Smokepole season had arrived and the temperatures were cold again. With lows around 30 degrees, I trekked into my climbing stand before daylight. I was within 15 feet of my selected tree when I heard 2 bucks lock antlers in the darkness probably not 100 yards away in a pine stand. As quietly as I could, I climbed the tree and got ready for shooting light.
It wasn’t long after daylight when I had my first sighting of the morning. 2 adult does were making their way downwind between my stand and the creek. They caught my scent stream and hung around long enough making their minds up about what to do that I don’t think anything was following them.
Not long after they moved off, I spotted another doe all the way across the 200 yard wide hardwood bowl that I was hunting over. I verified her sex through my binoculars and watched her wander up into a bedding area. Within a minute or two, another deer appeared at the same exact spot but traveling backwards of the doe’s movement. A quick head check showed this was no doe. Big Buck!
2 nights before a monster 7 pointer showed up on one of dad’s trail cameras for the first time and here I was staring at him through my binoculars at nearly 200 yards. The only reason I could see him was because the trees have dropped their leaves, but unfortunately they don’t also drop their branches and there was no way to even think about risking a shot.
He couldn’t hear my seductive bleats or my “come over here and kick my butt” grunts, but he did tune his ears into a snort wheeze. No sooner had that sound carried over to him, he went bow legged and walked to the nearest American beech tree and made a scrape. The whole routine – pawing leaves, licking branch, urinating down his hocks.
One of the scrapes he made under my binocular surveillance.
I’m figuring he’s mad some other buck dared to exert his dominance and is ready to come over and make a statement. But I was wrong. He took a half dozen steps away and I hit him with another snort wheeze. He repeated the exact same process by pawing out another scrape under the next beech tree he could find.
Unfortunately, he made his way up the other side of the hardwood bowl and that was that. My first great encounter of the year with a wallhanger. Usually if you have a 5 minute encounter with a mature buck (rather than a 10 second surprise meeting) you have a good chance of getting a shot, but this was not the case. Best I could tell, I guessed him at 4 years of age with only a 14-15″ inside spread but heavy beams, bases, and G2 tines stretching upwards of 10″. Eyeguards were great also at approximately 5″ apiece.
He’s not even out of sight and a small buck circles behind me following the tracks of the earlier does I had seen. Before the morning is over, I see 5 more deer. A frisky buttonhead acting like he really wanted to breed a doe fawn he was chasing and a doe and 2 little ones.
Great morning in the stand and I saw deer movement until about 9:15. When I came out at 11:00, I found out that my buddy had seen 2 bucks both after 9:00 a.m. with one shooter in the mix. Unfortunately, he was a surprise encounter like I mentioned above. Slipped out of a pine stand on silent pine needles and before a shot could be taken, he slipped right back out of sight.
