this topic hits home for me now!
As the best deer hunter and in general woodman I ever knew was a guy that lived down the road from my uncle when I was a kid
I was a very outdoors kid, always in the forests wandering about, (be it on foot or on my many motorcycles) and would come across him all over the area, some times miles from his home!,
My first yr deer hunting, I shot a buck with my bow , a bad hit, or, should say happened so fast and being new, I didn;t see the impact!, deer ran off, no blood or hair, I searched for about an Hour, and decided to walk back out(had a 2 mile walk out)
and see if I coudl maybe find some help(no one in my family hunted or any of there friends )
as I was walking out I again ran into this guy as he was wandering about looking for mushrooms
he asked me how my hunt was going, told him the details, and he , simply said, OK< come on, I ll find your deer for you as long as you hit it!
and he had 100% confidence he would find it!
we ended up tracking, or should say HE tracked it, I never seen any blood and NO clue HOW he tracked it
there was NO blood, , we went about 1/2 mile or so zig zagging across a mt side, and then he STOPPED me, and said, GET READY, as I still had my bow with me!
nocked an arrow, we slowly walked a little more, stopping often, and he spotted the deer bedded down, I made another shot this time, good, and got my first buck with a bow
Only now we were a good mile or more from the truck, and I wasn't sure how we were getting that deer back UP the MT side and back to a road!, and then I had NO clue how I was getting it back to where I was staying,a s, being a kid, I never thought that far ahead LOL
this guy offered again to help me , in dragging deer out and even offered to go get his truck and haul it back to where I was staying
as we dragged and hauled, he gave me a brief history about himself , as I was asking questions on hunting, and he explained to me , used to be a hunting guide in Maine, as after Vietnam, he moved into a cabin in the woods in the middle of NO where, and to make ends meet he started taking hunters out!, when we were driving out we stopped at his house to let his wife know where he was so long(no cell phone back then)
and offered to show me some of his deer he had killed, as he had many mounted and ton's of racks on several walls
NEVER in my life did I ever see so many HUGE Bucks, it was amazing to see !
at the time he had two McKenzie Timber Wolfs as pets too, and MAN were they BIG dogs and OH so friendly and trained, they , as a KID I thought that was just awesome, and I'd of gave kidney for one of them LOL
the man was a true outdoors man , he lived like Jeremiah Johnson,
the man coudl track anything any where like no one I ever seen or even know of! ( he once helped me track another deer that ran over a mile and half, before we found it ) and he did that again on NO blood just tracking , I still don;t know how he did it!, but the whole time, he was as confident as could be! he seen things I sure didn;t!, and I recovered a LOT of deer in my yrs, and still not close to his level of tracking!
one of his hobbies was walking around in the dark in the local forest and tracking critters and NEVER used a flashlight and picking Indian head arrow heads, and he had 55 gallon drums full of them! just amazing how many he had!
I swear you ever seen a person like this, there amazing, they almost walk making NO noise even in dry leaves,
it used to blow my mind how he could get around and so close to animals, ro sneak up on YOU and you never hear or see him coming!
it set goals I Tried to meet, but never came close!( have managed to sneak up on most types critters' and touch them, something he used to do, and got me into as a challenge to meet )
but I still wish I had HALF his skills and knowledge of the outdoors! and all things associated with it he had!
AS the yrs passed I got to know the mam very well, ( I lived almost a 100 miles from him, or I WISH I could have had him teach me things, but I only got to spend time with him, now and then so never got to learn from him, a regret I have as he would have been the perfect person to learn from)
the things he did and stories he told were just amazing and some scary and some sad!
HE was the BEST deer hunter and hunter tracker period,, I ever knew and doubt I will ever meet anyone close to
As he had his demon's, the several tours he did in Vietnam , all the people he killed(and he had a high count there)
left its toll on him, and last yr he sadly ended his life, Cancer was getting to him, and the past haunted him more than I guess he could handle, he is dearly missed now by me, and I wish I knew he struggled as much as he did, doubt I could have changed anything, but at least could have been a better friend maybe, ? as some times that means more than other things!, but cannot go back in time!~
an ironic thing about him, that always made me smile/laugh!
was in the almost 40 some yrs I knew him, I never ONCE ever seen him or his wife NOT wearing Camo~! LOL
so he gets MY vote for the best deer hunter I ever knew!