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MORSE BLUFF, Neb. — Tami Sloup of Lincoln stalled a bit before cutting into the whitetail to begin field dressing the buck.
It was mid-morning Saturday, about two hours after she shot the deer. Her father and an uncle had just dragged the carcass out of a deep, wooded ravine, where it died after Sloup shot it with her new 243 Martin rifle.
Sloup had a knife in hand, but she hesitated.
She wasn’t squeamish. Sloup, 22, has hunted deer with her dad, Joe Sloup of Lincoln, since she was 5 or 6 years old. She hunted deer with a muzzleloader at age 12.
Sloup’s delay tactic was strategic. She is a certified surgical technologist at a Lincoln trauma center. She was waiting for someone to fetch her a pair of latex surgical gloves.
Thousands of similar episodes — with or without the operating room drama — unfolded across Nebraska during opening day of the firearm deer season. More than 70,000 hunters were expected in the fields this weekend for the start of the nine-day season.
Policing the biggest hunting weekend of the year are fewer than 50 Nebraska Game and Parks Commission conservation officers. Among the game wardens cruising the countryside Saturday was 44-year-old Mike Luben of Wahoo.
Luben’s day started before hunters could legally shoot 30 minutes before sunrise. It ended long after dark.
6:55 a.m. — A big buck darts across the highway in front of Luben’s unmarked Chevrolet Silverado pickup truck from one unharvested cornfield to another on the road between Mead and Yutan. It’s an early sign of the challenge facing hunters. Deer will hide in thousands of acres of standing corn this year.
7:07 a.m. — Luben spots a white pickup slowly driving along a row of trees on a farmstead northwest of Yutan. It might be trespassers. He checks out the hunters, who are scouting the area.
7:37 a.m. — Luben investigates a pickup parked near property north of Leshara marked for no hunting. He notices a spotlight on the dashboard. He notices deer hair and a few tiny blood spots in the truck’s open box. He scans the nearby bluffs for the tell-tale orange of a hunter. He walks 50 yards along railroad tracks for a better view. No hunter in sight.
“I hate to spoil a hunt, but I’d like to ask about that deer hair and blood,’’ he said before deciding to move on.
8:15 a.m. — Luben notices two hunters in a treehouse blind overlooking a field of standing corn near Cedar Bluff.
“What a beautiful morning to get up and sit in a tree stand,’’ he says.
8:26 a.m. — Tom Lee, the chief ranger at the Camp Cedars Boy Scout camp, tells Luben about a buck he shot with archery equipment.
8:55 a.m. — Hunter Matt Hustedt of Omaha pulls out a mobile phone and shows Luben a photograph of a 10-point buck he shot an hour earlier on land he leases near Cedar Bluffs. Hustedt shot the buck with a muzzleloader as it was chasing a doe. He was heading home to pick up his 8-year-old son, Garrett, to help retrieve the deer.
9:07 a.m. — “The only thing I don’t like about deer season is that I’m not a very good sitter. I like to get out and walk,’’ Luben says as the miles roll by criss-crossing the countryside.
9:30 a.m. — Hunter Kurt Bohac of Wahoo calls Luben for advice on how to remove a raccoon that crawled into a vehicle’s engine compartment and won’t leave. Poke at it with a stick, Luben advises.
9:57 a.m. — Conservation Officer Bill Krause of Auburn calls to say new Open Fields and Waters public hunting sites in his area are packed with hunters. That’s good news. The bad news: Krause discovered that several hunters drove their vehicles onto the land, a violation of hunting laws. The sites are walk-in only.
10:12 a.m. — Travis Sund of Fremont, Neb., laments that he watched an eight-point buck rub its antlers on a tree about 60 yards away. But Sund couldn’t shoot because he has a permit to shoot a doe, not a buck. “It was neat to watch, but it killed me,’’ Sund said.
10:18 a.m. — Bohac calls to say the raccoon won’t move. Luben’s advice: Go to town in another vehicle for lunch and give the creature a chance to slip away.
10:23 a.m. — Luben stops to watch Stuart Oden of Wahoo and his son, Nick, 9, unload a four-wheeler to search for a buck Oden shot the day before with a bow and arrow. Oden had lost the wounded deer’s trail when darkness fell.
10:40 a.m. — After a few wrong turns, Luben finds a hunting party led by brothers Dan, Tom and Joe Sloup, who show off two bucks shot a few hours earlier.
12:03 p.m. — Luben wakes hunter Leighton Larson of Lincoln who is napping in his pickup near his family’s deer camp west of Morse Bluff. Larson was done hunting. He shot an eight-point buck about 8 a.m. and then watched a 10-point buck arrive on the scene an hour later. “It was the biggest deer we’ve ever seen up here,’’ Larson said.
1 p.m. — Luben heads home for lunch. He’ll return to the back roads by mid-afternoon.
Contact the writer:
444-1127, david.hendee@owh.com
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