As the end of the 2016-2017 deer seasons near, my interest wanes rapidly.
Maybe I'm just not as mad at the whitetails as I used to be, or maybe I'm satisfied with a decent season. I got two. That'll feed my family for a good while, but they were memorable for how I got them, as well.
I killed my first deer with a crossbow in October and rattled up a buck that I bagged with a rifle in November. That leaves me one muzzleloader kill shy of my first Triple Trophy Award. I should have tagged that deer at least twice, but bad luck and poor execution kept that tag in my wallet.
Just between us, the award doesn't really mean all that much to me.
Let's start with the actual statewide muzzleloader season in October. I hunted a stand that has produced a muzzleloader kill every year since 2009. I hunted it just once this year.
You see, I am bedeviled by the lingering effects of treatment for rectal cancer in 2009. Specifically, I lack about 20 inches of internal plumbing. To put it delicately, there's no holding it.
One of those spells hit in the middle of the prime hours of an evening hunt on the aforementioned stand. The wind was not in my favor. An entire herd of deer blew violently, and it sounded like a herd of longhorn cattle thundering to cover. I have not seen a sign of another deer at that stand since.
It happened a few weeks ago during a prime morning hunt in a favorite section of woods. It was modern gun season, but I hunted with a muzzleloader to get the third jewel of the trophy.
Inner stirrings made me fidgety and anxious, and then the 20-second warning hit. It is foolish to ignore the 20-second warning. Again, I was in the prime hours of a prime hunting day. I emerged from my blind and surprised five does that were coming straight to the blind.
Three or four more minutes, and my deer season could have ended there.
Could have, not would have. With me and muzzleloaders, nothing is ever certain. I missed two easy shots at deer this season. One, at a mature buck, failed because of a hangfire. I don't know what happened the second time. I just missed.
I hunted the pop-up every three to five days to prevent deer from patterning me. One deer habitually comes to that spot at sunset, in the last minutes of legal shooting time. The woods are dark by then, but deer pass about 20-25 yards from the popup, which is close enough to count antler points and to distinguish does from spikes and nubbins.
The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission's smartphone app has a sunrise/sunset timer that tells you precisely when legal shooting time is over in your location. Three times I've climbed out of my blind and spooked a deer approaching from a wooded draw.
The last time was Tuesday. I climbed out and watched a white flag bounding away through the pines.
Two or three years ago, that would have frustrated me.
As I watched that deer vanish into the gathering darkness, my first thought was an expletive, followed by relief that I wouldn't have to spend all night processing a deer.
I seldom hunt in the mornings because that's production time. I often write articles on a laptop in a deer stand, but for obvious reasons, that's a bad place and time to conduct interviews, although I have done it. I once interrupted an interview to shoot a deer and resumed the interview immediately after. I've never heard anybody laugh so hard.
Besides, this nice weather we've been having has me dreaming of fishing. My freezer is full of deer. It would be nice to have some fresh walleye, crappie and Kentucky bass fillets to go with it.
My Hobie is begging for some water beneath her keel, and my War Eagle is itching to take me to places beyond the Hobie's reach.
Duck season is about to get a lot more interesting, but I am sore for letting woodcock season get away without a single outing. I love hunting woodcocks, and they are delicious. I grumbled every time I flushed them coming and going to my deer stands.
This Triple Trophy obsession has taken far too much of my time, so maybe it's time to let it go.
One more hunt. That's all.
Sports on 12/29/2016