John Roseland and the Bentler girls after a nighttime possum hunt.

All tragedies eventually demand some kind of closure. Rosey and Lisa eventually joined Lori and me for dinner, and we spent most of the evening reminiscing about the friends we’d lost. Rosey was the one who finally said what needed to be said: “Mike wouldn’t want us moping. He’d want us to go hunting.”

Fair enough. But I would dedicate the month of November to the Bentlers’ memory.

WHITETAIL DEER ARE endlessly fascinating, perhaps more so than any other species we hunt. While scientists and biologists have analyzed whitetail mating behavior to great depths, I’ve noticed that the whitetail rut always varies in subtle ways from season to season. This year was no different. One early November morning, I took a walk through the coulees around our house and discovered that scrapes had appeared everywhere overnight like mushrooms on a wet lawn. But that burst marked both the beginning and end of the scrape activity last season. Almost none of those scrapes were freshened, and I saw only a few new ones. Go figure.

Then a run of unseasonably warm weather seemed to disrupt the usual whitetail feeding patterns and travel routes. Most of the buck movement was still taking place at night -- long after the imperatives of the rut should have had them traveling during shooting light -- and I was seeing remarkably few does on trails I’ve studied for years. But I’d seen at least three decent bucks among the usual collection of stunted 4x4’s and youngsters, and with ample time off during the best two weeks of the season, I knew it was only a matter of time.

By the middle of the month I’d filled three doe tags. My family lives on wild game, and with no elk in the freezer, I couldn’t focus on horns to the exclusion of making venison. I’d also let a number of bucks walk. Every time I rattled an “almost” 4x4 into bow range, I found myself asking, “What would Mike do?” As tempting as some of those shot opportunities looked as the season entered its final week, I knew the answer and acted accordingly.

Finally, the temperature dropped. On the first chilly evening of the season, I walked back to the house after dark and found Lori looking like an excited child as she shucked her safety harness and wool coat. Instinct told me that her shaking had nothing to do with the weather. As I kicked off my boots -- coincidentally, a pair that Mike had given me the last time I’d hunted in Iowa -- I asked to hear the story.

“I was sitting in the Hot Tub stand,” she explained. (The name derives from the stand’s proximity to our yard, but it’s still a great place to kill deer.) “About 4 o’clock, I saw deer enter the lower pasture from the north. I’d forgotten my binoculars, but I could tell by its body language that one of them was a rutting buck.

“Nothing was headed in my direction, so I rattled. By this time, I’d lost sight of the buck behind the hill. Next thing I knew, a gagger was heading for me on a beeline. He wound up broadside 12 yards away!”

“And...” I prompted.

“And I was shaking so hard with excitement that I shot right over the top of his back! I haven’t had buck fever like that for so long I’d forgotten what it feels like.”