Rare encounter with bucks puts quick end to archer’s hunt

GRAND FORKS, N.D. – Call it hunter’s intuition, but John Lien had a good feeling about the day’s bow-hunting prospects when he set out for his tree stand southwest of Park River, N.D., in September.

His optimism wasn’t unfounded; the spot has produced nice bucks, both for Lien and a buddy who owns the land. But never in his wildest imagination, Lien says, could he have envisioned the sight that greeted him when he walked up to the tree supporting his stand.

There, in a small creek about 10 yards from the base of the tree, lay what appeared to be a buck with a huge nontypical rack and completely covered with mud.

At first glance, Lien thought the buck had fallen into the water and drowned. The shallow water flowing through that stretch of the creek had been churned into a black, mucky froth, a sure sign that some kind of struggle had occurred.

A closer look revealed something much more striking: Two bucks, horns locked together in combat, lay in the mud – the smaller deer already dead, a twitching ear the only sign that the other still was clinging to life.

The bigger buck had a 5x4 rack, Lien says, the smaller a 5x5.

“I could see they had been in there for days,” he said. “They were both black from head to toe.”

Creeping toward the creek, Lien says his first instinct was to reach for his camera, but the buck that still was alive saw him and started thrashing in the mire.

Lien drew back and shot, putting an arrow through the buck’s lungs and killing the struggling animal within seconds. His 2005 bow-hunting season was finished – barely 15 minutes after it started and before he’d even had a chance to climb into his stand.

“It was kind of a mercy killing,” said Lien, 33, a construction manager. “It was really a depressing scene to see how they were. They were completely black, and they’d chewed up the little creek. It was pretty disheartening.”

If the struggle had occurred 50 yards in either direction from his stand, Lien says he probably wouldn’t have seen the bucks.

He used his cell phone to call the North Dakota Game and Fish Department for advice on how to transport two bucks with one tag. The dispatcher contacted Gary Rankin, district game warden in Larimore, N.D.

He also called his wife.

“I was just babbling like an idiot,” he said. “She didn’t understand how rare something like this is.”

The game warden arrived and the work began.

“If you can imagine trying to drag about a 320-pound animal soaking wet and full of slimy mud, it was not very easy,” Lien said. “When I went in to get him, I’d sink almost to my knees in the muck and the mud.”

Lien and Rankin used a Come-Along portable winch to pull the entangled bucks up two steep banks. From the time he shot the buck, until they dragged the deer to an accessible part of the trail about 75 yards from the creek, took nearly three hours.

The heads, still entangled, will be made into a special corner mount, Lien says.

“I don’t mean to act like it was some great hunt, but I was bow hunting, and I did kill one,” he said. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime find. There really wasn’t anything I did. I just showed up at my tree stand, and God put these two deer in front of it.”