Buck Tales, Chapter 3

Saturday morning Ethan and I took a 90-minute walk through the woods. I needed to just get outside and walk around, and I figured it would be a good bonding experience. We were hoping to find some sheds, antlers that the bucks drop, but we didn't run across any. I wasn't really expecting to, honestly, but as we won't find any in our living room, we gave it a shot.

Even though we didn't find any sheds, we found plenty of other deer signs, which wasn't at all surprising, as we were in a forest preserve. There are more deer out there than you can shake a stick at, all safe inside the no-hunting zone. Which is really irritating, considering the amount of time I spent out in the cold and wet this season, with only one buck to show for it. The Illinois DNR really needs a better management program for the wildlife, but we'll have to clear out some of the PETA-types and eco-guerrillas before we can change that.

Nevertheless, it was a good learning experience. We saw trails and droppings in the snow, along with rubs and bedding areas, all signs a good hunter must learn to recognize (which I am still learning myself). We also got to play with our new radios and head-sets, which allowed me to let Ethan wander on his own a bit (but never out of sight) and still maintain contact. On our trek back to the car, we ran into 5 deer: 3 does, a yearling, and a fairly large buck that had dropped his rack. We watched them for a while, getting fairly close; the deer in the preserve are so inured to human contact they barely take notice, but it was good practice for the boy to sit and watch and be quiet. After 10 minutes or so they wandered deeper into a thicket, and we left.

The strangest thing we came across was a scattering of human paraphernalia: coats, shirts, shoes, a cooler, a stick of deodorant. Signs of either some knucklehead that left or forgot about his gear or a homeless person...we weren't sure which, and either way we were angry that someone had left all of this junk out in the woods. Certainly a poor effort in keeping America clean.

An hour and a half netted us no sheds, people-junk, deer we could almost reach out and touch but couldn't hunt, and some basics in spoor-spotting. All in all, a pretty good way to spend some time.