Buck is worth wet day

This is the first deer the veteran hunter will have mounted.

By BOB RIEPENHOFF

MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS

MILWAUKEE — After a slow, rainy opening day of the gun deer season in the Northern Unit of the Kettle Moraine State Forest, things picked up for Jim Laganowski on Nov. 18.

“It was such a tough opening day,” Laganowski, of Franklin, told me. “It was depressing. You wait all year for opening day. The very worst weather you could have is what we got.”

The weather got worse as the day wore on so, instead of sitting out in the rain, sleet and snow and getting soaked, Laganowski decided to spend the afternoon doing some scouting.

“I know that, in that type of blustery weather, the deer just don’t move,” Lagnaowski said. “I decided to drive around and look for spots with pine or tamarack over-head cover where deer might be waiting out the storm.”

He located an area with the kind of cover he was looking for and, before sunrise that Sunday, walked in to his spot — a small opening in a stand of pines and tamaracks, along with some aspens.

“I wanted to position myself where I could get a good shot,” Laganowski said. “The wind was in my face, so I knew the deer couldn’t smell me.”

As the sun rose on a clear, crisp November morning, the woods started to come alive again after the storm, he recalled. A noisy flock of geese took off from a nearby lake. Pine squirrels were scurrying around in the leaves. Crows were calling.

“I was staring forward when I caught some movement coming through the woods to my right,” Laganowski said. “The deer wasn’t moving at a dead-out run, but it was moving at a pretty good clip. I could see the antlers.”

It would be a long shot for a 12-gauge slug gun — at least 70 yards, maybe longer.

“It came right through that opening,” he said. “Just by luck it happened to go right where I thought it would.”

Laganowski shouldered his gun, waited for the buck to reach the clearing, and aimed a little high above the buck’s neck because of the distance.

“I fired and it dropped,” he said.

But this wasn’t over. The buck got up and took off deeper into the woods.

“I walked up and found a good blood trail,” Laganowski said. “My heart was pounding and the adrenaline was flowing. I followed the blood trail into the pine woods.”

After tracking the deer for about 100 yards, Laganowski was starting to wonder whether he had made a good shot or blown it

Just then, the buck jumped up from where it had bedded down and ran off again.

After tracking for maybe another 150 more yards, Laganowski finally spotted the deer and ended the chase with a final shot. It was a beautiful eight-point buck that must have weighed close to 175 pounds, he estimated.

“I was very happy,” Laganowski said. “But at my age and in the shape I’m in, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to drag that deer out of the woods by myself.”

Laganowski, 54, has back and knee problems that limit his mobility. So he tagged his deer and walked out to the road where he happened to run into anther hunter.

“I told him my predicament and asked if he would help me and he was friendly as can be,” Laganowski said.

It took about 20 minutes for the two hunters to get back to Laganowski’s deer and drag it to the road. Meanwhile, two other hunters — also strangers — had offered to help out by retrieving Laganowski’s truck, which he had parked on the other side of the woods that morning.

“Everything worked out great,” Laganowski said. “I felt like a million bucks driving home.”

Laganowski has hunted all his life and taken close to 30 deer, but this is the first one he plans to get mounted.

“I never considered myself a trophy hunter,” he said. “I usually hunted on public land and I always took a legal buck when I could. They’re all special, but this one was really special. I love hunting in the Northern Kettle Moraine, and it’s the biggest one I ever got there. I always wanted to get one mounted.”

Laganowski paused, then said: “After being cold and wet and disappointed on the opening Saturday, this was a pretty inspiring Sunday. It felt good.”