Every time Penny or I turn our car or truck down our driveway the past few weeks, we think, “Hey, look at that. There’s no dead buck down there today.”
Let me explain.
While heading to the gym at 5 a.m. on Nov. 10, my wife and I were shocked to see a glassy-eyed 8-point buck lying near the bottom of our driveway. We live at the north edge of Waupaca – a town of about 6,000 people in central Wisconsin – and, although deer often eat our shrubs and poop in our yard, we’ve never had one die on our property since moving here in September 1992.
Penny was driving that morning, and I was buckling my safety belt when she gasped, “Oh my god!” and hit the brakes. I instantly looked up and saw what startled her. The buck was facing uphill, with its body blocking nearly half the driveway’s width.
Patrick and Penny Durkin found this bow-killed buck in their driveway before dawn Nov. 2. A grateful neighbor soon retrieved it.
I think I said something profound like, “Huh. Wonder what happened to him.” Then I suggested we continue on to the gym.
“He’s not going anywhere. I’ll deal with him after I run home.”
Penny then eased her car past the buck, which I estimated was 2½ years old, judging by its body size. After thinking about it a few more seconds I suggested a vehicle might have hit it on the busier street downhill from us, and that it died from a punctured lung while fleeing up our driveway.
Penny didn’t think so. She had gotten a good look of its chest as she inched her car around it, and she saw a big splotch of red at its center. “I think someone shot it.”
The wounded buck crashed into a neighbor’s dog pen and then stumbled onto the author’s driveway to die.
After trotting home about 90 minutes later, I walked down to inspect the buck in dawn’s early light. Penny was right. The buck had suffered a chest wound and, judging by its shape and size, it was from a perfectly placed broadhead.
I walked back indoors to await better tracking light before trying to solve the puzzle. Our tiny woodlot seldom holds deer during daylight, and it’s too small to hide a bowhunter without us noticing. The buck had to have run from the large woodlot northeast of us. Judging by the wound, it couldn’t have run much more than 100 yards in the few seconds it would have lived with such massive hemorrhaging.
I wondered why the bowhunter hadn’t retrieved the buck. He likely arrowed it around dusk the previous day, and it had probably left an easy blood trail to follow. Maybe he got spooked when the buck fled into our neighborhood. Or maybe he just figured he would wait till dawn to track it. The night was cool and the meat wouldn’t spoil.
About 7:15 a.m., still wearing my running shoes and blaze-orange running gear, I walked back downhill, hoping the bowhunter would be there. I really didn’t want to call the sheriff’s department or conservation warden to request a carcass tag and handle the deer myself. I already had enough obligations to fill my day.
A bowhunter had arrowed the buck perfectly, putting his broadhead dead-center in the buck’s chest.
Before long I found a blood trail. It began near my downhill neighbor’s crumpled dog pen – which the dying buck had hit hard – and then crossed the road, and cut through the yard of a vacant home across the street. The blood spots stood out against ground frost and brown, unraked leaves, and led behind the house. The buck had nearly run into the backside of the house before veering hard left and then hard right to reach my side of the road.
But the trail soon grew faint as I reached the yard’s eastern edge and drew closer to the woodlot. After losing the blood sign in a strip of trees on the property line, I crossed into the large backyard of another neighbor. I estimated I had gone about 80 yards so far, and the woodlot was just a few yards away. If I could find the blood trail’s origins, I would surely find a tree stand just beyond the city limits.
Instead, I spotted a guy in a camo jacket back in the woods. He was walking slowly toward me, intently studying the ground. When he looked up, I waved and called, “Are you looking for a deer?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, it’s over there in my driveway. You hit him perfect.”
He sighed with relief. He said after arrowing the buck the previous twilight he had heard it crash into the thin strip of trees I had just crossed. He figured he would find it there in the morning. When he didn’t, he started over, piecing together the blood trail from where the arrow struck. We bumped into each other minutes later.
The arrowed buck traveled only 100 yards, but instead of retreating into the woods, fled into a nearby neighborhood.
I congratulated him while walking him to an opening where we could see the buck through a gap between some neighbors’ homes. “There he is,” I said pointing out the buck, and suggested he bring his truck around so we could load it up.
Minutes later we met again in my driveway, and he tied his tag to the buck’s antlers while we discussed the buck’s odd decision to flee toward homes instead of doubling back into the woods. Wounded deer typically stay in cover or flee for cover if shot at a field’s edge, but flukes happen.
My newfound friend then grabbed the buck’s head and upper neck while I lifted its hind quarters, and we shoved the buck onto the truck’s tailgate. Before driving off, he promised to bring a couple of sticks of sausage in a few weeks.
That would be great, but I won’t hold him to it. I was just happy he had his buck, and I could start my day.
