Snowball: Legend of the Interlake

Snowball: A Hunting Story
By Shel Zolkewich
November 2, 2005

It had been raining slow and steady for the better part of half an hour. Just enough to get a glaze on my bare hands and turn them into little ice balls. The sun had said goodnight too. Barely enough light to see across the field now and definitely too dark to shoot. It was time to gather up and start the mile-long trek back to the farmyard.
I took one last scan. A white shape tumbling across the southern edge of the field—still without snow— caught my eye. Could it be a grocery bag? Maybe. Then it suddenly disappeared. With binoculars and gun in hand, I circled the long way around the stone pile where I had been posted up through the evening. Heading for the farmhouse, I took one more look over my shoulder. The shape was back and glowing like a white t-shirt on glowbowl night. Could it be? Was I looking at the famed albino whitetail deer I had been hearing about all week? I brought my gun scope up for a closer look. Sure enough a tiny white deer—save for a dark patch on his back and a marking on his face—dropped into a lower quadrant of my scope. I wanted to scream out “How cool is that!”. Instead I decided to get as close as possible to the whitetail calf, likely born this spring. I was about 150 yards away and it was black outside by now. I took several long strides, always keeping my eye on the deer. He didn’t seem to notice. At about 100 yard, I dropped to my belly and started to crawl the rest of the way. I think this is when I lost my cellphone.
I sensed some movement to south of the deer. When I looked away, I could see two more dark shapes in my peripheral vision. Snowball wasn’t alone. By the time I got within 50 yards, there were at least eight deer clustered on the field. The socked-in sky had broken to reveal a lighter gray patch and it was in this space that I could see all eight in silhouette. The one farthest away was the biggest by far. It was too dark for me to see horns but my guess is that he was a buck. Maybe even the big five-pointer that had escaped my trigger an hour before.
I continued to crawl toward the group. And they started to move toward me. At about 20 yards away, I stopped. Snowball was leading the pack and coming straight for me. Even in the dark he glowed. And he was curious. At this point my rampant excitement started to give way to a bit of uneasiness. What if they charged me? Trampled me? Deer don’t do this. But being so close to a group of wild animals delivers a certain kind of awe. In those moments—and I’ve been lucky to have a few—it doesn’t matter that it’s cold, uncomfortable and maybe a little scary. My pals in the hunting fraternity might scoff at what I’m about to say but it truly is a stirring experience.
Snowball kept coming. At about 10 yards, close enough to see his face, he stopped and gave a snort. Deer do this when they see, hear, smell or sense something they don’t like. His partners followed suit, all snorting then hightailing it for cover. Snowball blew by me, whitetail held high. I held my breath. Only that big buck in the back row stayed put. He snorted twice more, pawed the ground hard enough for me to feel it, then turned and ran in the opposite direction.
Everyone has an opinion about hunting. Usually you’re either for it or staunchly against it. For me hunting isn’t always about pulling the trigger. Sometimes it’s about almost catching a snowball.