Did we say that the season is deer season? We celebrate this special time of the year with tales both heartwarming and humorous.
The month of November is—in Texas at least—marks the beginning of deer season for hunters using firearms (as opposed to bows). It’s the month when deer hunting reaches its heights of attention, activity, and excitement. With so many of our oilfield readers being outdoorspeople, we wanted to share a few tales about the magic of deer hunting. Read on for three such stories. And meanwhile, have an awesomely happy Thanksgiving, all of you!
This first story was sent to us some years ago by Cody Bret, of Buck Hollow Bowhunters. We’re happy to finally share it. Thank you Cody.
What Matters Most
We’re all guilty of it. We see a hunter with mismatched camo with an older compound or old recurve bow, and he’s sporting his deer he just bagged on the back of his old truck. It’s a doe or more than likely a smaller buck. But he’s happy, and grinning from ear-to-ear like he just killed the new world record! So you laugh and joke with your buddies as he goes by. While leaning against your brand new truck, in your name brand matching camo.
But have you ever stopped to think that maybe the deer on the back of his truck means a lot more to him than just big antlers? Maybe he’s a third shift blue collar worker at the local sawmill, just trying to pay his bills and keep gas in his old truck. Maybe he don’t have the fancy game cameras and big food plots that you have. Or the big fancy hunting blinds, that cost more than his old truck. Maybe he’s happy because he finally didn’t have to work this weekend. So he decided to go hunting on the little piece of land that he’s hunted since he was a boy, with the gun or bow that his dad gave him when he turned 12 years old. More than likely he’s not hunting to kill the next world record. He could care less about the antlers.
But what he does care about is putting food on the table for his family at home, and knowing that they’re going to eat good for now. And that, my friends, will put a smile on any true sportsman’s face.
So good luck to all the hunters out there with the rest of your season. Just remember this, support each other and be happy for each other, no matter how big their deer is, because to some folks it means a lot more than the size of the antlers.
Roping A Deer
Another title for this story is “Why We Shoot Deer in the Wild.” This story by an anonymous author made the rounds on Facebook some 14 years ago. The author, an unnamed farmer, was trying to get his venison the easy way. It turned out not to be the easy way.
“I had this idea that I could rope a deer, put it in a stall, feed it up on corn for a couple of weeks, then kill it and eat it. The first step in this adventure was getting a deer. I figured that, since they congregate at my cattle feeder and do not seem to have much fear of me when we are there (a bold one will sometimes come right up and sniff at the bags of feed while I am in the back of the truck not 4 feet away), it should not be difficult to rope one, get up to it, and toss a bag over its head (to calm it down) then hog tie it and transport it home.
“I filled the cattle feeder then hid down at the end with my rope. The cattle, having seen the roping thing before, stayed well back. They were not having any of it. After about 20 minutes, my deer showed up—three of them. I picked out a likely looking one, stepped out from the end of the feeder, and threw my rope. The deer just stood there and stared at me. I wrapped the rope around my waist and twisted the end so I would have a good hold…
“The deer still just stood and stared at me, but you could tell it was mildly concerned about the whole rope situation. I took a step towards it, it took a step away. I put a little tension on the rope… and then received an education. The first thing that I learned is that, while a deer may just stand there looking at you funny while you rope it, they are spurred to action when you start pulling on that rope.
“That deer EXPLODED. The second thing I learned is that pound for pound, a deer is a LOT stronger than a cow or a colt. A cow or a colt in that weight range I could fight down with a rope and with some dignity. A deer—no chance. That thing ran and bucked and twisted and pulled. There was no controlling it and certainly no getting close to it. As it jerked me off my feet and started dragging me across the ground, it occurred to me that having a deer on a rope was not nearly as good an idea as I had originally imagined… The only upside is that they do not have as much stamina as many other animals.
“A brief 10 minutes later, it was tired and not nearly as quick to jerk me off my feet and drag me when I managed to get up. It took me a few minutes to realize this, since I was mostly blinded by the blood flowing out of the big gash in my head. At that point, I had lost my taste for corn-fed venison. I just wanted to get that devil creature off the end of that rope.
“I figured if I just let it go with the rope hanging around its neck, it would likely die slow and painfully somewhere. At the time, there was no love at all between me and that deer. At that moment, I hated the thing, and I would venture a guess that the feeling was mutual. Despite the gash in my head and the several large knots where I had cleverly arrested the deer’s momentum by bracing my head against various large rocks as it dragged me across the ground, I could still think clearly enough to recognize that there was a small chance that I shared some tiny amount of responsibility for the situation we were in. I didn’t want the deer to have to suffer a slow death, so I managed to get it lined back up in between my truck and the feeder—a little trap I had set beforehand—kind of like a squeeze chute. I got it to back in there and I started moving up so I could get my rope back.
“Did you know that deer bite?
“They do! I never in a million years would have thought that a deer would bite somebody, so I was very surprised when I reached up there to grab that rope and the deer grabbed hold of my wrist. Now, when a deer bites you, it is not like being bit by a horse where they just bite you and slide off to then let go. A deer bites you and shakes its head—almost like a pit bull. They bite HARD and it hurts.
“The proper thing to do when a deer bites you is probably to freeze and draw back slowly. I tried screaming and shaking instead. My method was ineffective.
“It seems like the deer was biting and shaking for several minutes, but it was likely only several seconds. I, being smarter than a deer (though you may be questioning that claim by now), tricked it. While I kept it busy tearing the tendons out of my right arm, I reached up with my left hand and pulled that rope loose.
“That was when I got my final lesson in deer behavior for the day.
“Deer will strike at you with their front feet. They rear right up on their back feet and strike right about head and shoulder level, and their hooves are surprisingly sharp… I learned a long time ago that, when an animal—like a horse—strikes at you with their hooves and you can’t get away easily, the best thing to do is try to make a loud noise and make an aggressive move towards the animal. This will usually cause them to back down a bit so you can escape.
“This was not a horse. This was a deer, so obviously, such trickery would not work. In the course of a millisecond, I devised a different strategy. I screamed like a woman and tried to turn and run. The reason I had always been told NOT to try to turn and run from a horse that paws at you is that there is a good chance that it will hit you in the back of the head. Deer may not be so different from horses after all, besides being twice as strong and 3 times as evil, because the second I turned to run, it hit me right in the back of the head and knocked me down.
“Now, when a deer paws at you and knocks you down, it does not immediately leave. I suspect it does not recognize that the danger has passed. What they do instead is paw your back and jump up and down on you while you are laying there crying like a little girl and covering your head.
“I finally managed to crawl under the truck and the deer went away. So now I know why when people go deer hunting they bring a rifle with a scope—to sort of even the odds!!
“All these events are true so help me God.” —An Educated Farmer
And now we close with an elegant and mood-inspiring piece by one L.W. Oakley. We have excerpted a few passages. Enjoy.
The Cold Grey November Woods
You are often alone, silent and still while hunting in the cold, grey November woods.
Being alone with your thoughts in a dark secretive place gradually heightens your sense of awareness.
You see leaves flickering gold and red and yellow as a gentle breeze passes through the trees above you. You hear leaves rustling as a gust of wind ripples across a swamp and moves unseen into the timeless woods around you. And you smell leaves rotting in the wet earth beneath you, returning to it, as you will one day, to rise again, which you will not.
Eventually you focus on your own existence. You hear yourself thinking and breathing and moving, and see yourself standing still and blending in, as if you’re looking on from a distance because the woods and the world no longer have a hold on you. Now you hold them. Just like in the palm of your hand.
Then you wonder what makes you think and see and feel this way. It’s not because you are in the cold, grey November days of your life. It’s because you are responding to the big woods that surround you.
At first you didn’t realize the impact that the changing woods had on you. But from the beginning you felt something inside the way others did before you.
Then you figured it out. It was simple really and it made you smile. You realized why the great woods were so important – because they made you feel alive.
At that moment you knew you would always return to the vanishing woods. And when you disappeared deeper and deeper into them other thoughts emerged from deep inside you.
There are some thoughts that are so elusive that you can’t just think them. Those thoughts are inside us all. They’re waiting to be discovered. You have to sink down and coax them to the surface. You have to feel them first.
When you feel a thought like that it speaks to you. It speaks in your words with your voice. And you hear it too since you say what you’re thinking out loud. Because even the sound makes you feel good.
This is what it sounds like. “I feel alive and I feel free because I hunt in the living woods.”
Hunting makes you feel alive and free when it becomes a way of life. You understand wild animals, respect hunting rituals, enjoy camp life, and are at home in the primal woods.
Hunting is an expression of freedom. That freedom has taught me to remember, and be grateful to those responsible for the right to choose.
Hunting has taught me to remember that millions of young men and women poured out their blood and tears in two world wars so people would be free to think, speak, and write what they feel and believe.
Unlike other countries around the world, in Canada, I am free to hunt, though many, if given the chance, would gladly take away my right to be free inside the unforgettable woods.
LW Oakley lives in Kingston, Ontario, and is the author of Inside The Wild, which is available at www.gsph.com