Curious behavior

It's a known fact that deer are curious animals. In fact, savvy hunters can take advantage of this when nothing else works.

On this adventure, I had been still hunting for a few hours in the morning. I like to eat an apple mid morning, while scanning around and contemplating my next move. I also like to take this time to revise in my mind, what I observed during my morning venture. I have sometime doubled back, and surprised whitetails trying to sneak around behind me, downwind from me. A deer will not necessarily be spooked if he sees you, but if he smells you, whooooooffff! You hunters know what this means!

An apple a day draws the deer in, there are no doctors in the woods. The crunch of biting into an apple got the attention of an 8 point buck that was within my proximity. I thought my peripheral vision picked up some movement as I crunched on. I scanned this area, but I didn't see any whitetail. I took another bite and picked up some movement again, to my left. This area had thick brush, a lot of big spruce and fir trees. I looked in the area where I thought the movement had occurred and took another bite from my apple. There it was, sticking his head out to the left, behind the trunk of a big spruce tree, looking straight at the sound of this crunching apple bite. Then he would hide behind the tree trunk again. This deer repeated this behavior four times as I scrambled with the mathematics of how to hold my rifle in position to get an aim, while holding my apple and biting it to draw it out again for another peek. All hunters know what the white flag means.

This memory has come back to me time and time again over the years. I have great respect for these animals. They do have a curious nature that is sometimes their downfall, but that day, this whitetail's curiosity turned into the best entertainment money can't buy.

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