Antler Eater

I am sitting in my treestand trying to coax a buck that I spotted behind me to come by my location so I can get a look at him. With a combination of tickling the horns together and grunting, about a half an hour later he comes downwind of me and walks by at less then twenty yards (no I am not wearing a carbon suit ). He is a basket eight and needs a few more years to develop.

As he is standing in front of me, I hear the familiar sound of leaves crunching and I carefully turn my head to see what is approaching. A mature doe with two fawns comes in to my left, upwind. She catches my movement but can't put it all together. After staring at me for a few minutes she let her guard down and walked closer to the tree and stops broadside at less than twenty yards.

I get no satisfaction out of taking a doe, but have come to accept the fact that I must do my part and harvest some, in an attempt to try and strike a balance in our local deer herd. Up to this point I have had opportunities to take other does but they didn't meet my "doe criteria" so I let them pass.

To make a long story short, I make a decision to take the doe and in a complete pass through, put an arrow through her lungs... anyway that is what I thought I saw with the half hour of daylight that I had left.

I expected her to fall within eyesight, in recent years most have, but she didn't....she kept running full tilt. I listened for a crash....none. I am not concened because the area I am in is a cow pasture and except for a few oaks and underbrush it is fairly open with short grass. She probably fell in an open spot on the soft grass. No big deal.

I decide to sit for the final thirty minutes of the day and give her time to expire in an attempt to act like the veteran bow hunter I am suppose to be, even though I feel she had to have died with a minute of impact.

As exciting as it is to kill a deer with a bow, when the deed is done, I always feel some type of, for lack of a better word, remorse . I know I am a softy, but I guess I am just "wired" that way. Catch and release isn't an option so you play the game the way Mother Nature meant it to be played and deal with both the euphoria and anguish in your own way.

With no legal hunting time left I gather my stuff and climb down to retrieve my arrow. Sure enough the dipped end of my arrow is decorated with bright pink blood. I head home, get my versa cart, a better flashlight, change clothes, and head back to the scene.

After looking for a while and unable to locate the blood trail I back out and wonder if I saw what I thought I did. As I get older I am always amazed how the darkness effects my eyesight. Getting old ain't for sissies! The temps are forecast to be in the high 30's so I am not concerned about the meat, I'll return in the morning. I leave with all kinds of questions floating through my little pea-brain.

With the dawn of a new day brings a renewed enthusiasm for the chores at hand. As I arrive at the scene, a murder of crows are making a ruckus on a distant hillside. "That is where I will find her" I say to myself and mark the spot in my mind. I want to see what kind of blood I find so I start at impact and follow the trail for a ways. It is decent but not great, I am surprised it is not a better trail..."No problem this is so open I won't have any problem finding her", I think to myself.

Even though I have trailed well over one hundred bow shot deer, like a dummy I lose my patience following the so-so blood trail and head for the spot the crows were screaming at...nothing there but a pile of dirt, hmmm. I decide to walk to the small patches of oaks and cedars in this open area. She can't be far and it is so open, I'll see her, I will find her.

After about an hour of this nonsense I get a hold of myself. Though no one is with me I am embarrassed that I ever left the blood trail... I go back to square one. After the first hundred yards of following blood I look up and see all of the open area and a sea of doubt floods my mind. I obviously didn't see what I thought when I shot her or she would be laying on this hill....I slowly follow blood another hundred yards, I have to look carefully it isn't easy to find the small blotches. By now I am mumbling to myself, I don't recall exactly what I was saying but I am sure the words idiot, stupid, dumb, and moron were interwoven in the sentences somewhere.

By now I am well over two hundred yards from impact, perhaps even three hundred...there is no more blood to be found. I go back to the last spot I found blood. I find the spot, straighten up and look around. There is no deer laying within eyesight of where I am standing and except for some cover that I have already checked I can see for a very long way!

It occurs to me that this is the spot that the crows were at. Yes, it has to be the same spot because at my feet is that pile of freshly turned dirt that I marked earlier. Man I am miffed! This deer is just gone...

As I am standing there staring at the ground, lamenting my poor luck, I happen to notice that the mound of dirt I am standing beside has hair growing out the top of it!!! Don't ya just love it when Ma Nature throughs a new wrinkle in the mix?

I start kicking dirt around and uncover a what is left of a dead deer. I am interested in finding two holes...sure enough they are there, this is unmistakably my doe.

From all appearances it looks as though she collapsed almost straight down covering the opening to a burrow. The side of her head was mangled, left ear gone, her head folded neatly back along her side, and there was a hole in her belly. There were claw marks all over her sides and back and she may have been urinated on too, I am not sure of that one, but she had a peculiar odor.

Here is an interesting fact, though she was clawed from stem to stern, other than her missing left ear, the meat and entrails had not been eaten. It is as if she was mangled out of rage, not hunger. Upon further digging and examination I noticed that there was a fresh burrow dug under her body that allowed an exit and entrance to the burrow the deer's body was blocking.

Of course I just had to reach in and pull out her vitals...I had to know if I saw what I thought I did. After all she was in the vicinity of 300 yards from impact, could a double lunger get this far??? Yeppers, she was almost perfectly "center punched" through both lungs.

Who or what did this you asked? I have what I consider to be a very educated guess, but in the final analysis that is all it is because I didn't see the animal. One thing for sure, it wasn't coyotes, no coyote tracks in the fresh dirt and the meat was not eaten. No cat tracks either. But there were some tracks that looked like....

No that would be to easy, any guesses?

Sometimes fact is stanger than fiction...........I guess a guy is never to old to learn.

P. S. We don't have bears here either.

P. S. II

I lied, no matter how hard I try I can never make a long story short...[&:]

Greg / MO

Antler Eater, my old friend, let me be the first to say that I'm glad you've not shortened your stories over the years! I relish in the phenomena of "being there" with a good writer, and you certainly accomplished it once again. Congratulations on finding her, before I go any further.

As far as educated guesses go, I would surmise perhaps a wolverine? We have none in our locale, but the stories I've heard would lend themselves to making that assumption...

jstanley

Badger

Arthur P

Yep. Sounds like badger work to me, too.

DoubleLung55

congrats ! i woulda gotten frustrated as well !

I would say a groundhog or something else that burrows got mad when they couldnt get in or outta their hole and clawed her up!

John Deer

Antler Eater,

Fantasticly written story. I always enjoy reading your posts. As for the perpetrator of this event, I would have to guess a badger. I don't know if wolverines inhabit your area but I'm pretty sure that badger's do and could inflict the injuries you speak of. At any rate, I'm sure it's a rare occurance to have something like that happen. Really neat to have experienced it first hand I'm sure. Thanks for sharing the experience with us.

TURKEY FAN

so are u still going to eat the deer, would it be okay to?

drstalker

Interesting story antler eater.I wouldn't doubt it was a badger,fox,or possibly a fisher.What part of Iowa do you live in?I may be mistaken but thought that I once heard of deer eating deer maybe not.Coon ,oppossum perhaps?

cardeer

A ground alien or either chucky. I have no idea.

Rob/PA Bowyer

Antler Eater, First I want to thank you for that story. I was right there walking beside you during the read. I enjoyed it thoroughly. I am also happy to hear you found your doe...though I had a idea that you would, or at least I was hoping for a happy ending.

As for a ventured guess into your area of the country, I was abscent minded once you said you didn't have bears.