Friday November 8th was a windy day in the mountains of Clinch Mountain Wildlife Management Area. My friend, Ron and I arrived at the WMA around 9 AM. Turkey firearms season and deer muzzle loading season was open. It had been cold the night before, but the sun was bright and warming the frosty leaves making walking fairly quite. That, and the winds were blowing from the northwest at close to ten miles per hour. The trees were bending slightly and the rest of the fall leaves were falling covering all signs of animal activity.
We walked about fifty yards or so up hill in the woods and came to an old logging road that was fairly clear. It was easy walking and we decided to follow it as it bordered an old clear cut that was several years old. It looked like there was no acorn crop at all until we moved back the leaves and found all sorts of red oak acorns, but not a hint of white oak was to be found.
As we walked slowly up the old road the clear cut age changed to just a few years old with many small saplings about eight foot in height. It was perfect habitat for a whitetail buck to make a rub line. Yet, we saw no rubs. It was warming up as the morning drew closer to noon and the frost and ice was melting and making small puddles on the leaves.
As we made our way to the top of a ridge that kept rising, Ron decided it was time to do a lost turkey call to see what would respond. It was around 10 o’clock. I decided to watch a small hollow and was walking off the road and Ron was walking to the edge of the ridge where it made a 90 degree turn when a small buck jumped out of its bed and walked not twenty feet parallel to Ron and I spotted him as I turned to see where Ron was going. I called to Ron and said, “Look at that deer!”
This was the first deer hunt I had been on this season and Virginia allows only two bucks west of the Blue Ridge and I was quickly deciding if this small buck should be taken or not. The buck stopped maybe thirty feet in front of Ron and made the decision easy. Ron was close by, but safely out of the way. I raised the 50 caliber Jim Chambers Early York flintlock and fired! Ron watched the buck fall down the side of the ridge and exclaimed, “You shot him in the spine!” He was down, but not dead. I quickly reloaded and went over for the kill. I aimed and fired, but I flinched and missed even though it was only thirty feet away! I reloaded as the buck grunted trying to gain its feet. I reloaded and put him out of pain with a lung shot. He tumbled down the hillside and stopped on a spot where a tree and fallen and left a flat place, but had since rotted away. He turned out to be a young eight-pointer and I made short work of cleaning him thanks to Ron who mentored me over the years teaching hunting skills. The buck turned out to be 108 pounds dressed.
We left the buck where he had fallen and marked the trail so we could recover him later. After all, Ron was looking for turkeys and there was plenty of daylight left. We had a lunch on a fallen log overlooking a flat area of the ridge when Ron spotted a rubbed sapling. Could have been made by the eight-pointer, but who knows? Later, up the ridge we jumped a doe that was much wiser than the young buck and she snorted and bolted.
The ridge lead us to a wildlife clearing made by the Fish and Game Department. We saw nothing in the clearing of short grasses and continued our hunt down a hunter access road. After several minutes of walking we came to another wildlife clearing, but nothing was browsing there either. Ron made some turkey calls, but nothing responded except for a few ravens and crows that had been flying around the area all day. We decided to turn around and head back for the buck and start the drag off the mountain.
We returned to the buck after awhile. As we got to him we noticed something had found him first! Some white hair was pulled out of its tail and a small section of hindquarter had been eaten. We could not determine what had done it, but the flesh had small slivers removed about the size of a pencil in an area the size of a baseball. My guess is that ravens and or crows did it.
The drag off the mountain was fairly easy since it was down hill, but loose rocks made the going slow and dangerous. Ron carried the weapons and I guided the deer down and we made it back to the road. Soon we were in the pickup.
We stopped by Laurel Bed Lake just to see what was hanging around. We were treated with a flyover by a golden eagle. On the water were twelve Canada geese, thirteen grebes (perhaps pied billed), five bufflehead ducks, and one unknown gull, which was too far off to identify.
