Sneak peek: Tracking a Buck

The following excerpt is a chapter from Christi Elliott's memoir, Always Game. The book is available for preorder now, wherever books are sold.

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I sat twenty feet high in a hang on stand in a spruce tree, overlooking a small bog the size of a basketball court in Pownal. It was the second week of November, and last week’s snow blanketed the ground. It was hard and crunchy and with no wind blowing; I would hear anything walking nearby. It was nearly silent except for the occasional rumble of a car driving half a mile away. It was too cold on my fingertips to scroll on my phone, which was good because I shouldn’t do that anyways. I had to stay focused for a few more hours.

“These are the most important hours,” I coached myself. “It only takes a second for a deer to come by.”

I was bundled in men’s wool pants and a down jacket, hands tucked into a muff at my waist, my Remington .308 resting across my lap. A squirrel scurried back and forth, up and over a log, readying its stash for winter. I wondered whether he carried acorns or mushrooms.

By this time in my hunting career, I was used to sitting for hours and seeing nothing. I had started deer hunting six years earlier and I hadn’t shot a deer yet. In fact, I rarely even saw a deer. As the afternoon waned, I checked my watch—two-thirty. Two hours until legal hunting time ended. I told myself I could eat a snack at four, which gave me something to look forward to and something to do when the time came. I watched that busy squirrel scurry by again.

Deer hunting tested my ability to withstand boredom. In today’s world, most of us are seldom bored. In line at the grocery store? Text a friend or watch a funny video on your phone. We are not comfortable being bored, with being alone with our thoughts, with listening to our inner monologue. When hunting deer, you must fight sheer boredom for hours and hours and remain totally present. If you move too much, you’ll spook deer before you even see them. If you’re looking at your phone, the only buck of the day might walk by silently without you even noticing.

I took the Primos doe call out of my vest pocket and turned it over, counted to ten, and turned it over again. It was a “can call” with holes on both sides. It let out a soft bleat each time I turned it, imitating a doe in heat. I watched the squirrel make another trip over the log.

At four o’clock sharp I cautiously unzipped my camo waist pack and removed a package of six small peanut butter crackers. I put one in my mouth and chewed. The chewing was loud inside my head. Then I heard something. Probably another squirrel, I thought. The noise came from behind me, over my left shoulder, but didn’t sound close. I took the deer call out again and turned it over, just in case. I craned my neck and peered into the forest. Nothing. I put another cracker in my mouth.

Then movement caught my eye. It probably was not a deer, and if it was, it was probably a doe. I didn’t have a doe tag for this zone.

Then I saw brown.

It was a deer! But was it a buck? The brown sauntered toward me as the unchewed cracker sat in my mouth.

Antlers!

A buck!

I didn’t count the points or study the rack, but just seeing antlers was enough for me. I raised my gun up and steadied the deer in my scope.

I had a hard time finding him and keeping him in my scope.

Breath in.

Breath out.

I clicked the safety off.

Breath in.

Breath out.

About eighty yards. If he turns, shoot, my inner dialogue coached.

He turned.

I shot.

The squirrel was gone and so was my cracker, although I don’t remember eating it.

Did I hit him?

My hands were shaking.

Through my scope I spied blood in the snow where the deer had been standing. I took out my phone and texted my friend, Randy, who was working nearby. I was sitting in his tree stand.

He must have these deer on payroll, I chuckled to myself.

Randy is a flannel-wearing burly guy in his fifties with a long, grayish beard who works as a nuisance trapper and Registered Maine Guide. When he arrived, we walked to the spot where the deer had stood. Randy crouched down and studied the blood-stained snow, “There’s a lot of blood, but blood looks bigger in snow, so hard to tell how good it’s hit.”

We followed the blood trail through the woods. We marked our way with orange flagging tape every few feet. I was positive we would find the deer crumpled up just around the next corner. That’s how deer hunting works, right? We kept walking.

We followed the blood trail for fifteen minutes or so until it was completely dark. The deer was still going. He had bedded down once, and we studied the pool of blood. It was red, with no green or brown material, which would have indicated a gut shot, but I must not have hit his heart or lungs either since the deer was still alive. We didn’t see any drag marks in the snow, so his legs were okay. We decided to back out and wait a couple of hours, hoping the deer would succumb to his injuries.

My stomach was in knots, but I remained confident we would find him; there was just too much blood not to.

I called Scot Clontz, one of the State’s certified tracking dog handlers. He said he could meet me in the morning.

“Promise me you won’t go back after that deer tonight, you’ll just spread the blood around,” Scot said, “increasing the chances of a coyote crossing its path, and you will make my job harder in the morning.”

“I promise,” I said.

I lied. Randy insisted we not leave the deer out overnight given the number of coyotes in the area, and I trusted Randy’s guidance. At about nine, with fresh batteries in our headlamps, we began tracking the deer again. The night was moonless, dark, and chilly. We easily followed the blood trail through the snow-covered woods, but out in the fields where the ground had less or no snow, we struggled to find blood.

Once, we bumped the buck and heard him cross a small stream ahead of us. We backed out again, and hoped he would bed down and expire. At midnight, we went in again, and that’s when we saw it—a drag mark in the snow. I had shot the deer in the leg.

I felt terrible. I knew this animal was suffering and struggling. A major reason I started hunting was to mitigate animal suffering, and now look at what I had done. This was not how I envisioned it. I was ashamed and disappointed in myself. And what would we do if we caught up to it? It wasn’t going to bleed out from a leg wound that night. We couldn’t legally shoot it again because it was nighttime. At one in the morning, we decided to go home and wait for Scot. I would not tell him what we had done.

I tossed and turned in bed. Sleep evaded me, like the buck I injured. I thought through the possible scenarios that awaited us come daylight.

What if we don’t find him?

What if coyotes find him first?

I remembered an audio recording I once heard of a deer crying as coyotes ate it alive. Here I am, in my warm bed, and coyotes could be eating my buck alive at this very moment. What have I done? Six years I’ve been trying to get a deer. I finally get my chance. And I fail. I should have given up on deer hunting, stuck to turkey and duck hunting.

No, that’s not true, deep down I knew the reason I never gave up on deer hunting—I am not a quitter. And I certainly wasn’t going to quit now. I hate to quit and I hate to fail.

I met Randy the next morning and we anxiously waited for Scot to arrive. Scot pulled up in an old Corolla, wearing jeans and sneakers, despite the snow. Scot was a middle-aged man who looked a bit unprepared, but I put a lot of faith in him and his abilities. He carried his beagle, Darwin, under his arm.

“Darwin and I will go first,” he said. “And if the deer is alive, you do not shoot until I give you the go ahead.”

Scot put Darwin down where we had stopped tracking the night before. I was impressed to watch Darwin work, to say the least. He spent a few minutes sniffing and turning and deciphering which direction the deer went, and then he was off, pulling at the leash, trying to break free and run. I struggled to keep up, at times jogging with my 12-gauge and chambered slug over my shoulder. Unlike my rifle, which I only fired a couple times a year, I was more comfortable handling and aiming my 12-gauge, since I used it frequently for bird hunting. Part of me wondered if the scope on my rifle was off.

About ten minutes into the track, Darwin started howling. “We must be close,” Scot translated. At the edge of a stream, Darwin stopped to work out which direction the deer had gone. I heard ice breaking and looked upstream. I watched a buck struggle across the barely iced-over river. He slipped and broke through, but made it to the other side.

“There he is!” I exclaimed as the buck limped into the forest on the opposite bank. Scot scooped up Darwin and we crossed a beaver dam nearby. We walked upstream, found fresh blood, and Scot put Darwin back to work.

The woods were denser on this side of the stream, but almost immediately we jumped the deer. He disappeared through the thickets and I didn’t have a shot. Darwin tracked him back toward the stream and we caught up to him in the open. The buck was in a clearing along the stream’s edge about thirty yards away. He was still moving, limping away from us.

Scot gave me the go ahead.

I put the gun’s bead on the buck’s neck and fired.

The deer dropped.

We walked over to the buck, my first deer. A medium-size eight pointer. Randy patted me on the back and congratulated me. I thanked him and Scot profusely. I knelt behind the buck and sank my fingers into his thick, oatmeal-colored coat. His rear leg dangled from his body. I shook my head in disbelief—what resiliency, what strength—to keep going so long on three legs.

I sat with the buck for a few minutes until it was time to field dress him. I was relieved that this buck was no longer suffering. A wave of relief washed over me. This had been my goal all along, back when I shot that first spruce grouse. I had hoped for this, unsure if I would ever achieve it. The highs and lows from the past sixteen hours flooded out in tears of shame and sorrow, appreciation and pride.

I gutted the buck with Randy’s guidance, while he studied his phone to determine the easiest way out. To get to the closest road, we would have to drag the deer past a house. Randy rigged up a stick for leverage and he and Scot dragged the buck headfirst toward the road. Once in sight of the house, Randy knocked on the door and asked if we could drag the deer across their lawn to the road; they agreed. This was my first time dragging a buck. I tried by myself and thought, There’s no way I could ever do this alone. I was glad to have their help.

Hunting whitetails in Maine has taught me a lot about myself. Sitting in a tree stand for hours, cold, hungry, bored, and discouraged humbled me and taught me patience. Alarms at four in the morning taught me discipline. Tracking my first deer for hours taught me perseverance. But the most important lessons I have learned deer hunting are to slow down, stay in the moment, and never give up.

Christi's first deer, photo by Christi Elliott

Christi Elliott's memoir, Always Game is available for preorder now, wherever books are sold.