Pass it on! That's the slogan used to promote hunting to our youth.
As an elementary school teacher, passing something on to today's youth is a daily task, but earlier this month my classroom was a tree stand and the passing on was the hope of a successful first-ever hunt for Tyler, one of my students.
In the 15 minutes it took to drive to the woods, I gave Tyler the brief do's and don'ts of tree-stand hunting -- try to be quiet, try not to move too much, use your ears more than your eyes, the basics.
After we arrived at the site, I sprayed us with a scent neutralizer, taught him how to put on a head cover and loaded him up with the extra stand. I carried my bow and the climbing stick.
As I struggled to put up his stand next to mine, I knew that any deer within a quarter of a mile would either hear me or smell the sweat I was working up. But eventually, the stand was in place and I motioned Tyler to come up.
Soon, after a visible sigh of relief, he was on his platform 10 feet above the earth. Because of the positioning of this clump of trees, we were able to sit nearly knee to knee. If all went right, the deer would come down a path toward us.
Sights and sounds
For the next 45 minutes, the classroom in the trees was all about the sights and sounds. Within minutes, birds made their way to investigate us. I told Tyler they do that all the time, that they're trying to figure out what we are.
The next lesson was telling the difference between a squirrel and a deer as they walk through the woods. We couldn't see the squirrel, but the unmistakable scratching in the underbrush provided the auditory lesson.
A few minutes later, several turkeys were beginning to settle in for the night, gobbling back and forth. Then a cow far away was voicing the need to turn in for the evening.
We had about 20 minutes of shooting light left. An owl hooted about 50 yards away and I whispered to Tyler, "That's a good sign. That means things are really beginning to settle down. If we see anything, it'll be in the next 15 minutes or so."
As if she heard me, a mature doe began to make her way toward us.
"There's one," I said quietly.
Meandering about 65 yards away, the doe began making her way to our stands. At 35 yards, she paused and I readied my bow. This would be the very edge of my comfortable shooting range and I waited for her to slip out from behind a thicket.
She stayed put for several minutes and Tyler and I whispered what we thought she might do. She must have smelled us or heard us, because she bolted back 20 yards toward where she came from, snorted and ran off.
After that disappointment, I couldn't decide if we should climb down or stay. I told Tyler we had about 10 minutes of light left and he said we should stick around.
That's no doe ...
A few minutes later, I spotted a deer and whispered, "There she is again."
Only it wasn't the same doe. It was a massive buck.
Tyler's eyes popped open. This wasn't just a huge buck. It was enormous. It had a barrel for a body and a rack big enough to set a table on. My mind was a blur. Here was the largest buck I had ever seen, quickly coming within bow range, and all I could think about was if Tyler's heart was beating out of his chest, too.
The big buck paused at the 35-yard spot visited just a few minutes ago by the doe and quickly came toward us. I quietly readied my bow and came to a full draw.
The giant was within 15 yards and stepped into my shooting window of 12-feet between two trees. It wasn't looking for us. It was looking for that doe and was in a hurry to find her.
I couldn't take a shot at such a prize moving that fast and uttered a loud, "Berrrt!" in an attempt to stop him. My peep sight was full of brown fur as the buck was only 8 yards in front of us.
He kept on walking. Again, I pleaded in a louder voice of desperation, "BERRRRT" and he stopped in his tracks.
No target
The only target I had was an erect white tail. The chest that was so big only two seconds ago was now hidden by a 6-inch tree that closed my shooting window and the chance of shooting the buck of a lifetime.
The three-second eternity while I stood there at full draw and he stood there looking for the source of the sound ended in his thundering off into the underbrush.
As I turned around to see what kind of effect this close encounter had on my student's first-ever deer hunt, Tyler stammered, "He scared the heck out of me. When he stopped, he looked straight up at me. We were starring into each others' eyes. He had a huge white nose. Man, I jumped when he took off."
On the way back to Tyler's house, we recounted the event over and over.
"He was huge," Tyler said. "There were at least 10 points on him. That was awesome. Man, I'm still shaking."
-- Ray Buckingham is a sixth-grade teacher at Sunset Hill School. He lives in Lawrence.
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