Exotic roar from an aged axis buck
My first experience hunting exotic animals was an eye-opener.
It seemed that exotics were always behind a big fence and out of reach, and would be too easy for a good hunt.
That couldn’t be farther from the truth.
At all the hunting shows I’ve been going to, I kept seeing these animals and kept being intrigued more and more. I’d heard the stories and seen the photos. I had found a place that has a huge herd of free-ranging axis (about 400 animals), and dove in.
I booked a hunt with Joshua Creek Ranch at the Dallas Safari Club show earlier this year, thinking it would be fun to try something new in a great setting. The ranch is gorgeous, a gem of the Hill Country. Great care is taken in keeping its 1,250 acres in great shape for wildlife and hunting. The lodge is everything a great hunting lodge should be: classy and comfortable, rustic and cool.
The food was great too, same as my axis hunt.
My guide, Richard Allen, Joshua Creek’s marketing director and part-time hunting guide, and Thomas Phillips, Lone Star Outdoor News’ news and graphics editor, spent the first morning in the Bobcat blind staring down a trail cut through the thick junipers at a corn feeder. Thomas gave an occasional glance behind us toward a protein feeder, which stood where the trail bent around the junipers, and the woods closed in on the view. The deer are known to hang out in the heavy cover, and we were right there with them.
Soon after Richard set off the feeder, we saw axis. But they didn’t come to the whir of the feed broadcaster like cowboys to a dinner bell, the way I thought they would. No, the deer, all does and fawns, peaked out of the woods toward the feeder, hesitating before coming forward.
They were as skittish as white-tailed deer.
The group of 12 animals fed for about 30 minutes. For some reason, they stayed about 20 feet from the feeder, eating only around the outside edge, never stepping close to the feeder. One occasionally spooking and running off to return in only a few minutes.
They finally left, leaving corn on the ground and after about thirty minutes, we saw parts of three axis bucks in the woods where the does had come out. They never came out. I never could see more than a hint of antlers back in the trees.
We waited a while longer and then bailed on the Bobcat.
We returned to the pickup to drive back to the lodge (where steaming bowls of axis venison chili awaited our return). During the drive, we talked about why the bucks were so skittish and didn’t come to the corn.
Did they smell us? They had to. Even though we were boxed in a plywood blind, it didn’t matter.
The drive took us past another protein feeder, but this one had deer.
As we drove up, they scrambled. We were perhaps 150 yards away and only caught a glimpse of a good-sized buck in the group.
You would think these deer could care less about people and pickups. The ranch is a popular place for quail hunting. Guests and staff are constantly on the move, and shotgun reports ring out often from hunters on a bird shoot. But the deer do not even react to these sounds
After lunch, Thomas spent the afternoon pulling rainbow trout from Joshua Creek and finding out how waterproof his coat is. Richard and I set up in another blind, thankfully with a roof over our heads.
North Texas was receiving snow, but all that fell on us was rain. The temperature was low — in the mid-30s — but not low enough for white stuff.
The rain affected us and the deer.
That afternoon, Richard and I posted up in a blind at the One Hundred Acre Field for more than four hours. Six whitetails were feeding on the wheat intermittently. Whenever the rain would stop, they’d come out and eat.
About 45 minutes before dark, we climbed back into the pickup to scout other areas. We saw tons of deer. And we flushed a pheasant at almost every turn. Quail were picking up grit in the ruts of the roads as we drove by.
We spotted deer in lots of places, too. But unlike the birds, the deer would bolt as soon as we approached. By the time we could distinguish whether a buck was in velvet or not, it would be gone.
As darkness fell, the rain finally stopped and we counted 38 deer in one wheat field, but none were for me.
That evening, I was baffled. I was very frustrated. What was going on? Thomas and I sat around a hot fireplace at the Covey House, and my mind kept turning over the hunt. Did they hear us? Did they know the blinds? Did they smell us?
The next day, Richard and I started early. Ann Kercheville, who owns the ranch with her husband, Joe, found out about how cautious the deer were being and offered the use of her private blind, the Summit blind.
Maybe there was the advantage we needed.
After we gathered that morning, Richard told me in the darkness Ann had been watching a nice buck come to her feeder, and I waited and watched. The tension had risen: The last day of the hunt was upon us. The pressure was on.
With the use of our binoculars we could make out a few deer gathering feed from a protein feeder. You could not see them without the binos.
“Is that Ann’s big buck out there,” I asked Richard.
“Still too dark,” he replied.
More deer joined in the feeding frenzy. They were coming out in groups of 12 or more, single file, out of the thick cedars, little ones first, then does, then bucks. We could see
better now but could not make out if they were hard horn or not.
One large buck lifted his nose, and that was it. Twenty something deer were scurrying off the hill.
Whoa, that is not fair, I thought. Then Richard sees more deer coming, when they get to the feeder, one buck lifts his nose, and that group busts us, too. And, yes, it happened a third time.
I wondered if one of us had emitted an odor that offended the deer and alerted them to our presence (and our intentions). Had one of us soured, or was it the fancy soap from the lodge’s shower?
I know they didn’t hear us. I was quiet as can be, and Richard was like a monk under a vow of silence. He was probably lost in meditation, day dreaming of one of his bird dogs flushing a quail.
Richard was as frustrated as I. He suggested we move to another blind, called the Sendero blind, which he had a good feeling about.
Weird things happened there, too. Two little bitty axis deer (just a few months old) fed near the feeder, no parents anywhere to be seen. Then a couple of whitetails came in.
One was a button buck. I started to think this was a baby-deer feeder, but I just kept quiet and did not say much to Richard.
A tom turkey strutted for 12 hens for 45 minutes. We watched.
We were both growing restless and started to talk about what time we would leave. “Let’s give it 30 more minutes,” Richard said.
Five minutes later, Richard said in a non-excited tone that three axis just stepped out behind our blind, feeding on native grasses, and they were not headed for the feeder.
I craned my neck and took a look, peaking through a not fully opened window.
I was looking through my binoculars and shuddered as an unfamiliar sound flooded out of the cedars. An axis buck was roaring, letting loose with a mating call that sounded like a lion.
A hard-horn buck stepped into view, and we both took a hard look at it. Richard said it was a buck worth shooting, but I was hesitant.
I could see another buck’s white antlers through the thick cedar and asked Richard if he could see it. He said no.
I was wondering which buck let out that sound.
The small herd grazed into a bigger opening, and again Richard suggested I take the young buck.
I decided to pass.
Moments later, out stepped the second buck, another trophy. He had a long set of white antlers and was obviously an older, more mature buck.
Richard gave the go ahead, and my shot flew true. I had my first exotic, my first axis and a knew perspective on exotic hunting.
I was really surprised at how sensitive the axis deer are, their noses. I was surprised at how little time they gave us when we came near.
But nobody likes a sure thing when hunting or fishing. That’s a big part of the reason we do it — for the challenge and the mystery of it.
I actually like that those deer busted us all those different times.
Joshua Creek Ranch
(830) 537-5090
www.joshuacreek.com
