A big day in the tree stand
An Outdoorsman’s Journal
Hello friends, This week’s column is about opening day of the Wisconsin’s gun deer season and our deer camp, the Red Brush Gang. We live out of a 18-foot by 36-foot shack that we put up in the Meadow Valley Wildlife Area and we hunt the MVA and the Necedah National Wildlife Refuge. There were 16 of us at camp on opening weekend and the weather was brutal.
Saturday, Nov. 19 High 21, Low 10 Wind sustained 18 mph
Last night was the only night I had to cook for the entire season. I fed the gang three elk roasts, three pork roasts and two bear roasts along with onions and potatoes from my garden.
This morning it was up at 4 a.m. and then a bit of a drive to where my 21-year-old daughter Selina, 29-yearold stepson Joey Dushek and myself had a walk of 1.5, 1.7 and 2 miles to our stands. A bit of a story is that Joey has never hunted public land on opening day due to the fact that he had a sweet setup on some private land. Our gang is all public so Joey had never been in our big buck contest.
Selina was dropped off first, I was next and then Joey vanished in the dark. We all hunted in portable tree stands, it was snowing, and the wind forecast was correct, sustained at 18 mph with gusts to 35.
My view was mostly of a strip of marsh that was maybe 500 yards in width, and I was in the middle of it. Shortly after dark I saw a buck that had gotten across and was just about to enter the red brush at 180 yards. I took a shot, and it was easy to see in the snow when I came upon its tracks that I had missed. No matter what, the story for the individual that hunted in a tree today, was the weather. To stay into the game, you could not over think.
About 10 a.m. I met up with Selina for a lunch break. Even though I had hauled a ground blind and a Mr. Buddy Heater she did not think it would withstand the wind, so it was never put up. Shortly after that I was back up in my tree and it was not 10 minutes and two of the largest gray wolves that I have ever seen came trotting by. I have watched a lot of wolves, but their size was amazing.
Selina would also see a bobcat from her stand. This would be a big year for our entire gang to see lots of bobcats and wolves. I might add that the entire day I never saw another hunter. I think we are just too far back for anyone to want to walk.
Our group does some texting with each other, and two common texts were, it’s too windy to hit a deer from the tree and it seems like my tree could get blown over with me in it. As much as I enjoyed this day, my 51st Saturday in a row before Thanksgiving to be hunting here, I was very excited for dark, the walk and the two wood stoves back at our shack.
Joey Dushek had made the decision that it was too windy to shoot from his tree and was doing a very slow walk and stalk. Joe came across a good buck that turned out to be a 10-pointer and sent it to heaven and it was incredibly cool to hear his war whoop which meant he had shot a buck. This was the beginning of a huge job, removing his stand, dressing his buck and a two-mile drag. Joe made it to my stand just before dark, which meant we had another 1.7 miles. No one really knows it, but I have been nursing some injuries from an October elk hunt that made dragging a large buck in a half-frozen marsh a death march.
I have to admit that Joey did the bulk of the work, but Selina and I certainly helped as well. When we made it to the truck at 6:30 p.m., no one was talking about how cold it was.
On this day Joe’s buck was the only deer harvested out of 16 hunters and would eventually win our group’s big buck contest the first year that he entered it!
Sunset
