Archery season opened Monday and it's been too hot, windy and or rainy every day since. So as I watched it begin to rain today, I decided to write the following story of my buddy's 1979 hunt.

FRIGID CHRISTMAS DOE

This is a tale of another man’s bow hunt from my memory of at least 30 years ago. It was a Friday night a week or so before Christmas. Wesley and I and our wives were enjoying a Christmas party thrown by Foster Design, a firm employing many of the contract engineers and draftsmen working in our natural gas pipeline engineering and construction office. It was also nearing the end of the archery deer season. And it was bitterly cold.

Prior to the party at a local night club, Wesley and I had packed our bowhunting gear in his Chevy pickup truck with the homemade camper shell. Soon after the party broke up and our families were safely home, we headed toward our traditional hunting ground 80 miles to the north. We would camp in a pasture alongside the timber bordering the Arkansas River just a mile east of Lakin, Kansas.

It was in the wee hours of the morning when we pulled through the pasture gate and headed down the two-track trail leading to the windmill on the north side of the river. There we would park and set up camp. The first order of business, however, was to sneak down to the river and set up our stands for the morning hunt.

Wesley had elected to hunt from the “high permanent stand”. It was an existing stand constructed between three trees on the south side of the river. The stand had probably been placed for the purpose of rifle hunting years before we discovered it. It was in a prime location overlooking the “big game trail” that paralleled the river for hundreds of yards. Wesley and others had used it many times and it’s only drawbacks were that it was too high for an ideal bow shot angle and, for me, somewhat difficult to climb onto. It did have a large platform on which to sit and a good view of the “big game trail” and surrounding river bottom.

Since I had already filled my tag, I was just along for moral support and the pleasure of hunting with my friend Wesley - and perhaps stupidity. Nevertheless, we took my homemade, hang-on, treestand down to the nearest cover on the river’s north bank where I selected a young cottonwood tree. It had limbs such that I didn’t need any tree steps and sufficient girth to hold my stand. After some difficulty in the dark and extreme cold and windy conditions, we managed to get the stand placed. I also managed to hyper-extend a shoulder when a limb broke and I fell just a few inches to land flat-footed on a lower branch.

Back at camp, we prepared to go to bed for the few hours before time to go on stand. My sleeping bag was lengthwise on the bed of the truck. Wesley would sleep on a shelf elevated above that. We slipped into our sleeping bags either wearing our hunting clothes or having them close at hand inside the bag because the morning promised to be cold. I took note of the five-gallon jug of water near my head as I drifted off to sleep.

 
In no time we heard the click of the alarm on Wesley’s clock. And I took note of the five-gallon jug of ice near my head. I struggled to put on the remainder of my hunting clothes inside the sleeping bag. Believing to have most everything at least attached in some manner to our bodies, we bounced outside the truck to adjust and fasten loose flaps and straps. And it was so cold. We later learned it was 8 degrees with a 30 mph wind.

My next recollection is of sitting in my cottonwood tree facing southeast toward the “big bend” in the river. I was fully occupied avoiding death by freezing. The gray early morning light had given way to a few rays of sun and sunlight was reflecting off an object moving toward me from across the “sandy clearing”. The first thought was of a white-antlered buck. Then, I recognized that it was Wesley. The next thought was wondering what he was doing off stand.

Wesley had shot a doe that then ran from the “high permanent stand” down the “big game trail” to the west. Joining Wesley, we searched for blood sign of his deer. We searched both branches of a short divide in the trail. I went to the river and walked along the bank to see if there was any evidence on the ice indicating where she might have crossed. While at the river, I heard Wesley holler. He had found her. She had indeed gone down the “big game trail” and before expiring had slipped under the island of thick brush between the two branches of the divided trail.

Having moved his truck from the north side of the river to the road on the south side near his fallen doe, Wesley began the field dressing chore. We have marveled at what happens in the mind when hunters begin field dressing a deer. No matter how much time is available or casual the circumstances, the task is undertaken as if some life clock is about to expire at the end of a game. This was no exception. Wesley with his shaving-sharp pocket knife swiftly and deftly made the pulls, tugs, cuts and grunts necessary to complete the task.

While observing this, I said, “I cannot believe you didn’t cut a gut.”

He said, “Hers or mine?”

Great story,amazing how we will hunt in such cold weather, but I wont do yard work in it!