T-minus: 65 hours until the opening of the 2021 Michigan Firearm Deer Season! I took vacation for the entire first week of the season. Hopefully my e-scouting, ground truthing and general preparation pays off this year. Despite my very best attempts to find isolated locations in the nastiest terrain possible (where there are usually deer, but not usually hunters), I have yet to find a spot to set up that doesn't already have some other guy's tree stand in there. Very disappointing...
However, this past Saturday morning when I was out scouting I was sneaking along completely silent, in FULL camo. Seriously...my only exposed skin was a thin strip around my eyes.
I then hear a grunt, and think to myself that it sounds a lot like a grunt tube (a call that hunters use to simulate a buck grunting) and it must be another hunter in the woods--probably up in a tree--who is trying to get my attention without speaking (after all, it's happened before...and I've done it myself). So I peek over the edge of the steep ridge I'm on and see a flash of brown moving in the cover about 60 yards away. So I blew my own grunt call and an 8-point buck sprinted in to see who's on his property. He came to a stop less than 10 yards from me and was looking for a fight. I just froze in place. He was bobbing his head (because their eyes are on the sides of their head, like other prey animals, they don't have the best depth perception at certain distances and will bob their heads to produce a better 3D view) and stomping the ground, trying to scare me into flinching, then he ripped up a small sapling with his antlers. All happening, really....really close to me. My heart rate must have been bouncing off the rev limiter.
After about a minute of this, he eventually walked off calmly in the other direction. I'm really glad I didn't get gored. This was the first time in over 20 years that I've had a rutting buck come running into a call. Super exciting.
So I stayed there for another 10 minutes or so, so that he would get out of visual range before I could begin walking again without being found out (deer remember encounters with people, and I don't want him to shy away from that area during hunting season because he saw me a week before).
I get another 50 yards down that trail and what do I find...?
Another tree stand.
