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A Sunday afternoon outing
Growing up with two hunters in the family plus a regular entourage of friends who enjoy the pastime, I once felt I had at least a limited idea of what the sport was all about.
That is until this weekend when I went out with my husband. After a Sunday hunting trip which began well before any deer in his right mind would even consider getting up and about to forage for food, I now know that the concepts I've held from my childhood were just whimsical fantasies.
First of all, everyone should know that deer are not dumb animals and could even be considered psychic.
Having two permits for white-tailed, anterless deer instead of "mulie" permits, we began our search along the river beds and creek bottoms. Because I was a novice, my husband had to explain the difference. The whitetail is a deer whose tail sticks up in the air when he's getting ready to run, has small ears and the hearing of a dog, the sight of an eagle and the nose of an anteater. A mulie is a deer whose tail doesn't stick up in the air when he runs, has long ears, and doesn't care what it hears, sees or smells,
Within the first hour of hunting, we came across a herd of mulies near Benkelman. As we drove slowly by them, they stood there looking at us. I swear one even winked at me.
From that point on, we were wading our way through those pesky long ears. Throughout the day, we were unable to spot that little white tail, bouncing through the fields. It seemed we were doomed to encounter only the big mule-like ears peaking over the brush and the brambles.
I began to believe the little critters have a psychic network which allows them to tell each other which hunter they should go out and torture -- the one hunter they know won't be able to shoot them.
After about five hours of driving around trying to find the perfect spot to stake our territory and finding nothing but long-eared deer and a sea of hunters dressed in the most awful orange outfits I've ever seen, it was decided that we would go home and take a little break. Actually, I told him to take me home or he was going to get out and walk.
After a nice long shower and a medium length nap, we were ready to hit the fields again.
This time I made my demands known.
"They're not going to jump out in front of the pickup, yelling, 'Shoot me! Shoot me!'," I told my husband, who by this time was so sick of my all-knowing wisdom he was eying the gun and me with a mischievous look on his face.
"Let's find someplace to wait them out," I said.
Finally coming to the understanding that I am never wrong, we talked to the right people and found a place to hunt.
By this time it was around 2:15 in the afternoon and we had plenty of time to search out just the right spot to get that little white-tailed critter.
We went to the hunting spot and decided to walk it out and walk it we did. Those hills out in the pasture are really big, especially when you are wasting most of your breath and energy dispensing your all-knowing wisdom. We walked, found a spot to hunt, decided to walk, found a spot -- three different times we walked, stopped and decided to find a different spot.
After circling the pickup three times we ended up about 60 feet from where we had parked it. Our adviser had told us we should sit near the watering hole where the deer came in every evening before going to feast on a newly sprouted wheat field.
Brad staked out our claim about 90 miles past the watering somewhere hole in Colorado, "so we can watch the deer come up the draw," he said.
The only problem with that theory was that there were four draws. We sat waiting, I reading a magazine I had found in the pickup, which, under normal circumstances I would have found very offensive, and he sitting with gun in lap living the role of great white hunter. The minutes began to tick away into hours.
Toward sunset, just as the sun was beginning to take on the orange hues of oncoming darkness, we began to hear the calls of pheasants. Lots of pheasants. Who said there are no pheasants around here?
Just as the orange sun began to slip below the horizon, we heard a rustle to our left.
"Is that a pheasant?" I whispered.
"I don't think so," he whispered back, tense with anticipation.
Then the rustling stopped. We sat for a couple of minutes, wondering what we had heard.
After a few minutes, I turned my head to look back at the truck longingly, hoping against hope he would take a hint. It was at that point I saw the psychic, long-eared deer whose tail wasn't sticking up in the air, and didn't care what it saw, heard or smelled, standing and watching us with the same mischievous look Brad had given me earlier in the day.
"Brad," I whispered, pointing over my shoulder. "It's just a darned good thing deer don't carry guns."