I typically spend archery season trying to get a head start on filling our freezer. With a family of five and an appetite for red meat, I try to put up at least five deer each year. Most years, by the time Thanksgiving is over, I'm done deer hunting and can spend some time on other pursuits like small game and waterfowl. 2017 was no different. By December, I had harvested four deer and a black bear and our winter meat supply was looking good.
So it was, that I found myself taking my young son on a squirrel hunt on a cold, late December morning. At the inquisitive age of three, he isn't exactly stealthy in the woods, and we didn't manage to shoot any squirrels. However, as we walked along climbing logs and jumping off and asking a million questions, I did begin to notice some very good buck sign that hadn't been there three weeks earlier.
First one, then another. Then I began to notice that every sapling traveling in a certain direction had been rubbed. I could stand in one place and scan the trees ahead and sometimes see as many as a dozen rubs. And they were fresh.
And some of them were quite large. Not only that, many of them were done on what we call Ironwood trees (American Hornbeam) that are very hard and very tough. I've made walking sticks out of ironwood and scraping off the bark is a job for a power tool. But whatever buck had made these rubs had no trouble shredding them.
For reference, that's a Benelli Super Black Eagle II leaning against that tree. When I saw this, I knew I had to come hunt this deer.
We spent the morning of Saturday, December 23rd eating breakfast with my wife's family. It drizzled a light rain most of the morning and turned into a heavy drizzle as we drove home around lunch. After we got home, I checked the weather and saw that the rain would be ending around 2:30pm and colder weather would be following. I knew that deer would likely be on their feet as soon as the rain stopped, so I put on my Gore-Tex, grabbed my rifle, and headed for the woods.
I love hunting after a rain. The wet leaves and softened ground mutes every footstep and I was able to stealthily slip along a thick creek bottom where the buck had obviously been traveling. I had seen a fresh scrape in an old logging roadbed, but it was in an area that was too open for a late season buck to likely visit in daytime hours. I suspected that he would be bedding in either a laurel thicket on the east side of the creek or a mature pine thicket on the west side. I positioned myself fairly between the two thickets, hoping I could catch a glimpse of him moving down the creek.
The place I had chosen was thick with fallen white pines and choked with underbrush that had sprung up to reach the exposed sky where once dark canopy had been. I could see three different rubbed pine saplings from my position. Even so, I felt uneasy about my choice of location. I couldn't see very well in any direction and kept second-guessing myself, wondering if I should backtrack and go watch that scrape. With the leaves wet and ground saturated, I knew I wouldn't hear a deer approaching, but would have to keep my head on a swivel and see him before he saw me. But knowing a late season buck would likely stick to the the thickest cover he could find, I stayed put. I could just envision a mature old buck slipping along silently out of the stand of pines on his way into the safety of a tangle of laurels.
And with less than half an hour of shooting light left, I saw the gleam of white antlers slipping along through the pines. He was moving at a brisk pace, and as he reached the edge of the pines, he stopped briefly to survey his surroundings. That's the only pause I needed before I dropped him where he stood.
Capping off a successful season, this healthy southern Appalachian whitetail would add more free range, low-fat, organic protein to my family table, and provide a handsome trophy in my future man-cave.
After aging his lower jaw, I determined that he was 4 1/2 years old, a mature adult buck.
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