Spike and the fork

'Spike'

For the past few weeks practically every day at the dig we'd see the same deer - a small little spike.  He's practically tame and with no originality we nicknamed him 'spike'.

Once deer hunting season began I horrified the rest of the archaeology crew by suggesting I was going to harvest Spike.  I was joking, but the fact of the matter is that once you've named a critter it is extremely difficult to harvest said critter.  And this is especially true if he is tame and just stands there.  That's not hunting!

But I must admit I thought about Spike while my friend Gregg and I were on a recent deer hunt.  It was more of a hike than a hunt and we passed on the first couple of bucks that we saw.  Then we saw some semi big bucks that eluded us, and after a long hike it was beginning to look like we were going to go home without a deer.

That's about when Gregg started to point out spikes for me to shoot.  One was just standing there at about 50 yards.  I told Gregg that I was not going to hike 8 miles to harvest a spike when I could so much more easily do it much closer to the road with the pet 'spike'.  Harvesting a spike was out of the question.

That's about when 'forkie' showed up on the scene.  Nothing wrong with a 2 point buck!  And so we found something worth the 8 mile hike.  Patrick

The view 5 miles and about 2500' vertical into our hike

'Forkie'