Wildlife Management and Bambi

As you well know from my interminable series, I enjoy hunting for a number of reasons. However, recently, two of those bedrock principles were challenged.

The setup

It is October 10, 2022, here in Western New York. I am on John’s property, a 20-acre lot with a hayfield and a woods that follows a creek which meanders northward toward Lake Ontario, which is about eight miles from here. I am in a tree stand where the woods, the creek, and the hayfield meet. It is precisely six o’clock PM. I know that because I am bored out of my mind, watching squirrels leap from treetop to treetop for the twelfth straight hour, and I just checked my phone for the time, for the millionth time. What little breeze there was has now subsided. Little finches and chickadees hop about, marking territory with little staccato peeps. That’s about it. It’s still six o’clock. Time has ceased to move. Sunset is at 6:45, an eternity from now.  I will never descend from this tree stand.

I peer into the thicket across the creek, which is not John’s property, and is newly posted as such, in bright yellow: NO TRESPASSING HUNTING OR ANY GALAVANTING OF ANY KIND OR PROSECUTION N SUCH signed: other property owner. I suspect some ill-will. Anyway, the thicket is as impenetrable at six in the evening as it was at six in the morning, an hour before sunrise. Twelve hours previously, I had marked the sounds of a few wild turkey hens. Otherwise, no movement. In the creek below, a wood duck drake quietly pursues a potential mate. The sun is still illuminating the field.

The Action Begins

All of a sudden, there arose such a clatter in the thicket across the creek that I lost my composure and snapped my head around to see. Emitting from the thicket, about 100 yards in, was the sound of a turkey hen being strangulated, as far as I can surmise. It was a horrifying and terrifying sound, an animal perishing in agony, no doubt the supper of a fox or coyote which had stalked this particular hen for hours. Or minutes. It didn’t matter, the thing was dying horribly, and as her cries weakened, all the hens in the woods began to cry out with her, a choir of clucks, comical in its sound, but heart-rending in its actuality. These, the stupidest of wild animals, were acknowledging the end of one of their own. I had no idea there were so many turkey hens in these woods, but they were of such a multitude their cries overwhelmed all the other sounds of the wind, field, and wood. After five minutes or so of this requiem, the woods returned to its normal rhythms, and I got bored again.

Bambi with his Mother

I checked my phone again, thinking to give up and get down. It was 6:30 PM. I actually took my arrow off the bow and replaced it in the quiver. As soon as I had done that, I re-checked my phone. Still 6:30. When I lifted my eyes from the phone, movement! In the field, east of me, illuminated by the last of the sunlight, were deer. I peered at them through the screen of trees. The lead pair were a doe and her fawn. I readied my bow for action.

At this point, however, doubts crept into my mind. They were two: in the first place, I was preparing to shoot Bambi’s mother. And I was going to use the fawn as a veritable decoy, letting him come into the woods under me, as he surely would, and she would follow, unaware of the danger lurking above in the tree, like a malicious dryad. On the other hand, the field was full of does and fawns. This is the problem. Without his mother, the fawn will likely survive. With his mother, the fawn will be joined by a sibling in short order, and the population of the deer will increase, with very few predators to manage the size of the herd. Disease and starvation will then do the culling, as opposed to the arrow and the bullet. I steeled myself to become the impulsive force of Disney evil.

At the very moment of action, the two of them hesitated. Had they made me? Hard to say. Perhaps they had. But as they prepared to walk under me again, a giant bowling ball with feathers flung itself across the creek and landed directly beneath me, spooking both the fawn and the mother back into the field. They entered the woods about fifty yards west of me. Several other of these massive black blobs hurled themselves across the creek, with no shortage of awkward aplomb, and made their way into roosts far from the funeral grounds of their recently deceased sister. Once that ceased, the sun had set, the pastels of twilight fading into grays. The doe and her fawn slowly drifted through the woods, moving eastward toward me.

The second doubt rose: if I shoot this deer, I have to track it in the dark. This is a minor discomfort. If she tries to escape death via the creek, then I have to track her in the dark while soaking wet on someone else’s property, a person whom I do not know, and, more importantly, who does not know me. This is a fair measure of discomfort, and a distracting thought. I got myself caught twisted in the wrong direction for a kill opportunity, and the doe was looking at me, wondering if I were a predator or just another friendly dryad.

Another predator appeared in the east somewhere, and the entire herd fled west into the woods beyond me, sweeping my doe along with them, and that was that. No more doubts to overcome, and I was grateful. On the other hand, no delicious venison roasts to feed my family occasionally for the coming year, not this time, anyway. But, yes, I would have shot her. It’s important that I do.