"Fooled Again"
In my humble and novice opinion, there are few aspects of deer hunting more enjoyable than stalking through the woods, despite how altogether poor at it I am. I get bored easily, and don’t learn much about the woods I’m hunting by sitting in a shooting house for four hours.
The objective of stalk hunting, of course, is to read and interpret deer sign and to stealthily hunt the deer where they bed down, travel between bedding areas and food sources, lay down scrapes and check rub lines. A good stalk hunter can slip into a bedding area undetected and hammer off a twenty-five yard shot at an oblivious wallhanger before it has time to blow at him and disappear into the brush. A good stalk hunter can spend twenty minutes poring over a topo map of land he’s never set foot on before and roll over a 225 pound cull deer before I have figured out how to work the latch on my shooting house door, the way my buddy Dru did a few years back. A good stalk hunter can locate an inconspicuous deer trail in December and a month-and-a-half later, set up an ambush on a rut-mad monster as it mindlessly saunters after a hot doe.
Despite the knowledge that I do not fit the classification of a good stalk hunter, I nevertheless climb down from ladder stands and alight from shooting houses quite often to do my own stalking. I see a great deal more wilderness and seldom-trodden trails by stalk hunting than by walking to a stand or sitting over a green field all afternoon. On one recent and unseasonably warm November day in the whitetail woods, I became convinced that stalk hunting was about to finally pay off.
My scouting a few weeks before had revealed a fresh rub line meandering through a hardwood bottom for about a hundred yards. After fruitlessly hunting over a green field, I decided to stalk to the rub line bottom I’d found. Believing at one point that I had spooked a deer up from its bed, I positioned myself at the base of one of the few pines in the bottom and waited and listened – the way I do when turkey hunting.
Roughly twenty minutes after setting up, I heard the rustling of leaves and the snapping of twigs. Just then, the forest floor thirty yards to my left came alive with the unmistakable crunching sound of something approaching; it seemed so loud, like a buffalo trouncing on broken glass. Moments went by. There! A flash of gray! My temples pulsated and blood coursed through my veins as my thumb flirted with the safety on my rifle. My neck tingled. The back of my tongue watered and then went instantly dry. With a pounding chest and shorter breath, I focused my eyes on my elusive quarry as the movement which had caught my eye emerged from behind a small thicket – a large gray squirrel scampering past me at about twenty yards. The monarchal buck that was already well on its way to adorning a wall in my guest room revealed itself to be nothing more than a common squirrel.
My imagination is pretty active - and pretty gullible. I am fooled time and again by the possibilities stirred up by my imagination every time I listen to the woods’ mysterious and hopeful sounds. Seems like I can always convince myself that the buck of a lifetime is only a few steps ahead of every crackling oak leaf and every snapping twig I hear. That’s why I appreciate my imagination and its boundless optimism; it’s part of what drives me to swing my legs out of a warm bed hours before sunup on twenty degree mornings; to drive twice as many hours as I’ll get to sleep in camp; and to endure all the hardship, discomfort and humility that are such an integral part of spending great days outdoors.
(c) Roger Guilian 2005
The objective of stalk hunting, of course, is to read and interpret deer sign and to stealthily hunt the deer where they bed down, travel between bedding areas and food sources, lay down scrapes and check rub lines. A good stalk hunter can slip into a bedding area undetected and hammer off a twenty-five yard shot at an oblivious wallhanger before it has time to blow at him and disappear into the brush. A good stalk hunter can spend twenty minutes poring over a topo map of land he’s never set foot on before and roll over a 225 pound cull deer before I have figured out how to work the latch on my shooting house door, the way my buddy Dru did a few years back. A good stalk hunter can locate an inconspicuous deer trail in December and a month-and-a-half later, set up an ambush on a rut-mad monster as it mindlessly saunters after a hot doe.
Despite the knowledge that I do not fit the classification of a good stalk hunter, I nevertheless climb down from ladder stands and alight from shooting houses quite often to do my own stalking. I see a great deal more wilderness and seldom-trodden trails by stalk hunting than by walking to a stand or sitting over a green field all afternoon. On one recent and unseasonably warm November day in the whitetail woods, I became convinced that stalk hunting was about to finally pay off.
My scouting a few weeks before had revealed a fresh rub line meandering through a hardwood bottom for about a hundred yards. After fruitlessly hunting over a green field, I decided to stalk to the rub line bottom I’d found. Believing at one point that I had spooked a deer up from its bed, I positioned myself at the base of one of the few pines in the bottom and waited and listened – the way I do when turkey hunting.
Roughly twenty minutes after setting up, I heard the rustling of leaves and the snapping of twigs. Just then, the forest floor thirty yards to my left came alive with the unmistakable crunching sound of something approaching; it seemed so loud, like a buffalo trouncing on broken glass. Moments went by. There! A flash of gray! My temples pulsated and blood coursed through my veins as my thumb flirted with the safety on my rifle. My neck tingled. The back of my tongue watered and then went instantly dry. With a pounding chest and shorter breath, I focused my eyes on my elusive quarry as the movement which had caught my eye emerged from behind a small thicket – a large gray squirrel scampering past me at about twenty yards. The monarchal buck that was already well on its way to adorning a wall in my guest room revealed itself to be nothing more than a common squirrel.
My imagination is pretty active - and pretty gullible. I am fooled time and again by the possibilities stirred up by my imagination every time I listen to the woods’ mysterious and hopeful sounds. Seems like I can always convince myself that the buck of a lifetime is only a few steps ahead of every crackling oak leaf and every snapping twig I hear. That’s why I appreciate my imagination and its boundless optimism; it’s part of what drives me to swing my legs out of a warm bed hours before sunup on twenty degree mornings; to drive twice as many hours as I’ll get to sleep in camp; and to endure all the hardship, discomfort and humility that are such an integral part of spending great days outdoors.
(c) Roger Guilian 2005
posted by Days Afield Host | 1:03 PM
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