The email message, linked to another from before Thanksgiving and its prompt response, was sent by Laurie Banas from Hatfield by way of South Deerfield, where her Frontier classmates will remember her as Laurie Magelinski. She was just checking in to provide her final update on a memorable deer-hunting season.

In November, Ms. Banas had touched base to tell about an unusual bow-hunting occurrence that unfolded before her doubting eyes on the way to her tree stand. Out of the corner of her eye, she had caught movement entering an old, overgrown field, identified it as a wild-turkey flock and decided to “snuggle up against a tree” to watch. In the process of counting more than 30 birds — many of them young, frisky jakes “making quite a ruckus” by strutting, faux-sparring and taking short flight in a playful maturation ritual — she was surprised to find among them a bright blue anomaly. Yes, to her utter disbelief, accompanying the turkeys was, of all things, a peacock.

“Yup,” she wrote, “hard to believe. Had to look and look and look again. Sure enough, a peacock. Bright blue. No ornamental feathers, but the little dicky-doo thing atop his head. Thought I had seen most everything, but never a peacock thinking it was a turkey, and a very fancy one at that.”

Accompanying the note were photos taken and sent by her cell phone. Yes indeed, a lonely peacock roaming with a flock of turkeys. Banas declined to name the site, and who can blame her for protecting the location of a favorite deer stand?

Prior to that peculiar sighting, from reading between the lines, the archery deer season could have been summed up as uneventful, perhaps even bordering on boring. Which doesn’t mean she hadn’t had her moments. She had, after all, according to a postseason email, let fly and missed a nice 6-pointer and seen many does that kept her enthusiasm piqued. She thus kept carefully trudging to her secluded tree stand mornings and/or evenings in pursuit of an antlered buck and the cabin-fever-soothing venison such a kill deposits in her freezer. Then, lo, proving once again that perseverance pays, her fortunes changed dramatically during the shotgun deer season, which she put an end to in rapid fashion, putting a lot of the local boys to shame.

Yes, according to her most recent update, Ms. Banas bagged back-to-back bucks on Days 1 and 2 of the two-week shotgun season. Not only that, but there may have been a little karma involved, given that she was hunting one of her late dad’s favorite haunts.

“I always go to my dad’s old stomping grounds as a tribute to him — a way to reconnect with that space and time,” she wrote, referring to former part-time South Deerfield cop, Stanley Magelinski.

Well, this time Dad’s spirit must have been present in the fall wind to push deer toward her. At 8:30 a.m. Day 1, she killed a scrappy 5-point, 115-pound buck with a broken main antler beam, likely from fighting. Then, 24 hours later, at 8:45 the next morning in the same spot, she killed a 7-point, 110-pound buck to end her season in a flash. Perhaps she had prematurely ended the reign of twin 2- or 3-year-old buckaroos. Or maybe they were just random, unrelated young bucks passing the same stand nearly a day to the minute apart.

With rapid-fire success in the rear-view, Ms. Banas was confronted with the bleak reality that her season was over unless she was up for helping others hoping to fill their harvest tags. Nope, not her cup of tea running around the woods trying to move deer for others.

“Honestly, I am not into helping people drive deer,” she wrote, “so it was a boring December, for sure. But, all tagged out, I saw many more deer after that on back-road drives.”
Sounds like one of those years all deer hunters experience if they stay at it long enough. Some years you can’t see a flag. Others, well, no matter where you go, there are deer.

Luck of the draw.