COLUMN: RIP Old Faithful

     If you watch enough hunting shows on television, like I do, you can really fall into a false sense of expectations when it comes to shooting a deer. Television celebrities are seen year after year shooting some of the biggest deer imaginable.

     Those men and ladies have something going in their favor. They most likely own their own tracts of land and are able to plant food plots and create an environment that lends itself to growing big deer. Plus they are darn good hunters.

     On the farm we hunt, we share hunting privileges with other hunters and the neighboring timbers have several more hunters coming and going at all times over the course of a season. If I had to estimate how many guys might be in the area hunting during bow season I would put it at 18-20 hunters. I won’t even guess how many shotgun hunt.

     So the competition is hot and heavy. It’s probably the biggest reason we don’t get to know any one single deer very well or get to see them grow old and big.

     Except for one deer, Old Faithful. My son Dillon and I have had a four-year history with Old Faithful. In 2014 Dillon first laid eyes on him one afternoon. He didn’t shoot him but got some video of the deer. He was an odd looking deer. He had thick bases but wasn’t big by any means.

     We went back home and found one photo of him in our hunting cam pictures.

     The next season, 2015, we had quite a few photos of him but most were all at nighttime. Many were of him in velvet. We felt pretty confident that he was using our hunting farm as his home base.

     Neither of us saw that deer while hunting that year. We look feverishly for his sheds but never came up with them. Sometime during that year we named him Old Faithful.

     While turkey hunting that spring, Dillon remembered we had forgotten to grab one of our cameras. To our surprise, Old Faithful was on that camera in late April still supporting his antlers. That is pretty late in the year to not have shed his antlers and would explain why we never found them.

     In 2016, he started showing up all over the farm on many of our cameras. He still hadn’t gotten much bigger but his bases were unbelievably thick. And they had all sorts of points on the bases as well. Dillon once again saw him one time that year across the field from where he was hunting. I still hadn’t seen him from a stand.

     Shotgun season was over and again no sign of him. Somehow we figured he knew us as well as we knew him. I decided to keep bow hunting and a few days after shotgun season I found his sheds together, about 75 yards from where I park. He didn’t carry that set for very long.

     I couldn’t’ believe the size of his bases. He had about 3-4 stickers on each base. It was just strange how he never grew up and out. He remained a basic 8-pointer that may have been lucky to score 115 inches.

     After seeing his sheds, we decided to see if we could figure out where he was bedding in 2017. He showed up on so many cameras in previous years that we couldn’t really place him in one area. But I kept going back to where I found his sheds.

     Dillon runs our cameras and all summer Old Faithful was once again showing up. During the summer we keep on cameras more on the fringe areas and try to stay out of the timber. One camera in particular seemed to have most of Old Faithful’s picture.

     We set up a blind not too far away in hopes of getting a chance at him in early October. That same day we moved two cameras close to where I found his sheds.

     The next week when I checked them, Old Faithful was standing in front of one camera while we had been putting up the second camera, right on top of where I found his sheds. He was bedding right by our truck, watching us go in and out of our hunting area. He was for sure a smart old buck.

     Shortly after that we stopped seeing him on those cameras. We were afraid we had bumped him out of his bedroom and he moved on us. We also thought maybe that would be a plus. Maybe if we changed our entry point and he was somewhere different we could finally fool him.

     On Friday November 3 Dillon was back in a stand, as far away from where we park and got a glimpse of Old Faithful that morning. Needless to say, we were surprised to see him in that part of the timber.

     Then that early evening, he popped up 40 yards in front of me, too far for me to shoot. I was stunned to see him. After all these years there he was.

     He had made up a lot of ground that day. (He also showed up on a camera that day on the other side of the woods).

     I decided to hunt that stand again the next morning. It was raining and very quiet in the timber. About 10 am I looked behind me and to the right and there was Old Faithful, just 10 yards away. He was calmly meandering through. I couldn’t move for fear that he would see me. And when I could he was behind a downed tree.

     Later that evening I switched to the opposite side of the farm. Just as it was getting dark, Old Faithful made yet another appearance. This time he was on the neighbor’s land.

     After getting home and checking the cameras, we had a few other pictures of him that day. What we also noticed on the camera cards was many of the other bucks we had been getting photos of were no longer to be seen. Old Faithful was running them off we assumed.

     That night I knew this was going to be his last year alive. He was making too many daytime appearances and his luck was going to run out.

     Unfortunately for Dillon and myself, Old Faithful’s life came to an end last Wednesday. Another hunter shot him on the neighboring property.

     As disappointed as I am not to have put an arrow into Old Faithful, I am thrilled that we finally got to see him during the day. He isn’t quite as thick as he was the previous year and most of the stickers were gone but on his left side he developed a nice point on the inside of his beam that was looking like it could become a drop tine. I’m guessing he will still score about 115-120.

     If you deer hunt long enough, deer will come and go in your life. It’s the memories that keep you heading back to the timber. RIP Old Faithful!