As rare as snow is along the banks of the Pamlico River, it offers the outdoorsman a good opportunity to observe wildlife by following the tracks animals leave as they wander around the woods and fields in search of food and a warm place to rest.

Growing up in the area around Aurora, we learned that the field manual for the Boy Scouts of America held a fair listing of what sort of tracks the animals left in snow or soft ground. There was no shortage of mud in that area and this did allow some degree of tracking, but it did not offer quite as good an example as the animal tracks in fresh snow showed us. By following these tracks in fresh snow, we could get a pretty clear example of what kind of animal had passed through the area and, if the snow was melting in the tracks, an approximate time the animal passed through.

Our native Beaufort County wildlife isn’t accustomed to snow and, particularly in the case of younger animals, it leaves them bewildered at what was happening in this suddenly white world.

During one particularly cold and snowy day, I was freezing my buns off sitting in a tree stand waiting for a chance to shoot a deer near the Bonnerton area. It was really another world that even I wasn’t used to. Where the woods all around me had been all green and brown, the landscape was now all gray, brown and mostly white. The snow also served to muffle the sounds and I didn’t hear the six-point buck as he came up behind me.

A hint of movement in this quiet world made me slowly turn to the right and I saw the buck just barely moving forward, looking around as if it was totally confused and lost. If he’d ever seen snow before, I’d have been surprised.

For about 15 minutes I watched this animal as it very slowly and carefully slipped along the once well-worn game trail where I’d set up my stand. Sounds were so well muffled by the snow that neither of us could make out any noise.

The sound of my rifle shot took the deer by shirt-lived surprise, as it felt the bullet enter its chest. Instinctively it bolted off the trail and through the trees and foot-deep snow as it tried to escape whatever it was that startled and hurt him. I knew the shot was true and just sat for a few minutes before I climbed down from the stand to follow the wounded deer.

Ordinarily you might have had to look closely to follow a blood trail through the woods, but in this case, there was no mistaking where the deer had run. Its tracks told a story of its frantic trek through the woods, but on the left side of its track there were splatters of red blood in the white snow. It wasn’t just a little bit of fresh blood either. There was lots of it.

At the end of the buck’s 100-yard death run, it lay where it fell. When I began to field dress the deer, I couldn’t help but wonder just how it had managed to go as far as it had after having been shot. The deer’s heart was nearly destroyed by the 150-grain bullet.

The thing I remember most of that particular hunt wasn’t the killing of the deer at all. It was the beauty of the snow and the quiet of the woods before I shot. It was a memorable and successful hunt that not too many eastern North Carolinians have ever had.

Probably one of the most talked about hunts that I’ve ever taken part in in Beaufort County happened years after that particular snowy hunt. I’d invited a very select group of seven women from the National Rifle Association to hunt deer in the Aurora area with me. My wife had chosen to stay at our home in Garner while I hosted the NRA’s women’s group at our house at Isle Vue Beach.

The majority of the women were experienced hunters from the Gulf States of Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi. They were all well trained in handling guns and were ready to tackle the woods and waters of eastern North Carolina.

They enjoyed crossing the Aurora to Bayview ferry and going over to hunt waterfowl at Booger Harris’s Pungo Acres Hunting Retreat near Pantego. Booger showed them one of the most memorable waterfowl hunts that these women will ever experience and most of the hunters left with big adult tundra swans with David Gossett to later be mounted. We returned to Isle Vue Beach by the ferry as the weather began to look threatening. It was windy, turning very cold and darkening clouds promised some manner of precipitation. The snow began to fall as we returned to a warm house on South Creek.

Many of these hunters were from warmer climates and snow was relatively new to them. In fact, this was the first snow that several of them had ever been involved in. It really shook them up the next morning when we awakened to a foot or more of new snow on the ground. The N.C. Highway Patrol was asking everyone to stay off the highways until the roads were cleared. I suddenly found myself snowbound with a house full of women.

So, what to you do under these circumstances? I played the part of host and cook as the women sat around the fireplace and traded hunting stories—for two days and nights.

Several of my guests had driven to Aurora and some of them were scared to death at the thought of having to drive back to the Raleigh Durham International Airport in all that snow. We probably should have waited another day or so before leaving, but their flights back to Texas were still on schedule. In my old Jeep Wagoner, I broke snow for the ladies to drive successfully back to Raleigh and on to home in Texas.

It had certainly been a memorable (snow bound in a house full of women) hunt and, as host to those delightful ladies, it was a hunt that neither I (or my neighbors at Isle Vue Beach) will ever forget.