I have posted in the past about how bad of a deer hunter I am (here and here for example) and I have posted about my desire in deer hunting, to harvest the weak and stupid. Weak, young, and stupid deer fear me, the strong and healthy just laugh at me and I’m just fine with that. After all, I know I’m a lousy deer hunter.
This week was gun deer season and as typical I was very excited about it because I like to read in the woods as I try to shrink the Wisconsin “rats with antlers” (i.e. deer) herd. In the previous weeks I had spent a fair amount of time in Eric & Natalie G’s woods bow hunting. I saw deer while bow hunting but none were within my 30 yard comfortable range for bow hunting. So I was ready to hunt and read on their property during gun season. Opening day came last Saturday and early in the morning I was ready in the tree stand with coffee, snacks, and reading material.
The sun rose and instead of reading I looked up to see two deer walking toward me, I watched them slowly walk closer and closer for about 40 minutes. I then determined that I wanted to take the larger of the two and watched until he was 70 yards away and in the clear. Then I took my shot. The deer jumped straight up, like they often do when the are hit, and darted 5 feet ahead into some brush. I assumed the other deer, which had been ahead of the one I was shooting, had run off into the woods. I sat and waited to make sure the the deer I hit was dead or if I had not hit it as well as I thought and it would ultimately poke its head up or dart off somewhere else. After a minute of watching for him I saw a white tail jump up and run into the clear as it was running away from me. I took another shot and saw it fall down. This time I could see that the deer was dead. So I climbed down and started to walk over to it.
When I walked past the brush I noticed a deer and instantly realized what had happened. Actually I instantly thought to myself “Crud, this is going to be twice as much work.” I had placed a good kill shot on the first deer, which ran to the brush and fell down dead. The other deer, which I had ignored, had run for cover in the small brush instead of going to the woods like I assumed it had. When it jumped into the clear, from the same brush as my first deer, and started to run away I had assumed it was my first deer and hit it too with a clean clean shot. I had the tags for both deer so it was legal that I had killed two, and didn’t therefore didn’t really matter other than double the work for me for that day and no no longer having a desire to go back out into the woods for the rest of the week.
So my reading took place at home instead. This week I only finished 3 books which is especially light for gun deer/reading season since two of those books were start before gun deer/reading season. Here’s what I read:
- “Simply Christian” by N.T. Wright – Excellent
- “Lincoln in the Bardo” by George Saunders – Meh
- “The Other Einstein” by Marie Benedict – Good
Anyhow I have maintained my average of killing a deer every other year of deer hunting, though I guess I need to phrase it to killing at least one deer every other year.
SIDE NOTE – There was a bald eagle flying low over me as I was field dressing both deer. She was just waiting to get at those gut piles. Thanks to being convicted a few years ago to use lead-free ammo for deer hunting, because of the rampant lead poisoning in eagles from lead based ammo fragments in guts piles, that eagle got a good meal with no harm. If you aren’t using lead-free ammo for deer hunting please consider swapping to it. Lead-free ammo doesn’t cost much more and it won’t poison our national bird.