David Heiller
The mark of a good deer hunter isn’t always in his or her marksmanship. The Bruce and Sandy Lourey family of
Moose Lake proved that on November 7.
Bruce Lourey, 53, was hunting that Sunday morning on land that his
brother, Dal, owns west of Kerrick.
Bruce saw a buck early on that opening morning. He shot at it
three times while it was running.
After the third shot, the deer flopped
out flat,
like it was dead. Bruce was confident that he had killed it. He still
had a shot left, but he thought he should reload before he walked over to it.
“By the time I got two or three more bullets in there, I hadn’t
even gotten them in the gun yet, he jumped up and took off running,” Bruce
recalled on November 15.
Bruce watched where it went into the woods and started trailing
it. “I kept thinking, he’s only going to go a hundred yards. He kept going and
going and going.”
Bruce looked for the deer for about three hours. Two times he
crossed the Willow River, wading in his wool pants and leather boots. But he
couldn’t find it.
At about 11:30 he marked his spot, then went in for lunch. He told
his two sons, Andrew, 17, and Jake, 16, about what had happened, and they went back
with him.
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They tracked the deer through the woods. It wasn’t easy, because
the deer had stopped bleeding when it got on a trail.
They saw that the deer had run up to a log on the trail. Bruce and
Andrew figured it had crossed over the log and kept going down the trail. Jake
had a different hunch. He got down on his hands and knees by the log, and for
about an hour he scoured the ground like Sherlock Holmes. All he lacked was a
magnifying glass.
Jake finally got a break when he found a spot of blood in the
other direction. He saw that the deer had reversed course at the log and walked
down to the river. There Jake found a track in the sand and another drop of
blood.
“It had actually run up alongside the log and went down the river.
It threw us off there,”
Jake explained.
Bruce and Andrew crossed the river, using a bridge, while Jake
waited where he was. They saw that the deer had crossed the river there,
because there was more blood on the ground. It had started bleeding again.
“It tried to go up a hill and fell back down and started
bleeding,” Jake recalled.
Bruce figured it couldn’t have gone far. He started walking in a
big circle around the spot.
Jake went straight ahead, up the hill to a trail and across it.
The deer jumped up and took off about 10
yards in front of
him. Jake shot it two times with his Remington .270, and the animal died.
The deer had an eight point rack and weighed about 200 pounds,
Jake estimated.
Bruce wasn’t happy that he didn’t kill the deer cleanly in the
first place. “Ι’m not very proud of it, put it that way,” he said.
“It all started when I didn’t make the very best shot. I’m getting
old, I don’t shoot as good.”
But he was glad that they found it. I could tell that it wasn’t a
matter of if they
found a deer but when they found it.
“Ι don’t
think there’s anybody else that would have found it except us,” he said without
a hint of boastfulness. “We just basically hounded it until we had it. Jake
really spent a long time down crawling around on his hands and knees, sorting
that trail out, where did that deer go.”
“We don’t give up easy.”
I asked Bruce if he was proud of his son. It was a dumb question.
Bruce answered by saying, “I’m glad he didn’t get lost anyway.” In case you
don’t speak the language of males, that’s the way a guy says, “Yes, I am
extremely proud of my son.”
I asked Jake if he considered himself a patient person. “I’m
remotely patient,” he answered with a self-conscious laugh. “Once I’m sitting
on the stand, Ι get a
little edgy but I don’t have a problem with tracking deer.”
I asked him another dumb question: “Did you feel it was important
that you find the deer?”
Duh!
“Yes, definitely,” was Jake’s simple answer. Jake shot a six point
buck the following day.
As for our household, we did not get a deer. Noah is already
planning his strategy for next year.
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