BY ANDY CRAWFORD

Photo by ANDY CRAWFORD

Tracking deer on the islands of Atchafalaya Delta WMA can be difficult, a fact of which Aucoin was reminded when he arrowed a big 10-point. After trailing the deer for two hours, all Aucoin was left with was a blood-soaked arrow.

Ricky Aucoin hates deer. That was the only explanation for why he would hunt under these conditions.

Mosquitoes — the nasty marsh variety that dig in and hold on — were swarming my stand, probing for any exposed skin. The horrible insects ruthlessly sucked blood from every blood vessel in my hands, including those invisibly coursing under my fingernails and between my fingers. Other mosquitoes swooped in to investigate my nose, mouth and ears. Some had just enough stinger to reach the skin through my head mask.

Even when I twitched the targeted appendage, the black demons held tight, refusing to lose a drop of life-blood. Mosquitoes so swollen that their abdomens turned crimson were barely able to lift off when brushed. Most popped at the slightest touch, but even in death the beasts held fast.

The sun had yet to cast its first golden rays over the lush marsh, and I was ready to give up. To hell with it; the potential gain just wasn’t worth the pain.

That was at 5:30 a.m. Twenty minutes later, I didn’t even notice the newest arrivals to the feeding trough that was my skin.

An irregular splashing brought me to full alert. In the pre-dawn darkness, I saw a shape moving toward my stand from the left. A flash of

white as the deer lifted its head sent my heart into overdrive.

The whitetail was sloshing through the muck only about 20 yards from the stand, walking a path that would put the deer about 8 yards directly in front of my position. Although I could barely see the dark silhouette of the animal, I brought my bow up and ensured my arrow was nocked.

The sight pin was almost invisible, so I drew the bow to see if I was able to shoot.

The deer threw its head up and stared at me for a few seconds, its movement clearly defining the bulging neck that signaled it was a buck. I couldn’t make out any head gear, but no doe has a neck like that.

When the deer put its head down and took another step, I loosed the arrow after placing the barely visible pin just behind the silhouette’s shoulder.

The suspected buck plunged to the ground as soon as the arrow left the string, and then it wheeled about and bolted back the way it came.

Although it was extremely tough to tell in the dim light, the arrow appeared to sail harmlessly over the deer.

Not 10 minutes later, I heard an audible thwack from a nearby stand. A deer bounded away from another hunter’s position.

Another 15 minutes of silence was ruptured by the unmistakable zing of an arrow being released from Aucoin’s position, although there was no accompanying sound of impact.

Minutes later, my small two-way radio crackled to life, and I held it close to my ear to hear what Aucoin had to say.

“I just shot at a big 10-point. The rack wasn’t outside the ears, but it was real tall and symmetrical,” the Morgan City hunter whispered, his words coming between excited gulps. “I think I undershot it, though.”

My heart raced as I whispered encouragement. The hunt was still early, and deer seemed to be everywhere on the marshy spit of land at the mouth of the Atchafalaya River.

The final action of the morning came about 6:30, when a big doe splashed out of a field of cattails and into a thicket of willow trees to my left rear. The deer gracefully picked its way toward the front of my stand, but it was obvious that it wouldn’t come within my prerequisite 25 yards.

I bleated softly, and the sounds of the deer moving about in the willows stopped. The nanny finally continued on its way, turning toward my stand, but remaining about 35 yards out. Followed by a yearling, it crossed about the halfway point between Aucoin and me.

By 6:45, the deer were finished moving. I decided to get down and confirm my fears about my early-morning shot.

I quickly discovered my arrow, which was stuck in the mud at a perfect angle to have passed through the deer. Unfortunately, the shaft and fletching were absolutely devoid of blood. The deer had jumped the string, which I wouldn’t have believed possible at such a short distance.

A quick radio call to Aucoin resulted in an invitation to help him search for his arrow. I started the short but muddy walk to his stand.

What I saw on the way was unbelievable. Every few feet were well-used game trails that crisscrossed to form a complicated web of pathways. Deer tracks were clearly visible in most of the muddy byways.

Atchafalaya Delta Wildlife Management Area apparently was exactly what Aucoin had promised — full of deer.

Once at Aucoin’s stand, I was directed to where the big 10-pointer was standing when Aucoin released his arrow.

“I figured it was 35 yards. I must have underestimated the distance,” he explained. “I think I shot just under him.”

The arrow was standing almost vertically in the marsh, and it was covered in blood.

“Come on! You’re not kidding me are you?” a newly excited Aucoin asked. “I thought I had missed.”

The discovery of a steady blood trail only yards away from the arrow resulted in a 2 1/2-hour trek across a good portion of the island. The two of us took turns on point, following the track that wound under and through the branches of thick crape myrtle stands.

The trail finally ended more than a third of a mile away from Aucoin’s stand site. We had crawled and duck-walked at least twice that distance while following the winding path of the wounded deer.

The last sign was where the deer bedded down. There was a clear depression in the soggy soil, and blood mingled with the mud. The deer, however, was nowhere to be found. The wound apparently had clotted, and the deer walked away.

No amount of searching revealed a fresh blood trail, and we were forced to give up.

“Hopefully it’s not dead or wounded too badly,” Aucoin lamented.

While the hunt ended without finding the trophy buck, the search provided further evidence of the incredible number of deer living on the marshy island. Aucoin and two of his Morgan City buddies had promised me the area was filled with the animals, but it was hard for a hardwood-bottomlands hunter like me to believe. It was simply marsh, much more suited for ducks than deer.

“I talked to a friend of mine, and he and a buddy saw 23 deer the other day,” David Simoneaux had told me the night before. “They’re down here.”

Photo by ANDY CRAWFORD

Dragging deer out of the marsh is nasty work because you are walking over soft marsh mud, but the effort is well worth the hassles. Atchafalaya Delta WMA is swarming with deer.

He and Aucoin have for years been hunting the management area, a 137,000-acre expanse composed mostly of water but including two series of islands at the mouths of the Atchafalaya River and Wax Lake Outlet.

“It’s my favorite place because I see more deer there than anywhere else,” Aucoin said.

That’s a telling statement, since this hunter frequents several public areas, including Sherburne, Attakapas and Mandalay.

Of course, those wanting to hunt Atchafalaya Delta must be rugged hunters willing to work for their deer.

Accessing the management area is the first hurdle. Because it is truly a delta forming at the mouth of a river, boats are the only way to get there. That means running the Atchafalaya River, which is packed with large crew boats, or learning backwater routes that increase the length of the trip.

Once there, sandbars can be a problem. Many of the islands are surrounded by the hard-packed shelves that will beach boats or eat up propellers or both. Knowing where they can be crossed is important, as is idling in to lessen the chances of running aground.

Then there are the tides. Being able to get past the sandbars doesn’t guarantee that you will make it out after the hunt.

“There was one time, when I had a bigger boat, that I came back after the morning hunt and it was sitting like this,” Aucoin said, holding his hand aslant. “The tide had gone out on me, and the boat was high and dry.”

Simoneaux chuckled at the remembrance.

“They had to stay in there all day long waiting on the tide to come back in,” he said.

Lastly, fog can be a major problem, particularly later in the season.

“I got caught in the fog one day, and I just tied to a buoy and took a nap,” Simoneaux said.

That’s why the best bet is to travel out to the management area the night before a hunt and camp at the public campground just west of Big Island.

“If you try to run out the morning of the hunt, you might not make it. There have been times when we’ve pulled up to the landing and had to turn around and go home because of the fog,” Aucoin said.

But the draw to the Atchafalaya Delta is so strong that Aucoin never misses an opening day. This year’s start was on Nov. 1, and Aucoin watched seven deer (including the 10-pointer) during that first morning’s hunt. Five were within bow range.

The first few days of the season, which is archery-only and ends at the end of this month, are the best because the deer aren’t spooked. Once the droves of hunters hit the island, there is a few-week slowdown.

Fortunately, once rifle season opens outside the area, the pressure exerted on the deer herd falls off dramatically.

“When most guys can hunt with guns, they’re not going to bow-hunt,” Aucoin said. “Once rifle season opens (outside of the WMA), pressure falls off.”

That’s perfect for Aucoin and his cohorts because the rut on the islands usually begins sometime around or just after Thanksgiving.

And that’s when the big bucks begin roaming the islands with little regard to hunters. Aucoin learned just how massive the bucks can be a few years back when he arrowed 10- and 11-pointers.

“These aren’t marsh deer,” he said. “Some of the deer that have been killed weighed over 200 pounds.”

The target of his attention is the largest island in the group of islands at the mouth of the Atchafalaya River. It’s called, appropriately, Big Island, and is just across a cut from the old Department of Wildlife & Fisheries headquarters.

“That’s where most of the people hunt,” Aucoin said. “It’s the easiest to get to and the easiest to hunt.”

The island is about three miles long, running in a roughly southwest to northeast direction, and roughly a mile wide. Its main features are muck and wildly contorted crape myrtles.

As I discovered while helping trail Aucoin’s 10-pointer, the myrtle groves are packed with deer sign. Trails leading every which way give ample evidence of the masses of deer on the island.

“If you find the right place, it looks like cows have walked through,” Aucoin said.

But he and his buddies said the myrtle thickets are almost impossible to hunt, and the effort usually doesn’t pay off.

“There are guys who go sit on a bucket in the myrtles, but it’s a hit-and-miss thing,” Simoneaux said.

Officials with the Department of Wildlife & Fisheries maintain a complex of rights-of-way cutting through the heart of the island, and that’s where most of the hunters frequenting the island focus their efforts.

“Guys make tripods with wheels on them, and they find a spot where deer trails cross and wait. If they see a deer cross out of range, they move their stands down to that trail and try that spot,” Simoneaux said.

Access to the rights-of-way is obtained by motoring into the Cove (shown on maps as the Cul-De-Sac) toward the southwestern end of the island. From there, stands can be rolled or carried to wherever the hunter would like to sit.

That can obviously be productive, but Aucoin and Simoneaux, along with a few of their Morgan City friends, move away from these areas to find less-pressured deer.

“The deer get in the marsh on the edges of the island and move into the myrtles in the morning and back out in the evening,” Aucoin said.

So that’s where they set up — on the edges of the crape myrtles, where they can ambush deer no matter which way the deer are moving. These areas are more open than the heart of the crape myrtles, and there is definitely no shortage of deer moving into and out of the myrtles.

Scouting the area can be a confusing proposition because of the sheer number of deer trails, but Aucoin said the key is to hunt often enough to pattern deer and learn which trails they prefer in a specific area.

“They use those same trails over and over, year after year. I think it’s because they think, ‘Why walk through that heavy stuff when you can walk through that open stuff?’” he said. “See how those trails were dug into the marsh? They stay like that.

“That’s why we don’t really do any scouting anymore. We just go back to those same trails year after year.”

The main access areas are on the southwestern end, either at the Cove or around the edges with flatboats or duck boats.

There are a couple of potential access points along the northern side of the island (Ditches 1 and 2), but there are rocks just under the water at the edge of the channel that make it treacherous for all but the most shallow-drafting boats.

“If you’ve got a Go-Devil, you might be able to get in there,” Aucoin said.

Photo by ANDY CRAWFORD

Aucoin shows off a 3-point that would tip the scales at about 130 pounds. The deer was killed while hunting with buddies David Simoneaux and Clay Briehn.

Although most of the pressure is focused on Big Island, Aucoin and Simoneaux said the other spits of land hold deer as well.

“The deer swim those islands, back and forth,” Simoneaux said.

For instance, Aucoin and Simoneaux know Spoil A, which is north of Big Island across a channel holds a ton of deer. The problem is hunting them. That island is ringed with willow trees, but most of the island is barren marsh, which is where the deer are found.

“If you want to go where the deer are, you have to have a tripod,” Aucoin said.

Since Aucoin and Simoneaux prefer short ladder stands that they chain to willows, Spoil A isn’t a productive choice for them.

Simoneaux said the islands south of Big Island, while know to hold a lot of deer, are too inaccessible for most hunters.

“It’s getting to where the sandbars are getting so big, and those islands are so far away from everything,” he explained. “And if it’s foggy, you’re shot.”

Once a productive area is found and a deer is shot, however, tracking can be difficult because of the marshy nature of the islands. At best, the rims of the islands are sloppy mud, and getting around is tough. At worst, much of the land is covered with water.

“When the water is real high, you can’t track in that,” Simoneaux said.

That’s obvious, but many novice Atchafalaya Delta hunters don’t understand the real implications of high tides. When blood falls in water, it quickly dilutes and disappears. Unless the deer stumbles across a high piece of land, it can vanish without a trace.

Simoneaux said there’s only one way to track deer in such situations.

“You go to where the last blood was found, and start walking in circles and hope you find more blood or find the deer,” he said.

To help keep track of where the last blood was found, Simoneaux likes to use toilet paper. That way, he can mark last blood and where he has already searched.

Hunters new to the area also should keep in mind that the ample number of deer is accompanied by a lot of coyotes. That means deer that are stuck should be tracked quickly to ensure the canines don’t get to them first.

“You can’t leave a deer overnight. If you do that, the coyotes will find the deer, and you won’t recover the entire deer,” Aucoin said. “You might get the backstrap out of it.”

That’s exactly what happened when he arrowed his 11-point two years ago. He had trouble finding it, so he returned the next morning with friends only to discover most of his deer was ravaged.

The Atchafalaya Delta experience is definitely not an easy one. Access is tough. Stinking marsh mud gets on pretty much everything. Mosquitoes do their best to suck hunters dry. Tracking can be very difficult and grueling.

But the odds of taking a deer on the WMA are very good.

“It’s not easy (to deer hunt) anywhere,” Aucoin said. “And I see more deer here than anywhere else. It’s my favorite place.”