Jackson County has a sort of mystique for me. It is the mythical home of giant bucks in great numbers. I’m sure it must be in the top five counties in Michigan for trophy whitetails, and the top producing U.P. counties seem to be on the decline. So when I arrived at the property our club had leased north of Parma, I was somewhat disappointed. The one hundred twenty acre parcel looked very much like our land in other counties, and there were no giant bucks scampering around the property or neighboring farm fields. This farm had a series of four east-west fields, three north-south fields, and one woodlot. Activity over the next hour moved my excitement level back up the scale considerably. Every fence line and field edge had evidence of resident deer. Heavily used trails in the snow were so numerous that choosing a “wind-favorable” stand was a matter of picking a spot rather than finding a spot. As I eased past the woodlot, I could see some rubs that signaled the presence of at least one buck. Today’s wind was out of the northwest so I selected a tangle of undergrowth in a north-south fence line between two fields twenty yards from a where it intersected with a fifteen acre woodlot. From this spot, I overlooked a hundred yard stretch of field on either side of me. About an hour after I settled in, a trio of doe appeared on the far side of the field and headed my way. For the next hour, these deer kept me entertained with their antics. One was a near-fawn that was actually a button buck who was extremely confused about his maturity level. At times he attempted to nurse an activity that his mother had little patience with, judging from her bucking bronco imitation. One of her kicks sent the little guy staggering for safety. At other times he was attempting to mount the second doe. A nifty left jab and right hook from his female companion seemed to bring him to his senses. When they got close enough, I could see the blood trickling down his forehead, and wondered whether he was contemplating the option of changing to a totally vegetarian diet, or maybe the benefits of a celibate life.

After moving into the woods downwind from me, Mom picked-up my scent and embarked on a chorus of snorts that went on for several minutes. Luckily, in spite of leaving my fanny pack in the van, I had my snort call and all-purpose call in my pockets; so a few minutes into the performance, I got out my snort call and started answering. It piqued her curiosity and it was not long before she had cut the distance between us in half and the tone of her snorts were clearly more curious than alert oriented. Then the second doe spotted me, and they all bolted for the next county.

It was December 17^th, with all it’s trimmings: icy temperature, cutting wind, and grey skies - all working together to turn a minor set-back into an overwhelming urge to give it up. But fighting that urge, I got out the all-purpose call and did a series of loud doe bleats and softer grunts before things calmed down. The buck must have been just out of sight on the north side of the property, because he materialized on my first scanning of the wood line. He was standing directly between me and a pontoon boat on the neighbor’s land a few yards from the border of the field. He was not facing my way, and was not responsive to grunts or bleats. So when he started walking across the end of the field, putting more distance between us, I took the safety off and brought the muzzleloader up to my shoulder. When he moved enough to clear the parked camper, and before he got in front of the plow parked on the neighbor’s land, I tried to settle the sights onto a vital target. Just as I was taking the slack out of the trigger, the buck stepped behind a bush and disappeared. He had been a decent ten point, so my heart-rate was up to the shooter level and the chill I had been fighting was melted away. So from a health and comfort point of view, the encounter was not a total bust, but my emotional state had taken a serious hit. It must have been well over an hour later, because I had done three or four calling sequences and was routinely glassing the fence-line when some movement caught my attention. It took another five minutes to finally make out a deer laying down under a bush near where I had last seen the buck. All I could see was his head and neck, and it was impossible to count points, but I was relatively sure it was the same buck.

I stepped up the volume of my calling, and when the lunch hour had passed, he finally got up, stepped into the field, and headed down the line of trees. Again the safety came off, the 50 caliber nestled into my shoulder, and I found a good supported rest to shoot from. He may have spotted some movement because he stopped, turned, and headed back up the field.

Without my range finder (in my fanny pack), I had to estimate the distance. Judging that he was between one hundred twenty-five and one hundred fifty yards away, I held the front bead a couple inches or so over his shoulder and squeezed off the shot. He was on the ground when the smoke cleared, as still as a stone. As I rushed to get reloaded, he jumped up and ran onto the neighbor’s place. I noticed he was limping badly on his right rear leg, and wondered if I had missed the mark by that much. Not able to wait the prescribed thirty minutes, I compromised the urge to go chasing after the wounded buck by pacing off the distance of the shot. This succeeded in slowing me down, but the distance was under one hundred yards! How could I have been that far off. The bullet might have grazed his back or neck. Somewhat downheartedly, I followed the blood trail to the border of the land, and glassed the vicinity thoroughly no buck. Next I went back to the car and drove around to the other side of the mile section. The fifth house I tried was the first one with an occupant who could help? they all tried, and I got permission to search a lot of adjacent property, but she said the magic words. She was not the owner of the property in question, but assured me that it would be alright to retrieve the deer. That was good enough for me. I parked where she suggested and headed out. The area was strewn with discarded stuff? cars, tractors, boats, campers, trailers, and a lot of etc. About ten minutes into my search, I spotted the buck standing in a thicket of undergrowth and blow-downs. I had not forgotten my fanny pack a second time so I was able to range him at 72 yards. The shot put him down for keeps this time. To say he had been shot up was an understatement. He had been limping from a wound in the right haunch, the entry point from my first shot had been just below his ear on the back of his head, and my second attempt had been a heart shot. The head shot didn’t exit his face anywhere, but distorted the shape considerably. There would be more than the usual amount of meat wasted when this deer got butchered.

After picture taking, field dressing, dragging, and loading this buck single-handedly, I was in my van resting and contemplating the purchase of a portable respirator. It came to me as I sat there that I had actually missed this ten pointer, but his head happened to get in the way. In fact, my success over the last several seasons have been a series of outings that ranged from brilliant strategies that paid off, to reactionary spur-of-the-moment actions that have been embarrassingly successful, in spite of their clumsiness. And so my last tag for 2004 was filled by a nice buck with a story that is somewhat hard to tell. He will make the CBM Book, but at the lower end of the list for this trophy-rich county.

American Sportsmen’s Club has properties like this one leased in several southeast, south-central, and northern lower peninsula counties. Readers with an interest in having exclusive access to private property for hunting, fishing, and general recreational use, should check-out our website at www.team-asc.com.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 17th, 2004 at 12:54 am and is filed under John Benedict's Hunting Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.