I actually don't remember much about the year 2007. I still am trying not to write 2005 on my patient charts. The one memorable part that sticks out is the 2007 deer season. It was a season that endured drought and heat like little we have seen in the past. Food plots dried up or sat stunted but strangely enough the acorn crop was one of the best in recent memory; and, I think, that factor alone kept the deer herd in reasonable shape. The rut was brief but strong. Although it did die off after the full month in November as I predicted, all were surprised during the last two weeks of the season by a resurgence that could be called a false rut.

The last two weeks of my season was comprised of trying to sort out the patterns of one of these bucks that wandered onto my property and claimed it for his own. It went something like this.

The drought had pretty much turned my stands of deer greens into stunted little cabbage plants and the deer had browsed them down. One field in particular seemed trampled and my friend Paul and I sat in it regularly and always saw deer. This is the field in which Ms. Breta Smith took her first deer to complete her Surf and Turf quest. I had noticed a week before Christmas that a scrape near the front of the property was receiving renewed interest and quite a few rubbing trees were being basically torn down. There was a new sheriff in town and he must be a big, bad boy. Paul liked to sit in the two stands bordering the swamp and one day he took a nice 8-point with a freshly broken-up rack. He had to shoot a hundred yards or so thorough an opening and mentioned that deer were running everywhere. He saw a really good buck but ended up taking the first decent one to stand in the opening long enough for a shot.

Later the next week he was sitting in the other stand and we were attempting to take a couple of does for the Hunters for the Hungry program when he felt rather than heard a presence over his right shoulder. He turned to peer through a hardwood flat and caught sight of a good 17-inch, 8- point walking along the edge rather slowly. As he was contemplating whether to shoot this deer or a doe, out stepped a monster behind the mature 8-point that dwarfed him. He wasn't able to turn and take the deer, but the image of that big buck walking away burned into Paul's brain. He refused to tell me how big he thought the deer was because he thought I would laugh at him.

The last week of deer season Paul had to work so I thought it would be a good opportunity to try and get Breta a good deer. She had taken a doe and a buck already and was very excited about the possibility of the chance at the trophy buck. You know how it goes. If you really want someone to get a good deer and you put him or her in a stand where you have seen one, the person never ends up seeing it. It is a chess match. A lot of luck is involved, but you can't get them if you don't go. That is the one truth in hunting anything.

It came down to the last day of deer season. Paul is a very lazy sort when it comes to hunting and so he didn't get up early that morning. I had Breta in a slightly different stand than where Paul had seen the monster, reasoning that if he was in the food plot that morning, walking her in there before dawn wasn't going to work and might ruin any chance we had for later in the day. I backed off of the food plot about 200 yards and put a climbing stand over the fresh series of rubs and within a hundred yards of the scrape. I put Breta in a tower stand at a crossroads deep in the swamp. As an afterthought I gave her a pair of binoculars to help her pick out movements in the woods. This, alas, proved to be her undoing. I shot a doe about 30 minutes after dawn. Shortly after that, the plan came together. About 100 yards down the road in front of her stand, Breta saw a doe step out on the road. She was supposed to shoot a big doe for Hunters for the Hungry and quickly picked up the binoculars to check her out. I had failed to tell Breta that when a deer crosses a road, it doesn't dally around. The deer has no need to. He or she is just traveling from one spot to another. We all know that the appropriate response would have been to pick up her rifle and check out the doe. As she watched the spot the doe moved across, another deer stepped into view. It was him. Dropping the binoculars and picking up the rifle took too long and the giant buck disappeared from view, moving away from the food plot and down into the swamp behind the doe to lay up for the day. The plan had almost worked to perfection. I guess if you look at it from a different viewpoint, it was fortuitous that she was even looking down that particular path to see the buck.

After lunch we developed a new plan. With the now-awakened Paul with us, we were faced with a new challenge. The wind was howling out of the west at 30 mph. We decided to surround the area where we believed the deer was bedding, but our hopes dwindled. Deer will walk in a light wind but really don't like howling, gusting winds. It robs them of their main defense ... their sense of smell. It also lessens their ability to hear or pick up visual movement. I decided to circle downwind into the swamp, hoping I could cut the deer off if he moved away from the food plot or moved very late toward it. We put Breta back at the crossroads stand (without binoculars), and Paul moved way upwind to a food plot near the scrape. As expected, nothing moved in a natural pattern that afternoon. We did pick up a perk though. A dog club that put out some 4 miles away eventually drove a fat little six-point to Paul, who made an exceptional running shot at about 20 yards. The deer piled up 30 yards away with a ruptured heart. Who says the early bird gets the worm?

The temperature dropped that afternoon and I found myself wading the shin-deep runs with ankle boots. It helped to leave my feet in the water, as it was much warmer than the air temperature. I eased quietly through the swamp and glassed first one hill and then another. I knew it was like searching for a needle in a haystack but hoped that my cautious movements, if noticed by the deer, would not be interpreted as a dire threat and simply cause the buck to move uphill into the wind and present a shot for one of my partners.

As I leaned against one tree and then another, I found myself inspecting the canopy above me. The 70 acres of river bottom in which I stood had never been logged. The giant oaks, cypress and pine towered above me and the swamp around me was so open I could see for a couple of hundred yards. There were a few of the old giants that were either on the ground or were in a state of standing decomposition. The brittle, old trees were dying and making room for the supple smaller trees below them to move into the light. I decided it was part of the cycle of life and death very much like humans move through. I guess I could bring in a logging crew and selectively cut the 300-year-old giants out, but then I couldn't enjoy them for what time I have left here. It was as it should be. I watched a group of 40 wood ducks swim down the run toward me. No more moving now! If I flushed them, the residents of the swamp would know I was there and my hunt would be over. I froze like a statue next to an old cypress and stood for 45 minutes leaning and listening. They swam up within five yards and though I am sure they saw something, they didn't interpret me as a threat and fed and splashed around for a few minutes before moving on. It was getting dark and so I cut on my flashlight and eased back out toward the river road, occasionally flashing the light around me in order to look as little like a deer moving through the flats as possible. When I got to the river I stood for a while as the last light of the first day of 2008 faded around me. 2008! Man how time flies. I am getting older at a progressively faster rate just like the giants of my childhood told me I would. I still have my parents and my family is secure for the time being. I decided I am a lucky man. As twilight came and went, the woodys swarmed into the night air and squealed out their communications. My life could have taken many turns, including being ended many times. I could have lived in a city and was on the verge years ago of moving to other states or entering the service. I decided to stay near home and move to the country. I decided to be close as the old folks turned brittle and passed to show me the way. Yes this is how it should be.

Dr. John Rheney's column appears every other Sunday.

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