PHONE HOME FOR A MAINE WHITETAIL TROPHY

By Stephanie McIntyre

This year, hunting season seemed as though it popped up without any warning because it had been pretty warm.  I hadn’t received a doe permit, which discouraged me because I hadn’t seen a buck in the two years that I had been hunting.  However, my family pumped me up for the upcoming hunting season because they all hunt and are very obsessed.   

            As the season began, I went hunting whenever I had the time.  Whether it was after school, before school, or on Saturdays.  My dad had tagged out opening day with a small eight pointer.  So my grandfather and I drove up to a field on his property together just about every day and didn’t see anything exciting going on around us.  One day I couldn’t go hunting because of something or other, and it had been rainy and drizzly anyways, so I didn’t feel like the deer would be out.  Little did I know my grandfather had gotten a five-point-buck that after noon.  A couple days later, my mom came home from sitting in the morning and said to my dad: “Steph will be mad at me…I shot a buck in the field.”  So I went over to the field and it didn’t really make me mad, it just excited me because I knew there were deer in the area.  However, I still hadn’t seen anything yet, and a couple weeks went by and I still hadn’t seen anything, not even a doe. 

            So Saturday morning comes around and since I hadn’t gotten that much sleep during the night I was pretty tired, and didn’t really feel up to going out hunting.  But I did, and got up around 5:45 to be in the field on my rock pile, overlooking two very primary deer fields and a blueberry field to the right of me.  I was still discouraged, because I thought my family had shot all the deer in the area and there would be none left for me.  I wasn’t as nervous as usual while sitting there because the wind didn’t seem as though it was blowing at all, so I didn’t have any mysterious leaves to listen to, that may sound as though it were a deer moving. 

As I was sitting there, I began hearing something, which made me very alert, since there had been no wind that morning.  I turned my body so it was facing the field on the left of me and propped my knee up, in case I had to balance my gun on my knee. It was now getting close to seven o’clock.   The crunching noise stopped, so I began glancing back to the other field and looking around.  When I looked back, standing like a target, was an enormous buck.  It was the first deer I had seen all year… and it was a buck, and huge! I couldn’t believe my eyes, but I put my gun up ever so quickly, not even making sure the butt was in my shoulder or that I had a good grip on the gun because I was in shock at how big it was.

Phone Home

 I was shaking like crazy, but I took my safety off, and it was still standing there just like a target, eating apples off the ground in the middle of a field.  I was already to gently pull my trigger, but when I tried it wouldn’t go off.  I was anxiously awaiting the ever so loud bang, and there wasn’t one.  I kept pulling gently, but it just needed a hard pull.  Finally, it goes off, and I see the buck limp away.  I jack my gun, jump up and quickly get to the field in case it needed another shot.  I could hear it blowing at me.  I had seen it run into the woods, but it stopped making any sound, and before I went to look for it I called my mom on the cell phone my dad got me to bring with me in case I had gotten something, so they could come as quickly as possible.  I could barely punch in the numbers; my hands were shaking so much.  I said to her how big it was and I was so excited at that point.

First I went to where it had been standing, and since I was so excited, I wasn’t looking well enough.  I went into the field and looked all around for a deer somewhere on the ground.  I listened and didn’t hear anything.  I walked to the woods road, anxiously awaiting the arrival of my parents.  It seemed as though they were taking forever.  Finally they arrive, and my dad asks me to show him where he was when I shot at him.  We walked back and found a clump of white hair.  I was so excited.  I knew I had hit him, because he had limped away.  We followed the path it looked as though he had gone and soon came across bits of fat and blood.  I was ecstatic.  I wanted to run through the woods looking.  But I had to be at the end of the line of trackers, because I was too excited.

Breakfast Break

            We were following drop after drop… one at a time.  My dad knew the area, and he said that maybe we should go home and have breakfast, so that maybe the deer would lie down so we wouldn’t jump it up.  I couldn’t possibly go back home with what we were finding, but we did.  It was more exciting than Christmas morning for me.

So after breakfast we go back with my grandfather to where we had left off, and we continue to find drop after drop, about every five feet.  Then it stopped.  They told me to stay where the last drop was, which drove me crazy because I was so eager to look for more blood.  After maybe fifteen minutes one of them called out that they had found more blood.  I ran to where it was and we followed the little drops there were for a little while, until it had stopped again.  This was very repetitive, it had kept stopping and starting again on a different path.   

 I stood on the last drop of blood for about a half an hour when my grandfather says he has found blood.  We follow the path for a short distance and lose it again.  A while later my dad finds quite a bit of blood way to the left of the direction we had been looking.  I got a little excited for more, but we lost it again.  We then decide to split up, and my dad was going to walk around on the woods road to where we were looking.  We stand on the last drop of blood for about five minutes to make sure my dad had gotten around us and then continue walking straight.  I had never done this before and was becoming very discouraged.  We hadn’t seen any blood now for the last half hour.  It was now close to eleven o’ clock.  We eventually come together and start walking back on the woods road once we had met up with my dad.  We get to the truck, and I’m thinking to myself  “How did I miss that deer?  He was so big!”  I was so mad at myself, and I felt bad because we had seen enough blood to know it was wounded, and I didn’t want it to go to waste if it had died and we weren’t able to find it.  We drove home, without anyone really saying anything.  I took a shower, and went to my boyfriend’s house. 

Skate Date

 Telling the discouraging story made me feel worse, so we went ice-skating at the new ice rink in town.  After about a half hour of skating a kid I had known a little came up to me and said I had a phone call.  I laughed and said “Funny, funny.”  He convinced me he wasn’t joking and I answer the phone.  It was my mom.  “We found your deer, he’s massive so you better come home quick.” 

            I was so excited, my boyfriend and I threw our shoes on and sped home to see what my parents encountered.  By this time it was around 1:30.  I couldn’t believe they had gone back out to look.  I guess after I had gone skating my brother at college made them feel real bad about not going to look for it again.  He said he would definitely go out looking all day if he was home.  I just kept thinking to myself “How did we not see it?  We looked everywhere!” 

            When we eventually make it to the field I see my mom, dad, uncle, and my grandfather standing around the truck.  I guess they had field dressed it and dragged it to the truck without waiting for me.  I jump out of our truck and run to my dad’s truck.  It was so big!  It was the biggest buck I had ever seen, and I had shot it!  The spread of the antlers was twenty-two inches, with eleven points weighing in at one hundred seventy five pounds.  But if it weren’t for my determined parents I wouldn’t have received all the bragging rights that I had gotten, or have all the townspeople in town talking about my deer. 

            I was very grateful that my parents had gone back out looking.  I just couldn’t believe they had found it.  I had walked to the last drop of blood and kept walking, without seeing anything.  I guess my mom had found it when they went back out and she was so surprised at how big it was she exclaimed “Holy @^%&!”  I guess persistence pays off, and I guess it’s not such a bad thing that my parents are obsessed with hunting.