A Warm Weather Deer
By Denis Rusco

 

Opening day of the  2001 deer season in NH didn't look very promising for me. With the weather forecast calling for clear skies and temps in the 60's, I wasn't overly excited. I never liked hunting in warm weather for a number of reasons. Deer don't usually move well in warm weather, the winds shift too much and scent control is almost impossible. Still, after hunting during the 2000 season, and  scouting that winter, I had a pretty good idea of where I wanted to start hunting the next fall, and the weather wasn't going to change my strategy.                                                                                                                                                                   
                In January of 2001, I decided to scout an area  I had  been in once or twice, but had  never hunted. The land was a select cut logging and sawmill operation, owned and operated by my neighbor, John Lynch, and only a handful of people had ever hunted the property.

                My first scouting trip into the area was on a cold, windy afternoon, with a thick layer of crusted snow on the ground, making the trek in noisy and slick. I parked my truck  at John's sawmill and started my hike along the well used log road that was cut along the side of a hill. The road turns up hill about 600 yards in from the sawmill and leads to an ice damaged area up at the top. As I got to the log yard,400 yards from the mill, I began seeing a few tracks, but nothing to indicate that there were many deer in the area. The log road continued past the yard, branching off here and there, leading to where John had logged in past years. I stayed on the main log road, following it to the top of the hill, where an ice storm a couple years prior, had broken off the tops of quite a few trees. The trees in the area were mostly beech, oak and maple, with a stand of hemlocks mixed with oaks along the hillside. For the past couple winters, John had gone in there to clear the damaged wood, bring out the beech that he had a market for, and take the oak and maple he used for winter fire wood.

                Walking through the ice damage and surrounding area, I found plenty of sign that the deer were using this as a bedding and feeding spot daily, and I made mental notes about where to put tree stands and what wind direction would work for each stand location. Below the ice damaged area, on the hillside where the oak and hemlocks were, the deer had pawed their way through the ice and snow to get at the acorns buried beneath. Their tracks criss crossed the area from all directions and by the different size and shapes, I could see that there were plenty of deer using this area. 2000 was a  good year for the mast crop in NH, and there were plenty of beech nuts and acorns on the ground, giving the deer, squirrels and turkeys more than enough to eat.

                 The next scouting trip to the area was in early June, when the new growth was at its peak. Walking in, the way I had the time before, I saw that the deer were feeding  further down hill and seemed to move uphill early in the day to bed down. I checked the oak and hemlock stand, but by now the acorns from last year had been picked clean and the deer were feeding on  browse. After scouting all day, I thought I had all my bases covered for the up coming season. The only place that seemed to be holding deer was that 75 acre patch of  ice damaged timber, and  the nearby cuttings. As I walked out that afternoon, I spooked a doe and her fawn, so I watched where they ran. They ran right back up into the ice damaged area. Not too surprising.  I scouted some other places during the summer so I would have someplace else to fall back on if the wind was wrong for hunting the hillside, but I didn't find anyplace that had as much sign.

                 Opening day  was extremely warm, 44 degrees at 4 am, and the forecast was for it to get warmer and the winds to be light and variable but mainly out of the south. The wind direction would be fine to hunt the hill, but with the warm temperatures, I didn't expect to see many deer. It had rained the night before, just enough to make the ground and leaves soft, making the walking very quiet, so I decided to still hunt my way to the crest of the hill and sit over the oak and hemlock stand and hope for the best. I was thinking that the deer might want to stay up higher to get any cooling breeze that there might be through the shade filled hemlocks.

                After parking the truck at the sawmill and gearing up, I walked slowly down to the log yard, trying not to break a sweat. I decided to wait in the log yard until just before shooting light and then slip down the road and up the hill, pausing to look over some of the more open areas with the binoculars. By the time I snuck out of the log yard and down the road, about 100 yards, it was almost shooting light. I could hear something moving, from down the hill on  my right, so I stopped and waited. Soon the sound of an animal's foot steps drew closer and I watched as a deer crossed the log road 40 yards ahead of me. Because of the screen of trees and a slight bend in the road, I didn't get a good look at it, but I was fairly certain it was a doe.  I snuck up the road a little further and settled myself between 2 fir trees. From there I could look down the road to where the doe had crossed. The hill dropped sharply off to my right, so the slight breeze would carry  my scent away, above the deer, should they walk along the hillside below me. Shortly after the first deer crossed, I heard the sound of another deer, coming from the same place the first deer had .This time I saw antlers on the buck's head as he jumped across the log road and followed the doe up the hill. I didn't get a good look at his rack until I saw him walking steadily up the hill. I grunted a couple of times and looked for an opening in the trees without success, but the buck never stopped. As the sound of the buck faded, I heard yet another deer, following the first 2, and watched as another doe crossed at the same spot.

                I didn't know why the deer were crossing at that particular spot, but they all seemed to headed in the same direction, into a stand of hemlocks that I hadn't scouted. I figured that since the rut was just getting started, maybe one of the does was close to estrous and another buck might follow that same trail the first three had, so I made myself a little more comfortable and waited. About half an hour had passed, when I heard another deer down the hill where the first deer had come from, but it moved  in the direction of the log yard behind me, and crossed the road back there. As it moved up the hill, I could see that it was a small buck, but again it didn't walk through an open shooting lane. I waited another 45 minutes without any more activity and since I  wanted to get up to the crest of the hill, I started still hunting down the log road. When I got to the spot that the deer were crossing, I noticed they were using an over grown log road, the perfect travel lane with plenty of cover.

                 I only went 25  or 30 yards past the crossing area, when I heard another deer coming up the same over grown  road. I crouched down and got my rifle ready, then watched another doe cross the main log road. By now it was 7:30 and I was getting a little anxious to get up the hill, so I moved a little quicker down the road. When I got  to where the log road turned up hill, I thought to myself," What are you thinking? Go back to where you're seeing deer". With the thought of bucks following the does, I tied a drag rag to my boot, put on some "Doe in heat" lure and started back to where I spent the first hour and a half. I was almost back to the crossing point, when I spotted a big hemlock stump on the side of the road. It was in a spot where I could look down my back trail in one direction and still see where the deer had crossed the road earlier, in the other. I took my backpack off, set it on the ground behind me, cleared the leaves from under my feet and sat down to watch the area.

                I had just put my rifle across my lap when I heard the first foot steps in the drying leaves. This time they were coming down the hill. Without realizing it, I had set up on an edge, where the sparse cutting stopped and the thick edge of some small pines and young mixed hardwoods began. There was a small dried up creek along the edge also, making it a perfect travel corridor. As I watched and waited I thought," this could be a moose, deer, squirrel, turkey, bear or even another hunter", so I checked my rifle to see that the safety was still on and tried to keep as still as possible. The steps were getting closer and coming almost straight at me. My heart was pumping pretty good by now but I still couldn't see what was moving towards me. Then I spotted the slightest movement through the thick brush. Just a  brown blotch ."OK",I thought to myself," it's not a hunter, at least not a smart one". Then I saw some white." Could be a throat patch, piece of a dears tail, maybe a belly", I thought. The blotch moved another few steps and  I  could see a piece of an antler. Now my heart is in my throat, my  breathing got a little funny and I'm going through the list of things to do and not do. Don't move, settle your breathing, bring the gun up slowly, look for an opening, don't look at the antlers,etc,etc,etc.Then I got a good look at his antlers as his head entered an opening in the trees. "WOW, those are big bones on that head". Now my breathing and heart hit high gear and I get a slight case of nerves. The buck took a few steps more and was in the clear.

                I don't remember hearing the shot or feeling the recoil, but I remember hearing the bullet strike and the bolt cycle another round into the chamber. The buck took  two bounding leaps down the hill, onto the log road, then a couple down the road itself and one final leap back up the hill. Just as I began to think," How could I miss? Did I really hear the bullet strike? Was it a branch that I hit? SHOOT AGAIN!", the buck dropped on his back and didn't move again.

                 I waited a minute before I walked over to the biggest deer I'd ever shot, mostly to get my nerves and breathing back under control. Looking down at the massive body, I wondered "How am  I going to drag this thing out of here?". The night before, John said," Come get me if you shoot a big deer". I thought ,"this one qualifies as a big onetime getting John". I reached into my fanny pack and took out the pen and tag, filled out the information and attached it to the bucks hock with a piece of bailing wire that I keep in my pack. Realizing that I could get this deer out quickly  with John's tractor, I didn't bother field dressing the buck, it would be much easier with it hanging from the tractor's hey fork. I put my pack and a vest on the deer, because I knew there were plenty of coyotes in the area, and headed out to my truck. As I drove towards John's house, I saw him on one of his tractors, spreading fertilizer. When he got up to the truck, I asked him if he heard the shot? "Nope, did you get one?" he asked." Well you said if I shot a big one, to come get you." "So here I am", I answered.

                Twenty minutes later, we were taking pictures in John's door yard and loading the buck into the bed of my truck to take him to the deer check-in station. After stopping at my dads house to finish cleaning the deer up and getting a few more  pictures and some video, we took the deer to the trading post to check it in. Its dressed weight was 206 pounds. It had a very symmetrical 10 point rack with a couple small kickers and an inside spread of 20 inches. It rough scored in the low 140's, and though it  may not be the biggest deer to ever come out of the woods, he sure is my best, and on a day that didn't seem very promising.

                Warm weather may not be the best time to hunt, but you just never know when the deer will do something they "aren't suppose to do", like move on a very warm day.