2012 WI 9 day deer gun hunt…what it means to me - Deer Hunting - Deer Hunting

I finally brought myself around to writing up how our 2012 season went. Figured it was better here than in a report. I do have a lot of notes from the crappy conditions we encountered and will share them at a later time.

I need to quote IDO’s member “umichjesse” to most accurately describe each of the nine days in our Gun Deer hunting season –“a Roller Coaster”. As part of the 614,435 hunters that purchased a license with high hopes of harvesting a deer of a lifetime, I had an advantage to seeing my dream come true.
Many have come to know my youngest daughter Olivia, and see her growing passion for the outdoors. What many don’t know is that I have an older daughter Lindsey (age 17) that 4 years ago announce that she wasn’t interested in hunting. Yea, that’s right…the day after she completed her hunter safety class she broke my heart. This is the same little girl that walked (sometimes was carried) on my trapline since age 4, helps me prepare pelts, loves to fish, and is in maturing at light speed.
The reality of life has caught up to her during this last summer heading into her senior year in school. Focused unlike any kid I ever known, she has completed her CNA certificate, maintains her high class ranking, GPA,…. and is already accepted/committed to college. What more can a Father ask for?? Glad you asked! The harsh reality of working in a nursing home and the long hours of school work has made her take a hard look back and see the things she passed on experiencing. Deer hunting being at the top of her list. So this last Aug when she announced that she was going hunting with us, I had the adrenaline rush that was indescribable. For the first time ever I would get to see both my baby girls sport’n the blaze orange and sharing in one of my favorite sports!
Our season starts in early summer with the work around the farm. Pruning trees, food plots, trail cams and the list goes on and on. A bit unfair to Olivia, Lindsey was exempt from a lot of the weekend choirs as she had been working 40 to 50 hours a week all summer. This also dampen the time I had to spend with her getting some copper sent down the range. But we managed and did the best we could.
In addition to having my favorite ladies accompanying me, I see each passing year as possibly the last year my father is able to join us. He’s in failing health and the ability to be mobile come very hard to him. In an effort to do what I could to make his life easier, I did what any kid should do for their folks – I built my Dad the new “Hilton Tower” that we had talked about over the last couple years. At just under 19 feet to the floor, it provides an incredible level of visibility across our land.
So moving forward, Thursday, Nov. 15th I was filled with visions of my daughters scoring on 2 of the 3 huge bucks that we had been watching. The truck was packed, girls attendace at school was already called in for the following week, tons of their favorite groceries bought……..then the train began to run off the track. Lindsey was called into work Friday night because a co-worker couldn’t work for her, Olivia’s wrestling coach wanted to meet with us about her potential to go varsity, and my Father called that he was running to the hospital because his blood pressure was out of control. Talk about feeling helpless. Finally making our way to our farm, we arrived just before midnight on Friday. 5 hours to get some sleep and hit the woods.
My Father was not up to getting outdoors, and before we knew it his season was over. He spent not one minute hunting this year. So making the best of the situation, I had Lindsey sitting with me in the tower, and Olivia off to a secret spot where she knew mature bucks were slipping between a couple plots of woods. Saturday morning started for me like only something you could dream up. The heavy layer of frost painted the landscape completely white. The satisfaction I felt of watching Olivia’s red LED light fade into the distance and she made her way to her ground blind, and myself walking with Lindsey to an area I knew had bucks passing in the early mornings.
As we sat from 6am to legal shooting time we could see the silhouette of deer passing across the field. Lindsey and I had an agreement based upon her inexperience with firearms. We carried one rifle for the two of us, and she would only take a shot on a standing buck at 100 yrds or less. Meanwhile, she assumed the role of videographer and took control of our camera. It didn’t take long for the action to start for us. Just minutes into legal time I watched a deer working down a territory trail in high grass. As it narrowed the gap from 500yrds to 300 yrds, we could see the massive rack getting bigger and bigger. At 294 yrds, he stopped in a grove of walnut trees, turned towards the woods and displayed a head full of hardware that left us awe-struck. With no ethical shot available, we could only watch him vanish into the woods.
Over the next hour, we had 6 more bucks working around us in the 200 to 500 yrd range. Nothing that presented a shot for Lindsey, and only 1 questionable 10 that I elected to pass on at 420 yds. With an ear to ear smile plastered on my face, I hung my head in disbelief as I discovered Lindsey was watching all these deer and never hit the record button. A morning of a lifetime and it was never captured.
Laughing about it now, it was hard to believe that that misfortune could continue. We had a small morphodite 6pntr come down a trail and we were taping him, and Lindsey saw what she thought was the big 10 we saw earlier was on the other side of the field. Definitely a nice buck, but before we could glass him or get the camera on him, he turned and slipped away. During all the commotion, we both failed to see a young 8 walking from a different end of our field directly towards us. Lindsey spotted him at about 120 yrds out and grabbed my rifle. I think one syllable came out of her mouth when she asked “ close enough big enough, can I shoot, I’m on him, now,now,now,now, can I Dad, …..” I just reminder her to take a breath, relax, be on your mark, and touch the rigger as I was zooming in on her deer.
108 yrds, Tikka 270WSM, Burris XTR 3-12, Barnes TTSX130gr,….and suddenly none of that was important. Her buck managed to move about 5 feet from the point of impact and expire. My baby girl just hammered her very first deer. Not the biggest by any means, but the image of her relaxed posture, calm attitude, and first buck on the ground was bigger than life!
Then the next mishap – battery communication error message on the camera screen????? Yep, Dad screwed up that opportunity. I replaced the battery just before her taking her deer and the camera wasn’t syncing with it. During the error message on the screen, the recording was halted and we never captured it.
At nearly 10am, we had watched 12 bucks cross our field, over 30 total, Lindsey had her deer, and finally a shot barked out from Olivia’s area. I gave it a minute and called her on a radio. Expecting her to say Big buck down….she whispered” I’m Scared”. Apparently someone shot RIGHT NEXT TO HER. I glassed the area I could see, and behold, there was a guy sitting across a fence from her – not even 125 yrds away. I instructed her to pack up and walk over to Lindsey and I.
During my moment of increased blood pressure and I’m sure a few naughty words, a shiny spot in the weeds caught my attention. Glassing it, I could see the rump of a pretty good size deer. I continued to watch it until this freak monster lifted his head. There at 218 yrds in my field was the brute that I watched at opening daylight courting a doe. I told Lindsey I was taking him as soon as he turned and to cover her ears. (Which later I realized she set down the camera on OFF to cover her ears). Finally after a few minutes, a perfect broadside shot was presented.
In the moment, I was confident it was a Monster Buck Down!!!! His body went completely sideways, saw hair blowing, and he was knocked silly. That was until he regained his balance. Like a rocket strapped to a out of control spaceship, he hobbled behind the doe that was a streak of brown blur into the woods. Knowing he was hit, and now suspecting a liver hit in lieu of a lung shot I felt it was best to let him lay for a hour or so. History always seems to repeat itself with deer hitting the first heavy cover and bedding down when hit.
As we sat there, I was completely thrilled. I had Olivia, Lindsey, Llindsey’s first buck, and my potential personal biggest buck ever on the ground!!! So we proceeded to take care of tagging Lindsey’s buck, photo session, and dressing it out. With a hour and a half now passed by, I figured it was safe to pursue my buck without the risk of jumping it up and a long trailing. Typical to a liver shot, there was nearly nothing of a blood trail. Easily over-looked at first, we continued to search and re-verify his path. Eventually found the needed blood trail and I continued down the hillside. I stopped and looked the landscape over very thoroughly and identified a treetop on the ground encased with raspberry brush. Confident he was in there, I followed the little amount of blood I could find until I spotted a patch of white. Immediately my heart sank and I grew with anger as I came to realize what I saw, was his testicles hanging on a tree limb with a gut pile below. I had to satisfy what I already knew. I made the walk along the blood trail directly to a huge pool of blood on the ground and the obvious drag marks of where he was pulled out to be tagged and dressed.
Unknowing to me at the time, 3 guys hunting a neighbors open access parcel of land had crossed a fence and was trespassing on my immediate neighbors’ land. I made for a quick line up the hill to see if they were around to no avail. Gone, empty, depressed, and beyond frustrated.
For us, it was like not only the train derailed, the bridge was blown out, engine destroyed, hijacked,…and the emotional roller coaster continued. Daily winds of 20 to 40 mph, dense fog, couple of yearlings, and 2 tiny bucks would be about all we would see for the rest of the week.
If it wasn’t bad enough to have been kicked in the groin on opening day, my last day was even worse. All packed up and heading out of my driveway, I was stopped by a little green truck. Young guy gets out, maybe upper 20’s/30ish, clean, and polite. He introduced himself and asked if I was the land owner or if I knew who the land owner was to a segment of land that he pointed off to. I am I replied, and that is when I fell off the cliff. He asked for permission to hunt where Olivia had been sitting on opening day and continued to brag up the two monster bucks that he and his buddies took out of the “DNR” land. He grabbed his camera off of his truck dash and played them back for me. I could not contain myself as he gave me the measuremnts of the buck his buddy took. Its at a taxidermist with a 22-7/8″ spread. Easily 170/180 class and the biggest that I have shot. Then I made dam sure he knew he was trespassing, I knew where both bucks were taken from, and the fact that his buck was shot right next to my daughter on PRIVATE land and that his buddy never shot my buck. Well, that argument continued for a minute or two as I took the Forestry map out of his hand and pointed to the obvious fence line that I KNOW is there. The damage was done and regardless of his beliefs, he and his buddies contributed to making this one of the most disappointing seasons after having such high hopes.
Fortunately for Lindsey, she didn’t have much time out sitting with me in previous years, so she didn’t have much to compare it to. For me, the greed and blatant disregard for ethics with a number of guys that entered and trespassed on my neighbor’s land all week was sickening.

This is part of what is killing me. My daughters were taking part in the reciovery. I made a bad shot, I know it, and its only I to blame. But here I am teaching them how to handle the situation. If anyone would have shot a .22lr in that valley I would have heard it, let alone a “deer rifle”. There was never a shot fired after the earlier shot next to olivia. This guy watched this deer stumble down the hill and bed in a thicket and die. I’m sure by the time he saw it, it was dead. (BTW liver was blown up in the gut pile). He told his buddies he shot it, and they believed him???
My dad did bring up one thing to me that I had to think about. About 8 years ago, we found a small 10 dead on our land. People hunting the neighbor’s land shot it and it crossed our fence. Unfortunately, no one looked hard enough – hellofa blood trail! Deer went to waste. My dad’s point was if you were sitting there for a hour and half and no one came looking, what would you do? Well, in this case within the hour the deer was gone, dressed, drug out, and taken away. I’m quite sure when he saw how big it was, greed took over.