'tis the season

Eight minutes after that, I'm driving into the cemetery. Near the entrance I pull up alongside two mule deer bucks, as motionless as headstones.

and just as covered with rime.

But neither of them is the buck I'm looking for. The game warden who called me pulls up alongside, and points him out, farther uphill in the fog.

Decorated with Christmas lights.

This is the fourth buck deer we've had in town in the past few months with some sort of wire wrapped in his antlers. Two of the others got tranquilized and the wire (or tomato cage) cut off. The third managed to lose his wire decorations just as I loaded the dart into the tranquilizing rifle.

This fellow I might not have bothered with, since holiday lights are not terribly strong, were it not for the long bundle he was trailing along his right side.

A perfect way for him to get snagged, break something (like his neck), or get some citizen injured as they tried to rescue him.

Fortunately, I've still got the loaded dart from the third deer incident. I load it, roll down my window, and head up the lane to try to pop this deer from the truck.

Just like a poacher.

I notice the deer and I are right next to the wife's and my plots.

This rifle is gas propelled. I nearly buried the dart in the second buck's butt this fall with a pressure setting of 2.5, clear across a backyard, so I dial back to just 2.0 for this shot.

And the bright yellow dart flies slowly out of the barrel and falls limply far short of my target.

Who decides to find some quieter part of the cemetery to rest.

Crap!

Back down the hill I go. The warden and her husband keep tabs on the gaily decorated buck while I pull out the vials and measure and mix a second dart.

And a third, just in case.

The buck has bedded down again, in the northern-most tier, just a metal fence from a main street of town.

There's lots of vehicles stopping to watch.

Craaaap.

But the cemetery is as quiet as, well, a cemetery, and if I avoid the crunchy snow, it is easy to walk up on him. Especially using one of the huge tree trunks as cover (we're one row north of where I did the same stunt with a bear). As I get near enough for a shot, I look beyond the deer and there, parked on the street, is a red pickup. With a guy in the passenger seat aiming a videocamera at me and the buck.

Now, these tranquilizer guns don't have a lot of range, but yeah, it could fly that far. Especially since I set it at 3.5 this time. And these idiots are exactly in my line of fire.

I find a nice, frost-covered obelisk headstone (it's a geocache, actually... or used to be one) and lean against it. Waiting for the gawkers to figure out what they're doing wrong.

They don't. The guy must have burned five minutes of memory recording a deer sleeping and me waiting. My toes are getting cold. The game warden revs her engine impatiently up the hill.

I shift to stand in the open, but still out of sight of the deer, and cradle the rifle in an impatient pose.

They still don't get it.

This could take all day. I figure it is worth giving up my position to the buck in order to scold the idiots. And shout out...

You're... IN... my LINE...of FIRE!!

The driver's hand fly up, literally, and in a panic he throws the truck in reverse and backs up the street.

Okay. I would rather they just left, but since the deer didn't move, time to end this. I step around the tree enough to see deer butt, and fire.

The dart falls short again! It looks like it hit the lower leg, but when the deer trots off, there's nothing extra hanging on.

Crappp!

All I can figure is the cold, cold air must be slowing the darts down, or messing with the pressure guage. I load the third dart and jump in with the warden. We watch the buck for a while as he mingles through a band of cemetery deer, and he doesn't look drugged at all. But does bed down farther up the slope.

I crank the air pressure up to 5.0, and we stalk a deer with a truck.

Wop!

Perfect hit.

Right in his left hip. There's naught to do now but wait.

The guys from the red truck come down to join us, along with the editor of the local newspaper, camera in hand.

We all watch as another mature buck comes in and decides now is the time to challenge his rival. I have visions of two bucks locked together by Christmas lights, one sleepy and one feisty as hell.

But fortunately, our holiday deer doesn't feel so good right now, and backs down from the challenge. And wanders off to lay down.

We give him ten minutes for the drugs to take effect, using the time to unsuccessfully look for my second dart, and then creep in. The warden makes a lunge at the trailing strand of lights, only to have them jerked out of her hands as the buck bolts.

Guess we better wait some more.

When his nose finally settles to the ground, we approach again, but all I get is one hand on an antler and off he goes, stumbling recklessly through the headstones.

Okay! Everybody back off.

We happen to have circled back close to my truck, so I trot down, load a half dose of tranquilizers into the jab pole, and stroll back. The buck looks like he's out, but just to be sure, I give him the second dose.

Wait a few minutes, and then we're on him again. Me on the dangerous left antler, the warden's husband snipping the lights off the right, and she and one of the red truck guys rolling the heavy buck's butt so we can pull out the dart.

In literally seconds, we are done. And the buck is heavily, totally asleep in the Hickey family plot.

And we get interviewed by the newspaper. (Yep. Page One.)

But this buck can't be left alone. Besides his rival two lanes over, we have to worry about stray dogs and overzealous antler hunters. I can just hear the story now, "We found this deer dying in the cemetery, so we finished it off. Can we have the antlers? (Which, by the way, are already in our truck.)"

No, somebody has to babysit this fellow until he wakes. Which would normally be an hour or so, but with the second half dose, who knows. Not to mention, what if he got some of the drugs from the dart that bounced off his leg?

Guess who volunteers? Yeah, I got a couple Sudoku puzzles in the truck. Gotta put away all the tranquilizing gear, anyway.

So the buck sleeps.

And sleeps.

While I wait.

Every now and then he throws his head back, presumably relieving gas pressure from his rumen, and then zonks back out.

The Sudoku puzzles are quickly solved. I walk over and watch the steamy breaths come out of my charge's mouth, and then wander down a few rows. Laying a mental grid out on the frosty lawn, I start walking.

On the fifth transect, I find my missing dart.

The tip is bent from smacking the deer's solid leg bone, but there is blood also, all the way down to the syringe.

He probably got that dose, too. Or most of it. We just didn't wait long enough for it to take effect.

I'm gonna be here a while. I grab the camera, and circle around my charge.

The rest of the deer are taking their midday naps.

And frost covers almost everything else.

A truck creeps slowly down the lane, and pauses next to my patient. I step out from behind some stones, and the driver moves on.

A while later, another truck comes rolling in, a familiar green. Turns out to be one of my neighboring biologists, leaving a meeting he was attending literally across the street.

"I heard all the radio traffic. If I'd known you were right over here having fun, I would've come to help instead of going to the meeting." We catch up on the meeting notes, our past hunting seasons, and throw out ideas for what he wants to do next fall. Then we go over to check the buck, still asleep on Mother Hickey.

And my neighbor kicks him in the butt.

I'm more than a little surprised at this technique, but the buck gets up, and wobbles away.

And beds down again a little farther down, but no longer unconscious. He's groggy, but holding his head up.

Time to go.

It's a quarter after one.