Here's a moment-by-moment account of what it's like to track a deer. This is one suspenseful tale!

For dyed-in-the-wool deer trackers, Christmas morning was to arrive a month early. Snow was forecast for Sunday—the day prior to opening day of deer season. Eager to get on a buck track, I woke up in anticipation of the proverbial white blanket. What I got instead was a wet one—bare ground. The storm had pulled east and the snow would not make its way into my northwestern Maine deer woods. I paced the floor hoping the weatherman might be wrong, but by evening I had just about given up hope. If there was a buck track to be found near home, I’d need to find its maker standing directly in it.

By 9 p.m., word of a fresh 5 inches in Mt. Katahdin to the north buoyed my hopes. By 3:30 the next morning, I was on the road. I hit the northern Maine snow line just at daybreak. I was anxious to find a track. These were unfamiliar deer woods, but in speaking with those who had hunted the area over the years, I formulated a plan. I opened my gazetteer to study the terrain a bit more closely.

Because mature bucks don’t travel very far early in the season in an effort to store energy reserves for the upcoming rut, I knew that finding a fresh track might be difficult. First, I drove an old logging road up the mountain to no avail before heading farther north toward Baxter State Park. The area features huge stretches of roadless, isolated timber—my favorite type of place to track deer. I drove to the end of an old cutover road, entered the truck’s coordinates into my GPS, and headed east. Just 50 yards down the skidder road, I hit paydirt—the telltale dimples of a buck track half full of snow. The game was on.

As I followed the track, which meandered through an old softwood cutting, it began to look fresher. Although I could tell that I was likely on a young 2 ½-year-old buck, I decided to stay on it. Buck paths in the big woods will often cross, and the hope that I might find the trail of an older deer intensified the adrenaline rush. Near a cedar bog and new logging cut, the straight-line trail began to wander. When I spotted feeding sign, I knew that I was closing the distance and slowed down to sneak mode. Just 100 yards farther, the buck flushed from a cluster of young fir trees. After stopping him in a clearing with a loud snort, I looked him over. He was indeed a young buck, with high, narrow, odd-looking antlers. I filmed him for a few minutes with my video camera before he bounded off out of sight.
tracking deer

Turning east again, I continued along with my original plan, finally cutting another track about a quarter mile farther. Though the hoofprints were filled with an inch of snow, I knew from their drag marks that they had been left by a big, mature buck—and he was laying down scrapes as he went. In a hardwood cut, there was more fresh sign where he had chased two feeding does around before heading back into the old-growth woods once more. As he moved along, he made several more scrapes, rubbed his antlers on a brown ash tree, and then abruptly bedded down. Often, bucks will feed before bedding down, which puts me on high alert.

Although the buck’s bed was frozen by the time I reached it, the track leading from it was crisp. It was clear that the buck I was on would make the magic 200-pound (when field-dressed) mark. Whereas deer hunters in most places talk of antler score, in Maine it’s all about the weight. He began feeding as soon as he left his bed—just a nip here and there. I sensed that he wanted to rest again somewhere nearby, since he was at the tail end of his nightly run. Just 30 yards farther, he fed around a blowdown and bedded again. Now I was in super-sneak mode, scouring the brush everywhere for any sign of him. Taking one halting step at a time and dissecting every inch of the woods with my eyes, I eased around the low-hanging limbs of a small spruce. A mere 30 yards away, antlers and ears poked above a blowndown log. Although most bucks bed down facing their backtrack, this one was looking away—with a rack stretching well past his ears. Using the barrel of my Remington 7600, I pushed down the limbs of the spruce, put the bead on buck’s neck, and sent the 180-grainer on its way. With little commotion, the buck merely rolled over in his bed. I eased over to where he was to find a beautiful Maine big-woods buck breathing his last. I sat down and thanked the good Lord for providing me with this buck.

It was nearly noon, but by 3:30 I had managed to drag the old boy through a mile of timber and back to the truck. On the drive home I replayed the events of the day—a three-hour drive into unfamiliar woods to shoot a giant buck. Many hunters might not understand what motivated me, but for serious buck trackers, it’s simply the way it is done.

Rustling leaves, breaking sticks—it was getting louder, and heading our way. In northern New England, the sounds could be made by either a moose or a deer. When an ivory rack appeared inches off the ground, seemingly weaving its way through a dense mixture of pin-cherry, beech, and aspen saplings, my hunting partner, Jeff Ladue, and I raised our rifles simultaneously. But as quickly as the antlers had appeared, they were gone. We lowered our guns. looked at each other, and shook our heads. Neither one of us had gotten a clear shot at the buck.

Two days later, we awakened to 3 inches of fresh, powdery snow. It was a morning that deer trackers refer to as a “killing day.”

You'll have to read the rest of the story over at Outdoor Life to see what happens, but we can promise you won't be disappointed! This tale is a testament to the power of patience and being meticulous, and has a lot to teach both novice and veteran hunters and trackers!

Article Source: Outdoor Life