Creek Bends: Fall brings deer season, and thieves
Thieves come into the woods at night and take things you'd think they wouldn't
SNAKE CREEK — It’s been some time since I’ve filed a dispatch from Snake Creek. This summer was just too danged hot and miserable to hang out at the pump house.
Since April the house has hosted a resident rodent, some apparently prolific spiders, and what appears to be a rat snake that dropped by to shed its skin.
Now I put that in writing, it occurs to me that perhaps the rodent is a former resident. I like rate snakes. Serves that mouse right for what it did to my reserve of paper towels and toilet paper.
Mornings with temperatures dropping to the lower 50s again have my mind set on deer season and sprucing up the place, so I stopped by the other night.
Archery season opens in just a few days but that little bit of daily distraction and anxiousness is just beginning to stir in me.
It’s the danged weather. Hot weather always cools my jets. I can’t help it, likely due to my northern upbringing. I just don’t enjoy competing with the ticks and the flies for my venison. Early November is more my speed, so I tend to run about a month behind others when it comes to deer season.
But, since I stopped by the creek, I have a hole in the pit of my stomach.
The sturdy, two-man ladder stand I planned to move to a better location in the coming days is gone. I swear I walked up to that tree and stared at it and looked around the area wondering if my brain had me at the wrong trunk for the better part of a minute. Finally, I felt that dry swallowing feeling and heat in my ears before I yelled some things that innocent wildlife nor children should hear.
I was naïve in thinking it was down the bottoms and was so big and heavy, and far enough from the road, it was basically impervious to theft. Who would do that?!
To boot, it’s a stand the landowner purchased. It was incredibly nice. He just said to place it wherever deer could be viewed or hunted and that he might use it occasionally to watch the wildlife too. I’d feel better if it had been mine.
I vaguely recall a short conversation about locking the stand on the tree after we put it up and me saying something like, “Nah, surely we don’t need to.”
What a bonehead.
I’ll have locks on everything now. Cameras stands, ladders, tools, you name it. It’ll be locked up and surveilled.
You know, I took an inordinate number of trips to the creek this summer to haul water for transplanted milkweeds and a few buttonbushes.
I ended up cussing the pigs and the armadillos for uprooting my efforts on several occasions. On those stretches of triple-digit temps, they were drawn to the only wet soil that wasn’t in the creek. Heck, I even cussed the Doodle-dog last winter because she developed a habit of dragging my footwear a quarter mile down the road.
That that kind of thievery is understandable.
But this? No.
That was one really comfortable stand, too. I loved it even if it was unwieldy to move—definitely a two-man job.
I shot pigs from it last winter. I came close on deer, too, but the location wasn’t quite right. Invariably, the deer were in range a little too early or a little too late to pull the trigger or draw a string. Location is everything. The position wasn’t quite right for the mid-winter, midday the sun position either. But I had a plan for this season.
Decoys and tree stands: Seems neither really works without moving them around at least once. Decoys and tree stands: That’s stuff that gets stolen too.
Buy locks and cables boys and girls.
Some creeps took the stand between 11:30 and midnight on Aug. 14. The trail cam at the gate to the Snake Creek property shows someone with bolt cutters chopped a link out of the chain and drove on in like they owned the place. Only took ‘em a minute. They closed the gate back and drove down to the bottoms.
The camera shows them on the way out about 23 minutes later.
Quick work.
I suppose if they had bolt cutters and a hacksaw a tree stand lock might not have stopped them either, but, dang.
They knew what they were after.
Our guess is the same crew was on the property a couple of months earlier. That time they only took only a bluebird house—if that isn’t just the strangest thing. This time at least two of the birdhouses were off-kilter too. It looked like they tried to quickly pull them up but they were stuck or something.
Imagine that talk at the bait shop?
“Hi, how are ya?”
“Good, you?”
“Good. Heckuva thing, though. Looks like some meth head hacksawed the lock off my gate and absconded with one of my bluebird houses.”
Not your typical bait shop back and forth.
Yep, last time it appears they used a hacksaw to cut the lock. The landowner got a better lock, which apparently foiled them this time around so they cut a link out of the chain instead.
If you live in the Locust Grove or Salina area and know of someone who suddenly put a $350 API Ultra-Steel Deluxe tree stand up for sale at a good price back around mid-August, we’d sure like to know who they are.
I highly doubt it was a deer hunter who put the stand to use elsewhere. More likely someone looking for a quick profit.
But then I’m the guy who didn’t think anyone would go to those lengths to steal a stand, either.
Maybe you can tell who it is by the photos with this column.
If nothing else take heed. Hunting seasons are upon us, time to lock up and surveil anything you plan to leave out in the woods.
Y’all be good out there.
