© Copyright John F. Trout III

Legendary whitetails are timeless.  Often, they are labeled by the hunter who bagged the deer, or stumbled upon the rack lying in a tangle of sumac and alder.  “Hole in the Horn”, the “Jordan Buck”, and Gene Wensell’s “Woody”, are only a few of the whitetails made famous by not only their size, but by the titles they carried.  These names given to deer of stature have become far more than a calling card.  They have taken shape and set a mood, instilling into all of us the essence of what whitetail hunting is really all about.

In my youth, I hunted whitetails with a loose-knit clan of passionate hunters, my father and grandfather included.  The group, which numbered five, hunted from the warmest days of early bow season through the bitter cold of December when they would huddle after a morning’s hunt, talking through frosted mustaches.  They spoke of rut phases, acorn production and distant shots that echoed through the woods. 
Sometimes they mentioned a certain deer, singling it out from the others.  Often, these deer were given special titles, and not all of them were bucks.  Horsehead was one such foe.  I first heard of the deer in the darkness as my father told the group about his evening dealing with the old doe.

“Well, she got me again,” he told them, his arms raised in defeat.

“Who did?” they asked.

“That big doe.  She’s the same one that smelled me last week.  Tonight, she picked me out, nailed me just before dark and started blowing and stomping.  I nearly climbed out of the tree and chased her off!”

The following weekend, the same doe made out another veteran of the clan. She found him in the skyline after drawing in volumes of cool morning air, turning over each molecule in her snout and refusing to leave until she knew positively what awaited her there.  That was the morning they named her “Horsehead” for the broad crest between her black eyes and an endless muzzle capped by nostrils the size of black walnuts.

Not long after, Horsehead became a common foe on our 200 acres.  I hadn’t seen her and was glad of it.  My young psyche hardly managed to deal with naïve fawns or love stricken, juvenile bucks, and I knew I was no match for Horsehead.  I had nightmares of her boring holes through my quavering eyes.  Still, I had thoughts of arrowing the old doe and gaining the respect of the others.  I longed for a photograph of myself, posing with the troublesome doe, my bow laid across the length of her, while the others gathered around behind me.  The thought of such a feat was fool’s play.

Horsehead had the genetics for intelligence like some bucks are destined to sport colossal racks.  Her parents were surely old and wise and well learned in the dangers of hunting season.  For two seasons the men dealt with her and never was she seen with a buck in company, though she always had fawns.  Likely, the fawns roused her from the bed before dark and kept her moving past daybreak.

Horsehead lived in a constant state of alert.  While other deer browsed through the honeysuckle and wooded draws, Horsehead kept her ears high, pitching this way and that, begging a foreign sound to give her cause for an investigation.  And her nose never rested.  She worked a fall breeze as though she distrusted the air itself.

One season, Horsehead began peering into treetops for humans.  About that time, we piled on Trebark camouflage, thinking we would become invisible.  This camouflage revolution took place while she watched.  Horsehead honed her skills and continued turning out hunters at her usual pace.  She made the connection between hunters and tree stands.  She understood the silhouette of a human as opposed to just another oak limb.  These talents proved her instincts, but her habit of seeking out what she thought suspicious unnerved the men. 
At times, she hunted the hunter.

In December of Horsehead’s third or fourth season, I heard grumbles of targeting her in the late season.  She had reared four fawns in the past two years, passing on her intelligence to each of them.  Often, the fawns would follow their mother stiff legged, their rumps bristling white, their stares as serious and as intent as any battle scarred buck.  My father feared that soon an entire herd of nervous whitetails might populate the acreage.  This deer represented a line of new-age genetics, a superior form of atavism compounded and run amuck.

They never killed her.  Truthfully, they never tried.  For although they often complained of her blowing their cover, they had come to appreciate her unparalleled senses, and joining her in the woods somehow proved more a comfort than a vexation.  In only two seasons, Horsehead became a legend for us, so that I am thinking of her today, some twenty years later.  We never knew how she died, or where she died, only that the woods quieted.  Perhaps she faded back into the land from which she came, like autumn leaves.

We all have memories of great whitetails, deer we have personalized as a token of respect.  These animals define us as hunters; they give us character, and a link into their world.  They are with us always.

John Trout, III