DEER PARADE

Author’s Note: This is part four of the series I started earlier this week. Today Duane and I took the thirty pounds of summer sausage we made out of the smoker. It was absolutely delicious! We had five six-pound sticks of it so I cut my part into smaller sticks, wrapped each in self-sealing food wrap, then placed each shorter piece in a sealable freezer style plastic food storage bag and put them in the freezer. These bags are the type that can be vacuumed-packed using a small hand pump to remove the air from them. They should store well, and I’ll have sausage all winter and more.

Anyway, today’s part of this series starts where part three left off. Enjoy!


THE PARADE STARTS

8:00 a.m.: The first of a series of deer show up, as three does approach from the tag alder swamp northwest of me and enter the hill well out of range. They ease closer however, and end up feeding on maple leaves from five to twenty yards from my stand. I almost immediately decided to simply watch these animals go about their natural activities and act as “live decoys” for the buck I heard earlier. I’m hoping he is still in the area and will pass by to investigate the sound of the foraging deer. The day is so calm I can clearly hear the “snap” as each leaf is pulled from the stem and when the does are close enough I can make out the grinding sound of their chewing.

One of the does is a one and one-half year old that would offer some very good venison, but I’m not even thinking about taking this one. I watch as it offers some near perfect shooting opportunities, but I am thinking about that buck. The does do not know I am there and go about their activities just as they normally do each day. I never tire of watching them forage, and I learn new things just about every time out. For example, I always knew they ate maple leaves, but this is the first time I have seen them target these leaves almost exclusively. In the future when looking for stand sites, Ill watch for spots where the visible mature maples send out these small “sucker root shoots”. There are probably thousands of them on this hill, but very few anywhere else. I have hunted a 160 acre tract here and this is the best growth of this type I have seen.

At some point after I first spotted the three deer, two more filtered into the clearing. This pair was a 2 ½ year-old doe with a fawn. I now had five deer within sight, and another that continued to circle this spot. It acted like a buck, or maybe a very experienced older doe. Hard to say. I could not get a good look at this sixth deer except for occasional glimpses of its silhouette as it move through the pines. This deer was obviously trying to get downwind of this spot so it could tell by scent what was going on. That is the sign of a deer that has learned caution – especially around places where groups of deer congregate. Their noise and milling around sometimes attracts coyotes of wolves.

This parade of deer reminded me of some of the trips Bob Buske and I made to the big woods out in west-central Illinois. Once in a while we would have as many as seven deer move past our spots at one time. This was a firearms hunt though, and when Bob saw that many deer he usually picked one he wanted and took it with one well-placed shot.

Anyway, back to the Michigan hunt. Eventually all five deer wandered off, having browsed as much maple as they wanted. This season is still quite new, and I’m under no pressure to fill one of my tags yet, so I am content to watch them for the time being. I sat back down for a welcome fifteen minute rest before another group showed up.

PASS THE CACTUS

9:45 a.m.: Three more deer came in from the north /northwest again. Two of these animals are unusual examples among whitetail deer, and I’ll describe them in a moment. The first one in was a normal yearling doe fawn. It began browsing on the maple shoots as did the previous visitors.

The second in line was a 1 ½ year old, four-point buck. This buck however was what hunters typically call a “cactus buck” because its antlers were stubby and full of short, pointed spines. It looked like a deer with two small cactus plants growing out of its head! These are not often seen and are not trophies. They don’t look very good, and most hunters simply take the opportunity to watch them in their natural setting. There is nothing wrong with them physically.

Come back Monday, November 3 for part five.

Copyright Ray Hansen, 2008