I finshed my BSc at the University of Wisconsin, Stout in 1986. My degree was in Industrial Technology with a concentration in Electronics. So I was a geek ....but lots of geeks are into guns. When I went to Wisconsin, I was amazed as everyone hunted and had guns. In the fall quarter, everyone brought their guns to school and kept them in their dorm rooms. We had more guns than people on our floor. I think the sky would fall, it would rain fire and brimstone, SWAT teams would be breaking down your doors and you would have to run around yelling "Don't Tase me, Bro" if anything like this were to take place today.
The city of Menomonie, where Stout is located had a free public range with berms at 25, 50, 100, 200 and 300 yards. After classes, we often went to the range to shoot. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources also provided public hunting land close to the school so we often went squirrel hunting in those woods (another story). I got a chance to try many different kinds of rifles and shotguns, including black powder pistols and rifles, which were a lot of fun. I had shot rifles before, being in the NCC and hunting at my uncle's coffee estates in Kerala and Coorg (it was legal in the 1970's). My uncle was an avid hunter and he taught me his ethics; If you shoot it, you'd better eat it. If you're not going to eat it, just enjoy watching the the animal or bird. Be a good shot so you can make a clean kill. You don't have a right to make anything suffer. Apart from that almost all of us fauji kids had airguns that we used a lot, so shooting well with a rifle was no big deal.U.W. - Stout
Well, back to Wisconsin. There were a bunch of guys on my floor who were all from the same small town. When hunting season rolled around they took me home with them and we went squirrel hunting several times. After the hunt, we always stopped at someone's house and cooked and ate our bag. When deer hunting season approached, I was invited to go home with one of the guys. His family weas really big into the annual deer hunt. The sons would fly back from California and Colorado just to hunt with their dad. The night before opening morning, their family had a sit down meal to roast Pheasant with all the trimmings. They made this (then 22 years old) kid feel like part of the family. The boys (grown men actually) were running around making deer antlers on their heads and pointing their fingers at each other and saying "Bang". Everyone was excited about hunting again. One of the issues about hunting this steep bluff country is the you often have to drag the deer all the way to the top of the ridge as they often slide down into the valleys after being shot. After dinner, we sat in front of the fireplace and they were telling tall tales about previous hunts and how steep the bluffs were where they had shot "their last monster deer" and how many "people it took to haul that deer up the hill". I went to bed that night dreaming of stately deer prancing through the woods.
Wisconsin is a beautiful state. The area we were hunting was near the Mississippi River in the western part of the state. The Mississippi sits low in valleys here with high bluffs surrounding it. The terrain away from the river mostly consists of gently rolling hills with the high spots being heavily wooded and the low spots being cropland. Common crops grown there are corn and soybeans. The deer live in the woods and since there is ample food in the fields, they live rather well till the crops are harvested. Almost all the area that we hunted in is private farmland and they very jealously guard their hunting privileges. You have to be invited by the land owner to hunt. These farms are several hundreds of acres in size. Wisconsin has a lot of deer as this is ideal deer habitat. There is an ample food supply (at least during the summer), plenty of cover and few natural predators. They are not bothered except for a few weekends a year.There are probably more deer in Wisconsin now than there were in the US when the first white man set foot in the area.
Wisconsin Farmland in Trempeleau County:
On opening morning, we gathered together at about 3:30 am and our host took us out through the harvested fields in his pickup truck and placed us in the spots that he had selected for us. He did not want us to move from the spot because, he did not want us to get in anyone's line of fire. This part of Wisconsin, on opening weekend, was shotgun only and you were entitled to take a whitetail deer of either sex. I was issued a 20 gauge smoothbore Ithaca M37 "Deerslayer" pump shotgun and a box of slugs and told to sit at at certain spot till I was collected. We had in the weeks before taken the time to sight our shotguns in and I was confident that I could hit anything around 50 to 75 yards without too much trouble. By the time I got situated, it was approaching 4:45 am or 5:00 am. In a little bit, it started getting light. Slowly the birds came awake and the first squirrels started emerging from their nests in the trees. I saw a few deer go by some distance away on the way from the fields to their beds. I could see them clearly but couldn't see the bead on my barrel yet, so I didn't even take the safety off. It was a beautiful crisp fall morning, the kind where you can see your breath if you exhale deeply, not too cold and very little wind in the depths of the woods. As it got light, a very light mist started disappearing. The squirrels were scurrying around gathering nuts and playing tag with each other. Birds were chirping at each other. One occasionally heard the drone of a bee or other small insects. I sat back with my gun between my knees and just enjoyed the serene peacefulness of the woods. I saw no more deer that morning. At about 11:30 we were picked up and taken to the farmhouse where we had venison chili and some choice cuts from the previous year's hunt. Even though they drink a lot of beer in Wisconsin, alcohol was forbidden till after the hunt.
As you can see in the photos above there are many narrow strips of woods and the deer will often sit tight there, especially after the sun comes out. They have to be pushed out of there. After lunch we went out again and since the deer had not been moving, they placed three of us at one end of a piece of woods while the others went to the far end to still-hunt their way towards us. Everyone wears "blaze orange" hats and jackets. It is very critical in this type of situation to make sure of your target and what is behind it.
I walked about halfway down the slope of a gully and found a good sized rock to put my back against. It was between two trees and gave me a line of fire all the way up the hill side. About an hour went by and then I heard stealthy steps in the fallen leaves and I gently raised the gun to my shoulder and eased the safety off. The tree on my right side was blocking the view. I held my breath and waited as I sensed that something was close. I blanked my mind, concentrated on the bead front sight and gently put my finger on the trigger. All of a sudden a big doe stepped out between the trees. She was looking back at the way she had come and then she turned her head and looked at me. She was about 30 feet away and the bead was on her chest. I honestly don't remember pulling the trigger, feeling the kick or hearing the gun go off. In my excitement, I had shucked the pump and chambered another round. I don't remember doing that either. The 20 ga. Remington slug caught her on the left side of her chest and she tucked her front legs under her and slid down the hill almost all the way to the road below. I remembered being told to stay put after I shot, so I didn't move from the spot. About fifteen minutes later, I heard the sound of running hooves and raised my shotgun again. This time it was a smaller deer and it was really moving. Once again it did not see me as it was concentrating on its back trail. It was about 40 yards away and I swung with it as it ran past and fired. This deer did the same thing and slid down the hill to stop a few yards away from the first one. I waited till the other hunters showed up and then we went down the hill to the road. There were my two deer laying in the ditch beside the road. We gutted them and slung them into the pickup truck. We were party hunting and so my tag and another one were applied to the deer and then we had to go back and help one of the other guys haul his deer up the bluffs. It took four of us to do that and we were really tired and sweaty after that. In the late fall, it gets dark around 5:30 pm so we were done for the day. It was my first deer hunt and I still remember it as clear as if it happened yesterday.
My first deer had a live weight of about 200 pounds. She as a nice sized doe. I do have a photo, somewhere, of a very much younger me sitting in the back of a pickup truck with that deer. I will have to find it and post it here. Since I lived in a dorm and had no place to put the meat, I gave it to my hosts, who processed it with their other deer. About two weeks later my friend stopped by at my room and dropped of an armload of three inch by twelve inch sticks of deer sausage. It was processed in their town by a small private butcher's shop and it was the best deer sausage that I have ever eaten (to this day).
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