vegetation that wilts upon the first frost.  This make your vision in the wood much easier.  Early season I can barely see thirty yards in front of me, but in late fall I can see as far as one hundred yards in any direction.  Deer trails are now much easier to see as well.  The trails are beaten clean of any plant life with nothing but dirt and hoove carvings  in the earth.  Due to the fact that the bucks are chasing the does all night, the tracks are much more congested on these trails and often can tell a story of what happened.  One could notice a set of  buck and doe tracks that was drug over a two foot span suggesting she was slipping as she was trying to run away from the buck that was chasing her down.  Since there has already been a frost or two, the sugar beets we planted in our lower field have turned sweet and the deer will trample through them, replenishing themselves of nutrients and energy lost from endless hours of chasing and mating.  Although they like the sweet sugar beets after a frost, nothing will ever be chosen by a deer over acorns.  Luckily at our land you can’t hardly take a single step through the woods without crunching and popping on one of those suckers.  Believe it or not, the deer also prefer the acorns of a white oak over a red oak.  Don’t ask me why.  Its and old saying that seems to have no scientific fact but spend any amount of time in the woods and you will notice the deer spending more time around the whit oaks then the red oaks when milling around for food. 

                My absolute favorite part about late fall hunting is the signs left by the bucks.  I'm talking about scrapes and rubs.  A scrape is an exposed dirt patch where a buck he leaves his scat, urine, and tarsal gland secretions.   He will find a spot, primarily on a field edge and under a low hanging tree branch, where he will scrape away the grass and leaves leaving a roundish dirt spot.  Consider a scrape to be like facebook, mypace and match.com for a buck.  His plan is to come back minimally every twenty-four hours or so to check and see if a doe has visited his scrape and left her scent or “phone number”.  If so, the buck will spend  time trying to locate this doe to mate.  Usually the buck will snap the low hanging branches almost as if hes flagging the spot in case he loses it.  Another action performed by a buck would be a rub.  This is when a buck rubs his antlers on  smaller trees ripping the bark from them.  This is his way of marking his territory and leaving his tarsal gland scent in an area he feels is ruled by him.

                All of these concepts are fairly easy to understand.  Most of the signs that I have talked about are fairly easy to identify if one was to spend time in the woods looking for them.  The most rewarding is being able to witness these deer and the behavioral patter changes in them when their reproductive system takes over.  One early sign that the does are going into rut is when you notice the does make their young “leave the nest” so to speak.  The does tend to travel alone once in heat and you will notice a lot of young deer running around alone and clueless, left to figure out the rest on their own.  The bucks will become stupefied with hormones.  Their tempers are very ill and they will become easily agitated by the sound or smell of another buck in their proclaimed area.  The buck’s neck will become swollen and dark.  His tarsal glands will be wet and greasy from constant secretion.  If any two bucks cross paths while you are in stand you will be rewarded with a rarely seen action of the two bucks engaged in a fight.  It is usually a suspenseful primal excitement that one can only achieve by such an act as freezing your butt off in a tree hiding yourself from captivity.  Even if you don’t like hunting, or deer, or nature in general, I don’t think anyone could keep a steady heart beat while two buck fight to what could be their death.  It is a very real and intense experience I wish everyone could share.   Indeed, late fall Bow Hunting is an adventure.      

Narrative Essay

        To say when I woke that morning doesn't really cut it.  Due to my excitement for opening day, I never truly fell asleep for more then twenty minutes at a time.  I awoke to the sound of dad clearing his throat.  The smell was a combination of two of my favorite smells to this day, a newly lit Camel Light by a Zippo lighter and a pot of freshly made coffee, percolated not the drip brew.  Dad claims it taste better that way.  Our camper served its purpose of keeping us alive throughout the cold night but when you’re a 5’10” 180lb twelve year old attempting to tuck yourself if a child’s sleeping bag, you tend to wake up shivering when your body is exposed from the shoulder blades up.  I jump suddenly from the crackling of the radio as dad tunes in a new station.  He stops on a station because we both instantly recognize the song being played.  I look up at dad as he raises an eyebrow, turns to me and says, “ Da Turdy Point Buck!”
Still not having fully removed myself from bed, I managed to graduate to a sitting position.  Although I loved the smell of coffee, the taste had not yet caught up to me.  Swiss Miss Hot chocolate was my poison of choice.  Now For something with substance.  “ Oatmeal Cream Pie, or Star crunch?” dad said.  Being a 180lb twelve year old I though to myself, “He must be joking if he thinks im not eating one of each?”  I proved the voices in my head to be accurate as I scarfed my way through the oatmeal cream pie first knowing in the back of my head that the star crunch would be firmer therefore easier to hold in my mouth as I tied my boots.  That’s a fat kids idea of muli-tasking.  I was fully dressed with a belly full of sugar and began to put on my blaze orange.  “Not yet”, dad said.  “We still have a half an hour before we’re gonna head out.  You’ll be sweating before we leave.  Lets go see Grandma and Grandpa.”
My Grandparent camper was only twenty yards from ours.  Our camper was a newer generation pop-up camper but not theirs.  Their camper was an early 70’s Corsair Camper.  Being shaded under a dozen sixty foot tall Pine trees for the last ten years has given the camper a slight appearance of blackish overspray I assume only to be mold from lack of sunlight.  Grandma had a stroke in years past.  Grandpa had to help her dress, use the bathroom and hold her arm to assist her in walking.  She was able to walk on her own but was very slow.  That being said, it was always mandatory to knock out of respect before walking in.  As I knock both my grandparents in unison shout, “ Come in!”  I noticed grandmas voice to be just a split second ahead of grandpas and twice as enthusiastic.  My grandmother loved Deer Hunting almost as much as she loved her family.  That being said, when you were able to combine both in a single event you bared witness to a physically impaired women with a spirit as if she could pass you in an uphill footrace.   “Good morning!” I stated as I walked in.
To the left is the kitchen which consists of a stove which was functional and a sink that was not.  Both were a horrible booger yellow color.  On the counter just past the sink was an old steel bread box were grandpa kept all the keys to the sheds and tractors.  It was also the vault in which he stashed an abundance of Hershey’s Coca containers, mouse traps and a pile of peppermint candies so old they had begun to soften.  Across from that all was a bench and table that when collapsed would make as an additional bed. On the right was the couch/bed and a bunk bed above.  All cushions were an ugly beige with olive green and burnt orange flower patters.  When the burner on the stove is turned on, the temperature in the camper is 20 deg hotter at 5 feet then it is at 3 to 4.  it’s the kind of dry heat that instantly dries out you nostrils.  Grandmas JVC radio was sitting on the ledge of the window usually surrounded by a stack of novel cassettes.  Not far from the tapes was usually a porcelain shot glass pilled with toothpick.  The flat ones not the round.  Grandma was sitting on the couch with her coffee.
I sat next to grandma and  it wasn’t long before she asked, “Are you ready for your first hunt?”  I of course was ready having been waiting on this day for over two years.  Grandpa chimes in with something innocently sarcastic like, “He aint gonna see no deer cause Ill have them gall shot before he even gets in his stand.”  Grandma chuckles and says, “Ya ya!”  Male bonding and emotions in our family stops and ends if our with picking on each other.  Dad walks in moments later and says, “Hello hello!”  Don’t ask me why but the double statement has always been a Fuchs family thing.  As if saying it twice simultaneously has some kind of secret meaning between our family, like a secret handshake.  Grandpa offers Dad a warm up on his coffee.  They sat at the kitchen table to discuss the weather, the corn, what engine has been acting up, and who from back in the farming days isn’t doing so good.  I sat with grandma and listened to her tell the story about my fathers first deer hunt.  I had heard the story a hundred times already but never grew tired of it.  The farm and news report whispering in the background, dad and grandpa shooting the breeze at the kitchen table, and Grandma and I on the couch talking of memories past.  There was still twenty minutes before we needed to head out into the woods.  I couldn’t think of a better way to spend that time.

Welcome To My Subject

   

     My blog is going to be about hunting.  I chose to write about hunting because it is my passion.  Hunting is very dear to me for many reasons.  My oldest and fondest memories entail loading up a truck and heading into the woods, field or marsh in pursuit of wild game.  My stories will include family and friends both old and new, alive and deceased. Although, not every story I have will involve the bagging of said game, nor will it necessarily be about the hunt itself but the "shenanigans" we encounter.  Since I was a young boy my father always made me his number two on every hunting trip no matter what the game or distance to pursue.  Hunting trips between him and I are now as they were then, about more than coming home with a dead animal.  To me hunting is about the story leading up to the "end of the hunt" and success is not determined by filling your tag or bagging your limit but the lessons learned, memories made, and the good taste left in your mouth by a dish known as comradery. Stay tuned and wish me luck this season!