Expect the Unexpected

By A. Sayward Lamb

I believe that most every hunter has all sorts of feelings and expectations which are directly related to hunting experiences that we have already participated in, as well as those hunts that we have planned for the future. All we have to do is to take a few moments to start thinking about hunting and thoughts race through our minds with plenty of unanswered questions. One thing that I have learned over my many years of hunting is that you can always count on one certainty and that is to “Expect the Unexpected.” The variants of these expectations run the whole spectrum of our thoughts and sometimes leave you wondering why such incidents occur or even why you did the things to cause them to happen. Let me relate a few instances that illustrate what I am writing about. These happenings are not in chronological order but are randomly selected.

Many years ago during the early part of deer hunting season, I decided to take a short walk to check out an old apple orchard located at an abandoned farm in Greenwood, Maine. I left my vehicle about three in the afternoon and after a short walk, I approached the old apple orchard. As I scanned the area, I noticed what appeared to be an animal with heavy, dark fur, sitting on an old log near one of the apple trees. I had never seen anything quite like it, so I simply stood in place and watched it intently. I had only watched it for a few moments when I noticed that whatever this creature was, began slowly swinging it’s forearms across in front of it’s chest. It wasn’t long before I concluded that no wild animal would ever be doing something like this. It was then that I realized what I was watching had to be a person wearing an old fur coat with the wide collar pulled up around their head. It was a very cold afternoon, which probably explained why that person was wearing a fur coat. With this knowledge I approached the man very slowly and spoke before I got near enough to frighten him. Sure enough! My thoughts were right. The “animal” I was watching was an elderly man whom I knew lived on a nearby farm in that neighborhood.

After a brief conversation, I left the man still sitting under the apple tree but I have never been able to figure how he ever dared to wear a fur coat while he was hunting. If he had not been moving his arms back and forth (which I presume was to help keep him warm) there’s no knowing what might have happened. I also have wondered if he really expected a deer would ever come into the orchard with the movements that he was making while swinging his arms. One thing for sure, it was an unusual sight and totally unexpected.

A few years later I was hunting on the top of Mollyockett Mountain and I had not seen any fresh deer sign or anything else to lead me to believe that game was in the area. I decided the best thing I could do was to go home. Rather than take the long way around back to the wood roads I had come up, I decided to take a more direct route and headed down over the southwesterly side of the mountain. I came to a small opening that was covered with rocky ledges and some grassy areas. In the middle of this small opening, which I would estimate might cover a quarter acre, was one lone evergreen tree about five or six feet high. I had just walked by this tree, which was about ten feet away, when I heard a “swooshing sound” and turning my head, I saw a fisher cat go running across the opening back towards the direction from where I had just come. Apparently the fisher had used the small evergreen tree as a place to hide, and the moment I walked past, it left the area in a hurry! Again, it was an interesting experience and totally unexpected.

The fall after I was married, my wife decided she wanted to visit with her parents for a few days. Their home was about eighteen miles from ours so I made arrangements to commute back and forth to work. Since it was deer hunting season, I decided to travel a seldom-used country road hoping to possibly see a deer beside the old dirt road. The only gun I owned was a single barrel shotgun and all I had for ammunition was birdshot. I happened to mention this to my wife’s grandfather and he told me I wouldn’t need to buy any buckshot or slugs for the shotgun as he had several of that type of twelve gauge cartridges that I was welcome to use. He gave me a half dozen rounds, for which I was thankful and carried them on the seat of my Chevrolet coupe, along with my shotgun, as I commuted morning and night. Sure enough, one morning as I was driving up the old dirt road, a doe ran across the road in front of me. I jammed on the brakes and as soon as the car stopped, I jumped out and grabbed my shotgun and one of the shotgun shells. I didn’t even bother to shut the car door because I was in such a hurry to get a shot at that doe. As I was in the process of loading the shotgun, I heard a noise and looking up, I saw a six point buck heading across the road right in front of the car. It was near enough so that I swear I could have reached out and touched it with the gun. Hurriedly I pulled the shotgun to my shoulder, cocked the hammer, and squeezed the trigger. Much to my surprise and dismay, all I heard was a very loud “CLICK”!! Twice more I pulled the hammer back and taking aim on the buck as it ran up the mountainside, I squeezed the trigger. Each time the gun misfired!! Needless to say: “It was totally unexpected!!”

Three or four years ago I was deer hunting in the north Maine woods near the Canadian border. My hunting partner, Leon Baker, and I had located an area of old cut over land where the deer were frequenting. On this particular morning, I chose to sit alongside a very active deer trail. It was dry, so the leaves underfoot were very noisy. I decided it might be better to sit and let the deer come to me. I found an old stump that was located on the uphill side of a draw. It made an excellent place for me to sit and wait for a couple of hours. I had been there for quite a while and no deer came by but I did notice a movement to my left. After watching it for a few moments, I determined it was a coyote walking down the deer trail. Slowing I brought my .308 Savage rifle to my shoulder and aimed the crosshairs of my scope on to the front shoulder of the coyote. It never noticed me and continued its slow gait down past where I was sitting, only about thirty-five yards away. I released the safety and slowly squeezed the trigger. To my surprise the gun did not fire! When the coyote heard the click of the firing pin, it left in a hurry! I never had time to jack in another round. Upon checking my rifle after this was over, I found that I had been hunting all morning with five rounds in the magazine and no bullet in the chamber!! It cost me a coyote, and of course, it was totally unexpected.

A few years ago, Leon Baker and I arrived at his hunting camp on a Saturday night. We got settled in and early Sunday morning we decided to take a trip down to scout out the area west of Flagstaff Lake. We had driven into several areas before we arrived at an old logging yard in Kirby Township. There was a dusting of snow on the ground and this enabled us to notice a nice set of buck tracks. We noticed the deer had been traveling throughout this area of the large cutting. We decided with that small amount of snow, the best thing for us to do was to come back the very first thing on Monday morning and see if we might get our eyes on the buck that was making those tracks. We didn’t notice any other tracks, either does or bucks, so presumed this was a “loner” who was hanging out there.

We arrived back near the old logging yard early Monday morning. Leon parked his truck about a quarter mile from the area where we planned to hunt. He struck out directly from his truck and entered the woods with plans to hike up the mountainside until he was a short distance above the old log landing and then sit down and wait. My plan was to walk down the wood road we had traveled in on and then take a side road leading directly towards the old log landing. I planned to still-hunt using the rifle’s scope to observe the large clear cuts adjacent to the road I was walking in on. All was still on this frosty, cold morning and I didn’t see any signs of deer. My plans were to travel in as far as the log landing and if I saw no signs of that buck, I would head up the mountainside and eventually meet up with Leon.

I approached the area of the log landing and using my scope, I slowly covered all the adjacent areas which were grown up with lots of raspberry bushes and other small bushes. For the most part, visibility was excellent. I was about ready to head into the woods, when I saw a deer run up out of a “sag”, about a hundred yards away. I was carrying my Weatherby bolt action rifle, in 30-06 caliber, with a variable 3X to 9X scope set on three power. I did not have an “Any Deer Permit” so I had to be sure the deer had horns. Fortunately for me, the deer that was bounding almost directly away from me stopped for an instant and looked back towards me. It was then that I saw the horns, so I pulled up on the buck as he bounded up the steep mountainside. Taking as careful aim as I could offhand, I squeezed the trigger. The buck was now at least a hundred fifty yards away and heading up the mountainside in long bounds. With the “crack” of the rifle shot, the buck collapsed on the ground. I walked up and was surprised to see it was a large buck. Leon and I had a pre-arranged signal to let each other know if we harvested a deer. This signal was to wait for a few minutes and then fire three shots in rapid succession. I did this and shortly after, Leon came walking into view. I was in the process of field dressing the deer and with Leon’s assistance, we completed the job in a few more minutes. Now the work was about to begin but we were fortunate enough to be uphill from the old log landing where we planned to drag the buck.

Leon took both rifles and walked out to get his pick-up, which he planned to drive in the logging road to the log landing. While he was gone I spent quite a bit of time cleaning all the extra fat from the inside of the buck. The buck was big enough so that I didn’t want us to have to drag any more than necessary out of the woods. Although the deer would be moved downhill all the way to the pick-up, we still had to go over, under, and around several obstacles, such as tree stumps, old blow-downs, tree limbs and branches left over from the logging operation, etc. When Leon got back the real work began and the more we dragged the deer, the more we knew we had a heavy deer in tow, even though he only had a four point rack of horns. After struggling to get the buck up into the truck bed, we both agreed we had a deer that would weigh around two hundred pounds.

We took it to the registration station at the Pines Store in Eustis where we had it weighed. Completely cleaned out, it still tipped the scales at 205 pounds. As Leon said, “If you had left some of that extra fat in and if that buck had been carrying a normal rack of horns, you might have had a buck weighing ten or fifteen pounds more.” We were both amazed that the buck only had four points, on a relatively small rack. We believe it was too old to grow a decent rack of horns. Still I was happy to have been able to harvest such a nice buck. We had to agree to get a buck that size with only four points was highly unusual, and completely unexpected.