There’s not much left for deer to eat, so you may need to manipulate your woods to give them something.
No Hollywood premier generated such anticipation. The capacity crowd waiting for the Rolling Stones to finally strut onto the Superdome stage in 1989 seemed pathetically blase’ compared to this crowd. The one stomping the Tad Gormley bleachers for the Beatles in ’64 had nothing on this bunch. Even the Jazz Fest crowd craving Vince Vance and Benny Grunch and the — whoops! Now THAT’s going TOO far! I’m losing all sense of proportion here. Getting carried away. Sorry.
At any rate, the tension in Artie’s camp was almost unbearable as the club president (some say Fuhrer) and master of ceremonies prepared to click on his new widescreen TV. The gang’s game-cam pics had been downloaded minutes before, the drinks poured and the cans popped open. All chairs were filled, and it was standing room only against the back wall. Faces glowed. Lips trembled. A roaring MGM lion and a blast of trumpets seemed fitting.
“Where’s Eddie?” Pelayo leaned over and asked Chris who looked around and shrugged. “Heck, he got here before any of us today. Saw him earlier fiddling with one of his many climbing stands.”
The screen finally flashed on, and the whoops and yells started — quickly followed by the guesses.
“Whatcha think, Artie?” Spence asked. “He’ll go at least 140, don’t cha think?”
Artie pursed his lips.
“I’d say 135 at least.”
“Bulldinky!” came the retort from behind.
“Ah!” Pelayo pointed. “There’s Eddie.”
“Dat deer’s a 110 — plain as day,” snorted Eddie, after a hearty gulp from his Big Gulp, which we knew contained more than the Diet Coke he’d bought at the Wag-a-Sack.
“Like YOU — of all people — know anything about this stuff, Eddie!” roared Artie. “Gimme a BREAK!”
The next four pics showed a family of does. The next two featured a herd of swine. All — needless to add — were snapped during deepest, darkest nighttime.
I was heading for the table with Eddie’s deer fajitas when some whoops jerked my head back to the screen.
“Now that’s another 140 for sure!” whooped Spencer.
“140?!” laughed Eddie through a mouthful of one of his deer fajitas. “Dat one’s a certified 220. Again, plain as day.”
This time everyone ignored him. Eddie was getting into one of his “zones.” No point arguing with him at this point in the evening. It was no different at Tigerland. The only method of reasoning with Eddie at this point was perfected by the bouncers back at Zack’s, The Keg and The Brass Rail.
“I may not be hung up on horns like you dilettantes,” laughed Eddie as he bulled to the front of the room and pointed at the screen. “But I sure know how to READ.
“Look closer at the screen, especially right here (he pointed at the bottom right of the screen.) Plain as day: 2:20 a.m. The one before read 1:10 a.m. So I’d love to know where YOU guys are getting YOUR figures.”
Many hands were raised and pointed at Eddie. But this was not a question-and-answer session at a deer-hunting seminar. Nor did these hands show the peace sign. They had only one finger upraised.
The game-cam feature had been rolling for nearly half an hour with plenty pics — but without showing a single pic of a buck during daylight — and only one of a doe during daylight. “Trail cams” they used to call these. Then came “game cams.” They’re more like “food-plot cams” nowadays, as we all know.
That deer in Southeast Louisiana’s piney woods rut late is hardly earth-shaking news. Our log, going back 10 years, shows the most sightings in January. Along with what our deer-hunting “log” shows, telemetry studies (including the one from Union Parish in the November Louisiana Sportsman) consistently show that a buck’s home range expands in late winter. It’s elementary, my dear Watson. There’s less food around than in the fall, so they’ve got to travel much farther to find it. This also applies to does, but to a lesser extent. Does, after all, have smaller home ranges to begin with.
“Look closely at this one,” Spencer announced as a thick-beamed 4-point flashed on the screen, with the usual shining eyes and the usual barrel-feeder as backdrop. “I’ve let him walk twice in the late evenings — once during bow season, another time during blackpowder. Haven’t seen him since then. Another year, and he’ll be good.”
“He’s already good,” Eddie yelled from over by the food table as he pointed at a platter. “You said so yourself, Spence. Remember?”
Spencer looked over frowning.
“Ignore him,” said Artie.
And Spencer slowly turned in his chair while slowly removing his cap. Remember Mikey Corleone’s face right before he blows away Solazzo and McCluskey in the restaurant? His rolling twitching eyes, etc.? If so you’ll spare me from trying to describe Spencer’s as Eddie’s remark slowly started sinking home.
“Didn’t you compliment these fajitas a coupla minutes ago?” smirked Eddie.
The room went suddenly quiet, and all heads turned to him. But only Pelayo was chuckling. Remember Sonny Corleone’s face when he got the call from Connie that Carlo was slapping her around? If so, you’ll spare me from attempting to describe half the ones in the room as Eddie chomped down on another fajita, YUMMED loadly, and rubbed his tummy for effect.
Remember Luca Brasi during his last moments alive? That look of extreme discomfiture on his face? I greatly feared Eddie’s imminent fate would make Luca’s appear peaceful and painless in comparison.
“Don’t think anyone else is going hunting during the week,” Eddie had told me over the phone a few days earlier. “We’ll have the place to ourselves.”
I’d been on my climber for an hour on that cold, drizzly week-day evening when I heard Eddie’s shot from a nearby oak/gum thicket. I’d forgotten my insulated hood, and was shivering and desperate for an excuse to get down. This was it. I called him, walked over and congratulated him on the big-bodied 4-pointer.
“Man! Plenty of browse around here,” I marveled while walking as he waved me over. “Plenty greenbriar and yaupon with berries to boot!
“Primary browse for sure. How’d you find so much …?”
Suddenly Eddie cocked his head.
“Somebody’s coming,” he said.
Finally I heard the 4-wheeler approaching.
“That’s Artie for ya,” I said. “Guess he knocked off early today.
“And looks like he also needed an excuse to get down and scoot back to camp, and start the festivities. Fine with me.”
“Hey, I’m the one with something to celebrate,” laughed Eddie.
Then the vehicle came around the bend — but this ATV was green; Artie’s is RED. And the guy now walking toward us was much taller, and dressed in L.L. Bean. Artie’s more a Wal-Mart/Army surplus kinda guy.
He was halfway to us when he yelled out, “Got one?” It was Nick, Spencer’s closest chum at this club, and slated to be the next club president.
“NO!” Eddie stood and blurted, shaking his head vigorously.
“Who’s that?” Nick asked as he picked up the pace. “That YOU? … Humberto? What on earth?”
“Yeah, it’s me,” I said. “Came with Eddie for a quickie week-day evening hunt. Been a long time, amigo. So how ya been!”
Then I extended my hand.
“Strange,” he said as he walked up, not smiling, and shook my hand mechanically and frowning. “Artie didn’t say ANYTHING about any GUESTS this week?
“He knows that we have a policy where … .”
“It was a last-minute thing,” I stammered. “Ha ha!”
“Humberto’s MY guest,” Eddie snapped.
And that was that.
During the Depression, Eddie’s grandfather had bought up much land “across the lake” (remember, the term “Northshore” only came into vogue about a decade ago). Two hundred acres of Eddie’s family land was virtually donated to this club’s lease after Katrina. This gave Eddie certain “privileges” utterly unknown to the club’s rank and file.
“Well, what ya got?” Nick asked with his eyes narrowing.
“Nothing,” said Eddie. “Shot at a damn coyote and missed.”
“That so?” Nick pursed his lips.
“Yeah man,” I grimaced. “That sucker came BOOKIN’ through that bottom where I was in my climber, chasin’ a rabbit. I mean that sucker was SHAGGIN! ’Bout a minute later I heard Eddie’s shot.”
“I popped off a shot just as he jumped the creek branch,” Eddie said, while pointing in the OPPOSITE direction from where the deer lay in some greenbriar and privet tangles. “Looked it over but no blood or anything. I’m about ready to head back anyway, so … .”
“Let’s have a look,” Nick said as he walked OPPOSITE from where Eddie had pointed. Nick had Eddie pegged from way back. Nick quickly found the blood trail — then the deer. He stormed back and confronted Eddie with a look that made Nurse Ratched look like Mary Poppins. Eddie did his best Jack Nicholson right back in Nick’s face. No words were exchanged. Those “privileges” at work, you see.
I figured Eddie would keep it quiet. I should have known better. Now, only a few days later, he was boasting about it clubwide and rubbing it in Spencer’s face. Well, at least he was sharing his trophy.
“Unlike you guys, I don’t adopt deer as pets,” Eddie smirked at his surly clubmates after proudly wolfing down another “Four-Point Fajita” (he even put such a label on the platter.) “Some of you guys know your deer so well from the multiple pics they might as well be your pets.
“How can you shoot a pet? Remember the movie The Yearling? Didn’t guys cry when Jane Wyman shot the little sucker? And especially when little Jody blasts him with the coup’d grace? Geezum, I wept all night! Not even Morgus and Chopsley lifted me from my funk that Saaaah-dy night. You guys are sure hard-hearted. Me, I make sure never to adopt any deer as pets.”
Those aforementioned “privileges” saw Eddie smirking and snickering his way through this episode too.
Eddie had not picked his climbing stand-site haphazardly. He was far from his food-plot in some thickets of Chinese privet and had donned gloves to pull down a canopy of smilax (greenbriar) vines onto the ground. Smilax, like most vines (i.e. primary browse) reach for the sky. By January, the lower reaches of this evergreen plant have either wilted from lack of sun or been browsed bare. In the Florida Parishes, you’ll often find it growing 10, 20, even 30 feet off the ground at this time, and forming a canopy over juvenile gums, swamp maples and pines.
Eddie found such a canopy, and hit upon the scheme to pull it down to deer-browsing reach. Then he bent down some yaupon branches laden with berries that had also been reaching for the sun (i.e growing high, out of browsing range). Deer browse yaupon leaves mostly as young sprouts and shoots, after logging, burning, etc. But in this area they usually browse berries to the very browse-line.
By January, the terrain around most ladder and box stands with their adjoining food plots and feeders looks like cow pastures. The trails leading to them look like cattle ruts. Looking at all that sign really cranks up the nervous system. But sitting in the stands — morning and evening after morning and evening after morning and evening — without seeing so much as a button buck sure gets old. Then the game cams rub it in, albeit with some entertainment.
Spencer’s pet deer indeed moved during daylight — but not in front of any game-cam. Eddie’s “natural” food plot had apparently enticed him. By late season, simply finding “deer sign” is pointless. “When was it made?” is now the key.
By January, most deer have long patterned us. And it doesn’t take long to do. Besides using different trails because of the hunting pressure, by New Years deer are also feeding on much different fare than they were in October or even in mid November. The big fronts and the shortest days all come around Thanksgiving. In consequence, much vegetation dies or becomes less attractive to deer by late December.
Persimmons, for instance, peter out usually by late October. In many areas of the lower Florida Parishes, the white oak acorns are also usually gone (gobbled almost as fast as they drop). This means the food plots and feeders are even more attractive, but almost exclusively at night.
So take to the woods, I say. And crank up that scouting fever that got you so pumped back in October, or in an earlier hunting life.
Poking around the thicker woods after several days of fruitless vigils over food plots during the holidays, Pelayo, Eddie and I noticed that deer were now munching out on wandering Jew (a green waxy plant with pointed leaves and a little white flower that grows mat-like on the ground, especially near rivers Tchefuncte, Tangipahoa and Amite) and on Chinese privet, (a bush with little round leaves that grows like crazy all over Southeast Louisiana). Both of these stay nice and green until consistent nights of low-20 temperatures finally shrivel them, which means they often stay green all season long. Both, by the way, are illegal immigrants, and are cursed and vilified by the EPA as “invasive species.” But unlike the abominable salvinia, these earn their keep by feeding our deer.
Back in October, none of this same wandering Jew and privet had been much browsed. At the time, acorns were dropping heavily, and everything else was still lush and green. But now it looked like a lawn mower had swept it. And the shiny deer droppings that peppered the area told the rest of the story. A couple of scrapes pawed out of the wandering Jew orchard had me whooping like a lunatic as I tromped back to Pelayo’s truck for my climber, which shortly went up in a nearby gum.
At 9:35 the following Saturday, I was cursing my stupidity at setting up here and preparing to clamber down when movement caught my eye.
Looked like a spindly-racked 6-pointer — perfect. And he seemed in a hurry. He wasn’t moseying along feeding.
“This guy’s headed somewhere, with his nose to the ground,” I thought.
My rifle was hanging from a limb, and the deer was so preoccupied it didn’t see me fumbling for it. Finally the gun went up.
Where IS he?! I can’t find him through the scope! Up… Down… Around … AHH! There he is. The crosshairs danced, and finally steadied. Deep breath now. There’s his shoulder… squeeze, jerk — BLAM!
The recoil knocked me off balance, but my safety belt was good and tight. I looked down to see the buck on his back but kicking. Another round — FAST! Crank the bolt! CRANK IT! … GEEZUM! He’s almost back on his feet! Still bucking! Hold on his neck. Anchor him for good. He’s still thrashing around — BLAM!
Another deafening blast, and the scope — with the rifle held awkwardly — smacked my glasses right at my nose bridge, momentarily stunning me.
NO! He’s still kicking! But more slowly … more slowly, as I cranked in another round.
There, he’s still. Now let ME try and keep still before I start humping it down this tree.