THE DAY THE FISH GOT AWAY - Part one

THE DAY THE FISH GOT AWAY!
By: Ray Hansen

Dateline: Saturday, January 10, 2008 – Gladstone, Michigan

I chased fish all over the bay today but it was one of those tough times. Things just did not go right - on top of a tough bite – and I failed to land a fish for all the effort I put into looking for a few that would hit.

I started out in the darkness prior to sunrise with life-long friend Duane Deno of Gladstone, Michigan. We left from a lot he owns on the shores of Little Bay de Noc where we rode out onto the bay on his Honda four-wheeler. He drove and I sat backwards on the cargo rack on the back of the machine. We pulled a portable ice shack and all our fishing gear on a high-sided sled behind the all terrain vehicle like a small train with a couple boxcars behind it. I should have been swinging an old red lantern like a brakeman leaning out from the caboose.

Sunrise / moonset was spectacular. The sun brightened the eastern horizon into pink, orange, and mango streaks, as the moon touched the treeline to the west like a massive painted parchment pancake. It is at its closest approach to earth and has been putting on a show for the past few days. I’m sure astronomers worldwide have been seized with spasms of near-orgasmic delight in the past forty-eight hours or so by what they observe through telescopes trained on our celestial neighbor.

About 10 o’clock last night Kate and I went for a hike in the frigid woods around our home, just to experience this wonderful phenomenon. The moon was so bright it would have been possible to read a newspaper by moonlight alone. Almost no artificial lights exist nearby to compete with the intense lunar luminosity. We saw deer silhouetted against the snow as we made our way past hardwood ridges and spruce covered hillsides. In every direction snow crystals caught the moonlight, reflecting like tiny diamonds sprinkled along the path.

Anyway, Duane and I headed for an area we had not previously fished through the ice. Since we had taken walleyes there very late in the autumn season in open water, we figured we might still find them in the same location now that the lake was frozen. In most other years we had not been able to safely traverse the ice there until late January, but the freeze has been quite early this year. Just a few days ago an icebreaker passed this point and its course is still visible on the frozen bay as a jumble of clear, jagged ice like broken glass scattered along a highway after a crash.

In this spot, a sand and weed flat broke sharply at ten feet, descending into a thirty-five foot depression where a field of scattered boulders provided cover for perch, gobies, and various minnow species. Walleyes just had to be there, didn’t they? Duane and I were completely confident.

End of part one - check in tomorrow for part two

Copyright Ray Hansen, 2008

PREDATOR AND PREY

Author’s note: I enjoyed a successful hunt last week in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. I spent the week in a bowhunting camp owned by life-long friend Duane Deno of Gladstone, Michigan. Duane and I have hunted together for many years, and as usual, we were the only ones in camp during the nine-day hunt this year. Hunting is far from over. Bow hunting continues until the end of December, and the annual “rifle season” (the firearms portion of Michigan’s whitetail deer hunting season) runs from November 15 – 30. We will also be out in the woods with muzzleloaders in early December.

Both Duane and I tagged adult does during the bowhunt, and we both retain tags legal for one antlered buck each through the remainder of the season. We also have the option of tagging another antlerless deer with archery equipment if we want to use our buck tags in that way.

Anyway, I keep a detailed journal during the hunt since we normally have a number of experiences worth writing about. Today’s blog is about an injured deer I observed while hunting this year.

To set the stage for this incident, I was hunting from a small tree stand about twenty-five feet above the ground at a spot I call Birch Hill. I was experiencing a lot of deer activity that morning, and had seen nine different deer in five hours. Some offered easy shots which I decided not to take. I was confident I would see additional deer and was enjoying the activity. A group of three deer were browsing around my stand, consuming maple leaves and small, woody roots growing up out of the ground from the main roots of nearby maple trees. This is what I witnessed:

PREDATOR AND PREY

The third deer in the group was hanging back while the others began browsing. It was small, and did not have the somewhat “sleek” look of a healthy deer during the autumn season. As it maneuvered closer I saw that it had recently been attacked by coyotes or wolves. Perhaps a mountain lion or one of the local black bears. Its sides were raked heavily as if by claws, the lower jaw was broken, and its tongue protruded out of its mouth sideways from the right side. Once in a while, deer survive an attack from these predators, and make an escape. The injuries could also have been caused by a vehicle, but we were so far away from the nearest road that I did not think this was the case. Even then, the closest roads are dirt and quite rutted. Ten miles per hour is about top speed.

I decided to kill this deer if I could. I watched it try to eat with the others, but it could not bite effectively. It stayed out on the fringe of the group, and when it got closer the others would drive it away. Unfortunately (I guess) the injured deer walked away toward the east, and I had no opportunity to get a clear shot. That’s just the way it is when hunting with a bow.

Although I spent a lot of time hunting many different spots in that area for the nine days I was in camp, I did not see that deer again.

In upcoming days I will detail other hunting adventures I had. See you then!

Copyright Ray Hansen, 2008