For deer hunters, a productive season often boils down to a series of actions taken in the heat of the moment, as the buck of a lifetime stands within rifle or bow range.

Make the right decisions, and you get your deer.

Make a slight mistake, and you don’t.

Sometimes we sneeze at the wrong moment … or decide to peer around the side of our tree and spook the deer that’s been stalking us for the past hour … or simply fail to see what’s standing directly in front of us.

And luckily, sometimes we get a second (or third) chance.

Skip Butler can tell you a thing or two about second (and third) chances. And in the case of the veteran Eddington hunter, it’s those extra chances – and the final result – that he’ll remember forever.

On the first Saturday of the firearms season, Butler enjoyed a perfect day in the woods with his grandson, 11-year-old Wyatt Butler of Bradley. This season is Wyatt’s first as a deer hunter, and it began with a tale the Butlers will tell for years.

After sitting in a ground blind all morning and seeing nothing, the duo decided to move around for a bit.

Again, no deer turned up.

But after returning to the blind later in the afternoon, the Butlers got pretty busy.

Eventually.

First, however, Wyatt had other priorities.

“He was kind of dozing off beside me in the blind,” Skip Butler confessed. “He was on my right and the deer came in from the left. I had to wake Wyatt up and tell him there was a big buck coming.”

After that, Wyatt did nearly everything right.

When the burly buck stopped and stared at the blind, Wyatt froze … just like his grandfather had instructed him.

And when the deer bent its head to eat, Wyatt shouldered the Savage Model 340 that his gramp had used to bag his first deer as a youngster, took aim, and shot.

In an ideal world, the shot would have been perfect, the deer would have dropped, and the story would be over.

Hunting, as we all know, isn’t always an ideal world.

The shot missed. But the deer didn’t move.

At that point, Skip Butler decided that missing out on the deer he’d seen during earlier scouting trips wasn’t an option.

He took aim with his own Contender rifle, took careful aim, and squeezed the trigger.

“Click,” he said. “I had somehow left it on rimfire instead of centerfire.”

Meanwhile, Wyatt Butler was getting ready for the duo’s third chance.

Wyatt made the most of the opportunity, downing an eight-point buck that weighed 210 pounds, field-dressed.

“I was real excited,” Skip Butler said. “I’ve been watching this deer, and knew it was a nice one. I wanted him to get it and it worked out that he did.”

Skip Butler was a bit chagrined at leaving his rifle in rimfire mode, but said the hunt turned out perfectly, all things considered.

“I was glad my gun misfired, because there was no question who got the deer,” Skip Butler said.

And Wyatt’s reaction?

“He was amazed and was walking about two feet off the ground,” Skip Butler said.

And he kept repeating the same thing, the proud grandfather recounted.

“He thanked me over and over again for taking him hunting, and for ‘letting me shoot your deer, gramp,'” Skip Butler said.

“I told him it wasn’t my deer. And this [hunt] just did work out great,” he said.

Salmon meeting on tap

Since a 1999 decision, fishing for Atlantic salmon in the state’s legendary salmon rivers has been prohibited.

If you’re a salmon enthusiast who wants to keep up to date on recovery efforts and an ongoing effort to reopen one of those rivers next fall, there’s a meeting you may want to attend.

The Maine Atlantic Salmon Commission is holding what it’s calling a “scoping” meeting on Nov. 14, and the agenda will be of particular interest to anglers who traditionally called the Penobscot River’s pools home.

The meeting will run from 6:30-9 p.m. at the Penobscot County Conservation Association clubhouse on Route 9 in Brewer.

The commission, which is charged with protecting the species in the state, as well as coordinating management and restoration efforts, is seeking additional public input on a plan that would open the Penobscot to a catch-and-release fishery in the fall of 2006.

The commission will present a technical and policy report on recreational Atlantic salmon fishing, and a question-and-answer session will follow.

The commission’s goal is to gather information and public input on its plan before drafting new recreational Atlantic salmon rules for the Penobscot.

Simply put, the commission wants to tell you what it has learned, and what it wants to do. And the commission wants to hear your take on the plan.

It promises to be an informative evening.

If you’re interested in getting your hands on the commission’s reports before the meeting, contact Kathleen Brosnan at 287-9972 or e-mail her at kathleen.brosnan@maine.gov.

John Holyoke can be reached at jholyoke@bangordailynews.net or by calling 990-8214 or 1-800-310-8600.