An expert deer hunter I am not, do not profess to be, never had the benefit of a venerable mentor to hunt beside, teach me. Yes, I have taken deer over the years, mostly does when holding a rare permit during shotgun or blackpowder. But, still, I always keep my eyes open and try to understand deer by evaluating surprise close encounters, one recent.

Many of those chance encounters occur during pheasant season, while noisily brush-busting through dense alder swamps. That’s when I seem to jump deer, often nice bucks making the rounds during the November rut. It never ceases to amaze me where I find them, what I’m doing at the time of the sighting, and how I am moving compared to the way I slither through the woods when actually hunting deer. It leaves me thinking that perhaps I do it all wrong during deer season, slowly stalking, still-hunting, sitting on stand for hours waiting for one to appear. Some of the best deerslayers I have known, especially trappers, learn fast that you’re just as apt to bump a deer and have a good shot at it while moving like I do while bird hunting through dense, tangled cover. These men have the trophies to prove it.

My recent deer sighting occurred an hour into a pheasant hunt while angling across a gnarly open field toward a corner of dense young alders fronting cattails, a deep ditch filled with water, and taller, mature alders behind it. I was handling the dogs, often giving them two short bursts on my whistle to turn them, also giving them the whistle and vocal command to “come around,” my way of keeping them within range. It was after such a command that Lily appeared from my right and sprinted down a manmade path through dried golden rod and other weeds, tail furiously wagging. As I watched her, I caught a subtle flash of white in the young, head-high alders ahead of her, then noticed movement; yes, a big deer, head low, furtively trotting. When it broke briefly into a partial 10- or 12-foot opening, I could see large antlers, then its hind quarters as it moved away from me. When it reached the ditch, it jumped the water and circled back toward a dense, impenetrable alder swamp. Imagine that, I thought: all this activity and racket by me and the dogs, and a big buck passes within 80 yards; the third straight year I had seen a nice buck in that field at midday.

I jumped my first buck in that piece three years ago, maybe 100 yards east of this recent sighting. The big animal came out of the same type of young alder cover. It stood up, froze broadside for a moment to look at me and the dogs, then bound off through eight-foot, thorny cover, across a wide meadow brook, through a brown swamp and into a faraway hardwood stand. Then, last year, this time in taller alders nearer the road, maybe 10 a.m., the dogs jumped a big buck that bound off across the road and up a steep hill of mature oaks. It too wore a handsome rack, which, upon further inspection, had been used to tear up the alders it had been flushed from while making a large, aggressive rutting scrape on the ground. The dogs got to within 20 feet of that animal before it bailed out, and I was no more than 20 yards away, not trying to conceal my presence.

Another similar sighting that occurred in the past three or four years in the same area involved four does. A friend and I were hunting the back, secluded, L-shaped field with three dogs, Ringo, Lily and Bessie. We were working between the woods on the long leg of the L when the dogs broke into the trees on the west side of the field. Out came the four does, tails high, bounding across the open field no more than 25 to 30 yards in front of us. My friend claimed he could have killed all four with his buckshot gun, a long-barreled, full-choked, Belgian-Browning, Auto-5. I had no reason to doubt him.

“Why doesn’t that seem to happen during deer season?” he quipped, shaking his head. Probably because he never hunts deer that way, likely never will.When I told the landowner this week of the handsome buck I had seen in the alders, he knew of it. His brother had seen it, called it among the largest bucks he had ever seen, and the man has killed many nice rackers in his day. When I got to talking about all the nice deer I had seen in that dense covert in recent years, the landowner wasn’t a bit surprised. He said bucks live in that swamp and are nearly impossible to hunt. In the last year or two when he, his father and brother weren’t having any luck in the highlands, he remembered well a memorable swamp maneuver he put on for for the boys. He pulled on a pair of hip boots and thrashed through the alders and bull briars, trying to move deer toward the back lip overlooking the swamp, where his father and brother were “posted up.” The strategy didn’t work, no matter how hard he tried.

“I kept hearing those deer in front of me, to my side, in back of me, not far away at all, splashing through water, running around, making a lot of noise,” the swamp-buster recalled. “But I was helpless, could barely see flags, never pushed one anywhere near my father or brother. Once they’re in that swamp, you might as well leave them there because they’re almost impossible to get.”

Either that or maybe just sit patiently along the swamp’s edge near a frequently traveled run and wait for the deer to enter or exit the habitat early and late. It’s about the only chance you have when you can’t use use Springer Spaniels to help you.