Wes Greenrose, Jr. has been hunting almost as long as he’s been walking, if you count the years before he was allowed to carry a gun. His father Wes Greenrose, Sr. would take him in the woods with him and together they’d set up blinds down on Dutch Neck. Wes, Sr. no longer hunts much, but Wes, Jr. has the bug, and still hunts on Dutch Neck. He bow-hunts, too, taking advantage of the expanded season that opened this year on Sept. 7th. It’s a season designed for places where there are large deer populations either among populated areas or islands that are not connected to land, either by bridge or low tide. Wes hunts on Islesboro which teems with deer, albeit smaller than average. This year he snagged an 8-point buck plus a doe. Now in rifle-hunting season and on Dutch Neck, he’d like another buck and perhaps a doe or two. Wes will tell you it’s all about the hunt, but then he’ll add that it’s also about the meat. Wes does his own harvesting and processing which includes gutting, hanging, skinning and then quartering and breaking it down before putting it in the freezer. He and his girlfriend generally pan-roast, and sometimes slow-cook his venison. It’s a provision that takes them almost through the spring. Out of hunting season, Wes works as a carpenter with small crews doing just about everything. And come winter, he also tends his father on the boat while his dad dives for scallops.
My first deer was shot right down the road here on Dutch Neck. I shot her with this rifle, the one my dad gave to me as a kid. I probably started hunting when I was ten which is the age when you can legally start. But it took me several years to get a deer. I kept missing because I would get so excited whenever I saw one. I still get the jitters. It’s the adrenalin. My heart gets pounding. I get excited and a little shaky for a little bit. But when I get a couple of minutes to take some deep breaths and calm down and get that out of the way, I can place my shot. When I was a kid, that was so much harder to do.
I got into bow hunting five years ago because I got tired of sitting in the cold weather. I wanted warmer weather, and the expanded archery season starts in September. That’s how I got into it. Then I fell in love with it. It’s extremely addictive. Any carpentry jobs I have, I tell them I need that time off. Opening week of the expanded season, I spend a week in a tent on Islesboro. Every year possible.
I love the chase. And bow-hunting is much harder. My farthest shot with a compound bow (a bow that uses a levering system) is 30 yards. You’re right up close and personal. It’s not like a rifle where you can shoot from 200 yards away. That’s an easy distance. You can see one in one of these fields and walk within 200 yards and you just shoot it. To me, there’s no sport in that.
I mean, I get it. That’s how you fill freezers. But I, myself, I love to chase deer. And they’re hard to chase. But when you do it correctly, it’s rewarding. Like, you have to take care of your scents. I wash all my clothes. Then I leave in this bag with an old fir branch because that’s the scent the deer are smelling with all these downed fir trees. I also have a deer caller. I can make it sound like a doe (baaaa) or I can make it sound like a big mature buck (a short grunt).
Buck fever is a real thing. Your heart gets pumping. I get adrenalin every time I see a deer, but it’s exaggerated with the bucks. The bucks seem to be smarter whereas the does, for some reason, don’t seem to be scared. They’ll come out in the fields early. The bucks are more skittish. Everybody knows that bucks are harder to find. Maybe the bucks know they’re a bigger target.
But other than that, there’s not much difference. Just a little bit in size and the antlers, and you can’t eat antlers. On the other hand, with a doe, there’s nothing to brag about. There’s just the meat in the freezer. A buck comes with the meat and the trophy. To me, each one is a trophy, even the little eight-point I shot five years ago with four little nubs on each side. He’ll go on my wall, too.
I am always learning. Most of all, I’m learning patience. You have to wait until they get close to you. And they can always get closer.
So, you wait. You don’t take that first shot. I’ve missed more than a few doing that and thrown an arrow too soon.
When you wait, you learn. You are in their home. They know those woods. So, you learn what deer like to do and how they traverse the land. A lot is about survival. They’re constantly eating. Acorns. Bark. Alfalfa. The greens in the field. And in the gardens. The last deer I harvested had eaten mostly greens and acorns.
What I don’t like to see is buckshot inside a deer. I think that’s inhumane because buckshot doesn’t always kill them.
But I’ve wounded deer. And when you do, you chase it ‘til you can’t chase it no more. And if you can’t chase it no more, you hope it lives. Because if it wasn’t a kill shot, that breaks your heart. A few years ago, I wounded a deer. I called in a blood -trailing dog to make sure I didn’t kill that deer. That dog found only one teeny, tiny spot of blood past my own last spot of blood. We never found the deer. So, I’m confident saying I didn’t kill it. I just placed a bad shot. I wounded it. There’s uglies to hunting sometime.
The way I see it, I owe it to the animal to kill it as fast as I can. Even so, for me, the perfect kill is to shoot it, and have it run off and die before I get to it – because it’s brutal to shoot and see the deer fall right there and have to watch it die. That’s hard.
But I don’t always shoot. I let some deer go because I like to watch them. Sometimes, if they’re sitting in my field and I have daylight to play with, I won’t take the shot. I’ll wait, and see what they’ll do.
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