A West Virginia hunter has concluded that deer activity on his property has “shut completely off” following a morning arrival witnesses described as somewhere between a furniture delivery and a minor logging operation.
Kevin Hensley, 45, reported seeing no deer during a four-hour sit Wednesday, despite what he called a careful approach designed to leave the woods undisturbed.
“I slipped in before daylight,” Hensley said. “They never knew I was there.”
His arrival began at 5:42 a.m., when he parked beside the access road and shut his truck door with enough force to wake the dome light in a neighboring vehicle.
Hensley then reopened the door to retrieve his gloves.
He shut it again.
The gloves were in his coat pocket.
He reopened the door a third time after remembering his phone, which was illuminating the inside of his backpack.
According to hunting partner Wayne Blevins, the final door closure was performed more softly.
“He held onto it and eased it almost all the way shut,” Blevins said. “Then it didn’t latch, so he had to give it a good one.”
Hensley maintains that truck noise does not bother the local deer because they hear vehicles regularly.
Asked whether those vehicles typically stop in the dark while a man spends eight minutes arguing with a zipper, he said the deer were probably used to that too.
The walk to his blind involved approximately 300 yards of dry leaves, loose gravel, and several pauses to catch his breath while explaining that he had worn too many clothes.
Hensley said he carefully placed each foot.
Blevins said this was true.
“He’d find a stick with one boot, then finish it with the other.”
Halfway up the trail, Hensley attempted to move his thermos from one hand to the other.
The thermos struck his chair.
The chair struck a tree.
The thermos then fell and began a descent that Blevins described as “having several distinct chapters.”
“It’d hit something and stop,” he said. “You’d think it was over. Then it would find another gear.”
Hensley retrieved it using the brightest setting on his flashlight, briefly illuminating enough hillside to conduct a search-and-rescue briefing.
He defended the light choice as necessary.
“I wasn’t leaving coffee.”
Upon reaching the blind, Hensley discovered that the chair had been folded differently than he remembered.
The next three minutes consisted of metal scraping, fabric pulling, and increasingly personal remarks directed at a hinge.
Once seated, he opened the window.
The zipper caught.
Hensley pulled harder.
A bird left a nearby tree.
“That wasn’t a deer,” he said.
At 6:13 a.m., Melissa called to ask whether he had remembered to take the trash out.
Hensley answered in what he described as a whisper.
“I’M IN THE WOODS.”
Melissa said she had gathered that from the photograph he sent her twelve minutes earlier.
Hensley lowered his voice further and explained that he could not talk because sound carries.
He then spent four minutes describing where he had parked.
Blevins, hunting farther along the ridge, said he appreciated the update.
“I knew where he was, but it was nice to hear from him.”
Shortly after daylight, Hensley developed a cough he attempted to suppress inside his coat.
The resulting sound caused Blevins to briefly wonder whether somebody was trying to start an old outboard motor.
Hensley followed this with a drink of coffee and the careful opening of a snack cake.
The wrapper proved resistant to careful opening.
“I don’t know why they make hunting food so loud,” he said.
By 8 a.m., Hensley had seen three squirrels, a woodpecker, and a shape he watched for twenty minutes before determining it was the same stump he had watched the previous week.
He texted Blevins that the woods were dead.
Blevins replied that he had seen two does shortly after daylight.
Hensley attributed the difference to wind, moon phase, nearby construction, coyotes, and “something the DNR ain’t telling people.”
He did not consider his entrance a factor.
“I’ve hunted that spot for years,” he said. “They know me.”
Asked whether that might be part of the problem, Hensley said Blevins had always been negative about his setup.
At 9:47 a.m., Hensley began packing up, explaining that deer clearly were not moving.
His exit was delayed when he could not locate his truck keys.
After searching every pocket, emptying his backpack, and calling Melissa to ask whether she had seen them, he found them clipped to the outside of his coat.
They had been jingling against the chair frame since daylight.
Hensley said he would return Thursday and try a different approach.
At press time, he had purchased a bottle of scent eliminator.
The Holler Herald — West Virginia’s Least Reliable News Source.
