Rack Magazine

The cow that wasn’t responded to the grunt that wasn’t.

Fifteen-year-old Wayne Navarro and his sister, Brooke, three years his junior, have grown accustomed to their mother’s noises.

She does it in the kitchen, in the car, and on the living room sofa. If the urge comes, she tucks her chin and urrpps. And if she doesn’t like the timbre of the first one, she’ll do it again.

Imagine the belch that might result from drinking either a whole 2-liter soda or chugging a can of fermented hops. Or, if you’re old or nerdy enough, think of Booger’s contest-winner in “Revenge of the Nerds.”

As the young folks might say, Linet (pronounced Li-nay) Navarro’s grunting is epic.

She sounds just like a buck deer.

If the stay-at-home mother — or her children, or her husband, Jonathan — had any doubts, they were put to rest on Nov. 8, 2012, the day she urrpped her way into whitetail history. Within a few months, her photograph was plastered all over the Internet and in deer hunting magazines far beyond the family’s Oklahoma home.

She could’ve cursed her luck; cursed the cows she’d endured there previously, which made her not pay close enough attention to what was happening behind her; could’ve risked unzipping the pocket into which she’d tucked the grunt call her husband advised her to always carry; or she could’ve sat down and cried as the monstrous buck continued putting ground between them.

But she did none of those things. She simply tucked her chin and urrpped. Twice. And the deer threw up its head, looked back at her, and then turned around and walked into her pink arrow.

Linet isn’t new to hunting. She used to tag along with her daddy when she was just 5 years old. She took her first deer, a buck, when she was 15. But then life intervened, and she didn’t really get back into the swing of it until she was 26.

After that, not even pregnancy could keep her out of the woods.

Nov. 8 was brisk and breezy, the kind of day that warrants a face mask for warmth as much for added camouflage. Linet was astounded that so much could change in so little time. It seemed like only yesterday when the woodlot she hunts was still green, the trees full of leaves, her Scent-Lok clothing more than enough to ward off the slight chill.

The moon was late. It was still visible and almost directly overhead when Linet first heard faint rustling noises behind her 12-foot ladder stand.

The sounds got her attention, of course, but she was quick to dismiss them.

She had spent countless hours in that stand in 2012 — a perk for having no clock to punch outside the home — and she’d been frequently disappointed to see cows responsible for the goings-on back there.
She liked that setup, though, because she had seen some nice bucks early in the season. Unfortunately, however, all the deer activity had ceased.

The noise she heard was close to a dry creek about 40 yards behind her. She glanced back there occasionally, but she was convinced cows were to blame.

Rather than dwell on it, Linet focused in front of her, where deer normally travel. At least until the crunching of leaves grew louder. Closer. When she glanced back once again, she finally saw the backside of a deer in the dry creek bed, walking away from her.

“It lifted its head, and I didn’t dare stare at the rack,” she said. “I thought I was dreaming, at first.

“All I knew was that it was one I wanted to shoot, so I stood and adjusted my facemask to where I could properly anchor when the time came,” she continued.

“I had a grunt call in my pocket that was zipped up, and I didn’t dare go for it,” she said. “I had been playing around at home in the evenings, buck-grunting at the kids at random times, so I used my mouth to grunt.

“It turned him around, too. I could not believe that worked!” Linet added.

The deer not only stopped, but it also turned and began walking toward her, even coming up the creek bank.

“My stand is in the middle of three trees that meet up at the base. The tree to the left concealed me from the deer, but it also caused me a moment of panic because I couldn’t see it either,” she said.

She leaned back to see around the tree, but she couldn’t see the buck, and she almost panicked.

“My heart was sinking,” she said. “I kept telling myself to be patient. And then, finally, I leaned forward and saw it at 25 yards!”

She tried to draw her bow, but her arms wouldn’t quite work. She believes it’s because she’d never really practiced shooting downward.

You have got to be kidding me! she thought.

The buck, oblivious, kept coming closer, heading to a spot Linet had ranged at 18 yards. When it slipped behind a small tree, she tried again and managed to draw.

When the deer stepped into her pin sight, she mouth-grunted again to stop it.

The arrow passed through both lungs on its way through the animal. The impact stole her breath as well.

“That’s when the nerves hit,” she said.

Linet immediately called Jonathan and his buddy, Kurt, to help with the recovery. In the hour it took them to arrive, she recovered her arrow and climbed back into her stand, where she thanked God and watched her mind’s YouTube.

When the guys arrived, they started following the trail and jumped a deer almost immediately. Linet feared it might be hers, but it wasn’t. Her buck was lying just a few yards farther, just over a rise.

Hunter: Linet Navarro
BTR Score: 186 5/8
Compound Bow
Irregular

– Photos by Jonathan Navarro

This article was published in the August 2014 edition of Rack Magazine. Subscribe today to have Rack Magazine delivered to your home.

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