NAW's Gordon Whittington arrowed this doe on a recent visit to his
family's ranch in Central Texas. Photo by Mike Clerkin.
At schools across the U.S., autumn is a time of homecoming. It’s a tradition built around a home football game for the local high school or college, and it typically involves a halftime ceremony at which the year’s homecoming queen and her court are announced. Folks who went to school there come back for a chance to see old friends and family and keep the school spirit alive.
Well, I just got back from a homecoming of my own . . . but it didn’t involve any football games or chrysanthemum corsages. Rather, this was a reunion of a 51-year-old deer hunter and the land on which his whitetail career began, way back in the early 1960s.
I try to get back to the family ranch in Central Texas’ Blanco County at least a couple of times a year. It’s always special to return to your roots, but this trip was particularly memorable. This time, North American Whitetail Television cameraman Mike Clerkin was joining me for a unique bowhunt on the old home place.
My mother, Gertrude, still lives there on the ranch. So do my brother, Sam, his wife, Susan, and their kids, Rilee and Luke. Unfortunately, my dad, D.J., and his parents, Des and Lela, have all passed on . . . but I can still feel their presence whenever I return home. They all loved the ranch as much as the rest of us do.
I was in an oat field on this ranch, sitting on Grandpa’s knee in a pit blind, when I shot my first whitetail. That watershed event took place in November 1962, when I was just six years old. Since then I’d shot a number of deer while hunting on the property, including some nice bucks; however, as the years went by, I found myself hunting the home ranch less and less. When you work on a major deer magazine and television show, you get a lot of invitations to hunt in far-flung places, and most of them seem more intriguing than hunting familiar ground. I typically gave in to the allure of more exotic locations.
But this fall, things were different. My mother recently had knee-replacement surgery, so my wife, Catherine, and I decided to drive out to Texas for a family visit. Only after deciding to make the trip for that purpose did it occur to me that videotaping a deer hunt on the ranch might be feasible. With bow season just starting, it would be a great opportunity to try to arrow a whitetail.
I hadn’t bowhunted the ranch in a quarter-century, since the days I still was hunting with a 50-pound recurve and broadheads that needed sharpening by hand. Now I was equipped with archery gear that would have been impossible to imagine back then: a Mathews Switchback XT (www.mathewsinc.com), 100-grain Muzzy broadheads (www.muzzy.com), Beman Max-4 arrows (www.beman.com) and an Apex sight with fiber-optic pins (www.apex-gear.com). In place of my old World War II camo jacket and blue jeans I had a ScentLok Savannah EX outfit (www.scentlok.com) in Realtree AP pattern (www.realtree.com). Instead of having to rely on a bargain-basement pair of 7x35 binoculars, I’d have the overwhelming advantage of a 20-60X Swarovski spotting scope (www.swarovskioptik.com). And as opposed to simply crawling onto the most comfortable oak branch I could find, I’d be perched in comfort in a Summit Deer Deck (www.summitstands.com). In short, I’d have a way better chance of finding and taking a whitetail than I’d ever enjoyed “back in the day.”
Despite abnormally warm weather (even for Texas), Mike and I saw a lot of deer. And when I arrowed a fine doe on the last morning of our hunt, I was as excited as if I’d taken a mature buck. In fact, it somehow was fitting that my 2007 deer was a doe of about the same size as the one I got in 1962.
On paper, a deer’s body and antler size are the usual determinants of its stature as a “trophy.” But the memories forged on a deer hunt are just as real, and in many ways more important. I can assure you this latest Texas bowhunt was one of my most memorable, even if the deer I shot had no antlers and was of only average body size. I’ll never forget how special it was to fill a doe tag on the same family ranch where I’d first done so nearly a half-century before.
I trust your own 2007 season is also going well, and that you’re enjoying this latest wave of cooler weather that’s swept across North America. It seemed summer would never end, but now we can feel change in the air. With much of the huge corn crop being picked earlier than usual, and with the acorn crop being so spotty following a sharp Easter freeze, feeding activity around food plots could really pick up in the coming days and weeks. And that can only mean better hunting lies ahead.
Please check out our 2007 Rut Reports, which are now up and running. These threads — one for every whitetail state and province — are a great way to keep up with buck activity around North America as the season progresses. We hope you enjoy reading them and that you’ll throw in your own observations as well.
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