More Important Matters
Last in this blog, we’ll get to a detailed story of the buck I was able to tag for those of you who care to read a detailed story. I’m writing a detailed story because tagging a nice one for this hunter feels a bit like the arrival of Haley’s Comet. It has been a long time coming.
First, we touch on a few more important matters that occurred this week. Second, we also offer some kill photos and trail camera photos sent from friends and Wisconsin readers.
Saturday, Lori and I and our entire circle hopefully helped at least some to lessen the burden of friends who said goodbye to their young son who died of a heroin overdose. We are mostly from the southeast Wisconsin suburbs. For decades, I have written about the “Natural Highs” found in the outdoors. For years I have also watched sons and daughters of those close to us lose their lives, either literally or figuratively because drugs grab them by the mind and won’t let go. I’m not sure what we do, except I know we have to start in grade school with the message that “you will die if you do drugs.” I also know we have to introduce them to natural highs, outdoors or elsewhere, and teach them to find their own passions in life that will provide those good highs to them. I honestly don’t know anyone who does not know a young person destroyed from substance abuse. This is a huge problem.
Lori and I watched 50 people be baptized in church Sunday. That was a very good thing, especially after a very sad yesterday. I also gave blood this week. Do you give blood, or platelets? Blood Centers of Wisconsin, and other organizations similar throughout Wisconsin, need it. Now they call me the day I’m eligible and I go give. Talk about a natural high, not to mention chocolate chip cookies and Cheetos and juice that they make you eat and drink before you leave. The whole process, from giving blood to eating, takes less than an hour. Try it. It will give you the warm fuzzy, I promise.
Bucks Tagged or Caught on Camera
Steve Henske tagged this 9-point buck west of Stevens Point.
Steve Henske of Stevens Point shot this nice 9-point buck pushing two “non-receptive does” November 3 west of Point in Portage County. With the tag filled and in the tree again looking for a doe, of course Steve had “the buck of a lifetime” show up at 20 yards. He couldn’t shoot.
Jeremy Dietel took this brute near Iola on a day that Jeremy and Nate Grant were surrounded by trophy bucks.
Jeremy Dietel's tagged this heavy antlered 9-point buck November 3 north of Iola. Jeremy and Nate Grant of Iola had close encounters with six shooters that morning. Nate was “pinned down” for almost five hours by an estimated 170 class buck with a non-receptive doe that would not leave Nate's little pocket of woods, but would not present a shot either. The monster buck chased off four different bucks trying to get to the doe during that five hours.
Mike and Tom Hart and family are waiting on their QDM property near Wisconsin Dells for bigger bucks than they have ever tagged before. That means that bucks many of us would not think twice about drawing on are passing by. Here are a couple trail cam shots from the Hart Camp.
Eric Pacey of Wausau tagged a beautiful buck this week but I have few details yet with the exception of this photo. Eric is writing the story for OWO and we will post that in the next few days.
Eric Pacey shot this buck November 6. Look for the story soon on this website.
My brother Jim Ellis is hunting in Minnesota but has not had a lot of deer activity since September. To add insult to the no-deer-show saga, he returned after a long day on stand…again…with no deer sighted to find this buck chasing a doe in his backyard.
Jim Ellis shot this big boy with a camera from the deck of his home.
Eric Simpkins of Wausau tagged this beautiful 8-point buck on November 8 between Rosholt and Amherst on family property.
Send your photos for posting to ellis@onwisconsinoutdoors.com.
So Much to Learn….
My friend…and cousin….John Dlobik of Sussex and I were talking two weeks ago about the importance of remembering how to kill a deer with a bow. John was planning on taking a doe on his family property near Wisconsin Rapids if given the opportunity.
He is a very good bowhunter, and a very good archer. They’re not always one in the same. In fact, I hear as I am starting this November 7 Blog that John took a good buck today on his property. I will post it when I receive it.
John Dlobik tagged this buck on family property near Wisconsin Rapids November 7.
If a deer is in his comfort range and John makes the decision to shoot, I would say odds are heavy that the deer is in big trouble. But he also knows that hunters make mistakes out there and that is why tagging the occasional doe or more average buck becomes important. I told John that it was funny that he should bring that whole thing up because I had just blogged about it a week before. “Can we forget how to kill a deer?” I wrote, referring to a decision I had made a lot of years ago to wait for a bigger buck after taking a number of smaller bucks and a doe. It wouldn’t necessarily be a monster. But I would know the buck when I saw him.
That quest took years. For many of us, I think that killing any deer with a bow, not just big bucks, is a difficult task. Killing a deer, especially an adult doe on full alert, takes knowledge of when to do what from the stand. Unfortunately, that education of learning when to do what is often earned by making mistakes. Getting busted becomes part of the curriculum, or making a bad decision about when to shoot, or simply making a bad shot, often because the fever intruded at the moment of truth. Or we make one of a hundred other mistakes.
Think about the number of times those oh-so-close encounters had you thinking if you would have just done it this way, you would be celebrating a bow-killed deer. But you aren’t because of a mistake. Like I said, it’s not easy out there when the prey’s first drive is to survive. Until, of course, the rut makes those big boys that have been seen only on trail camera all fall show up looking for Sally and the Hooper Triplets. The rut is the great equalizer and the archer’s best friend.
Late morning on November 5, with the voice in my head asking what I was doing at the computer during the rut, I had loaded the truck and two hours later jacked quietly up a white oak on private property near Fond du Lac. The plan was to hunt out the day, leave the stand at the base of the tree, return to New Berlin, be back on stand before light the next morning, hunt, and finally abandon ship to continue the hunt in Vilas County far to the north if the tag wasn’t filled. History predicted the tag would not be filled. It had been years since my own decision to try and tag a bigger buck. Too long, in fact, and I had made a decision early in the season that I would tag any lone doe that presented a good shot. I wanted to remember how to kill a deer with a bow; but not during the heat of the rut.
On this hunt, a doe and a fawn, and later two fawns had all passed near the stand moving downwind, and continued on. At about 4:00 p.m. he came from the vast cattail marsh upwind, as expected. I saw him at about 100 yards in thick cover. I could not see antlers but could see his greeting of a tree that shook violently in the distance.
I had placed the seat of the portable climber high so that I could be in a sitting/ standing position that would enable me with little effort to rise completely to stand for a shot. This is the first year I sit at all. For years, even if on stand for six hours, I would stand over the entire vigil. Due to a dominant left eye, I changed completely as an archer, and my left-handed Mathews Reezen with nocked arrow was facing directly opposite and away from the buck.
Here was where past mistakes and my bowhunter’s ongoing education kicked in. I call it a controlled fever, where the hunter can make decisions and perform despite an elevated heart rate and adrenalin rush. With plenty of time as the buck approached and knowing I would shoot from the sitting position if he came completely around the right side of the tree within my comfort lane, I did nothing at all. I looked over my left shoulder to track his movement, my head in a facemask and body camouflaged from head to toe. A hunter’s safety system allowed me to concentrate on the buck and not worry about any fall.
100 yards is a long way for a buck to come on a line that would place him in a spot for the shot. Would he waver from the course I needed him to take? He cooperated every step of the way. Walking with the patented rut strut, in a hurry to find female companionship, he broke thicker cover at about 70 yards and I could see he was a buck I would try to take if given the opportunity. I never know if a buck on the move is a seven, an eight or a ten, or what his tine length is, what his score would be… I just knew he was wide and high enough for me as he came straight on, head down, rack moving up, down, up, down in time with journey.
He moved behind cover at 40 yards and I stood, still unsure of what line he would take. He broke cover and I froze. He moved behind cover and I moved my boots 180 on the stand to face the seat in response so my left-handed shooting position would be able to take him on a course that I was only guessing would take him to his left. If he moved to his right, I would again need to react, but this time with the buck almost in my lap.
He moved left and behind cover at 25 yards and I came to full draw. He broke cover at 20 yards and stopped. The hit was too high and too far back from what I intended. But immediately due to the amount of blood, it obvious the hit was lethal. He died at 40 yards.
It has been a long time since I fastened a tag to an antler during the bow season. The buck was a brawler, a nine-point, large-bodied deer that would have been an 11 if five inches of main beam on his left side and one tine would not have been lost in what I guess were recent fights with other bucks.
I’m grateful for the buck. It has been a long wait.
Thanks to Chris Delfosse, the property owner’s son-in-law, for helping me to drag the buck to my truck, taking these photos, and helping to gut the deer. Chris, who shot a turkey on the property that morning and also watched two small bucks fighting, made a heavy burden much, much lighter. Plus he’s one great guy.