Deerless Hunting November 15-16, 2008

Firearms season for deer opened on Saturday November 15, 2008. Since Blake got his deer during the archery season he planned to sit with Skyler and help him tag a deer. Saturday morning began as promised 20 mph wind from the northwest 38 derees and raining. Perfect for duck and goose hunting, not so good for deer. Friday night with GPS aerial photos Blake and I planned out where we would go in the morning to make sure we had good safe sites to hunt. We have hunted the same farm for nearly 20 years so we pretty well know every feature. Blake and Skyler would hunt from the east end of the esker http://www.fettes.com/cairngorms/esker.htm and I would hunt south of the set-asside in behind the big cottonwood. Because of the heavy rain and wind we decided to use ground blinds rather than tree stands.

Blake and Skyler came to pick me up a little before 6:00 AM. We had pretty well loaded and unloaded equipment, trudged down the farm lane, through the fields, and to the edge of the woods ready to set up by 6:30. The arrangement was that when Blake and Skyler were ready to head out Blake would call by cell phone. My morning was a combination of wondering what any self respecting deer would would be doing out on a day like this and trying to spot a a deer that might not have noticed how miserable it was.

At about 9:30 I thought it was about time for Blake to call and that's when I noticed that my phone was not on my belt like I thought it should have been. Since I had not seen a single sign of a deer and since I was wondering what had happened to my phone I decided to head back to the truck, expecting to find it in the grass near where I had pulled on my hunting gear earlier in the morning. At the truck I was disappointed to find no sign of the phone. I decided to head back out to the woods, trying to retrace by steps exactly and watching the ground more diligently. Still no phone. I decided to head to a place where I would be on the path of Blake's and Skyler's retreat from the woods, find a place out of the wind and rain and wait. In a few minutes I spotted a pair of blaze orange hats headed toward me through the brush.

They had only seen one deer all morning and it was not up to Skyler's standard for his first deer (a six pointer with two points on one side and four on the other). Not exactly what you would want as your first trophy.

"So had you tried to call my phone" I asked. "Yes, but it went straight to voice mail" he said. "Bummer" I said. I had hoped to use the old, trying calling my phone and I will try to see if I can hear it ring, trick.

As we pulled down the lane in front of our house there it was, in the driveway, my phone covered with mud and it looked like it had been only driven over by the rear tires of Blake's truck. I wiped off as much of the mud as I could, opened the lid, with sort of a grinding sound and notice nothing familiar was happening. I took it into the house and for some stange reason when I pugged it into a charger it miraculously came to life. Tough little critters those cell phones. Some day I might write about my experience with a cell phone and sailing, but this is about hunting.

It rained most of the day Saturday, we went back out into the woods in the middle of the afternoon and where disappointed to find no deer again.

Sunday Afternoon I headed out into the woods early in the afternoon thinking that since it had quit raining and since the wind wasn't blowing quite as hard that maybe the deer would begin to move around a bit. I worked my way back into the woods to a place where I thought I would at least have a chance to see deer. I got to the tree stand plenty early, the sun was peeking through the clouds a little. I happened to bring a camera so I took a few shots of the area where I hunt.

About 5:00 PM just when the deer should be moving out of the heavy cover into the open clearings a bit, my phone buzzed. It turned out to be the IPFW police wanting to know if I have given someone permission to strip copper wire off of some light poles we were storing for reuse. Once that converation was over I realized that had a deer been at the edge of the clearing he would have gotten boared by my conversation with the police and would have just gone another way. So at the end of the second day of hunting all the deer in the woods were safe and healthy, the copper thief is in custody, I got some exercise, and got to enjoy the great outdoors.