Don't stop hunting until you get back to the truck

A deer hunt goes flat when an old lesson learned goes unheeded

Hunting with my brother Brett, who is two years my senior, was an often-as-we-could exercise in our teenage years. We hunted hard and we never, ever, stopped hunting until we got back to the road and opened the doors on his boxy late-60’s model International Harvester Scout.

That was because, more than once, when we both unloaded our guns and crossed that last fence at the last ditch, or actually walked up to the Scout, pheasants or quail flushed under our feet. One time a danged rooster actually shot out from under the Scout!

Tuesday morning proved 40-plus years experience with that rule has apparently only taught me how to recognize my mistakes.

When you go out to hunt, hunt from the time you leave the truck until you get back. When you go out to scout and figure things out, go to figure things out. It’s that simple.

Scouting while hunting is a good idea, a necessity in fact, but don’t just up and stop hunting while you do that kind of scouting.

My plan for the day was to get to my tree stand very early to sit through the early morning transition time and some expected movement by moon projections about 9 a.m. I’d hop down around 10 a.m. and spend the rest of the afternoon in a comfy ground blind on a well-traveled ridge.

I saw deer at sunrise but they were well out of range. They came out of an area I previously didn’t give much attention but where the deer tracks I saw in the snow on my way in that morning blew my mind. It just got me to thinking about what I must have missed while scouting this new property.

And I kept thinking about it.

When sitting in a tree stand for five hours at an average temperature of 30 degrees, one has plenty of time to think on deep subjects like, “I wonder what the heck is over there?”

When 10 a.m. came I gave the sit my usual 10 minutes extra and stood up to leave at a nice, even, 10:10 a.m. My path to the ground blind would lead me past the spot where I saw the deer and all those tracks and where the landowner had, since I’d last been there, cleared some brush and really opened things up. It made me curious.

So, what did I do? Yep, I walked smack out in the middle of that open area to look at tracks and the lay of the land. Then I pulled out the ol’ iPhone to set a waypoint in the OnX app so I might look at it more later on the maps. I set my bow across the toes of my boots to keep it up out of the snow and let string rest on my shins.

When you go out to hunt, hunt from the time you leave the truck until you get back. When you go out to scout and figure things out, go to figure things out. It’s that simple.

Then something caught my eye. A big doe came trotting out about 50 or 60 yards ahead. Right out there in the new wide-open spaces, she was. She stopped short of the brush line on the opposite side of the opening and looked my way. I had already tucked my phone and hands in next to my leafy camo, and dropped my head to watch her under the bill of my cap.

I made like a stump: A big dumb stump with a bow leaning against its base.

Behind her came a little doe, and I mean a tiny one, like a July- or August-born fawn. She romped through the snow like a kid. A little further out and a minutes behind the fawn came another doe that crossed the opening at a steady trot. Behind her came a nice 8-point buck, nose down, doing a quick-step follow like a bird dog.

While I stood there like the dumbest old stump north of the Red River the first doe seemed to relax some and she walked into the brush. The second older doe and that buck were already there. They were actually on the travel corridor that runs right past the tree stand I’d left not five minutes before.

And that youngster? Oh, she was in stop-n-go and sniff and romp mode right there out in the open, one side to the other, all the time coming, roughly, right at me. She was so close I could count her whiskers when she finally hit the brakes, spun around and ran like a whipped pup in the opposite direction across the open field.

Surprisingly the other three ignored her running off, or didn’t notice, and they kept on coming. I couldn’t see them very well through the head-high brush but I could tell they had pulled into a tighter group. I saw eyes and noses and ears and antlers and could hear their footsteps in the snow.

The blows and crashes of fleeing deer came when they closed to within 20 yards, directly downwind of me. All that was left was bouncing white tails and my flagging spirits. I was busted in a way you not only see the deer flee but you feel the explosion.

Sure, I could have stayed longer in the stand that morning and it likely would have been the ticket. But in all honesty I made my best decision based on available info and stuck to my plan, plus 10 minutes. I couldn’t feel too bad about that.

But if I had kept hunting like I’m supposed to do, well then.

If I walked out slowly, remained concealed, minded the wind direction, kept my phone in my pocket and stopped occasionally to nock and arrow and still-hunt, then it might have been a very different day.

My punishment was a slow, depressing walk to my ground blind and the remainder of the day spent watching songbirds and squirrels—not all bad, but not terribly productive. You don’t get to meet your deer face-to-face in the morning and then stick an arrow in one that afternoon.

Remember the lesson, boys and girls. When you go into the woods to hunt, go to hunt, and don’t stop hunting until the sun goes down or you come back and actually open the doors on the truck.