From Whitetail Bucks to Wild Boar
“It doesn’t matter whether I get a deer. It’s enough just to be in the woods.”
Why should we believe the fella at deer camp who says something that silly upon finishing the season empty-handed? I certainly don’t – at least no more than I’d believe it if he said, “I don’t mind that she rejected me. It was enough just to ask her out.”
Well, I failed to grass a buck in New York during regular firearms deer season for the second year in a row. Yes, I took a doe and that’s better than nothing. Yet, a whitetail buck is a cagier beast. Grassing one, therefore, is more of an accomplishment.
No matter what, it’s important to be a good sport commensurate with the Roosevelt Ethos, which Voyageurs Fieldsport promotes. Besides, coming up short while afield builds character, meaning I still got something out of it. Funny how that which is unfortunate in and of itself is also simultaneously meaningful and fulfilling. It’s very Advent, no doubt, and ’tis the season.
Therefore, I report herein both the ‘downs’ and the ‘ups’ that I experienced throughout the course of New York’s regular firearms deer season, starting with a cursory description of the manner in which I go about things while afield. Once again, I spent it hunting entirely at the Convent of the Sisters of Saint Mary in Greenwich, New York. I truly enjoy providing them venison. Hmm…A doe makes better table fare than a buck any how.
“This is Steve. He’s a stalker.”
That’s how a septuagenarian parishioner at Holy Redeemer introduced me to her friends at a game dinner the Saturday before Thanksgiving. “Margaret!” I exclaimed. “That makes me sound like a creep!” I then turned to Mr. and Mrs. Goodelaw, smiled and said, “Pleased to meet you. What she means is that I like to hunt deer.”
Mags can be forgiven, of course, conditioned as she is by my notes and dispatches regarding deerstalking in the United Kingdom and knowing that I observe British praxis here in the United States. Now in North America, we call it deer hunting. Our cousins on the other side of the Atlantic, though, replace the hypernym with ‘stalking’ because, in the main, Brits prowl, not ‘sitz.’
Extending the Stalking Metaphor
Interestingly, the French, who are contenders for the Most Enthusiastic Hunters in the World award, colloquially refer to stalking as La chasse au cul levé. Now, I’ve always rendered that in the King’s English as, The hunt for a raised ass. However, I got a surprise when I ran it through the Google Translate app on my iPhone, which I installed per the advice of a friend from Gov. Thomas Johnson High School (Class of 1986) in anticipation of us hunting roe deer and perhaps wild boar on land in the Dordogne region of France a family member of his owns. You see, I want to hunt with the natives as a peer, not as a tourist, which really necessitates conversing as much as possible in their language, not mine. Unfortunately, I’ve never had an ear for spoken French. I probably never will. It’s the liaisons. They throw me off.
But this high school friend recommended I just install the Google Translate app on my iPhone and carry it around over there, holding it out whenever I’m speaking and when I’m spoken to, and all will be fine. Very well, so I proceeded to install the app and then tested it by carefully saying, ‘La chasse au cul levé.’ What came out the other end of the line, though, was, ‘Hunting for a perky behind,’ which sounds like a method that would be banned in Boston. Nonetheless, I gave it another try, only this time doing my best to incorporate the liaison between cul and levé. Yet, the result was even worse. What came out was, ‘Hunting with your ass in the air.’ Of course, if I did that, then I’d probably be banned in Boston.
Now, I’m all for extending the metaphor whenever it’s fitting. Even so, to my high school friend: How’s it going to work for me if I say to Laurent while holding my iPhone out, “Je crois que je vais chasse au cul levé aujourd’hui,” and he hears, “I believe that I’m going to hunt with my ass in the air today,” huh? I mean this is almost as much your problem to solve as it is mine. Although I probably should run it by my Alsatian contact, too, if I want to avoid being sent back to the United States in handcuffs.
Either way, I’ve gone well off on a tangent, and I apologize. Moreover, I think it’s time to report the highlights of the season. There are three: An Unsavory Option, Déjà Vu, and Twice Outa Dodge.
An Unsavory Option
So I’m creeping along Saturday, November 15th, about an hour into the season opener, and closed within 20-yards of a 6-pointer couched behind a screen of brush. In truth, I didn’t know he was there. The only way it could have been otherwise is if I had picked-up his heat signature using a thermal spotter. Such a contrivance, however, is illegal in New York. But once he bolted, the only option the brief moment he showed his white tail in the gap between the bramble and wild rose was a Texas heart shot, which is bad form.
Is it that being Texan turns a man into a blunt instrument? Je ne sais pas. But living in the sophisticated Northeast and wanting to be invited to all the best Christmas parties, I of course let the 6-pointer run.
Déjà Vu
The following Saturday, November 22nd – the same day Margaret introduced me to her friends at the game dinner – there was a light drizzle with hardly a breeze much of the morning. And with the conditions nearly perfect for stalking, I managed to close within 25-yards of an 8-pointer. The problem this time, however, was that he was only one step below the crest of the hill shown in the photo, meaning that he was fully skylined. This happened to me last season, too – frustrating.
Now, about 5-seconds elapsed before this 8-pointer detected me. But when he did and we locked eyes, and before he spun around and bolted off, he flashed the same expression you’d see on a man who is emphatically blurting a naughty word. Yet, if you read Hear Ends the Season, you’ll know that ‘Mr. Whitetail’ had nothing to fear with his being skylined because it would’ve been an unsafe shot. In fact, the only guy in my circle who would do such a thing is Huff at the Runagates Club. Huff’s unsure of himself and is always compensating, mentally working off the back foot, which leads him to cut corners when he believes no one’s looking, all to secure some desired outcome in the interest of proving himself. Who wants to be like that?
Twice Outa Dodge
It was wicked cold Saturday morning, December 6th, when I pulled up to the convent’s maintenance barn at 06:15 hours. And when I did, I immediately spied a large 6-pointer in the field below. As expected, he sprinted for the brushline before I got out of my vehicle. It didn’t bother me, though, even by nightfall without closing again with something antlered. I still had one day left to fill my buck tag.
So, the second Sunday of Advent, December 7th, I suited-up after Mass, all the while convinced I was likely to see the 6-pointer in the field again at last light. My plan was to stalk through the woods until 16:45 hours when I would cut a hot track back, but slowing to a glacial pace as I neared and then carefully peaking through the brushline at which point I would take the shot if the 6-pointer was there and the shooting was safe. Almost everything went to plan, too.
To begin, I was well into the woods when it was time to trek back to the field. Yet just as I was changing course, a group of does came into view. Though the rut was generally over and handsomes were no longer sex-crazed, there was the off chance that one of the lovelies might still be in estrus and, if so, a suitor might be trailing behind. Thus, with daylight fading rapidly, I remained in place. And I waited for 7-minutes, but unfortunately no buck.
It now being too dark in the woods for shooting, I then triple-timed it back, not caring if I spooked anything along the way because it was down to minutes before it would be too dark in the field, as well. Yet in my haste, I overlooked slowing to a glacial pace as I neared the brushline and unintentionally introduced myself rather abruptly to the 6-pointer. There he was, out in the open – but also over 200-yards distant, about 45-yards down from the barn.
The upside was that this 6-pointer was in the field at last light just as I thought, proving my theory-of-the-mind was up to scratch. The downside was that, in a flash, he sprinted-off in the direction of the convent proper. Although that’s a moot point because the barn was in the line of the shot, again about 45-yards behind the 6-pointer, which is why I didn’t bother even raising my Browning BAR. Though he was down the hill with plenty of soft earth to absorb a .30-06 150-grain monolithic copper bullet passing through him, the margin was too thin with me being over 200-yards distant. For it was so dark that, after the fact when I aimed my rifle at the patch of uncut grass behind which the 6-pointer was standing, I couldn’t see the front sight and, at that range, a degree too high might be the difference between striking the beast and striking the barn. In truth, the margin would have been too thin even in broad daylight.
Was any of it like the rabbit tracks?
Some of you are no doubt reading this dispatch after seeing Advent 2024: Les Chaussers dans la Neige reprinted in the Frederick News Post and following the hyperlink back to Voyageurs’ website, etc., and perhaps you’re wondering if the episodes involving the 8-pointer in the woods and the 6-pointer in the field seemed like taunts, much like the rabbit tracks in Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s painting, The Hunters in the Snow. The answer is, “No.” You win some, you lose some. Besides, I’ve grassed enough bucks and stags and fail to see why I shouldn’t continue doing so going forward. But coyotes – they taunt me.
To be clear, I very much prefer a hunter’s return gilded with the presentation of quarry met with fanfare. Or to frame it in romantic terms: I ask the girl out and, with fireworks going off in her heart, which I see in her eyes, she enthusiastically exclaims, “Yes!” And I’m a cool onlooker with respect to life, too. Yet for a man, there’s this hard-wired, prehistoric impulse that exists thanks to millennia of sexual selection – something I address in Men, an article in Fieldsports and the Faith. Read it and the associated references if you’re interested. Anyhow, this prehistoric impulse isn’t something a guy simply switches-off. The circuit’s always closed. In fact, with me, it’s totally off the leash.
Even so, the last thing I need is a set of antlers on the wall reminding me there was a moment when I was as desperate a man while afield as Huff is in every corner of life. Last September at the Runagates Club, he told us he was marrying this woman – surprising because we thought he didn’t even date. But Huff also remarked that this would be her first church wedding. I then had to ask how many times she’s tied the knot. “Three,” he said. “The first two in Vegas and the third in prison.” No kidding, Huff’s fiancée once married a guy while he was in the tank.
Now, Pete’s a loose cannon and says things. Yet, he was eating vanilla cream donuts when Huff related what a gem he found. I think that’s why he showed more restraint than normal. All Pete did was hold out his hand, covered in powdered sugar, and, with half a donut in his mouth, garble, “Con-gwah-cha-way-tions! She’s a gwir wurf fightin’ fohr.”
The good thing for Huff is the deal fell through. But he shouldn’t be so doubtful of himself in the first place; so desperate that he’ll cut a deal with the type of woman who implicitly forces him to discover how low he’ll go. Huff’s his own worst enemy. Although I really should leave the poor guy alone.
You know, you ought to send Huff a Christmas card this year to boost his confidence. Use Voyageurs’ business address shown at the footer and I’ll forward it to him. The point, however, is that a man shouldn’t be so doubtful of his ability to grass a deer the right way that he becomes desperate enough to cut a deal with the Devil, endangering the public.
The Ravens in The Hunters in the Snow: A Cautionary Tale
If there’s anything involving Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s The Hunters in the Snow that is tangential to the present discussion, it’s the ravens in the trees. For they remind me of an incident that occurred the Saturday of Mother’s Day weekend in 1983 near Frederick, Maryland when two men in a pick-up pulled onto the shoulder of US Rte 340 and one of them shot at a raven in a tree with a deer rifle (I believe it was chambered in .270 Win.). I don’t know what happened to the bird, but the bullet struck a teenager – a senior at Governor Thomas Johnson High School – who was a mile or more away, in the back of the head and killed him.
My family was acquainted with his. In fact, that fateful Saturday in May 1983, my mother and sister were at the same event this young man’s mother and sister were attending when the latter received the news. It truly was sad and senseless, and it is never far from my mind when I close with a buck but the shot is unsafe. If anything good came from the incident, it’s that it makes it easy for me to maintain discipline in the heat of the moment.
The Thunder of Guns
The main development this past regular firearms deer season in New York is that I am retiring my Browning BAR, shown with the Goodyear and Firestone Christmas albums in the featured photo, in favor of a Sig Sauer Cross and a modified Model 1917 Enfield complete with a USMC OKC-3S bayonet. The former is coming with two barreled actions: one in .277 Sig Fury – for stalking red stag in the United Kingdom and black bear, moose, and caribou in North America – and one in 6.5 Creedmoor – for stalking roe in the United Kingdom and whitetail deer in Maryland and northern Virginia. The latter is a custom project, which I hope to complete by November next year, and will be chambered in .30-06 Springfield for hunting wild boar in Europe and stalking whitetails in New York.
The Sig Sauer Cross and choice of calibre actually reminds me of another friend from Gov. Thomas Johnson High School (Class of 1986) who uses 6.5 Creedmoor. Our class voted him Most Sensitive and it went straight to his head. Well for some time, he’s advised that I adopt 6.5 Creedmoor because it grows even better than corn on Hornady’s farm in Nebraska and is the preferred chambering of 9 out of 10 angels in Heaven. When I retort that I prefer .30-06 Springfield here on Earth, he calls me ‘old-fashioned.’ Naturally, I don’t like the sound of that. But he’s a friend, and so I attempt to find common ground by stating that I also like 7mm-08 Rem. It gets me nothing, though. For he then tells me 7mm-08 Rem is ‘inferior.’ As I said: It went straight to his head.
Anyhow, 6.5 Creedmoor was introduced in 2007 and has been the darling of hunters for about the last 15-years. I’ve always been out-of-step with the mainstream, though, living on the Island of Misfit Toys, no matter the subject. And true to form, I’ve resisted embracing 6.5 Creedmoor. The reason: It seems to be such a dainty and delicate chambering – so much even that it might put a hunter adopting it just a step or two away from becoming a cross-dresser, staring at himself in the mirror and agonizing over whether an A-line or a pencil skirt best compliments his figure, basically wondering if it will be Christian Dior or Coco Chanel instead Mossberg 500 or Remington 870.
I’m not, however, categorically old-fashioned, a stick in the mud such as my high school friend implies, and so I’ve changed my opinion regarding 6.5 Creedmoor as a consequence of three factors. Firstly, I’ve grassed red stag in Scotland with it and therefore know first-hand that it punches above its weight. Secondly, it’s the ballistic twin of 6.5 x 55 Swede. And thirdly, U.S Special Operations Command, U.S. Navy, Department of Homeland Security, British Royal Marines, and others have adopted 6.5 Creedmoor as the chambering for their sniper platforms. So, I’m onboard now, part of the mainstream for once, which oddly feels soothing much like taking a long, hot bath at the end of the day to unwind. I only hope to avoid becoming a L’Oréal Pro by the end of 2026.
Perhaps the modified Model 1917 Enfield chambered in God-Bless-America .30-06 Springfield, complete with a USMC OKC-3S bayonet, will function as a bulwark, keeping me in top form similar to what baleen stays do in a high-end corset. You see, unlike deerstalking, there’s nothing subtle about hunting wild boar. I’ve done it once. It sort of involved an international border, and so no questions about location, s’il vous plaît. But if you’re curious enough to learn a little more, then refer to my 1 November, 2024 dispatch, The Octave of All Saints and a Sporting Holiday, and scroll to the bottom. Just know that I’ve never felt more alive than the moment ‘Sir Shaggy’ was about to charge with knives out.
I’m not claiming hunting wild boar, or anything for that matter, is nonstop action; a rock concert. In fact, it annoys me that American fieldsports media presents it as such. But if I had to pick one song, and one alone, that embodies the spirit of wild boar hunting, then it’s AC/DC’s Thunderstruck. My mother would wash your ears out with the King James Bible if she caught you listening to it. But I’m telling you, listen to Thunderstruck and you’ll know what I mean.
Now two years ago, I was set to purchase a Blaser R8 for hunting wild boar because it’s fast-cycling and reliable. Watch this video of Franz-Albrecht Oettingen-Spielberg on battue to understand why that’s critical. However, I held-off because the Blaser R8 barrel in .30-06 Springfield incorporates a 1:11 twist rate, which is too slow for the 150-grain copper bullets I use exclusively. I’m so glad I did, too. For in the interval, I’ve taken quite a liking to the Model 1917 Enfield. It’s Old School, but it is the Blaser R8 of its era: fast-cycling, reliable, but also tough. And it also comes with a bayonet.
You see, what makes a good battle rifle also makes a good wild boar weapon, and the Model 1917 Enfield is it. Don’t gainsay the bayonet either, because it isn’t for the sake of image. The reality is that if you hunt wild boar using dogs, then you finish the quarry with a blade. And again, they’ll often come at you with knives out.
A Parting Shot
I actually feel a bit guilty for recommending that you listen to AC/DC’s Thunderstruck. I suppose it’s because that might add a few days to your tour of duty in Purgatory should you follow through with it (See Advent 2025: The Hunter’s Return.). Then again, you can work ’em off by going full-Presbyterian this Christmas Eve Vespers. But, of course, afterwards treat yourself to a dram of The Glendronach 12-Year single malt Scotch – a Highland whisky possessing flavor and aroma reminiscent of Christmas cake (See footnote (8), Advent 2024: Les Chaussers dans la Neige.).
Interestingly, my friend – the one voted Most Sensitive – dislikes Christmas cake. You know, I should send him a bottle of The Glendronach 12-Year in time for New’s Eve as a ‘thank you’ since he is complicit regarding my being led astray with the oh so feminine 6.5 Creedmoor. I now must choose a matching telescopic sight. Will it be Swarovski, Leica, or some other marquee? As always, the battle’s won or lost by how well you accessorize.