Deer Hunting

This year deer hunting at Mora has been a sketchy affair. We are selling this property and negotiating on a 41 acre parcel by Leech Lake, not too  far from the cabin, but the buyer fell through, so we are hunting at this property this year.

I was unable to get out on opening weekend, except for 4 hours on Sunday afternoon--11/5/17. I posted in my stand for 4 hours until my cold hands froze me out. My wife slept in the truck and turned the heat on every so often--it was a chilly opener.

At about 2pm a beautiful 110 pound door made her way slowly for 450 feet sideways along the deer highway on the ridge on the other side of the swamp, about 90 yards away. I am a decent shot so I could have taken her. My tag is for buck or doe, but I wanted the buck that was servicing her.

The rule of thumb is let the doe go to see if the big guy will come after her. It never happened and I let her go. At 3 pm we had to head back to the Cities so I made one final sweep around the swamp that I knew the buck was laying down in. We had 2 to 3 inches of snow and he had TWO fresh scrapes on the trail on the south side of the swamp behind some trees! They may have been 6 hours old or an hour old. His antler tines ploughed furrows in the half-frozen dirt.

I felt he was taunting me and teasing me that I was too dumb to ever see him, let alone get a shot at him. I agree with him. I have talked to very experienced hunters who point to two very prime, big, smart bucks that use a different lure. They invite the doe into their special hiding place for breeding, and then send them out first to see if the hunter will shoot the doe, or at least reveal his location so the alpha buck can slip out of the hiding spot by another route to spend another evening mating, fighting and eat. I believe that that buck sent that doe out to test me.

I cannot prove this but it seems likely. We will try again for the big guy next weekend.