One wouldn’t think of hunting whitetail deer as a dangerous hunt. Let’s face it, hunting bear, big cats and other aggressive animals would certainly fit that description. To hunt deer, heck, we just get a little doe pee, climb a stand and wait for a good shot, right? How dangerous can that be? If one had to guess which part of the hunt would be the most dangerous, you might think it would be climbing the deer stand. Oh, is that an understatement!

It’s 3:00 am and I am driving 2 hours to a farm on the western side of the state. If I get there by 5:00 am, I’ll have enough time to get into my stand by 5:30 am, about a half an hour before daybreak. The drive went well as I listened to my CD’s at near maximum volume just to wake me up. Breakfast went down without a hitch and the coffee did its thing by keeping me alert

At last, I arrive without spooking all of the animals on the farm. I get out of the vehicle and put on my hunting clothes. After fumbling around with my bag of tricks, I found my doe pee, grunt call, bottled water, bow, release, snacks and everything else I needed to sustain life for about 8 hours. Oh yea baby, I’m ready to go!

Walking to the spot I had previously chosen to hunt, I periodically trip over the furrows in the plowed cornfields which remind me how dark it is. After about 25 minutes of stumbling, I realized it was time to load my cotton ball full of doe pee and drag it from my boot as I continue to walk. After a brief stop and holding my breath for an eternity because of the doe pee smell, I’m on my way.

50 yards into my stroll, I notice my left leg is soaked! I’m thinking, “What in the heck is going on”? Then comes the smell….”oh shoot”, I think to myself as I realize that my leg is soaked with doe pee! “That stinking lid fell off in my pants”, I say. Now I’m wet and I’ll be uncomfortable for the first part of the day and to top it off, I smell like a farm animal! “Good thing I’m not hooking up with anyone today” I think. So now I’m out of the fields and into the woods. It’s even darker between the trees, and now I can’t even see how far it is to my stand, but I can hear and I don’t like the sounds that are echoing from the dark! I can also hear myself think. Thoughts are going through my head like “I’ve only seen this on TV” or “How fast can I get to my stand” or “If I punch him real hard in the snout, will he back off”?

No time to process those thoughts because he’s coming right at me! It’s funny how you can’t see in the dark, but you can see eyeballs getting bigger and bigger! It’s also funny how all of a sudden you know just how far it is to your stand. So as I run like mad to my stand, the antlered Sasquatch of Illinois follows me. He grunts as his hooves gallop over the downed trees. I’m thinking to myself, “I’ll teach him a lesson if I can only get to my stand”. Speaking of “stand”, I take my last leap, and jump to the tree with my stand in it.

With no time to lose, I’m elevated to the point where he can’t get me. I hang there for a moment to catch my breath as he circles my tree with anxiety. After I compose myself, I finish my climb and get situated. I get my bow ready, but it is too dark to see the pins on my sight, so I wait…and he waits. He frequently shows agitation and grunts at me while running back and forth. I finally had enough of him, so I open my new water bottle, take a huge swig, then with all of my might, bean him right in the head! No, he doesn’t run off, he flips out and trashes, stomps and hurls my smashed bottle into the air. “This young man needs to see someone for help”, I’m thinking.

The minutes pass and the sky is getting lighter. I’m just about able to see my sights when he decides to tiptoe deep into the woods. A nice, big 10 pointer, whose head would have kept the other mounts on my wall company, never got the chance to see my house. “Just as well, I’ll get him another day”, I mumble. So now it’s about 6:15 am and I feel like I have just worked out for the Olympics. Wow, that was a long day as I didn’t see another deer for 4 hours, and I certainly didn’t want to get out of that stand to get chased again as I didn’t have a clue where that crazy thing was. Ten more seconds on the ground and my head would have been hanging on his wall. Oh well, live and learn and learn I did! I will never make that stupid mistake again.

Article by Marc Anthony
Non Typical Hunter, Inc.