Big Boy

Big Boy
Written by Fletcher “Butchwax” Ferguson

Bow season was rapidly approaching. I could barely contain my excitement for another chance to match wits with the wise, old,  gray muzzled patriarch of the woods that had eluded my arrow these last few years. On several occasion I could have shot him with a rifle but the challenge of getting him with my bow was more appealing.  I took a shot at him last winter, but he blocked my arrow with his antler. It was a thrilling, heart pounding hunt that December morning but it was the last time I had seen any sign of him.

In late July, after a considerable dry spell, we had two weeks of on and off heavy rains. The wet ground afforded the chance to study the deer tracks left behind in the mud. While doing my chores I would take time to take a gander at the tracks, making a mental note of new tracks and patterns the resident does left for me to conjecture over.. Big Boy left a unique print. His front right foot was a tad larger and the outside toe was turned in.  There was no sign of him.

As things dried up I had a task of cutting down some undesirable hedge trees and an old storage shed that was nothing more than an eye sore. We excavated a big pit, filled it with the trees and the remains of the shed for the purpose of burning. Once covered with dirt, it left a large area of bare ground. After a light rain one night, I found a clear series of  fresh tracks stretched out across the mud over the pit. The tracks belonged to Big Boy.  He was back. Lord only knows how old he was. Heck, he had to be nine maybe ten years old.  I had been hunting him going on five seasons.

At the start of bow season, it was just plan hot. Way to hot to consider hanging a deer, so I used the warm weather to scout and study patterns. Changing weather conditions alter deer behavior, as does the lunar cycle. The time of day the doe hit the food plot varied, and needed to be mentally recorded.  Where there are doe, a buck is surely lurking somewhere. The goal was to use the food plot to attract the doe, use the doe to attract the buck, then shoot the buck.

One cool morning I climbed up into the tree stand that over looked the food plot.  For the first time in six weeks I saw not a single doe. Something had changed. This outing coincided shortly after the spotting of Big Boy’s  tracks. While in the stand I noticed a bare spot on the opposite edge of the food plot.  Upon closer examination it was in fact a scrape that reeked of urine. Cool. Big Boy was working the night shift.

A week later one of the Christmas trees we had planted had been destroyed by a buck. Big Boy’s track was clearly visible. He was staking a claim. That evening, while in the stand, a single mature doe came into the food plot. She was acting weird. Jumping around, kicking up her heels like a playful cotton tail does. She suddenly bolted from the food plot, cleared the fence to the west of the food plot and darted out into the middle of the freshly seeded winter wheat field. Out of a cluster of wild plum came Big Boy. The doe clearly was glad to see him, as was I.  Big Boy, without any foreplay mounted her. The rut was on. Despite my rattling,  use of my doe bleat and a grunt tube, the old buck just sundered off to the south with a satisfied stride.

I saw him again a week later. He had all the doe rounded up and corralled down in a little area I call twin fawn valley. It is a  heavily timbered area with a thick underbrush of gooseberry, buck brush and a little creek. A day later, to my surprise, there was a new buck with the doe. A rather handsome ten point with good size. Big Boy had lost his harem over night, never to be seen again. This ten point looked haggard and was not in the best of shape. Big Boy must have given him a good fight.

The doe pattern had not changed much, but they did start coming into the food plot from a different direction, out of range of my bow. The new buck was always right on their trail. Sometimes there was only two or three doe, other times as many as a dozen. The ten pointer kept out of range. I decided to relocate a stand from the other side of the property that was not in a productive spot. As I was hanging the stand, which I did at a time when the doe typically where not around, here they came. Trailing them was a different buck.  A smaller eight point. Evidently he was working the day shift. This buck chased thirteen doe off the property. Great, all the work, all that time scouting, all that effort and this non shooter had ruined the weekend hunt.

Two weeks went by before the doe returned to the food plot. The ten pointer had been spotted clear on the other side of the property a couple times by duck hunters. He had abandoned the doe in the valley and was working another small group of three doe that resided in the timber north of our marshes. I was determined to get him. As I had no stand in that area, I planned to set up a pop up blind and use the old shot gun loaded with a slug to get him. He was usually seen in a cluster of willows at the edge of the marsh between eleven o’clock and two. I figured with it being rifle season,  I would hunt the food plot in the morning and then move to the pop up blind down in the marsh.

I was a little late getting into the stand up on doe ridge that Saturday morning. I had barely got settled when a group of six young bucks came into the food plot. One buck looked like the ten pointer I was seeking. I thought it weird, all those bucks together. I suppose they were about to settle their differences. I was just about to raise my shot gun and take the ten pointer when a truck load of duck hunters came down the gravel road towards the marshes. The noise of the truck rolling over gravel spooked the bucks and they scattered. I was a little pissed. These guys were not supposed to be down there until next weekend, or so I thought.  I was wrong.

As I sat in the stand and fumed over the circumstances, I just could not make up my mind what to do. I just sat there in the stand with shattered hopes.  Thirty minutes later here comes the triplets. Two year old doe I had actually touched when they were still wet from birth. I was not about to shoot one of them. Then here comes the twins, right on the same game trail. Two of the prettiest doe you ever did see. The darn things looked like they wore make up. Can’t shoot them either. Then a mature doe came up the trail with twin button buck yearlings. She was a big doe but I felt she should have the chance to give those two boys a fighting chance over the winter. So I passed on her.

The  button buck yearlings had come in sight first, followed by the doe. She stopped just at the edge of the food plot where the timber was just starting to thin. She raised her head to sniff the air. I was busted. She snorted the alarm call, raised her tail and bolted. At the same time she does this, a huge buck came to a dead stop back down the game trail. He was forty yards back still in the thick of it. My heart started pounding hard. I had never seen this buck before.  He was huge. His antlers were hidden from me due to the thick brush. All I could really see was the base of his white neck. He was facing me. I did not hesitate, raised my trusted thirty five year old shot gun, put the bead of the open sight right on the base of the buck’s neck and pulled the trigger. The slug found it’s mark, dropping the buck instantly. He did not even twitch.

I waited a few minutes in order to collect myself, then I climbed down still shaking from excitement a bit. I could not believe my eyes as I stood by the big white tailed buck. His antlers where spread wide apart. Only six  heavy beamed points. The brow tines, both of them broke off. That was a real shame, he would have been a mountable  Boone and Crocket trophy had it not been for that.  I did not want to field dress him right there, as it might effect future hunts, yet another tag to fill. I tried to drag him out of the thicket. He was way to heavy  for me to drag. Maybe in my younger days I could have, but not now.

My middle son was clear on the other side of the property hunting with a recurve. I went to fetch him.  He was none to happy to be pulled from his roost. He gave me the business about shooting a deer I could not drag. “What’s the matter old man. Can’t reap what you sow cause you’re to old and feeble?“  I told him to wait and see if he could drag it. He could not. Together, we struggled to drag this buck out of the thicket. What a job. We could not begin to lift the thing into the cargo bay of the ATV. So we tied him to the trailer hitch  of the ATV and drug him up to a clearing where we could field dressed him without compromising the killing field. I had to go get the tractor and load him into the bucket in order to get him weighed and  hung in the barn. After much effort and two failed attempts, his field dressed weight was two hundred and twenty seven pounds. Biggest bodied buck I had ever shot. He had thrown his weight around for the last time. Too bad about the brow tines.