Gratitude For The Deer That Are There

[Hammsolo]

Thank you for this post. I am in the midst of prepping to hit the road for my yearly deer hunt with my brother and hang with my buddy Roger. I don’t even have a tag this year. It’s about time, place, and people.

My heart aches to return to Montana. I was born of that soil and water. I ground it into my bones as a kid. It is still “home.” Kim and I will be returning as soon as these damn kids graduate high school! Pull it together children.

 

[kansasdad]

I’m glad your bullets flying style is rubbing off @Nameless Range

I enjoy your writing style immensely. A nice blending of fact and introspective thoughts.

 

[rikard78]

Lots of bellyaching about the state of deer in Montana. The crowding, the structure of the age class, the disturbing trends. I jump in and do it too, almost always based on a juxtaposition of what I remember when I first started hunting from around 1995-2010 - my own "Good Old Days". I have not shot a mule deer in the hills I grew up hunting since this thread 6 years ago.


I am blessed with family and friends, and this hunting season has been 90% hunting with them. My son shooting his first deer, a childhood buddy from the midwest who drew the nonresident deer/elk combo and came out with this father, hunting with my dad - that's been the last month.

Someday I plan to formalize an argument against the adage of "Don't pass on the first day what you'd be happy to shoot on the last". I don't think it's logical, doesn't take into consideration different attributes of experience like what's desired given what's likely to be possible, or the fact that sometimes you just wanna keep going. Looking at my work/family schedule, I had 3 days to hunt a permit I drew. Kind of a bummer, but things like my buddy coming out came up and I prioritize that over my permit, and so though I passed on deer larger than this buck on the first couple days, on the evening of the last day I pulled the trigger, and was perfectly happy.

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Montana certainly does offer opportunity, and after work one day before we stole daylight from the evening, I filled a WT doe tag as well.

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My son is 10, and this was his first year to hunt deer. I think when the youth season first started I had mixed feelings about it, but getting to go out with my boy during those two days was wonderful - one large reason being the hills weren't overrun, and we could take our time without really having to think about competing with other hunters. For the boy’s first deer hunt with him behind the trigger, I took him for a pretty challenging hike in the morning. We saw many deer but no bucks. Regrouping at lunch, I didn’t want to burn him out and told him that we’d spend the afternoon glassing and grousing. We found the grouse first. In between snow squalls limiting visibility to a couple hundred yards, I thought I saw the phantom of a small buck on a ridge not too far off, and I asked him if he wanted to try and he said yes. We crept to within about 100 yards, I lined him up on him and he said he was ready. I told him to take his time and watched through the binoculars.

After a minute of nothing happening I looked down. He’s steady on the birds, but leveled on the buck the scope shook as if in the hands of human mid-seizure. “I can’t stop jittering”, the boy whispered. I comforted him with the fact that as far as the IQ of God’s ungulates goes, the only beast dumber than this young mule deer buck would be this young mule deer buck a month from now. We stayed concealed in the trees and snuck another 30 yards closer. He said he was ready and I wasn’t so sure, but he made a great shot and adhering to my code that the bullets fly till the spirits in the sky, followed it up with another. He was as happy as I’ve seen him and some combination of passion and innocence and knowing it's all temporary made me a bit misty, and as happy as I could be myself .

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My dad is 75, and I am now at an age where my friends' folks seem to be disappearing a bit. I enjoy they hell out of driving around and looking at deer with him. Every year it's the same country and conversations, and they never get old. "Remember when your brother shot that buck over there? Remember that terrible storm we drug that deer out up that gulch?" We just drive to glassing spots, look at deer, and move on, unless he sees one that tickles his fancy, and sometimes he does.



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My friend and his father arrived a week ago and our plan was to hunt elk every day - I have no recipe for hunting elk other than hiking up mountains I have shot them on before and seeing if they are there. In the evenings when all were bushed we'd glass hillsides for deer. We found some elk which was awesome, but I most enjoyed the evenings. We probably saw 120+ deer over 5 days, and maybe 7 or 8 were bucks, and only two of those bucks weren't two points. I was kind of lamenting this when my buddy and his dad chimed in about how much they were enjoying what we were seeing. I tried and started to enjoy it with them, and when they took their bucks, my joy for them was as real as the joy they felt in their success.

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I am hopeful that the work that folks on HuntTalk have done will change the direction of conversations around mule deer and hunting in Montana. I don't like where we are headed, and I think there's possibility for something different and special. That said, there is actually some really interesting science around gratitude - how it changes your brain, your happiness, your health. Being mindfully grateful is something everyone can do to better their station. It's easier said than done but it's real.

Due to my schedule, other than a couple mornings, I am mostly done hunting for the year. On one hand, I hope for a different future and will continue to speak up in favor of it, but on the other, I feel like a guy bitching about a stubbed toe in front of another who just lost both his legs.

There's no doubt in my mind - it's been beautiful out there.

That's awesome!!