Deerbuster.com


	My neck of the woods is more neck than woods. What I mean by that is that I live and hunt (mostly) in suburbia, southwestern Connecticut. The wood lots are small and segmented and they neck down to funnels all over the place. The deer spill out of the woods between developed areas to feed in the lawns and orchards of estates and school yards. Instead of funnels formed by meadows pinching into a rock ledge, they may be where a strip of thicket separates a road and a backyard. "Should be easy" you might say. Hunting deer that are used to a certain amount of intrusion ought to be like catching tadpoles in a bucket. In fact, some of my internet friends have commented that they don't even think this sort of hunting is hunting at all. Don't be so sure. Here in Connecticut, the archer success rate hovers around 16%, far below states like Colorado where bow men and women score two and a half times more often. True, the entire state isn't suburban, but a disproportionate number of the deer are taken in zone 11, my zone. But I don't think that is because the hunting is easier. The deer here are thicker per square mile than any other part of the state. Also, they are squeezed in to small pockets of cover. Heck, if these deer were as easy as more rural deer, HALF the deer harvest would be from "TheZone" . What makes them so crafty? The key is their adaptability. They learn to differentiate normal, harmless human activity from the other kind. My kind. They know where people are supposed to walk in the woods, and from which direction it is normal to smell a man. Remember, to a deer, we stink! They are not curious either, certainly not the big ones. For instance, consider a buck I took last year. I was hunting in Easton, a residential town with no industry to speak of. One evening early in the season I was in my stand when the weather broke, after two continuous days of wind and rain. It didn't take long for the deer to move. They were hungry! From the right, departing the top of a knoll came deer. They walked down a lightly worn trail, not an obvious pathway. Without stopping or browsing, they came on in like a mule train. Bow in hand, release on the string, I could see the lead deer was a shooter. The other deer would be bucks because it was " bachelor group " time of year. The leader had a full curve of the main beam with eight points. I started to assess the rest of the buck train (four of them) and my eyes went right to the caboose. He was twice the size of the others! His rack seemed burdensome as he lumbered along. I realized soon after seeing him that it was the same buck I encountered the year before. The leader, a spindly eight point with a 16 inch spread and six inch tines hit the wall right beneath my stand. The wall was my scent trail. Both he and the smaller eight point started acting nervous, sniffing the foliage and looking up in the tree tops, for me I suppose. They were very suspicious, but the number three deer, a spike in velvet, didn't care. He just started eating. Big boy sure noticed, though. He watched the two eight points intently, only occasionally reaching his head around to groom himself. When he did this maneuver, at twelve yards, his neck looked like a good target. The front-on shot angle is controversial. If I took the shot, my powerful set up likely would have killed the buck, but an exit wound would have been unlikely. With the light rain, the tracking job promised to be hellish. Finally, amid the smaller bucks checking me out, the big buck turned to leave and I drew the bow. Unfortunately, he turned so quickly that by the time I was on target he was walking away. I held on, hoping he'd turn. He doubled the distance between us, going back on the trail he had come in on. Then he stopped, facing dead away and just stood there. In the minutes that followed, I considered pivoting and shooting the largest of the other bucks. It was a four yard broadside shot. Finally, I chose to let down my draw as smoothly as I could, hoping none of the bucks would be looking my way at just that moment. I got away with it and finally the deer I wanted most took a step into a slight quartering away right pose and paused again. Now was my chance, but my next attempt to draw the bow failed. The fatigue of holding my draw for about two minutes took a toll. I was suddenly very pissed. No way I'd let this happen to me again (the same thing happened on a bear hunt). I risked the extra movement and hoisted the bow up high and drew downwards. Got a bead on the deer and released a perfect shot. The arrow flight was beautiful to watch a shallow arc that disappeared just in front of the rump crease. The angle promised entry into the chest cavity. The bucks scattered.
Even the younger eight pointers knew something was up when they hit my scent trail. They knew that man scent didn't belong there in the thick stuff. And that mature buck wasn't going to hang around to find out what had them on edge, either. He had NO curiosity. At the same time he wasn't going to blaze off into dangers unknown either. He coolly and calmly decided not to take a chance and started walking away. He almost made it too. Nowadays I get to see that Pope and Young buck whenever I pass by my archery work bench. Suburban bucks are a challenge, just like anywhere. Give them a try sometime. Look for a future article on how to obtain permission to hunt on the little honey holes of private land in my "neck of the woods".