A Season to Forget…and Remember (Long)
The September 15th opener seemed to come unexpectedly, despite eight months of planning, burning, planting, and preparation. I was doing my best to apply lessons learned during the Deer Steward Habitat Enhancement Module the year before. Despite feeling unprepared, it was great to be in a position to fill a tag. Over the summer, camera surveys revealed deer numbers and health were responding well to seven years of habitat management. My target deer for opening day was not a storied buck. Rather, it was a sentinel doe aptly named
Busted stemming from her uncanny ability to point out human predators to her cervid friends and family despite seemingly perfect winds and access. Busted was easy to identify. In addition to looking old, the white of her belly came up further than other does in the area. A third identifier was that she was never seen with fawns in person or on camera.
Opening day’s hot southeast wind relegated me to a blind with firearms windows, so I abandoned the compound for a crossbow. With 40 minutes of shooting light left, Busted entered the drought-ravished remains of a fall food plot, presenting me with a clear 35-yard shot. My arrow veered right, high, and unseen by
Busted. I launched another, which veered left and low. This time
Busted sensed danger and exited stage left. I was left dumbfounded.
Back home, I took a third arrow and released it into the Morrell target at 35 yards. Bullseye. This time, the nock failed to illuminate. When I mentioned my misses and the issue with the non-illuminating nock, my wife mentioned that the grandkids had been playing with them. Long story short, she found several nocks and batteries on the floor, and put them back, not knowing crossbow nocks had to be aligned to the “this vane down.” She also mentioned that one of the “end thingies” light was on, but thought it would go off by itself. Alas, the arrows released on
Busted were likely 120 degrees off, causing them to torque significantly, whereas the arrow released at home just happened installed correctly, but with a dead battery. Lesson #1 for the season learned: Check your equipment.
Fast forward to mid-October. It was my birthday, and I was targeting
Dangles, a whitetail with a possible pedicle injury that caused his right antler to grow upside down. This season his G2 had grown into his right eye, blinding him on the right, and his main beam was growing into his face.
Dangles was still on a food-cover pattern and was frequently on camera entering a clover plot around sunup. The goal was to catch him from a ground blind near a transition zone. Two minutes before shooting light, a friend texted me birthday greetings. As I flipped my phone to review the message, the glow of the screen reflected on my eyeglasses.
Dangles one good eye must have caught the reflection on my glasses as he was staging near the transition zone 40 yards away. Several snorts and wheezes followed, and then he was gone! Lesson #2 for the season. Checking the phone caused me to miss a target buck in bow range. Fortuitously, I connected with mature doe a few minutes later. Happy Birthday to me.
What started as an exciting season with numerous deer sightings and two antlerless tags filled now turned quiet. I did not see a single deer during the next 86 hours of hunting. This included ten days of deer camp during the rut. I can’t recall anything remotely like the dry spell I experienced from mid-October through November.
In December, I passed on a couple of immature bucks, despite the temptation caused by the 45-day deer drought. The deer I was after were
Busted,
Dangles, and
Eleven, an elusive main-frame ten with a kicker and whose left G3 and G4 formed a perfect 11. I had followed
Eleven for three seasons and this year he was my target buck. Unlike
Dangles, whose core range was on our property
, Eleven’s core was on another farm. Based on intel from friends and neighbors, I believed our farm was on the fringe of Eleven’s home range. This was supported by nighttime pictures of Eleven limited to two oak clusters on the southern portion of our 85-acre farm. Attempts at securing permission to scout his suspected core had been unsuccessful. Two neighbors and fellow New Hope Creek Wildlife Coop members were also after
Eleven.
On Christmas day I had the first picture of
Eleven on the north side of our property. On New Year’s,
Elevenand several other bucks paraded by two cameras on the north side of the property. Both camera encounters were at night near a doe bedding area.
On January 5, the farm was blessed with 15” of snow. The roads were still blocked the next day, so I worked from home. Just after lunch,
Eleven appears on a camera 75 yards from our house. Within minutes I was tracking him in the snow. His behavior suggested he was after a late estrus doe, and I found where he turned 270 degrees and followed smaller tracks onto our neighbor’s property. While I did not lay eyes on Eleven, he managed to trigger one more camera and I could tell he was in great shape for late season.
January 11th was my final hunt for the season. I was in the same blind I started the season in, but it was 80 degrees colder. At 4:00 pm I watched a 2.5-year-old buck cross the field at 90 yards. Thirty-five minutes later,
Eleven shows up along the same path. This was the first, and only, time I had seen
Eleven in person during the past three hunting season. I attempted to call him in with some low grunts, but my Hail Mary gesture only produced a momentary pause, followed by a quick look behind him (and not at me). A minute later three does followed along the same path into the woods and onto our neighbor’s farm. The season ended with a magnificent crimson sunset and a pocket full of unfilled tags.
While the 2024 deer season deer-drought was unprecedented and the unfilled tags vexing, the season provided some great memories along with the lessons learned. In early September, my son tagged his first archery deer from a new blind we had put up together. In January, he filled his first muzzleloader tag on an 8-point buck. His seven-year-old daughter harvested her first buck late in the season. Last year, I was in the blind with her when she harvested her first deer, a doe, during the late season. This time she was with her dad when she harvested her first “boy deer.” Sadly, the coyotes had predated her deer before it was recovered. Despite that disappointment, she had a great season and is looking forward to harvesting a mature deer next year.
Over the course of the season, I mentored three new hunters through Field to Fork events. Of these first-time hunters, all three enjoyed seeing deer in range, and one enjoyed the full field-to-fork experience. Another highlight was hosting six Field to Fork hunts in partnership with the National Deer Association and Baptist Homes & Healthcare Ministries, my employer. This partnership resulted in six Field to Fork events in five locations for staff and residents, including a 94-year-old first-time deer hunter.
I will reflect upon the lessons learned from this season that will help me to be a better hunter, woodsman, and mentor. I will pass these lessons on to others to help them avoid my mistakes. This year’s hunting calendar includes a new activity,
Pre-Deer Camp. This three-day event will engage friends and family who hunt on the farm for a weekend of food, fellowship, and season preparations coinciding with a New Hope Creek Wildlife Cooperative meeting. Goals for Pre-Deer Camp include preparing stands and blinds, cutting shooting lanes, clearing access routes, and sighting-in firearms. We will also make sure all blinds hunt-ready, with chairs, hearing protection, water bottles, wind & drop charts, heaters, propane bottles, and window wipes. Although I have not seen
Dangles since late December,
Eleven and
Busted are still around and will be at the top of my list. Between now and September there will be planning, pruning, planting, and practice to keep me busy. Plus, I just signed up for the Deer Steward II course in July. This leads me to believe 2025 will be a(nother) great season!
One of four senior deer hunts in 2024.
The sun sets on the 2024-2025 deer season
