Kentucky holds a Whitetail Deer Season just for youth
hunters under sixteen years old every year.
This year the season was October 10 and 11.
The morning of the 10th was drizzling and everything was soaking
wet, after several days of persistent
rain.
Fortunately, we have a stand on the farm
that allows us to hunt out of the weather.
The woods behind the stand is Mammoth Cave National park.
We arrived at the stand and with a few minutes
of propane heat, everything was
comfortable
as the wait for daylight and
the hope of
seeing a Deer consumed the morning.
We saw eight Deer in the morning, and 17
coming from the Park onto the
farm the first
evening, but they were too far
for me to
try a shot.
I learned in the Apprentice Hunter Program
not to take a shot we are not
sure of. Although
I fired a lot of rounds at Prairie
Dogs earlier
this year in South Dakota at much further distances, it is harder
on Deer, who almost never stop
moving, so
we determined I could only take
shots to
about 80 yards, and we marked
how far that
was with the range finder when
no Deer were
around.
Sunday morning was calm, dry, and a perfect
day for Deer. We saw four other
Deer, and
in just the place that Dad had
me practice,
a Deer with one spike and a small
clump of
spikes walked out. Dad checked
it out with
the binoculars, and told me it
was still
in velvet and something must
be wrong with
it, and I could take it if I
wanted. We usually
do not shoot our small bucks,
we want them
to have a chance to be big bucks,
but this
one needed to be removed, and
I wanted to
get a Deer, so I set the Sako
.243 across
a chair for a rest. Because of
the sharp
downward angle, I decided to
use the “pop
the balloon” method we learned
on the Lasershot
simulator, and carefully squeezed
the trigger.
The Deer ran about sixty yards, and fell.
The 100 grain Nosler Partition
bullet had
done a great job, with a large
exit hole.
It turned out the top half of
the heart and
most of the lungs were destroyed.
When we looked at the Deer, Dad showed me
it was a Doe!
Matthew Edwards and his Antlered Doe
 |
This was the first time any of us had ever
seen a Doe with a rack, and it is the only
one to be taken on the farm. It weighted
127 pounds, it had plenty of fat, and seemed to be in
good health, it just had an overly large
head.
When I got home, I learned that male deer typically have three testosterone
surges per year: The first testosterone
surge
causes their antlers to start
growing. The
second causes the velvet to start
to peel,
and the third causes the antlers
to fall
off in late winter. It is entirely
possible
for does to have a testosterone
surge. There
are various causes that biologists
have found
for this surge: One reason is
they may have
a tumor, another is that the
doe may have
a hormone imbalance due to something
that
went wrong during her first pregnancy.
Typically,
a fully-functional female deer
cannot have
that second testosterone surge.
If a reproductively
functional doe has antlers, they
will almost
always be in velvet.
This condition is almost always associated
with older does. Dad showed me that this
Doe’s teeth were worn almost completely away.
Some researchers estimate this to occur in
only one doe in every 1,000 to 5,000, a very
small percentage!
This was a very interesting addition to a
fun and exciting Deer Season.
