The Border Buck

BY Hal Blood

Winter is in full swing, but telling deer stories keeps us hunters warm and cozy. Last month, I wrote about the first two weeks of my deer season, and this month, I’ll finish up the season. When the third week rolled around, there was still no tracking snow to be found. What little was in the high country, had pretty much melted away. The rut starts about the 15^th of November in the north country, so this was the week that the bucks would be ramming around day and night. Rylan, like me, has a hard time sitting so still hunting was on the agenda. We rambled around various places and bumped into some deer, but none that we could identify as a buck. Rylan didn’t even apply for a doe permit, so finding a good buck was on the agenda. One of the mornings, I told Rylan we were going to hunt our way into a spot that I had found while hunting with Billy the previous week. I found the spot while hurrying to get out of the woods before dark one day. It was a fairly flat area in the softwoods, with a low ridge in the middle of it. There were more rubs and scrapes in that area than I had seen in a long time. I knew the chances of seeing a buck there were fairly high.

At Dawn

As dawn was creeping in over the valley, we were making the mile walk to that softwood ridge in hopes of crossing paths with a rutting buck. Rylan was in the lead, easing his way through the green growth. It was a quiet walking with no wind as we made our way along. Rylan was pointing out rubs and scrapes as he slowly eased along. We came to an old cart road that I recognized from the week before. Right then, we spotted two big scrapes under some low hanging spruce limbs. Just as we went to look at the scrapes, tails started waving about 50 yards in front of us. The first two deer that jumped through the hardwood opening were both crotch horns. The next one was a doe. I knew there was another deer, so I looked back to the right where the other deer had come from, and saw a big buck with antlers to match, bound into a blowdown and stop. Rylan had his gun up, but I couldn’t see the buck. I whispered that the buck should cross the opening too. Just then, the buck bounded into the opening quartering away and then disappeared without Rylan taking a shot. Well, that was about a week’s worth of excitement in a couple of minutes! We tried setting up and calling without any luck, so continued with our still hunt, hoping we might bump into them again, but we never did.

Week three wrapped up on Saturday with a camera man following me. We finally had some new snow on the ground, so it was time to get back into tracking mode. We made a big swing around a mountain trying to find a big track. I knew it would be tough as the snow was still coming down at daylight. It was a perfect tracking day, with the new snow and a stiff wind to go with it. It was nearing noon and we hadn’t found a good track yet, when just as we crested a low ridge a buck was bounding toward us. I could se that he had a nice rack, but I knew he wasn’t an older 200-pound class buck. As he jumped up the knoll that we were on I grunted and he stopped at about twenty yards. I could see one side of his antlers and it was a couple of inches outside of his ear, but his points were short. I already knew when I first saw him that I wasn’t going to shoot him, but it was fun to watch him bound off be on his way. Scott got the buck on film, and you can view it on the Big Woods Bucks FaceBook page.

Decent Track

I had told Rylan that Papa needed to hunt and film Thanksgiving week, so he was going to hunt with his other grandfather. But, that night at dinner Scott showed him the footage of the buck I let go. He came to me and said he had an idea. He said how about I go with you next week and I film and if you see a buck you don’t want to shoot, I’ll shoot him! How could I say no to that offer. That Monday, we found a decent buck track right off. It wasn’t the one I was looking for, but it was fairly fresh so I told Rylan to take it and if we found a bigger one we would switch. As it turned out, we never crossed a bigger one, but we ended up seeing the buck twice and Rylan almost got a shot. We found two of the monster tracks that I was looking for. The first one we found at one o’clock just as snow started to fall. I hurried to work it out and since he was with a doe, I didn’t think that they were far away. Within a half hour as I ducked under a spruce limb, the buck jumped out from under another spruce ten yards from me. That was quite a sight, but the one jump was all I saw of him. We tracked him for a couple hours before it was time to turn back toward the truck. Later that week, we found where another monster had crossed the road in new snow. The track was less than an hour old, so we jumped right on it. The buck was just feeding along and wandering down skid trail. I had a feeling that I was going to kill that buck when we came to his bed with a running track. Thinking we had jumped the buck, I waited my half hour. Then I checked my OnX app and realized we were only one hundred yards from the road. It dawned on me that the buck had heard us pull up in the truck and that’s why he left his bed. I confirmed that thought when he only took a few bounds and started wandering up the skid trails again. He was headed towards the Canadian border, and I hoped I could catch him before he got there, but we didn’t. This was one time that waiting a half hour may have cost me the buck. Oh well, I still play those odds as it has worked more often than not. Next month, I’ll write about my exploits with my smoke pole.

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