Deer Harvest 2023

Warning: if you're PETA, or if you're squeamish, you might want to skip the third, fifth and sixth pictures in this post.

Given that we have a lot of project stuff we've been trying to accomplish before winter sets in, and that DH was able to get an elk on his trip out west in October, neither he nor I have hunted as hard this deer season as we have in years past. 

For him, that meant not going out in bow season (Oct 1-Nov 14) hardly at all.  For me, that has meant if I'm not feeling up to the hike to the woods and up the ladder to the tree stand, or if the weather is rainy, (or like the several days in the second week of firearm season snowy, windy, and suddenly subfreezing) I haven't gone out. So, although deer season is not done yet, I'm going to post about it now.  December gets really crazy with all the Christmas stuff added in.

The morning of November 15th (opening day of firearm season) was beautiful, if a tad warm.  I didn't even wear my insulated bibs (and I chill easily), that's how warm it was.  The sunrise from the tree stand was reddish, and I thought of the old saying about 'red in the morning, sailors take warning' and wondered if it applied to deer hunters too.

The deer were active.  I saw many in groups of two or three, and occasionally a lone deer also.  But they were either does, which I wasn't going to shoot on opening day (especially as we are low on freezer space since DH brought an elk home from his Colorado trip), or they were fawns or small bucks.  I began naming the bucks as I saw them: Skewers (tall, spindly spikes reminiscent of shish kebab skewers), Tiny Basket (six points, but the whole headgear was shorter than his ears and wasn't any wider than his ears), Fork-Half (antler on the left only, and forked, which distinguished him from the buck DH has seen that also only has an antler on the left but has four points on that one antler).

Small deer eating windfall apples at the entrance to the woods

DH was also seeing does and smallish bucks.  Until, slightly behind him over his right shoulder and coming through the trees, he saw a much wider rack.  I heard a shot ring out to the south of me, where DH was sitting, and I got excited, thinking he'd gotten something.  Then a second shot rang out, and my exact thought was "either that's not him or he's shooting trees", as rarely does DH take a second shot unless the first one missed.

As I found out a few minutes later, via text, he'd shot a tree.  Literally.  His scope was not adjusted quite right for that distance.

But he'd also shot a deer and there was a clear blood trail.  So looked like we'd be bringing a deer in from the woods later that morning.

painting the woods red

We waited almost two hours before I got down from my tree stand and walked carefully to the other side of the woods where DH was sitting.  I didn't kick anything up on my way there, so we hoped that meant that his buck was dead and piled up somewhere.

From his stand, DH directed me to the spot where he thought the buck had been standing when he'd shot it.  Then he got down, and we started following the very clear blood trail. But after only about 10 minutes, up ahead of us a buck leapt up and went crashing off.  Dang!  It wasn't dead yet.  And we didn't want it to run across property lines, so we backed out the way we'd come, away from the direction the buck went, and went into the house for some brunch.

DH tracking

It so happened that opening day was a half day from school for the grandkids, and I'd told DS1 I would pick his kids up from school so he wouldn't have to take off early from work.  When I went to get K3, Toad and Rascal, DH went back out to the woods to locate his buck.

By the time the grandkids and I arrived at this little place here, DH had located the buck and was getting ready to go bring it in from the woods with the 4-wheeler and wood hauler trailer.  The grandkids and I quickly threw orange hats on our heads and jumped on the trailer to help.

They were quite interested in touching and examining the deer, although Rascal was a little sad that it was dead "Because I like deer".  (I wonder if being around the deceased deer touched something in him about the death of his mother this Spring. . . ) 

While they may not have had classes at school that afternoon,  they got quite a life science class at this little place here instead.  Started with Field Dressing 101 where they watched intently and asked questions while DH dressed the deer.  That rolled into an Anatomy Class as I explained each step of the process and DH pointed out organs as he removed them.

After the deer was dressed we put it back on the trailer and hauled it up to DH's shop, where he rinsed the gut cavity with the hose, and then hung the deer from a gambrel.  More deer anatomy lesson as he explained to the grandkids how there were tendons in the back legs that you could hang the deer from and what they did on a live animal (and how people have tendons in our legs too).  Once the deer was hung, K3 was excited to find the entrance and exit wounds, although she wasn't brave enough to put her finger in them.

A few days later we had them overnight, and we served venison from that buck.  They looked a little skeptical at first, but then dug in heartily (except Rascal who doesn't eat hardly anything except pizza and chicken nuggets; neither of which this Grandma is willing to buy premade just for him.  I was/still am a picky eater and learned to either eat or go hungry and am of the mindset that he can learn the same thing.)

Hunting is pretty much over for me now that there's horses at this little place here that need to be fed at certain times of the day (I'm not that fond of late season hunting anyway since it overlaps all the Christmas prep craziness).  Dh has gone out a few times a week, but he's not in a hurry to harvest another deer unless a really impressive one happens to walk his way.