Election Section

The art of deer hunting in Mendocino county

By Paul Mchugh The Associated Press
Wednesday October 30, 2002

UKIAH — The primary task of a deer hunter is not shooting, but seeing. 

That’s the first point I’d make to anyone interested in the craft. Gaining an ability to perceive much more of the forest than its trees is a rudimentary base of the hunter’s skill-set. 

So, to start becoming a hunter, you needn’t own a gun. You can simply step on that path the next time you walk in the woods. 

Try to open your awareness, and every sense, to all dimensions of a wild place. Large animals derive from a healthy landscape. Try to grasp how the woods work. Then your ability to view the creatures, and to intuit their behavior, gradually shall improve. 

Master this, and your mission of moving from ignorance to success as a deer hunter will seem less daunting. But many other lessons remain. These include skill in safe handling, shooting and cleaning of firearms, scouting and stalking and, if successful, the right way to clean and dress your game. 

In the early 20th century, most Americans lived on farms or other rustic settings. A tradition of skill transmission was unbroken. Now — lacking that — a “wannabe” must locate links to woods wisdom through friends, Department of Fish & Game personnel, hunter safety and firing range instructors. 

I became a hunter that way, in my 30s. Now, by my 50s, going on a late summer deer hunt has grown into a major ritual of my year. 

As rancher Cliff Blank (not his real name) and I ascended a wooded mountain on his Mendocino County property, I mentally reviewed the myriad ways a deer can appear. 

There’s the “Y” shape of a big-eared, thin-necked doe alertly turned toward you. The twiggy bush shape of an antlered buck peering over a log or rock while lounging in his bed behind it. The glow of deer hide lit by a beam of sunlight, even when most of the animal is concealed in shade. 

One should not search for these views, specifically. Just acknowledge possibilities and clear the mind of irrelevant, workaday thoughts. Then scan the woods both by unaided eye and with binocular, and let an “Aha!” moment of recognition erupt. 

Suddenly, a large buck leaped up from a log not 50 yards away and sprinted over a rise, into the dawn. 

I never even clicked off the safety on my Winchester. I don’t go for snap shots. Besides, shooting at an uphill trajectory meant a bullet might sail down a mile away, on someone else’s property, with unpredictable results. 

So, I just admired the view. Then we continued. 

Blank has hunted this ranch — with an old, lever-action 300 Savage his wife bought him after their wedding — for more than 50 years. He has a well worked-out rubric of push-and-stand hikes down the land’s canyons. One hunter takes up a post at an overlook, the other seeks to drive game down the canyon and past that point. Deer, of course, have their own strategies. 

“This time of year, the bucks all hang out together, while does and fawns form their own groups,” Blank said. 

It’s only in autumn, as the rut fully kicks in, that coastal bucks seek to assemble harems. Then, their IQ drops to about that of your average, 14-year-old human male — and for precisely the same reason. 

Prior to that, buck groups manifest a collective intelligence that’s formidable. Older bucks, when together, unite brains that brim with experience. 

Four of them can process signals from four noses, eight eyes and eight ears. Each acts as scout for the others. 

Blank tried to push a group just like that past me. They would have none of it. Figuring us out in an instant, they bounded off at a diagonal, into the canyon’s maw, then out the other side. All I could see was antler tips, bobbing up and down, swiftly growing smaller as they coursed away. 

By late morning, we abandoned the hunt. I spent midday helping Blank yard and section a big bay tree that had toppled into the ranch creek. This, by the way, is another tip for a would-be hunter. Public land often is overrun. Many top hunt options are on private land.