A Wounded Doe

This morning the SO went out to get the paper because it was 22 degrees and I slept cold all night, just didn't feel like getting out in the cold so early today, and the dog was bothering one of us to go. He was only gone for about a minute and came hurrying back in. "A doe's hung up in the fence," he said, and I could hear the worry in his voice. I asked what he was going to do, and he said he was after his wire cutters to clip her loose. No telling how long she'd been there.

I watched through the binoculars as he went across the inside fence to the horse run on our land, which was where the doe was, looking like something from a WWI movie, caught on the wire in No Man's Land. The doe struggled as he neared. It was obvious she was wounded and hung fast. It was her back right leg that was caught. He cut the wire in a couple of places and she bolted free. But she was only able to wobble a couple of feet, then fell again. Clearly worried, he backed away, watching her. She bolted a couple more feet, and fell up next to the fence. He thought he hip had maybe come out of its socket.

When he came inside, he said we should leave her there and wait to see what happened with her. All morning we kept getting up in turns to look through the binoculars. She was alert, lying down with her head up and ears forward. She seemed focused on the house. She broke my heart.

A few hours later, he had an errand to run and the doe tried to bolt away when he walked to the pickup. But she could only go a little bit and had to lie back down. It seemed to me that her problem was indeed in her hip. although I thought it might be broken. While he was gone I continued to keep the dog inside, much to her distress, and even called Daddy to tell him not to bring his dog if he happened to come by. He often will drop in on a Sunday. The doe remained in the last place she had fallen, but still in her upright-alert head position, looking around and soaking up sunshine.

My SO came home, and I could tell he had been fretting over the little doe the same way I had been. He said he'd thought it out and that we should go out as a team, throw a blanket over the deer, and lift her across the fence. On the other side, in the pasture there, she would be closer to better cover, water, and food, as well as the rest of her herd, and maybe she would make it. By this time she had moved down to the far corner of our property, behind where the SO parks the tractor. It's a low spot and the deer often go to this corner to leap over the fence into our yard. The doe was obviously familiar with this method of ingress and egress, and had moved down there to try to get over the fence. Of course, it was an impossible feat with her in her wounded condition, but she continued to try only to run headfirst into the wire fence. We had begun to worry that she would catch an ear in the barbs on the top wire. That's the only part of the fence that's barbed. The rest is wire mesh, or hog fence as it's sometimes called.

I was nervous about the whole prospect of doing this, not experienced with things of this nature like my SO is. He's a farm boy, has been around livestock all his life. I'm a city-slicker, good with dogs and cats, but not much else in the way of furry animals. I guess I had read but didn't believe the power of throwing a blanket over an animal. We took a big horse blanket out to her. She struggled up to the fence and collapsed. All the while, my SO was talking in soothing tones to her. He threw the blanket quickly over her, then knelt beside her with his hands on her sides. She immediately calmed. I spotted a place in the fence corner where it looked easy to unhook the wire, so we did that, and sort of guided her through it. She did her bolting wobble walk, collapsed a few times, looked at us so seriously. She had long eyelashes just like Bambi's mama. She blinked a few times and seemed exhausted by her ordeal. I choose to think she realized in some deep part of her brain that we were trying to help her. In a bit, she got up and was able to very shakily and in a wobbling lurch, make her way across that end of the pasture to the creek where we hope she will lay up and heal, near water and grass.

All of this has me thinking and reconsidering putting out corn for the deer the way we have been doing. It's easy enough to fill up bird feeders and enjoy them coming for a winter meal. They have wings. Fences don't affect them. The deer, on the other hand, have to jump the fence to get into the yard to get to the corn we've been putting out for them. They do jump the fence on their own even without the feeder, as witness when we returned from our trip to the mountains in October to a yard full of deer on several consecutive mornings. But the corn feeder is really almost too luscious for them to resist. It baits them in, and primarily for our enjoyment, so we can watch them across the horse fence in the little run part of the yard that we can see from the house with our binoculars. It now seems hardly fair to them to put them in harm's way. I think our little doe has taught me a lesson I won't soon forget.

Onward ....

Opening Weekend - Deer Season

Opening weekend of Whitetail Deer Season in Texas: there are hunters in this state who live the rest of the year for this one weekend. I'm not a hunter but happen to be in love with one, and so this is my second year of inclusion in this rite of passage of a segment of Texas men. Or maybe a certain segment of men period. Maybe it's this big of a deal in other state's as well. I am decidedly un-enamored.

It really begins on the Friday before the actual shooting can start. On my SO's deer lease the rule is "if you shoot it you have to mount it." In other words, if it is not a trophy deer, let it live. The idea, I guess, is to keep trigger-happy hunters from shooting anything that walks out of the woods and into their gunsights. While I was there the only thing shot was a large feral hog. There is no season on these creatures. They have become such a nuisance, and so overpopulated, that the season on them is year-round. I have come to believe that every hunter in Texas could shoot a hog every day of the year and still not put much of a dent in the population, they are that pervasive. And they are destructive, as well as dangerous. So my soft heart did not bleed over the humongous hog in the back of one of the hunter's pickup.

But back to the rituals. Friday evening, after everyone who is going to participate in the opening weekend festivities has arrived, each hunter goes to his designated blind to sit with binoculars and see what comes out in front of them. Each blind is accompanied by a feeder, usually set with a timer to go off and scatter corn at a certain time. If the hunter has been rigorous through the year with keeping his feeder full, the deer are used to the noise of the timer as it performs it's job, and in fact, they often stand nearby waiting to eat the corn. They seem to have some sort of internal clock and begin to congregate around the feeders within twenty minutes of the mechanism throwing out corn. While I was with my SO in his blind, there was once a large buck standing directly under the feeder when the timer threw corn, and the buck simply sidestepped a couple of feet and let the feeder do its job. Within three or four minutes all the other deer who have been standing around waiting, came in to gobble corn, and others appeared from other pastures, either having heard the spinning wheel that flings the corn, or from prompting by their own internal clocks.

The hunters dutifully watch the deer as they eat the provided corn, and some, like my SO, take notes on the deer they observe. The SO leaves his notebook in his blind, and so we were able to compare opening weekend 2009 to opening weekend 2008, and found that weather conditions were similar and numbers of deer had slightly increased. By the way, any conversation that takes place inside a deer blind is done in a whisper, even though I accidentally dropped my binoculars, they made a loud bang, and none of the feasting deer even so much as flinched at the sound.

After the sun goes down, all the hunters come into camp, which is a collection of motley buildings, campers, etc. Deer camp is the place where the dead or worn out accoutrement of life end up -- things like ragged towels, bent chairs, crapped out bedding, etc. It's part of the spirit of "roughing it" that reigns at deer camp. There is also a lot of cooking that goes on, and a required camp fire, even if the temperature outside is in the 80s. Everyone stands around discussing in great detail the deer they witnessed that evening, paying particular note to the male deer and their antlers, using technical terms like beam length, spread, the presence or absence of brow tines, symmetry, and of course, number of points. The points are all important, as is body mass. Guns are also discussed, the best options, the age of the guns they are each using, the older the better it seems, and scopes are also all important.

Then the eating begins. Meat is the main dish. Meat of all kinds, pork ribs, spare ribs, roasts, steaks, brisket, fajita meat. Vegetables are not part of the menu, except for the odd jalapeno pepper or bag of potato chips. There is also dip, manly dip like bean dip or cheese dip, with tortilla chips or possibly even jalapeno chips. Desert is a storebought pecan pie or nutty brownies, if there are deserts at all. I made the mistake of taking an orange cake. Only one piece was eaten. Cake requires the use of plates and forks, which is also out when it comes to camp food. Unless it happens to be chili. There are always chili bowls available. The single piece of my cake that was consumed was eaten out of a chili bowl with a spoon. Ahh mee.....

On opening day, the hunters are up at 4:30. The smell of coffee is strong in the air. Nobody speaks much. They climb into their vehicles and drive slowly to their blinds. After daybreak, gunfire can be heard and you speculate on who did the shooting and what they might have shot. Most of the gunfire at our camp came from too far away to be any of our gang. The only nearby shot opening morning came from one of our group firing at a coyote, which he apparently missed.

At about 9:30, everyone heads back to camp to eat breakfast. Bacon and sausage, eggs mixed with onion and potatoes. There is euphoria even though nobody shot anything. Tales of antler points abound. If anyone needs to go to town, now is when they make their trips. Others take naps. Someone keeps the camp fire going, and all the jobs just fall in place without assignment.

That evening was when the large hog was shot. And it was also when I decided to go home. I was tired of just meat meals. And tired of the radio broadcasting one football game after another. Our group were not drinkers, but there were also no cards or dominos played like at some deer camps. I enjoyed sitting in the blind and watching the deer. I even got to see a fight between two bucks with larger racks. But I was a little worried somebody might kill a deer, and I didn't want to stick around camp for that.

The SO just came home. It's Sunday morning, and he reports that no deer were killed. Thank goodness for that. Maybe those gorgeous creatures we watched through our binoculars will go on to live through the season. My fingers are crossed for that.

Onward ....