by Jay Cassell
When I caught up with the deer, they were bedded down at the head of a black coulee. A doe jumped up, and led eight does and fawns by me. They passed one by one between a gap in the timber like sheep jumping a fence. A forkhorn brought up the rear, and I considered taking him, but declined. I wanted a heavier animal.
It’s not the amount of early snow but its mere presence that gives the deer hunter a new advantage.
As noon approached, my legs began to tire. I turned homeward, working downslope on a gentle incline that led me over a series of terraces and through dark pine hollows. I slipped up on two other skinheads who never knew I was there and killed a four-pointer where the forest met the canyon floor.
On that one day I had seen more deer than during the previous three weeks of hard hunting. The temptation is to owe their sudden appearance to migration, but snow depths were insufficient to create the kinds of conditions in the high country that would force game into the lowlands. The deer had actually been around all season long; it just took a little snow for me to see them.
There are both physiological and psychological reasons why this happens. Most important is the effect the first snow of the year has upon a deer’s perception of critical zones.
Most deer develop a sixth sense regarding how close they will allow a human to approach before becoming evasive. This critical zone amounts to a circle of terrain, and its diameter varies with the kind of cover they inhabit—the thicker the vegetation, the tighter the circle. Critical zones are largely determined by a visual limit called the forest curtain. This is the distance you and they can normally see into the forest. It is not a wall, but more like a veil, a gauzy haze of brush and trees. At the inner limit of the curtain you can see objects clearly. At its outer limit everything is obscured. However, between those two points, a sharp eye can usually pick out the ill-defined form of a deer.
Perhaps taught by the actions of older deer, or by signals of human recognition—hunters or hikers staring, pointing, yelling, making excited motions, or shooting—deer learn at what point within that curtain it is safe to watch a walking hunter without being seen. Snow, because it reflects flat light into the darkest woodland corners, and because of the contrast it provides, moves the forest curtain back. But deer don’t realize that at first—remember, the animals have spent six to eight snow-free months with the woods on their side, warned by sounds and scents and hidden in dappled shadow patterns—and as a result, they stay put and are easier to spot.
Even light snow cover can short-circuit a deer’s early warning system: it muffles and absorbs the sound and shock of footfalls, helps cover and diffuse human scent, and silhouettes the deer’s telltale outline. All in all, the first snow of autumn brings a dramatic change in a deer’s environment that the animal is unprepared to cope with and that makes it much easier to hunt.
On the other side of the prey/predator relationship, snow has a positive effect on hunters and their habits. Perhaps the visual change wrought by a blanket of white suggests to our subconscious that the slate has been wiped clean. Perhaps it is the invigorating effect of cold, crisp air. Whatever the reason, the sight of fresh snow seems to call up a new reserve of human energy and resolve. You are more eager, more confident, and as a result, you hunt harder.
Tracks play a part, too. Not so much because they lead directly to game, but because a fresh track is incontrovertable evidence that a deer passed that way recently and that it is somewhere nearby. Cutting tracks pumps you up psychologically. It keens your senses and forces all of them to focus upon one thing—serious hunting—and that edge often accounts for the difference between success and failure.
I remember one particular fall—back when I was a guide and outfitter—when the weather conditions were similar to those I experienced last year. Indian summer lingered like a curse, and except for the flurry of activity that always occurs on opening day, the meatpole behind camp held neither elk nor deer week after week.
Many times watching a football or baseball game, I have sensed a lack of spirit on the part of the losing team. It is not an identifiable fault or flaw, just a kind of negative aura that hangs over the heads of the players and the way they execute their parts. An equivalent dark cloud hung over my clients every day we went up into the mountains, an overbearing sense of “the game is already lost.”
Then one morning we awakened to three inches of snow that had flurried in during the night. I can still recall stepping out of my tent to greet that day. The scattering clouds were tinted pink by the first rays of the rising sun and they wreathed the distant peaks like cotton candy. Snow clung to every branch and bough so lightly that it seemed a sharp breath would blow it all away. Suddenly it was a whole new ball game.
Like a key play that sparks a rally, you could feel a change at the breakfast table. Conversation was more animated, everyone ate with more gusto, and where clients had lingered over their coffee before, they now left the table to get suited up immediately.
The presence of tracks urged them deeper into the timber that day. They complained less about being winded and tired. They went the extra yard, and that afternoon we shot a fine muley buck, then a spike elk the next morning, and the rest of the week went well.
Although a fresh snowfall is a powerful ally, hunters do need to adapt to some of the changes it brings about. It’s always a good idea to use binoculars when big-game hunting, but it’s a virtual necessity when there’s new snow.
Clinging to boughs, branches, and the trunks of fallen trees, cottony snow combines with the forest tones to create the illusion of an animal—the right balance and shape of white, brown, gray, or buff that suggests things like the white throat patch on a whitetail or muley, or the butt of an elk. With a pair of binoculars, these illusions can be sorted out quickly. Before I got that figured out, I spent a lot of time stalking stumps or, more embarrassing, watched the object I had positively identified as a blowdown get up and run away.
Wool pants, recommended hunting apparel because they are quiet, are a must when hunting in snow. Every other material forms ice around the cuffs, which then whiff and wheeze as you walk, warning every creature within earshot. Wool stays supple and soft.
Lastly, I have found that game learns to adjust quickly to the changes brought about by the first snow: the harder they are hunted, the sooner they extend critical zones to encompass the new forest curtain. Hunting the same area with no competition, I figure I have four days before the deer move farther back into the brush. In heavily hunted areas, I’ve seen them do it the second day.
When that happens, if I have the gift of time, I hang up my rifle until a truly severe storm blows in from the north, with all the physical stresses attendant to knee-deep snow and bitter cold. That kind of a snow changes game habits once again, and in other ways. But that is yet another story.
Reprinted with permission of Silvia Strung.
Hunting with Lady Luck
NORMAN STRUNG
Although the annals of outdoor literature are clogged with the sweet smell of success, if the truth be told, the great majority of big-game hunts are tinged with the scent of skunk. Whether you are after deer, antelope, or elk, when you embark on an essentially public opportunity where everyone has a fair crack at game, it is rare not to spend long, hard hours, slogging through snow and mud, before you see so much as the flicker of a white tail or the buff-colored butt of a wapiti winking at you through the timber. The Daniel Boones among us notwithstanding—and I haven’t met one yet—the average hunter pays his dues for every head of big game the same way that dues are exacted in other pursuits.
It is that cold fact that runs through my mind every dim morning I set foot in the woods, yet like a carrot on a stick, or a bone suspended just out of reach of a salivating dog, I am also urged on into the dark prospects ahead by the singular memory of one incredible weekend, when everything went right—with one small exception.
It began normally enough: at the ranch home of an old friend, among the compan
y of old friends and ranchers and hunters, a weekend visit for my wife and I that just happened to coincide with the end of deer season, crops in at long last, cattle weaned and in winter pastures, and more than enough hay to last until spring. It was one of those rare times when men of the soil were actually caught up with everything that needed doing, and the concept of simply relaxing being as foreign to them as a map of the New York City subway system, they were just itching to find something else to do.
Eli sized up the situation. “Hell, there’s enough of us here to have a whale of a drive on Franny’s Island. Let’s go hunting in the morning.”
Franny’s Island was an impenetrable tangle of willow and wild rose in the Yellowstone River. It hid huge whitetails, or at least that’s what things like tracks and scat piles suggested, but pinning them down in that jungle was like catching a greased pig in a cactus patch.
“Sounds good to me,” Carroll chimed in. “We get all these guys pointed in the same direction, we might do some good.”
Al, Deek, Harvy, and Harlan nodded in approval, Harlan adding, “There’s been some real soakers feeding in my beet field, and I’ll bet they’re holin’ up on Franny’s Island during the day.”
So the plans were made. We would meet at Carroll’s house for breakfast at five, then proceed to the island. Four of us would take a stand, and four of us would drive.
A raging red sunshine was just beginning to spread across the eastern sky as we trudged across the wide, shallow slough that separated Franny’s Island from the mainland. It was a hunter’s morning: cold and still. Breath vapors hung in the air like smoke, and you could hear cows bellowing for their calves three miles away. Over coffee we’d divvied up the details; Eli, Carroll, Sil, and I would drive while Harvey, Harlan, Deek, and Al would take stands on the lower end of the island.
“There’s an old fallen snag tree at the edge of the slough,” I had said, “with a deer trail like a highway underneath it. Somebody cover it, because I’ll bet that’s where they’ll come boiling out.”
The task before the drivers was simple and straightforward: form up in a relatively straight line, try to keep track of one another, and wade through the prickly patches of primrose and willow where deer loved to bed down. If you jumped a deer and could tell its sex, you bellowed out “doe” or “buck.” If you only heard its retreating hoofbeats, you yelled “deer.”
Franny’s Island is typical of the landforms common to moderately swift Western rivers. An overstory of cathedral-like cottonwood and box elder presides over a bottomland of brush that grows thicker and thicker as you approach its downstream limits. At first the walking was easy, the clawing brush growing in isolated patches that were seldom more than waist-high. I heard Eli yell “Doe and fawn,” then laughed as the pair very nearly ran over me, their liquid eyes wide as saucers when they recognized me at a distance of about 10 feet.
Gradually the brush grew denser. The other drivers became glimpses of orange, and in places I had to duck-walk to follow the deer trails that tunneled through thickets. Soon I was on my hands and knees, the morning sun the only beacon by which I kept from becoming totally disoriented.
From that low vantage, I began to notice all those signs that point toward a very big buck very much in rut; scrapes musky with the scent of urine, pellets of scat the size of marbles, and fresh rubs at the base of the biggest willows. Then the trail led into what I can only describe as a series of deer nests; rooms formed within the densest willows by nature or intent, replete with beds in the soft duff, and a roof of twined branches that blotted out the sun and probably did a good job of shedding rain and snow. It was a storybook setting: the perfect lair for a trophy buck, yet how often before had such sign proved to be fruitless novelties?
Suddenly the brush to my right exploded. I can use no other word to describe it. It was not the sound of a deer rising to its feet and dashing off, but more like a big cock pheasant trying to rattle into the sky through bone-dry standing corn. I couldn’t see what made the noise, but given the crackling and crunching that was fast receding, it had to be big. I made a wild guess, and hollered “Deer . . . deer!”
In 30 seconds, the first shot rang out, then another, and another. From their location it was obvious the buck had struck out for the tip of the island, had run into the posters, and was now heading south for the mainland. I cannot say how many shots were fired: five? six? But the last one was plainly the last, the plop of a hit hanging in the still air like a word of confirmation.
Next to downing a big buck of your own, the most thrilling part of a deer hunt lies in the speculation that occurs between the sure knowledge that a companion has scored and coming upon the animal. Buck, doe, points, spread, weight, circumstances surrounding the kill?
When I found my partners, they were squatting around a four-by-four whitetail. Not only did it carry a set of antlers that took your breath away, but it was also big in body, and so gray and grizzled with age, that at a distance, I mistook it for a mule deer. It had emerged from the island exactly where I predicted it would, and the buck had fallen to a shot from Al’s rifle. Remarkable too, was that he had crossed the slough before expiring, obviating the need for a long drag over dry, sandy ground or a boat launched down an eight-foot bank to get him to the mainland. From where he lay, it was less than 50 yards to a farm road and a waiting pickup.
In an hour we were back at Eli’s ranch. The deer weighed in at 172 pounds fielddressed, and Al was delighted. It was the biggest whitetail he’d ever shot, and he already had chosen the place in his home where he’d hang the head.
Al was done for the season, but the rest of us still had the hunting bug. After lunch, half the party elected to shoot pheasants, but Eli ushered Carroll and me into his pickup.
“The hired man says he’s been seeing a real soaker of a muley over by the Sarpy Breaks. Let’s take a drive over there to see if we can’t find him.”
The chances of finding an earmarked deer in the Sarpy Breaks are about the same as finding an honest man at a liars’ convention. It is a tumbledown jackpot of juniper, sandstone cliffs, and ponderosa pine, where a big population of muleys move around like ghosts, and where there are many spots so remote that you just don’t shoot a deer in them, and if you do, you bring a frying pan and eat it there. Rather, a hunt over at Sarpy is a chance to see wildlife along the way, to catch glimpses of breathtaking scenery and the glory of a prairie sunset, and maybe, just maybe, luck into a nice buck. But running down a particular deer a hired man saw? Never.
Pickup hunting is the most logical way to work out the Breaks, and by that I do not mean running down deer and shooting them from a pickup. Rather, you drive out on long points and ridges and glass the vastness below you for some sign of a bedded deer that can be stalked, or use the pickup to drop off drivers who work up coulee bottoms while you double back to pick them up, acting as both chauffeur and poster. It’s the only practical way to hunt a country that is measured by square miles rather than acres.
We had driven out on two ridges when Eli brought the pickup to a halt on a long finger of land transected by a fence. Below us lay a tortured drainage of ravines and washes, buckbrush and tall timber on the north-facing slopes. To our right, just over the brow of the hill, we saw the top of an old dead snag tree. Then the tree got up and looked at us.
I cannot begin to estimate the number of deer that Eli and Carroll have shot between them. It is enough to say that they are among the coolest and most collected hunters I have known. Yet it is testimony of the nerve-jangling excitement that arises at the sight of a truly large deer in all of us that both men came totally unglued. Simultaneously, Caroll blurted, “I can’t get out of the pickup truck,” while Eli kept stepping in and out of the truck, hitting he ground, then jumping back in to apply the brakes. Carroll’s gun had become lodged across the truck door and in that moment that demanded swift action, he couldn’t figure out how to disengage it, but kept pushing against it, trying to get out. Eli simply hadn’t consid
ered putting the truck in park or shutting the engine off. Every time he stepped out, it would roll forward.
The grandfather muley watched all this with mild amusement, then was off like a shot. Carroll finally got his gun unwedged, and Eli had covered enough ground to run the pickup into the restraining fence, where it at last stopped, but Carroll groaned again, “Can’t get the gun to shoot!” as he squeezed the trigger until his knuckles turned white.
This was because the bolt was open, a standard safety practice we have all observed since the day we met. By the time everyone got it all together, the muley was long gone, without a shot having been fired.
All of us have heard tales about dumb muleys: how they stop and look back and such, and it’s rather true of young deer. Every trophy-class muley I have ever seen, however, was every bit as smart as a whitetail, tucking his head low and running like the wind until he had put several miles between hunter and hunted. So I greeted Eli’s suggestion that we fan out and circle around the ridge with some degree of skepticism.
Then, just as the sun set and darkness began to creep over the land, I heard one shot boom out so close that I thought I felt the concussion. Eli had surprised the very same deer, which was evidently watching me from the dense shadows of a big pine. It wasn’t 200 yards from where we had first seen it, and we backed the pickup right up to the carcass. It was a magnificent four-by-four, with a high rack of dark, rich chestnut. At the weighing-in ceremonies that evening, he tipped the scales at 210 pounds!
Dinner was a celebration that night. The pheasant hunters had done well, and Eli allowed as how his deer was the biggest muley to come off the ranch, he would mount it. But there were still a lot of unfilled tags, and tomorrow was the last day of deer season. “Let’s try Franny’s again in the morning . . . ”
