“This place is a f#<€ing Zoo!”
We have called this place the Zoo since my first hunt here. I couldn’t believe all the animals I was seeing. It’s only 100 acres, mostly open farmland that is bordered with a thin strip of woods and is divided in half by a deep ravine. You’d never guess it was a hot spot, it doesn’t look like much, but it’s the hub at the centre of some very important but fragmented habitats so there’s a lot of animal traffic. In the midst of my first hunt here, I texted a friend, “This place is a f#<€ing Zoo!”
Dad and I decided that we needed to give the Zoo one last hunt before we removed our stands. Walking out to my favourite stand in the pitch black, I’ll admit was emotional. I’d had all of my best hunts here; my son and I shared our first kill here, my brother took his first deer here too. My Dad and I have made weekend excursions to the Zoo a fall ritual. I always knew the Zoo wasn’t mine, but it sure felt like home.
The Zoo Opens at 8:00am Sharp
I had a good feeling that today was going to be a good one. The temperature dipped below freezing for the first time this hunting season and we’d had a light rain earlier in the night. Rutting activity was heating up and Stand #3 is located on a well-defined scrape line. There was absolutely no wind. It was dead quiet. I settled into my stand and waited for first light. It didn’t take long for the action to begin.
At 8:00am, I could hear the steps of an animal in the deep puddles that surrounded my stand. I readied myself and trained my crosshairs on the shooting lane on my weak side. A huge, lone doe that I know has busted a half-dozen times, stepped out at 15 yards. Seeing as this was going to be our last hunt here, I couldn’t pass her up. At the impact, she turned herself inside out and made her way back to where she came from. I could hear her swan dive and thrash in the ankle deep water. She didn’t go far, (those Swat A4’s are devastating).
Time to Reload
At 8:15am, a hot and bothered doe zigged and zagged her way around my stand. I have heard that does will sometimes make scrapes and use licking branches but I’ve never witnessed it. She put on a nature show for me, made a few of these scrapes and proceeded on her way.
Not 5 minutes later, as fog dissipated from the sun which was now warming the frost on the forest floor, I caught the faintest movement about 100y away. It was followed by a large puff of warm, exhaled air that could’ve only come from a deer, a big one. I settled my bow and readied myself for the encounter. For a painstakingly long time, the buck slowly picked his way through the brush, and I mapped out all the possible routes that could take him to my lane. He was locked, I knew he was onto that hot doe and that he’d eventually have to pass through.
When he finally closed the distance, he stopped behind a wide tree and made a scrape. While he was obscured I made one last adjustment to my position and settled myself. “He just needs to take one more step,” I said to myself. And like he could hear my inner monologue, he did just that and under my facemask, I cracked a little smile. At 48 yards, he stepped into the lane but he immediately quartered hard to me and slowly raised his head. For what seemed like an eternity, I stared him down through my Leupold VXR Patrol and when he took his eyes off me and scanned the bush for that elusive, hot doe I squeezed the trigger and sent the arrow on its way. That familiar, satisfying thud was followed by an all-out death-run and the buck of my lifetime bounded away with his tail elevated.
I’ve always believed that you should take the first shot you’re confident in. For everyone, that’s a matter of ethics and practice. I’ve made this shot before. If you can slip an arrow tight to the clavicle and the neck at this angle, it’s incredibly effective, albeit with a very small margin for error. With that in mind, I waited an hour before looking for my arrow.
That Sickening Feeling
When I got down from the stand, predictably, due to the angle, I didn’t find any blood at the hit site and the arrow was nowhere to be found. “Did I miss?” I looked for another minute when suddenly I heard a branch crack and I scanned ahead to see a deer walking slowly with its tail up. A sickening feeling crept in. “Had I wounded this buck?” I backed out and I went for breakfast with Dad. I could hardly eat.
We started about the business of removing our old stands, furthest from the hit site. Around 1pm, the anticipation was killing us and we had gathered some reinforcements for our tracking job in the form of the good friends with whom we shared the Zoo. We started about the search, and it didn’t take long to find blood. Good blood. Lots of thick, frothy, foamy blood. “He couldn’t have gone far,” we all agreed. No sooner had we said that, I could peer the tall, bladed tines of the beast I was blessed to take. We ran ahead and found him tangled up in a deadfall that was just too much effort for him to get through.
I was elated and our whole crew celebrated the last hunt at our favourite property. Putting my hands on that awesome frame, I was awed by not only the deer’s heft, but the character of his rack; bladed, twisted tines and some junk near his bases. We weren’t leaving the Zoo empty handed. Quite to the contrary, we were loaded with meat.
The buck weighed 180 lbs with his hide, legs and head removed. The butcher said it was among the biggest deer he’s processed, ever. The doe, similarly dressed was a girthy 120 lbs. The Zookeeper feeds them well.
In our tracking, we learned there was no way my buck was the deer I’d bumped earlier when initially searching for my arrow because he never bedded down. He didn’t go much further than 60 yards and he covered that distance quickly.
Bittersweet
I’ll never forget this place and this hunt is one that I’ll re-tell to my kids and my grandkids someday, sitting around a fire at some new camp. I figured I would be able to raise my kids in the woods at the Zoo and teach them how to hunt. Now we will only hunt for land; it’s so hard to find in Southwestern Ontario. Plots like this one are exceedingly rare. While I did take my personal-best whitetail, I’d trade it all for a couple more years at the Zoo.
