Traditions...

...should get their due also.  We've seen the transition from the stream to the field here.  Plenty of views from the treestand for my two youngest sons and I...already a success with the nice 8 point buck taken by a nephew last week bowhunting.  We usually only take two or three deer a year.  The venison was great as usual...my family has a taste for it over beef.  Lean and not herded into slaughter yards...it is adrenalin free.  Something I've learned to appreciate...a clean kill.

I wish I could say they all are clean...there have been a couple deer I've had to track long ways including one for over 6 miles...a december buck I caught up to after 24 hours from first shooting it.  I'm proud of the tracking but not so much the shot.  I had a new mathews zmax hanging in the archery shop I hit a 1000 lb cow with my car in front of.  Seven of them walked in front of me in the rain and I had no where to go.  I only hit it at a few miles an hour but it was enough to roll the cow over my hood and roof.  The windscreen fell on the back of both hands sending me to the hospital for a half dozen stitches in each of them.  When I finally got my new bow I had to sight it in with a weak wrist and two months later in December I was holding my hand differently with a stronger wrist.  My bow shot differently in December.  After 6 miles I caught up with that buck as it was trying to lay flat on a trail parallel to the one I was on.  It looked dead but its eyes were wide open.  I put an arrow through it again...the first was in its flanks and I had watched it pull the arrow out with its teeth just before dark the previous afternoon.  I felt bad all night and was glad we were able to jump it as it bed down the next day and pick up its trail.  The blood trail is sacred to a hunter...we jumped that deer several times but couldn't get a shot.  When I put that second arrow through it I picked it up and it had no blood on it but I knew it was a passthrough when I examined it.  It got up and crashed down the hill with heavy legs...Josh thought I missed it but I showed him the arrow.  We followed the dark leaves to a hill overlooking a small feeder creek to one of my favorite trout streams.  It took us a while but a large blood spot on the side of a tree showed us where to look.  The buck was sitting upright on its butt with its front legs extended forward against the side of the bank of the little feeder.  I looked at Josh and said, "do you think its dead?"  He said, 'yeah.'  I said, "I don't trust that deer," and nocked the same arrow I had just put through it.  Just as I said that the deer turned and looked at us...I put that arrow through its heart pinning it against the bank.  I'm only glad we were able to fill our obligation as hunters that day...and the two Wisconsin Buck and Bear book bucks were double lung shots.  It makes those trophies even better.

Deer hunting is religion in Wisconsin...home of the world record whitetail for over 70 years and more record book bucks than any other US state.  Our bow season is long and gun season runs the weekend before thanksgiving through that week.  Sometimes longer...a great time for family and friends.  Thanksgiving dinner in the driftless usually includes some morning deer hunting.  A tradition...one that goes back to subsistance living.  When we needed the deer and the elk to survive.  At one time there were more elk in the midwest than out west...my stream was named for the elk herd found here in 1850.  And elk antlers have been found in the banks of it after spring floods.  Elk creek...land of the elk.

A University of Wisconsin researcher spent some time with the Innuit native Americans in Alaska and studied their traditions for his book on Wisconsin deer hunting traditions.  He found the same traditions there as here...and no other place.  Wisconsins deer hunting traditions stand alone in the lower 48...religion meet tradition.  In deed, land is sacred to the deer hunter as is that blood trail.  Sustenance may be different than the Innuit but still venison is a delicacy of corn fed and free ranging livestock.  But, much smarter...one tradition I was reminded of today when I saw an old friend at the store and he was off to his woods to hunt an 18 pt buck he had trail cam photos of.  Just finding a buck of that caliber is difficult enough but to pattern one and take it is the ultimate tradition of the hunter.

Thanksgiving week is almost a party of free passes from school for kids if they just want to hunt and early morning breakfasts and coffee.  Sometimes it is the only time family is together.  Tall tails of the past and dreams of future stories are what holds it together...the tradition of story telling.  Long held in all civilizations it is at its peak during deer season...some might call it something else.  But, there is nothing wrong with that either.  I always enjoy a good story...enhanced or not.  I'm a story teller myself...like the many thanksgiving does I have shot.  A tradition of taking does for venison makes a thanksgiving doe as much a trophy as any buck.  And a feeling of fullness besides just that turkey dinner.  Family, friends, and religion.  And watching the Packers on Sunday.  Which I am doing right now...