Deer Season 2022 Opens

Deer season 2022 is entering its fourth day this morning. Squirrel-Eating Jon – the man whom eating nothing but squirrels matured to a full-mediocrity – has been out every day. Conditions for hunting deer were superb the first two days, snowing, blowing, the thermometer dropping. He stuck closer to home cos the roads were treacherous and at least two trophy bucks and some other perfectly acceptable specimens are about. This includes the great bullbuck with the vaguely asymetrical cast to his antlers that made it through last year, pictured above. As you can see, he’s now sporting a drop-tine and his brow tines may be a little shorter than last year (see last year’s post.) Like the man tracking him, he may have entered his decline now. Nostrils recognizing the scent of the earth rising to claim him.

On Day One Eating got into some big does, and while he is carrying two doe tags, he doesn’t shoot them close to home out of some doomed sentimentality. The second day similarly he could have filled his doe tags, as well as still-hunting to within 60 yards of this big-bodied young buck pictured here less than a week previous:

Let him grow.

The young feller was mosying along through an open hardwood ridge when Jon peeked over a rise, broadside at 60 yards. Some does up ahead of him. He was let walk, soon breaking into a frolic in pursuit of the doe-group, across a meadow and out of sight.

Down in the coulee bottom were the partially-filled tracks of the season’s last active grizzly from the night before. Or at least, it is hoped it is the season’s last. Eating has swapped his big .375 for his preferred deer rifle, a light and fast 1956 vintage Remington ADL pump in .300 Savage. Not a gun to be used protecting yourself against grizzlies on the unlikely chance you might need to. For which he is still carrying his mace.

Day Three dawned frigid, -22 C/4 below zero. Ridiculous given a mere week and a half previous it was 75 F and he could feel his neck turning into bacon. How do you acclimatize? Baptism by frost is how. The Squirrel-Eater put on his layers and hit the big woods, the public lands to the west. He cruised some considerable miles parsing the plethora of lesser deer tracks before he came upon the track of The World’s Biggest Buck in a region known for dakotensis whitetails that can field dress at over 300 pounds. Look at that stride, he thought, not noting in his initial flush that the straddle did not match:

It was the track of a lone wolf. Nice to see, but nothing he ever wanted to hunt. On he went, going about another mile before coming upon the track of an actual big buck crossing the road. Not the biggest, but big enough for Day Three. He got on trail. The ol’ boy took him through some heavily regrown young cutblocks interspersed with mature blocks of lodgepole, hellacious with blowdown. By now it was 0 degrees C/32 F. He was building a film of sweat, a stupid thing to do in the winter woods, but how do you dress for such outrageous fluctuations? You strip off is how, but he had been too eager to get on it. In a bit over a half mile he came upon the deer’s first bed. It was clear now the track was not quite as fresh as it had seemed on the cold road surface and in the powder. Furthermore, he had not jumped the buck. It was in all likelihood not just up ahead, so given the late start on this one and his sweated condition, he turned back. He would check this area again at intervals. One day the circumstances might fall together just-so, and the season was still wide-open. Aside from The Bullbuck, other bucks back home were waiting, including this ten (eleven?) pointer, poised to take Bullbuck’s crown if Jon didn’t:

It’s a region known for dakotensis whitetails that can field dress at over 300 pounds.