Tribute to a Duck Dog

A fellow member and outdoorsman on the Virginia Hunting Forum recently lost his best friend. He shared his memories with us, and being the family that we are, it seems that the entire forum cried with him. We wanted to share his tribute to his pal Dutch because it truly measures just how much we hunters adore our dogs and strive for that connection that is inevitable when it comes to our four-legged partners at home and in the field. Thank you for sharing with us, Andy. Our hearts are heavy and breaking for your loss. Many a tear has been shed on keyboards across the state today...

A Tribute to Dutch

SEPTEMBER of 2014 wasn't like the Septembers previous. I was hired on as a professional fire fighter in August with the City of Hampton and the fire academy kept me away from home and the birds five full days a week. So for a change I was a true weekend warrior (but I finally have a real job and the ability to support my family, now a wife and two boys strong). Like many things, the academy will pass and I will have more than enough time for other pursuits outside of my very important career, combined with enough financial free-board to actually do it. For all that, I am more than willing to give up a season.

We got to dove hunt like usual, just not the five and six days a week usual. It was hot those first two Saturdays and my red dog was no longer a puppy at the age of 8, but you wouldn't have known it. Dutch actually got better and better every fall. His temperament and behavior in the blind and on the hunt was absolutely perfect. A model citizen. I wish I could have kept him exactly as he was this past September forever. I would have never wanted for another animal in my life.

By the time late October rolled around, we started to notice something wasn't quite right with Dutch. He wasn't eating like normal. Ever since he was a puppy he would chomp down his food so fast he would make himself sick. We had to buy special bowls to slow his consumption down. Now, we were trying to bribe him with gravy and trimmings just to make him eat. His bowel movements got irregular. At first, we didn't think anything of it. Probably just too much venison trimmings from a deer I shot during archery season... he would be fine in a week. He improved a bit and we stopped worrying. He had lost some weight, which didn't seem like a bad thing. He went to the vet for his rabies shot and the vet didn't seem concerned at all with it.

By Thanksgiving, we knew it was something more serious. Dutch appeared to be going blind. He had no energy to retrieve any longer, despite still having the desire. He was running into things. He was having trouble getting up and stairs were almost an impossible chore. I entertained the thought of hunting him over the Thanksgiving holiday on an easy walk in hunt, but while his ears went up at the word ‘Birds’, his body wouldn't let him do it… and neither would my wife. He was up at 3am to see me off, but wasn't even whining and throwing a fit like the times I left with my coat and a gun case all the years passed. He simply sighed, and seemed to accept that he had seen his day. It nearly broke my heart.

Dutch had a form of epilepsy which gave him occasional seizures when he was younger. He had been on a highly toxic drug called Phenobarbital to control those seizures. We took him off of it cautiously a few years ago, and he hadn't had any episodes since (that we knew of), but we thought it might be a reaction to the rabies shot, since it was a round of vaccines that triggered the disorder to begin with. Phenobarb is very hard on the liver, and while he wasn't showing any symptoms of liver or kidney failure or distress we didn't rule that possibility out. We also feared it could be a tumor or worse, cancer.

It came to head the next week. He stopped eating altogether. He started leaking stool and we knew it was something very serious. Unable to take a day off work due to the academy schedule (you miss a training day at this point you fail, you fail and you get fired), I got Kristi to take him to the vet on the morning of December 5, 2014. I snuck back to my vehicle to check my phone during a break in the day and called her and it was just as we feared. Cancer. It was aggressive and in his bone marrow. The vet was surprised he was still alive at all and said two weeks tops if we were lucky. Lucky?

The selfish side of me (historically the dominant side) wanted to keep him alive and hope it would just go away. But the adult side that had finally set in over the course of this wonderful dog’s life knew what I had to do. I couldn't let that wonderful dog suffer, and I refused to let him die without me by his side. Only having weekends we set ‘the appointment’ for the next morning at 11:30. My brothers at the fire station instantly knew something was wrong, maybe my eyes were puffy, maybe it was my posture or that I was oddly quiet. I brushed it off while my heart broke inside. I rode home with tears in my eyes.

Dutch was curled up in the laundry room by the back entrance door where he usually was, waiting for me to get home like always. I tried not to make a big deal of it when I came home. I stopped and petted him like I have ten thousand times before and let him in the house.

We laid out some old linen on the living room floor and picked up some plain cheeseburgers in hope he might have a nice comfortable evening. He didn't feel up to eating, and unable to stand up any longer I knew he might not make it through the night. Deep down, I prayed that he wouldn't… I didn't think I could handle carrying him into the vet’s office the next day… dreading every second of the morning that passed… waiting for the inevitable. Everybody deserves to die at home with their family, especially this dog. And it still hadn't hit me yet.

I pulled out some old duck hunting DVDs that kept my going through my incarceration in military school and the long hot off-season. Dutch and I used to watch them several times a week… he chewing a bone or us playing mini-fetch with his half-gutted plush duck toy in the living room.

I smiled thinking about that little tiny mallard duck with his squeaker ripped out by puppy teeth, and that one simple memory opened a flood gate of times spend with that dog I hadn't relived in a long time.

________________________________

I WAS 22 years old; a dangerous age. Fresh out of college at The Citadel and working in a local high-end firearms shop catering to the well heeled sportsmen that passed through the low country of South Carolina. My mind was full of dreams about being the next Will Primos and working in the hunting industry. Being on TV, paid to travel and hunt. Maybe going to Africa and becoming that rare American PH. I had a lifetime of opportunity ahead of me, and absolutely zero clue about the real world, how it works or how to get where I wanted to go

It was November of 2005; I met a gentleman named David Solana from Savannah, Georgia. He was looking for a 20 gauge Browning Superposed to match the 12 gauge his father has left him. Oddly enough within a few hours of phone calls and internet searching, I found him one within his budget and made the arrangements for the sale. We got to talking back and forth and I made mention that I was starting to look for a retriever of my own now that I was out of school, and was considering either a Boykin or a Golden.

David smiled and said “Hey, no kidding! Our two Goldens are going to have a litter right around Christmas. I’d love for you to have one!”

He emailed me pictures and credentials and offered me a price that was just ridiculously low and I went ahead and wrote him a check.

His two goldens, Dixie and Cotton, whelped a litter of 13 (7 females and 6 males) on Dec. 31, 2005. I was the first in line with pick of the litter on a male puppy and on February 22, I made the trip to Savannah to pick out my new partner. Twelve puppies is a hot mess if you have never seen that many at once. The pick of the litter female had been sold at the DU banquet the night before for A LOT of money, and there were 6 males to choose from.

It’s not easy to say no to a puppy. They all will run up and love all over you. You have to spend some time with them. I had a couple frozen duck wings and one or two showed almost no interest at all, so that narrowed the field a bit. Three of them were very much into the wing and fought over it and then would carry it off and try to eat it. One of those puppies however, would always carry whatever he had back to me. Even after I had been there for a couple hours, this little guy who they called ‘Bullet’ after the Lynard Skynard song, would amble over every ten minutes wagging his tail just to say, “Hey Boss… just checking in… call me if you need me.”

I knew then that was the one.

The Solana’s lived on a marsh island just off the Savannah River named Dutch Island. So it seemed logical that the dog be named ‘Dutch’.

I have to admit, I cried a couple times on the ride back to Charleston. Dutch rode on my lap the whole way home. He whimpered a few times, but mostly just curled up and slept. I vividly remember tears running down my cheeks, tears of happiness, excitement and anticipation for the years of hunts we would share together.

As we rode up the coastal highway, I rubbed his head and made him a promise, “We are going to have some good adventures together you and me red dog.”

He was a pretty good puppy. He didn't tear up anything too awful. One pair of shoes, the strap on a gun case, a dust jacket off a book. He was hell on plush toys that had squeakers inside and ate up every single dog bed I ever bought him… right through adult-hood. At 9 weeks, he gave me ‘the look’. Anyone who has ever trained a dog knows what ‘the look’ is… it’s that time when the dog decides he is ready to learn, when he stops fighting the leash, understands his name, and in two weeks time, sit, heel, kennel and come are easy to teach.

Dutch was a natural retriever. He just had it. He had a lot of drive to please and while he was never a super-star (due to the shortcomings of his owner) he always did what I expected him to do. 

He was a ‘Water Dog’ trained puppy. I didn't have a ton of money and never will, so we did the best we could together. We trained every day, rain or shine. When he was 8 months old, I scraped together $650 and sent him to Chris Bishop at Goose Pond Kennels in Johnsonville, SC to be force-fetched and polished up where my training was lacking. It was a long 6 weeks, but it cemented the drive in that dog and he was better than I had hoped.

We shot birds that first winter of 05-06 in the low country and I got to experience Arkansas for the first time that year also. We went back home to Virginia and killed a few birds there as well. I moved back to Virginia in early 2007 and went to work for Bass Pro in Hampton, knowing that in two years they would be opening a big store in Richmond I wanted to get to know the company to start in management at the new place. Maybe I would finally get a real job. Working four 10 hour days and commuting 80 miles each way for a while gave me three days off to hunt, and we took advantage of it.

Dutch in his pup-tent

I bought my War Eagle about the same time I got Dutch. We hunted the Paumunky River a bit, but the Mattaponi is where we made our mark. In the days before internet scouting and the ‘Duck Dynasty Wanna-Be’s’ (also known as Hoodies for the hooded sweat-shirts they seem to prefer to wear while hunting to go with all the barrel stickers on their guns) we had the river and the marshes almost all to ourselves. Limits came fairly easy and seldom was there ever a time we didn't at least kill a few. Most mornings we would hunt alone, just the two of us. Our favorite method was to ignore the blind altogether and climb up in the marsh… me in a layout blind and Dutch in his pup-tent. The birds would land right in our laps, the shots were easy and so were the retrieves. Dutch and I felt like all-stars.

Dad would come sometimes and I had a girlfriend who was also into duck hunting that would come occasionally. My two best friends Kyle and Kevin were largely weekend warriors, and starting out families of their own, their time was limited, but we all got to shoot quite a few birds together. Dutch was always there, and for the first 5 years of his life picked up over 100 doves and nearly 100 ducks and geese combined each season. For a Virginia boy whose family owns a combined two acres in neighborhoods and has never made more than $45,000 a year, that’s a right high number of birds.

Girlfriends came and went. I moved in and moved out and moved around like most young bachelors do. Dutch was always my constant. I avoided (not entirely by choice) ever getting a ‘real job’ and worked full-time ‘subsistence’ jobs clinging to my dreams of getting to hunt and write for a living… despite having absolutely no clue how to go about it, nor the connections to get there. I suppose I was living in a fantasy world that consumed most of the best years of my young life. That dog and I lived it up.

I lived over a 4 car garage in Chesapeake for a couple years in my mid-late 20s. Having parted ways with Bass Pro and never looking back at corporate retail again, I went back to work in a small shop doing mostly archery work and firearms sales, while starting to pursue my captain’s license to run a charter boat on the side. Up until I became a father, those were some of the happiest days of my life. Hardly any responsibility, nobody to answer to, just a very basic schedule to keep. It was just a big open space, one bathroom, closet, sink, cabinets and microwave. Most of my cooking was on propane stove outside or the grill. It had a big fenced in yard and a place for my boat. Close to work, it was perfect for the two of us.

The only downside was the place wasn't insulated very well (at all). It had a pellet stove for heat that worked about half the time, and still didn't warm the place up any. It would go out halfway through the night and the pellets would pile up and pour out the sides. That winter was one of the coldest of the last 15 years, and you would have to pee a hole through the ice in the toilet in the morning. Why the pipes never burst is beyond me. Dutch was my main source of heat. He would actually try and crawl in the sleeping bag with me. He was never a very ‘cuddly’ dog, but always had to be touching you… sitting on your feet or up against your leg. If you have ever had a golden, you know exactly what I mean.

When I met my wife, I don’t think she was really wild about Dutch at first, if only because the dog was higher on the ‘importance list’ than she was (for a couple years I even told her as much). But like everyone else, she fell in love with Dutch. The first night we spent together, Dutch actually slept at her feet instead of mine. I was insulted, but took it as a sign that she was worth keeping around.

While he was pretty good as a puppy, he would break bad from time to time as an adult dog. He was a true ninja when it came to stealing food. This dog, normally clumsy and loud and aloof, turned into an apex predator when it came to taking a steak or a cookie off the kitchen counter. He would be in the other room, and you would turn around and it would be gone. You would go to investigate that most likely suspect, only to find him asleep, upside down against the wall... tail wagging when you walked in. It wasn't until I found some crumbs on his nose and subsequently caught him in the act that I stopped questioning my own sanity.

Dutch chewed up my navigational chart three days before I took my exam for my captain’s license. Right out of the blue. There were six other charts rolled up next to that one. Books, toys, bones, shoes… nope he chewed up THAT CHART. It’s impossible to beat a dog with a wet 3x5’ piece of paper but I sure tried my best… not that it mattered… a cross look was enough to make him tuck his tail.

Two weeks before my wife and I got married, Dutch got a sweet tooth and somehow got into the zippered bag where all the custom wrapped and printed Hersey kisses were that we planned to use in the gift bags at our ceremony. I really thought Kristi was going to kill him. 

It’s hilarious looking back on the times he was a stereotypical dog.

                                                   ________________________________

I WAS hunting out of Dad’s boat one morning on the Mattaponi. Like usual it was just Dutch and I and we had killed a limit of teal and mallards. I had a doctor’s appointment at 9:30 so at 8 we picked up our last bird and rolled out. I had just cleared the point of the marsh, probably 8 miles from the ramp when the motor died. I pulled until I was soaked in sweat, it just wasn't going to restart… a solenoid or something electrical had gone out. Dutch and I were stranded.

I called my Dad, who basically had ZERO sympathy and offered no help. Granted looking back I couldn't really expect the man to just drop everything and send a fleet of boats to come get me, but he had contacts and friends and damnit it was 20 degrees, blowing 15-20 and I had two granola bars and a bottle of water. Sorry kid keep in touch and let me know when you make it back. Deuces.

I had the tide incoming for about an hour and wind laid down just enough that I could make decent headway. Dutch stood behind me as I took a knee on the bow with paddle in hand. He wagged his tail in a show of encouragement and I got with it. I probably made two miles in an hour, but when I lost the tide the wind picked up and it started blowing my back down river. I threw the anchor and sat there and cussed my Dad for probably two hours. Not that it was his fault, but it took my mind off being cold.

Not seriously concerned for my life, but still cold, marooned and mad as a wet hen, I decided throw the anchor to wait out the tide and maybe, just maybe, another duck hunter would come by and tow me back. I curled up on the cold floor of that aluminum boat and Dutch tucked himself right up alongside me and kept me warm. He was probably about 3 at the time, and while I cared about him more than anything, it put it in perspective just how much we cared about each other.

Right at sundown as the tide finally began to swing back incoming, my best friend Kevin rounded the bend in our buddy Omar’s boat and towed me the last few miles back. I had paddled, or thrown the anchor and drug myself about 5 ½ miles from the marsh. And I was still mad at my Dad… for weeks!


                                                 ________________________________

FRIDAY evening we went through our old favorites; Duckmen 4 –Straight Powder, Take ‘Em 5 and 6. All the shooting and calling on TV seemed to perk him up at first, but when he tried to lie down and sleep I knew it was just a distraction. He turned his head away from his old favorite whopper junior with cheese (plain) and I knew then we made the right decision as hard as it was to admit it.

I turned down the volume on the TV so Dutch could rest. Everyone else went to bed, but not to sleep. I laid there on the couch next to my best friend as we had done countless evenings over the last 8 years together, watching ducks pour out of the North Dakota heavens on mute, still dreaming about the two of us doing such things in a world where people reached out to hunt with us and landowners actually said yes to grown up boys with handsome dogs and big ambitions.

At 12:30am, Dutch picked his head up slowly and looked over at me, his eyes foggy, almost sad and sunk deep in his now white face. His ears raised a little and it looked like he was trying to stand up and come over to me. I sat down on the floor and rubbed his head and scratched his ears. His tail managed to thump the floor softly a few times and I knew that there was no place he would rather be. Ducks be damned, he lived his life just to see me happy.

He laid his chin on my hand as my other hand softly stroked his fuzzy red head and his breathing got shallow. My eyes full of tears, I told him it was ok.

“Its ok pal. We had a lot of great adventures together didn’t we? I told you we would. And we will again buddy. It’s alright. You’re a good boy. I am really gonna miss you red dog.”

That was all he needed to hear. One last time that he was doing right by the man he lived his life for.

He took a deep breath and I tried to do the same, tears pouring out of my eyes... I tried not to sob, for I knew it would make him upset. His breathing got shorter and shorter and I almost drifted off to sleep with him, dreaming about that 7 week old ball of fur in my lap on the way back from Savannah; the promise of all the times we were to share, all those hot afternoon swims in the settlement ponds on Palm Cove Drive, having to walk the edge of the pond to check for gators before we started long retrieve practice on Daniel Island, the cold walks to the elementary school in Ocean View to play fetch, the wind sprint drills after baseballs in the field behind our house in Suffolk, putting up with the torment of a new baby who thinks the dog is a pony, all the hot afternoons by the sunflowers picking up doves… mouths full of feathers, getting stranded on the river, having to take the decking out of the boat to get his tent up out of the rising tide, picking up and dragging field killed geese, sleeping on his owner’s warm duck coat on the ride back home with a limit of ducks still fresh in his nose.

He sighed slowly and then my friend went to wait for me by that duck filled marsh in heaven. He died doing the thing that was most important to him… being with me… the thing he loved the most. 

Barely able to keep it together, I laid his head on the floor and went in to tell my wife that it was over. He had spared me the pain of the chore I was to do the next morning, something I will always be grateful for. I picked up my dog, wrapped in the linens and laid him on the sun room floor next to my waders and blind bag… exactly where he would have been waiting for me the morning of a hunt.

________________________________

Dutch and his first wood duck drake

HURT but numb, I started making arrangements the next morning. Contacting custom decoy carvers to have a decoy urn made for his remains. A drake wood duck… the first wild duck he ever retrieved, what seemed like just a few months ago now. We should have had five or six more seasons together… and like I did so many times the day before, I cried. That decoy will be with me on every hunt, just like the memory of my first dog… the dog every other dog will always be judged by.

We canceled the appointment at the vet, spared that green mile by grace, but brought his body over so his remains could be cremated. The trip over was silent and tear filled as my wife and I held hands and drove ten under the speed limit just to have a few more moments with our dog. A funeral procession. I looked down in my empty lap for that little ball of red fur, and kept hoping I would feel those wet jowls and cold nose on my shoulder from the back seat as I drove, or hear that tail thumping as it wagged against the rear driver side door. It wasn't until I opened the back gate to let my friend out for the last time that it really sunk in he wasn't going to jump out on his own, tail wagging and ready to go.

Trembling, I reached down and unbuckled his collar and it finally all let go. I cried like I have never before in my life. My hands full of his cold, dark red fur, I sobbed for all the adventures we were still supposed to have together. For the chance to retrieve my youngest son William’s first bird the same way he did for our oldest, Jesse. For the chance to finally make it to Canada with me and hunt the prairies and blackened skies full of mallards, sprigs, specklebellys and snows and endless acres of hunter friendly land.

But he was already there; ears up and tail wagging… waiting for me to get home.

"If tears could build a stairway,
and memories a lane,
I'd walk right up to heaven
and bring you home again."

In loving memory, from Andy and the rest of the Virginia Hunting Forum.

DUTCH

December 31, 2005 - December 6, 2014

Thanksgiving - The Native American Way

Chief Mark Custalow and Governor Terry McAuliffe

I had the opportunity today to witness a tradition that is 337 years strong. Members of the Mattaponi and Pamunkey tribes ventured to the center of Richmond, VA to present wild game to Governor Terry McAuliffe in lieu of paying taxes. Chief Mark Custalow represented the Mattaponi Tribe, and chief Kevin Brown represented the Pamunkey Tribe.

The ceremony drew a rather large crowd. The Governor opened the ceremony with very kind words about both tribes. He announced his well-known plans to pursue all legislation that increases full recognition of Virginia's Native American tribes. He then got down to a personal level to speak about his own hunting adventures with his son. We are fortunate to have a Governor that is very outdoor-oriented and supports our hunting traditions full-spectrum!


Disclaimer: You'll have to excuse the poor photography. I got there a little late, I'm only 5'1", and I was behind some of the tallest people that crowded the front lines. I literally held the camera as high as my little arms would go to snap pics over top of peoples' heads!

.

The first to present was Chief Mark Custalow. They presented the First Lady Dorothy McAuliffe with a beautiful pair of earrings made by a tribe member. They then gifted the Governor with a dancing stick made by the tribe.

To end their segment of the ceremony, they presented a beautiful 6-point buck to the Governor.

Afterwards, Chief Kevin Brown and his tribe presented the Governor with a beautiful necklace and their hefty 7-point buck:

Mattaponi Dancer

The ceremony was ended with a drum song and dance by the Mattaponi people. The Governor announced that both bucks would be donated to Hunters for the Hungry, an organization that donates venison to families in need. This is especially significant during the holiday season!

Here are some additional photos I took at the ceremony:

Mattaponi Tribe member J.V. Custalow

The bucks that were presented to Gov. McAuliffe

Children that attended the ceremony to learn about the tradition. The attendance
of these children is very important to the future of this tradition.

Mattaponi Chief Custalow recording an interview

Pamunkey buck.

Mattaponi buck.

 Click here to see a video of the ceremony from WTVR!

Love this blog? Be sure to visit the Virginia Hunting Forum, Virginia's leading hunting and fishing community on the net! Join in on great discussions there and share your very own hunting traditions!

Rut Report - Early November

The "What" Report?

Anyone that was brought up hunting knows what the rut is. But there are also those who may be new to hunting, or interested in getting into the sport. Those new outdoors men and women may ask, "What's the rut?" Let's have a quick lesson here for some of the beginners...

This is the part of the year that appeals most to hunters. That brief instance of the season that finally makes hiding bucks come out in the open. Some of the nation's largest whitetails are harvested this time of year, and even a portion of those are deer that have been nocturnal for weeks, or even months, before start to come out during daylight hours looking for love. The breeding season, or "rut" as we call it, is brought on naturally by the amount of sunlight that hits a deer's eyes, and registers to their brain. Once that  perfect amount of daylight is reached, it all breaks loose.

Buck "rub" on saplings

One of the first signs you begin to notice are "rubs". When the testosterone levels start to heighten in the male whitetail, they get a sudden urge to let every other deer in the vicinity know it. They will aggressively rub their antlers along the stalks of saplings and, sometimes, mature trees. There are scent glands located in between the antlers of buck deer, and those glands are responsible for leaving scent on the rubbed trees. Rubs may sometimes be seen on neighboring trees for several yards. These are known as "rub lines" and tell you that the buck making the rubs travels that path often. This is usually a good area to hunt if you're seeking to harvest a mature whitetail.

Scrape found in the woods.

Usually in close proximity of rubs, you will start to find large dirt patches conspicuously located next to hanging branches. Many times, when these "scrapes" are found in the middle of the woods, they are highly noticeable because the leaves are completely cleared out. Scrapes are also extremely popular along field edges; many of them in very close proximity to each other. There are sets of scent glands in between the front toes of a buck deer, and each time they make a scrape with their front feet, they are leaving a message there for the next deer that may happen upon it. Also, if you look into a scrape, you may find several piles of droppings. Those droppings are also part of the deer's message. Above a scrape. majority of the time, will be a low-hanging branch. When a buck is making a scrape, he will lick the hanging branches, leaving scent there as well. All buck activity goes full swing before the doe even comes into play.

I've only been hunting for four years, and each year, I make notes of what I observe as far as deer activity during the rut. In Virginia, the rut typically peaks around the 15th of November. This means that usually around the middle of the month, the female whitetail becomes extremely receptive to the male whitetail.

So What's Happening Now?

My current observations here in Central Virginia are going along perfectly with the typical prediction for our geographic area. I've been seeing scrapes and rubs since the beginning of bow season (October 4). Those signs were very aggressively hit almost on a daily basis. This tells me that the bucks in the area are all communicating. Last week, we had a rainfall on Thursday morning, and all scrapes thereafter weren't hit. Even a quick scout around the property on Sunday morning revealed no new scrapes, only old ones. Does have not been showing receptivity here, yet. However, the bucks have definitely been trying to persuade them otherwise.

In the past week of hunting, a nice mature buck was called out into the open via a brief doe estrus bleat call. He was also lured out a couple days later by using tarsal gland scent from a stranger buck, coupled with a light grunt sequence.

Young buck seen trailing

Another younger buck was also seen checking a scrape, then headed on his way down a trail, nose glued to the ground, at a steady trot. He was possibly trailing a doe, but his mind was on the track, not his surroundings. I was bowhunting from the ground, and he nearly walked right into my lap. Bucks tend to lose some of their "common buck sense" during the rut season, which is why so many make "mistakes" that benefit the hunter!

The actions of these bucks, combined with other reports from various parts of the state lead me to verify that the rut will be peaking by the weekend of the 15th. Currently, does are not receptive, but are in pre-estrus. The few does that still had fawns by their side are now alone. Fawns have been seen pairing together. By the weekend and into next week, the first main rut should be in full swing. The activity will obviously differ in different areas of the state based on many, many factors, but this is coming to be the best time to be in the deer woods!




Love this blog? Be sure to visit the Virginia Hunting Forum, Virginia's leading hunting and fishing community on the net! Join in on great discussions there and share your very own rut reports from your area!

First Month Down.

The first month of Virginia's 2014 hunting season is becoming another in the books. The 27-day archery-only season is a great prelude to the upcoming energetic breeding season for Virginia's brown-bodied favorite game animal - the white-tailed deer. Those lucky Virginians who are fortunate enough to bowhunt are able to get into the woods before the deer become pressured, when acorns just begin to fall, and before the bucks put their mind on a mission.

I can still remember the first day of the season...quiet, slightly windy. I didn't see a deer all morning. I sat until about 12 pm, then headed out for lunch and caught a quick nap before heading back to the stand around 2:30. I hunted on the top of a slightly-sloping hill, full of oaks, uphill from a swampy flat. To the other side of me, a freshly-cut corn field. It wasn't until about 6pm that evening that I started seeing deer moving off in the distance toward the field. The only one that came in range was a small 4-point year-and-half-old buck. I admittedly mistook him for a large-bodied doe, until he turned his head just right and I noticed his tiny head gear. The little guy wasn't worth one of my three buck tags, especially on the first day. So I lowered my draw and let him walk. He seemed to still have fawn-like personality attributes; full of playful energy, innocent, inexperienced. In the coming days, however, his brain is going to start telling him to think quite differently.

I've started hunting my own property for the first time in the 8 years that I've lived on it. The terrain is unbeatable. Two good steep hills, rolling valleys, bowls, swamp land, carved creeks, thick cover and open marsh, and the winding Chickahominy River, all nestled on 50 narrow acres. It's a favorite highway for deer, and the quality of the bucks I've been catching on camera is surprisingly not bad despite low-quality management tactics by previous hunters. I've spent some time and energy to try to figure out where they're traveling (where are their highways?), when they're traveling (mid-morning, late evening?), and why they're traveling (food sources, or love sources?). The catch? I've had to try to figure it out it only one short month. All the answers aren't creating a story quite yet, but I believe the process of figuring out the white-tail brain is what keeps a good deal of large corporations in business, anyway! It's an ongoing, lifetime-long process.

From Day One until now, I've only harvested one small doe. But remembering the atmosphere of that day, all the way up to the hunting adventures in the past week, I can definitely tell a difference in the behavior and signs of the deer. I've made more shots on deer this year than I have in previous years. As the month moves along, the tell-tale Virginia temperatures really start to spike up and down, and as the moon rotates its phases, the deer activity has obviously increased. So far, scrapes and rubs have only begun to pop-up within the past 2 weeks. I have yet to see a buck actively chasing a doe, but I have seen lone bucks with their noses to the ground as if following one. And I've had several camera sequences from different locations on the property showing does being followed 2 hours later by a buck. Coincidence?

It's been said that 2014 is predicted to be the year of big bucks. The rut is in its early phases here in the heart of the state, and I honestly feel that it's going to be one heck of a season; if not for me, then for many, many Virginians.



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