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| Panoramic of Ryley in the treestand. |
Due to Ryley’s successful youth hunt we had two deer in the
freezer. This took the pressure off of me for opening day of our firearms
season so I opted to take Ryley on a bit of a journey to see if we could
connect with a sika deer or another nice whitetail. As luck would have it, my brother-in-law,
Ronny, was part of a hunting club on the Eastern Shore about a 30 minute drive
from the public land we were going to hunt. Ronny is my surrogate Father in a
way. My Dad really wasn’t much into hunting and fishing, but Ronny came from a
family passionate about the outdoors. So growing up he was my mentor and it was
time that the three of us spend some quality time together at deer camp.
So if these were Japanese relatives to our American elk,
what exactly were they doing here in the marshes and pine woods of Maryland’s
Eastern Shore? As far as the Maryland Department of Natural Resources can tell
the sika deer were brought to Maryland in the early 1900s by Clement Henry when
he released about 5 or 6 deer on James Island. They currently can be found in
four counties as well as on Assateague Island. They prefer the marshy habitat
which has earned them the name of “Marsh Ghost”. Luckily for hunters in
Maryland they seem to be able to coexist side by side with our native whitetail
and are not in direct competition. This means we have two thriving deer
populations in the state which can be hunted during the same seasons. To find
out more about the Maryland Sika Deer you can read up on them on the Maryland
DNR website.
The original plan was for us to travel down on Black Friday
and spend the night in his camper. We would hunt Le Compte WMA on opening day
and then hunt the private property at his hunting club on Sunday. Going into
the hunt I was optimistic but was definitely prepared for failure. The area we
would be hunting would see high pressure on opening morning. Coupled with the
fact that we both had to hunt out of a climbing treestand and you can
understand what I wasn’t overly optimistic.
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| Safety first. |
Sure enough when Saturday morning came I realized that the
treestands were going to be an issue. Ryley simply didn’t have the strength or
height to properly work the treestand I had for him. My treestand turned out to
be a little easier for him to operate but not by much. So we switched stands
and I helped him get himself in the tree. The problem was he could only get
himself about 7 feet up the tree, with my help. So I fashioned my stand at the
base of the tree and we tried to make do with what we had.
I think we would have been successful that morning had it
not been for the extreme high winds that were keeping the deer bedded as well
as making it almost impossible to hear anything. The only thing we really could
hear all morning were the endangered Delmarva Fox Squirrels running around like
kids playing in the backyard.
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| Le Compte WMA. |
After a few hours we headed back to the truck to go have breakfast/lunch
at deer camp with Ronny. When we arrived he already had the fried potatoes
going along with a couple pounds of sausage already fried up. He whipped up
some scrambled eggs and we sat around eating and talking about our morning’s
hunts. Turns out we weren’t the only ones not seeing deer, sika or whitetail.
The weather seemed to be keeping the deer bedded and we only saw two does
hauled in on four-wheelers that morning.
Buoyed by the fact that others weren’t having any success
either, Ryley and I set back off for the woods to get nestled in. I opted to
not take the treestands as they took too much time to set up and break down and
didn’t make it any easier for us to see. Again as we got comfortable in our
spot the squirrels came out to drive us nuts!
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| Me and Mini-Me. |
We drove back in the darkness in silence. We had closed out
the opening day of deer season completely skunked. We hadn’t even seen a glimpse
of any deer and the only signs of deer around us were the bugles that broke the
silence of the darkness and gun shots indicating the few deer that seemed to
have made it out of bed that day. When we arrived back at camp we received even
worse news, Ronny had read the regulations regarding guest hunters. It would
cost me $50 per person for Ryley and I just to be allowed to go out in the
field to hunt and another $200 if we shot something. For those prices Ryley and
I could go on a really nice pheasant hunt out of state. The saving grace of the
night was Ronny’s hand cut, triple fried, French fries and venison burgers.
On the bright side, we got to sleep in on Sunday morning and
we took our time driving home. Driving back Ryley and I discussed our
successful and not-so-successful hunts this year. The wind had ruined two (one
bear and one deer) of our hunts but we had still succeeded in spending quality
time together as Father and Son. I had the ability to take him to deer camp so
that he could experience it with the man who introduced me to the outdoors and
for that I will be forever grateful, whether we got a deer or not.
So as the sun sets on our deer hunting season this year I am
looking to the future and trying to figure out what we will get ourselves into
in the coming year. I definitely want to get out with Ryley and do some
squirrel hunting before the winter has passed. In the Spring we are going to
try our hand at turkey hunting and I have already committed to bringing Ryley
back down to the Eastern Shore in the early Fall to chase that marsh ghost
again. Until then keep taking your kids outdoors…
