LUCKY 13

After putting the poor traffic accident doe out of her misery and driving home I realized my car was looking a bit Dexter. The large blue boning knife, the blood splattered plastic in the trunk.  Not to mention the driver packing the 9mm. "I swear officer. It's all legal. I'm an artist."
    Yesterday i moved the school house stand closer to the big sign I'd seen before Sandy hit. There was a large scrape and a tree tore up by a set of heavy horns. The sign was on the west side of a brushy field. I hung the stand on the east side, notched against a couple of hemlocks. There was another two rubs close by and a great view of the field. The first night I had a couple does come downwind and that was it. I was going tho hunt WSSP in the morning. I didn't want to pressure this one or take a doe here. Better to hunt the buck.
   The stand I had out at WSSP faced due east. I got in it before dawn (after slicing my finger on a butcher knife, rooting around in my dark car). As the sun cracked, I heard movement off to my right. A little buck was chasing a doe in circles, on the wrong side of the fence line.  It was encouraging. When the sun came up it was right in my face. Around 8 am a little doe appeared out of nowhere right under my stand. Then another. And another. The three milled about and I caught movement off to my left. I stood up and clicked on my bow release. Two large does were coming in. When one quartered away at 25 yards, I fired. I saw the arrow center punch her right behind the shoulder. She ran and turned. Then i lost sight of her.
   I got out of the tree and had to pee like a race horse. I came prepared. I had a plastic orange juice bottle to contain my fluids, not wanting to foul my spot with piss scent. I took off my coat and put it, and the pee bottle, in my pack. Then I felt something warm running down my neck. I ripped off the pack. Had I not screwed the cap on? I pulled the wet bottle out and realized there was a fifty cent sized hole in the top. It must've frozen and broke in the chaos of my Dextermobile. Oh yeah, I found the dead deer 100 yards into the woods. Success!
   One of the ways I'm contextualizing my deer season as art this year is by doing blood drags. Each one is on a slightly different material. I did one on canvas for the "roadkill doe" and army tent material for the WSSP doe. I drop the deer from the trunk of my car onto the material and drag it across. I think you'll like them.

    After washing the piss and deer blood out of my clothes I went back to the brushy field stand. Around 3:45 pm I saw some grass moving out in the field. It was a buck. It was a really good buck. I grunted and he raised his head and started for me. I stood up, grabbed the bow and then things began to get interesting. It was warm and the bugs were out. One of those gnats that always fly in your eye, flew in my right eye. I was facing due west. Then the clouds parted and the sun came out....blinding me. I lost the buck. Where had he gone? Had he bedded down? I had no idea. I slowly sat back down, questioning everything.
   For the last hour of daylight I didn't dare move. I had to pee again. The bandaid had dropped from my sliced finger and when I went to shoo a fly away, my long hair caught the finger and opened the slice like a paper cut. Now I was bleeding everywhere. I wiped it on my florescent orange pack. Hmmmmmm. That could look good as material for the next blood drag. But wait..... I'm still hunting. Don't get distracted. Then, just as shooting light was fading, that buck got up. He'd been in the field all along. I grunted again but he wasn't interested. He must've heard does in the woods. Then he was gone. I can't wait to get back in the treestand in the morning. Night is nothing but an annoyance these days. Lucky 13 tomorrow.