Shawnee State Forest

Shawnee State Forest

Hunting Deer

© by Abraham Lincoln

October is almost here again. It is the month I was born in. I am a Scorpio — if you believe in signs; My name, Abraham, means, "Father of a multitude." My wife tired of that and she ended our multitude at five. Five is a magic number and, as of this past Pat and I got married in 1955 have been married since then.

Five in the morning is a perfect time to be in Shawnee State Forest near Portsmouth, Ohio. That forest is huge and has hills and hollows and I always feared I'd stumble into a working still, but I never did.

I am going to describe getting ready to go to Shawnee State Forest to hunt deer. Step back in time to the late 1950s and try to imagine me at 24 years of age. I worked in Research and Development in Building 30 at NCR (National Cash Register Company) where playing golf and hunting and fishing were the big topics about weekend activities. My interest was in fishing and hunting and specifically hunting deer with a bow and arrow.

I had hunted rabbit with the bow and arrow and was successful at shooting them sitting and running. I even entered shooting contests in Greenville and shot paper target deer hitting the paper targets where the heart would be on a living deer.

I also read every published scrap of information about hunting deer and bear with a bow and arrow. The Bear Archery Company programs, with their legendary sportsman Fred Bear hunting and killing bear with, what else — a bow and arrow. I was hooked and couldn't wait to tie my first buck on my front fender and head back home to Gordon, Ohio where little kids would rush out to see the dead deer on my fender Abe Lincoln had shot with his bow and arrow.

Getting ready to go deer hunting began some 30 days before I actually left home. I felt like I should follow the rules if I wanted to get close enough to deer to shoot one with a bow and arrow and I had to avoid smoking (I was addicted to nicotine in those days) and giving up cigarettes was worse than going without sex.

I bought some rotten apple lotion in a tiny bottle and we had one or two apples in that condition on the window sill. I looked through my clothes and found some old pants and shirts that had paint on them and probably added paint color to camouflage me and them in the forest. I don't remember my coat but it was cold down there in the forest before daylight and rainy days were common in October.

The alarm clock was like 2:00 A.M., and I had the old clothes on, smeared with rotten apple lotion. My wife gave me a sack of rotten apples, and some food to eat and I roared out of Gordon in a 1958 Pontiac that was almost 20 feet long.

When I pulled into Shawnee Forest the headlights showed the way to a place I had chosen to begin my deer hunt. The rotten apples were dripping off my clothes when I strung my bow and hooked five razor sharp arrows on the bow quiver and stepped off the road into that wilderness.

I went back and forth from home to the forest for 5 years just to learn where the deer came up out of the valley and crossed the ridge using their game trail and I wanted to be in position, on their game trail, when they came along that morning. It would be daylight by the time I got to the top of the ridge where the deer always crossed over (that took a lot of Saturdays to find long before I ever went hunting).

As I remember those hunts, I would sometimes see the deer coming up out of the hollow on my left and I would work my way up the hill hoping to meet them at the top. At other times I would get to the top before they got there and I would have to wait on them to come up and cross over in front of me: passing me as close as 10 feet away, or closer.

I had my day spoiled once when, instead of a herd of deer, I hear a crashing sound and looked, expecting to see the deer running, but instead saw a hunter in a bright day-glow orange coat, walking up out of the hollow, stepping on sticks and scuffing through dry leaves. I thought to myself, "Shit. This idiot scared away the deer I would be tying on my fender."

He came on up to the cross over point and walked right by me, about 5 feet away, and never knew I was there. I could have said, "Hi," and caused him to have a heart attack or a stroke, but chose to say nothing and he went on over the ridge making more noise than a herd of elephants and he never knew I was standing there beside the tree he had passed.

I am proud to admit that I did shoot at deer and my arrows missed them all: yippee! I could never avoid hitting small trees, twigs, and limbs that I never saw when I took aim at a deer. My arrows went sailing off and sticking in the tops of trees on the other side of the ridge. From the ridge they looked close enough to reach out and pull them back out, but once I was over the ridge and looked up at this tree, I realized I would have to climb 20 or 30 feet up the tree to get close enough to pull out the arrow.

Sometimes the mere sound of the wooden arrow being draw across the bow would be enough to alarm the deer they jumped 9 feet away in one leap before I could fully draw the bow, aim and shoot. I never realized my dream of a deer on my fender but I did learn how to get so close to deer that I could see the individual hairs on their face; watch the skin twitch across their chest, and see the flies drinking from the corners of their eyes. How close? I could almost reach out and touch them and they never knew I was standing there in front of them. Honest.

Notes:
It took me about 5 years to discover the trails deer used and to learn how to walk in the woods without making any sound. It was the greatest experience in my life.

About Shawnee State Forest:
Shawnee State Forest, also called "The Little Smokies of Ohio," has developed into the largest of the 20 state forests, with over 60,000 acres. While the Forest is a fantastic recreation feature in Southern Ohio, it is also a wildlife habitat. And other activities like timber harvesting, tree planting, forestry research, watershed and soil protection, and production of tree seeds are all in a day's work for Forest Employees and many local residents. Nearly 8,000 acres was designated as wilderness and all activities and public motorized travel have been eliminated in the area.

Hunting Deer

Shawnee State Forest

© by Abraham Lincoln

I used to be a pretty good shot with a bow and arrow. I bought a new bow in Greenville and this gently recurved bow sent many an arrow into the bullseye on targets. I didn’t go for the much-hyped “Bear”archery branded bows but I did buy a new “Root”bow and it was my choice when I hunted deer. I am proud to say that my arrows never killed anything but just getting ready was part of my life experience — going to the forest and finding deer and their trails and leaving without being detected.

Long before I had any hope of killing a deer with my bow and arrow I spent lots of Saturday mornings driving to Shawnee State Forest looking for deer and was finally successful in finding the saddle where a small herd crossed over each morning. My idea was to be there on that ridge when the deer came up and crossed over to the other side. I did it because of visions in my head of killing a deer that would be fresh meat for the family.

Once I had learned where I had to be to be able to shoot at a deer, I would leave home very early in the morning and arrive at the forest, park my car, and be on the ridge, waiting on deer by 5:00 AM. If it happened to be raining that was so much better as it is a lot easier to move through a wet woods without making any sounds than it is when it has been dry for a spell.

I had visions of a deer tied on my car before I left that day. It was those visions that kept me going to Shawnee State Forest to hunt deer. I always imagined myself coming back home, in Gordon, Ohio with a deer strapped on the car. I wondered what the people back home would say? Seeing me with a smile on my face, coming back into town; my car loaded with fresh meat — and a new skin to work into leather.

Life was different getting ready for the hunt — no sex, no smoking and no perfumes. Instead, I wore apple-stained clothes; and had no sex and quit smoking for a week before the hunt. None of this is made-up by me to tell here; it was old-timer's advice from long ago.

Smearing rotten apples on your clothes and abstaining from sex and smoking is what you learned to do if you didn’t want the deer to smell you in the woods. Deer are also attracted to the smell of rotten apples on the ground and that smell will attract them to the tree where they can eat apples. So smearing yourself with apples was a smart thing to do.

I notched the arrow that would do the deed and drew the string and left it go. But, just the sound of that arrow as it slid over the wood spooked my deer. It jumped up and came down and was gone without a trace and without a sound. I stood there in defeated silence and heard the birds start singing again. I smelled like rotten apples all the way back home.