The Short Unhappy Life of Francis Buckomber

 

OK, I might as well apologize right up front for the title.  I shamelessly stole it from a short story, “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber,” by Ernest Hemmingway.  But, I swear, it was not without reason.  The buck I shot during the 2017/18 deer season had a short, unhappy life, just like the subject of Hemmingway’s story, and both of them had their lives ended at the hands of another.

And it’s not totally clear whether the ending of their lives was bad for them or relieved their sad plight.

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I’m sure my buck started life in the spring and, after his momma weaned him, grew fat and strong on the crops Eddie planted on our farm.  The young buck may have been one or two years old, most likely the latter, which made him a mature buck who had just been through his first full breeding season as an adult.

So far, so good.

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Those opposed to hunting would have you believe that the only pain an animal suffers is at the hands of mean-old human hunters.  You’ve probably seen “Bambi” the cartoon movie made by Disney that shows the abundantly happy life of the deer herd.  The animals dance and play among the colorful wildflowers and butterflies, accompanied by singing birds and cuddly, friendly rabbits and skunks, until some evil hunter starts flinging bullets randomly in their direction.

The shots add horror and pain to the animals’ perfect lives.

Not so the young deer I’ve just dubbed Francis Buckomber.

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My deer spent his first few weeks hiding in the brush and tall grass where his momma hid him, only rising when she came around to feed him and clean up his droppings.  She did this to keep the scent down, lest coyotes or bobcats be made aware of his existence and convert him to protein for themselves or their young.

The little deer had more at stake than just his life.  Remember, natural predators don’t care whether their prey is dead or not, as long as it is incapacitated so that it can’t fight back or escape.  They’ll start eating, or drag it back to their babies to eat while it’s still alive.

The growing deer also had to survive parasites.  Anyone who has spent time roaming the woods and fields has had to deal with ticks and chiggers.  I’ve gotten pictures on my game cameras of deer covered with masses of ticks that resemble a bunch of grapes, hanging over their eyes to obscure their vision.  Something like that may have ultimately led to Francis Buckomber’s final, sorry state.

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Since I’m not a deer and my buck had not developed a distinctive feature to make him stand out from the herd by the time I noticed him, it’s possible, even likely, that I got some pictures of him on my game cams.

Maybe, maybe not.

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Those who have read my column for a while may recall our final meeting and his ultimate demise so bear with me while I reiterate.

Christmas morning 2017 I got up well before Annie and went out to my stand.  Perhaps because of the frigid temperatures most of the deer stayed home.  After a fruitless wait I exited my stand and made my way back toward the house.  A couple of our dogs barked an alarm before I turned the corner to go uphill toward our machine shed.  It occurred to me that the dogs shouldn’t have seen me yet, but stranger things have happened.  When they didn’t come down to greet me I knew something was up.

A couple of the dogs were standing at the southeast corner of the yard looking uphill.  I was downhill.  Our black and tan colored mix, Buttercup, stood beside the brushy waterway, barking at something hiding among the trees.

A deer stepped out of the brush and stomped its feet threateningly.

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The slickhead didn’t run but, instead, made its way uphill and into the woods.  I wasn’t close but I didn’t have to be to see that the critter was, in the local vernacular, “hurtin’.”

Outdoorsmen/women in Missouri have been made aware of the spread of chronic wasting disease and asked to report any emaciated deer we come across.

Knowing there are other maladies that can cause emaciation and that none of them are good, I headed to where I thought the critter was moving.

A healthy deer can easily outdistance a dog, but Francis Buckomber wasn’t healthy.  He was standing beside a tree, still strong enough to threaten the dogs with a battle but not strong enough to actually put up much of a fight if it came to that.

When I got a good look at him I could see he was very sick.  His ribs were obvious through his thick winter coat, and that hair was scroungy.  There was also a slick, greasy patch under his right, front leg…and the strong smell of decay.

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I felt so sorry for him that I raised my .50 caliber Knight and Hale inline black-powder rifle and centered it on his heart.  At the shot he dropped like a rock and died.  I rolled him over and raised his right leg to see the disgusting wound that was leaking corruption and the smell of rot.  Not to beleaguer the point but the hole was almost big enough for me to stick my fist into it…if I had wanted to.

I didn’t want to.

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I went home and called our local representative for the Missouri Department of Conservation.  Despite the fact that it was Christmas morning and he has children, he called me back within minutes.  The officer agreed with my theory on what the young buck was suffering from.

Poor, unfortunate Francis Buckomber had probably been running through the woods and impaled himself on a snag of wood.  Either that or he could have been injured in a fight over a receptive doe…stabbed by the antler of an opponent.  Both kinds of injuries are surprisingly common although neither is usually as bad as his was.

The infection had grown and, as it did, his body tried to preserve energy in any way it could.  December 25 is pretty early for even young bucks to shed their antlers but his appeared to have been gone for a while.  His body had absorbed what little fat he had stored during the summer, then started breaking down his muscle.  There wasn’t much left by the time I saw him.  Although it’s possible he could have survived, the chances are very, very slim.  More likely, in just a few more days, he would have found himself unable to rise from his bed.  He might have died of hypothermia or the coyotes that are common in our area might have found him before he died.

Either way, my muzzle loader bullet through his heart was probably the most merciful thing that could happen to him.

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With his short, unhappy life at an end, and despite the fact that his body was inedible to me, he still would serve a purpose.

After I got off the phone with my conservation agent, Annie accompanied me to the scene where I placed one of my game cams.  I wanted to get pictures of whatever scavengers came around to clean up the carcass of the unfortunate deer.

Checking the cameras every week I saw pretty much what I expected.  Coyotes and my dogs cleaned up most of him, but there were also raccoons and opossums.  I was pleased but not surprised by crows and a red tailed hawk, a couple of the lesser-known scavengers in the area.

What I was surprised to see was the number of deer that stopped by to check out their dead relative.  There were more deer in my photos wandering around the deceased than any other animal, and deer are not scavengers.  You could tell by looking at them that they were just curious what the smell was.  But one deer in particular caught my eye and he wasn’t even close to the one I’d killed.

He was the one I WANTED to kill.

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In the background of one of the photos, gray and grainy, was one of the eight point bucks I had hoped to get a shot at this past season.  It was the same one I had tried to shoot the second day of the rifle season, but my rifle had misfired, and I hadn’t seen him since.  It looks like he and I both survived the season.

Maybe I’ll see him again next year.

At least I know he didn’t get shot by somebody else, thanks to the short, unhappy life of Francis Buckomber.

 

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(below)  This hungry crow was happy to find the dead buck.  The leg is swollen from decay so don’t get the idea he was fat when I shot him.  He wasn’t…at all.

(above) This coyote got fat, returning night after night to help clean up the dead buck.

(below) Most people think of vultures when they think of scavenger birds, but this redtail hawk happily visited the carcass a few times.

(above) This yearling was one of the many deer that stopped by to see what the smell was.

 

(below) This ghostly figure is the eight pointer (ten if he has brow tines, which he probably does) I was aiming at the second day of the rifle season when my rifle misfired.  I’m surprised he’s not thumbing his nose at the camera and saying, “Na, na na, na, na na-a-ah.”  I’ll be looking for him next year, and he’ll be watching out for me.