By the 29th of November, 2017 I had already been deer hunting hard for twelve days. On the first day that I was able to take rifle in hand I met with a wide 7 pt. whitetail buck amidst roaring winds in Oklahoma’s Northern Crosstimbers. This was the first time that I had shot a truly mature buck on opening day since 2013. Yet, satisfied as I was with this harvest, I was not about to recline by the stove just yet. I was determined to stock the freezer with deer—even if it took hunting hard in two states. Though the first deer came easy, the second proved a greater challenge. Several hundred miles north, I had hunted riverbottoms, oak ridges, and bare-dirt fields with no sight of deer. All of this had been done on dearly-earned vacation days too. Then, on Thursday, the 29th the nature of my fortune seemed to shift on the wind.
For the evening hunt, I settled on a public hunting area
where I had success a few years prior—hoping beyond hope that it had not already
been occupied by a blaze orange army of public land hunters. To my surprise, it
had not. The frontage of this property was a cut cornfield nearly a half mile
deep, which bordered thick timber. I intended to hunt a bottom where I had
placed a ladder stand the year before, but my initial survey of the landscape
revealed that although the cornfield had long-since been cut, there were two
remaining patches of standing corn separated by a mowed channel approximately
50 yards across. I slinked several feet into the woods, bracing against a large
oak, and proceeded to weave pliable saplings into a sort of makeshift
cross-fence in front of me. I sat at this location for approximately 30
minutes, just long enough for the woods to settle, when I became aware of the
din of machinery. “What on God’s green earth is that?”, I thought to myself.
Then it hit me—the sound was coming from farm equipment. Caddy-corner from my
location and under a mile away was another corn field. It sounded like this one
was just now being cut.
Abandoning my brush blind, I took long strides back to my
truck with full intent on pre-empting the imagined droves of deer that were
hearing the very same corn harvest that was. A farm crew of an unexpectedly
high number of pickups, semis, and combines were buzzing around the scene like
so many bees. As I hoofed it into the area another semi came up behind me and I
couldn’t help but give a sheepish grin when the driver waved at me, bedecked
like some sort of gargantuan day-glo orange pumpkin. But, they all knew what I
was about. I quickly positioned myself away from the ongoing work and facing a
safe shooting zone amidst the double row of standing corn that is often left
when public land agricultural fields are harvested.
As the work tapered off and the crew began to head home,
animal life seemed to manifest itself from thin air. Birds of all manner
descended on the field in cackling, scratching, squadrons. There was so much
crop residue on the ground that they had a veritable cornucopia all for the
picking. As soon as the last truck pulled away I heard a decidedly mammalian
rustling behind me. My back was to a slim finger of timber that separated two
forks of the field and I couldn’t believe that something larger than a squirrel
had waited out all of the whirring, smoking Fords and John Deeres. But, there
it was again—the distinctive rustling of corn stalks just behind me! It was in
the worst possible position. I had expected the deer to emerge about 200 yards
in front of me and browse towards me; I was in no position to take a shot
behind with the .338 rifle laid upon my lap. Instead, as a rustling grew
louder, I eased my .44 revolver from the pancake holster on my right hip and
prepared to take a one-handed, gunfighter-style shot at the approaching deer.
No such thing
happened. As I craned my neck to the right I immediately saw the bushy tail of Canis latrans—the coyote. Coyote and I
have come to a little bit of understanding as of late and I’m a bit less
prejudiced against him than I was once was (thanks in no small part to Dan
Flores’ excellent book American Coyote).
Perhaps more importantly, I was not about to ruin what could turn out to be my
last best chance. As he sauntered away obliviously I knew that we had reached magic hour. If you’ve spent much time
deer hunting you know exactly what I am talking about. Magic hour is the period
of last light approximately 30 minutes before sunset to 30 minutes after
sunset. Deer, being crepuscular animals, often move about at this time.
Beyond magic hour, however, there was something special
about the moment I was experiencing. It wasn’t just the combination of habitat,
weather, and timing. It was medicine.
Good medicine are those extraordinary
moments and places where you are truly immersed in nature and get to see behind
the veil. You are able to witness ongoings that seem either too private or too
incredible to be experienced by ordinary people. In Tom Brown Jr’s biography Tracker, the conceptualization of
medicine is laid out based on Tom’s world-class tracking and his instruction
from Apache tracker Stalking Wolf:
Good medicine is any experience
so memorable that it just has to be a
gift from the spirit-that-moves-through all things. Good medicine announced its
presence in marvelous sights, wondrous happenings. Good medicine was also any
mystery, no matter how small, whose solution opened to larger, more wondrous
mysteries
The cacophony of birds and the close encounter with
coyote had me convinced that I was in the middle of good medicine. Yet, strain my eyes as I may in the fading light I
was unable to make out the dancing forms of whitetails in the field. The
oversized and glowing full moon gave them ample opportunity to wait for the
cooler hours of night. I would not put knife to hide this day.
Sunday, December the third was another atypically balmy
day for meteorological winter. I returned to the area around 3:30 PM after
several hours of still-hunting a few miles down the road. Given that I had
expected to shoot a deer resting against a blowdown I was packing an entirely
different type of rifle: a Winchester 1885 in Theodore Roosevelt’s favorite
.405 Winchester. It wouldn’t allow me to take a deer at 400 yards, but it would
anchor a fleeing buck with authority. It was an atavistic arm to choose and
being equipped with only iron sights it was probably foolhardy to take it on a
public land hunt. But, I enjoyed carrying it and its charisma couldn’t be
matched. I walked in with it and a much smaller ditty bag than usual. Instead
of a frame-pack full of paraphernalia I simply had a leather belt slide full of
.405 rounds that was made by my local leather shop and a waxed canvas parcel
which included a headlamp, a spare knife, and surgical gloves. Something about
a lighter kit is freeing. It makes you want to walk farther and hunt harder.
At the field’s margin I scanned the perimeter with my
binoculars and noted for the first time a fresh-looking rub in a location that
I had not hunted since 2015. Since the corn field was immense and I had no real
way of knowing where the deer might emerge I figured that a setup near the rub
would be as good as any. Thus, I wedged myself against a small cedar and began
to wait. My view over the field was limited by the terrain to about 100 yards,
but that was perfect for the old .405 rifle. Behind me another large corn field
stretched for close to a half mile.
The first unexpected incident occurred when a very confused cottontail rabbit ran into my outstretched boot. It downright jolted me and I said “hey rabbit” far too loudly. At this point I thought that I had probably ruined my chances for a deer but sat it out nonetheless. About 4:50 PM (just the beginning of the magic hour) I turned to examine the field behind me and witnessed two deer walking into its cut rows. The deer were not yet aware of me and were about 100 yards away at this time. However, when I raised the rifle I was unable to make them out in the tang sight. I had not counted on the height of the surrounding prairie grass, which made accurate sighting impossible.
I decided to take a chance. I belly-crawled a few feet
past the tallest grass and sat back up. One of the deer had obviously seen the
movement and was leaving the scene with a small degree of discomfort. The other
yet remained and I was able to place the big brass bead of a front sight on it
before it departed. I remember nothing about the shot—neither the trigger
breaking nor the heavy recoil lingers in my memory. Yet, the deer was down
instantaneously and I rushed over to it, overcome with gladness and a sense of
blessing for being able to live out this moment. As I field-dressed the deer
and dragged out the half-mile back to my truck I couldn’t help but think that
this place was good medicine indeed.
