Opening day of modern gun deer season Saturday at the Old Belfast Hunting Club was subdued.
That is usually the busiest day at this chunk of piney woods in Grant County. Opening day of the 2017 modern gun season, for example, sounded like a war zone. Gunshots boomed across the landscape, and happy hunters gathered at our camp to share their success with fellow club members.
Saturday was entirely different. Deer didn't move much that morning. There were no gunshots from our club and not many from neighboring clubs. Nobody brought a deer to camp.
It was very cold, and with a wisp of a waxing crescent moon, we all believed that deer would move in the morning. Mostly they didn't. Several members reported seeing does and spike bucks, but they all held out for mature bucks that never showed.
If you hunt in an enclosed stand, the Little Buddy propane heater is indispensable in the kind of frigid weather we've had this week. It's the difference between "To heck with this" and "One more hour."
I brought my Little Buddy to my stand on Friday, at which time I also topped off my feeders and, as an experiment, placed 50 pounds of Buck Grub in four big piles. I discovered that the hot wire to one of my feeders was severed, probably by a raccoon. This is common. That's why I keep a well-stocked "necessaries" kit in my four-wheeler, including wire strippers, butt connectors and spare wire. I repaired the break in minutes, but it appeared that the feeder had been inoperable for a long time. Judging by the lack of fresh tracks, it hadn't thrown feed for probably two weeks. This is not a high traffic area for deer. Without an attractant, deer might not be visiting this spot.
My daughter Hannah usually accompanies me on opening day of modern gun season. She is not interested in shooting a deer, but she loves to go on that one day. She had been counting it down for a week. Her hunting outfit was arrayed, and she had been chattering about her Thermos of hot cocoa and stash of deer-stand goodies that are usually prohibited in our household.
Alas, Hannah fell ill on Thursday, and though she wanted to go, she was in no shape to sit in a cold, drafty box stand on Saturday. I left the house without waking her, but Miss Laura sent me a text in the afternoon that said, "HANNAH IS MAD AT YOU!"
You can always tell when nobody is seeing deer because they start working their phones. I'm in a text chain with four other people who traded a barrage of barbs, quips and taunts. One guy complained that we were disturbing his nap.
At noon, we convened at camp for our traditional opening day lunch of Mike Romine's hearty stew. Sometimes he uses venison, but this time it was beef. It was hot and rich, and it warmed the body.
Only a few of us were there to enjoy it, including Mike Romine, Larry Romine Jr., Zack Smith, P.J. Spaul, Eric Richardson and Henry Jezierski.
Smith left for work. Larry Romine had to take his son to Clinton for a basketball game. Richardson and Spaul returned to their stands. Mike Romine and I sat on a bench and listened to Jezierski hold forth on a great number of topics in his inimitable fashion.
Full and warm, I nodded off in the warm sunlight for about 15 minutes. I eventually keeled too far forward and lurched back to consciousness. I felt rested and ready for the second shift.
The cold redoubled in the late afternoon, and it sharpened when my propane supply expired.
For several weeks, one of my game cameras at a different site photographed three bucks that appeared to have been stamped from the same mold. All are three-point bucks with two tall tines, of which one is tipped with a small fork. One is a yearling. One is a two-year old, and the third is a three-year old, with 16- to 18-inch spikes. I hadn't seen them before this year, but they were the only bucks my camera documented.
At sunset, a deer appeared at the feeder. It was the largest of this spike trio. If I could talk Hannah into hunting, this would be a perfect first deer for a child.
I descended silently from the stand after dark and slipped away like a ghost.
Sports on 11/15/2018