Episode #5: Legend of the North Side Swamp

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Code of Traditional Archery. Brought to you by Primitive Stone Archery and the founder Grant Richardson. Welcome, welcome to the Code of Traditional Archery. This is episode 5 in our Lessons Learned series podcast. My name is Grant Richardson. I'm the owner and founder of Primitive Stone Archery and the Arches Trinity instinctive shooting method. Hunting with a stick and string is continuous education, and I found if you keep an open mind and a half empty cup, that such lessons will prevail to encroach upon your life continuously in your pursuit of game with the stick bow. Some lessons end in success and others failure. And as is the way of human nature, those failures tend to bend us to their will and sear themselves into our being as vivid, cherished memories. If you've bow hunted for any time at all, then you know that sitting silently for hours immersed in inclement and adverse weather ends up becoming meditative in its tedious process. And if we open ourselves to that process, we are given moments to share with the game we pursue that are unforgettable. The remarkable connection to our past as hunter-gatherers is brought to the forefront of our intentions and fuses us into the predatory nature of our species and the part we play in Mother Nature's Zen-like state of chaos as her wheel turns us to the ever-changing cycle at play in the wilderness. The following lessons learned served as a guide to me more than I care to admit at times, an antler professor who I met on several occasions who ended up honing my instincts as a traditional bow hunter into something else. If iron sharpens iron, as they say, then this animal's iron was cast on a different level indeed, and honed my own process to a razor's edge. By the time I first saw him, I was a seasoned hunter with a stick and string. I had taken whitetails and some notable bucks, as well as moose and other species. I have had other deer in that time since take my breath away, but he there was something different about him that was methodical, the same thing that had kept him alive through years of rifle and archery seasons, severe winters, and at least one poaching attempt. He was the cover of every fall outdoor magazine I'd read as a kid, and at times he'd become a great teacher to me in the ways of the whitetailed deer. And this episode is all about him, the legend of the North Side Swamp. It had been a wet October. The season for Archery Whittails had been open for over a week, and there was barely time left before the annual gun hunt would begin, and the orange army would be out after the same deer and animals I was hunting. I had walked in later than I wanted to, and the rainfall the night prior had made the entire process of sneaking in a soaking wet affair upon entering the old edge of red pine I was hunting that year. I loved this area. It was a transition zone, so to speak, an area of thick, red, tall pine bordering the back end of a large overgrown swamp and beaver pond. Teg alder and swamp maple persisted here along the remnants of gray ash trees, many whose skeletal remains still littered the area, both from a decimating ice storm years prior and an invasion of emerald ash borers. The cover, several yards from where I was sitting, was not fit for a tree stand. Its tangles from the aforementioned carnage and many widowmakers served to ward off any attempts at setting up in its darkened labyrinth of blowdowns and cover. The deer, however, they loved it. Food was plentiful, there was water and resources and protection nearby, bedding and unlimited resources. I had, however, found a good tree. You know the one. It yells out to you. Trails converge from all directions nearby. It offers good background cover, and a prevailing wind that doesn't invade the bedding areas on your approach, or those sneaky, swirling evening thermals that have spoiled many a hunt for all of us. Nope, this was it. This was the spot it told me. Sit here and you'll meet success square in the face. I managed to get into the stand that day without getting terribly soaked, and the sun was rising slowly as I climbed into the stand, taking care not to slip on the wet cogs of the tree I was using to ascend to my perch. I looked down after clicking the safety belt into place and carefully tugged my recurve up the tree to my seat. The furl rut was not yet on, but the chase period was. I took out my small handcrafted grunt call, which I have since lost to the woods sadly, and blew through it to clear out the excess moisture. I had not yet knocked an arrow. I was staring intently at something that hadn't been there the day prior, a mass of rub less than fifteen feet away, and as the sun rose higher and cast its rays on the small pine tree that had been scarred from whatever antlered beast had made it, was growing larger by the minute as the growing sunlight revealed its true size. After I had blown through the grunt call to get the rest of water out, I barely stuffed it into the old wool pocket of my jacket when hooves were heard running behind me. Turning slowly, as water droplets shed from a slight breeze blowing them onto my face, I saw a buck jogging directly to my tree from my six o'clock position. I barely had enough time to knock an arrow when he stopped abruptly. He stood there and stared. He was a stout looking eight point, probably around two to three years of age. He walked carefully around to my offside where I had no shooting lane open, upon checking the wind with a snowed in the air. He walked around to my right and then directly over to the rubide scene after climbing into the stand, sniffed it, licked at the branch above it for a moment, then proceeded to walk several yards behind the tree to a small blowdown, and bedded down, only forty yards behind me. Moments later, footsteps and running from the south distracted me again from watching him, and a doe burst out and stopped only fifteen feet away in the middle of one of my shooting lanes. I had no dough permit, however, that year, and I watched her. As she bristled her shoulder and guard hairs, another buck burst from the cover to my left and ran at her. She ran as well. He stopped short of the shooting lane and stood with his head raised high. The first buck was now standing looking over at the intruder, a respectable nailing point around the same age. He grunted in defiance and turned into the shooting lane as I began to lean out to create space. My recurve was already up, and an arrow on the way which disappeared to the muscle knots rear of his shoulder as he sprang low and kicked into the air, stopping only forty yards away and turning to look back at what had just bitten him from the skies. I checked for the arrow and caught it sticking into the ground, shining crimson in the sunrise and dampened forest floor, a stark contrast to the young seedling pines and glistening moss growing there. The buck wobbled a moment and fell over, relaxing into the undergrowth and resting still in a matter of seconds. I turned, looking slowly over at the first buck. He was standing for only a moment before slowly bedding back down and staring intently at the buck I just arrowed. He then looked directly up at me, then back at the other deer, and didn't move. His ears pinned behind his head. I waited for almost fifteen minutes. The sun had risen now fully and cast shadows onto the beaver pond nearby. I could still see the eight point bedded down now, and growing impatient at the work ahead for the buck I just arrowed, started to climb down from the tree. I lowered the bow. He did not seem or want to move. Gingerly I descended the tree and halfway down looked over to see the bedded buck watching me climb down. He started to stand as I hit the last step, and settled onto the ground, untying my bow from its hoist rope. I knelt and we watched each other for almost ten minutes until he took several steps towards me, then as quickly as he came, sauntered casually back the way he'd come into the gloom of the old swamp. That was my first encounter with the buck that would become a legend, not only locally, but to my own bow hunting family. He grew to large proportions and at his prime was a solid, large bodied eight point typical with some stickers here and there from year to year. I hunted him intently and often indirectly from year to year, most often whether I had a dough permit or not. He was a regular visitor, but he favored the darkness of the north end of that old swamp on our farm, and we named him the legend for good reason. He was the king for many years in that area. One evening after a dark on a trail camera, we cut a truck stopping across the entranceway to the back, and a crossbow prod and light shining out the window at him, missing him by mere inches as they sped away. The local gun hunters spoke about him in awe for years, missing him several times on drives and running him with hounds as well, remarking how he always took the old rock run out of the adjoining swamp and used heavy trails to his advantage to escape their pursuits. I watched him one day, a mile or more down the same road as a group of blaze orange hunters began to set up a drive into one of his favorite early day haunts, a grown up cut over alfalfa field, and I watched them set up their push. I saw his antlers, first mere feet from the left far side hunter who walked past him, loading his shotgun oblivious to his large presence nearby. And after they had traversed the field into the nearby brush, he stood slowly, hunched down, and snuck quickly to the dirt road, more like a cougar than a deer, standing on the road and staring at me in my SUV, as if to revel in his evasion of their efforts, and I applauded him as he vanished into the opposite side of the road. Over the years I had several attempts at him, all failed. He had once came out to my stand, I had painfully set in the middle of the mess I'd spoken of prior in that swamp, only to have him walk in behind me, stand under the tree with no shot presentation, and I watched as he indignantly tossed my hall rope with his antlers around only twelve feet below me into my rear before walking off with the dignits again to my presence. The following year we were allotted two tags, and less than two weeks later, after I tagged out on a buck and had only a doe permit left, was the only occasion when I had a viable shot on him. As if he knew, he walked out directly into my front and stopped feeding on cedar branches down by the heavy snow we had just had, only ten feet away. I again watched him bed down that day nearby inside the shield of cedar trees, and once again at dark this time, he again watched me climb down from my perch a second time, now four years later, seemingly unimpressed as usual. The following year was the only time he was seen whipping the tar out of a non typical six point that was as big as he was at the time, and I watched from a tall oak I was set in as they fought brutally over sixty yards away in a small clearing for dominance of that swamp. He chased the interloper for over ten minutes around my set that evening, ensuring that the new six who was the boss of that bedding area, was flying and hammering him with his antlers, until bawling loudly, the other buck ran from the area, neither of them giving me a shot. He was meticulous, and apart from the fight I'd witnessed, always appeared to be a cool customer even in the rut. At almost at least eight years of age now, he had developed into a swamp ghost, graying in color by midfall, he was the chatter of several nearby hunt camps and non hunters alike. He had tenacity, and rarely strayed from the secondary trails he paralleled out of to move into the other runs used by deer. I once watched him trailing a group of deer like a shadow, three does and a decent buck as they made their way to my stand, and I watched him as he let them all go into the small clearing I was sitting in as if knowing what was about to beset the other deer, and I often wondered myself about that day, did he know I was there? The same year my father had encountered him at close range and remarked that he dwarfed the three mature does he had been with. He had come into my father's offside, as he sat in his stand with his Howard Hill ASL in his hands, a lethal weapon held by my father there never was. Saw the big guy tonight, he told me later on. He's lucky, he said. Yes, he was, I thought. More horseshoes on that buck's rear end than anything else. Another bow hunter and his son told me they'd loose shovel shafts and bolts between them two of themselves from their component crossbows that same year as they sat in a large European gun hunting setup they were using, baited with a massive pile of corn out front, and they mentioned how he'd walked over to the far edge after the last arrow had missed him, for whatever reason, and exclaimed how he had bedded down to their rear seventy yards out of range and waited until dark before returning on their trail cram after shooting light to continue his feast in safety, never appearing in the daylight for them again. The following year was hard on deer. After a tough winter I'd not see him at all, nor were there any signs of his telltale rubs and scrape lines in the routes he usually tended to. I hadn't heard from any of the gun camps at all if they'd taken him, nor had my local source of whitale intel, the country school bus driver, had seen him coming and going. No trail camera shots either. Had he been taken by a poacher at night, maybe hit by a car or succumbed to old age, I surmised to myself. This would not have been the first year I thought I'd seen him completely or incompletely, he would have been around nine or ten years at that age and pushing it for his life spine in our northern climate. It was a tough year to hunt the late season. I had been out and missed on getting a shot at a very nice buck the month prior that had winded me as he came in downward and circling to find the location of the grunt I was mimicking, and being persistent, I braved a very cold minus twenty Celsius afternoon to sit near the old pond stand I favored in the north end of that swamp once again. I'd been watching two very nice doughs that presented no decent shot, and it was growing dark. Behind me, soft crunching in the snow, warmed my senses and I turned. The sun was setting, and rays of sunlight broke open parts of the cover as I watched the legend, still very much alive, walking slowly out of the same cover he had the first time I saw him. His gait had slowed. He had a slight stiff limp and hunch on his rear left side. His face and snout were white and grizzled, and his back appeared lowered with his belly. He raised his head slowly, chucking the air and grabbed a sprig of swamp maple and rolled it into his jawline. I had the bow up at this point and watched him walk through two shaling lanes, the shooting lanes only being fifteen feet away, slowly edging ever closer to where I was sitting now, maybe eight, nine feet from the trail. The does moved around us and back into the bedding area. I had no dough print either. I lowered my recurve and sat down slowly. I sat quietly as he fed around me for the better part of an hour. As the sun hung low in the sky and faded into the smoke like clouds boiling with the chance of incoming snow. The snow that had been falling was accumulating on his back and shoulders. His antlers I could see closely now. Still impressive, were missing the left brow tyne, and it appeared to have been broken off. I mused he was still trying to put the boots to other bucks, and you could tell he had tyne scars on his head and snote from oar wounds. He ambled around slowly, as was his trademark, walked behind to the right side behind my stand, bedded down near the berm only a few feet away from where we had first encountered one another years before. I could see his chest rising and falling like a grey haired mountain embossed against the white snow laden ground. I marveled at that moment in his presence, what he had been through apart from what I had seen over the years. A reverence had formed in my mind that had always been there, but now stood fully connected in his presence. It was as if he knew I wouldn't take a shot. Not at that point anyway. It was dark now as I climbed down the tree slowly and sat down at the base of the old pine. I could barely make out his shape now, but his head was up and looking in my direction. I stood, quietly beckoning to him, raising my bow, I said Thank you loud enough for his ears to move back and forth in recognition, even if he did not understand my intent. Encasing my bow, I turned back to watching him melt into the darkness of his winter, his slow gait ambling into the bedding area. I found him that spring, looking for an arrow I'd lost shooting at grouse earlier the year prior. His skeleton was curled up in a ball, his head resting on his haunches. He was in a spot I'd found prior with a set of his sheds that I now use for rattling antlers. I have two sets of his sheds from his prime, the other I'll be gifting to our youngest daughter for her first set of rattling antlers this coming year for her first hunting season, carrying a bow by herself. His antlers and scald showed several signs of battle scars, and I sat that morning next to him for almost an hour and chatted off and on to myself and I expected both to him about his tough winters, his home, and how much I respected it. For the last twenty two years I'd hunted in that location. When I left I carefully picked up his skull antlers and remarked on them. He was, even in death, remarkable. The skeleton not been predated yet, and I noted his teeth were worn down to the bone. I had him aged by the M and R biologist at almost twelve years later that year. His lower jawbone telling the tale of his lifetime a remarkable feat for a whitetailed box in our northern climate with tremendous hunting pressure nearby. I was then and am still very sure of myself in shot presentations, and I developed in my shooting platform the shoot don't shoot mentality, an instinctive shot process that I now teach to folks getting into hunting with a stick and string. Better to let an animal walk than wound is my advice when unsure of a shot. If you're not sure, don't shoot. So what? The animal walks. Better luck next time. What's the risk of a bad shot worth? What is it gonna hurt? Last year hunting for hours in sub zero weather with my youngest, we had a beautiful buck come into the left of our ground setup. At one point was only around ten feet away as he turned to chase another smaller buck that was in the scrub away before coming into the shooting lane. I could have risked a chance shot at that deer. I maybe had a small window to put an arrow into him. But I've learned that low percentage shots means low percentage recoveries, and I let him walk. He came back minutes later and we watched him as he freshened a nearby scrape and a licking branch my daughter had made earlier that year, some distance away, before tearing up the ground, grunting and huffing, putting on quite a show that she'll likely never forget. The deer, the legend, was not likely the largest buck in the area. Even though he was by any standards a specimen, it was his behavior and tenacity in the fact that he taught me more watching over him those years than actually taking him. From scouting to setups and wind direction to shot presentations, he had fulfilled a role I still appreciate to this very day. His head and antlers sit on our wall now. Both as a mark of respect, as much as a reverence for his life, I did not just learn from him and how to hunt his species more effectively, but in connecting and hunting him over the years, gaining an appreciation for his hardships and habits, and developed a fierceness in protecting the very wild places that I pursued him in. Thanks for listening. We're launching our new membership platform soon. This will be filled with unique content and weekly updates on hunting with a stick and string and instinctive shot development. Follow us on Instagram and on Facebook on the edge of instinctive traditional archery. If you haven't already, check out Compton Traditional Bow Hunters, a great organization ensuring the art and legacy of shooting with and hunting with a stick and string is not lost for us in future generations. Thanks again, and until next time, shoot straight and walk with us.