My 17 year-old stepson and I were staying at my wife’s family property on Toledo Bend Reservoir, where we planned to hunt deer in the adjacent Sabine National Forest. The cabin has all of the amenities - fishing out the front door, and hunting out the back - not to mention running water, heat & a/c, kitchen and bath. It’s rustic, but a far cry from pitching a tent.
Not only is it rustic, but it’s buried as deep into the east Texas piney woods as possible. Any further and we’d be in Louisiana. We’d made the three and half-hour trip from College Station several times since July to stock the feeder with corn, which we hoped helped to hold deer in the area. The feeder is near the cabin on private property - feeders aren’t allowed on public lands. We’d spent hours before the season sighting in our rifles, readying our equipment and supplies, and purchasing both of the required hunting and public lands access permits. It’s not a cheap hobby, but we anticipate every hunting season like a three-year old anticipates Christmas - this time even more so, as it was our first time to hunt the national forest. We’d previously hunted a paid lease on private land without much success, so this year we thought we would try something new and different, with better hopes for a rewarding hunt.
The weather was warm and humid for November, but we were optimistic. Increasing our odds was a new moon, which meant the deer would likely move in the mornings & evenings, instead of foraging at night. We selected promising locations for our ladder stands. My stand was near a small rise, and The Boy’s stand overlooked a heavily traveled creek crossing. Both spots showed good sign of recent deer activity and had good transition - low growth areas opening onto areas clear from undergrowth. There was a good food source, as the ground was covered with acorns the size of my thumb from the towering oak trees competing with the even taller pines. Prospects appeared excellent for harvesting an East Texas Piney Woods Buck.
It was Saturday afternoon, around 3pm. Shooting light would be over by 5:30. It was time to get into the stands before the deer began to move. A hunter who lived nearby had knocked on the door that morning to, in a gentlemanly-like manner, let us know we would all be hunting in the same general area, and that he wanted to be sure we knew he would be hunting down a draw adjacent to where we had set up. He added that he’d seen a group of four does on the way in. We hoped the does would help to attract a buck.
We prepared to leave by donning our scent-free camouflage, specially washed only in baking soda and stored in plastic garbage bags so as to repel any odors. We had bathed thoroughly and sprayed ourselves with scent eliminator. We’d put out doe-in-heat scent that morning around the areas where we noticed activity, hoping to draw a buck within shooting range. We placed apples in our pockets for cover scent. We’d spent a lot of time and money preparing for this hunt, and didn’t want to ruin it with a buck spooked from picking up a stray man-smell. Finally we put on our fluorescent orange caps and vests (required in the national forest), loaded our rifles, and walked silently to our stands, eager, tense, and alert with the anticipation of seeing that first antler tip, gray-brown patch of hide, or silhouette through the evergreens.
We settled in and it wasn’t long before the other hunter we’d met moved through, dressed exactly as we were, silently picking his way through the brush. He hadn’t noticed me yet, and I observed the practiced way that he studied the ground for sign, took a few silent steps, stopped to slowly look around, and then repeated the process - an experienced, and likely successful, hunter. I waved my orange cap to him so he would note my location. He saw the movement immediately, and he returned the salute. He moved out of sight, and we returned to waiting, trying not to give away our position by swatting at the mosquitoes that floated around us in buzzing clouds or landed to remove a little afternoon snack from our veins.
It was about 4pm when I saw it - a flash of white deep in the woods to the southwest - exactly the location where I had anticipated the buck would appear. I readied my .308 Remington for a potential shot. Searching the scope for the deer, hoping for antlers, I instead saw something completely unexpected - a golf cart. It was, of all things, an all-white electric golf cart, complete with a windscreen, and three paunchy occupants - four if you count the golden retriever they had with them. One of the hunters was dressed in camouflage, the others wore white t-shirts. No fluorescent orange for these guys. I lowered my rifle as they approached my hunting area, picking their way around trees, stumps, and downed limbs. It was surreal - the electric golf cart made no sound other than snapping a twig now and then. They traversed my hunting area within 50 yards of my stand, then proceeded to the dirt access road about 200 yards away. They parked there for awhile, standing out like a huge white neon sign in the deep green of the pines - I suppose they thought they were hunting. I hoped they would leave via the access road since surely they had noted me in the stand dressed out in my hunter orange. But, no. A short time later, they slowly drove back, directly the way they had come - straight across my hunting area again, right over the game trail and the spot where I’d found a rub and carefully placed my doe scent earlier. Needless to say, I was incensed. If I hadn’t been so surprised, I might have been angry enough to disable their vehicle with a 180-grain round through its electric motor. They were close enough - I could have done it, and that silly thing would have forever remained in those woods as a monument to their stupidity. Besides, from the look of them it would have done them some good to do a little walking. If I’d had a cell phone with me, I would have called the game warden. It’s against the law to hunt from a vehicle or to drive off-road vehicles in the national forest. Unfortunately, my only recourse was to watch them slowly disappear back through the trees, our chances for a buck gone, at least for that afternoon.
Shortly after they were out of sight, I heard the sharp crack of a rifle - likely the other hunter we’d met, judging from the location. I figured the golf cart might have spooked a buck to him. Or, maybe he decided to put one through their motor. I almost hope next time I’m out there that I find that rusting golf cart, buried in pine needles, with a nice, neat hole through it.
Many years ago I took a youth group into the Sangre de Cristo Mountains for a back packing trip. We were very high up, over 11,000 ft, on the Rainbow Trail, in a narrow valley camping. In the middle of the night, I was awakend with something wiping my face, I felt my face and it was covered with the nastiest smelling slime you could imagine. I opened my eyes and looked up over my head and in the moonlight was looking directly into the face of a fairly large black bear. The same one that had just been licking my face. I reached up beside my sleeping bag pillow and grabbed my .45LC and placed the barrel up against his nose and blew his brains out.
It took myself and 3 teenagers to drag the carcass out from in front of the tent, and needless to say, no one slept the rest of the night.
We fired in the air a couple of times and the shooting stopped. We decided to give up hunting and go bass fishing for the rest of the day.