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THIRD DAY. A chill, gusty rain whipped through the trees. "This is good," said Fred. "The deer's vision will be dimmed by raindrops on their eyelashes." Toward nightfall, as the downpour subsided into a fine mist, Fred spied a big buck munching on ground hemlock 80 yards away. Slowly, silently, Fred positioned his razorhead arrow and watched for five, ten, 20 excruciating minutes as the buck worked his way toward the clearing. But suddenly, he jerked his head, wriggled his nose, and was off into the bush. "Damn!" exclaimed Fred as he huddled over the camp stove. "With this island's tricky wind, it's hard to beat a deer's nose."
FOURTH DAY. After bracing himself with a shot of peppermint schnapps, Fred peeped out of the tent flap at 4:30 a.m. to find four inches of snow on the ground. Then he slipped on an extra suit of thermal underwear and set out in the dark. In the near-zero temperature, the inlet rimming the camp was layered with ice, and the sand was frozen hard as concrete. Bending like a bloodhound over the maze of snow tracks in the clearing, Fred whispered: "They're moving out of that shintangle [thicket] over there just after sundown." At dusk, as he watched a deer 100 yards off through his binoculars, a red squirrel barked behind him. Turning, Fred looked straight into the eyes of the big buck standing 20 yards away. Startled, the deer quickly thumped off into thick cover before Fred had a chance to react.
FIFTH DAY. After an uneventful day's hunt, Fred went to the mainland for supplies. At the Ponderosa on Interstate 75, he bought some smoked fish, and the proprietress, Mrs. Melina Hills, invited him into her kitchen for some homemade dandelion wine. She showed him a 20-lb. coho salmon she had "pulled outa the crick this mornin' " as well as photographs of the half-grown pet bobcat she had "potty-trained." Then, handing Fred a sponge soaked in anise oil, she confided: "Don't breeze it around, but that's the best buck lure there is. Just hang it on a tree near your blind." "How long will it last?" Fred asked. "For three rains," she replied.
SIXTH DAY. Fred was awakened by the violent flapping of the tent. Outside, an icy, 45-m.p.h. wind was screaming off the lake. In the clearing the trees were bending in the wind like drawn bows as Fred hung Melina's sponge in a spruce and sprinkled the trunk with a liquid lure made from the sex glands of a doe. Nothing worked. "The only thing left to do," said Fred, blackening his face with soot, "is hunt by moonlight and shoot by shape." Shortly after dusk, his eye caught the reflection of antlers in the moonlight. Again it was the big buck, and again he was moving enticingly close—70 yards, 65, 60. Then the wind shifted, the buck snorted and disappeared into the night.
SEVENTH DAY. The hunt was over. Deer spotted: 17. Arrows shot: 0. "Boy, those whitetail are really something," said Fred as he headed home. "They're just smarter than hell. Reminds me of the time I was hunting mountain goat in Alberta with Bud Gray, the chairman of Whirlpool. After about three hours of panting up those icy mountains, he rested on his bow and said: 'Tell me we're having fun, will ya?' "