Finally, I saw him. The perfect buck. There he was, in the corner of my eye, ten yards to the side of me. He had his head down and was trying to slink out of sight, but the sharp angles of generous pair of symmetrical antlers, at least eight points, rendered his efforts comical. Still, I dared not look at him directly for fear of spooking him. I was almost certain where he was headed, following a worn deer trail around an island of brush and then across the fence onto the Big Lake Bottom Wildlife Management Area where he would be instantly legal to shoot. He disappeared around the island. The wind rose, rattling the late autumn leaves into a gentle roar. I took advantage of the sound to move closer to where the game trail met the fence. I positioned myself and the bow at the ready and waited.
It had taken me five days of hunting Big Lake Bottom to reach this climax. I first started on the western side of the WMA, where a large peninsula juts south into the Trinity River. First I had to drive an ATV 30 minutes over a grassy track filled with mud holes and sections that had to be detoured. The ATV track ended at the river. Leaving my helmet and heavy ATV emergency bag with the ATV, I continued on foot. Unlike most of my bowhunting brethren, I refuse to use a tree stand. Humans are both hunters and designed to move. I stalk game. The first day, I walked about five miles before I saw my quarry, or rather, their white tails bounding away in mild alarm. As I walked I learned the lay of the land and the domains of its denizens. The mature forest of oak, hickory, hackberry, and other hardwoods is interspersed with grassy glades and thick swaths of oatgrass, cactus, and thorns. These latter dense thickets nevertheless have game trails running through them that, as indicated by the low height of the overhanging branches, are made and maintained by hogs.
Above: Mature hackberry trees recognizable by their corky, striated bark.
Deer, on the other hand, prefer the easier walking through grassy forest glades although the optimal areas for them were grassy clearings interspersed by thicket patches against which they can camouflage and which they can use as visual barriers between an oncoming predator. Namely me. Nevertheless, I appreciated the easier walking that deer habitat provided compared to that of the hogs.
Classic hog habitat; note the dense oatgrass around the saw palmetto.
I was encouraged to learn also during my long afternoon trek in that these deer were fallible. In addition to shunning thick cover, the deer could not move silently in the grassy areas either, since the plethora of fallen limbs, sticks, and natural forest litter snapped under their feet as well as my own. In one case, I stalked a deer that I spotted bounding away toward a thicket. As I quietly followed in the direction of the last sighting, which led between two thickets, a twig snapped across the thicket to my right. I turned to spot my quarry across the thicket. It had tried to circle behind the thicket around to my back, but the same crackling twigs that gave me away now gave it away. Before I could draw my bow, however, it had bounded away.
As evening fell, I followed the banks of the Trinity back. At one point, I scared up a large doe at close range as she climbed up the steep banks of the river, almost running into me at the top. She took off immediately before I could get off a shot.
Hiking back through a dark forest filled with fallen tree trunks, eye-level spiderwebs and spiders, and hog underbrush was difficult enough, but the darkness enhanced by cloudy skies and a failing flashlight battery made for an even more suspenseful trip. So when an owl boomed close by, my adrenaline jumped and I had to remind myself that while I was only 5 miles from the George Beto Penitentiary with nothing but a bow and arrows, any escaped inmates were surely having as difficult a time in the woods as I.
The next morning, I returned to the area where I had begun my trek. I moved slowly through the forest glade until I was sure there were no deer. After a half hour of waiting and slow movement, I assessed it was safe to start hiking briskly. With my first purposeful stride, a pair of white tails bounded through the thickets. Deer in their chosen habitat have an incredible way of blending in. Taking a page from their own playbook, I crossed the clearing and waited. I scanned the empty glade before me and put up my binoculars for good measure. My astonished eyes found the shape of a young doe otherwise perfectly blending in to the forest floor moving not twenty yards in front of me. Like her colleague the day before, she was circling around behind my former last spot in order to resume her grazing itinerary. We spotted each other simultaneously, but she kept her steady pace. In desperation, I fired a shot in front of her to cause her to slow down. It worked, and startled, she turned to look at me directly to see how far I was. However, deer, being a prey species, have eyes on the sides of their heads rather than in the front, as we do. As such, she had to back down and lower her head awkwardly in order to view me with both eyes. Even then, I could tell it was a strain for her to focus. However, once she had gotten her distance from me, she bounded along confidently on her chosen path. Foolishly, I loosed a second arrow on her while she was in flight only to watch her look back one last time before vanishing into the brush.
After a few more hours, I returned to the ATV and switched over to explore the east side of the WMA.
Here the thickets were not as thick; one could see (and be seen) much further in the woods. I scouted this area over the next couple days, following the uneven contours of the WMA boundary. There were essentially two main attractions. First, the area where the land dropped off suddenly into the massive Trinity River, was full of game. On my initial approach, two deer dashed across the grassy track. When I attempted to stalk, I could not find them in the open woodlands, but the largest cottontail rabbit I have ever seen, the size of a small dog, scared me half to death as it exploded out from near my foot into the forest. There was a doe that I caught sight of a number of times, but she was too wary for me to get close enough for a shot. The ultimate high, however, was when I was admiring how plainly colored songbirds blended in perfectly with the forest floor, given away only by their movement, when I saw out of the corner of my eye three massive wild hogs trotting away from me single file, their small hooves soundlessly bearing their massive bulk. I gave steady chase and encountered them again near the River’s edge at about thirty yards, but the thickets and distance between did not provide a good shot. Had I a rifle rather than a bow, it would have been a different story.
Hog tracks by Trinity River.
The second attraction on the east side was an overgrown field not cultivated for a long time. It was a bulge of the WMA on the map and away from the river; however, it was very difficult to get to. A stream cut it off from the rest of the WMA, and my first day scouting it out I had to cross fallen logs with a full pack and a bow and arrow ten feet above the water. Once across, the pasture was ideal for deer, and in a particular spot on the boundary, I came across a shed antler. At that spot I looked up to see forty yards away a doe catching my scent on the wind. She immediately bounded over the boundary fence and ran into the WMA. Just on the other side of the WMA boundary was a game feeder. I had found a good place for an ambush. I scouted the whole field that day and found two more shed antlers, but nowhere was quite as tantalizing as the deer feeder on private property with the game trail running over the fence onto the WMA. Clearly, the feeder and the line into the safety of the WMA was the highlight of the area.
Taking a nap after finding the perfect ambush spot.
The last day of the hunt, which happened to be my birthday, I laid the ambush. The weather changed in the night from a low in the 50s to the lows in the 30s. Up into the cold and on the ATV at 5:30 am. At the creek before the field at 5:45, finding my way through the predawn woods. Because of the pitch black, I did not feel safe crossing the creek on a high, unstable tree trunk. There was nothing but to ford the stream on foot. The first step into the water sank up to midcalf in mud. “Black gumbo mud” is the local moniker for this perilous muck that can suck your boot off if you’re not careful. The center of the channel afforded more stable footing, but the mud cliff of the opposite side yielded no purchase for my boots, so I had to support my body weight by forcing my fingers into the mud bank and alternately climbing and pushing my bow and arrows before me until I reached the top.
Dawn rose clear and cold. I slowly traversed the field of chest-high grass and reeds until I came to the grassy track near the feeder. This time I approached from downwind, treading cautiously until the feeder came into sight. Nothing was there. As I continued down the grassy track, I then spotted him, the birthday buck. Taking up position following the wind gust, I waited. Long minutes passed. But sure enough, I spotted him fifteen yards in front of me. His head was low down, calf height, but somehow he’d gotten it through the fence in that position. He was eyeing me with a single eye (since, remember, deer can’t really look with both eyes) with the greatest suspicion, hoping I wouldn’t see him so low down. This was my chance. I began drawing back my bowstring. It was surprisingly difficult because my muscles were so cold. And then, tragedy. In mid draw, my arrow fell off the arrowrest on the side of the bow. I looked down to guide it back on with my finger. The buck saw me break eye contact and bolted through the fence to the other side of the grassy track completely within the WMA. Then he paused to look at back at me in a perfect “quartering” shot with his heart and lungs exposed. His expression was almost disdainful. Had I successfully drawn back my bowstring during the time that he passed through the fence, I would have had the perfect shot. As it was, I began the process of drawing the bowstring back from the beginning, but as I did so, the birthday buck skipped away into the brush.
Of course, I tried to follow and track him down in the overgrown meadow, but all to no avail. The cold, crisp, still morning gave way to a cloudy, cold, and windy day. After a couple hours, I ceased my hunt, forded the creek, and began my journey home, ATV to truck, truck to home. I had to tell my family and friends that I didn’t get our deer this year, but that it had still been worth it. I had tested my mettle against that of a wild creature designed for escape and brushed repeatedly close to success. I had confidence that I was skilled enough to force an audience with an unwilling monarch of the hidden forest and that very likely next time it would be I who won at an encounter. And perhaps most of all, the peace of the forest I had so patiently hunted now lay in my heart like still waters.
