Hook and bullet club

The funny thing about deer hunting is that it imitates your regular life at times: not all goes as planned. Take opening morning for instance. All of Camp Cholesterol were able to clamber out of their bunks, put on the orange and be out the door before the crack of dawn. This was pretty amazing in itself after our annual Camp Cholesterol Awards Banquet that is traditionally held on the night before the opener. Luckily for us the dancing girls decided to go home early. After donning our blaze orange, Jake and I walked across a soggy swamp in the dark and made our way up to the two stands we have on the other side. The other five hunters in our group (Bill, Dave, Brian, Mike and Steve) spread out across the forest, heading for the stands they hoped would be the lucky one that day. It was quiet in the woods on opener. Real quiet. With no snow on the ground and no rain as of late, the forest floor resembled Rice Krispies in the sound department. This is where the squirrels come in. Until you get used to them, the sound of a squirrel running across the leaves on the ground can fool you. Is that a deer? Slowly you turn your head to get a peek over your right shoulder…and spy a squirrel carrying a pine cone in his mouth. This goes on and on as you sit on your stand until you either get whiplash from looking at every squirrel sound you hear or you tune out the whole racket and wait for a visual on a deer.The visual thing happened right around 9:30 a.m. over my left shoulder. I was facing this way already so I caught the deer poking its nose out between the small Norways before coming out into the mature stand of trees I was trying to be a part of.Up went the gun and the scope crosshairs were aimed right above the ears. Except that’s all there was, ears. No antlers, no nubbins, no nothing. A small doe had decided to make its way past my stand, oblivious to me up in the tree as it fed on brush along the way. I decided this doe would live to see another day and would make excellent bait for a nice big buck to come in and check out. The doe obliged by dilly-dallying around, sniffing the air at times but really just out for a morning walk. My plan however failed at this point. A buck never materialized and the doe finally walked out of sight, right down the path I had walked in on nearly four hours ago. That was it for seeing deer for that day and three more to follow. The same thing happened to Mike on opening day. He was in the Beaver Stand, so-called because of its close proximity to an active beaver pond. On the other side of said beaver pond a doe came splashing along opening morning leaving Mike with a tough decision: shoot a doe and find a way to get across the dam and fetch the doe on the other side. Or wait for a buck to come along.The right choice was made, even after the doe made it across the dam and disappeared into the swamp on Mike’s side of the beaver pond.After the opening morning sit, we decided to out-strategize the deer with our immeasurable wit and wisdom. So, we put together plans on the table while back at the shack, drives through this point and that section of land, all with hopes of moving whitetails toward the hunters.Our plans did not produce anything, leaving us to wonder if we were doing something wrong. Well, that just couldn’t be. We had already pulled off a last-minute feat of engineering by putting up a metal meat pole covered with plastic pipe the night before. The idea was that the pipe would spin, making for an easy lift of the deer and less chance the rope would break sending the deer back down on top of the unsuspecting helper. It’s still a great plan, but we really haven’t had a chance to test it. Dave tried hanging a grouse on the pole but the head and body separated so we were left with a bodiless grouse head swinging on a rope. Not a lot of “Outdoor Life” photographic appeal there.At the banquet I had distributed fresh deer scent from Udovich’s game farm where we had done some pheasant hunting on election day. The plan was to have each guy put out some deer urine around where they were sitting in order to attract the whitetails to the point where they would ignore the natural danger signals and reveal themselves for our shooting pleasure.Except that plan didn’t work true to form, either. I had a little problem with the scent.The scent comes in a glass bottle with a screw on top that contains an eyedropper. Well, on Sunday I was dropping deer scent on a likely spot along the trail when I thought I screwed the cap on and put it in my hip pocket.Sitting on the ground and feeling a cold and wet spot developing down my leg I knew another plan was not working as I had hoped.I was now fearful of being the object of affection of a love-sick deer so I kept a sharp eye in all directions and headed back to camp.After removing every shred of clothing I still had a definite odor that required some serious scrubbing to remove. That wasn’t exactly in the plans but it was all part of the opening weekend at Camp Cholesterol which is now known for having a unique smell at times. But we do have a really nice meat pole and it doesn’t smell at all…yet.