Maine Sportsman Vermont Column Nov 2024

“Old Dogs and New Tricks”

          As we head into another November, my mind spins back across many hunts that have taken place and shaped me. I smile at the racks on the wall and the memories of those hunts, but I’m prone to returning to the bucks that slipped through my fingers. I can still feel the sting of this one from almost a decade ago.

          Dad had shot a buck the day before, so was headed for home. I was on my own for the last two days of the season. My plan was to swing up onto a couple of small peaks and check the saddles between them. I knew this area held a couple of doe groups within the range of a good buck I had located early in the season. I cruised around several of his signpost rubs, hoping. An hour into the day, I finally crossed his path from the night before.

Melting snow made determining the age easy. I kept the pace up as I moved along his older track. His track finally changed direction and I could see where he had encountered a doe. I spent the next hour sorting out the barnyard. They were feeding heavily on ferns and old man’s beard on blown down trees. The tracks finally left the slope, and I walked onto the now-empty beds of the buck and doe that I had jumped while I was sorting out their wanderings. His was significantly larger and looked like the bed of an old dog who could no longer curl up. I could smell his tarsal stink still hanging in the air.

In The Game

I now had a big buck jumped up and a fresh track laid out ahead of me. I started out at an easy pace along the track. They circled the mountain back toward where I’d originally cut his track, but up higher. The deer led me past two bull moose who were moving through. I didn’t want to scare them and then have them spook the buck, so I let them meander away about 100 yards ahead of me until the deer’s tracks diverged from the moose’s path. The tracks swung uphill, still running. Reaching a bench on the mountainside, the deer started to slow to walk and turned. I slowed my pace as the tracks led me into a spruce top.

The buck’s track was quite distinct; big enough that I only had to glance down to know I was following him. The pair calmed down and began to meander. The doe went back to feeding. At this point the buck split away from her, drifting toward the east. I tiptoed around blowdowns and tried to slide through the brush silently. Slowly cruising over the bumps and hollows along the top of this mountain, the buck’s track began to pitch downhill.

The track was traveling to my right, angling across the slope. When I looked left down the steepening angle of the mountain, there he was, 70 yards away. I could see his square body, the dark brown coat, against the snow and trees. His head was turned to look at me, hidden slightly in the hardwood growth behind him. I snapped up my rifle and confirmed it was the buck I was tracking. Seeing the outline of his substantial rack, I lowered the crosshairs toward his body. At the same time, he gathered himself to bolt. I shot and worked the pump as he accelerated to full speed. Another shot. He disappeared. I ran to the ridgeline where he had disappeared hoping to get another shot. There was no sign of him.

I went to where he was when I shot at him. No hair, no blood. My stomach turned and I squatted there in disbelief. I took up the track again and followed him down into a clearcut, through a thick swamp and then back up the mountain. He circled the top and then crossed into his old tracks form the night before. The midday sun was causing the snow to drip out of the trees and on the south facing slopes it was melting away completely. Two and a half hours after shooting at him, I finally lost his track. I started back to the truck feeling sick.

Moving On

All that effort had culminated in a miss. When the goal is to track and kill a buck over 200 pounds it is hard to be consoled by the idea that everything went right except for that final, and essential, step. I talked to my buddy Ben at length that night, sitting in my driveway, hashing out what might have happened. As I pulled down from his head toward his vitals, he started to drop to take off and seeing this, I probably pulled the trigger a split second too early, causing a miss over his back. Like a bag of magic tricks, I found another new way to miss.

I felt emotionally raw for the next couple of days. The level of physical exertion, mental fatigue and disappointment left me wrung out like an old dish rag. Chances like that are exceedingly rare. I was lucky to have encountered him. I have learned that moving on from a miss is important to regaining confidence. Hunters who track are going to miss shots. A tracker should start each day with a mind fully focused on killing the buck in front of him.

That buck probably isn’t roaming the woods any more. I searched for him the next day on bare ground, then again, the following year and never found him. So, he’ll forever roam my mind along with all the other bucks from the close calls I’ve had.