I went deer hunting on Friday. Over the past year, particularly through discussing hunting with some of my friends from Alaska and Idaho, I've come to feel a little guilty about the way hunting is set up in Texas. Most of my friends that move here from out of state are outraged at the fact that you have to pay landowners to hunt on their land--in many other areas the land is open to everyone to hunt for free, if you are a resident of the state. I guess it is an inherited way of hunting from the huge private ranches that were established when Texas was young. We really don't have mountains, and you have a limited range of sight in the trees.
So we use a different style, mostly what's called "ambush hunting", where the hunter sets up a blind along known deer trails and waits for them to wander by heedlessly. Kind of like shooting fish in a barrel, as one of my friends put it.
To me, hunting is a great excuse for just going outdoors. One of my favorite parts of hunting is just driving along small country roads, stopping at a risky Fina station somewhere in small-town Texas and getting a dubious cup of coffee to wake me up. I like the anticipation of getting out to the deer stand (blind), being a little scared of walking in the dark by myself, even if it is just a few hundred yards (and I'm 6'2", 250 lbs, armed with a high powered rifle). There's something soothing about deeply breathing in the crisp black air in the early morning, and smelling the pure air, freshly expelled by the forest and fields--air that has typically been filtered through cars, across pavement, and breathed by other people before it reaches me in my suburban home.
I really enjoy spending three or four hours clearing my thoughts, shifting my mind from one issue to another, maybe getting a song stuck in my head, or a poem, or a conversation. After about an hour and a half, I mentally catalog and name the natural structures that are within my view. Friday, I named one tree "bicycle flag" because it was a bare trunk with a large, single, red leaf waving wildly from the top, even though the wind wasn't blowing very hard. Bicycle flag started getting on my nerves because it kept catching the corner of my eye and making my heart race.
Most of the time, when deer appear, it's as though they were immediately transported into view, and it can sometimes be very shocking. You don't typically hear them coming through the leaves or brush--they are very quiet, even in the crunchiest blankets of leaves. You just look up and there they are--nonchalantly standing right where you were looking just seconds before!
It usually takes me about two hours before the hallucinations start.
Sitting in one place for a long period of time, especially as the lighting changes from dark to light (or vice versa in the afternoon), shadows and lighting start to play tricks with your mind. You start to create "deer" out of tree trunks, rock formations, even shadows. In large fields and open areas, your perception of size can get thrown off quite a bit--one time a raccoon crawled out from a tree that I thought was about 200 yards away--the biggest raccoon I ever saw! I mean freakishly HUGE! I soon realized that the field and trees were much smaller than I thought and the raccoon had only been about 40 yards away (so my perception made it about 5 times larger than actual size). I had to chuckle to myself--anyway, these are the mental gymnastics that take place while sitting still and trying to be quiet.
After a little over three hours on Friday, I decided that my hunt was over--the sun was set, everything was getting very grey, and there had been no sign of life except for a turkey calling in the distance through thick brush, and a pair of cardinals that flitted by all afternoon..
I got out of my seat and came out of the blind. The four-sided structure had one wall along the back that is completely blocked out, and this is the side that the door is on.
As I opened the door, I spotted a small deer, chocolate brown with a triangular black patch between it's shoulder blades, about 150 yards away, grazing in a field. Behind the deer about another 300 yards away was a road, but that's still a little too close to risk a shot, in my book. But as I watched that deer, a second deer, a very large doe walked out openly about 40 yards away, right into an open field and completely unaware that I was there.
My rifle was still in my hand and I knew that this, truly, would be like shooting fish in a barrel--no problem at all. My only hangup was that she was in a field across a fence, and I wasn't sure why the fence was there. When the leaseholder dropped me off at the location, he didn't give me any particular instructions, but typically on private property you don't want to shoot across fences because it may be the border of the land, or have some other significance such as bordering off a residence.
And here's the real truth: I really didn't care to shoot the deer that day. About 10 years ago (maybe even five), that deer would be in the freezer today, but the panic that makes me need to bring home something, anything to prove that I can pull the trigger is just gone. But, standing there with my rifle in my hand and without the will to use it made me feel a little conflicted as to why I was out there at all--is this the deer hunter's version of erectile dysfunction?
I reached down and slowly raised my binoculars with one hand--the doe filled the whole field that I could see. Oftentimes, a large buck follows a doe into a clearing, so I was watching her closely to see if I could catch a glimpse of the doe looking at anything coming up behind her, but no. I stood there for a good four or five minutes, realizing that she would wind me very soon as she made her way across the field. She did, and her head snapped quickly in my direction--she saw me immediately and snorted and raised her tail in the air, standing still a good minute or so before rushing off up a lightly wooded hill in exactly the opposite direction.
Walking back to the rendevous site, I couldn't help but think this was a failure of purpose to show up empty-handed despite having a couple of really nice shots. I thought of the erectile dysfunction analogy thing, which made me laugh, and then I thought that maybe I shouldn't share that with my buddies because, well, maybe they would get ideas. And I really don't want to put it in my blog because that'll put me on some kind of wacky search engine, but oh well...
Lost in mundane thoughts like that, I trudged through thick grass and something caught my eye on the left--a skunk, about 20 yards away, was extremely irritated with me! Thankfully, I had taken a course to not walk directly at him, and also had spotted him although it was already heavy dusk. If I hadn't, I could say it was "heavy musk"--I tried to resist.
One of my buddies also passed up a nice shot today, and the other two, who had seen nothing at all, were a little incredulous, maybe even questioning our truthfulness a little, that we both had declined opportunities to put a "trophy" in the back of the truck.
But I have no regrets.
So we use a different style, mostly what's called "ambush hunting", where the hunter sets up a blind along known deer trails and waits for them to wander by heedlessly. Kind of like shooting fish in a barrel, as one of my friends put it.
To me, hunting is a great excuse for just going outdoors. One of my favorite parts of hunting is just driving along small country roads, stopping at a risky Fina station somewhere in small-town Texas and getting a dubious cup of coffee to wake me up. I like the anticipation of getting out to the deer stand (blind), being a little scared of walking in the dark by myself, even if it is just a few hundred yards (and I'm 6'2", 250 lbs, armed with a high powered rifle). There's something soothing about deeply breathing in the crisp black air in the early morning, and smelling the pure air, freshly expelled by the forest and fields--air that has typically been filtered through cars, across pavement, and breathed by other people before it reaches me in my suburban home.
I really enjoy spending three or four hours clearing my thoughts, shifting my mind from one issue to another, maybe getting a song stuck in my head, or a poem, or a conversation. After about an hour and a half, I mentally catalog and name the natural structures that are within my view. Friday, I named one tree "bicycle flag" because it was a bare trunk with a large, single, red leaf waving wildly from the top, even though the wind wasn't blowing very hard. Bicycle flag started getting on my nerves because it kept catching the corner of my eye and making my heart race.
Most of the time, when deer appear, it's as though they were immediately transported into view, and it can sometimes be very shocking. You don't typically hear them coming through the leaves or brush--they are very quiet, even in the crunchiest blankets of leaves. You just look up and there they are--nonchalantly standing right where you were looking just seconds before!
It usually takes me about two hours before the hallucinations start.
Sitting in one place for a long period of time, especially as the lighting changes from dark to light (or vice versa in the afternoon), shadows and lighting start to play tricks with your mind. You start to create "deer" out of tree trunks, rock formations, even shadows. In large fields and open areas, your perception of size can get thrown off quite a bit--one time a raccoon crawled out from a tree that I thought was about 200 yards away--the biggest raccoon I ever saw! I mean freakishly HUGE! I soon realized that the field and trees were much smaller than I thought and the raccoon had only been about 40 yards away (so my perception made it about 5 times larger than actual size). I had to chuckle to myself--anyway, these are the mental gymnastics that take place while sitting still and trying to be quiet.
After a little over three hours on Friday, I decided that my hunt was over--the sun was set, everything was getting very grey, and there had been no sign of life except for a turkey calling in the distance through thick brush, and a pair of cardinals that flitted by all afternoon..
I got out of my seat and came out of the blind. The four-sided structure had one wall along the back that is completely blocked out, and this is the side that the door is on.
As I opened the door, I spotted a small deer, chocolate brown with a triangular black patch between it's shoulder blades, about 150 yards away, grazing in a field. Behind the deer about another 300 yards away was a road, but that's still a little too close to risk a shot, in my book. But as I watched that deer, a second deer, a very large doe walked out openly about 40 yards away, right into an open field and completely unaware that I was there.
My rifle was still in my hand and I knew that this, truly, would be like shooting fish in a barrel--no problem at all. My only hangup was that she was in a field across a fence, and I wasn't sure why the fence was there. When the leaseholder dropped me off at the location, he didn't give me any particular instructions, but typically on private property you don't want to shoot across fences because it may be the border of the land, or have some other significance such as bordering off a residence.
And here's the real truth: I really didn't care to shoot the deer that day. About 10 years ago (maybe even five), that deer would be in the freezer today, but the panic that makes me need to bring home something, anything to prove that I can pull the trigger is just gone. But, standing there with my rifle in my hand and without the will to use it made me feel a little conflicted as to why I was out there at all--is this the deer hunter's version of erectile dysfunction?
I reached down and slowly raised my binoculars with one hand--the doe filled the whole field that I could see. Oftentimes, a large buck follows a doe into a clearing, so I was watching her closely to see if I could catch a glimpse of the doe looking at anything coming up behind her, but no. I stood there for a good four or five minutes, realizing that she would wind me very soon as she made her way across the field. She did, and her head snapped quickly in my direction--she saw me immediately and snorted and raised her tail in the air, standing still a good minute or so before rushing off up a lightly wooded hill in exactly the opposite direction.
Walking back to the rendevous site, I couldn't help but think this was a failure of purpose to show up empty-handed despite having a couple of really nice shots. I thought of the erectile dysfunction analogy thing, which made me laugh, and then I thought that maybe I shouldn't share that with my buddies because, well, maybe they would get ideas. And I really don't want to put it in my blog because that'll put me on some kind of wacky search engine, but oh well...
Lost in mundane thoughts like that, I trudged through thick grass and something caught my eye on the left--a skunk, about 20 yards away, was extremely irritated with me! Thankfully, I had taken a course to not walk directly at him, and also had spotted him although it was already heavy dusk. If I hadn't, I could say it was "heavy musk"--I tried to resist.
One of my buddies also passed up a nice shot today, and the other two, who had seen nothing at all, were a little incredulous, maybe even questioning our truthfulness a little, that we both had declined opportunities to put a "trophy" in the back of the truck.
But I have no regrets.
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