Open Season - Texas Fish & Game - December 2012
 Open Season - December 2012 By Reavis Wortham
Fresh Tracks
"I’m going to track a big buck deer this morning," I told Cousin as we both stared in awe at the falling snow.
"You’re gonna eat breakfast first," Granny said from beside the stove. "And go get some clothes on, you’re gonna freeze."
We ran back through the living room in our Fruit-of-the-Looms to dress. When you’re ten and twelve years old, snow is more important than modesty. Once covered, we hurried back in to the kitchen table.
I opened the newest Field & Stream. "Look here. It says that tracking deer is easier in the snow."
"Makes sense," Cousin said through a mouthful of eggs and biscuits. "But what makes you think a deer is in the pasture this morning. We’ve never seen a deer out here in our lives."
"That’s because we can’t track them," I said, obviously speaking to a moron. "Deer don’t leave tracks in the grass."
"Oh."
"You boys dress warm," Granny said. "And don’t go around the pool today. It’s icy and you could slip and fall in. You’d freeze to death before you got back to the house, if you came up at all."
"Yes ma’am," I said. "We’ll stay away."
An hour later I stared at my wet shoe. "She told you to stay away from the water," Cousin reminded me.
"I did stay away," I answered. "She didn’t say it was possible to slip for five whole yards."
"Yeah, that gravity is something else. Is your foot cold?"
"Naw. It’s already numb. Hey! Look! There’s a deer track!" I shouted. "See, I told you we’d find one today."
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"Aren’t we supposed to be quiet?"
"Obviously, if we were waiting for the deer to walk up on us. But we’re tracking, so he’ll be facing away from us with his nose into the wind. He’ll never hear us."
Cousin pondered my amazing knowledge of deer behavior. "Are you sure that’s a deer track?"
I pulled a magazine from my coat and opened it to the examples of buck and doe tracks. "See, how the points of his hooves splay out and those little dots are behind them? Those are called spurs. This is a huge deer. I bet it weighs four or five hundred pounds."
"How can you tell?"
"When they’re this heavy, the weight forces their hooves apart. Look, the tracks lead through the plum thicket. Let’s go."
Like professionals, we followed the meandering tracks along the snow-covered cattle trail around the sassafras tree and stopped just at the thicket’s edge.
I pointed at one of the plum trees. "This must be a rub."
"That’s when they rub their antlers against a tree," Cousin stated with authority.
"I knew that," I said. "I called it a rub first."
"Doesn’t matter," he said. "I already knew."
I glared at him. "Come on, it’s going to the oak tree."
We followed the tracks to the enormous oak tree sitting on the highest point in the pasture. Above, our tree house was three inches deep in snow. Of course we had to climb up for a while, and from the vantage point, tried to find our deer.
Nothing.
Undaunted, we climbed back down and followed the trail through the open pasture, and then back along the fence line until they led to the barn.
"I’ve got it," I said. "Because the weather was so bad, I bet this deer bedded down somewhere behind the barn to get out of the wind."
"Maybe it got inside to sleep in the hay. That’s where I’d go if I was a deer."
Careful now, lest the bedded deer be looking in our direction, we crouched and went into our version of the Phantom Sneak. We approached the barn.
"What’s wrong with you boys?" Grandpa asked from inside. "Y’all hurt yourselves or something?"
"We’re sneaking up on a deer," I said, annoyed that he was talking so loudly. "We’ve been following this big buck’s tracks for half an hour. Look, they go right past you and into the hay."
Grandpa looked at the tracks at his feet. "Where? All I see are the tracks made by the new calf I bought yesterday."
Cousin snorted. "Calf. And you said they were deer tracks."
"You went along with it," I said, frustrated that my deer was gone.
"You’re the one that got all this started, and I’m freezing," Cousin said. "And by the way, Grandpa, he fell in the pool."
We all stared at my icy foot for a long time before Grandpa sighed. "I have a long way to go with you boys," he said, and led us back for a quick thaw and a lesson in calf tracks.
Email Reavis Wortham at rwortham@fishgame.com
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