Doe Fever
By Nick Simonson
The first morning of muzzleloader season arrived clear, cold, and calm. With just the faintest bit of dawn edging over the eastern hills, I ventured down to the southernmost stretch of a favorite piece of public access land and followed the flags along the hillside break to the final mark on my GPS. The grass coming up from the cottonwood stand on the riverbank was well-traveled and along the way I noted sign and scat in the beam of my headlamp that suggested heavy doe traffic, perfect for the antlerless whitetail tag I had and for buoying the hopes of harvesting my first deer with my inline. The prospects of the early morning conditions excited me as I crossed the pinch point and entered the open meadow.
I burrowed in against a small stand of buck brush on the hillside. The position gave me shots at trails running at 20, 50 and 100 yards along the narrows formed by the half-iced river. I tucked my hunting pack into the base of the cluster of wrist-thick trunks at my right. The bush’s angling branches provided a nice screen to break up my outline, and another stand down and to my left did the same, creating a 10-to-2 shooting lane with ample cover to conceal my nervous energy. Along with the start of the hunting day, the slightest hint of the gusts to come rolled down from the hills to my southwest.
As I turned my face to the gentle breeze, I caught motion on the far side of the field. My heart jumped as I confirmed through my binoculars that it was indeed a doe and she was tracking directly toward my position on the middle trail. I felt the flux of energy often reserved only for an antlered deer shoot through my body and I began to tremble from head to toe as her shadowy form flowed in and out of the rising and falling grasses, moving like an apparition as the white of her flicking tail appeared from time to time. Lowering my optics, I braced the bottom of the muzzleloader on the steady stick and began to shake violently from the endorphins that were coursing full force through my body. I could hear the thunder of my pulse in my ears and tried in vain to slow my breathing. I kept telling myself “it’s just a doe…it’s just a doe…” to no avail as the distance between us narrowed and she cleared the screen of branches, app
