Run-and-Gun Deer

Hunters who tackle whitetails at the Pungo Unit of Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge often face the bear facts.

Mike Smith and Diane Culberson parked where a locked cable stopped their pickup truck’s progress.

The grassy area held several other vehicles, disembarking hunters who were readying their gear.

Smith and Culberson are from Fayetteville, yet had made the trip to Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge in Washington and Hyde counties. A portion of the refuge also is located in Tyrrell County. But the special hunt they were participating in is only located in Washington and Hyde Counties.

“I’ve been hunting at Pungo since I was 14,” said Smith, a 44-year-old industrial mechanic from Fayetteville. “My dad and uncle were from Plymouth and it was close.

“We’ve continued to come back, even after my family moved to Fayetteville. Back then, nobody really bowhunted, and it’s still pretty much the same way. Pungo and the rest of the hunting area on the refuge is a big piece of country.”

The Pungo Unit is a designated general hunting area at Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge. It’s open during North Carolina’s regular seasons, with a wide variety of hunting opportunities, including deer hunting under regular WRC seasons and bag limits.

However, the Pungo Unit has a special hunt. During bow season, hunting for deer is allowed without a permit except during November and a few days in October. There’s a special drawing for the gun hunts.

These lottery hunt drawings for the gun hunts formerly were administered by advance application through the U.S .Fish and Wildlife Service. But during the 2007-08 season, administration of the hunts was done through the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission’s Special Hunt Opportunities Program.

Howard Phillips, Pocosin Lakes NWR manager, said the gun hunt helps keep the deer population in check, while also providing hunting opportunities to the public within the national refuge system’s mission.

“There are crops like soybeans and corn planted at the Pungo Unit, many of which are flooded for waterfowl use in winter,” Phillips said. “Deer and bear also utilize the crops as food sources, and we have high deer and bear populations as a result.”

Without hunting to keep deer in check, plantings likely wouldn’t be as productive as they are. Yet the deer hunting is not as good as it was during the “good old days.”

“I’ve seen it change every year because of what’s planted and where it’s planted,” Smith said. “Then there were the years following the big fires at the refuge back in the ’80s. The vegetation was burned to the ground, and the grass that came back was like a magnet to the deer. You would see dozens of deer every day back then.

“It’s changed a lot these days. It’s like any other coastal deer-hunting territory. The cover’s either thick or it’s thin, with not much in between.

“The farmers plant crops under contract with the refuge, then harvest some and leave some in the fields. You start looking for deer sign in the fields, but then you trail them back into the cover. You might trail their tracks a long way before you find a good spot to hunt them.”

The Pungo Unit has lots of dirt roads that can be dusty or muddy, depending upon weather conditions. Some are open for vehicle traffic while others are closed.

Refuge personnel tour the area during the gun hunts and will help hunters bring out deer killed beyond the locked gates. Parking in front of any gate is prohibited and driving on any roads marked against vehicular access is also prohibited.

There are also lots of canals, dug for water management for the waterfowl units, as well as for drainage. The canals and road network make up most of the access. But there are also some trails through the standing pines, firebreaks, and mowed trails through the pocosin vegetation.

Canoes and small john boats are employed to ferry hunters and gear across the canals or carry deer long distances. The ditches are filled with water most of the time. There are plenty of snakes; other hazards include mosquitoes and bears.

“The bugs are usually horrendous,” Smith said. “You wear a Bug Tamer jacket and pants and a head net, carry a ThermaCELL (insect-repellent device), spray on some DEET repellent and hope like heck your stand is downwind from a deer trail so they don’t smell you. Some years it’s dry and they aren’t as bad. The bugs are part of the Pungo experience.

One reason Smith likes hunting Pungo is the early season opener. While everyone else in the state can’t hunt with a firearm until October, the Pungo Unit hunts begin in September. For those who can’t wait to get a chance at a deer, it’s an additional hunting opportunity. Permits are issued for up to 200 hunters per day during the firearms hunts and the hunts last two consecutive days.

“I usually hunt places where I’ve had success before,” Smith said. “I’ve killed several eight-pointers. But I had one buddy who killed a 10-pointer and I’ve heard of bigger deer killed during the hunts.

“It’s unusual for a coastal plain public hunt because there is so much agriculture. You don’t see that on other public lands and it’s probably the reason there are so many nice bucks.”

But killing a deer can be only the beginning of excitement. The bears of Pungo have become so acclimated to the presence of humans they can come close enough to make a hunter’s heart skip a beat.

“I had a bear so close I could almost touch him with my shooting stick,” said Basil Watts, a retired Cape Fear River pilot from Southport. “I talked to him, and he basically ignored me. I was sitting on a chair on the ground, overlooking a field, and he walked right up to me. He weighed at least 500 pounds. He was an enormous bear.”

While Watts’ experience was only a close call, bears have caused damage.

“Nobody’s been attacked,” Phillips said. “But the bears have eaten the seats off bicycles and tree stands, bitten truck tires and taken at least one hunter’s deer right out of his pickup truck bed. There are so many bears that bear watching is a popular activity on the refuge. If you hunt at Pungo you can expect to see bears.”

Smith and Culberson used their wheeled cart to carry their necessities into the woods. They wore the required 500-square inches of hunter orange above the waist, which is essentially a hat and a vest. They used shotguns with slugs for hunting. Culberson used a 20-gauge and Smith used a 12-gauge. Both shotguns had scopes and the hunters used saboted slugs.

“Our shotguns will shoot well within a pie plate at 100 yards, which is good enough for hunting deer,” Smith said. “The slug kills a deer fast, so you don’t have to track it far.”

At the end of their afternoon hunt, Smith and Culberson recounted their adventure. Smith harvested an eight-point buck while Culberson harvested her first buck, which had spike antlers. She had seen four deer.

“I saw a bigger buck before I saw the spike,” Culberson said. “But there was a tree limb in the way, so I couldn’t get a clear shot.”

But she made a good shot on the spike. The deer ran out of sight a short distance.

“I’ve shot does, but it was the first buck I killed,” she said. “I was up in a climbing tree stand about 12 feet. The bugs were bad the day before, but not this afternoon.

“I shot the deer, and two minutes later a bear was sniffing where I shot the deer. A bear had also eaten the half of the seat out of my deer stand. I had left it at the bottom of the tree the night before, and he found it.”

Luckily for her, the bear didn’t find her deer. But Smith had a closer encounter with another bear.

“We followed some tracks and went back off the path into some pines,” Smith said. “It was thick back in there. We had a big bear follow us out. I was going to try to leave my deer right there and come back for it. I had a little 8-foot john boat I carried into the woods for crossing the canal; it would have helped get the deer across. But I couldn’t leave the deer because as soon as I began to gut the deer, the bear was standing 30 yards away.

“It’s like ringing a dinner bell for a bear when he hears you shoot. I got our deer on the cart. The bear went to the gut pile then began following me. He followed a couple hundred yards before turning back. I suppose he went back to eat the guts.

“Another reason for gutting a deer where you kill it, besides distracting the bears, is to save the weight. It’s a long way out back where we hunted.

“It’s running and gunning — a young man’s game at Pungo if you hunt for success.

“Everyone crowds the fields and the easy spots. But Pungo deer are still deer. They’re going to be disturbed by human presence, feeding at night in the fields and going way back into the thick areas to spend the day.”

Another hunting tactic is jumping deer.

The low pocosin holds deer, especially at areas that recently have been burned as part of the landscape management. While hunters used to employ this tactic with great success, it’s used less now that the refuge has recovered from the wild fires of the past. Nevertheless, Smith said the tactic still works.

“Keep the wind and sun at your back and walk as quietly as you can,” he said. “The deer are bedded near the fields; if you jump one, the shot will be close.

“If you jump deer in one spot today, they’ll be there again tomorrow.

“I like hunting the east side near the observation tower because there don’t seem to be as many bears there. It’s also the only time you can go back in there around Pungo Lake, during the gun hunts. It’s a chance to see something you can’t see any other time.”

Taking a stand means anything from using a ladder stand to a climbing stand to a stepladder. The cover is low enough that a short stepladder is enough to give a hunter an excellent view. The vast majority of hunters use buckshot to take deer at Pungo, but a few use muzzleloaders and shotgun slugs.

The use of short-range projectiles is important because the hunting area can get crowded. The hunter-orange requirement helps hunters locate other hunters without interfering with their hunts and for safety reasons. There are many special rules for participating in the Pungo unit deer hunts. Successful applicants are sent a hunting rules booklet and map. The brochure must be signed and in the hunter’s possession while participating in a gun hunt.

The hunter check-in is done at the equipment office, although hunters who don’t take a deer aren’t required to go through that process. But all harvested deer must be reported.

While the number of deer harvested in the past was much higher, Pungo hunters take a dozen or so deer each day, depending upon conditions. The total annual harvest is from 300 to 400 deer.

Hunters can’t enter the refuge more than 1 ½ hours before shooting time. Local wildlife officers and refuge personnel often block traffic and check licenses and applications during hunt mornings.

Wildlife officers also often check the vehicles of hunters leaving Pungo. Harvested deer must be included as part of the regular bag limit and added to the hunter’s harvest report card.

“It’s important to read the rules and become familiar with them,” Phillips said. “We want everyone to have a safe and enjoyable hunt, and we don’t experience many problems with hunters. They’re important to the management goals of the refuge.”