Grouse Hollow Journal for December 17, 2015

Grouse Hollow Journal for December 17, 2015 by Greg Koelker

Deer Hunt ‘15 continued . . .

Chuck was making bacon and eggs for breakfast on the second day of Gun Deer Season when we came upstairs.  Barb is a wonderful hostess and cook and baker, but she also has a bunch of calves to feed and care for - some bottle fed even, so she runs a farm for a living, and has a great many chores to do around the hunt and El and Chuck try to pick up the food slack.  It was 9 degrees outside.

El and I went to our usual stands and had similar luck to opening morning, but there was a lot more shooting in the area this morning.  After one barrage nearby, I watched a coyote race across the river bottom a quarter-of-a-mile away.  The wind was blowing, and the sky was red at sunrise; we could actually see the sun, sort of, through layers of dappled clouds.  

The first drive of the day was through Barb and Chuck’s woods.  I have the somewhat dubious distinction of being the oldest member of our hunting party, so I stand a lot.  I was posted on the creek bottom.  Not long into the drive, I heard a shot up the hill.  With my senses on high alert, I observed a flying pheasant skirt the brush to my right and disappear down the bottom.  Then I saw a deer running in the cedars and brush along the hill in the sunlight.  It didn’t make a sound in the snow. I probably couldn’t have seen it without the snow.  I picked a sort of clear spot along its path and took the shot.  The deer kicked out its back legs, ran thirty yards and collapsed.  It was an 8-point buck.  There were two other bucks taken on the drive up top.  After the drive was over, I shot a coyote coming along the opposite hillside.  

I shot another buck later.  It was a nice 9-pointer kicked out by some other party.  Ellen and nephews Nick, Brian, and friend Travis were great about helping me recover the second buck that expired high up on a very steep, snow covered hillside that I dare say, I probably would have spent the entire rest of the day trying to ascend.  By the end of the day Sunday, we had 9 deer hanging in Bill’s walk-in cooler.  

Our group butchered ten deer on Monday at Burton, starting a little later in the morning.  Chuck brought in a doe taken that morning.  Brother-in-law Dave Fure is the deer skinner, working with a sharp knife, reciprocating saw, a deer hoist, and years of experience, he slits, cuts, scrapes, and pulls the hide off each critter to where it can be clamped by the pliers-like hide puller tool that tightens on the skin when the hoist chain pulls it tight.  Dave uses the electronic hoist to lift the carcass and pull the hide off free.  He uses the reciprocating saw to remove legs and cut the ribs and hind quarters into pieces that can be hauled into the heated shed to be boned out into containers for steak and trim.

In the shed, Sports Center or CMT was on the big screen. Sometimes there were dogs and small children underfoot.  There are tables in rows with cutting boards, grinders, a sausage stuffer, a freezer, and a well equipped kitchenette.  Everyone takes on a job or two.  I prefer deboning hams.  The conversations run from stories of the hunt, jokes, the Packers and Badgers and Bears and Vikings and even romance, but no politics - too many sharp objects around.  The romance? Well, our college student nephew Jordan Fure’s girlfriend Brooke came to help with the butchering - for a second year.  I suggested that, “It must be serious,” and they just smiled.  While the deboning, burger grinding, and steak cutting is going on, El’s sister Kathy Russell fries the venison tenderloins in butter, onion, and garlic for lunch.  The aroma is just what you might imagine - savory, pungent, to die for.  There is soup and cookies, and more.  After that sumptuous lunch, the sausage stuffing and packaging begins.  The grinders mix chunks of seasoned venison and pork together to make bulk sausage, smoked rope sausage, and sausage patties.  Dave takes a cooler or two of trim to Dickeyville to Hauber’s Meats to be made into summer sausage.  Ellen and Barb and her sister Lori Fure worked on trimming and cutting and butterflying chops.  I ran the taper as we filled bags labeled venison steak, venison chops, venison tidbits, venison sausage, and venison burger.  By 4 p.m. the rope sausages were in the smoker and people were pitching in to clean the utensils and area.

Ellen and I were loaded and headed north by 4:30.  The deep snow in Grant County giving way to an inch or two by Prairie du Chien and hardly any here at Grouse Hollow.  Scout was ecstatic, almost exploding out of her skin to see us.  She had to inspect the truck and trailer to see who or what had been about us.  After we unloaded the truck into the kitchen and shed, I tossed a tennis ball for her before giving her a special dish of chow with treats.

The DNR report on gun deer season accidents and fatalities attributed to the deer hunt is disturbing.  It would appear, most were preventable with the application of a little common sense.  Every hunter safety graduate has the fundamentals of TABK drilled into them: Treat every gun as if it is loaded; Always point the muzzle in a safe direction; Be certain of your target and what is beyond; Keep your finger out of the trigger guard until you are ready to shoot.  

Until next time, get out -  there is no Holiday Hunt for antlerless deer this week, but you can plan your own holiday hunt for small game, wild turkey, ruffed grouse, pheasant, archery deer, fox, coyote, or maybe just take a hike maybe dropping by your deer stands to see if any visitors of the whitetail kind have made an appearance.  Enjoy.

Grouse Hollow Journal for December 3, 2015

Grouse Hollow Journal for December 3, 2015 by Greg Koelker

It is Sunday night, the end of the Big One, the 2015 Wisconsin Gun Deer Season.  El and I just got in from hunting with our neighbors.  I took in the last minutes of the hunt behind our tobacco shed as sleet started to fall in the dimming light.  

Memories were made once again.  

We got out of Dodge early on the Friday before the Wisconsin Gun Deer Season.  After spending the morning spoiling a suspicious Scout, loading up gear, food, and the four-wheeler, we headed south to Grant County a little after 1 p.m.  We hoped to beat the forecast blizzard rolling in from the southwest.  The sky was quiet when we stopped for fuel in Prairie du Chien at 2:30, but by the time we got checked out, it was starting to spit some drizzle that gave over to snowflakes at Bridgeport.  The snow was sticking and visibility was declining by Patch Grove.  Hurray! Snow for deer hunting - tongue in cheek for sure.  

There was maybe 3 inches of powder and a swirling snowfall at Barb and Chuck’s when we rolled in.  Nephews Chris and Zach Wright and their friend Travis pulled in from the Twin Cities a couple hours later. They hit the first heavy snow somewhere north of Lansing.  After a supper of some of Ellen’s sister Barb’s scrumptious vegetable beef or chicken noodle soup, Chuck and I drove down to Burton to the war council in brother-in-law Bill Hauk’s shed in a near white out.  Inside the crowd was smaller than usual, pared down by the blizzard swirling around us.  It was good to see that nephew Brian Fure was there after he apparently leapfrogged from California to Dubuque over the impending storm that morning.  The talk was of the snow and cold, but mostly it was about deer hunting and the first drive and wonder at how we would get around the next day.  Besides joking about sleeping in, everyone knew they would be out there in the woods come first light.     

We woke up to nearly knee-deep powder, cold, and swirling winds on opening morning.  I could hear Chuck running a skid steer outside, plowing the driveways when I came upstairs.  Fortunately, he had moved the trucks, including ours into a shed the night before.  I also woke up to wonderful aromas coming from the kitchen.  Barb had two pots of coffee going and Ellen had French toast casserole in the oven.  The girls packed boxes, filled thermoses, and made sandwiches while I stayed out of the way and watched the weather.  It was still snowing with temps in the teens.  I kept wondering what the heck we were thinking.

Ellen’s breakfast casserole was bubbling and ranked up there with the best ever.  I poured sorghum molasses over my piece and tucked in, only burning the roof of my mouth a little.  The room got an orange tint to it as people finished breakfast and coats, hats, and gloves appeared.  Hunting knives were strapped on while bullets jingled and radios, phones, candy bars and cookies were stashed into pockets.  Food boxes were carried out to the trucks, shooting irons were strapped on, trucks and four wheelers started, and “Good Luck” became the watchwords of the morning as hunters disappeared into the storm.  

Eventually, it became necessary for me to go out.  When I found the light switch in the shed, the feeder calves began bawling for breakfast.  All they got from me was a blast of cold air when I opened up the big shed doors wide enough to drive the Ranger out.  I left the truck running in the still falling snow while I loaded up the Stolen Cooler and food box.  Ellen joined me in the almost warm cab and we were off.  Township highway patrolman Louie Liebfried and his snow plow had done at least one pass on Dutch Hollow Road when we pulled out, but I still locked in the four-wheel drive.  

The road down into Chaffie Hollow was sketchy at best.  We met Louie and his plow coming the other way, snow flying.  The lane to the Bench wasn’t plowed yet, and I had my doubts about pulling the truck and trailer off the road into the field driveway and deep snow.  We got it parked and loaded up our rifles, added “Good lucks!” and headed out into the snowy gray dawn.  The snow was nearly knee deep on me.  I took my time so as not to get sweated up.  I chose a different place to set up my chair than usual, leaning up against a young oak tree that was surrounded by high piles of snow pillows along a field edge where I thought I might hide better and have a better view.

Snowflakes still swirled around and of course, the wind started to pick up, amping up the cold.  I am not a snow fan, but it was beautiful with snow sculptures covering trees and weeds like frosting.  I thought, “No deer in its right mind is going to get out of its warm bed and come out here this morning unless someone or something pushes it out.”  I was right; I only made out a dozen shots in the distance in three hours.  Usually, there are four or five times that many on opening morning near the Bench.  Anyway, it was a pleasant enough time until the wind started getting down my neck.  By ten, we were back at Burton, deerless and ready to warm up a bit.  No deer were hung by our party.

The Burtson Deer Hunters organized a drive over Burton hill next.  Four of us took fourwheelers down the long river bottom, plowing deep snow and dropping off standers as we went.  The drivers came in from the top and had quite a time, slipping and sliding on steep slopes and hazards covered with snow.  The wind blew right in my face the entire time as I watched across the corn bottom and up on the hillside, making swirling snow devils.  This drive takes a couple hours under the best of conditions, but eventually there was a shot up on the hill; I learned later that Ellen shot a doe.  Two deer came bounding down the hill, pausing by the fence and then breaking out across the bottom in between me and my niece Katie who was three hundred yards down river.  She fired first and one of the deer collapsed.  I fired and the second deer ran to the river and crossed without a scratch.  Later a doe came across in the same spot, but by then there were drivers on the hillside, and someone was driving a four-wheeler across the bottom to the south and I didn’t think I had a safe shot.  I wished I was quicker on the draw with my camera as the scene of swirling tufts of snow framing the doe as it picked her way down the river bank and leaped off into the iron blue river water and bounded up the other side.  It was one of those rare moments that only happens in that instant at that place.  The deer walked up river on the other side and I might have had a shot, but it was on the other side of the river, so . . .

 

Ellen had made lasagna for supper.  As always, it was outstanding and after a couple adult beverages and a belly full of hot lasagna and cold weather, I went down for a hot shower.  I never made it back upstairs.  We learned later that nephew Brian had taken a doe on his evening stand.  Oh yeah, the Badgers were robbed!  How is that not a touchdown?  

Until next time, get out - I really like that we can register our deer by phone or computer; however, I am puzzled.  Ellen used a phone in the shed at Burton to register her doe.  She had tagged it on the ear as directed by law, making it nearly impossible to put a 10-digit confirmation number on it.  The doe was already hanging in the walk-in cooler, so she wrote the confirmation number on the back of her back tag until later.  I am puzzled about why we need to put a 10-digit confirmation number on a tag that has been put on an ear or antler and is sliced with the date and time already.  I don’t know about you, but sometime I want to watch whomever came up with that idea do it after the tag is on a deer’s ear in swirling wind and snow or rain or sleet - as directed.  The muzzleloader season is on and archers can still take to the woods if they can brave the cold.  More memories of the Big One next time.  Enjoy.