The second Saturday of archery season in Texas, I was in my pop-up blind tucked away in the brush a full hour and a half before dark. I made all of the adjustments to make sure that if I saw something I would be ready. There was just a hint of fall chill in the air as a light breeze blew through the zip up windows of my little shelter as I settled in for the wait for daylight.
The previous morning, for the better part of an hour, I had watched an older doe with a yearling doe and a fawn that was still in its spots. After they left, I saw a familiar buck I called “One-Side” that I had often seen on my trail camera. He had impressive antlers on the right side but on the left he barely had any antlers at all. I had shown a picture to the local game warden, and he said it was still a young deer and had probably damaged his left antler early in its growth. He said that he would probably be a shooter next year. One-Side was headed right for my feeder only thirty yards in front of me. I didn’t get too excited because I knew that I wasn’t going to shoot him. Then came something I didn’t expect. Right behind One-Side came another buck I had seen several times on my trail camera. A buck I had named “Utah”. The first time I saw him I noticed that his antlers were unusually tall, and I remembered something that happened when my oldest son TJ was in college. He came home from college at Harding, with a shirt that had the state of Utah on it and was inscribed: “Utah, but I’m taller.” Hence, the buck with the big rack and tall horns was dubbed Utah.
Back to the previous morning, I saw Utah heading for the feeder about fifty yards behind One-Side. I realized I should have gotten my crossbow up and adjusted my shooting rest when I first saw One-Side, but I didn’t. So, I tried to be careful and get ready for a shot, but One-Side was right in front of me. I got my crossbow up but it was too high and, when I lowered it, I moved too fast and spooked One-Side which in turn spooked Utah. In a flash they were gone. The next evening, I got to watch the old doe again with her two offspring, a yearling and a fawn for the better part of an hour, but that is all I saw and I wasn’t about to shoot one of that little family.
So, after that eventful day I am back in the blind, and it is dark with the first streaks of gray beginning to form in the eastern sky in front of me. It would still be a while before it would be daylight enough to shoot, so I decided to get out my phone and read my daily Bible reading. I had barely started when in the dark I could barely make out something moving just in front of the tree line behind my feeder pen. I strained in the darkness to see what the movement was and verified it was a buck. but that was all of the detail I could make out. A few minutes later another showed up and, as it got light enough to see, I could tell they were both young. I quickly determined that they might be next year’s deer, but not this year. They both jumped into the feeder pen when the motor came on and scattered corn. Both deer took off like a shot into the woods but soon came back, and this time there were three. The third was a little bigger and older, and he was definitely legal. A buck has to have a minimum of 13 inches at the inside of his antlers. The newcomer had an atypical rack. We would call it a 10-point buck but, in the Rockies, they would call it a 4 by 6 since he had four antlers on one side and six on the others. I determined that I might shoot him if I got the chance. He stayed at the back of the pen, and I watched the trio for about 25 minutes. The thing that cemented my decision to take him was the fact that, first, his antlers were weird, and it would be good herd management to take him out of the gene pool. The second reason was that he frequently bullied the other two bucks, establishing him as an Alpha buck. I decided that whichever of the other two bucks was the Beta buck, it was time for a field promotion.
Next Week, the hunt after the hunt.
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