The end of the season

[B.Habermehl]

I took Friday off from work. :grin: Got up at 0-dark thirty, drove out to the farm. Visited with the farm dog so she wouldn't bark her head off. The headed out to my climber. Climbed about 15 feet up in the tree and settled in. After the owls stopped hootin it got a bit lighter. A few tweety birds are pecking around me. About 7 the first squirrel bounds by underneath me. A bit later I hear a crunch to my right.. Slowly I turn and see a good sized doe coming twards me. Boy is she on red alert! Her two yearlings are about 20 yds back. She takes a step, looks around wait acouple minutes then another. She stops and stares at the permenant tree stand 35 yd away. Boy is she burning holes in that stand! Then she does the head bob and step thing. The turns and stares at me. Dang! I'm busted I think. I freeze and slowly close my eyes a bit and look away abit. She relaxes abit. I flip off the leather frizzen cover, my second safety. The breeze picks up and I use the rustling to cover pulling the hammer back to full cock. Never mind the tree I'm in is swaying. Ok deer take two more steps and get your head behind that tree so I can raise this rifle. She takes 4 or 5, but I get the rifle up anyhow. The front sight finds the crease of her shoulder. The .58 roars, smoke and brimstone fill the air. She turns and dashes jumps a pile of brush, and dissapears down the slope. Did she get rubber legged at that brush? I ratchet my way down the tree and disconnect my safety harness. Reloading the rifle I wonder if I did see her get rubberleggy? I walk over the the spot I thought she was standing. No blood or hair. Not that surprizing I think so I start to zig zag on her exit route. No blood so far I come to the slope and turn to the left. I go about 20 or 30 yds no sign. Turn around pick my way along. Aha! There is the brush pile! I see a bloody skid mark, then another. I look down the bank and there she is, 40 yds down, wrapped around a tree! I wait a while then unload for safety due to the steep and icy slope. Standing along side of her I give thanks for the harvest. Then the thought come to me. Geez she's big how the heck an I going to get her out of here? I try to drag her up hill. The only result is her and I sliding downhill to the next tree. Down hill is not a option, the property is posted. Time to go home and get my burley Son in law. Then we drag her up the hill a foot and a half at a time. Funny how it takes 500 lbs of man power to drag a 130 lb doe up hill!

 

[rabjr]

:haha: Nice, grats! :thumbsup:

 

[bucktales]

Good Going! :thumbsup:
Another 9th inning save! :applause:

 

[dallas10c]

Congrats on the doe. We have teenage sons to haul deer! We help teach them about the woods and hunting...they haul the spoils out of the woods. Sounds fair to me!

 

[Flint311]

Good story. Nice way to end the season...Congrats!

 

[Jamie from Alberta]

That's awesome and memories to last you a lifetime to boot!!

 

[paulvallandigham]

Great story. Where did your ball hit her? Did it fully penetrate her, or was the slug found in her when you field dressed her?

My first deer was a large doe, with two trailing yearlings. She also made it to the bottom of a steep ravine, thereby teaching the lasting lesson:

" Either shoot them close to camp, or shoot the little ones!"

Congratulations on a fine hunt, and a nice ending to this season. :hatsoff: :hatsoff:

 

[RC]

Congrats an Atta boy! :thumbsup: (on the hunt,,,the story definitely coulda used Bleeps! :haha: :thumbsup:

 

[PreglerD]

Congrats and Waidmanns Heil!

Is it deerlike in the USA to harvest guiding does from the fawns? In Germany it is when hunting roedeer. The red stag calfs are still to young!

Regards

Kirrmeister

 

[BillinOregon]

Herr Habermehl:
Thanks for sharing your story. Deer seasons ended here weeks ago. Glad to hear someone is still making venison with a muzzleloader.

 

[agill]

Congratulations! :thumbsup:

 

[PreglerD]

Roeseason ends at 15th of jan. red stag season ends at 31st of jan. So I have 3 weeks left to get a red deer.

Regards

Kirrmeister

 

[rabjr]

Not sure what a guiding doe is but the fawns have been weaned here for a good 6 months at least by this time of the year Kirrm.

 

[blueridger]

Great story. I really enjoyed it. I'm already scouting for next year.

 

[B.Habermehl]

The yearlings left behind will be fine. If the doe fawn was born earley enough this spring, she may have been bred herself. If the other one was a button buck, the doe would verry soon be chasing it away. The doe fawn may have hung around mom in the coming season as does will often stay together.

 

[B.Habermehl]

As far as I could tell the ball did not exit. The ball hit just abit foreward into the shoulder blade than I intended. I normally place a round ball just the same as I would a arrow. She was shot about 30 yards out and ran no more than 25 yards. My butcher will let me know in a day or so if I missed the exit hole.

 

[PreglerD]

Not sure what a guiding doe is but the fawns have been weaned here for a good 6 months at least by this time of the year Kirrm.

Swampy I mean a doe who leads fawns/calfs. this is called in Germany leading or "führend".

Regards

Kirrmeister

 

[Roy]

cool :thumbsup: Congrats!

 

[chance]

Congrats!

 

[paulvallandigham]

Its not uncommon for a mature doe to let her newborns(that Spring, or Summer) to trail along with her into the Fall and even into Winter, as she teaches them how to find food during these harder seasons. However, of a yearling doe has been breed, the two does will separate in the Spring the following year to have their fawns. If the mother is barren, she may stay with the daughter, to act as a babysitter for the new fawn, and help guard the daughter from predators, and even from bucks. By Summertime, the does usually separate, and each takes her own family off with her.

In the dead of winter, when deer yard up, its not uncommon to see dozens of does all together, with the bucks together in a separate yard, some distance away.

Only rarely will a young "button buck" be allowed to stay with the women into the Winter. As soon as he develops and begins producing Testosterone, he is kicked out of the fold. Then he wanders around looking for company and finds his way to a group of other bachelors. Bucks have been shown to travel great distances, apparently looking for does in heat, but then make their way back to their home territories, often a circuit that may be more than 100 miles in length. However, the vast majority of bucks remain within a mile or two of where they were born, their entire lives.

There is a group that calls itself "Stumpsitters" that publishes a magazine called "Deer & Deer Hunting", that comes out only 9 times a year. It is a combination outdoors magazine, focused on deer hunting, and published data from university researchers on deer. Its very good information, and much easier to read than the stuff published in scientific journals.
http://www.deeranddeerhunting.com/Magazine/

I found the tracks of three generations of does walking together one June, when I was scouting a forest preserve to find tracks to teach Track Identification to a group of Science Teachers later that day. Mom was clearly only slightly more than a year old herself, and the yearling was only weeks old. Grandmother was staying with her daughter and granddaughter, and this was clearly seen from the relative location of the tracks, and the fact that grandmother lead the three as they walked away from the site where I found them browsing for food. The relationship between the two older does was also easy to read from the interaction between the two as shown from the tracks. ( Size of the tracks told me the age of the does; sex is/was determined by the pitch angles and straddle for the back legs compared to the straddle for the front legs.)

As a bonus to the Teacher/students, I was able to show them all of this and how to go about reading footprints like this. They asked very good questions, and listened very well. They gave me a round of applause when I finished my presentation for the morning, and left them. That was nice. I later got some feedback from the staff at the Forest Preserve, who told me that my presentation was what everyone there talked about the rest of the seminar. ( How to use local Parks & Forest Preserves in teaching Natural Science to students in grades 1-12).