As many of you know, I love hunting and pretty much every other outdoors activity that encourages not bathing and sitting for long periods of time.
A few weeks back I started looking into deer hunting in Iowa, since I now have an
Iowa driver's license I can get resident hunting rates ($27.50 for thos of you interested).
I called in and
ordered my license and everything,
bought some spray de-scenter stuff for my clothes (deer can smell really well... like bloodhounds on steroids) and
some synthetic doe urine (bucks apparently like the smell of female doe pee... nature is stran
ge, all I know is that at $5 for a 3 oz bottle the stuff better work!),
a collapsable orange hunting vest and orange hat from Cabela's and I was ready to go.
I laid out all my stuff on Friday night to make sure I was ready. I checked and re-checked to make sure I had enough shells, my knife, binoculars, a rope, the fake doe pee, de-scenting spray, sunflower seeds (for me to eat), my gun, my license, and some salami sandwiches to eat for lunch.
I went to bed at 10 PM on Friday night to try to get a good night's sleep so I wouldn't fall asleep while I was hunting like I usually do after about 2 hours. I didn't sleep for crap. I think all total I got about 3 hours of sleep between 10PM and 5AM when my alarm went off. Basically I spent the whole night as wound up as a 3 year old on a Halloween sugar high who was going to Disney World for the first time the enxt day.
At 5 AM, my alarms (yes, I set 3 alarms to make sure I got up early enough) went off and I got up and threw all my gear on and loaded everything either onto my person or into my car. By 5:20 I was on the road.
I had talked to a professor from school who knew the area well and he had recommended an area of public land about an hour from Des Moines, so thats where I decided to go. On Monday I had driven out there to scout it out and had found tons of deer track and a spot that I thought looked good.
At 6 AM I got to the spot on the side of the snowcovered (foreshadowing) road where I would head into the woods. By 6:30 I was at my spot spreading fake doe pee all over and de-scenting myself for the 6th time that morning. By 7 I was wishing I had dressed warmer... it was 12 degrees out and below zero with the wind chill. I had on under armor tops and bottoms and jeans, a long sleeve t-shirt and a moderately lightweight coat with hat and gloves, definitely not enough to be warm... I guess I hadn't anticipated it being that cold... or I forgot how cold 12 degrees can be when you're sitting still for hours on end.
At 7:23, 4 does (like the ones picture here except there were 4 not 5) walked in right across where I hoped deer would be going. Against my better judgement, I didn't even pull my gun up and take aim, I just watched as they crossed through about 50 yards from me.
At 8:05 some idiot hunter started blowing on a "buck call" that sounded a lot like a wounded cow. He blared that darn thing every 5 minutes for the next hour and a half. #1 Bucks don't call like that very often if ever #2 they certainly don't do it every 5 minutes if they do, these two factors mean he was likely doing more to scare deer away than to draw them in. Had it been warmer I might have tried to hunt him down to tell him this, but I let the idiot continue ruining both of our chances to get a deer.
By 8:30 I was wishing I would have shot one of the does despite their small size, then I could be on the way back to the car with my deer and be done freezing my tail off.
By 9:30 I had some unkind words for myself for letting the does pass through.
By 9:45 I was literally shivering because I was so cold. I curled myself up into the tightest ball I could to try to stay warm.
At 9:55 I decided to walk around for a bit to try to regain feeling in my feet, butt and thighs. After 5 minutes I realized that was a waste and went back to my spot. I had been sitting down for about 15 minutes when I heard something over to my left.
There he was... the biggest most beautiful buck I have ever seen in my entire life and ever hope to see again about 120 yards from me running in my general direction. He kept looking back over his shoulder as if something had spooked him or was chasing him. I tried to slip off my glove on my shooting hand, but couldn't get it to come off, so I kind of shook it off as fast as I could and brought my trusty Remington 20 guage up to my shoulder. The buck came to a stop in a clearing 30 yards directly in front of me. I took aim, held my breath and slowly squeezed the trigger. BAM!!! A direct hit in the shoulder right where I was aiming and he took off running like a derby horse out of the gates.
I jumped to my feet and took off after him trying to stay relatively close. About 150 yards later he kneeled down and started breathing really heavy. I put a couple more shots into him to finish him off and stood there staring in amazement at what had just happened. I pinched myself to see if it was real. I counted his rack and was even more surprised to find 13 points!
I field dressed him and then began dragging him back to my car (with the rope in case you were wondering the purpose of the rope). It took me a full hour and a half to get back to my car dragging this monster up and down hills through brush and woods.
Another hunter was just coming back to his truck, and he helped me load the buck onto the back of my 1997 4 cylinder Chevy Cavalier. He was amazed at its size saying he'd been hunting there for 15 years and had never seen a buck that big. I tied him down to my trunk/frame/spoiler (the only use I've ever discovered for a spoiler on a non-racrcar).
I then attempted to drive up the previously mentioned large snow-covered hill in my front wheel drive car with an extra 250 lbs on the back axle. (as you can see the buck dwarfed the back end of my car hanging off both sides simultaneously) After the 3rd time getting stuck halfway up the hill, I backed up as far as I could up the preceding hill and gave it all I had reaching 50 MPH by the bottom of the big hill in 12 inches of snow ontop of a dirt road (kind of like a winter version of Dukes of Hazzard) and finally made it up and out!
The drive home was awesome, I stopped at 2 different gas stations (basically to show off and get gas and to get a bandaid since I had sliced my knuckles while field dressing the big guy) on the way and made it home a bit after 12:00. We took a bunch of pictures (I put several on here, as you can see, Amy was vey impressed) and then I went over to a buddy's place to start getting it ready to be processed.
We (my buddies Josh, Andy and I) figured the buck weighed about 250 field dressed (huge for a deer) and they both said it was one of the bigger bucks they had ever seen. We had some beers and worked on the deer for a bit.
Sunday I spent a good part of he day mounting the rack and re-living the hunt as hunters are known to do for months to years following a successful hunt.
A
13 point buck on opening morning 4 hours into season while hunting on public land I had been to once before... not too shaby! Now all we gotta do is figure out where we're going to keep all the meat frozen once I get it back!
Here's what the rack looks like mounted. For those of you (Whitey) who are incapable of counting/can't comprehend multiple angles, I have also posted below each side of the rack individually with the points numbered so you can see all 13 points.
