The Wasteful Buck
2020 was an odd year for a great many reasons, the beacon that will mark these yet to be determined amount of years will be Covid-19 and how we did our best to navigate its ever-changing landscape. I, like many others, did my best to live a normal life, but sometimes that simply couldn’t happen. In this story, it’s relevant, and a mere inconvenience compared to what others have gone through. This story tells of a particularly difficult deer partly from covid, but there is no shortage of self-induced headache, there are lots of little lessons to be learned but I think the biggest takeaway is, sometimes, things don’t go your way.
The Hunt
Every year I try to add a little to my hunting skill. A person naturally learns just from being in the woods searching, but on top of that, I try to read a book or two on the subject and pick up what little tips I can. In 2020 one lesson I had to re-learn was to slow down. It’s human nature when looking for something to try to get to it instead of letting it come to you. With deer I find, that in my mind, the one I am looking for is just over the next hill and about to leave so I better get there.
After spooking a sufficient amount of deer with my size 14s crunching in the snow and leaves I decided to try doing what every successful hunter suggests, it’s called “still hunting”. I slowed down, way down. I would take a cautious step, take a breath, look around, listen intently, wait a moment, then take another step. Two things about this technique, first, you see a lot of other wildlife like squirrels and birds, second, it’s a good leg workout, they are sore come the end of the day.
On my second day of proper still hunting, I found myself cautiously walking between the treeline and a swamp. About 100 yards behind me, just beyond some trees, I heard the unmistakable sound of movement. In a single motion, I spun a 180, dropped to one knee, and brought my rifle to low-ready against my shoulder. It was two does trotting along slowly working towards me. They came around the trees and out into the open only about 50 yards from me, then turned into the bush again and ran off. I sat silent for a moment listening to them go away from me. I didn’t want to move or make noise, if I spooked them, they would run and spook other deer.
As the sound of the does faded away, I started to hear another deer coming from the same place the does had. Through the trees, I could see a silhouette of a single deer running with its head down close to the ground. That’s the unmistakable posture of a buck hot on the trail of a doe, in this case, two does. As he rounded the trees it was clear he was a nice buck. I recognized him as a wide antlered whitetail I had trail camera pictures of. He came out about 50 yards from me, stood perfectly broadside, lifted his head gracefully, and turned toward me. Looking at pictures of him, I felt he could use another year of growth… standing in the wild looking at me with my rifle in my hands, I had different opinions. I raised my rifle, steadied the crosshairs, and pulled the trigger. He fell, lifted his head for a moment, then laid out gracefully.
The Work
This is where the story starts to fall apart. I had just shot a big deer, then it all went downhill. First I called Darrell to come out with the truck so we could get him back to the farm to hang and skin. We drug the deer only about 50 yards to the truck and then loaded it in. I immediately vomited after loading the deer. This was a combination of the excitement and the exercise but I primarily attribute it to the fact that covid lockdowns gave me about 8 months of sitting on the couch watching TV, eating junk food, and gaining weight. I was embarrassed and Darrell was clearly worried… puke during a pandemic and see how folks look at you.
We got the deer home and I started skinning. I discovered I had made a mistake that season, I used my hunting knife to clean a lot of geese early in the season and didn’t resharpen it for deer season, it was like skinning with a butter knife. Luckily, Darrell is the kind of guy who has a stockpile of knives and they’re all razor-sharp. Skin half a deer with a dull knife and the other half with a sharp knife and you’ll never let a knife dull again. I got the deer skinned, cut in half, and hung up and relaxed. The work was done for now. I headed home, back to the city.
Covid Interruptions
I left the meat and skull at my parent’s farm with the intention of dealing with it in the coming weeks but days after I got home lockdowns and restrictions were announced. I was no longer allowed into other people’s homes and had to maintain a distance of 6 feet at all times.
The Skull and Antlers
I wanted to keep the entire skull as a European mount, but I needed to turn in brain samples for CWD testing. I spoke to a friend who does some taxidermy about getting beetles to eat the flesh off of the skull, but it was up to me to skin the skull and take out the samples for testing. Unfortunately, I had left the hide on the skull and the skull was at my parents’. We had entered a lockdown so I couldn’t even go into their house. I made a day trip and picked up the skull and brought it to the city. It was frozen solid from being in an unheated garage. After 3 days of sitting in my basement, it was still solid, which makes sense, deer have evolved to survive in minus 50 so it stands to reason that their hide would be a great insulator. I ended up using an Exacto knife and heat gun to slowly work the hide off and get the samples. I got the samples out and turned in (they came back negative) and got the skull to the taxidermist. She had asked if I wanted the skull bleached, I declined as I prefer the natural colour of skulls in mounts over the bleached white look. After a few months, beetling takes time, she returned the skull to my wife while I was at work. She mentioned to her in passing “I’m not sure why he didn’t want it bleached, it really kills that rotting smell”… I had no idea that was the purpose and felt mighty foolish. That skull stunk out my entire basement. I ended up making a baking soda paste, lathering a quarter-inch thick layer on the skull, and tossing it on the roof of my shed for most of the spring just to get the smell off. Had I known, I’d have happily shelled out the extra few dollars for the bleaching.
The Meat
This is the part of the story that makes me sad and ashamed. At the time of shooting the deer, my plan was to come back and butcher the deer myself within a few weeks. The lockdowns we were under were supposed to only be a few weeks but kept getting extended, as a result, the deer sat hanging for about two months. Finally, I just made a day trip out to the farm and picked it up and attempted to butcher it at my dad’s shop. All that time spent hanging resulted in a thick rind of dried meat that was simply inedible. I carved off what I could from every part of the deer. In the end, I had a few steaks pulled off the backstrap and 2 big bags of ground meat. A pitiful amount given the size of Alberta deer. I remember being frustrated and scraping meat off of the bone, and my friend in the shop watching me finally stopping me, “it’s time to stop, you’ve gotten all you can” I grew up in a house where wasting food was a sin, and this felt like a big one. I’ve heard it many times before, if you hunt enough, eventually you’ll lose a deer, usually, it’s one you injure and never find, but I guess sometimes it’s lockdowns and confusion too. This season is off to a better start, I already helped my brother load a deer without vomiting, I guess my time at the gym has paid off. I have my knives sharp and ready to go, and I’m going to put a bit more urgency into anything I get on the ground because we are currently in the fourth wave in Alberta. Were I betting man, I would bet on more lockdowns coming this winter.
Posted in Huntingwith 1 comment.