Opening day deer-hunting memories

I come from a long family line of successful deer hunters, so you'd think some of that ingrained ancestral talent would rub off on me like springtime velvet on a tree from a buck's antlers.

Opening day of Maine's firearms hunting season for deer is one of my favorite times of the year.

I have old photos of my dad and his three brothers — and their father and five uncles and even my great-grandfather — at the family camp in Wilton, proudly showing off the deer they got during the season.

So, even though I haven't hunted in years, opening day rekindles that heritage deep within me like that of a child at Christmas.

For me, though, it's the memories, the time spent hunting in the woods — either with a hunting buddy or by yourself — that is so mind-blowingly awesome.

So, when my grandfather gave me a .32 Winchester special several years ago, I was eager to prove my hunting prowess.

I've hunted deer in Maine for about a decade. Never got one, but it wasn't for lack of trying.

One opening-day morning, my hunting buddy, John Wick, and I drove to Greenville to hunt the Lily Bay area. He'd gotten some big bucks there before.

He posts me in this thicket along a swamp with some standing deadwood, but a pretty good shooting lane, and tells me he's going to stalk hunt to the north of me. The strategy was that if there were any deer over there, they'd likely move in my direction.

"You're not going to fall asleep, right?" he says.

"I'm not going to fall asleep," I say.

He takes off. Thirty minutes later, I fall asleep, naturally.

The next thing I hear is BAM! BAM! BAM!

Disoriented, I get ready for a shot, looking wildly around, loud banging sounds still ringing in my ears and I'm getting pelted with splintered wood and chunks of wood. I look up and see a 2-foot-long pileated woodpecker beating the heck out of a dead tree above me.

I moved to a safer, quieter location. No deer that day.

Another time, hunting alone in Livermore woods, I find this well-used deer trail and sit and wait in a good position.

Then this gray squirrel just starts mouthing off at me, totally blowing my cover. I lost my temper after trying in vain to shush it quiet, and fired at him, but shot the thin branch out from under his feet, dropping him to the ground.

At least then, he had something to squawk at me about. No deer that day.

Another time when my ninja-stalking skills had greatly improved and I was tracking a deer, I froze along a ridge after hearing four-legged noise in leaves just over a slope, coming toward me.

It was a fawn searching for its mom, judging by its bleating. Still, I could have reached out and touched it as it walked by apparently unaware I was there. That was a memorable day, but still, no deer.

The closest I ever came to getting a buck was with Wick, again in the Lily Bay area.

While stalking a deer single-file, he steps into a waist deep pit of quicksand hidden by fall leaves and flounders, trying to keep his gun out of the soupy muck.

I started laughing so hard, I fell in, too.

Covered in mud and leaves and laughing our heads off, we both see two bucks that had been fighting about 75 yards away, gawking back at us.

He got off a shot with his muddy gun. The bucks melted into the woods, and we slogged and swam out of the muck, gasping for breath lying on solid ground.

Afterward, we tromped around for a while like Bigfoot, giggling like school kids, and washed off in a brook.

Then, we tracked those two bucks for a ways. No deer again.

So, I envy all you hunters who get your deer opening day and good luck to those who don't. There's still plenty of time left to do it safely, and a lifetime of memories to later cherish.

tkarkos@sunjournal.com