Behind the Lines: by David Heiller

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...

David Heiller “Dad there’s a deer out in the field.” I was only half awake when Noah said that on Saturday morning. I had heard him come down the stairs at 6:15, half an hour earlier, so I got out of bed to give him a little moral support. It’s nice to have someone to mumble to before an early outing. The temperature was a balmy 32 degrees, but he had on long johns, sweat pants, wool pants, two pairs of socks, a T-neck, a jacket, a sweat shirt, a stocking cap, and choppers. For some reason, we think of deer hunting as a bone chilling experience, and Noah wasn’t taking any chances. I went back to bed, still half asleep, as Noah stepped into the dim dawn. Then he told me about the deer in the field, and I was wide awake. I stepped onto the deck, and looked at the field. I heard the deer snort before I saw it. It sounded like an air horn. It’s a loud and startling noise even when you are expecting it, and I wasn’t. “See it?” Noah asked. My eyes, even with glasses,...

David Heiller The alarm clock rang at 5:30 a.m on Saturday, November 8. I was waiting for it to ring. I hadn’t slept much. First day of deer hunting will do that, even if you aren’t going hunting. I got out of bed, dressed, went upstairs, and woke up my son, Noah, 14, who was going deer hunting for the first time. I lit a fire in the wood stove. We ate cold cereal. Noah put on the warm clothes that he had laid out the night before in the kitchen: long johns, snow pants, T-neck, jacket, blaze orange sweatshirt, stocking cap, choppers. It was 33 degrees outside. You can never be too warm when you are hunting. We headed out to the deer stand at 6:15. I had made the stand a few days earlier, nailing a platform between an oak tree and a basswood at the edge of the woods. It was about 12 feet high. We saw a lot of deer tracks near the stand. Noah climbed up. I headed back to the house. It wasn’t big enough for both of us. He came in at 9:30. He hadn’t seen anything from the ...

David Heiller My son, Noah, is going deer hunting for the first time this year. I bought him a license. He is 14, and because he is under age 16, he can shoot either a doe or a buck in our woods. I will be going with Noah, but I won’t be hunting or carrying a gun. I didn’t buy a license for myself. Noah Most people don’t know that DNR game warden Curt Rossow of Willow River was the person responsible for letting youths shoot either a buck or doe (in areas where antlerless permits are given). He told me on October 28 that it took his daughter, Heidi, seven years to get an antlerless permit. Now it’s possible to get one right away. Young hunters have a better chance at success, which will more likely keep them hunting. Thanks, Curt! I went deer hunting a few times when I was Noah’s age. I used an old 12-gauge pump shot-gun that we had. It was in bad shape. The stock had electrical tape holding it together. Luckily it didn’t misfire and kill anybody. It had a tendency ...