November 3rd. 4:30 am.
The alarm bleeped me awake at 4:30am Saturday morning November 3rd and I got out of bed and got ready for…work.
Yes, work.
On a Saturday.
Not only was this a Saturday but it was also my most coveted hunting day of the year. I covet this day for one very big reason. It the best day in the whole hunting season to harvest a trophy buck. And I had to work for half of it.
We all have our theories regarding the best day of the hunting season to harvest a trophy buck. Each member of my hunting circle has their favorite day during that first week of November.
I firmly believe November 3rd and 4th are the best days to be in the woods. These are the days I can expect to see that giant buck that no one in the community has set eyes on. He will be fearlessly prowling the woods in the middle of the day nosing around for a doe.
I came to this conclusion after spending a decade watching whitetail bucks in my western Massachusetts hunting area chase does. On this day of the season, deer demonstrate the most lack of caution and concern for hunter, predators, or even ordinary people. Their pursuit of does in estrus, or rut, is all consuming and happens to consistently line up with the day of November 3rd and 4th in Western Massachusetts.
Science supports this via the concept of photoperiod. This is the amount of daylight in the day. This measurement of daylight at particular times of the year is relatively consistent. It is consistent because the amount of light is determined by the Earth’s orbit around the sun and the angle of the planet and those do not change. Photoperiod seems to be the biggest indicator as to when does will enter rut and bucks will focus on only them.
Knowing all of this there I was. As a responsible adult I am forced to work for a living to support my family.
I dutifully worked from six in the morning until eleven. Afterwards, I headed out on this shortened day did not leave much time to get it done. Massachusetts has its’ oddball quirks. One of those quirks happened to be that hunting is banned on Sunday’s. If I was going to get a buck it had to be today - a day with little more than four hours of daylight left.
The Hunt
By the time I got to my hunting spot in the mountains I was discouraged. It was almost one o’clock. It was already a long day, and I was exhausted.
The only good news was that shotgun season in Massachusetts does not start until after Thanksgiving. That means that the bucks in the big state forest I was hunting hadn’t received the increased hunting pressure that shotgun season brings.
Once parked, I headed for a three-year-old clear cut on lumber company land bordering a state forest. It was a twenty-minute stalk to the clear cut. I moved slowly, stopping and scanning. I hoped to pick up movement and get lucky.
When I arrived over the hill to the top of the clear-cut edge, I set upon a lone hemlock tree. I love hemlock trees. They are excellent cover and bring me fond memories. When I was ten, my dad shot his biggest buck at the base of a hemlock tree.
Hemlock offers firm a safe bases for a tree stand. They provide food and cover for deer. But it’s not why I was attracted to this one. It was just alone and different. After deciding to stay there I took off my pack and looked for shooting lanes.
At this point I really wasn’t hunting anymore. I was scouting for shotgun season. Discouraged late in the day, tired, it was easy for me to mentally give up.
There he was.
A ghost in the middle of a shooting lane.
The massive buck looked like he stood up from his bed on full alert. I could only see his neck and face as his body and antlers were concealed by mountain laurel bushes and a couple felled hemlock trees.
I deliberately did not count points. A hunter who focuses on antlers is a hunter that is sure to miss. I thought he had to be seventy yards away. Too far for an ethical shot (later that week I returned with a range finder. The shot was 55 yards). I thought for a moment about all the moments from the past like this one when I didn’t shoot.
I then decided “I’m shooting!”
I had confidence because for years when I was young, I practiced shooting at 70 yards all the time. I could confidently put 3 out of five arrows in a paper plate at 70 yards using my Bear Whitetail two, shooting instinctive with fingers.
The equipment I had now was light years ahead of that. I aimed high and with extreme confidence I released the arrow. The arrow snapped out of the bow and cut through the air - before it sank into the trunk of dead fallen hemlock 10 yards short of the deer.
He never moved! The deer proved my theory. The deer was so focused on finding a doe he did not even care that I’d lofted an arrow at him.
He remained motionless. I pulled another arrow out of my quiver. As quick as it was notched and aimed; I released my hold and let it fly with little thought and the arrow struck home.
With a trash and crash the buck stormed uphill through the laurel back the way I had come and was vanished.
Tracking ‘The Big One’
I hiked down to the scene of the crime. I found blood and half of my snapped arrow. I didn’t know where I had hit the deer. I decided I needed help tracking this one.
I called my son. More than one set of eyes when tracking is helpful when trying to mark the last place you found blood. Typically, the hunter will compare the deer’s direction to the next drop of blood you find. I knew this deer was the biggest I ever shot. I didn’t even know how big he was. I couldn’t see him clearly. But seeing his huge neck and eye was an ah-ha moment. When you have enough experience to know you just know.
As I waited for my son to get there, I started paying attention to the weather. The storm system hustled in behind me over the mountain top. The wind gusted and carried my scent over the treetops and below me. Snow alternated with rain off and on.
Here I started to worry. I didn’t want the rain to wash away the blood. Nor did I want it to get dark before we found him.
After I shot, I checked my watch. 2 o’clock.
At 3 o’clock, my son arrives with two friends. Excellent! The weather pulled back and we began tracking him back to the top of the mountain.
He traveled through a patch of the upper clear cut with lots of logs on the ground and brush so thick we didn’t know how he got threw it. We had to use teamwork ourselves to crawl through the brush.
Finally, we got to the edge of the clear cut. The deer went through a hemlock forest down the hill into a ravine and towards the truck. I thought about how convenient it would be to find him at the truck waiting for me.
He took a right. Right away from the truck.
We easily followed the blood trail. Blood stained the ground liberally and we were moving fast. But we had already hiked over 200 yards. That’s not a good sign. There was so much blood on the ground we all wondered how he could be alive.
After three hundred yards we reached the edge of a large pond. My heart sank. I knew he swam across it. I knew I had to get to the other side. Just then my son’s friend yelled, “there he is! I see him!”
He’d made it to the middle of the pond and no further. The euphoria only a hunter can experience rolled in over me.
“I got him!”
I couldn’t believe it! But that euphoria faded as I realized I now had to go get him. But how?
There was a boat on the other side of the pond. Someone carried it through the woods so they could have a private fishing spot. We borrowed it and I waited on shore as my son and his friends rowed out to get the deer. As they approach the deer I couldn’t wait, I shouted “How big?” “How many points?”
The next thing I know they started hooting and hollering. Then they yelled “Its’ the biggest deer you ever shot!” My son rowed while his friends hung onto the deer. The Deers antlers kept catching on sunken tree stumps and he earned the nickname ‘Anchor.’
On the shore we had to take a few moments to admire his sized and beauty. ‘Anchor’ happened to be my first ten-point buck. I have been deer hunting since I was 12 and my first ten-pointer came at age 49. The buck had 4 points on one side and six on the other. The antlers would total 146 inches but will go into Pope and Young as 136 7/8 inches.
He looked perfect to me.
It was then I learned something else about this trophy. The deer was shot in the jugular and the 125 grain thunder head with a piece of the 2317 game getter was still in him at the base of the head and spine. I had no idea how he did not drop at the first impact of the arrow.
What an amazing strong tuff animal! For a moment I wished he was my backyard friend instead. I wanted to watch him under the birdfeeder every day. But later when we fried up the tenderloins the feeling went away. I have plenty of deer around the house with whom I could make friends.