THE FLIP SIDE

Pry taunts hunters at Camp See No Deer

Heat contributes to season’s slow start

With modern gun deer season in full swing, it's high time we file a report from Camp See No Deer, the little piece of woods where a few of us have been bowhunting during the archery deer season.

Opening day was in September, but we're just now getting to the woods. It's been so darned hot the weather has been more suited to fishing than hunting. Swimming is more like it. Now that cooler weather has arrived, we've been enjoying some tree stand meditation, sitting quietly and pondering life while waiting to see a buck or doe.

The great thing about Camp See No Deer is that the landowner lets about five of us bowhunt there. Gun hunting isn't allowed. We'll be using our bows and arrows through the modern gun deer season which runs through Dec. 4 in most of Northwest Arkansas.

Another neat quirk of Camp See No Deer is that the landowner is vegetarian, but understands that hunting is important for deer management. Not that we put much of a dent in the whitetail population.

Instead of an offer of venison, we try to show our thanks for hunting in other ways. Before the season, one of the bowhunters shows up with his tractor and brush hog and mows the fallow fields and meadows at Camp See No Deer, a gesture the landowner truly appreciates.

So far this archery season the deer are up to their same old tricks. Take last week. The view from the tree stand was lovely, with tinges of crimson showing in the oak trees and yellow in the hickories. We watched squirrels gather acorns and skitter hither and yon from branch to branch. The deer were no-shows, until we got out of the tree stand.

Walking back to the pickup, five deer stood in the landowner's yard. If a football referee was around he'd throw a flag at the deer for taunting. Turning into the driveway back home, six more deer, all does, stared our way from the neighbor's property next door.

Squirrel hunters can relate. You see squirrels all day long until you step into the woods with a trusty rifle or shotgun. Then the squirrels high-tail it to the next county.

Word from the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission is that the deer harvest statewide is behind last year's because of warm weather during October. Hunters don't get deer fever until the frost is on the pumpkin, as it has been for a week.

Weather the first weekend of modern gun season was ideal, with frosty mornings and cool afternoons. No doubt that most of Arkansas' estimated 300,000 deer hunters took to the woods.

The state's white-tail harvest for all seasons combined (archery, muzzle-loader and modern gun) has topped 200,000 the past few years. With more liberal bag limits this season because of Chronic Wasting Disease, a record harvest is possible. The record is 213,487 deer killed during the 2012-2013 season.

That doesn't count deer hit by vehicles. Game and Fish tells us that about 21,000 deer are killed each year in deer-vehicle collisions.

At Camp See No Deer, we hope to get some venison for the grill, not by the grille, of our pickups on the drive out to the woods.

Flip Putthoff can be reached at [email protected] on on Twitter @NWAFlip

Sports on 11/15/2016

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