Another good article. The Art of Hunting Deer the Old-Fashioned Way
Thomas Aquinas Daly, wielding a slender stick as straight as a conductor’s baton, pointed out a bright droplet of blood splashed across a yellow maple leaf. “She went off the trail again,” he muttered, hunched over and resting his palms on his knees. “No wonder we didn’t find blood where we’ve been looking.”




Doug Benz for The New York Times

Daly hunts with his wooden bow on the 240-acre farm he shares with his wife, Chris.


The New York Times

Daly hunts on his 240-acre farm in western New York.

We were tracking a whitetail doe that I had hit with an arrow on Daly’s property near this western New York community on opening day of bow hunting season. Tracking is an ancient art, if not a very happy one; the conscientious hunter prides himself on his ability to make a clean and swift kill. But things sometimes go wrong, and there I was, growing more anxious and desperate to find the deer by the minute.

My host pinched another snippet of toilet paper off the wad in his hand and carefully placed it on the bloody leaf. He straightened up and looked back over the long, meandering paper trail we had created. He flicked his baton this way and that, toward our markers, as if it would help him puzzle out the condition and intent of the deer from the blood trail. He quietly said, “This is what I love doing most. For me, it isn’t so much about the actual hunting as much as the woodsmanship and skills that come into play at every stage of a hunt.” Read the whole article.