ike most guys, I am infatuated with gadgets. There is nothing more fun than shiny objects with bright lights. Guys are generally easily entertained.
Bart and Kent showed me a great new gadget I never knew existed. My friends from Louisiana had video cameras mounted on their bows in order to take digital movies while deer hunting. I found this to be fascinating. The camera is about the size and shape of the tube out of a roll of paper towels. It mounts where a person would normally have a stabilizer. To people who do not bow hunt, this makes little sense, but the camera is pointed the same direction as the arrow.
After the first day of hunting, I asked if they had any deer movies. I think more to please me than to save pictures for posterity, they filmed most of the deer they saw that day. They had movies of does walking by under their tree stands. They had pictures of small- to medium-sized bucks wandering around. Kent even had a picture of a buck making a scrape on the tree next to his. The quality of the pictures was really quite good.
When Bart got his deer, he turned on the camera, aimed, drew, shot and looked into the lens. It was then he realized; the camera was not on. He had nice movies of several other deer, but the biggest deer of his life, though down, was not saved on the camera. He was rather upset, but consoled himself in the fact even though he did not have the pictures, he did have the deer. It will soon be on the wall, which is even more impressive than on film.
Kent slowed down on making movies of every deer in the woods to entertain me, wishing to save some space on his memory card in case he needed it for something important. Saturday, he needed it for something important.
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He was in his tree stand in a hickory tree at the edge of a pasture. He had come out before daylight and waiting as the day got warmer. There was little activity as far as the deer were concerned. The trumpeter swans flew off the lake shortly after daylight. A few squirrels scampered about, but the deer were not moving. Since the deer have grown their winter coats and the temperatures were climbing into the 70s, they did not want to get out and exercise any more than necessary.
About 10:30 a.m., Kent blew a few times on his grunt call. Just out of range, a buck stood up from behind a cedar tree and started toward him. Kent flipped on the bow camera and pointed at the deer. A nice, mature buck walked slowly, looking for the source of the call. He paused about 30 yards away. Kent grunted again. The big old buck came to within 20 yards of the tree stand; stopped, and looked away, off into the field. Kent drew, aimed and released. The buck bounded off a short distance and dropped over. The best part was he had the entire event captured on his camera with no memory to spare.
When Kent called us, needless to say he was excited. We were excited for him, but being able to watch it over and over on film makes the hunt even better.
We as hunters and fishermen love to relive past hunts by telling stories over and over. Sometimes the stories even get better with age. This can be called "the big fish" or "big buck" story. Now we have the technology to show pictures along with the story. It will keep hunters from changing the story too much, but Kent does not have to worry about that part. He has pictures to prove he is not telling "the big buck" story.
Walter Scott is an outdoors enthusiast and freelance writer from Bloomfield, Iowa.
