Right off the bat let me begin by saying that no “Booners” or “wall-hangers” were killed this year in the Kentucky deer woods, but man oh man did we have a good time. Dad and I went up a few days early prior to Opening Day. I took my stick n string out the first evening and saw a couple of bucks down in the swamp. One was a pretty good 9 point that passed right under my stand. I came close to putting an arrow in his pumphouse but in the end I decided to let him walk. He was a young deer and I didn’t want to punch my buck tag before gun season even started. Dad also watched the same deer when he came out in the field in front of camp. Dad said I did right by letting that little buck live to see another day. “But if that buck walks out in front of You-know-who (ie Joe) he’ll be shot pretty quick.” Said Dad. (He would latter be proven right.)
On Friday night, Dad and I went over to Ray’s shack for dinner. All the Mills River boys where in camp, Ray, Jr, Wyatt, Matt, Serina, the Balenger boys. We dined on fresh cow elk steak that Ray brought back from Utah and fried potatoes and onions. After dinner we traded hunting stories and talked into the late hours. Dad and I headed back to our camp sometime around 11.
Joe got into camp sometime around midnight. As he was unloading his car he realized that he had forgotten all of his hunting clothes at the house. All he had were the clothes on his back. It was going to be a long and uncomfortable trip for him.
The next morning was Opening Day and we hopped out of bed around 5AM, ate a quick breakfast and headed out to our stands. Today was bigger than Christmas! I sat in the swamp and saw several does and nice seven point that I again let walk. I was holding out for a trophy. Just around 9AM I heard a shot in Joe's direction and several minutes latter he texted me: 9 PT ON THE GROUND. Just after that it began to rain. It looked like it was set in for the day.
When I got back to camp, wet and cold, I found Dad and Joe skinning his buck in the old shed near camp. Sure enough it was the same buck I had seen earlier. Dad just grinned and whispered “Told ya!” My bother has an itchy trigger finger when it comes to seeing antlers in the woods.
Over the next several days, I watched more deer than I had ever seen on one hunting trip. This new property that we had leased defiantly had a lot of deer on it and we were getting our money’s worth. Unfortunately, I was trophy hunting when it came to bucks and I passed up several good-sized whitetails. One evening while Dad took Joe to Paducaha to buy some warm clothes, I went back into the swamp and shot a big doe for meat. She was being chased by a small six point buck that just stood there and looked at me after I had shot his would-be girlfriend. Man I love hunting during the rut.
Eventually our time in the woods came to an end and I had to get back to Atlanta. Dad and Jo stayed to hunt an extra day but I’m glad I left when I did, since Joe came down with a severe case of Strep Throat and didn’t even get out of bed the last day.
But as Gen. MacArthur once said, “I shall return.”
I love Thanksgiving. I love the food, being around family, relaxing by a warm fire reading a good book. But I also love deer hunting and since I didn’t bag a big buck the first time around I had to fore go my turkey and dressing at the Crout’s and head back to the Bluegrass State. I wish I had a big climactic ending to my story here, that I killed a monster swamp donkey but that unfortunately isn’t the case.
But I did bring home some meat.
Dad and I traveled light and didn’t bring the camper. Instead we squatted in Ray’s shack for three days. Again we saw a lot of deer but no big bucks. Thanksgiving Day the heavens opened up and the rain poured all day. They even had flash floods in the region. We sat in shack most of the afternoon chatting with Ray would by that time had been in camp a total of 15 days! Just before dark, the rains stopped and we decided to move our stands for in the morning. We headed down into the swamp to retrieve Dad’s climber when we jumped a big buck chasing a doe. Dad handed me his 7 mag and told me to run ahead down the road and see if I could catch the buck crossing. I did as I was told and when I reached the bait pile something jumped up in the thicket. It was a buck. I threw up the rifle, saw a rack of horns in the scope and thinking it was the same buck we had just seen, fired. The deer jumped the road and disappeared in the swamp. I heard a loud splash and a gurgle coming from the creek. Dad caught up with me and told me to go and look for the deer while he hung his stand. I waded through the brush to creek and scanned my surrounding for the buck. The creek was up from all the rain and about 30 yards from me the water turned for brown to crimson red: the buck had fallen in the creek and was completely submerged, all I could see was a single horn sticking up. After a quick inspection, I realized the buck I had just shot wasn’t the same buck Dad and I had jumped. It was just a little raghorn 5 point. But oh well, he needed to be taken out of the gene-pool anyway. He would eat the same as a 10 point. I pulled the buck out of the creek and Dad and I gutted him by lantern light. We left him to hang that night in the shed since the temps were going to fall into the 20’s.
The next morning was probably the most disappointed I’ve ever been in the woods. After a day of heavy rain which changed to snow that night and temperatures plummeting into the 20’s I just KNEW that morning was going to be PRIME TIME for deer. But the deer didn’t move. Nothing. No shots anywhere. Dad and I guessed that after the weather blew out around midnight, the deer moved and bedded back down just before daylight. We decided that we weren’t going home without one more doe in the cooler so we both watched the big field that evening. I was ready to get home by that point and decided I was going the shoot the first doe I saw. Around 4PM and fat doe walked out at 150 yards and stupidly I shot. I grazed her and she high-tailed it up towards Dad’s stand where he made an equally bad shot but at least he put her down. We shot that doe to pieces but we would at least get some tenderloin and hamburger out of her.
We then hit the road and after a long 7 hours we pulled back into Mills River around 1AM. In the end a buck and a couple of does ain’t bad for a year’s hunting, but hopefully next year I’ll cross paths with a nice trophy. But I guess that’s what keeps us going back.
