I imagine you have heard of outhouse luck. Now I gotta tell ya, I have been deer hunting for over 50 years and this, well this is a first. I went solo to the rustic mountain camp on Sunday afternoon and set up.
(please excuse the file photos, I forgot my camera)
After a fitful night’s sleep, I got up about 5:00 a.m. Monday morning, opening day 2013 rifle season to stoke the old Warm Morning coal stove, have breakfast and suit up. It had sleeted heavy the night before and the temperatures had dropped to 10* F so the woods were crunchy as hell and it was as cold as a well digger’s butt in the Klondike.
As daylight approached, I, being the highly evolved dedicated hunter that I’ve become in my old age, opted to build up the fire a little more and hunt out the cabin windows…a heated blind so to speak. This is not a farfetched an idea as it may sound as the cabin is located in one of the better deer crossings on the whole mountain and deer are often seen nearby. I circulated among the three windows, drank tea, cussed Ma Nature and was generally having a fine ol’ time. Along about 8:30, the sun peaked through the clouds and the temperature doubled in a matter of minutes. I know because the thermometer hangs right outside my main lookout. I sez to meself, “self it’s time to get off yer ass and go huntin’. Hmmmn, better get yer wood and coal in first so you won’t have to deal with it at dark.”
I got in a few armloads of wood and started out the cabin door with a coal hod (bucket, for those not coal stove wise) in each hand. About that time a distinct urge became apparent so I set down the buckets at the door and went back to grab some necessary paper. I looked over in the corner near the window and thought…"dumbass you had better take your rifle." So here I go out back to the coal pile, hods in one hand clanking with each step and rifle and paper in the other.
Peristalsis was now firmly in charge, so I set the coal buckets down and proceeded immediately to the privy.
About the time my bare butt hit that freezing cold seat, brrrrr; I looked up on a little ridge that trails down to a corner of a 5 acre overgrown field just off from camp and there stands a deer.
(looking down the little ridge that led the deer to camp)
If you don’t hunt, I can’t really explain it to you, but what your eyes and mind see are parts of deer, not whole deer. It’s kinda like seeing that patch of gravel coming up in a twisty even though you are looking well through the turn; you are not looking directly at it but you see it. In spite of the fact that I was definitely otherwise occupied, I reached over and took up my rifle and scoped the deer part. Yep, deer alright, coat visibly shining in the sun through the scope.
(where’s Waldette?)
The deer began moving down the ridge towards the camp yard and my parked truck. When it came to a road that enters the field, I had my first plain view of its head…a doe, big enough to ride, but a doe. One of either sex was legal in the county where my camp is located. I, now very much in need of finishing some paper work, had to make a decision; take the first deer I saw on opening morning or wait. I chose to wait; deciding that if that ol’ gal continued to work her way toward my truck bed, I would accommodate her by helping her in it.
I set the rifle down and finished the paper work…much appreciated thank you! ::024:: Now bear in mind, it was still only 20* and my britches were down and my butt still on the seat. That had to change! I was watching the doe feed and I slowly half stood, hiked up me pants, much relieving my cold bare but now clean ass, promptly eased back down to the privy seat and latched onto my weapon.
About the time I determined to take up the previously maligned Ma Nature on the offering of a no drag harvest pending the next open shooting lane, the doe buggered for no discernible reason and went hopping off disappearing through the head high crop of life everlasting weeds in the field. “Ah well, too early in the season to doe hunt anyway. Hell maybe she has a buck trailing her.”
I just set still all the while eyeballing that little ridge for movement. About 3 minutes later, a second deer appeared, and that is a good description of how it happens, one second nothing, the next…deer! As it made its way into a clear sight line, I scoped it and sure as hell, it was a spike buck. Under normal circumstances, I would have passed right then, hoping he would grow up a bit and perhaps we would have a subsequent future encounter. But this, now this was a buck coming into the yard…a no drag harvest, mine for the taking.
In a catch and release quandary, I was still not committed. When he got to the spot where the doe was when she buggered, he lost her scent and turned the wrong way right down the road that would soon have him cross directly in front of me with not so much as a twig between us. Walking with his head down like a beagle on a cold trail, he got too close for his own good and folded on the spot as that 150 grain core-lokt bullet impacted the point of his left shoulder. And that my friends was the last of the outhouse buck! ::003::
After a fitful night’s sleep, I got up about 5:00 a.m. Monday morning, opening day 2013 rifle season to stoke the old Warm Morning coal stove, have breakfast and suit up. It had sleeted heavy the night before and the temperatures had dropped to 10* F so the woods were crunchy as hell and it was as cold as a well digger’s butt in the Klondike.
As daylight approached, I, being the highly evolved dedicated hunter that I’ve become in my old age, opted to build up the fire a little more and hunt out the cabin windows…a heated blind so to speak. This is not a farfetched an idea as it may sound as the cabin is located in one of the better deer crossings on the whole mountain and deer are often seen nearby. I circulated among the three windows, drank tea, cussed Ma Nature and was generally having a fine ol’ time. Along about 8:30, the sun peaked through the clouds and the temperature doubled in a matter of minutes. I know because the thermometer hangs right outside my main lookout. I sez to meself, “self it’s time to get off yer ass and go huntin’. Hmmmn, better get yer wood and coal in first so you won’t have to deal with it at dark.”
I got in a few armloads of wood and started out the cabin door with a coal hod (bucket, for those not coal stove wise) in each hand. About that time a distinct urge became apparent so I set down the buckets at the door and went back to grab some necessary paper. I looked over in the corner near the window and thought…"dumbass you had better take your rifle." So here I go out back to the coal pile, hods in one hand clanking with each step and rifle and paper in the other.
Peristalsis was now firmly in charge, so I set the coal buckets down and proceeded immediately to the privy.
About the time my bare butt hit that freezing cold seat, brrrrr; I looked up on a little ridge that trails down to a corner of a 5 acre overgrown field just off from camp and there stands a deer.
If you don’t hunt, I can’t really explain it to you, but what your eyes and mind see are parts of deer, not whole deer. It’s kinda like seeing that patch of gravel coming up in a twisty even though you are looking well through the turn; you are not looking directly at it but you see it. In spite of the fact that I was definitely otherwise occupied, I reached over and took up my rifle and scoped the deer part. Yep, deer alright, coat visibly shining in the sun through the scope.
The deer began moving down the ridge towards the camp yard and my parked truck. When it came to a road that enters the field, I had my first plain view of its head…a doe, big enough to ride, but a doe. One of either sex was legal in the county where my camp is located. I, now very much in need of finishing some paper work, had to make a decision; take the first deer I saw on opening morning or wait. I chose to wait; deciding that if that ol’ gal continued to work her way toward my truck bed, I would accommodate her by helping her in it.
I set the rifle down and finished the paper work…much appreciated thank you! ::024:: Now bear in mind, it was still only 20* and my britches were down and my butt still on the seat. That had to change! I was watching the doe feed and I slowly half stood, hiked up me pants, much relieving my cold bare but now clean ass, promptly eased back down to the privy seat and latched onto my weapon.
About the time I determined to take up the previously maligned Ma Nature on the offering of a no drag harvest pending the next open shooting lane, the doe buggered for no discernible reason and went hopping off disappearing through the head high crop of life everlasting weeds in the field. “Ah well, too early in the season to doe hunt anyway. Hell maybe she has a buck trailing her.”
I just set still all the while eyeballing that little ridge for movement. About 3 minutes later, a second deer appeared, and that is a good description of how it happens, one second nothing, the next…deer! As it made its way into a clear sight line, I scoped it and sure as hell, it was a spike buck. Under normal circumstances, I would have passed right then, hoping he would grow up a bit and perhaps we would have a subsequent future encounter. But this, now this was a buck coming into the yard…a no drag harvest, mine for the taking.
In a catch and release quandary, I was still not committed. When he got to the spot where the doe was when she buggered, he lost her scent and turned the wrong way right down the road that would soon have him cross directly in front of me with not so much as a twig between us. Walking with his head down like a beagle on a cold trail, he got too close for his own good and folded on the spot as that 150 grain core-lokt bullet impacted the point of his left shoulder. And that my friends was the last of the outhouse buck! ::003::
