Early Doe Season and Some Bucks

They surely do come in all sizes. A fawn still in his spots can sport a pair of buttons. But you have to wonder whether the awkward, lop-sided adolescent will find a mate. Do deer value symmetry in mates as much as we do? Few bucks around here survive longer than three or four years, but in that time they do become quite handsome.

These past three days have been our early doe ("antlerless deer") season, and I am satisfied, even relieved, to have a good amount of venison in the freezer so soon. Early Thursday evening I walked down to my cedar tree, and after about an hour of listening to crows, cranes, squirrels, turkeys, and nuthatches, two deer suddenly came into view thirty yards off to my left among the high goldenrods. While I watched the front deer through the scope, part of my brain was trying to evaluate, think clearly about whether to shoot this deer, but as I heard the question "Am I going to shoot this deer?" in my head, the gun went off. My right index finger did the thinking for both of us. I saw that it was a good shot, and the deer bounded off into trees and undergrowth to my right. I heard her go down and knew I could leave her there for a while and wait for another. Some twenty minutes later, a nice, full-size doe came along the same trail the others had used. When she paused under an apple tree to eat apples from the ground, I shot her through the shoulder and she dropped where she stood.

I felt sort of numb, slightly puzzled, not jubilant or celebratory. I had two good kills on the ground at the same time, but it was somehow too easy. This gun is not ambiguous, unwieldy, or subtle; it's for killing deer. The bow and arrow require much more skill, technique, knowledge, and experience. Archery calls for conversation; the gun calls for the buck knife.

Friday evening, I sat in my tree for two and a half hours and got busted twice, about a half hour apart. But it was time well spent. I listened to the cranes a mile to the southeast. I watched a group of ten or so turkeys making their slow way through the aspen stand near the marsh. I watched a peewee hunting and eating insects from his perch on a branch of a nearby cherry tree. But the best was a male grouse; I heard something coming through the undergrowth for ten or twelve minutes before he stepped into view--a handsome camouflaged fellow.

This morning I walked down to the deer blind on the ground that the previous owners built. The floor is rotting out, and there are cat briars growing through the windows, but you're hidden from view and you can see much of the southern slope. I wasn't there twenty minutes when I saw too close to me an autumn olive bush moving from the browsing of a large fawn. There were two of them not thirty feet away, and they were eating the berries from the autumn olives. I moved the gun into position as slowly and quietly as I could in order to be ready when larger deer appeared. After those two young ones worked their way across in front of me, a fine doe emerged from my left, ran a few steps, then walked behind a large autumn olive bush, then stood broadside in front of me some seventy feet away. The bullet just knocked her over, and she did not move again.

You should see the dog, often called Puppy Wuppy, when she takes a bright blue lung in her mouth and trots away to bury it a couple of times. When I am field dressing a deer, the dog is in her happiest state of mind. But Alison won't have anything to do with her when she's trotting up to the house with one of her dripping, bloody treats swaying to and fro from her doggy lips. Alison normally loves the dog, but this morning all she would say was, "Go away, Stinky!"