Halloween Deer

The trick-or-treaters (a mob in the thousands that descend as vultures on Centre Hall to devour sweet and chocolate with god-awful speed) invaded on Thursday, October 30th this year, to avoid any conflict with all important Penn's Valley football scheduled, almost religiously, for Friday night. Good thing, too, as I got to go hunting Friday night.

Headed up to Treaster afte working on my colloquium presentation all day. Was a bit jittery from the pot and a half of coffee I'd drank during the day, but made my way out to the permanent stand around 4:00. It was a beautiful day. Blue sky, no clouds, a touch warmer than the past few days, and the last of the fall foliage hanging on for just a little while longer. I had a really good feeling about the evening - I knew something was going to happen. For some reason I kept picturing the hole a broadhead makes in hide.

Around 6:00 I saw some movement about 100yrds away at the corner of the thicket. I had brought my binoulars with me and glassing showed a small spike with brilliantly yellow antlers and a good size doe making their way down the trail. It was directly down-wind and I assumed this would end poorly, without a shot - me getting busted by my bad breath :)

Instead of walking directly down the trail, these two moved diagonally into the thicket - good from a wind direction perspective, but bad from a "oh shit, they're going to just walk away" perspective. I could see now there were at least four deer in the pack and I must have missed the first (or last) two - still unsure. As they were all headed further down into the thicket I decided they would just disappear if I didn't spark their curiousity. Whether it was the coffee, my undevoted attention to work, laziness, or stupidity, I'd forgotten a bunch of gear at home, including my bleat call. Instead, I turned my head the opposite direction (didn't want to yell right at them) and bleatted a couple times. I was happy to see it didn't immediately scare them off and even more happy when it looked like one of them was coming up to check the area out.

One doe peeled off from the group. She slowly made her way through the red maple saplings and briars stopping for minutes at a time to check the wind and listen for anything strange. One more bleat changed her mind when she turned back to join the others. As she reached the edge of the thicket I pulled up the bow, ready to draw. I don't think she saw me move, but that deer looked directly up at me right then. I held as still as I could for the whole 5 min she watched me. With the bow fully extended my arm slowly started to shake - I thought this was it - she's going to see me, or smell me, or stand here so long I won't be able to shoot. Thankfully, I was wrong.

Don't know if she gave up trying to figure out what I was or was turning around to join the others, but she took a couple steps to her right giving me a full broad-side view. I wasn't going to wait to watch her walk away so as soon as her eyes were behind a few leaves, still clinging to their branches, I drew. I knew she was further in the thicket than I had hoped when I envisioned the shot from my stand, but it was a perfect shot at just under 20yrds. I put the 20yrd pin on the top of her back, slowly let the bow drop until that point was just behind the shoulder and let the arrow fly. The arrow must have been deflected by a small branch or something, but it didn't hit where I had aimed. Instead, it clipped her directly in the back and she dropped immediately to the ground. I'd hit her in the spine and she had no movement in her hind quarters. She tried to get up and move, but found herself lodged against a tree. It didn't take long for the broadhead to cause enough bleeding for her to expire. I did throw another arrow at her to try putting her down for good, but she was even further into the thicket now and that arrow too was deflected, this time finding a solid maple sapling instead of the bread basket I'd aimed for. I waited about 15min before climbing down.

Again, whatever the reason, I didn't have any of my needed gear on me. No knife, no headlamp (it was quickly getting dark), and no tarp to put her on in the back of the 4runner. I headed back to the car and then home to get the gear. Long after dark I headed back into the woods and found her again, cleaned and brought her home.

Good to get a tag filled early. Makes the rest of archery relaxing. Allows me to focus on buck hunting. Allows me to watch deer more instead of searching for the first good shot. Looking forward to the last two weeks...