It wasn't 15 minutes after it was light enough to see that I got my first text from J-Dawg: "got a big doe. should i shoot it?" I didn't notice it when it arrived, so my reply of "yes" was a few minutes tardy, leading him to respond that I was too late. I told him on the next doe to shoot first, and text after. It was probably only a half hour later when I heard a gun shot that seemed to come from his direction. I texted my B-I-L telling him I thought I heard J-Dawg shoot, to which he responded, "yep, a doe. I'll go pick him up in a bit."
I was sitting there smiling, glad J-Dawg had shot one when I noticed a doe looking directly at me from about 40 yards away. She was standing just to the right of the roadway which is directly ahead -- the same roadway where I had seen the spike the day before, only she was between me and the woodline at about half the distance. I have no idea where she came from. I never heard her or saw any movement -- I just looked up for a minute and she had instantly appeared. She seemed to be a pretty young deer, from what I could tell. I flipped open the covers on my scope and put the cross hairs on target. She was so close, I might have been able to kill her with a sling shot. She walked across the road, making sure to stop broadside and tempt me to pull the trigger. In all, she must have stopped a half dozen times giving me clean, broad side kill shots as she sauntered counerclockwise from about my 2 o'clock position to my 7 o'clock position. I thought she was heading to my feeder (85 yards out at my 9), but she never strayed more than a 40 yard semi-circle away from before heading into the woods on my left flank.
That was really cool. I knew right away I wasn't going to shoot that doe, but it was awesome to be able to watch her through the scope, knowing I could if I wanted to.
In the meantime, I got the following text from J-Dawg: "I got down to pee. That doe I shot wasn't a doe -- it's a button buck. FML. I broke the law!" It was followed by "how the hell was I supposed to be able to tell it was a buck from 75 yards????" I told J-Dawg not to panic, that my B-I-L would know what to do. The general rule in Arkansas is that a legal buck must have 3 points on one side. In the meantime, J-Dawg had already texted his mom, who had gone online and determined that shooting a buck with horns less than 2 inches was also legal. My B-I-L subsequently confirmed. Apparently, the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission had already pondered and answered J's question -- you're NOT expected to tell that a button buck is actually a buck and not a doe. Thus, it's not illegal to shoot them thinking they are does despite the 3-point on a side general rule. The only downside? You have to use a buck tag to register what you thought was a doe, leaving you with only 1 buck tag for the remainder of the season. Oh well, much better than breaking the law.
I learned a while later that my B-I-L had picked up J-Dawg and his deer and were headed back to camp. Just before 11, when I planned to climb down and head in, I noticed a deer on the edge of a young pine thicket just behind my stand. It's hard to tell in this photo, but if you see what looks like a roadway behind the feeder on the pre-scout post, you can see the area where I saw it. I'm not sure whether it was a buck or a doe. I just saw it's back half as it stepped into the pine thicket. Once again, I thought it might be headed to the feeder. After waiting another half hour without seeing her again, I decided to hike out and go see J-Dawg's deer.
By the time I got back to camp, my B-I-L and J-Dawg had already skinned J's deer. When I saw it hanging on the rack, I knew why it hadn't taken long. The poor little thing was about the size of a healthy German Shephard (the smaller, canine version -- not a sheep babysitter from Eastern Europe). We gave J-Dawg infinite amounts of grief over that monster he downed the rest of the day. But hey, he saw one, his aim was true, and he made a legal kill. I think he and I both learned a valuable lesson that day -- if you are going to take what you think is a decent size doe, you should always be sure she's with other deer so you can make a relative size comparison. It's hard to tell a decent size doe from a medium sized dog from that distance without having another deer nearby to do a comparison. Oh well, it was a good shot and I'm sure those tenderloins turned out to be pretty tender!
On my way back out to my stand for the afternoon hunt, I decided to film the last little bit of the drive in so you get a little better sense of the territory. Here's what the drive looks liked from behind the wheel of my Pathfinder.
The wind continued throughout the afternoon and made for miserable conditions at my stand. In fact, over a 3.5 hour period, I caught a glimpse of one buck. It was being chased by 2 domestic dogs at my 3 O'clock, out about 300 yards. I could tell it was a buck, which from that distance and considering I only saw it for about three seconds, probably means it was a pretty good one. I spent the rest of my time entertaining myself by reading about the previous day's Michigan victory over Illinois on my Ipad.
You have to love modern technology!
When I got back to camp, I learned that I was one of three hunters who had seen the same dogs chasing my lone deer of the day. One of them (who saw it just before it passed into my area) confirmed that it was indeed a very nice buck. Unfortunately, it's a little hard to get a decent shot at a bounding whitetail at 300 yards when you have all of 3 seconds.
At this point, I was 40% finished with my 5-day hunt, and had only been in a position to shoot one small doe. I'm not going to say I was not enjoying myself, because just being out there was terrific. However, for the first time since I decided to join the camp and make this trek, I was beginning to wonder if I might go home empty handed.
When I got back to camp I heard similar stories where many hunters just weren't seeing the deer they had seen only a week earlier during the blackpowder hunt. I kept telling myself, however, that it only takes one.
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