The Meat Hunt

October 17, 2009

Gather at the Kill Site

A few weeks ago my buddy Brian (NC St8) called me wanting to know if I was up for a Game Lands Hunt? Sure I said that should be fun. Part of me questioned my sanity about agreeing to this hunt. My only hope was that NC St8 could find a few others to join us so we could spread the fun around.

NC St8 is a fun guy to hunt with but probably one of the luckiest / unluckiest hunter I’ve ever come across. He’ll get his critter (lucky part) but along the way he’ll have a calamity of errors (unlucky part) that you wouldn’t believe could befall one individual. With that as the backdrop I knew this was going to be an adventure and if we lived there would be some stories to tell.

This has become somewhat of a tradition with a few of us from the website ( NC Hunt & Fish) that we get together one day during the week of Muzzle Loader season and hike into a secret spot on the Game Lands and have a meat hunt.

Being public land that gets hammered pretty hard this is the best time to connect with something because you can take both antlered and antlerless deer. Next week when the regular firearm season rolls in it is antlered deer only till around Christmas time when does become legal to hunt again. This is a stock your freezer adventure and pretty much “if it’s brown it’s down “type of hunt.

The Crew

We hike in a pretty good distance with the nearest stand more than a mile from the parking area. This year there was four of us ; NC St8, Quiet But Deadly (QBD), Jay Bird, and myself. With 3 carts to haul our stands and blinds we begin the hike in. The temperatures are cool and it’s misting a bit a much better situation then opening day when I hunted in hot & humid conditions.

I set up my blind in a grove of oak trees mostly reds but a few whites to make it interesting and settle in for the hunt. I spend the afternoon watching squirrels and birds enjoying the oak grove. I have a pretty uneventful but enjoyable afternoon in nature.

The first shot of the afternoon belongs to Jay Bird but he has less than perfect ignition and the deer bounds away unharmed. The misty dampness obviously got to his powder preventing him from connecting on the doe.

QBD has an afternoon much like mine where the squirrels entertained him he does see a deer but can’t get a shot. It’s looking like we are going to get skunk but with just a few minutes left in the hunt NC St8 gets a shot.

Moments later I get a call from him telling me that he shot a buck but he couldn’t find any blood but he heard the deer crash. By now it is the end of legal light so I tell him once we get our stuff together we’ll be down. I pack up my stuff and head to the meeting spot. Jay Bird and QBD are coming down another trail to the meeting spot. We decide to hide our equipment and bring just what we will need to track a deer and start heading towards NC St8.

We find NC St8 in the woods looking for where he left his stand and stuff when he went to track his deer. The good news is that he lucked out and found his deer despite not being able to find “much blood”. While we found it somewhat funny that he laid his equipment down and now the dark woods looked pretty much all alike we helped him search for his stuff. It took about 10 minutes or so and he stumbled upon it. Great now to get back out to the trail and go get his deer.

His deer was only about 200 yards from where he shot it and it was really close to the trail. Once we got in there we started back tracking from the deer to learn from the blood trail. There was a pretty good blood trail but without good lights it was difficult to see. QBD talked about how Coleman Lanterns are really one of the best items to use when blood trailing but folks rarely uses them these days. We ribbed NC St8 about not finding “much blood” especially in a couple of places where it looked like it someone poured it out.

A little Blood

Gutting the deer with 3 experts offering advice, holding legs, and shinning lights while none of us offering to gut it for him seemed to make NC St8 a bit nervous. Let’s just say we laughed pretty well while NC ST8 did the gutting job as a light rain fell. Some how he completed the job with all his fingers still attached.

We had a 45 minute hike to our trucks so we got rolling. It was about 9pm when we finally got back to the trucks. I swear someone added a few hills to the trail while we were in there hunting. Once at the trucks I offer to let NC St8 use my game hoist that hooks into my trailer hitch to cut the deer up. He rejects my offer wanting to get home and use his hoist there to finish cutting his deer up.

NC St8 had one more lucky / unlucky event in regards to this hunt after we all split up and went home. I guess his hoist snapped at the house and he barely escaped injury and a trip to an emergency room. I bet he wished he used my hoist.

We had a great hunt; lots of laughs, some great sights, and spending times with friends. We all got out of the woods with all our limbs so I guess it was a very successful hunt. Besides once again NC St8 is the only one to tag a deer…. he is one lucky dude.