Troy Esau

We left off part one of this story with the frustration of poachers, on our own land to boot. The fact that this person took a shot into our bush, with my wife sitting less than 100 yards away is an extremely big safety hazard. Needless to say, once I heard of the poaching happening on our own property, I was outraged. Now comes the decision; how do you react, and what do you do when you have witnessed an act of poaching on land you own or hunt? Everyone handles this type of situation differently, but I immediately called up my local conservation officer and gave him as much information as I could to help them catch the criminals.

It wasn't until November 7th that I was able to hunt the stand location where Left-Hook was travelling. I was planning for an all-day sit, so I packed up my bag with all the essentials: rattling antlers, grunt call, and most importantly, snacks. I was seated and settled in for a long sit well before legal light, and as the sun started to rise, the bush came alive with the sounds of all sorts of critters and animals moving through the dead leaves and remnants of snow from our mid-October snowstorm. There were deer moving all around me, and about 15 minutes after sunrise, I looked to my right and caught a glimpse of a big framed rack moving through the trees toward me, hot on the trail of a doe. As he moved closer and more into view, I quickly recognized that long crooked browtine, as it belongs to my target buck; Left-Hook! As soon as I realized that things were starting to play out as I pictured them, I got myself ready. Left-Hook walked right past my trail camera before stepping into a small shooting lane at about 75 yards. This was my chance! I quickly got Left-Hook in my scope, exhaled to steady myself, and pulled the trigger on my .50 calibre Thompson Centre muzzleloader. I had pulled the trigger essentially as soon as Left-Hook had stepped into the shooting lane, and as I shot, he buckled and his front leg was labouring; looked like a shoulder hit. He ran about 80 yards, and as I held my breath, I expected the buck to tip over, but he didn't. As this registered, I reloaded the muzzleloader as fast as I could, in order to attempt another shot. Left-Hook was in some extremely thick cover at this point and was working away from me. I let another shot go, but it didn't reach him as there were too many branches and scrub brush between us. He trotted off and out of sight; I was devastated.

I immediately backed out of the bush as quietly as I could, as Left-Hook's reaction to the shot was giving me that nauseous feeling. I went back to the house and gave him a good 3 hours to lay and hopefully seize up and die. A non-fatal shot is unfortunately a part of hunting; a part that we don't like to talk about much. Even though we practise and play the sequence of making a perfect shot in our heads over and over, we as humans make mistakes. I knew where my gun was hitting, and it was a chip shot by many peoples' standards. How could I have wrecked a perfect opportunity? Maybe Left-Hook was just so jacked up on trailing that doe that he didn't realize how badly hurt he was?

I went back in started after the blood trail. It was pretty bleak, but there was blood to follow. After about 100 yards of trailing, I found a bed, and Left-Hook wasn't in it. A gut wrenching feeling. I was marking the blood trail with marking tape as I went, so if I lost blood, I could retrace my steps to the last blood found if I needed to. No sooner did I tie the marking tape beside the fresh bed, when the bush erupted in front of me. I raised my gun but couldn't get a shot. He ran off into even thicker cover, and at this point, I knew I had to back out again and give him more time to hopefully expire.

I decided to give him the night and try again in the morning, with the help of my brother-in-law and nephew. We made a game plan for me to sit and watch just in case the buck wasn't dead in his bed. As my nephew started through a thick part of the bush, Left-Hook jumped out of his bed and ran past me. Again, I was on the wrong side of the thick trees and couldn't get a shot at him. He was gone, possibly forever.

I hit rock bottom. Many of us have had these moments. Sometimes it's a clean miss, which in this case I would have been much happier about, and other times the deer runs out of our life and dies, and we never do get to recover it. In all of these situations, we tend to wonder what we could have done differently, and we dream about where the buck ended up after our encounter in the bush. In most cases, we don't ever get to find out what happened next for the deer. For me, I guess I'm one of the lucky ones, as roughly a month later Left-Hook showed up on my trail camera. His front shoulder looked to be swollen and sore, but there was no visible open wound and he seemed to be walking on it with no issue. These animals are so incredibly tough; to think he took a bullet in the front end and will live to tell the tale, is incredible.

Fast forward to winter. I feed the deer on my property to keep them healthy and help them get through the long Manitoba winter. Left-Hook was a regular at the feed and I captured many photos of him. He left for about 2 weeks right at the tail end of January and returned without his head gear. WHAT A JERK! All I wanted to do was put my hands on those sheds and he vacated the property to drop them somewhere else, so the search was on! With many other bucks still carrying antlers, I didn't want to put a ton of pressure on the other deer living on my property, so there was not a lot of searching until late winter/early spring. It took me until April 9th to find his first shed, on nearby property. The next evening I returned with my oldest daughter Natalie, and we were fortunate enough to find the second side within 50 yards of where the first one lay. What an incredible sight. I was so pumped, and Natalie's smile was worth 1000 words and a memory that will last a lifetime. I searched all summer and fall for Left-Hook, running many trail cameras on various properties, but the search came up empty. What a disappointment, and certainly not the ending I had hoped for. Here's hoping he will turn up in 2021!

Troy