With the early muzzleloading season underway, I was reminded of my first flintlock deer. Taken in the late season here in New York, it posed some challenges....
It was so cold, the geese would not fly.
My hunting partner, Steve, and I had been in our ground blinds since first light, waiting for the resident Canada geese to leave the pond and head to the cornfield where we lay. After a couple of hours at 7 degrees, we could not feel our feet or our fingers, and we had not heard a single honk. We decided that the geese were smarter than we, and were not going to expend any unnecessary energy on a morning that cold.
So we packed up our spread in the bitter cold and returned to a warm cabin and woodstove. Walking back to the camp, the loud crunch of crusted snow underfoot reminded us of just how cold it really was.
Since late goose season coincided with the late muzzleloader season, we decided to warm up and then put on a short two-man drive near the pond where the intelligent geese had remained grounded for the morning. After some hot tea and a brief sit by the stove, we headed out.
The plan was for me to sneak into the end of a swamp near the pond, and for Steve to wait 30 minutes before making a silent drive in my direction. I loaded up my left-hand TVM .62 caliber rifled fowler with 70 grains of 3F and a patched round ball, and headed to my watch.
The crusted snow made the side-hill walking in the woods hazardous, and the noise carried for miles. This had all the makings of a ceremonial dry run, after which we could call it a day and sit by the fire. Any deer within a mile of our little hunt would hear us coming long before we could ever see them.
After making my way to the appointed spot, I settled in to watch a well-used runway between me and the pond. The geese were there, trying their best to survive the cold. The sun came up, but held no warmth. After five minutes on watch my fingers had stopped sending signals to my brain and my feet were like bricks. I checked the priming on my flintlock and waited for Steve to find his way to me.
Twenty minutes later, I heard hurried footsteps coming from some hemlocks to my south. Instead of taking the well-worn trail that was before me, something was breaking trail behind me, between my watch and the sharp hill to my west. I assumed that Steve had misunderstood where I was going to sit, and was crunching through the snow on a different trail. I twisted around to my right, just in time to see three deer running along the bottom of the hill about 35 yards from my perch.
Instinctively, I swung my rifle through the shoulder of the largest of the three deer. The gun surprised me as it went off, seemingly of its own volition. Already at full speed,the deer ran by me and disappeared from sight beyond the knoll. Then, it got very quiet.
It seemed forever before Steve came lumbering in to my spot, thrashing through the crust under a great cloud of steam, with a questioning look on his face. "Did you shoot?" All I could do was nod my head. I had never shot at a running deer with a flintlock before, and I felt pretty foolish.
We walked to where the deer had run by me, and began searching for some sign. The trail had plenty of deer tracks in it, but not hair nor blood. It looked like a clean miss. We looked for signs of my having hit a branch or twig, but found nothing. I had to accept that wing-shooting deer was harder than wing-shooting geese.
After a brief consultation, we decided to make one more morning drive in the opposite direction, perhaps heading off the fleeing deer. So I stripped down to traveling layers, left Steve on watch with our extra clothes, and began to make a loop designed to bring me back to where we started.
The walking was not better on the hill, but at least I was getting warm from the exertion. I pitied Steve, now sitting along a sunless knoll in the bitter cold. At least there was no wind. I climbed, circled, and headed back towards the pond. There was no sign of anything alive. Even the squirrels, so common in the hillside acorns, were staying somewhere warm. Nearly to the end of the drive, I stopped to listen to the geese, resting on the pond below and now honking loudly. Disturbed but too smart to fly in this cold, they scolded my approach.
And then I saw it; a large brown shape in the snow between the pond and where I had sat. It couldn't be. Be it was. Fifty yards from where I had shot an hour before, and just out of sight from where Steve now sat, was a dead deer with a .62 caliber hole in her right shoulder. The shot had entered the point of the shoulder, broken the shoulder bones and taken both lungs before coming to rest in the opposite shoulder. The high placement of the shot and extreme cold had kept any blood from reaching the ground. She was dead when it hit her. Her momentum had carried her out of my sight and into the dark hemlocks by the pond. We had our deer.
The long drag back to the camp warmed us up. When we arrived at the camp, the temperature had risen to 9 degrees above. I have taken a lot of deer in my hunting career, and not a few with muzzleloaders. But this was my first Flintlock Deer. And that made it special.
ADK Bigfoot
It was so cold, the geese would not fly.
My hunting partner, Steve, and I had been in our ground blinds since first light, waiting for the resident Canada geese to leave the pond and head to the cornfield where we lay. After a couple of hours at 7 degrees, we could not feel our feet or our fingers, and we had not heard a single honk. We decided that the geese were smarter than we, and were not going to expend any unnecessary energy on a morning that cold.
So we packed up our spread in the bitter cold and returned to a warm cabin and woodstove. Walking back to the camp, the loud crunch of crusted snow underfoot reminded us of just how cold it really was.
Since late goose season coincided with the late muzzleloader season, we decided to warm up and then put on a short two-man drive near the pond where the intelligent geese had remained grounded for the morning. After some hot tea and a brief sit by the stove, we headed out.
The plan was for me to sneak into the end of a swamp near the pond, and for Steve to wait 30 minutes before making a silent drive in my direction. I loaded up my left-hand TVM .62 caliber rifled fowler with 70 grains of 3F and a patched round ball, and headed to my watch.
The crusted snow made the side-hill walking in the woods hazardous, and the noise carried for miles. This had all the makings of a ceremonial dry run, after which we could call it a day and sit by the fire. Any deer within a mile of our little hunt would hear us coming long before we could ever see them.
After making my way to the appointed spot, I settled in to watch a well-used runway between me and the pond. The geese were there, trying their best to survive the cold. The sun came up, but held no warmth. After five minutes on watch my fingers had stopped sending signals to my brain and my feet were like bricks. I checked the priming on my flintlock and waited for Steve to find his way to me.
Twenty minutes later, I heard hurried footsteps coming from some hemlocks to my south. Instead of taking the well-worn trail that was before me, something was breaking trail behind me, between my watch and the sharp hill to my west. I assumed that Steve had misunderstood where I was going to sit, and was crunching through the snow on a different trail. I twisted around to my right, just in time to see three deer running along the bottom of the hill about 35 yards from my perch.
Instinctively, I swung my rifle through the shoulder of the largest of the three deer. The gun surprised me as it went off, seemingly of its own volition. Already at full speed,the deer ran by me and disappeared from sight beyond the knoll. Then, it got very quiet.
It seemed forever before Steve came lumbering in to my spot, thrashing through the crust under a great cloud of steam, with a questioning look on his face. "Did you shoot?" All I could do was nod my head. I had never shot at a running deer with a flintlock before, and I felt pretty foolish.
We walked to where the deer had run by me, and began searching for some sign. The trail had plenty of deer tracks in it, but not hair nor blood. It looked like a clean miss. We looked for signs of my having hit a branch or twig, but found nothing. I had to accept that wing-shooting deer was harder than wing-shooting geese.
After a brief consultation, we decided to make one more morning drive in the opposite direction, perhaps heading off the fleeing deer. So I stripped down to traveling layers, left Steve on watch with our extra clothes, and began to make a loop designed to bring me back to where we started.
The walking was not better on the hill, but at least I was getting warm from the exertion. I pitied Steve, now sitting along a sunless knoll in the bitter cold. At least there was no wind. I climbed, circled, and headed back towards the pond. There was no sign of anything alive. Even the squirrels, so common in the hillside acorns, were staying somewhere warm. Nearly to the end of the drive, I stopped to listen to the geese, resting on the pond below and now honking loudly. Disturbed but too smart to fly in this cold, they scolded my approach.
And then I saw it; a large brown shape in the snow between the pond and where I had sat. It couldn't be. Be it was. Fifty yards from where I had shot an hour before, and just out of sight from where Steve now sat, was a dead deer with a .62 caliber hole in her right shoulder. The shot had entered the point of the shoulder, broken the shoulder bones and taken both lungs before coming to rest in the opposite shoulder. The high placement of the shot and extreme cold had kept any blood from reaching the ground. She was dead when it hit her. Her momentum had carried her out of my sight and into the dark hemlocks by the pond. We had our deer.
The long drag back to the camp warmed us up. When we arrived at the camp, the temperature had risen to 9 degrees above. I have taken a lot of deer in my hunting career, and not a few with muzzleloaders. But this was my first Flintlock Deer. And that made it special.
ADK Bigfoot
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