I had an encounter tonight I believe was the result of a doe bleat can. I had been using my doe bleat can all evening. There wasn't much to see in the way of deer. In fact, the only deer I saw were two very young fawns I have been seeing in the field every night since opening weekend. They're always alone, so I'm assuming the doe must have been shot or somehow died. These fawns still have some light spots, so I would think they are too young to have just moved on by themselves. Anyway, even as it approached dark I used my doe bleat a couple times, the last time being just a few minutes before I left the stand.

As I left the stand I walked the fence line on the edge of the field, a few
small pine trees also grow along the fence line so I was trying to get out
without spooking too many of the deer that had moved in to the field after
dark. It was now completely dark, so I had no idea what might be in the field. When I got about 20 yards out of the trees where my stand was hung and into the field, I stopped to look around, just to see if I could see any shadows of deer in the field. All of a sudden from my right I hear hooves and a deer running, which sounded like at least two deer, and bleating. I heard what sounded like a stampede of hooves and fawn bleating getting closer and closer.

So I quick flipped on my mini mag light and shined it in the direction of
the bleating. Just as I got the light up, those two fawns appeared out of
the pitch dark about 20 feet from me, running full speed right at me. I
waved my light and yelled, afraid they might just plow right in to me, and
they veered off about 90 degrees to my rear. I turned and shined the light
right on their faces, still about 20 feet away. We all stood there for a
couple seconds staring at each other; then, suddenly, they started running at me again. I yelled even louder this time and waved my light at them some more. This time I walked towards them to try to scare them away. I thought for a moment about letting them get right up to me to see if I could touch them; what a cool story I could go back and tell my kids.

But I didn't want such young deer having such a pleasant encounter with a person, they're going to have a hard enough time surviving as it is. They finally turned and ran off far enough that they were out of the range of my small flashlight and I couldn't see them anymore.

I've never had such an encounter. It was such a combination of first being
scared out of my mind that something was charging me, and then immediately humorous that it was just a couple of fawns thinking I was another deer. It was quite the encounter.

Chris Kleist
D&DH Web Pro Staff Member, Wisconsin

The Ohio Division of Wildlife says it will phase out deer registration stations, or "check stations" as Ohioans call them, by 2010. Today's story revealed that successful hunters will not only ultimately buy all licenses online in the state -- they'll register their deer by phone.

That means Ohio will be joining many other states that do not use check stations. While phone-in or online registation no doubt helps agencies meet tight budgets, questions remain as to how accurate this system will be in terms of measuring harvests and population estimates. That, of course, could result in adverse effects later when hunting policies and quotas are set.

Posted by Corey Graff, Online Editor