Tuesday's first flurries fluttered into my deer stand tentatively, like the first guests at an A-list party.
I felt snow in the air Monday, and it heightened my expectations for Tuesday.
My only company Monday was the same mature doe and her yearling that visit my spot in the pines every evening. Where there are does, there eventually will be a buck.
In October, I knew of only a trio of three-point bucks that regularly appear on one of my game cameras. Starting Nov. 8, that camera photographed a couple of new bucks. One was a 5x2 with wide, low antlers. I wondered if it was the same buck I saw Saturday at 6:40 a.m.
That was opening day of modern gun deer season. I had scarcely settled into my seat when I heard rustling behind me. A legal buck stood broadside in the dim light about 40 yards away. I leveled my crosshairs on its neck and squeezed the trigger. "PING!"
I thought I dropped the hammer on my first dud reload. What timing!
The buck bounded twice, stopped, raised its tail slowly and walked stiffly into brush.
I retracted the bolt on my rifle, a Remington Model 700 BDL in 7mm-08. It wasn't a dud. The chamber was empty. I must have partially retracted the bolt when I loaded the magazine so that it didn't catch and chamber a cartridge when I closed the bolt.
As I watched the does Monday, Mike Romine sent a text message that said, "Buck of my life!" Attached was a photo of a 10-point buck that he shot on the other side of the Old Belfast Hunting Club. Its symmetrical rack was heavy and thick, and its muscles were swollen and taut.
In this day of boutique rifle cartridges like the 6.5 Creedmore, 338 Lapua and the Nosler super magnums, Romine scored with deer hunting's version of the Wishbone offense. He used a Marlin lever-action rifle chambered in .30-30 WCF.
Encouraged by Romine's success, I arrived at my stand in the dark Tuesday. Maybe the "Empty Chamber Buck" would return.
It started snowing shortly after dawn, and the flurries spearheaded the earliest snow shower I've seen this far south.
The woods were silent except for the muffled whispers of snowflakes scraping the pines and tapping the cold metal roof of my deer stand. The sharp, swirling wind intensified the cold despite my propane heater, but it was the picture of peace. There's no place I would rather have been at that moment.
Deer, on the other hand, were anywhere but there. I left at 9 a.m. and returned at 3 p.m.
I have a corn feeder about 130 yards from my stand, but I also sweetened the site over the weekend by spreading 50 pounds of a product called Buck Grub into four big piles.
The does that visited Monday were very suspicious of this new addition and glared at it for a long minute before advancing furtively into the feed zone. One taste, and all was forgiven. By Tuesday, about a third of it was consumed.
The does returned Tuesday about 4 p.m. I was eager to kill a deer, so I put my crosshairs on the younger doe, disengaged the safety and curled my finger around the trigger.
"There's plenty of time," I told myself. "Wait for the one you want."
Alternately, one doe peered into the woods while the other ate. They reposed for about 20 minutes, but then they both jerked up their heads and stared into the woods behind them. They were tense and alert.
The younger doe walked toward the edge of the thicket and slowly raised her tail to half mast. Then, they both spun and fled.
I rested my rifle on its leather strap atop a rail as a third deer stepped into the clearing. At 130 yards in dim, dull light I could only discern that it had a legal rack, but it's body was massive. I centered the crosshairs at the junction of the neck and shoulder and squeezed the trigger. I wouldn't have to track this one.
It was a buck I hadn't seen before, a rut swollen 6-point that reeked of musk.
I worked up a sweat wrestling it aboard my Suzuki Eiger 400. That's a big machine, but the buck dwarfed it.
The featured guest made this A-list party a resounding success.
Sports on 11/18/2018