I turned home, waded the creek, walked under the sycamores and made enough noise in their dry leaves to awaken the dead (they're noisy.) As soon as I made the hardwoods I sat on the trunk of a fallen maple a beaver had dropped, emptied the water from my boots, pulled off my socks and wrung the water from them.
With the sloshing sound in my hikers gone I felt more like a hunter. I slowly began moving along the logging road that bisected the river bottom from a tall wooded ridge. I rounded a sharp bend in the trail, looked up on the ridge and saw two does scrounging acorns from underneath the leaf litter. Twice I counted coup: I eased off the safety, looked at the rear doe in my sights, wrapped my finger over the trigger, eased off, and did the same to the lead doe. Just maybe a buck would show.
For twenty minutes I watched the deer nose into the wind. For twenty minutes I nosed along behind them. A possum walked across the trail in front of me. A grey squirrel jumped off a tree beside me. My heart skipped a beat. The evening was warmer than it should have been, the rut was gone, and I suppose the bucks were as tired as me.
Bow season is in for a few more weeks. I know of a spot where the red oaks dropped a heavy mast. Maybe the deer will be hungry enough to eat them and maybe I will be up a tree there when they do.
I am pretty sure this is the buck I saw in the marsh during shotgun season. I had him in my scope three times, but I couldn't quite get the shot. Maybe he made it through the rest of the season.
