TOUGH DRAGS
By: Ray Hansen
As I write this piece I’m preparing to head out into the woods again tomorrow with a muzzleloader. By the time you read this I will have hiked out a mile or so in the frigid pre-dawn weather, picked a good spot, and have been sitting for a number of hours waiting for an eight-point buck to slip by in range (that is what I have tags for). And I’m going to love every second of it! The following paragraphs detail some challenges I’ve in the past getting deer out of the woods after the shot.
“I’m getting too old for this” I told myself as I pulled the big doe along using a rope attached to a shoulder harness. Dry, snowless ground made this part of the hunt a real challenge. Four or five steep ridges and a lot of flat ground stood between me and where I parked. On the steepest parts I could only manage ten feet at a time before resting. Even downhill sections were tough after a while. Several hours passed before I was able to load the large animal into my pickup. This deer was taken on a hunt in Illinois where walking in and dragging your deer out was the only option.
Of course getting the animal out of the woods is part of the hunt. I might gripe about it a little, but secretly, I’m glad I can still do it.
Sometimes the chore is made simpler with machinery. I keep an old 1981 Honda All-Terrain Vehicle in a friend’s shed here in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan where I hunt each year. What a great piece of engineering! It always starts (with a pull rope), gets me out into the woods quickly, and does a workhorse of a job when pulling deer out of the swamp.
My friend Duane Deno of Gladstone, Michigan also keeps an old (1978) Honda handy when we hunt. It is a very small – 90 c.c. – machine, but therein lies its utility. It can get in and out of spots that larger ATV’s can’t access.
One year I arrowed a deer on a bow-hunt in which we had to cross a one-hundred yard stretch of flooded swamp using hip boots. The footing was treacherous, and we dreaded trying to drag the deer across that beaver-flooded, marshy pot-hole.
Using some “Yooper” ingenuity however, Duane and I devised a solution. He rode his machine back into the woods to the last of the high ground before it dropped into the swamp. Using several odd lengths of rope we scrounged, we managed to create a piece long enough to span the worst part of the waterway. I am not exaggerating when I say the rope we pieced together was all of three hundred feet long. Tying one end to the Honda and the other end to the deer, he took off, skidding the doe across the water like it was water-skiing. We’ve had many good laughs about that incident over the years, and it will always be a good story to tell around the campfire.
Copyright Ray Hansen, 2008
Showing posts with label muzzleloader. Show all posts
Showing posts with label muzzleloader. Show all posts
Friday, December 12, 2008
Thursday, November 20, 2008
THE OWL AND THE BUCK
Author's note: We are still in the midst of a snowstorm. About 14 to 16 inches blankets the ground outside. The deer should be moving well when it lets up. Just before this bad weather hit, one of our group (Duane's brother Larry) got a nine-point buck. I've been busy with snow removal and related chores. The cold weather got me thinking about past hunts I've made trying conditions. Here is a story that took place on a December hunt.
THE OWL AND THE BUCK
By: Ray Hansen
Over the years I’ve had occasion to sit out in the cold many, many times: for the sake of chasing fish through the ice; in the hopes of catching a buck unawares; simply to enjoy the transition from darkness to daylight; and for innumerable other reasons.
A frosty December morning in a cedar swamp in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula comes to mind. The primitive firearms (muzzleloader) season just started, and would run the first ten days of December.
Swaddled in layers of insulated coveralls, vests, sweatshirts, and longjohns with a knit cap under a full face mask, I must have resembled an overstuffed sausage. Moving around was not an option. No wind howled to conceal the sounds I would make. The surrounding cover was too thick, and my best alternative was to sit while watching a small clearing within the dense swamp.
When creeping into place earlier that morning, I hung felt pads saturated with rut scent, hoping to convince a buck that had survived the gun season that an un-bred doe was hiding nearby. And it worked! I heard occasional movements through the green wall of cedar branches, and even saw the silhouette of the buck passing through some alders forty yards distant. Getting him to step into the far end of the clearing where the pad hung was proving difficult. Having been hunted non-stop for the previous two-weeks, he was wary.
Drinking water carried in a pack was now frozen in the bottle. I slid it into the pocket of my coveralls, but after an hour, only a small trickle of liquid could be coaxed from the cold plastic container. Breathing in the frigid air dries your throat, causing thirst nearly as intense as that experienced while working outside in the summer.
The buck kept moving slowly around, trying to catch a scent trail that would let him pinpoint the source of the smell, but the swamp was dead calm. No breezes helped out. It would be a waiting game. After an hour elapsed I could not track the deer by sound, and I thought he had moved on. An owl began to hoot however, and the sounds very slowly circled the clearing.
I began to realize the owl was following the deer. Why? The answer came to me when I visualized what the bird of prey would accomplish in this way.
The only thing moving in the swamp was the love-struck buck. The owl wanted a tasty breakfast of squirrel, partridge, rabbit, or some rodent, but they were not moving. The only chance was to follow the deer. It might kick up something while slipping through the cedars. So that’s what the bird did. He was hunting just as I was.
Whether it worked or not, I don’t know. After four hours, the arctic conditions got the best of me. Leaving the swamp, I followed an old logging road ran toward a warm camp where fresh, black coffee brewed. I walked slowly along, reviewing the few glimpses I had of the swamp buck. Had I learned anything? After writing notes about the day’s experiences, one nugget of truth emerged: I’d pay more attention to owl hooting on the next hunt.
Copyright Ray Hansen, 2008
THE OWL AND THE BUCK
By: Ray Hansen
Over the years I’ve had occasion to sit out in the cold many, many times: for the sake of chasing fish through the ice; in the hopes of catching a buck unawares; simply to enjoy the transition from darkness to daylight; and for innumerable other reasons.
A frosty December morning in a cedar swamp in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula comes to mind. The primitive firearms (muzzleloader) season just started, and would run the first ten days of December.
Swaddled in layers of insulated coveralls, vests, sweatshirts, and longjohns with a knit cap under a full face mask, I must have resembled an overstuffed sausage. Moving around was not an option. No wind howled to conceal the sounds I would make. The surrounding cover was too thick, and my best alternative was to sit while watching a small clearing within the dense swamp.
When creeping into place earlier that morning, I hung felt pads saturated with rut scent, hoping to convince a buck that had survived the gun season that an un-bred doe was hiding nearby. And it worked! I heard occasional movements through the green wall of cedar branches, and even saw the silhouette of the buck passing through some alders forty yards distant. Getting him to step into the far end of the clearing where the pad hung was proving difficult. Having been hunted non-stop for the previous two-weeks, he was wary.
Drinking water carried in a pack was now frozen in the bottle. I slid it into the pocket of my coveralls, but after an hour, only a small trickle of liquid could be coaxed from the cold plastic container. Breathing in the frigid air dries your throat, causing thirst nearly as intense as that experienced while working outside in the summer.
The buck kept moving slowly around, trying to catch a scent trail that would let him pinpoint the source of the smell, but the swamp was dead calm. No breezes helped out. It would be a waiting game. After an hour elapsed I could not track the deer by sound, and I thought he had moved on. An owl began to hoot however, and the sounds very slowly circled the clearing.
I began to realize the owl was following the deer. Why? The answer came to me when I visualized what the bird of prey would accomplish in this way.
The only thing moving in the swamp was the love-struck buck. The owl wanted a tasty breakfast of squirrel, partridge, rabbit, or some rodent, but they were not moving. The only chance was to follow the deer. It might kick up something while slipping through the cedars. So that’s what the bird did. He was hunting just as I was.
Whether it worked or not, I don’t know. After four hours, the arctic conditions got the best of me. Leaving the swamp, I followed an old logging road ran toward a warm camp where fresh, black coffee brewed. I walked slowly along, reviewing the few glimpses I had of the swamp buck. Had I learned anything? After writing notes about the day’s experiences, one nugget of truth emerged: I’d pay more attention to owl hooting on the next hunt.
Copyright Ray Hansen, 2008
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