sabre

It had snowed early that year, earlier than normal. The farmers had just gotten their crops out of the fields that late November, when one late afternoon the northwest sky turned cloudy and an angry dark blue. The wind picked up and at first the flakes were few and far between. But, within a few minutes the sky was white and the ground became whiter and whiter......and so it began.

Winter took a great hold on us that year, giving us more snow every 2 or 3 days. Sometimes only a little, but usually 3 inches or more. The roadside ditches became clogged with huge, great drifts of snow that sometimes spread themselves over the road and then had to be opened with the V-plow of the county road grader or truck. We all settled in for what seemed like it would be a long winter, with cold and snow and wind in abundance.

Late one afternoon in December, my phone rang. It was my friend Tom, the local DNR conservation officer..."I need help", he said. Someone had called him about a buck deer that they had shot at, just at the close of hunting for the day. The deer had been hit, but it had jumped the fence and run into the protected wildlife refuge of 4 Meetings Lake. I couldn't understand why Tom was calling me about a wounded deer. Deer are in such abundance in this area as to be nuiasance, with hundreds of them being hit by cars on the highways in the county each year. To go out and look for a wounded deer that would ultimately end up as an easy meal for the coyotes and vultures didn't make much sense.....until he said, "I think it's Hercules!"

4 Meetings Lake, is a large lake that is surrounded by timber of evergreens and hardwood trees. It sits along one edge of the 2 square mile timber that was made into a state park in the 1930's and the entire lake, timber and park area is a no hunting wildlife preserve. For the last 3-4 years, while fishing the lake, I had occasionally seen an unusually large buck, with an unusually large A typical rack of antlers. His rack was unique in that it had a tine on the right side that pointed straight down and a tine on the left side that pointed backwards, instead of up. Now, I've seen thousands of deer over the years, but this one was so uniquely large in both body size and rack size, that I had started to call him Hercules. Tom had seen him many times too and we often talked about him when we got together. Tom thought that we should go into the wildlife preserve to track him and find him if he died....he was just to magnificent to leave to the coyotes and the vultures. I agreed. Though a deer hunter myself, I had always hoped that this magnificent buck would not hunted, so that he could pass along his genes to several more generations.

It had been snowing earlier in the day and had cleared off for a bit around noon, but was snowing again as I pulled my pickup off to the side of the road, along one side of 4 Meetings Lake timber....it was 6pm. The sun had set almost an hour ago, so we would be tracking in the dark. I had my 2 Maglites fully charged...one in hand and one shoved into my belt deep inside my insulated overalls. Though the temperature was around 15 degrees, there was no wind....the night was as still and calm as could be. You could almost hear the huge snowflakes falling through the air and whistling past your ear. I wore a heavy thermal sweatshirt under the bib front of my insulated overalls...knowing that we would be walking and climbing through timber and hills, a heavy jacket would not be needed. Tom showed me where the young boy had told him he had taken his shot at the trophy deer. The young hunter had taken a bad shot......late in the day with fading light and he had told Tom that he could not see the bucks whole body. Though you don't like to see it...it is understandable coming from a new or young hunter....it's called "buck fever" ......excitment and desire sometimes over rule good judgement and common sense. It's something that as a hunter education instructor I teach about.....how to over come that urge to shoot when the facts of the situation don't add up. The snow was full of deer track....this was a spot that they normally left the wildlife area, crossed the gravel road and went onto private property on the other side, in search of corn on the ground in the harvested cornfield. The tracks of Hercules were easy to pick out...they were twice the size of the others. We crossed the road ditch and made our way to the barbed wire fence that ringed the entire 2 square miles of park and wildlife refuge. Using our flashlights, we found the spot where Hercules had jumped the fence.....it had hair and some hide on it. We knew then that Hercules must've been hit by the young man's slug, because leaping this fence should have been an easy task for Hercules. We had each seen him clear fences with feet to spare, but the hair and hide made it seem obvious that he had been hit.

We crossed the fence and used our flashlights to sweep the area for more tracks from Hercules. I found them after just a few moments and called Tom over. "Looks like he must've been hit in left hind quarter," I said. "See that long streak in the snow, just before his hoof print? He's dragging his left hind leg just a little." There were a few drops of blood on the snow, where he had landed from jumping the fence.....bright, dark red and frozen solid on the snow. He would be easy to track for awhile, with his new, distinctive left hind foot track....but we knew we had to get going, before the snow that was falling filled in and covered up his tracks. We turned and headed into the evergreens to see if we could find this magnificent animal. The snow flakes increased in frequency and size. Now about the size of a quarter, one of them hit me dead center, right between the eyes.....

TO BE CONTINUED......