Hunting "Over the Hill"

A few posts back a commenter indicated interest in what it would be like to start hunting in one's mid 60's.  There are to this question both pragmatic and whimsical answers.   

Overall it's not too bad.  Some of the things you'd expect to be problematic were not.  Get up at 5AM? Heck, I do that all the time.  Aches and pains?  Sure a few, climbing up and down from tree stands and tromping considerable distances through the woods and all.  But again, heck, at my age there's aches and pains all the time.  I did not take a single Advil.  As to staying up in the tree without needful Calls of Nature, well just cut back the morning coffee from an enjoyable four cups to a neurologically necessary two.  No problem.

I'd like to think that my patience was above average.  The young lads got their deer respectively on Opening Day and Day Two of the season.  I kept hunting another five days past that.  That's a lot of hours sitting quietly surveying woods that were increasingly devoid of deer.  (As the season progresses in its Darwinian fashion the dim witted deer are harvested and the clever ones change their habits and haunts radically).

In the end I really only had a reasonable shot at two deer.  One I missed....various excuses are possible but I won't bore you with them.  One I needed another two or three seconds to get a confident aim, and the deer just kept walking.

This points to the major problem with being a first time deer hunter born in the 1950's.  You don't target things as quickly.

My eyesight is pretty good.  Oh, I wear reading glasses and have had both eyes "done" for cataracts.  But most of the visual aspects of picking up a target are just being the equivalent of a good motion detector.  You need a few seconds to know where the deer is in order to know where it will be when you have a clear shot.

It's my hearing that is the problem.

My sons tell me that they generally hear the critters before they see them.  Well, other than the deer that must have nearly crashed into my tree ten minutes before shooting hours started on the Opener (and Lordy that musta been one big, clumsy deer) I pretty much never heard the deer coming.

Now, I do have hearing aides.  These were grudgingly accepted a couple of years back when my Better Half put forth the unanswerable argument that I did not want to miss anything the grand children said.  They are really sophisticated, I can adjust setting from my phone for instance.  But they are also:  A: expensive and B: designed to pick up higher frequency sounds.  Small, delightful child's voices.  Also spousal voices, as it's best not to wait until things are repeated at a volume or in a tone of voice that cannot be missed.

I tried hunting without them, worried that anything lost in the woods would never be found.  I tried hunting with them.  I even tweaked the settings.  There's an outdoor mode.  There are options for volume...crank that up.  And for speech discrimination....crank that down.  But I still can't say I reliably heard the deer. Oh, one or two times I had a dim perception of "something", but that was usually about two seconds before I saw the insolent white tail flashing as the deer ran off.  Really, it's like a stylish middle finger.  

Mostly I heard everything else.  Leaves rustling.  Squirrels and small mice cavorting.  A scratchy noise every time my jacket moved against the tree bark.  And at my age every pivot of my neck beyond about 30 degrees causes a crackling noise that sounds like several large deer rolling around in a pile of dry sticks.

Well that's how it is.  This aspect of deer hunting is not going to get better in subsequent deer camps.

But all is not lost.  I've become a lot more comfortable with firearms.  Honestly the past week has increased my amount of total "holding a rifle" time by several orders of magnitude.  I know how to quietly disengage the safety.....having learned this the hard way when a deer snuck into my peripheral vision one morning.  I can perch in a tree stand for three hours or so at a time, shifting positions such that the rifle is safe and generally pointed in useful directions.  I've learned to sight in on plausible shooting lanes.  Of course the deer usually turn up somewhere entirely different.

We've also learned a lot about the behaviour of deer in our specific location.  I expect next year we will benefit from this, with the caveat being that 2020 had near ideal hunting conditions regards temp, snow cover etc.  If 2021 has some combination of bare ground, rain, bitter cold etc we may consider our haul this year - two very nice deer for three hunters - a high water mark.

Going forward I need my own rifle.  A borrowed unit is never as comfortable.  I think if I shop carefully, get something that feels comfortable and then put a hundred rounds or so through it, I'll be able to get the cross hairs on the target in three or four seconds.  Because five or six is often too late.

I'll have a few philosophical musings on the hunting tradition in a few days.

Addendum.  I've just learned that there is a short "second chance" season coming up in December for those with unfilled tags.  Look out deer, I'll be back....