Leggett: Wide Load a miss this time around at Hotel California
CAMP VERDE — Any doubt I had about the Central Texas rut was wiped out by the string of dead bucks lying in the middle of the road, off in the ditch or just along the shoulder.
I was driving from my house in Burnet to Camp Verde Ranch, so I had to see them to avoid running over them myself. There were dozens smashed to bits by big trucks and then cars passing over their remains. Most were youngish bucks, though there were a few older animals among the dead.
At Camp Verde Ranch, the day that the rut goes crazy is Nov. 8. I have learned that over a number of years of hunting on Bobby Parker’s ranch near Verde Creek. Deer sightings had been few during the first few weeks of the season as the animals stayed way back in the brush, picking up acorns that were dropping from the live oaks.
Leggett: Ambushing wild turkeys not the correct way to hunt the bird
Before the acorns get wet and start to sour, deer can make a pretty decent living under the oaks, picking up acorns and then moving a few feet away to rest and digest their meals.
I was headed down to hunt a specific buck with former head of Texas Parks and Wildlife, Andrew Sansom, making his first trip to the ranch. The buck I wanted him to kill was a super wide deer I’d named Wide Load. He had been pretty steady during morning hunts at a stand we call Hotel California after the classic Eagles anthem.
He has lived within a few hundred yards of that blind for several years. I saw him the first time three years ago and he was an older buck then. It should have been easy.
This was going to be a quick and dirty hunting trip, one afternoon and the next morning, and so I thought we could hunt Hotel California in the morning and Lower Air the first afternoon. But first we needed to drive around a little to let Sansom get a feel for the ranch.
We saw a couple of mature bucks and half a dozen does on that first round and then traveled back to the Lower Air blind and unloaded our gear. We sat quietly for more than an hour until a 4-year-old buck showed up. He’s a buddy of Wide Load and anticipation amped up when he came ambling in from the cedars to the left of the main road.
More:New Great Pyrenees a gentle giant protecting the yard from hawks, owls
With nothing to distract him and no other deer coming in to feed, the buck stayed for a long time, stopping to look back off into the tree line from which he’d come. He eventually got bored or saw or smelled a hot doe and he went back into the brush.
Soon he was replaced by three does and a spike. We watched them until dark when they decided to move on and give us a chance to exit the tower blind and walk back to the truck.
The following morning, we were up and ready to go well before daylight. It was cold and dark, but we parked and walked into Hotel California before sunrise to begin our wait.
We saw four or five bucks out chasing, looking for does but Wide Load was a no-show. That was the first time I’d been to that blind in the morning without seeing him and it gave me a sinking feeling that we’d made a mistake coming here.
Later that day, I got a text from ranch manager Joey Connell. He included a photo taken at 7:30 that morning. The trail camera clearly showed our buck feeding quietly at the Lower Air blind, while we were sat less that half a mile away watching almost nothing.
As we made a quick trip around the ranch, we saw five or six big mature bucks out cruising for does. None of them was our guy.
Just the luck of the draw, I guess, and so we made plans to come back soon and try again. Wide Load will wait for us, I’m sure.
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Large buck proves hard to find in November hunt
