White Oak Mtn Ranger
Active member
- Joined
- Aug 28, 2007
- Messages
- 28
180 OUT AGAIN - NO KNOWN CURE
They were on me before I could effectively react. Reacting would have required standing and twisting to face the poplar and what definitely sounded like three deer in the still of the frost covered dawn. The deer had walked silently out of 500 acres of 15 foot high pines and hit the fresh patch of loud and freshly dead leaves dropped by scant hardwoods that lined a dusty dry creek. The sun was still somewhere over the horizon but it was shootin’ light.
This ‘come up from behind and freeze me in my seat’ crap has happened to me before. There apparently is no known cure.
When you finally pick the one tree on earth that you want to climb, you have 360 options at your disposal to point your nose. That’s a bit of an over statement because you normally try to avoid direct contact with the bright rising sun on clear days which usually cuts down on some of your 360 degree dilemma. There are a few other good reasons that help cut down on the ’which way do I face thing’ but it really results in roughly 360 options for you to choose from.
So I blew it. The deer that I thought would walk under my tree from behind me thought that I stunk and stampeded like cattle back into the pines where they spent a good part of the morning snorting the stink out of their lungs. I managed to get a fleeting glimpse at a flag of one.
For all I know there could have been 100 deer behind me when I started to stink up the place.
Now that those deer were gone it’s adjustment time and I’m facing the tree, knowing full well that within the next hour one of the deer that was the most mentally challenged would circle back to see what all the snorting and wheezing was about and I would be facing the wrong way again.
It didn’t take 30 minutes for the noise in the leaves behind me to get that old sick stomach feeling rolling. Twisting to get an actual look at this deer was all it took to make him/her bound like a jack rabbit back into the pines.
180 out again. No known cure.
The next five does did the same thing about an hour later but by then I was spinning around in the tree stand like I was on a treadmill. A big doe and two yearlings cleared the pines first and I could hear that there were at least two maybe even more back in the thicket. The first three crossed the hardwood strip and were about to drift into the next growth of pines when they developed a good case of the shakes. Another deer stuck his head out of the denseness and the fifth one; the one that I had deduced must have been the buck decided that all he was willing to divulge was his front legs.
So here we are again, 180 out. No known cure.
Do you drop the easy doe, put the meat in the freezer?-OR- Do you gamble on the opposite and shoot for the set of horns that you can’t quite see, but horns that you’re sure are getting up around the 180 to 190 class with every heart beat?
Waiting is a terrible ordeal. While I was enduring this miserable little conflict the three does at 20 yards decided that something smelled awful. And with that little announcement the legs that probably by now held a 200 class buck disappeared.
The silence that you are left with when you have spent your morning 180 out is big. It lasted from Saturday until about Monday afternoon. I’m thinking about inventing a tree stand with a motorized bar stool that spins around at three fully adjustable speeds.
Probably call it the “Lazy Susan for The Dumb A#$%! That Can’t Decide Which Way to Face in a Normal Deer Stand”. Probably be too big me to carry but it may catch on. Surely I’m not the only guy in the woods that is directionally challenged.
Might just get rich. I wonder how fast you have to go before you get air sick and puke all over the base of the tree.
No known cure.
They were on me before I could effectively react. Reacting would have required standing and twisting to face the poplar and what definitely sounded like three deer in the still of the frost covered dawn. The deer had walked silently out of 500 acres of 15 foot high pines and hit the fresh patch of loud and freshly dead leaves dropped by scant hardwoods that lined a dusty dry creek. The sun was still somewhere over the horizon but it was shootin’ light.
This ‘come up from behind and freeze me in my seat’ crap has happened to me before. There apparently is no known cure.
When you finally pick the one tree on earth that you want to climb, you have 360 options at your disposal to point your nose. That’s a bit of an over statement because you normally try to avoid direct contact with the bright rising sun on clear days which usually cuts down on some of your 360 degree dilemma. There are a few other good reasons that help cut down on the ’which way do I face thing’ but it really results in roughly 360 options for you to choose from.
So I blew it. The deer that I thought would walk under my tree from behind me thought that I stunk and stampeded like cattle back into the pines where they spent a good part of the morning snorting the stink out of their lungs. I managed to get a fleeting glimpse at a flag of one.
For all I know there could have been 100 deer behind me when I started to stink up the place.
Now that those deer were gone it’s adjustment time and I’m facing the tree, knowing full well that within the next hour one of the deer that was the most mentally challenged would circle back to see what all the snorting and wheezing was about and I would be facing the wrong way again.
It didn’t take 30 minutes for the noise in the leaves behind me to get that old sick stomach feeling rolling. Twisting to get an actual look at this deer was all it took to make him/her bound like a jack rabbit back into the pines.
180 out again. No known cure.
The next five does did the same thing about an hour later but by then I was spinning around in the tree stand like I was on a treadmill. A big doe and two yearlings cleared the pines first and I could hear that there were at least two maybe even more back in the thicket. The first three crossed the hardwood strip and were about to drift into the next growth of pines when they developed a good case of the shakes. Another deer stuck his head out of the denseness and the fifth one; the one that I had deduced must have been the buck decided that all he was willing to divulge was his front legs.
So here we are again, 180 out. No known cure.
Do you drop the easy doe, put the meat in the freezer?-OR- Do you gamble on the opposite and shoot for the set of horns that you can’t quite see, but horns that you’re sure are getting up around the 180 to 190 class with every heart beat?
Waiting is a terrible ordeal. While I was enduring this miserable little conflict the three does at 20 yards decided that something smelled awful. And with that little announcement the legs that probably by now held a 200 class buck disappeared.
The silence that you are left with when you have spent your morning 180 out is big. It lasted from Saturday until about Monday afternoon. I’m thinking about inventing a tree stand with a motorized bar stool that spins around at three fully adjustable speeds.
Probably call it the “Lazy Susan for The Dumb A#$%! That Can’t Decide Which Way to Face in a Normal Deer Stand”. Probably be too big me to carry but it may catch on. Surely I’m not the only guy in the woods that is directionally challenged.
Might just get rich. I wonder how fast you have to go before you get air sick and puke all over the base of the tree.
No known cure.
