The Hunt is On

When seasons changed, I would trade my trusty Zebco 33 reel for a hand-me-down rifle and pivot my pursuit from fish to fur. Spring was reserved for fin and feather, catching bass and chasing the adrenaline of the tympanic thud of a turkey gobbler drumming to his harem. In the fall, I awoke before Jesus to pursue those elusive Odocoileus virginianus or the common North American white-tailed deer. But my favorite hunts did not end in harvest.

As an adult, I would frequently return to Grandma’s house. When she passed away, I purchased that crooked little cabin with its chipping paint, heirloom floribunda roses toppling over every fence, and a fireplace that would scorch my backside if I got too close. It became my little respite from reality and, of course, a place to hunt. It became my therapy.

My first deer season back at Grandma’s house remains the richest in my mind. It is the ammunition of the tired tales I’ll spin in my later years. Like any good hunter, I began the season well before opening day by scouting. In those Ouachita Mountains, there is no shortage of national forest to explore. As the season grew nearer, my gaze turned to the ground, searching for scrapes and rubs, a common sign of a mature buck about to rut. I didn’t have to wait long. The cameras revealed two MASSIVE mountain bucks, both 10-points, with huge, muscled bodies developed from a lifetime of climbing up and down that mountain. They always traveled together at night. The greatest shock was that this pair of prehistoric deer were captured by camera only about 20 steps from the cabin’s kitchen window.

Each morning after found me red-eyed, sipping coffee from a saucer, gazing out that window, waiting for the sun to come up and a chance to see with my own eyes one of these ancient future trophies. It never happened. Night after night, they would return to drink from the pond on the property and eat the apples and pears that fell to the ground in the former garden plot. Before the sun rose, they would retreat back to beat the heat of a sultry summer that overstayed its welcome. From there, they could also spy a bedraggled bowhunter huffing his gear up the mountain and safely escape.

I studied those deer. I tracked their patterns. I knew when and where they ate and slept. They were like friends of mine. I even named them: Chainsaw (because of a uniquely serrated eye guard) and The Perfect Ten.

Every moment after opening day I could steal away was spent in the dense canopy of that refuge, bowhunting in a new tree or attempting to creep up on those old brothers from another angle. But big deer like that do not survive to such an age by accident. Statistically, most bucks do not live to age 3 because of hunting pressure and rut-related injury. By that measure, these bucks were about 100 years old in wisdom. They were smart. Smarter than me, anyway. I would need deer-like instincts or beginner’s luck to harvest one of them successfully.

As it happens, that is exactly how Chainsaw met his fate. That very season, I saw a picture online of a young boy grinning ear to ear after bagging the buck of a lifetime on his inaugural hunt under the tutelage of his grandpa. I wasn’t mad. Not even disappointed. I was not meant to connect with ol’ Chainsaw. He was meant for that boy in his borrowed blazed-orange hat, that memory with Grandpa, and an experience that would ignite a child’s lifelong passion for the outdoors.

My target buck, though, I choose to believe that he is ageless, still roaming those woods, harassing would-be trophy hunters and making hearts like mine skip a couple of beats. I hit those hills with stick and string for the following three years, hunting that elusive deer. The closest I got to him was watching him run away. All I could see were huge white horns and his white tail waving like a flag, signaling another defeat.

It has been several years since I have seen any evidence of him. Nonetheless, each deer season you will find me climbing closer to heaven in a Loblolly pine, holding my breath as I hear the crunch of fall leaves over my shoulder, clamping my release to the bowstring, convinced that I am about to sneak a shot at The Perfect Ten.