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Deer blog archive: Opening Day | In the woods

Words About Hunting

In hunting literature, one can find many profound passages by great writers that describe what it truly means to be a hunter. Here are some of my favorites.

"For the hunter, fall is the island and the rest of the year is the swim." —Charles Fergus, A Rough-Shooting Dog, 1991.

"Some people ask why men go hunting. They must be the kind of people who seldom get far from highways. What do they know of the tryst a hunting man keeps with the wind and the trees and the sky? Hunting? The means are greater than the end, and every … hunter knows it." —Gordon MacQuarrie, Field & Stream, November 1939. Read more

— Keith "Catfish" Sutton

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Futile attempt to hunt

To more than a hundred thousand Iowans, the first weekend of December means the opening of shotgun deer season. I, for one, love hunting — the best way to pass the time when you have too much ice to chop through with your boat, but not enough to walk on.

My favorite way to hunt these sneaky, wise creatures is with bow in hand, but between a growing number of other time commitments (now including college), bow hunting has simply not been an option for the past few years.

(Not to mention, you can still have yourself a good day of fishing in October and November!)

My dad made the 40-minute drive from Cedar Rapids that Friday night to pick me up. We hadn't had any snow yet, but I saw the forecast a couple days before, and it looked like it was going to come on Saturday, just in time. We always like a good fresh powder, so it sounded perfect.

Well, we got it half right. It turned out to be more like a perfect storm.

When we were home preparing, we kept an eye on the news, waiting for an updated forecast. As it happened, because temperatures were slightly warmer than expected, the snow they had previously forecast was now going to be a "wintery mix" that could include snow, sleet and freezing rain.

(Let me tell you something: I never want to hear the words "wintery mix" out of a meteorologist's mouth ever again. Last February, I missed out on most of the Bassmaster Classic coverage because one of these huge "wintery mix"/freezing rain storms knocked out our power for 20 hours.)

We really weren't too worried. Believe me, my dad and I have been through some of the most severe winter weather you can imagine, from 60 mph winds and blizzards, to 20 below temps and wind chill factors of 40 below, all while trying to fill our tag.

(Quote by the local weatherman two years ago: "Anyone outside for than 10 minutes is at severe risk of frostbite.")

My mom, on the other hand, was, as usual, worried sick we were going to either end up stranded in a ditch miles from civilization, or frozen solid to a tree. She questioned our sanity right up until we left at 4:30 the next morning.

We pulled into a gas station to get a cup of joe before we headed out of town. Our camo and blaze orange made it obvious to the clerk where we were headed. "Good luck out there," he said, as if to salute us for the mere attempt.

It was still dark as our truck crept along the gravel road. We were a little early, so we parked and closed our eyes for a few minutes. The wintery mix hadn't begun to fall yet, but we could hear icy winds stirring around us. Finally, we got out, put on our gear and loaded our guns.

Since we have only two guys and a relatively small piece of land to hunt, we find it most productive to sit and wait to ambush deer that party hunters drive and funnel into our area. As we started to our spots, we first saw and hear sleet. As we split up, we looked at each other and said, "Here it comes."

The sleet slowly turned to freezing rain, and before we knew it, we were literally covered in a quarter-inch of ice. If you moved at all, you sounded like a crinkling candy wrapper from all of the ice cracking and crunching. It was ridiculous.

We headed back to the truck around 11:30 to regroup, pick at the ice covering us, and have a quick lunch consisting of Gatorade and sausage, cheese, and crackers. (There's nothing wrong with using your good old field-dressing knife to cut the sausage.) With my dad's 12-gauge now out of commission, and the freezing rain turning to the normal variety, this hunting season was not going at all like we planned. We had only heard a couple of shots in the distance, and we had not seen any other hunters driving by all day.

We decided to walk a few fencerows and other scattered strips of timber. The winds were now a steady 40 mph, with gusts to 60 or so that turned the raindrops into bullets. We managed to see three does, all well out of range, the only three of the day.

At 2 o'clock, cold and soaked to the bone, we finally faced reality: Today was not our day. We might as well leave and try to catch my little brother's basketball game (later canceled, by the way). Quitting was pretty hard to do — these were basically our only two deer hunting days of the year. Everybody was poking along at 35 or 40 on the interstate, which made our 1 1/2-hour ride turn into an almost 3-hour trek. To top it off, we hadn't even made it into the house yet when we learned that we had water in our newly finished basement, thanks to the freakish ice storm.

We ended up not going on Sunday because the roads, now completely frozen over, would have been 10 times worse than Saturday, and that was a white-knuckle ride in itself. Feeling a little ripped-off about our nearly nonexistent deer season, I wrote the Iowa DNR a letter asking if they would be willing to give first season tag-holders another weekend. Other hunters did, too, and so few deer were harvested, (we have a big deer overpopulation problem in Iowa) that they did allow a hunt the weekend before Christmas as well, an unprecedented and much-appreciated decision.

Unfortunately that shard of hope was washed away by yet another "wintry mix" storm that blew through just in time. Looks like we'll have some extra space in the freezer until next year.

— Tyler Mehrl, University of Iowa Bass Fishing Team