Grouse Hollow Journal for June 22, 2017 by Greg Koelker

Grouse Hollow Journal for June 22, 2017 by Greg Koelker

One sunny morning last week, I was driving down the coulee when a deer walked out of a rising mist into the road a few hundred yards ahead.  I slowed down.  I could see something the size of a big pussy cat or fox tentatively walking behind it.  I rolled up quietly, rolling down windows, trying to get my camera turned on for a picture when the deer bounded off into a newly planted field.  You guessed it of course; the little creatue was a spotted fawn that tripped a bit on the road before bouncing along, almost playfully after its mother who was waiting in tall grass along a ditch.  I just enjoyed the scene and didn’t bother to try to get the shot.

I can’t help but wonder how something so tiny lives past all the critters trying to earn a living in this coulee.  Coyotes, fox, bobcats, hawks, dogs, even pussy cats on the prowl are a threat to a fawn this small.  The deer flies and ticks and gnats must be a misery too.  People, mushroom hunting, turkey hunting, flower picking, hiking, fixing fence, working farm ground, etc. disturb fawns and does too.  

When I was a kid, there were few deer in our part of Grant County.  I remember that the only time I ever saw a fawn was when we were cutting hay.  Here in Grouse Hollow, I have seen a bedded fawn, curled in under broadleaf plants while I was mushroom hunting - one time.  Fawns’ spotted coats are well-suited for hiding in forrests as sunlight filters through tree cover to create an almost perfect camoflage effect.  In the first week of life, one can probably touch a bedded fawn and it will stay put to avoid detection, they say.  After that, it will most likely bound away.  I remember Mark was up north fifteen years ago taking a summer class in creative writing.  He wrote a piece he titled, “The Little Spy,” about a fawn he spotted watching him with huge eyes from under cover.  Mark was moved by the experience.

Fawns are generally not alone much though.  Research shows that does leave fawns to feed during the day and return to nurse their fawn or fawns 4 to 6 times a day.  They say that one can use a bleat call in the spring and nearby does will come running to check on any fawn, not just their own.  Never tried it.  Anyway, at about two weeks of age a fawn will start trying vegetation but it will be four months before it can survive on just browse, according to what I have read.  

Almost all of us enjoy the whitetail in one way or another, whether it be going out for a drive to see deer in fields or watching them at one’s bird feeder or checking trail cameras and taking a deer for the freezer in the fall.  Whitetails are the subject of excellent recipes, much lore and many, many stories.  As regular readers know, we deer hunt in the fall.  The hunt and the associated activities and especially the friends and family makes it a holiday time of year for us.  As I grow more chronologically advantaged, the fire for the hunt doesn’t seem to blaze as hot as it once did, but the season still kindles and it still burns as the weather turns colder.  The deer hunt is a social event as much as anything for us.  I call it the start of the holidays.  We have friends and family who come to hunt at Grouse Hollow and to break bread together and to catch up on the year past.  We go back home to Grant County to hunt with the family on opening weekend of the gun deer season, a true family event with 18 to 20 hunters and ten or more people who help butchter the deer we harvest.  Of course, time alone spent in a tree stand or blind is quality time for me as well.  We dont’ need the meat, so I could do this without a weapon and shoot some photos I suppose - okay I actually I tried that two seasons ago.  Something was missing.  Someone said once that to kill a wild animal while hunting makes a connection to some inner self, some place deep within from a time when a man had to hunt and kill for a living.  I’ll go with this I guess.  I just know for me that the intensity, the natural sense for seeing and hearing wild things was not there, at least not imperative.  I just wasn’t as careful with the camera.  I lost interest earlier and went home.  That’s on me.  I still carry a camera when I am hunting with a weapon.  

Finally, I got a letter from Catherine Harris of Viola last week.  It made my day, maybe my week as the dishwasher died and it cost over $400 to fix my truck earlier in the week.  Anyway, she correctly said that I might not remember her and her late husband, Gene.  He passed last year.  In the envelope was the original letter I sent to them after they let me muzzle loader hunt for deer on their property back in 1996.  In her lovely and careful cursive handwriting (remember I was a Language Arts teacher for over 25 years), Catherine told me how much it meant to her husband that I wrote them a letter to thank them for letting me hunt and to tell them the story of taking my very first muzzle loader whitetail.  It is an honor for me that she wanted to share how much it meant to Gene that I wrote to thank him for letting me hunt and even more that she and Gene enjoyed my journal for years after that.  I am sorry that we never got to know each other better.  Thank you Catherine.  

 

Until next time, get out - the calendar is climbing up the backside of June and I can tell you for a fact without being there, that deer hunters are talking whitetail sightings, fawn survival, food plots, coyote numbers, hunting seasons, and (the best part) they are telling stories as their autumn burn begins to glow and become a flame.  Enjoy.