TERRY MADEWELL/Clarendon Citizen - Finding a scrape or a rub means a good area to set up for bowhunting deer. Find them together as seen here and you will likely see a buck. I did, but didn’t get the right shot – but I will be back.
Bowhunting – More than an addiction; it’s a passion
It was a pleasant surprise and it hit me square in the face one morning last week. I stepped outside to find the air a bit cool, with a slight northwest wind. It was refreshing and intoxicating. I stood there in the pre-dawn dark for a moment soaking in the feeling before deciding that I would finally go bowhunting for deer that afternoon. I had been waiting for this day for weeks.
The diehards, I know, are out there in mid-August braving the heat, humidity, and most of all, the mosquitoes.
For me, it’s now the season for deer hunting and especially bowhunting. And it’s only going to get better from here on out in terms of weather and deer movement as well. Our strategically placed game cameras have not recorded much buck activity during the daytime yet. But based on experience, that will begin to change as the weather cools.
When I consider the brilliant sunsets in all their splendor and the even slightly cooler weather, I get excited about hunting. Not only of the enjoyment of the natural beauty, but the heralding of close encounters of the antlered kind.
I recall the evening clearly. As the sun descends toward the horizon, the air stills, the sky mellows from brilliant blue, through shades of orange and red and eventually into deep purple as evening shadows creep slowly through the woods. The softening of the sky, the cooling of the air and that peculiar brand of silence found only in the deep forest tend to lull one into complacency.
Unless you’re a bowhunter; I’ve learned that potential complacency turns to intoxication with this magical moment.
The last half-hour of the day is not the time for reverie; it’s the time when dreams can come true. Hours of stationary silence are condensed into these waning moments of daylight. In slow-motion movements that evening I took the grunt call and produced a low, muffled grunt, mimicking a deer’s vocalization. It breaks the stillness of the evening and the searching with eye movement only begins.
That shadow in a thicket – is it a deer, or did my eyes conjure the image from the maze of trees and limbs? An ear flicks, and I slowly release the breath I wasn’t aware I was even holding. Doe season is not yet in, now the question is whether it’s a buck? Tension beads sweat on my brow waiting for the animal to move. When it moves, I see it is a buck. He’s staring directly at the base of the tree where I am perched, seeking the source of the deer sound I fabricated a few minutes earlier.
Now the deer is the hunter and I am the hunted. A hint of anything wrong, one scent of any peculiar odor on the air, and he will quietly and quickly vanish. My fault, his fault, no one’s fault, it doesn’t matter; if he suspects something amiss, my hunt will be over.
Such is the essence of a perfect bowhunt and the distinctive attraction. For the rifleman, the hunt would likely end successfully here; for the bowhunter, the game is scarcely joined. The buck is 70 yards away and I need him 30 yards or less for a high percentage shot. Bowhunters are attracted to the unique challenge of hunting the whitetail deer in his own backyard while forfeiting the advantages of rifles and high-powered scopes. I certainly enjoy that aspect of the sport as well, but not today. Today is a bowhunt day.
It is an intense one-on-one sport where seeing deer is sometimes commonplace but actually getting one in range, and then in position to shoot, requires the maximum of any hunter.
Bowhunting requires more than patience, it requires a back-to-basics style of hunting, demanding much more of the hunter to be consistently successful. Not to diminish the skills of the modern rifleman where “close” is usually good enough, the bowhunter often literally looks into the eyes of his quarry before finding the opportunity to take a shot.
The shot itself must not only be close, it must be near perfect with just the right angle. It’s this continuous testing of skill and patience that draws us back time and again. Just when you think you know something about the sport, a wily old buck will teach you a new lesson.
Because it’s not imperative to see long distances, bowhunting is truly a personal sport. Often you are not merely hunting deer, you are hunting “A” deer; one you have scouted, patterned and hope you can predict the movements of within a matter of a few yards.
Talk about getting back to nature. You take the game to the deer, invade his domain and attempt to rule his kingdom. And you do all that with a weapon essentially made with sticks and feathers. Despite modern advances in compound bows, the sport requires the ultimate from the user in terms of accuracy and woodsmanship.
But we would have it no other way.
On this day, the 8-point buck won the battle; I did not get my shot. We were close enough at one point, but brush and the low percentage angle he presented dictated a “no shoot” scenario. But I had the wind in my face and the buck never caught my scent. He slowly meandered out of sight into the darkening woods.
My heart pounded hard for several minutes and I relished the moment. For me it was a great evening and a new beginning for deer season 2010.
The game is now officially on.
