This story, “13…Unlucky?” appeared in the October 1949 issue of Outdoor Life.
Would you go 180 miles away to hunt deer — if you had them in your own backyard? Probably not, unless you had buck fever. I don’t mean the acute kind that leaves you trying to swallow your Adam’s apple and pumping all the cartridges out of your rifle while some lordly buck stands calmly off a stone’s throw away and watches you. I mean the chronic kind that comes along with the first hard frost and puts a gleam in your eyes.
Shut them, and you can see the tops of the jack pines, black-green against the blue of the sky, in the grove where you camped in other years. Heady odors are there too — of pine needles and wood smoke, along with frying bacon and boiling coffee. Hunting deer without all these just isn’t according to Hoyle.
My hunts started years ago, when Dad Cowles (my father-in-law) was running his Michigan farm and I worked at an auto plant in Lansing. We didn’t get together often, so one fall we took a trip north to hunt deer. It was just a quickie — the last three days of the season. Neither of us got our buck, but we brought back some experience and an awful appetite for more such trips. In fact, we haven’t missed a year since. Ten years ago Dad turned the farming over to me, but he still looks after his part of the deer hunting.
Now, the deer here in Michigan have been working slowly south for fifteen or twenty years, and their numbers have increased. That explains why, as the time neared for Dad and me to take our thirteenth annual jaunt, the state Department of Conservation opened several of the more southerly counties to hunting. Our county, Kent, was one of those selected by the department.
There seemed to be quite a few deer around. I saw their tracks and quite often the animals that made them.
Question was, should I stay home and hunt in my own backyard — or go north, as we had in previous years? Dad didn’t care, so the decision was up to me. If we went north, I got a vacation.
Farming is like anything else; too much of it gets tiresome. We went north.
Neither Dad nor I had connected with a buck for two seasons running, so I figured the law of averages would be on our side. Sure, it was our thirteenth trip; but I wasn’t superstitious.
The Michigan deer season opened at daylight on Saturday, November 15. Noon of Friday found us back at our old campsite. There was snow on the ground, but we scraped it off and pitched our tent. After dinner we drove to a little valley about a mile away, where we knew there were some white-pine stumps. We wanted a few slabs from these, for kindling.
Dad and I both had scope-mounted rifles, and I had mine with me, for it needed sighting in. I paced off 100 yards from one of the stumps and shot at a knot. The .30/40 bullet hit the snow about thirty inches to the right. Next I aimed thirty inches to the left and hit the knot. By then it was too late in the day to readjust the scope, so I let it go, figuring that if I got a chance to shoot I’d know about where to hold.
It was snowing next morning as I headed for the hardwood hills southwest of our camp on the Middle Branch Big Creek. It’s good deer country, but after two hours of still-hunting I hadn’t seen a flag. The snow was coming down a little thicker and the wind was coming up.
I crossed a bumpy, winding road and started north along the west side of the Big Hill. It’s about 200 feet higher than the rest of the country and from its top you can see for miles in all directions. After a bit I jumped a doe, picked her up in the scope for practice, and went on. That was the only deer I’d seen when I got back to camp at noon. Dad came in and reported spotting three, but no horns. We ate dinner, did the dishes, and started out again.
The wind was swirling snow in all directions. Familiar though the country was, without a compass I’d have been lost in half an hour. And I didn’t see a buck all afternoon.
Dad had come upon does, but no bucks. Karel Crozier, who was camped near us with three other boys, told us he’d collected a spikehorn.
Sunday I didn’t hunt, but in the afternoon I went for a walk in a section I seldom visited. The snow was eight inches deep and the going was hard. Deer tracks were scarce until I hit a little spruce swamp, where I found lots of them.
Monday morning, after adjusting my scope as best I could, I went back to the swamp. I sat in the middle of it for about two hours and never saw a hair. Going back to camp I glimpsed two running deer, both does.
Farther on I came over a little ridge and saw the legs of some deer ahead of me. I stood quietly and watched for sight of horns, but it turned out that the legs belonged to two does and a fawn. Suddenly I heard a twig break to my right and saw more deer moving my way. Then a shot rang out, so near it made me jump. The deer on my right ran past me about twenty-five yards away.
There were eight of them, does and fawns. Then I heard another deer coming, bleating like a sheep. It was a doe, and someone had shot her hip all to pieces. That made my blood boil, for all the deer had been moving slowly, and the hunter had plenty of time to look them over. Whoever it was that shot first and looked afterward took out of there plenty fast, leaving the doe to die a lingering painful death.
After dinner I hunted west of the Big Hill. The sun was shining at last and the deer were moving about. I saw ten or twelve, including one that looked like a buck. But he ran off without ever showing me his head.
Back at camp that night, Dad reported that his luck had been running about the same as mine. Tuesday? Plenty of deer but nary a horn — and we were due to leave for home next day! So Wednesday morning we started out with blood in our eyes. It was now or not at all.
Up on the east slope of the Big Hill about 10 a.m. I came on the track of a big splayfooted deer — I was sure it was a buck. Following it, I saw where he had joined up with four does. They went along for quite a ways together, then he struck off by himself. By now it was close to noon and I knew he would likely hunt a spot to lie down for a while.
Squatting down, I peered out from behind a big jack pine and saw a doe lying under another tree about fifty feet away. Then a doe with two fawns, one ahead and one behind, walked into view. The one in the lead came around a pine and stopped short. I could make out little two-inch spikes.The Michigan law specifies a three-inch minimum, so he was safe as far as I was concerned. Finally the old doe saw me and off all three went in a hurry.
That Old 13 Jinx
Still following the buck track, I slowed down to almost a crawl when I found where he had been standing still, then moving this way and that. I peered ahead until my eyes ached and finally saw the deer’s hind legs and tail. The old 13 jinx again! He stood with his head hidden by branches so that I couldn’t actually see his horns, to save my skin. Then a gust of wind must have whirled my scent to him, for he took off and I never did catch sight of the rack I was looking for. It was past noon and I headed for camp in disgust. Dad, who’d had equally bad luck, was there ahead of me.
We finished dinner and were breaking camp, when in came two men from our home town — Ray Gorby and his son Gordon.
“What’s going on here?” Ray said. “We’re going home,” I told him. “You can’t get any bucks that way,” he laughed. “You ought to come down our way. Five of us have hung up four bucks.”
“There are more about six miles south of here,” Gordon added.
“Most of the bucks are a lot farther south than that,” I said sourly. “They’re right where we left ’em — practically in our own backyards!”
Back home I found the snow practically gone. Some of the neighbors still had corn to pick, so I got out the picker and went to work, waiting for the right kind of day to try for one of the local bucks. Everyone had a story to tell of some guy who’d got a deer close by. Card Durst had shot a ten-pointer the first thing opening day about a mile from home. Leon Benham bagged a spikehorn half a mile from our house. Ross Buckley got his. So it went. I’d mumble something about maybe collecting mine later on, and get on with the corn picking.
East of our line fence, a good 100 yards from the house, are some Northern Spy apple trees, standing in a field of unpicked corn. I found fresh tracks there almost daily, where deer had come up from the swale at the north end to eat the apples during the night. From the same swale they crossed the wheat field back of the barn to a wood lot. My wife had seen four crossing while I was gone. One, she said, was an old granddaddy, and I found tracks — the biggest I’d ever seen — that bore her out.
Now, our apple trees are in easy range of the east barn window. Some morning, I told myself, that buck might linger over his apples too long. Anyway, I left my .30/40 near the window, where it would be handy.
A Target at 225 Yards
Sunday night it began snowing. Monday morning there was a fresh, soft blanket two inches deep, and no sign of a let-up. I finished the milking just as it was breaking daylight and went to the upstairs barn window. There were no deer under the trees, but I could see one in the wheat field about 225 yards away. I picked it up in the rifle scope, but because of the poor light and the snow in the air I couldn’t tell whether it had horns. I watched for about fifteen minutes. The daylight was strengthening and the snow let up for a moment just as he lowered his head for a bite of wheat, It was a buck, either a spikehorn or a four-pointer.
I braced my left arm on the window sill, his head came up, and I squeezed off a shot. It hit about a foot to his right and I saw snow spurt up. Over the fence he went; and as he did, I saw three more deer start out of the corn at the edge of the swamp. One was the old big boy.
Knowing that nothing would disturb them for a while, I ate breakfast, finished the chores, put on my hunting togs, grabbed a handful of cartridges, and started out. The snow was still falling, soft and wet. I wrapped a bandanna around the scope to keep the lenses clean and struck out through the cornfield toward the swale where the deer had jumped. The wind was from the east and I went along that side of it, knowing my scent would flush out any deer that might be there.
I had got past the swale when out of a clump of willows near the fence jumped a doe — and a buck with a rack that made me gasp. Was that some head! His antlers, neck, and shoulders were so massive he looked top-heavy, as if he might fall forward with the next jump. He was about seventy-five yards away and I pulled the handkerchief off the scope, put the cross hairs on his neck, and squeezed off.
The 13 jinx was still working. I never touched him. Again I picked him up with the cross hairs, shot — and missed. Then, out in the open field, he stopped and looked at me. My meat now, I told myself as I took plenty of time for a lung shot at 125 yards. When I missed that time, I was plenty upset. Still he stood there and I shot once more and missed. That was too much for the old boy and he started running again.
I threw a fifth shot at him with no results. Again he stopped to look me over. I figured I would shoot as long as he would let me. I carefully squeezed off the last shot in the clip, but that was no good either. Off he went.
By then I knew it wouldn’t be any use. I hadn’t had even a trace of buck fever. With that same rifle I had killed three successive bucks with one shot apiece, two at about seventy-five yards and one at 100. I knew the trouble was with the scope. So I started for the house, undecided whether to take time to sight in the gun or to get more cartridges and hurry back, hoping for a close shot.
My better judgment told me to sight in first, but a hunch told me to keep right after him. After all, wasn’t this a cockeyed hunt anyway?
Another Opportunity Missed
In the house I handed my oldest boy the broom and said, as I grabbed some more shells, “Hit me over the head. I just missed the biggest buck I ever saw right out back here!” Then, before he awoke to his once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, I ducked out the door and headed back for the swale.
The tracks of the two deer led into a long stretch of low woodland and swamp. I followed them through one neck of swamp and along an old stump fence that bordered an open field. On the far side of the field was a clump of sumacs and beyond that more woods. It would be just like the deer to circle out into that sumac clump, I thought, and stopped to look it over.
Seeing a big brown stump a bit in from the edge, I watched it for several minutes. Sure enough, it moved! It was the doe, and just back of her was the buck. I took plenty of time, held where I figured I should, and squeezed off. Same old jinx! Off went both deer with me after them.
The next time I jumped them they were in brush so thick that I didn’t even see them. I followed for half a mile before I heard them jump again. Now they were running through water about eight inches deep and I cut across to the road, where the going would be easier. Once there I soon found the doe’s tracks and followed them. I was sure the buck would join her, but when he hadn’t shown up after three quarters of a mile I went back to where I last jumped them.
Sure enough, the old boy had pulled a whizzer! He had simply run out into the field a ways, circled, and returned to the swamp after hearing me leave. At that very moment, somewhere up ahead, he was following the tracks I had made only a few minutes before.
So, putting my feet down into the slushy swamp water as silently as I could, I followed him. Suddenly, looking up, I caught a glimpse of the buck’s rump among the willows twenty-five yards ahead. I froze in my tracks and raised the rifle slowly. The patch of rump disappeared, the buck turned broadside, and for a brief moment I saw his rack. But by the time I had him in the scope the head had disappeared. Just as I was about to lower the rifle I saw a patch of brown appear between two tree trunks. A bit of the neck, about ten inches square, showed in the scope as I touched off my eighth shot at that buck.
A Thrilling Discovery
What happened then had me guessing. That piece of deerskin was gone from view — and I hadn’t heard a sound. Not a grunt, not a splash, nothing. I stood for what seemed minutes, listening. Then, cautiously, I started forward. After a dozen steps I thought I heard the old boy sneaking out on me. Thinking perhaps I could get another quick shot at him before he was out of range, I rushed ahead. Then I caught my toe on a willow root and fell against a stump. I pulled myself up and looked over it.
There, in six inches of slush, lay my buck! Blood was spurting out of the hole the 180-grain .30/40 bullet had made in the neck. I took another look at that set of antlers and let out a whoop. Unlucky 13? Who said so?
I hauled the buck from the swamp, dressed him out, and, after draping the heart and liver on a bush where I could get them later, dragged him to the road. I had been less than a mile from my barn the whole time.
Down the road a ways a hunter walked out of the bushes. “What have you got there?” he asked. It was Ray Gorby, out to help his son Gordon tag the deer that would fill their licenses. (Yes, they got it there later that afternoon.)
“This is the buck I had to come home to collect,” I told him.
“I guess you did! Man, is that some rack!”
My “Lucky 13” weighed 184 pounds dressed — not so large as some, but his neck was massive. The antlers had ten perfectly matched points and had a 24 1/2-in. spread. The taxidermist said it was the largest head he’d had in two years. It’s probably the largest I’ll ever get; in any event, I can’t imagine that will give me a bigger thrill.
And, by the way, before I go out again I propose to sight in that scope properly!
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