The Late Fall Deer Hunt

I took a run up to Colville last week. Sort of a last hurrah for 2014 deer hunting – a couple more days to find that big whitetail buck hanging out in the thickets atop one of the timbered hills perched above Williams Lake Road. Over the last decade or so, this run seems like one of those things that just has to be done.

Washington’s general state-wide buck deer season kicked off about a month and a half ago, and lasted through a couple weekends. This November season is specific to whitetail deer bucks in the northeast corner of the state. There is also a late season for black-tailed deer on the other side of the Cascades, but my habit is whitetails. Thus, I crawl those Colville hills.

I met the folks who own the up-and-down half section some years ago. Since their first invitation to hunt it, I have been a regular. I’ve always had a couple or three days to myself. For a couple years while he was studying at Central, Edward (last of the Hucklings) joined me. To my mind, those were my richest moments on the mountain. Still, even on my own I have never regretted an instant of time on those Colville hunts.

From year to year, I’ve been rained on, snowed on, blown on and nearly frozen. I have always seen deer, including a handful of legal bucks I left to roam the mountain.

One year, the buck I was looking for found me. 2006 was the first year Edward hunted with me in that corner of the state. We would have two wet and drizzly days to ourselves on that beautiful piece of private ground – ground that was sometimes crawling with whitetail deer.

Given the demands of homework and grading, we final piled into my rig at 2 a.m. on a Saturday and headed northeast. By daybreak, we were in the soggy woods. By noon, we had spotted several deer, a couple of them possible bucks.

We hunted hard and widely, and that afternoon chose a couple stands overlooking prime bits of habitat on the hills several hundred feet above the valley bottom. Edward watched deer drifting across a hillside, but no clear antlers. In the semi-sunshine, some does moved below me. At 3:30, a whitetail buck materialized in a spot I’d been watching for a couple hours. One short prayer later, I was dressing a very nice fat buck.

The next morning, Edward found the rest of the deer on the mountain, but was unable to find one willing to give itself. About noon, we headed for home.

A year later, we started our hunt on a Saturday dawning with 50-foot fog and a light drizzle. As we moved up to the spots we wanted to watch, we slipped by a couple does and small bucks. At the fork where Edward would climb up to his spot and I would continue on to mine, we heard a cough in the fog. The kid signaled he could hear steps coming. We waited. In moments, a grey ghost materialized from the fog. The doe couldn’t see us any better than we could see her, so we stood looking at each other a short stone’s toss apart. As some point, she backed up enough to disappear – then returned to view. Somewhere in there, she sort of shrugged and headed off down a hill.

By Saturday afternoon, the fog had lifted to 70 or 75 yards, with a moderate, steady rain. By dark, we had seen a handful of does, but none of the bucks we expected to see chasing them at this point in the rut.

By daylight the next morning, we were up on a high bench, finding none of the bucks we have come to expect there. We watched does feeding and moving, and worked our way to the most remote corner of the mountain top ground we had permission to hunt. As we slipped along the timber’s edge, Edward nodded and grabbed his binocs. From 300 yards, we watched a nice buck behaving rudely – very closely following an attractive doe wandering and darting in and out of the brush and timber. By the time we finished our stalk, they had dropped off into a deep draw on closed ground. We slipped through more of the buck country, to no avail. At some appropriate point, we declared that hunting season a success and pointed the rig back to Paradise.

In the years since, I have never failed to see deer – except one to take home, I got close in ten inches of snow a couple years ago, but not close enough. As I watched that buck slip away, I chuckled at Edward’s story of watching over that same bench and looking directly behind him in time to see a big buck grow weary of waiting for him.

This year, the bitter cold air sliding down from the north had me in deep debate about making the trek. The more I thought about those steep hills and open benches and the peace with which they leave me, the faster I loaded my rig for the trip.

I saw deer and I stalked deer. Dressed for the bitter cold, with handwarmers for my fingers, I was never particularly uncomfortable. Over a couple days, I climbed and watched and breathed crisp clear air. “This is for you, Edward, and for your grandfather – The Old Man – who insisted that everyone should have time on a mountainside looking for deer,” I thought. Mostly, though, I got that it was for me. I never saw a buck.

These late deer hunts leave me grateful for the natural world and time immersed in it. I hope that you, too, find much for which to be thankful this holiday season.