A Stand In The Valley

An archery hunt in the Riverbottoms of West Tennessee proves there’s still tremendous public deer hunting for anyone willing to work for it.

- Will Brantley

That buck wasn’t supposed to be standing there. Not in a beanfield an hour after sunrise in October—on Tennessee public land. I have a game warden buddy in the Volunteer State who says Southern deer are so notoriously wary because, in this part of the world, “critters get got after.”

Yet, here he was—a heavy, potbellied 8-pointer standing there as if he lived on 1,000 private acres in Iowa. He wasn’t 200 yards from where I’d parked the truck, and I would’ve had a chance of killing him had I brought my bow. Unfortunately, I was just holding binoculars, scouting ahead of a hunt the following week. I could hardly wait to come back.

Bottoms Up

I was on the Hatchie National Wildlife Refuge in southwest Tennessee. Most of the refuge is pristine hardwood bottomland forest, the type of habitat that once dominated the region called the Mississippi Alluvial Valley (MAV), which follows the lower Hatchie River from southern Illinois to the Gulf of Mexico. Today, only 20 percent of the MAV’s original forest remains. The rest has been cleared for farming.