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It’s Finally Come to This
By Russell Thornberry
“When do I get to shoot a big deer?” she asked. That question was posed, as it had been every year, by my wife Sharleen. And it’s not an easy question to answer if you’re in charge of making that happen.
You see, Sharleen is a busy woman who doesn’t have time to hunt hard every day.
What’s more, she doesn’t do well with heights, so treestands are out of the question.
Extreme weather is not an option, either, which means her hunting opportunities occur primarily during bow season. Because of physical limitations, she can’t shoot a bow, so that’s been another limiting factor.
This past season, we finally overcame that obstacle with a special permit for her to use a crossbow.
Getting her within bow range of a big buck was still a tall order. Did I mention I am the one responsible for putting her on a big deer?
To complicate matters, the 2015 deer season in central-western Alberta, Canada, revealed a startling shortage of deer. The reasons are complex. Like many other areas, Alberta has allowed a virtual slaughter of does. I suspect this is due to game management pressures by auto insurance providers rather than biologists.
In my area, the problem is exacerbated by grizzly bears, a factor that doesn’t typically affect whitetail populations. Grizzlies are a protected species in Alberta and have been for a number of years. Here in the foothills of the Canadian Rockies, we now have grizzlies killing livestock, tearing down granaries and showing up in the deer woods where they have not existed in the last 50 years.
In addition to the grizzly factor, baiting black bears has been outlawed where grizzlies exist, so their population has exploded. It is a documented fact that bears are the ultimate predators of deer fawns. Add to that, our cougar population is estimated at far greater numbers than when the first Europeans set foot on Canadian soil. In my neck of the woods, cougar sightings are common.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the timber wolf population has soared, too. Subsequently, our moose and elk numbers have dwindled to nearly nothing.
That said, it would be less than honest to blame everything on predators. Oil and gas exploration in central-western Alberta has pushed networks of roads into the vast blocks of public forests, called Crown Lands in Canada. The bottom line is the large ungulates like elk and moose have lost the necessary forest sanctuary needed to survive in viable numbers.
All things considered, these collective negatives have taken their toll on the white-tailed deer population, and seeing a mature buck is a rare treat.
I was beating the bushes all season and saw only one mature buck. Some of my faithful whitetail haunts produced zero deer sightings. It was shocking, to say the least.
I had all but given up on finding a respectable buck for my bride of 47 years when one of my trail cameras revealed a mature, tall-tined 8-pointer traveling through a timbered corridor en route to a clover field.
It was early enough in the bow season for the buck to be fairly predictable, and it was showing up between 6 and 7 p.m. I hid a ground blind behind some prominent deadfall about 25 yards north of the trail he was frequenting. He continued his pattern with no concern for the blind. Now all that was left was to get Sharleen in place with her crossbow.
That happened a few evenings later. I got her settled in the pop-up blind and showed her which way the buck was likely to travel. I told her to sit tight until last light and then call me if she shot the buck. Otherwise, I’d pick her up after legal shooting light.
Ordinarily when Sharleen hunts from a ground blind, I have a treestand in the area where I also hunt. The deer shortage was so dire there was no other opportunity anywhere near where she was located. Since she was only three miles from our home, I decided to go back to the house and watch TV until I heard from her or until darkness fell, whichever came first.
I scrolled through the depressing news networks and finally settled on a deer hunting show on Canada’s Wild TV channel. It seemed odd — me watching hunting on TV while my wife was manning a blind in the deer woods. “It’s finally come to this,” I thought as I sat there.
I never thought I’d see the day when there weren’t enough deer for both of us to hunt.
About 6 p.m. my phone buzzed with a text message. I grabbed it in eager anticipation. It was from Sharleen and read, “I see a small buck, but I don’t think I will shoot it.”
I responded, “Good for you. You won’t get the big one unless you let the small one walk. The bigger deer will come later.”
It was significant because it was the first time she had elected to pass an opportunity to shoot an antlered deer. Thankfully, Sharleen isn’t a hardcore trophy hunter.
The next time my phone buzzed was a little after 7 p.m. The message said, “I see the big 8-pointer, and I think I will shoot him.”
In a moment my phone buzzed again. This time it said “I shot him and he ran off.”
“Okay, I’ll be there in five minutes!” I answered.
When I got to the blind, Sharleen was walking through the timber in the direction her buck had run. She showed me the spot where she thought it had made a hard right turn before she lost sight of it. There wasn’t a drop of blood to be found anywhere.
I asked her if she felt confident of her shot, and she said she did. I already knew she was a great shot and that she has ice water in her veins when it comes to keeping calm. She is wonderfully unflappable in that respect, so I was confident, even though we didn’t find a blood trail.
I could see that Shar was greatly disappointed and starting to doubt herself, but I knew if she had made a bad shot she would have known immediately. The light was fading fast in the timber, and I had no idea what to do next. One last time I asked her to tell me what she saw.
As I considered her account of the event, one point bothered me. I have never seen a fatally shot deer run away and suddenly change direction. On a hunch, I started at the spot of the shot and followed the southbound exit trail. When I got to the place where Shar saw the buck turn right, I just kept going south. Forty yards later, I found the buck piled up in his tracks.
The shot was a little forward, which accounted for the lack of blood, but the crossbow bolt had taken out both lungs. I also found a fresh bed where a second whitetail had been bedded when Sharleen’s buck nearly ran over it. Undoubtedly the bedded deer was the one she had seen running west.
She was greatly relieved to see her buck up close and personal.
A wet snow began to fall, so I drove Sharleen back to the house. My son-in-law and I went back to retrieve the buck, and we realized just how big it was when we tried to lift it into the little trailer. It was all we could do to load it up.
When we got back to the house, Sharleen came out for her glory photos. She was looking like a million bucks and had put on fresh lipstick and earrings. I told her she didn’t look very woodsy, to which she retorted, “Hey, this is all about looking good!”
What could I say except, “It’s finally come to this!”
At least she didn’t put any lipstick on the deer.