North Woods Deer Hunting, Part 1: What Trophies?

Last Thursday, I packed up my truck and drove the 1250 miles from San Angelo, Texas back home to Alexandria, Minnesota. What would inspire someone to make such an arduous journey? Why the Minnesota  Deer Hunting season, of course! Minnesota deer hunting holds a few idiosyncrasies that make it differ from Texas deer hunting, and the largest of which are the methods. While hunters in both states tend to use elevated stands, Texans are allowed to use feeders and baits to lure deer within shooting range, while in Minnesota, you are not really allowed to do so, and more or less just sit in a tree hoping you put your stand in a good spot.

A fair warning up front, my family are not, and never really has been, trophy hunters. In plain terms, that means when we hunt, we hunt to fill the freezer, as opposed to attempting to bag the biggest buck with the most tines, or “points.” While there have been a few “trophies” that we have taken over the years, our deer tend to be on the underwhelming side, from a trophy perspective.

Deer season started this past Saturday, but the hunting part of my trip started the day before, as my Grandfather came and picked me up so I could help him get our little hunting shack ready. Nestled on a 40 acre plot in the woods outside of Nimrod, Minnesota (population 69), the hunting shack has no permanent electricity and no running water. Our cooking and heating is done with propane, plus the occasional wood fire when it gets really cold. Any bathroom needs are facilitated by a wooden outhouse, which is periodically filled with lye to keep the stink away.

Grandpa and I arrived at the hunting shack around noon on Friday, and immediately set to work readying our hunting area. We walked out to retrieve the memory card from the trail camera, then walked out to a few of the stands to make sure they were ready to go. I hadn’t been to the shack since 2013, and I hadn’t really been out and checked on the stands since 2009, so while a lot of things were exactly as I remembered them, there were a few things that were different, or that I needed to be refreshed on.

Within the span of a few hours, Grandpa and I had finished our preparations, and settled in to several hands of cribbage, while listening to a country station on a battery-powered radio. My Dad and my youngest brother, Max, were on the way up, as my parents had driven down to Minneapolis to pick him up from college. Our middle brother, Elliot, was not able to join us until Saturday evening. Max and Dad eventually showed up, everyone talked awhile to get caught up, and then we all got ready for bed around 9:00 PM.

We arose at 5:00 AM on Saturday morning, bundled up to combat the Minnesota temperatures that were just beyond the sliding door of the shack, grabbed some breakfast and coffee, scooped up our equipment, and were in our stands by 6:00 AM. Legal shooting hours start one half hour before sunset, which for us was right around 6:30 AM every day. Right as it got light enough to see was when you start hearing shooting. Our party, however, sat in our stands patiently hoping to see a deer come trotting through the brush.

It is a strange feeling when you are sitting in a tree stand with nothing to do but strain your hearing to the point where you can actually hear the blood flowing through your head. You sit there and think “I am a stone, I do not move.”  Then, as you do your best impression of said stone, your mind wanders to other, increasingly more random topics. I have found this to be the best strategy when hunting the elusive White Tail Deer, as every hunter knows that when you think about hunting deer, they can sense your thoughts and use this to their advantage to avoid your position. Thoughts run through your mind like “Would it be more impressive to shoot a 10 point, monster Buck, or a 50 lbs squirrel?” or “I wonder what so-and-so from high school is doing right now.” So-and-so is, usually, in this case someone you only just remembered you went to high school with.

Alas, my best stone impression and thoughts that wandered on crazy tangents were not enough, and I packed in my equipment and headed back for the warmth of the shack and a venison sausage, egg, and toast breakfast. None of our party had any luck that morning, and in fact nobody had any luck during the afternoon. When we arrived back in the shack after the afternoon hunt, Max did a bit of his homework while my dad made contact with my mom, who was in the process of pulling off something legendary.

Elliot, the middle child, was swimming in a college swim meet, and still wanted to make it up to the hunting shack, if only for a few hours Sunday morning. Since my Dad and Max were already at the shack, the task of retrieving Elliot fell to my mother. With the “Mother of the Year” award already clinched, Mom proceeded to drive back to the cities, retrieve Elliot, and then transport him to the hunting shack. In a performance that will be whispered about for generations in the very competitive Mother Hall of Fame, she delivered Elliot late in the evening, and then stayed with us at the shack, allowing all five of us to be together for the first time since June.

 

Having all of us at the shack greatly excited my grandfather, and most definitely enhanced the hunting experience. In fact, Mom brought with her a bit of luck, as my dad shot a small buck the next morning. While Dad, Grandpa, and Mom recovered Dad’s deer with a Kawasaki ATV, Elliot, Max, and I returned to our stands. Dad and Grandpa brought the deer back and hung it up in a tree next to the shack, and while Mom hung out in the shack, Dad and Grandpa walked through the woods in an attempt to drive some deer into one of our paths.

This was, in a way, successful, as I soon saw a large Doe run up close to the stand I was sitting in. Unfortunately for me, the stand I was sitting in was not the most stable, and the amount of creaking and groaning the stand made while I got ready scared the deer away.

At the end of the Sunday hunt, Elliot and Max needed to be returned to their respective universities, and my parents left with them, leaving me up to hunt for two more days with my grandpa, and eventually grandpa’s brother and my cousin joined us for Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning.

In the end, Dad’s small buck was the only deer we were able to harvest, although that is only half the victory. For me, being back in a place that I have cherished for much of my life and being able to hunt with my family again was more than worth the drive. The little buck was just icing on the cake.

That being said, Dad and I are going to try again this weekend, at a different hunting area (this one has electricity and running water). Perhaps I will get lucky this time, but who knows? I know it’s already going to be worth every second.