BOWHUNTING GEAR

Image Gallery Darrell Pace, two-time gold medalist for the U.S. Olympic archery team and enthusiastic bowhunter, draws on a practice target.

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Going after your winter's meat the good old hard way.

By David Petersen

This little fawn obviously was an orphan. I'd been crossing paths with him for a couple of weekends, he sometimes feeding so near my hiding place that I had to wonder if I couldn't reach out and touch him. And never once had he been with a doe, even though this strip of pinon and juniper woods was jumping with mule deer. Ma or no, I figured, the fawn would probably make it through the coming winter, this being prime river bottom habitat—sheltered from cold winds and snow, rich in browse.

But lordy, was he ever naive. In order to survive to adulthood he'd have to learn a few things about lurking danger and its avoidance. I determined to be his teacher. It was early morning and there I was again, rumped down on a log in my makeshift ground blind in the pinon and juniper, peering through a low screen of cut sage arranged in an arc in front of me. My back was pressed into a clump of mountain mahogany. Just after daylight two does materialized and began feeding toward me, cautious, one's head always up and watching while the other dipped for a nip of green. Go in peace, ladies. By and by came a third doe, this one with a fawn. It was midmorning before the orphan finally came poking along, unwary as always. When I saw that he wasn't going to wander quite close enough to touch hand to fur, I jumped up, reached out and swatted his rump with the tip of my bow. He leaped straight up and landed with his little legs pumping. In seconds he was gone. "In future," I whispered after him, "what say let's be a bit more watchful?" I spent the rest of the morning sitting like a bump on my log waiting for a buck that never showed. At noon I walked out to my truck and drove home.

It had been another good morning's bowhunt. I didn't bag my winter's wild meat, but I did sit for six quiet hours observing nature. Camouflaged to dissolve into my surroundings, I felt, and was, almost invisible. I had watched undetected as several deer fed nearby, even counting coup on a small. orphaned one of their number. I had watched a swarm of crows harass a great horned owl trying for a nap in a cottonwood snag close by, the owl remaining insouciant through it all. I had chuckled at a chipmunk's frantic gyrations and marked the ponderous progress of a box turtle across the sandy soil. Before daylight and for what seemed a long while after, I had shivered in the night's leftover cold, waiting for a lazy autumn sun to wake to its task and warm my painted face. It had been a good morning's bowhunt.

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