Public lands on Lake Pontchartrain’s north shore are the perfect targets for bow hunters who want to get a shot at deer before the rifle-bearing hordes hit the woods.
Temperature’s dropping to 48! But it’s two days after Christmas. Getting in your deerstand for dawn? Probably. But you’re not really pumped for the occasion.
It’s more of a ritual than a pulse-pounding passion.
Then, sure enough, back at the camp everyone reports that nobody saw a thing, except in the ATV headlights on the ride back.
Temperature’s dropping to 48! And it’s the second week of October. Humping up the tree for bowhunt? In fact, you can barely sleep the night before, and jump out of bed well before the alarm.
Then your non-hunting chums at the LSU tailgate party (to say nothing of their spouses) tire of hearing your excited account of all the deer you saw that morning. They roll their eyes and flee at your approach.
Indeed, experience has taught that you see multiple times the number of deer under the second scenario than the first. Granted, for many (perhaps most) Louisiana deer hunters, going to da deer hunting camp (especially during the Christmas holidays) has a very tangential relationship with actually hunting deer.
In brief, if a South Louisiana deer hunter had only one day a year to hunt deer, he’d be wise to make it the day after the first cold front of the year, even if this “cold” barely called for long sleeves.
Naturally this means taking up a bow or crossbow.
Start hunting in October, and the deer become nocturnal in October. Start hunting in November, and the deer become nocturnal in November. Sure, a (very) few (very) briefly goof up their schedule when crazed by the rut or carb-loading during super-cold fronts. Hence the 4-point fajitas, chili and Cuban steaks that so delight the guests on Doc’s gazebo later in the year.
But a Louisiana deer hunter’s (myself included) powers of self deception always amaze me. It’s not rocket science, amigos. Hunting pressure turns our (relatively) few and ultra-wary deer nocturnal. But we love to kid ourselves.
The mischievous look on Pelayo’s face as we planned the coming deer season from Doc Fontaine’s gazebo during halftime of the Auburn game said he’d solved the riddle.
Remember Steve Martin in “The Jerk?” Remember when, as the service station attendant, he hooked that cable to the hoodlum’s car axle? Remember his snickering? He thought he’d hit upon a brilliant and ultra-slick scheme. He looked like Mr. Super Slick in the flesh!
Pelayo shamed him.
“Why bowhunt our lease?” he snickered from his chair while accepting another brewskie from Trisha and lingering at the view as she bent over him.
Finally he patted her affectionately on the hip, walked up to Artie and leaned over to whisper in his ear, his eyebrows dancing.
“All that does is making our few deer nocturnal two weeks into October,” Pelayo hissed.
Now he looked more like Michael Corleone transmitting another hit order to Consiglieri Tom Hagen.
“Then, as usual, by the time Thanksgiving comes around we’re all pounding sand,” he said. “So here’ the deal ….”
Indeed, heated disputes had been raging over this very issue. Squirrel hunting had long been banned (so much for recruiting the “youngins” into hunting). Now the very thing this squirrel hunting ban was imposed to protect (bow-hunting) was on the table for banning.
Our deer’s no-shows during daylight hours had finally brought this about. In brief, those vigils over food plots were becoming an utterly futile exercise — for shooting deer that is. Many other chores can be completed splendidly during these vigils, what with video games and texting and a good iPad.
“During bow season,” winked Pelayo while looking around, his eyebrows dancing, “let’s hunt some nearby WMAs or NWRs. Let’s give our deer a break, and make the state’s and the feds’ deer nocturnal, or into fajitas.
“Plenty such places around. Take Big Branch NWR by Lacombe. Take Lake Ramsey WMA north of Covington. Take the tiny Hutchinson Creek WMA by Hammond. These are all bowhunting only. And heck — the Pearl River WMA and the Bogue Chitto NWR north of Slidell aren’t bowhunting-only. But given the huge acreage in these last two, and the difficult access after all the blowdowns from all these recent hurricanes, those tangled swamps and thickets contain deer that probably never go completely nocturnal.
“Sure, getting to them won’t be easy. But we’re always most pumped for hard hunts early in the season, after that nine-month rest. Then as the season progresses we get lazy.
“So let’s use our early season excitement wisely this year. Worth a shot?”
“The boy makes sense,” said all the pursed lips, wide eyes and chin scratching as he looked around the gazebo for an answer.
Much of “Da Gang” had given up bow hunting, as seems to happen often with the passing years. What with families, jobs, LSU and Saints games, the best fishing of the year — with all this going on, finding time to practice shooting, for proper scouting, etc., gets tough.
Crossbows offer some relief from those time-consuming bowhunting chores. So Artie had taken one up a few years back, but had yet to score. Though, as usual, he saw many more deer while crossbow hunting than during the regular season.
So at least it got the blood pumping; at least he got those heart-thumping adrenalin shots of sighting a deer at close quarters.
I’m guessing the cost of Spencer’s health club membership could keep me in salty sack oysters for years. At his health club, Spencer lifts weights and walks around a track with weights on his leg. But the notion of me lifting a weight (my climbing stand) and walking a mile with it on my back seems to horrify him. Carting a deer out of these no-ATV public places on our handy-dandy cart made from old bicycle tires amuses him to no end.
Granted, on a lonely trail in a sparsely used WMA, I can’t show off my fancy jogging shorts and socks and sneakers and sweatbands and Walkman as Spencer can at the health club. But I’m guessing I get as much exercise as he does. And I’ll put my physique and waist size against his as exhibit A.
OK, so you can’t corn up on WMAs and NWRs? So what? Find persimmons and white oak (especially cow oak) acorns or elderberry in early October, and you’ve got a (natural) bait station that’ll outdraw every corn feeder in the parish.
We’ve seen it time and again. The persimmons won’t last the entire month. And the actual elderberry berries will also be mostly gone (but deer also relish the leaves). “Soft mast” just doesn’t make it much into the season.
White oak acorns drop longer but seem to be gobbled almost as fast as they drop.
I said gobbled, but this gobbling isn’t exactly like that of the smaller willow, laurel and live oak acorns. Deer usually swallow those whole. Upon gutting your kill, you’ll often find them in that condition (minus the caps) in their first stomachs.
Those huge cow oak (aka swamp chestnut) acorns, however, get “popped” before being swallowed. Kinda like what we do with a crawfish tail. We “pop” or squeeze out the meat.
So that’s the telltale sign that deer, rather than squirrels (or along with squirrels), are the ravenous culprits under a cow oak that’s dropping acorns. You’ll find the semi-crushed empty shells lying about, usually amidst several piles of dark, shiny droppings.
If that “barnyard” smell also lingers around, you know you’ve found a hotspot.
Granted such hotspots with smell, droppings, etc., can be found in November, December and January. The difference is that when you find these in early October in a (relatively) sparsely hunted and hard-to-reach area, the chances of daytime visits from deer is about 10 times greater than later in the year — at least in our experience.
And that’s exactly what I found at Lake Ramsey WMA in an area close to the Tchefuncte River after hiking in about a mile from the nearest road and negotiating two stumbling creek crossings. (Please note: The gated Lake Ramsey subdivision borders the WMA. If you live there or have friends and family who live there, getting to the prime habitat close to the river is a cinch. Otherwise you’ll get some superb exercise).
My long and laborious hike meant I had the area pretty much to myself.
Chinese privet, French mulberry, smilax and blackberry thickets dotted with mature red and water oaks make prime deer habitat — but you often wish for a bulldozer while hunting them. Such a buffet and bedroom attract many deer from surrounding areas that remain predominately mature pine or pine savannah, as is the case in the Lake Ramsay WMA and the northern reaches of the Big Branch NWR.
What select cutting and logging did on private land, hurricanes Katrina, Gustav and Isaac duplicated on these Northshore WMAs and NWRs. Many big trees went down, and the brambles and thickets came up. So, generally speaking, we’re not talking easy hunting in these places nowadays. It’s mostly hoofing it in with a climber on your back and threading your way over thickets and blowdowns while periodically wiping spider webs from your face and banana spiders off your shoulder.
So be it. We curse it, but deer love it.
Browsing sign was everywhere on the trails leading to the cow oak grove (all of four trees actually). Even better, three medium-sized permission trees grew on the edge of the oak grove, and a little orchard of elderberry sprouted from a nearby creek bank. These touches added enormous allure to this natural bait station for deer.
The deer trails, however, only became obvious after I’d gotten on my knees while scouting. At first they’d looked like the ubiquitous armadillo tracks and scrapings. Then I noticed all the fresh droppings — both in Milk Dud and Raisinette sizes.
Looked like entire deer families were converging at my hotspot.
Pelayo opted to hunt the very northern edge of Lake Ramsey WMA, another nice hike leading to another of the very few bottoms in this primarily pine savannah public property. His natural bait station consisted of a few live oaks; their little, green acorns are another deer favorite in this area.
As usual when two habitats meet, deer trails appear. Pelayo found a place where the pine savannah met the oak bottom, and he followed the trails to the live oaks, and came back to the truck still whooping about the sign.
He had a hotspot, too, and had not seen a human track anywhere around. He was pumped.
As usual, everyone else bugged out. So Pelayo picked me up the first October Saturday after a cool front at 4:30 a.m. Sweating buckets from the hike and fully expecting to pick a few banana spiders from my neck after settling in, I humped up on my climber about 150 yards away from a near-impenetrable (except to deer) jungle of French mulberry, Chinese privet, smilax and muscadine.
No muscadine grapes are around for deer by October. But the grapes only grow on the thick, mature vines. The ones around me were young vines, forming a mat over the privet and mullberry bushes.
Deer (at least in the southern portion of the Florida Parishes) are seriously fond of muscadine leaves.
The first hour passed slowly. Finally, light came, followed shortly by swarms of squirrels all around me.
At 8:45 I caught movement to my right. “More squirrels,” I thought to myself while focusing.
Then the adrenalin jolt and shakes kicked in!
When I saw the little forks on his head, the shakes cranked up several notches. When I spotted more movement behind him, they cranked up another 10. When I saw it was a spike, they went from shakes to near convulsions.
Often happens during October — smallish bucks hang out together in bachelor groups. They were only 70 yards out and moving down the trail like clockwork, none of that stopping and looking around and nibbling so characteristic of does, especially when escorting their offspring.
Alas! My bow was hanging from a branch, where I’d put it for an earlier banana spider and tick body search.
As I reached for it, my movements were those of molasses in wintertime. A slight click when I slipped on the release stopped the deer in their tracks, brought their ears up and pointed their eyes directly at me.
I refused to even breathe. I even managed to momentarily calm the convulsions.
Finally they turned away and started ambling slowly.
Then they stopped again.
“Why won’t they move?” I asked myself.
Then they resumed their route, a bit more briskly now — and soon were about 40 yards out.
But I don’t even contemplate a shot until 25 yards, which meant that controlling my shakes again was becoming impossible. John Vought drawing on that deer in “Deliverance” came to mind.
Another 10 yards, please!
Then they suddenly turned at a right angle to the trail, and ambled away into the thickets, never to reappear.
It took about half an hour for me to stop shaking.
At 11 o’clock, my phone beeped. It was Pelayo waiting at the truck.
An hour later we were leaning over the truck bed, quenching our raging thirst and jabbering excitedly. He’d seen three does, but also never shot.
We didn’t draw blood on that trip. But the adrenalin sure flowed, which is more than you can say for most deer hunts later in the year.
And we crossed paths with all of two other hunters.
