Hunting a Ghost Buck

When I reversed direction in the forest, I came across a set of tracks in the snow that weren't there 15 minutes before. I knelt down beside them. They were very big; a .30-06 rifle cartridge fit easily in either hoof mark. There were drag marks where the buck had taken his strides, and his hooves had pulled up bits of dead leaves. He was heavy.

I considered two questions: did I truly have the skills to track him? And, if the moment came, was I going to kill him?

These questions had germinated in my mind on the drive up to the Adirondacks. I sped along with traffic, listening to Morphine and Nick Cave, not really thinking but feeling the press of important thoughts. I crossed the Mohawk River and moved due north through Amsterdam, and then the town of Perth. Soon the countryside turned wild and rural, and I felt jazzed by the prospect of three solid days of hunting. That is, I was jazzed by the idea of spending three days in beautiful wilderness. When I stepped out of the car, out of the music and into the universal silence of the forest, I knew I had taken on a heavy, serious task.

A friend who lives near Caroga Lake had invited me to stay with him. "Dere's big bucks up here," he told me over the summer. "You should come up and hunt." An interest slowly grew. I had never seen a "monster" buck, and the idea of encountering one became irresistible.

Most people do not have any idea of the power and sophisticated instincts of a full-grown whitetail buck. They are not cute reindeer. They are not dumb overgrown Bambis that jump in front of your Mercedes at the wrong moment. They are wily, tough animals that usually don't live much beyond five years?a spike yearling has four years to make himself big, learn to fight other bucks, and during the autumnal "rut" chase and impregnate as many does as he possibly can. No matter that the cougars and wolves that used to live in the Adirondacks are gone?a buck is a creature shaped by millions of years of predation. He is an animal that knows he is pursued as he himself pursues multiple mates. He has excellent senses of hearing and smell. Hunters talk of being "ghosted" by older bucks, animals that seem to be able to make themselves invisible as they float silently through the forest and into oblivion, leaving the hunter alone and totally bewildered.

The first day I hunted, I cut so many deer tracks?does and sizable bucks?that I thought that my killing a deer was certainly going to happen. I quietly wove my way in the predawn dark through a thick stand of hemlocks until I stood along the edge of a ridge that overlooked a high-walled creek bed. Below me was a sloping hillside of oak trees. I slowly, ever so slowly, made my way down to a wide, black oak stump and settled myself in the snow. Atop many fleecy layers I wore a mottled brown-white-black camouflage coat and pants, a black balaclava and a black watch cap. I wore a blaze orange vest while I moved, but now set it down beside me.

I was at a great vantage point, able to survey the wall of hemlocks above me. I saw over and down into the creek bed. And I looked over to my right and up the other ridge. The deer were supposedly moving over this place, Oak Ridge, on their way to winter range in the Great Sacandaga Lake valley. The bucks had probably been out most of the night running does, and now would be moving back to bedding areas to snooze through the morning.

At one point I saw some does at a great distance, but nothing else came through. I spent four hours in that spot and my left arm grew stiff from supporting the weight of the rifle. My haunches and toes were totally numb. The temperature hadn't topped 25 degrees. By 10 o'clock I slowly walked out, seeing nothing. I went to my buddy's house for lunch, took a long nap on the sofa with the cats sleeping atop me, and then around 3 o'clock I went back to the very same spot on the slope of oak trees. Now, the bucks would be up and moving after does again.

Does did pass me by, on the ridge on the other side of the creek, but no big buck was in tow. To test myself I quickly aimed my rifle and put the crosshairs on a doe's shoulder and followed her as she moved. It was merely a test of reflexes and vision, but not one of will.

As I feel asleep that night I wondered about what I intended to do. Most hunters head out in the early dark with the matter already decided, but I'm one to believe a little a priori ambivalence is a good thing. And I see a hunter's relationship with wild animals as one of terrible ambivalence. On the one hand we very much like and respect all wild animals (and I'm talking here about ethical people, not the slobs who kill for killing's sake and sell trophy racks to Japanese businessmen), but on the other hand, we intend to kill and eat certain animals. I actually don't eat much meat?at least, not much cow, pig or chicken?but I do my best to get game meats in the freezer to last all through the cold months.

I am also a superstitious person. I don't keep the first of a kind. The first keeper striper I caught, I put back. The first sockeye salmon I caught, I put back. The first pheasant I had dead to rights, I let go. And I decided I was going to do the same with the first big buck: see him, know him and leave him.

Then on this second day, here I was on the track of a tremendous buck. The day was icy-cold, a little damp, and I had decided to do a little walking instead of sitting. I had also gone to a different place, a large, relatively flat woods of hemlock and beech trees. In the morning I had crossed two sets of big tracks, one going, and one coming back. And now, in the chill, dark afternoon, I was on him as he was going back out to chase does. I set off, walking steadily, my white breath drifting sideways in the breeze. I paused every hundred paces, bent and stared ahead intently to see if I could pick up the buck's shape or movement. Here and there were spots that I thought might be him, his gray coat merged with a network of beech-tree branches. Logs and limbs took on the dark shape of his big neck and head. But he was never there. I moved on.

He went down a shallow ravine and through a wet, swampy place of standing water. I was delighted to see the places where he had broken the skein of ice on the water, flakes of ice floating and swirling in the eddies his motion had stirred up. The edges of his tracks on the opposite slope were clean and sharp, the churned-up snow crystals still gleaming. He was walking, his stride unhurried. He did not sense me. My heart quivered.

I took this slope very slowly, pausing three times, and at the top I stuffed myself against a hemlock trunk and peered through the trees. There, I see him. Yes?for perhaps half a second I thought I saw his back, neck, head and wide-spread rack of antlers. He was shuffling, easygoing with his head high. He had regained strength during the day while he slept. I checked my watch: 3:45. Sundown was just after 5 o'clock.

Now I felt a very serious intent. I felt serious enough to shoot him. I wondered just how to catch up with him, get an angle on him and make the shot count.

The buck's tracks came to a snow-covered dirt road, and I held myself back from the tree line. His hoof marks were clear in the snow on the other side of the road. If he meant to turn to watch behind him, this was where he was going to do it. I slowly backed up, moved fast downslope, strode briskly and quietly across the road, then crept back the 100 yards to where the buck had crossed. I picked up his trail, turned and saw where it crossed a deer trail.

The trail was battered and pockmarked with doe tracks. Ladies galore. But the big buck kept going. His tracks led away from the doe trail, deeper into the woods. I began to lose heart that I was going to catch up with him before dark, but I kept going. Here he ghosted me.

His tracks led to a wide, flat, snow-covered rock and stopped. He had moved onto the rock and turned, facing left. But there were no tracks on the ground left of the rock. I stepped back to see if he had reentered his own tracks, but he had not. I became confused. I went back to the road, picked up the buck's hoofprints, followed them across the doe trail, followed them to the rock, and again lost him. I circled the rock. Nothing. I went ahead then zigzagged back to the rock. No tracks at all.

I bent over the rock and looked at those big prints. How heavy must he be? What had he done? I realized he had taken wing.

I quietly stepped over to the doe trail, maybe 20 feet away, and I found it. One big scuff mark. The buck had leapt from the rock right into the doe trail. The corridor must have been full of doe perfume, and after passing through it the buck made his stealthy, turning leap. I walked along this trail and in places in the mashed snow saw parts of his big hoofs. Once in pristine snow I found one perfect print.

Nowhere did this buck leave the trail, no matter how I looked for traces of the big hoofs turning into the woods. He had lost me, and left me to retrace my steps through the woods in the dark without having to consider taking a shot.

The next day, the last day of hunting, a steady, cold rain came down and washed away the buck's tracks. But I staked out his woods. I sat near the road, near the buck's trail from the day before. I waited, very much wanting to see him. My rifle was loaded, but I was going to let him pass. I just wanted to know what he was like. But he did not appear as I sat waiting in the rain.