Jbee, your report triggered a memory. This was not a CO event but an experience with deer when I was barely out of college.
I was invited once to go deer hunting near Davy Crockett National Forest in East Texas. My friend’s ancestral property was a section of land near the forest. We got there late and spent the night inside the old family house that was literally falling down. You could see the ground through holes in the floor. We woke up early to get started and made a campers breakfast because the house was no more than a large tent.
We left in darkness. The woods was dense and the sky was brightening but the sun wasn’t up. We moved on old deer/cattle trails. My friend told us that feral longhorns lived in the woods and if we encountered any to not move in an aggressive way or the bull might be motivated to defend. He spoke from personal experience. They weren’t at the top of the food chain but close to it, so these wild cattle were not in the least afraid. Back then in the early ‘70’s there were cougar and the rare black bear still in the area.
I grew up in East Texas so being in a dark wood felt familiar. It was just a new and different one. I carried the rifle over my arm so the walking was relaxed. As the sun came up the birds let us know. Even though we attempted to walk quietly I am certain every animal in the area knew we were there. We only heard the birds.
As we headed downhill into the forest you could sense the damp musty smell of the morning dew on the soil. Soon enough we passed into a large clearing of about an acre. And there on the opposite side was a herd of about 15 or 20 of the wild cattle. We stopped and sure enough there was a large bull watching us. He had a spread of 5 or 6 ft. My friend suggested we not cross the clearing but walk around to get to the trail on the other side. As we walked the cattle never stopped watching us.
As we headed back into the wood the FIL of another friend on the trip, who was an experienced hunter, announced that he saw evidence of deer ahead of us. He spoke with the land owner and they decided to cross over the stand we were in and wait for them to come out on the other side. Clever hunters!
We followed their advice and headed to the ambush site. Once there we settled in to wait for the herd. There are essentially two types of hunting. Blind and tracking. If you have ever been blind hunting it’s boring. You wait for a poor unsuspecting animal to walk into view. We were doing a bit of a hybrid. We tracked them until we thought we knew where they were going then waited on the opposite side of that clearing. We didn’t have a blind, just a spot on the ground. We spread out so we wouldn’t be in danger from each other. And waited.
And waited. After about an hour or so the friend whose FIL was there suddenly busted out laughing and stood up. The experienced hunter was scrambling around to see and we all stood up to watch the whole herd of about 6 to 8 deer come out of the woods about 100 yds. down the hill from where they supposed to be. Clever deer!
The buck in that group had a rack about 3 or 4 ft. across. I have since decided that the smarter deer are the ones that continue to reproduce while the clever hunters only are lucky with the less intelligent ones. We are slowly raising the intelligence level in the deer population.
That buck came out of the woods and looked straight at us. He knew we were there. Because of how we were laid out, the only one of us that could have had a shot was the one downhill nearest the herd. When the hunter saw them he hollered for us to look. The herd turned and were gone in an instant. No shots fired. We had been outsmarted! A magnificent display of animals in their home showing us who was in charge.
I did not fire my rifle. I didn’t even get a chance to choose to not fire it. I have only been hunting maybe 10 times in my life but that one trip I remember as one of the best. I remember it as a walk, with all the sights, sounds and smells associated with it. I don’t remember it as a hunting trip but more as a ramble through the wood where I just happened to be carrying a rifle. It was the landed equivalent of fishing. You know, “getting away from the wife and drinking BEER”.
Most of what happened on that trip has faded. The things I still remember are the two encounters with the wild animals. The circling around the front room of the wild cattle where they dared us to set foot in it. And the deer leaving us flat footed, arms a’flappin hollerin’, “There they go! There they go!”. We, the clever hunters, were never in charge of anything. I am sure they did the deer equivalent of thumbing their nose as they left.
I remember that buck. Of course I imagine he was looking straight at me, with pity.
I haven’t been deer hunting since.
As I said, they are silent and fast. And magnificent!
Duane
