Not opening day in the regulation sense, as I found it way too warm to sit in a tree last week on “Opening Day”. No, opening day as in -- this is the first time this season that I have headed out to hunt. However, as I walked to my truck at 4:15am Saturday morning, the second Saturday of the Virginia bow season, I was clearly questioning my decision as the outside temp gauge in my truck read a balmy 76 degrees. Well, I was already up and dressed, so I reasoned things might be a little cooler after the 2 hour drive West.
Now I don’t know about all of you, but for me, my first day in the field is usually a little on the comical side. Never is it smooth and practiced -- something always comes up. Maybe it’s fumbling with the tree stand in the dark, or dropping an important item on your way up the tree, and who hasn’t forgot something critical to your success for that day. Yeah, you all know what I’m talking about. For me, it’s often a combination of things. For this reason, I use my opening day to “work out the bugs”. This is the time to get back into the swing of things. This opening day was no different than those past.
I arrive at my club about when I expected, just before sun-up. The temp, a balmy 76 degrees! My plan; stop at the clubhouse to change into my scent-free hunting garb before heading to the stand that I decided on once the wind direction was confirmed as I stepped outside my truck. Dressed and ready to go, I head to the middle of our property to begin my trek to the tree I planned to climb. As I’m loading my portable tree stand on my back, I get this overwhelming urge to grab a good book, or in my case, a good hunting magazine, then run off to my reading room. So back in the truck and back to the clubhouse I rush.
So starts the Opening Day Blunders!
That taken care of, I head back to the middle of the property, load my stand and begin the walk. Unfortunately, now the sun’s coming up and it’s getting pretty light. The path I’m walking down is about a quarter mile long. At the end of the path is another path requiring a turn to either the right or the left. As I approach that turn, approximately 5 yards from it in fact, I come face to face with my quarry, a tall racked buck that I believe to be sporting 6 points. He’s minding his own business meandering his way along the path that I’m quickly coming to. Not a care in the world, afterall, it's been what? 9 months since he’s dealt with a critter like me on two legs? We both freeze at the same time. Now, with just a few branches from a shrub between him and me, we stand. Me? I have my bow in hand but no arrow is knocked and my release is comfortably in my pack. A good 40 seconds goes by before the buck remembers the potential danger associated with critters like me. So with a rather loud snort, actually a series of loud snorts, he turns and runs off.
And so the blundering continues.
A few minutes later I get to my tree which is in close proximity to a number of oak trees. After bumbling with my tree stand as normally happens on opening day, I get it set up and begin my ascent. Now comfortably in my perch 18 feet or so above the ground, I wait – arrow knocked, bow in hand and release at the ready.
Roughly an hour passes with nothing moving, no sign of life, not even a Squirrel. I’m thinking it might just be too warm for deer to be moving during daylight hours today. I’m situated in the tree, facing away from where I expect deer to show up, presumably to feed on White Oak Acorns. I decide to stand and draw my bow in that direction just to make sure nothing is in my way including my new safety harness. Yeah I know I should have checked that first thing. Well, as I said, this is my opening day. I stand, draw the bow and make sure all is clear. Satisfied, I let down the string and begin to sit on the rail of my climber. As I’m sitting, I notice movement about 50 yards in front of me under a group of oak trees. Could it be a deer? Yes, it’s a doe with a single yearling in tow.
Soon, like in a matter of a few short weeks, that yearling will be kicked out of the house so-to-speak. The rut is no place for a young doe to be hanging around. So I wait to see if momma doe will come within range of my arrow wondering all the while if I will take the shot or leave her be. I pull out my new range finder and it tells me she’s 55 yards out. Too far for me. She moves a little closer, turns and offers me a nice broadside shot but instead of raising my bow and putting the site on her, I hit her with the range finder once again. This time she’s 40 yards out. For me, still too far. I’m deadly inside 30 yards and while my Bowtech Victory bow is capable at 40 yards, I’m not. I don’t have the room to practice out that far so I’m not about to take such a long shot at a live animal. In the end, she never comes any closer and she, along with her young, feed off in the direction they came.
Now it’s about 10:30 in the morning. Time to get down, maybe do a little scouting then take a nap before a buddy of mine shows up for the evening hunt. 3:30am comes pretty early. I don’t normally nap, but I plan to drive home after the hunt this evening. Don’t want to be falling asleep at the wheel. At 2 in the afternoon after a couple hours sleep, my buddy shows up and we shoot the breeze, then take some practice shots with our bow’s while planning our evening hunt. He showed me a cool new trick shot while shooting at one of them small round throw targets. At about 30 yards, he missed it with an arrow equipped with a lighted knock and it skipped off the dirt and embeds itself into a distant pine tree. Looked pretty cool when he did it.
So around 4pm we head off for our evening hunt. I gave up my “good” stand to my friend as I choose to try out another section of the property that had a great deer-crossing highway noticed during Turkey season. Problem is, I didn’t take into account how much different it would look with all the leaves on the trees and bushes. Still, I beat my way down there so I decided to make the best of it. After all, what’s an opening day of blunders for? I get to the spot and the only good tree to climb is smack dab in the middle of the game trail (highway). What the heck, the wind was right. The worst that could happen is every deer that wonders buy, offers no shot as it crosses directly under me. At least I’d learn something, right?
Not to be! A couple hours later, with dark ascending upon me, I climb down and assemble my stand, load it onto my back and begin to make my way out. A couple hundred yards later as I make my way to the top of a trail, I damn near jump out of my skin, as once again I walk up on an unsuspecting Whitetail. Final Blunder of the day! This one had to be a Doe because she wasted no time deciding I was an undesirable element in her woods. She let out a God awful snort / wheeze, turned and ran back through the cutover, snorting loudly over and over again to let every deer in the county know that it’s not safe to enter this section of cutover anytime soon. Good thing they have another 7 days to forget all about it. As for me, these are memories I’ll keep with me for a good long time.
No comments:
Post a Comment