Hunting The Catskills: Opening Day Two’fer
The Nooner & The Bruiser
New York's Southern Zone opened for firearms hunting on November 17, 2018. We were there and we tagged out that day. What follows are all the pictures and a little backstory from our Greene County, NYS WMU 4R hunt - for those who're curious, and into that sort of thing.
Morning was cold and quiet on my end. Spent the first four hours of the day hunkered down at the spot I’d scouted a few weeks earlier. The view was narrower than I remembered and I saw only one deer, a too-small buck, with tons of trees between us. Around ten thirty I decided to creep around in the snow for a bit. Following a bunch of tracks, I found the funnel from the next property over, and a cool new spot to sit. When I head back in for lunch, it was just before twelve.
As I took my leftover morning coffee from the microwave, I heard a gunshot, real close. I ran outside to yell to Jon, but then remembered that it’s 2018. I text him.
Jon was hunting from his new stand when he harvested this beautiful two and a half year old 8-point buck. His story includes the deer popping up out of nowhere, the heart stopping moment he left the safety engaged, then dropping the buck mere feet from where he was shot. Last year he’d set me up in the same area, and I was lucky enough to take my first deer, a little 7-pointer.
There were a bunch of other places for me to go sit, but when I head back out, around two o’clock, Jon suggested I go to his stand. Historically, this made sense, but after all the commotion, and a gut pile fifty yards away, I hesitated - if only for a second. We’d gotten two bucks from that stand in under a year, it couldn’t be the worst idea.
So I sat, bored, and tired, and I didn’t see anything for two hours. Then, Jon called and said he saw a monster buck heading my way, from his vantage point in the house. My heart started racing.
Jon said it was a monster, so it had to be. He shot a great deer, this one was bigger?! I waited. I couldn’t see the buck. Then I did, about a hundred yards out, but only for a second; he disappeared into the brush. Big, yes, but… more waiting. What if he turned around?
About ten minutes later, like magic, the buck’s back, 60 yards away at my nine o’clock. I didn’t count his points, but I didn’t have to, no doubt he was big enough. I had to stand up in the stand, and turn around, facing the trunk, to take aim.
The deer was broadside, I raised my rifle for a shot, and it was there, but I wasn’t steady. Deep breath. I reset. He was heading left, vitals obscured by trees. I put the crosshairs ahead of him in the next clearing. As he stepped out, I made a weird noise (not a bleat, more of a “merr”), aimed behind his shoulder, and pulled the trigger.
He ran.
I couldn’t see any blood. He ran so fast, I didn’t see much. I’d been reloading.
Ugh.
“I think he was a ten?” was the first thing I said to Jon when he got up to the spot. From the treestand, the only thing I knew for sure was that the buck had barreled up past one particular barberry bush. Jon followed that info and thankfully, about a hundred feet up the mountain, just above that bush, the blood trail started.
Only, then we went back to the house for a while. If the buck was still alive, it was getting too late in the day to chance spooking him further into the woods. So we waited it out. I paced. It was the longest forty-five minutes of my life.
Another friend showed up, we grabbed some flashlights, and head up the mountain. We didn’t have to hike too far, maybe ninety yards beyond the stand, when I spotted him first. Big buck down, his back to us. Pretty sure my jaw dropped when I got a better look at him. I think all of ours did.
I had been a little nervous that I took a bad shot when he’d run so fast and hard. I’m a perfectionist, and the last thing I want is to injure an animal. When we found him, it turns out I’d placed a perfect double lung shot with my .243. What a great feeling. “I can’t even believe it,” became the mantra for the rest of the night.
All told, within the span of four hours, we took two gorgeous bucks from the one treestand. My 10-pointer weighed in at 151 pounds, dressed. He was three and a half years old. Now I have fifty plus pounds of venison in the freezer, a caped buck at the taxidermist, and cannot wait for next year.