We live on 40 acres on Beaver Lake in NW Arkansas and I hunt on our property, less than 1000 yards from my front door. Although 40 acres seems to be a very small area, it is unbelievable how many deer we have! In all the days that I hunted (and I hunted every day with the exception on the holiday hunt when I had the flu), there was only one day I didn‘t see deer. What a wonderful season! I watched does fighting, saw two little bucks sparing, an absolutely insane number of squirrels, woodpeckers of all sizes, crows (even saw crows walking as if in formation, strange!). Each day was an experience!
You may be organized at your house, we are not. We have guns scattered everywhere, ammunition randomly stored somewhere else, knives in my jewelry cabinet, etc. As the first gun season approached, I asked my husband to find me a few shells for my .30-06. He did and when I saw what he had laid out for me, I recognized them to be 220-grain bullets. I personally prefer 180-grain silvertips and told him so. He said I should just shoot these (he was thinking I wouldn’t be shooting anything anyway) because I might "have to shoot through brush". I thought the same thing (I wouldn’t be shooting anyway, not the brush part) and figured that if the bullet grain was so important to me, I would have found my own shells!
We have lived here for four years and although I have hunted every year, I had not shot a deer in this state. I have always seen deer, but not anything I wanted to shoot. I’m not a "trophy hunter", but I don’t like to shoot does and Arkansas has a 3-point rule (minimum 3-point on one side for legal buck). I have enjoyed many hours sitting watching deer and other wildlife in my "front yard", but I hadn’t put anything in the freezer or on the wall since we moved here.
November 8, 2003 was the opening day of our first gun season. Bucks had been chasing does for quite some time. It was a cool but not cold morning; winds were light and variable, fortunately mostly in my face. I was on my stand before daylight ready to spend the morning reminiscing about everything, relaxed and enjoying sitting in my tree stand rather than at my desk. The sun wasn’t even up good when a nice buck came in over a ridge to my right, walking at an angle toward me. When I first saw him, my mind quickly identified him as a legal buck. It seemed that he was looking at me in the stand, not spooked, but cautious. There I sat with the butt of my gun resting between my feet with a good buck approaching and looking at me. There was some heavy cover between him and me, as he continued toward me, I raised my rifle when he passed through the brush still coming even closer to my stand. When I brought my gun up, I could see brush, branches, and hair. He had stopped about 50 yards away, looking, again not spooked, but he knew that something wasn’t right. Through my scope, I put the crosshairs on his chest area (framed by branches on a cedar tree), prayed to God that I either dropped him or missed him completely, and pulled the trigger. It was a good solid hit. He ran a short distance and died within seconds, nearly under my tree stand. What a buck! He was no Boone and Crockett, but he is a very respectable buck! A 9-point, 20" spread with 5" brow tines. In gutting him, I discovered that the 220-grain bullet took out his heart and lungs. I would say that it was the luckiest shot I ever made, but I know that God helped me when I pulled the trigger! By 7:15 that morning, I had killed my first Arkansas whitetail!
Around 10:00 that same morning, Greg, my husband, killed a good 7 point - he tried to call it an eight, but that didn’t fly. The "8th" point was a bump, not a tine! In all the years that we have hunted together, that’s the first "double" we’ve had on the same day! It was magical to be skinning our deer together! On Wednesday, the 12th of November, Greg took a 10-pointer. When he came in, I have to admit that while I was excited for him, I was a little disappointed that he had "beat" me, until I discovered that his 10 point rack fit inside my 9!
Greg's Arkansas deer season was closed; he’d filled his limit. For the rest of the seasons, I enjoyed hunting and he enjoyed sleeping in while I went out. Many days I would come down from the stand to find that all of our animals had been fed and a fresh pot of coffee and good home cooked meal were waiting on me. "Feeding the animals" at our house includes more than just dogs and cats. We have a Beagle, Redbone, two English Setters, an outside house cat, a pet deer, and a pet bobcat! Buster Beagle and Ruby Redbone stay in a pen in the backyard together. Charlie and Laci stay in their pen in the front yard (right now, Laci is in the garage with her beautiful litter of 8 born on Christmas Day - another story to come!). Outlaw the deer is confined to a 10’ fence attached to Charlie and Laci’s pen and Baby Bobcat, 6 months old stays in an enclosed area off the back deck of our family room.
Outlaw is probably the most tame deer anyone will ever see, but we are cautious with him and do not go in the pen with him when his horns are hard - he’s just a spike but we do recognize that testosterone can make him forget that he’s tame. We feed and water him daily - grain, alfalfa hay and a cut up apple. We open his gate and are very careful as we fill his feed pans; he eats the apple from our hand. The 3-day holiday season I mentioned earlier opened the day after Christmas, Friday. I came down with the flu and spent the season on the couch rather than on the stand. That Saturday, Outlaw got out! He had rammed the gate hard enough to pivot the latch bracket to the point he could escape. We were so upset when we discovered that he had gotten out. It’s still hard to believe that he had the strength and intelligence to get out of his pen! Greg called neighbors and asked them to be on the look for him and not to shoot for meat - deer season was open for another day. We have a good stand of Biologic growing around Outlaw’s pen and since he wasn’t grazing around and didn’t come when we called, we figured that he had escaped in pursuit of a doe. We were at a loss as to what we should do too! We prayed, but it seemed so unlikely that we’d be able to get him back once he’d had a walk on the "wild" side!
Sunday morning, Greg went to my tree stand before daylight. Does had been coming through there each morning around 8:30 and we thought that would be the best bet for just seeing him again, although we didn’t know what we could do if we saw him! I kept watching out the window - I don’t know what I was watching for, but it was something to do. I noticed Charlie looking up the road watching something that really held his attention. I opened the window and could hear Greg calling Outlaw and he sounded like he was talking to him, not just calling him! Soon, they came into sight, Greg with Outlaw following! I grabbed some dog food (Outlaw loves dog food but we don’t let him have it) and went out to see what I could do to help. What I decided to do did not help - I got a rope on him, made a halter like the one you’d put on a horse, but he wanted nothing to do with that! Fortunately, we got that off him before he could hurt himself or one of us. We simply enticed him with apples, dog food, and talking to him and got him back into his pen! Unbelievable!
Greg told me how Outlaw had come into the feed near my stand grunting - there was another deer with him that he could hear but not see. In the low light, Greg could not initially tell if it was Outlaw or not but as it became daylight, he could see the ear tag. Thank goodness, we did not take that out! Greg called him from the stand and when Outlaw came over closer, he tossed down bites of apple. Greg climbed down from the stand and coaxed Outlaw home through the woods with the apple.
That Sunday ended all but bow season for Arkansas. In spite of the fact that I’d taken the biggest buck of all the local hunters, making the shot of a lifetime, there was no question that Greg had brought home the season’s best buck!
