Buck in the Woods, aka Stuck Buck
Today Erin and I took a walk in the nearby woods with our dog.
Since no other cars were in the lot, we let Daisy off the leash.
She’s usually pretty good about coming back to us when we call, excepting when certain wild animals catch her attention.
Today she took off after something, and we shouted and whistled, and she only had interest in the animal.
She had crossed a drive, which meant she was on private property.
I tried to see what she was chasing after, and couldn’t see anything.
Then I saw a flash of big antlers and a deer rump thrashing.
“Woah! I think there are bucks fighting up there!” I shouted to my wife.
I began to pick my way through the light underbrush toward Daisy.
As I came up toward the drive, I saw a buck, maybe 8-10 points.
No other deer was in sight.
This guy was hardly moving, but he seemed stuck in the brush.
Finally reaching Daisy, I caught her attention and sent her back to Erin.
I stuck around, examining the situation of this deer.
Some yellow ratchet straps and ropes were strung between a few trees, but I could not find any trace of a trap or any real reason that this buck was stuck in the bushes. I saw no injury or blood, but he was clearly exhausted. I couldn’t tell if he was in the process of dying from an arrow, or a fighting injury that I couldn’t see, or if he was somehow cleverly trapped in a way I couldn’t see, or perhaps he would recover and move on.
Being unarmed, I’d have been asking for a real bruising or worse if I were to intervene and help him, and on private property, I realized that there was nothing I could do but go home, and maybe find the land owner online and get in touch.
The deer was still standing there when we left him.
I felt sad, puzzled, and impotent.
I’m a hunter, and also a man who tries honor the life of the animal, by wasting not.
It tugs at my heartstrings to see this handsome buck in whatever situation he was in.
It breaks my heart to leave him abandoned, with no resolution.
If he dies there tonight, the cold weather will preserve the meat. I can check on him tomorrow.
So we went home, and I looked up the public records map, which shows who owns which parcels.
I found a woman’s name associated with what I best figured to be the location of the buck.
Her name seemed familiar, but who knows, it’s probably a somewhat common name around here. Apparently she’s an audiologist, so maybe my dad is her customer, hahah.
Anyway, there was a phone number, so I sent it to my phone and called.
“Hello, you have reached the office of…” I hung up, after hearing something about being closed for the holidays.
Few more clicks, and I found another number and address, and this address made me realize that this lady was a bartender who I sorta knew from my younger years. At least I’m about 90% sure.
I dialed the second number.
“bee bah boo [chime] this number is out of service…” another dead end.
I have no idea whether or not she’s my dad’s hearing aid lady, but I’ll find out soon I guess.
Oh! what’s that? One quick image search confirms that the audiologist is the bartender.
I’m lazy, so I’ll hold out on the dad thing for now. That’s private medical information anyway, I might break a law if I told you.
Another close by land owner was also a familiar name, because he’s a family member to one of my good old friends, and also the inheritave owner of a large company in the area. I took a screenshot to send to my friend, because this little patch of woods is certainly not where he lives.
Browsing the map further, up the hill was a much larger plot, entitled to some natural living trust or something.
I believe this is where the cattle graze. It looks like that property extends down into the woods quite a way, and perhaps those guys are hunting up there, and this buck had been shot, then made it’s way into the valley where we were. I certainly saw no exit wound on the one side of the deer that I was able to see, which indicates a bad shot if that’s what it was.
I hope that some hunter was back in the woods where I couldn’t see them, watching our ordeal with the dog, my perplexity at this strangely immobile stag, and stifling his laughter.
I hope I don’t go back there tomorrow morning, find it there, and start calling local governments to ask their permission to take it for meat.
But I might.
It will be an unfinished story if I don’t.
A good samaritan who wasn’t, a handsome buck whose purpose went un-manifested, and perhaps ended in the tragic and sorry torture that is nature.
I hate these helpless moments, but they sure make me think.
Watching that deer suffer, without the power to help.
Ugh.
I could have taken my wife and dog home, grabbed a bow, some knives, bags, and a rope, went back and finished the job.
I would have been breaking a number of laws by doing so, not to mention possibly pissing off landowners and hunters.
Anyway, that’s why I had to write about it.
Sometimes, when you can’t do anything, you just gotta write about it, maybe talk it out.
That’s all for now, and if any developments occur, I’ll let u know. Maybe, if it’s worth it.
Next Day
Today I went back to the spot where we’d seen the buck, and he was not there.
I found the yellow straps and the bare patch in the snow and leaves where he’d been struggling.
But no trace of blood or anything beyond what I’d seen yesterday.
Well, I guess he got out of there.
I hope he’s ok.
Accountability
Recently I bought new snow tires for my shitty old car.
I expect to keep driving this car for a few more years, or whatever providence brings.
I ordered the tires online, and had them delivered to my home.
I threw them, along with my tasteful cast aluminum rims, old bald tires still on, in the back of my pickup truck, and drove them over to my favorite mechanic, who I’ve been going to for nearly a decade.
He got them back to me in a day, and I was mildly surprised by the higher mounting fee, but prices are not going down these days, are they.
Anyway, I took the newly mounted and balanced tires home and unloaded them onto the patio by my house.
Two days later, my father stopped by, and we were admiring the new car sneakers when I noticed a gash in the aluminum rim.
I looked closer, and saw that it went in a circle, carving a crude groove in every spoke, concentrically around the wheel. Chipped powder coating, with more damage, even out the edge of the rim in one area.
I racked my brain, to puzzle out if I could possibly have been responsible for this damage, if it could have been there before I dropped them off. I knew I’d scuffed the curb a couple of times, but only lightly, and those curb scuffs angle inward, like a spiral. This was one solid groove.
It wasn’t till a day later that I lifted that top wheel off of the stack, and found a similar groove in every wheel.
Now I knew; it must have happened with the mechanic.
I felt conflicted about this for another day or two. I was pissed, but I didn’t want to confront him with accusations and ruin my connection to a usually good mechanic. I went over lines and phrases in my head, and took pictures of the worst damage.
Eventually I composed a text, “All 4 rims came back with this deep groove. Any idea what happened?” and sent it along with a close-up photo of the worst damage.
I talked to my wife about it, saying how I really like this guy, and I don’t want to burn this bridge, and all I would need is something. Fifty bucks back, or at least an acknowledgement of responsibility.
A week went by with no reply.
Knowing I couldn’t just let this go, and in the interest of clearing the air and preserving Bob’s status as my favorite mechanic, I loaded the wheels back into the back of my truck one afternoon, and drove over to the shop.
Seeing Bob in the office through the large windows, I walked in.
“I didn’t see your text until just today, I was on a recovery mission for my trailer down in Texas.”
He started to describe his trip, then caught himself, saying, “Anyway, that’s neither here nor there. I probably should have stopped after the first one…”
Rather than reply with a smart-ass “yeah”, I let the silence marinate until he started talking again.
He brought me back to the jig to show and explain what had happened.
Then he got to the reimbursement part. He first brought up calling his insurance company to replace the rims, which hadn’t even occurred to me. I spoke frankly, saying that I did not expect new rims for my crappy old kia. I expressed my appreciation for him over the years, and stated that I simply wanted to clear the air and make things right.
He then offered a refund on the job, which I gladly accepted.
We headed back toward the office, ducking under lifted cars and stepping around piles of grimy parts and tools.
He looked up the invoice from the job, then took out his wallet and counted out $81, just over what I had paid him.
We chatted for a while longer. When we were both ready to move on, I offered my hand over the desk, which he took. I noticed he did not look me in the eye; I’m sure he didn’t enjoy doling out that money.
Hey, at least I left the office happy, and with no resentment on either side. Actually, I think perhaps we even shared a bit more mutual respect. At the very least, I had kept a good mechanic, and he had kept a good customer.
I could dwell on the fact that he did’t come right out and tell me about the damage, which he clearly was aware of. He may have thought I didn’t care, knowing the humble condition of the vehicles that I drive. Not a great excuse, but perhaps a factor. Rather than dwell, or try to drive the point home, I will simply file it away, and forgive but not forget.
In today’s world, we rarely hold each-other directly accountable.
People will call the cops on their next door neighbor before knocking on their door to ask that they turn the music down.
We’ll smile and wave at our neighbor right after complaining about them on Facebook.
We are so averse to confrontation, that we’ll let friendships die on the vine rather than addressing whatever issue has come between us.
The biggest challenge in confronting someone, or in being held responsible for our own mistakes, is to avoid anger. To initiate a confrontation often takes so much emotional energy, anticipation, mental rehearsing, that it can be hard to not blow off immediately, blustering through accusations, when we finally do confront the other person.
As the accused, it’s hard to accept criticism without jumping to defensive excuses and diverting the blame to someone or something else.
Sometimes a relationship can only be preserved by open honesty, humility, and forgiveness.
Every day I ask the Lord to help me “Walk humbly and with strength in Your way”.
As someone who tends to flip off in anger, or to stuff down my grievances and emotions, letting them smolder without release, I must thank God for guiding me through this scenario, and for providing the best possible outcome.
1996 Honda Civic.
I want to buy a brand new, 1996 Honda Civic. It was a nearly perfect car. Front disc brakes, excellent motor, comfortable interior, sunroof, and power everything if you got those options. Mine was an EX Coupe. It had a great stereo, and shifted manually, while still featuring cruise control. This car was a joy to drive, and nicely economical. I bought mine in 2003 for $6k with 98k miles, then drove it up to about 190k over the next decade. It had no gps, bluetooth, onstar, xm radio, or any other built in communications, excepting keyless entry and AM/FM radio.
Imagine if Honda still made a 1996 Civic, just the way it was back then, new off the line.
How much would it cost? All the research and development was taken care of a long time ago, and it’s a dependable car to this day. I would pay around ten thousand dollars or so, which, now that I think of it, is probably not far from it’s original price tag.
Have you noticed that vehicles are getting bigger?
A Ford Ranger was once a small pickup or suv, on the footprint of a sedan. Now, in 2024, it’s every bit as big as the F-250 was twenty years ago. As an added bonus of hilarity, most of them have 4-6 ft beds now, while even many of the Rangers had 8’ beds in the 80’s and 90’s.
My point is that vehicles have gotten more heavy, less efficient, and way more computerized, complicated, bloated, prone to failure, and harder to fix than they should be.
Inflation and regulation have driven the price of new cars up to the point that it can mean crippling debt to the buyer. Constantly changing regulations necessitate the release of new models from manufacturers every year or two. Emissions and safety rules constantly pile more weight and lower efficiency onto our new vehicles. Manufacturers have had to drop models, or make them bigger, to fit emissions standards.
Emissions standards dictate that a vehicle must attain a certain mpg per certain dimensions of the vehicle. Since, as mentioned above, these never ending regulations add weight and block flow, this becomes impossible to reach with older models, and the manufacturers actually add dimensions to the chassis and body of the vehicles, so that they will match a different class of emissions standards.
Artificial incentives have driven us toward methods and products that are extremely unsustainable and unhealthy. Electric vehicles, solar panels, windmills that take more petroleum to produce than they will ever save before aging out into a windmill graveyard (see Jim Breuer’s documentary on this).
Anyway, I’m rambling.
It’s not that my example of a ‘96 Civic is necessarily the ultimate car, it’s just that I had one that I loved. To be honest, my dad’s ‘90 Civic was in some ways better. It still had power windows, but it was lighter and smaller, simpler, and got 40 mpg.
Also, maybe your perfect vehicle is a pickup truck, or a minivan.
In my case, I love having a commuter sedan and a pickup truck, as well as a car for my wife.
We keep slightly older vehicles, right now all three are ‘06-’08.
Her ‘08 Civic has lots of enjoyable options, including heated leather seats and a sunroof. On the other hand, it has a built in gps and xm stereo, and a clock that updates from satellite and is usually wrong. We don’t subscribe to xm or gps, so these extra features, and the nearly useless screen that has to mechanically fold out from the dash in order to swap a cd, are really just in the way of what this car could be. We have phones; we don’t need our car to be a self-driving deathbot that never works for long and relies on foreign slaves strip mining in toxic sludge, speaking of which, her Civic has an oil pan that’s also the bottom of the transmission, etc. It leaks oil, but it’s way to hard to pull out and replace compared to a conventional oil pan. Due to the cost/labor involved, my mechanic recommends checking and filling it regularly while it drips toxic sludge.
Here’s another angle on this:
Why can’t I buy a car powered by woodgas, or a miniature nuclear reactor?
For a number of years, I have had this joke line that I should be driving a nuclear powered auto-gyro.
An auto-gyro is an early 20th century helicopter/plane made by a Pitcairn. It had a genius anti-stall mechanism using it’s passive overhead rotor.
So while I say this line tongue-in-cheek, I’m getting at a bigger concept:
With freedom to produce and sell vehicles that are designed to what consumers actually want, utilizing technologies uninhibited by monopolistic gas and government regulators, we could be driving more efficient, fun, cheep, practical, and maintainable vehicles.