Whenever hunter-pressured whitetails go nocturnal, nothing beats an

At high noon a few December muzzleloader deer seasons ago, I was on a deer drive with friends and acting as a stander at a likely location on the corner of a briar-infested woodlot bordering a hayfield. According to all the fresh tracks there were plenty of deer seeking refuge in the thick and snarly cover, and I was anticipating plenty of action, which can be the case with a well-organized deer drive.

Deer drives don’t have to involve a lot of hunters, especially when everyone knows the lay of the land. In this instance, there were 5 of us, with 3 being standers at key “escape” locations, and 2 drivers, who would be using their scent on the wind as well as their zig-zag movements to dislodge any deer from notable safe havens.

The 2 drivers were Bob Walker and Dick Randall, both of Kingston, who have been performing deer drives together for over 4 decades, and they know their craft well, and the ground we were hunting. There was an easterly breeze that day, and deer prefer to escape matters with a headwind, and being on the northeast corner of the woodlot, I had a great view of any deer trying to escape to the east across a tilled field.

I was armed with my scoped, 50 caliber Traditions Vortek StrikerFire, a hammerless muzzleloader which has proven to be a very dependable and accurate hunting rifle. However, when the dozen or so deer exploded out of the cover, they were at least 100 yards away, all grouped up, and running full tilt. There were 3 bucks in their midst, but it wasn’t an ethical shot to even attempt. I remained at the ready, hoping for something much closer and offering a viable shot. I still had a buck tag in my pocket, and bagging a nice plump doe was certainly on the agenda.

No more deer came bounding out, and I eventually heard crackling brush and saw a hint of hunter orange, as Dick Randall approached near my position, while forcing his way through some thorny shin-tangle. He had only about 30 more yards to reach the edge and complete his drive.

That is when a huge doe came leaping out of the brush and stopped fully broadside at 20 yards, while she stared back at Randall’s steady advance. I automatically put the crosshairs on her shoulder and touched the trigger, which was followed by a loud “click” due to a misfire, which was my first ever with a 209 primer. The doe briefly snapped her head in my direction and then started loping away while I frantically broke open my muzzleloader, removed the bad primer and was in the process of digging out another when a huge buck jumped out and stopped exactly where the doe had been. He then began casually loping after her.

Well, folks, you might say I was in a bit of a frenzy re-priming my muzzleloader right then, and I do believe I did it in record time. The buck was about 60 yards away when I put the crosshairs on him and had he angled left or right for a quartering shot, I would have fired, but he remained going straight away. I’m none too fond of what is called a “Texas heart-shot”, because if you are off just the slightest, you will most likely have a crippled and hard to recover deer on your hands.

Dick Randall was soon stepping out of the cover, and he could tell by my wide-eyed expression something extraordinary had just transpired, and according to him I was “speaking in tongues”!

The reality is, that big buck was never meant to be mine. Had my muzzleloader not misfired, I would have shot the doe dead in her tracks, and would have been standing there with an empty rifle when that huge buck came bounding out. And yep, folks, I would have still ended up “speaking in tongues”! As for my misfire, after the drive, my muzzleloader fired like clockwork into a stump. Such happens.

A very memorable deer drive occurred a couple decades ago during a muzzleloader deer season, when my son Josh came home from college for the Christmas Holidays. It involved just the 2 of us, and it is a drive technique I refer to as “active team hunting”. It was midday, after not seeing any deer activity in the morning, when I decided to check a property we had permission to hunt. There was an impending snowstorm which was just starting up and a couple inches had already come down. That is when we saw the very fresh deer tracks, possibly a doe with a buck in tow, crossing the farm lane, and I stopped our Jeep right there and we got out and readied our muzzleloaders.

I told Josh to head on out to the end of an evergreen shelterbelt and I locked onto the deer tracks and went into a double-time gait through the heavy cover. As fresh as those tracks were, especially with the snowstorm picking up, I knew the deer were close by and it wouldn’t take them long to figure out I was “dogging” them, and my hope was they would try to circle around me and head in Josh’s direction.

I found the tracks where the two deer had milled around a bit when they sensed me on their trail and took off in overdrive on an angle towards Josh’s position. I went into overdrive as well to keep them going in a straight line. Nope, folks, I can’t run anywhere near as fast as a deer, but the deer didn’t know that. I heard the boom of a muzzleloader up ahead, and soon came upon Josh who had an excited expression on his face, and I could see deer hair whisking around on the snow-covered ground.

The storm had reached blizzard proportions when a doe suddenly came exploding out past Josh, closely followed by a buck, which Josh shot in the ribcage at near pointblank range (close enough that the muzzle blast created a bald sphere in the hair surrounding the entry hole). I could see lung blood on the snow, but it was quickly disappearing due to fast accumulating snow, and I knew this was no time to wait. I told Josh to cover the left flank while I stayed on the blood trail, which soon disappeared.

Fortunately, the buck had only gone about 40 yards before piling up against a tree with a visible foreleg sticking up out of what soon would have become a snowbank. It didn’t take Josh and I long to field dress the buck and get it to the Jeep, and then quickly head for home. The Thumb ended up being literally shutdown for the next couple of days due to the snowstorm.

Hunters these days tend to wait for the deer to come to them. For me, there are certainly times to take the hunt to the deer. Good, old-fashioned deer drives are something I dearly look forward to.

Author
Recent Posts

Tom Lounsbury

Tom Lounsbury has been an outdoor writer and photographer for more
than 40 years and has had his weekly radio show, “Tom Lounsbury
Outdoors” for more than 20 years. Tom grew up on a farm in
Michigan’s Thumb, and it is where his first outdoor adventures began
as a kid accompanying visiting pheasant hunters into the field during
the “pheasant hunting heyday” of the 1950’s and 1960’s. It is a passion
he still has to this day and being the 4 th generation to own the family
farm, he has put most of it into conservation programs with a focus on
wild pheasants, which in turn helps all wildlife.
Being an outdoor communicator, Tom appreciates all the outdoor
adventures he experiences in different places, and especially the
people he meets in which to share them.