Finding where bucks were isn’t a problem this time of year. Finding where they are is the challenge. (Jeff Lund / For the Juneau Empire)

Finding where bucks were isn’t a problem this time of year. Finding where they are is the challenge. (Jeff Lund / For the Juneau Empire)

I Went to the Woods: Really skilled or really lucky

My success may come in spite of my method, not because of it.

We entered the muskeg peppered with small cedar trees and lousy with salal. I know devil’s club probably has the worst reputation for being viciously annoying, but patches of unreasonably noisy salal might be the plant I look least forward to encountering on a hunt. Even the slightest contact results in a sound that resembles opening a bag of tortilla chips and crushing them with your hands. Worse still, is while everything else loses its leaves and therefore the power to blow a stalk, the salal stubbornly stays green out of loyalty to the deer – both for warning and for winter sustenance.

My wife, Abby, and I slowly made our way through 75 yards of tortilla chips to an opening. I stopped at the sound of what was either a deer bumping out of a bed and tearing down a knob choked with brush, or an infant squirrel walking through a patch of salal.

I called and we sat before moving up and over a hill to a network of muskegs that would be our focal point for the day.

Abby stayed at the main one while I walked slowly on the edge, careful to keep my heels out of the muskeg to avoid sinking.

My muskeg hunting program is either a brilliant hybrid that incorporates calling and movement, or an impatient system completely dependent on luck. Rather than posting up, calling and attempting to draw in a buck from a great distance, I call softer, focusing on the muskeg in front of me. I’m hoping for a head turn, something to stand up or step out. I sit for 15 to 20 minutes — rather than 45 — then move on. The problem with this is that my success may come in spite of my method, not because of it. It’s impossible to really know because there is no postgame analysis, just conjecture. Does this tactic work, or is it simply a matter of me doing the same thing so often it’s bound to work once in a while? Did I bank-in a 3-pointer then just start calling glass from that point on?

I called, waited, then moved slowly and quietly through a transition to another small muskeg roughly fifty yards away. Since deer sometimes employ stillness as a safety mechanism, it’s beneficial to turn around and be sure nothing is moving behind you. I stopped and checked my six. To my right was a buck that I either passed on my left and didn’t notice, or that had emerged from the brush in the time it took me to cover the last thirty feet. Either way, I racked and fired.

Perfect? Maybe, maybe not. It’s clear that slow, quiet movement with an ever-present awareness of the wind and expectation of seeing a buck are universal standards of effective hunting. That leaves the effectiveness of the call.

Though the buck was moving parallel and on the other side of a thick stretch of timber from where I had last called, had it come in, not seen anything, then moved on? Would it have come all the way in had I been patient? Had I got the thing to stand and move just as I planned? Maybe it was just moving and was oblivious to my calls.

Regardless I was happy that I didn’t have to worry about being quiet going back through the salal on the way to the beach and my wife and I would be able to fill in that bare corner of the freezer with prime, Southeast Alaska venison.

• Jeff Lund is a freelance writer based in Ketchikan. His book, “A Miserable Paradise: Life in Southeast Alaska,” is available in local bookstores and at Amazon.com. “I Went to the Woods” appears twice per month in the Sports & Outdoors section of the Juneau Empire.

More in News

The Norwegian Cruise Line’s Norwegian Encore docks in Juneau in October, 2022. (Clarise Larson / Juneau Empire File)
Ships in Port for the Week of June 4

Here’s what to expect this week.

Cars and people move past the City and Borough of Juneau current City Hall downtown on Monday. The Assembly Committee of the Whole unanimously OK’d an ordinance Monday night that, if passed by the full Assembly, would again ask Juneau voters during the upcoming municipal election whether to approve $27 million in bond debt to fund the construction of a new City Hall. (Clarise Larson / Juneau Empire)
Voters could see proposal for a new City Hall back on the ballot this fall

City signals support for $27 million initiative, after $35M bond last year fails.

(Michael Penn / Juneau Empire File)
Police calls for Sunday, June 4, 2023

This report contains information from law enforcement and public safety agencies.

(Michael Penn / Juneau Empire File)
Police calls for Saturday, June 3, 2023

This report contains information from law enforcement and public safety agencies.

The Hōkūleʻa, a double-hulled and wind-powered traditional Polynesian voyaging canoe, sits at a dock as it navigates throughout Southeast Alaska in May. On Saturday the canoe and crew members will be welcomed to Juneau in preparation for the canoes launch days later for its four-year-long global canoe voyage called the Moananuiākea. (Courtesy Photo / Chris Blake)
Celebration of four-year Polynesian canoe voyage to kick off Saturday at Auke Bay

Voyage set to circumnavigate 43,000 nautical miles of the Pacific Ocean beginning in Juneau.

On the Trails: A mallard family, juncos, and tadpoles

One evening in late May, long after most female mallards had gone… Continue reading

(Michael Penn / Juneau Empire File)
Police calls for Friday, June 2, 2023

This report contains information from law enforcement and public safety agencies.

A lifeboat from the Sapphire Princess cruise ship loads passengers and crew from the Wilderness Discoverer after an engine fire on the vessel Monday morning. No significant injuries were reported and U.S. Coast Guard officials said the disabled vessel will be towed to Ketchikan. (Photo by Dan Reilly)
Nearly 70 people rescued after engine fire aboard small cruise ship in Glacier Bay

No significant injuries reported as large cruise ship, Coast Guard respond to disabled vessel Monday

Most Read