One man’s buck is another man’s trophy
By Dave Bates
For the Observer-Reporter
There is no limit to what I won’t do to make my buddies feel good about their buck harvests. Call it my sportsman’s Christmas gift to my friends but I go to great lengths to ensure my pal’s feelings are never hurt by my taking a larger deer than them. A superior whitetail on my behalf will never complicate our friendship; quite the opposite. My deer is always smaller, not quite as wide, nor tall, and never as thickly massed as the ones they shoot. All by design.
Oh sure, I harvest deer most every year but not the wall-hangers my friends bring home. My deer are not exactly the scrappy fork horns of 12-year-old dreams nor are they spikes that have reached full maturity and need culled from the herd by any means. My bucks are the deer that cement friendships. My pals love to send me pictures of their deer as soon as they pull the string or trigger. They drive their deer over to my house so that I can see exactly how big their deer really is in person, which is to say much bigger than mine. Friends gaze upon my harvests with a pity that is usually reserved for baby ducks struck along the highway. When I text them pictures of my bucks they respond with friendly texts like “nice.” Sometimes they’ll respond with “uh huh.”
There’s usually a little smiley face emoji of some sort accompanying their text and although I could be paranoid, I’m pretty sure that emoji is laughing directly at me. But it’s really about keeping up good relations with my guys. No one is threatened by this writer’s oversized racks and I will never offend any of my buddies by gloating over my Super Deer. No one’s masculinity is threatened by another 15 or 16-inch basket rack on my part.
One thing that makes me wonder after 45-plus years of deer hunting is how a seven-year-old boy can pass on a deer that I shoot regularly? While I think it’s fantastic that father and son are out there hunting together, it does cause me some consternation as to what the status of their hunt will look like 15 to 20 years down the road. I heard a little fella telling his family about the deer he took with a crossbow earlier this fall. I’m guessing he was all of eight years old. He described the antler growth and mass and shape in detail and then proceeded to mention, casually, that he “let several others walk” prior to selecting this model. I can scarcely imagine allowing an 18-inch, high-racked buck to walk by my platform now or in the 1970s so that I might opt for a “real trophy.”
My friend and archery mentor, Mark Phipps, attempted to school me in my days as a novice archer. Phipper’s words still echo around the campfire, sermonizing that, “You need to take a couple of does so you’ll learn how to be patient for the shot.” Doe practice. He believed harvesting an old, mature doe was more difficult in some ways than taking a mature buck and I tend to agree with him. I wonder if a youngster, disillusioned with does and non-trophy bucks at seven or eight will have much interest at 18 or 28, in the harvesting of any deer shy of the Milo Hanson Buck? I can only hope that there is enough passion left for the sport to carry him through the years til his own son or daughter is ready to learn the craft.
As for me, maybe I have become a disgruntled old fart but I have seen enough itty bitty racks hanging in the cabins and garages and dens around the area to believe that I may not be completely alone in my philosophy. While I tease about taking “the big boy” I have to admit that this season was one of those nostalgic hunts that caused me to give pause. My friend Joe passed away last year and I carried his old Ruger No. 1 in 6mm Rem. with me this season. Twice in my life I have set out on a hunt knowing full well that all I wanted to do was to harvest a deer with someone’s former rifle so that I might honor them. Last time was with Uncle Blair’s old Ted Williams Model 53 in .30-06′ the year we moved to our farm. On both occasions I was more interested in paying homage to an individual I thought a great deal of. I set aside the pursuit of a “trophy,” more or less intentionally in both instances. Both hunts ended with average PA whitetails taken within a couple hundred yards of one another. And both times I returned home with a smile on my face, a freezer full of venison and the memory of another great hunt.
At 7:15 a.m. on Saturday’s opener, I shot a seven-point with Joe’s old Ruger No. 1. I’ve killed bigger deer. It was enough venison to fill the freezer but I still felt like hunting, so I headed back out to sit my evening stand with no rifle. Wouldn’t you know it… I saw the best buck of my life. He stood 75 yards, broadside, for almost 45 minutes, offering a perfect shot. I think I heard Joe laughing off in the distance.
On Wednesday evening, just after supper, we heard a knock at the kitchen door. My good friend and assistant coach of many years, Red Kolar, was standing there smiling, asking for help in loading his buck into his truck. Guess which one he killed? You guessed it. The things I don’t do for my friends.
Dave Bates writes a weekly outdoors column for the Observer-Reporter. He can be reached at alphaomegashootingsolutions@gma