Who’s stalking whom?

by Gary Catt –

So, it’s deer season — bow season to be exact. I know this only because of an incident I observed the other day along Allens Hill Road. True confession: I’ve never hunted a deer. Killing and eating deer is no issue with me. I’ve been the beneficiary of some tasty eating courtesy of friends.

Those same friends were always pumped up with stories of the hunt, the cagey behavior of their prey and disasters in the field that resulted in great success or laughable failure.

That brings me back to Allens Hill Road on a beautiful sunny day. I’m motoring along when my eye was pulled to movement in the backyard of a farmhouse. Wow. It was one, big, well-antlered buck. He was slowly mincing along and I slowed almost to a stop. My first thought was he appeared to be wounded.

With each slow step he lifted his legs high in an exaggerated motion, like he was tip-toeing. He carried his head low, between his knees and he was staring straight ahead focused on a treeline separating the backyard from the adjoining field. It was like he was sneaking up on something.

Creeping along in my car, I paced the buck for a couple moments and then moved on. As I passed the adjoining farm field I saw the object of the buck’s focus, a camo-clad hunter, decked out in full regalia trudging up through the field to set up in the high ground above the farm.

The clever buck was tippy-toeing around behind the hunter to find a safer place to be.