white tail

The Seven Best Days to Hunt Deer This Season

fieldandstream-editor — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 10:00:00 -0400

Dream Bucks: Your Trophy Deer Photos From the 2005 Hunting Season

fieldandstream-editor — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 05:00:00 -0400

Giant Whitetail Bucks

fieldandstream-editor — Fri, 21 Jul 2006 05:00:00 -0400

Classic Photos Part III: Old-school Bucks

fieldandstream-editor — Sun, 19 Mar 2006 04:10:00 -0500

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Previous classic galleries
Classic Photos Part II: 29 Hunting Shots
Classic Photos Part I: Old Timers

The Land of the Giants

fieldandstream-editor — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 04:15:00 -0500

In November in Saskatchewan, where temperatures may soar to a sultry 15 degrees, I went to find a whitetail that would give me chills. Over the years I'd squandered too many hunts (as much as any hunt is ever squandered) in too many places by turning down adequate bucks, waiting for something extraordinary. The result has been, of course, broad swatches of vacant walls for all the heads I never got, and extra room in the freezer for the venison not taken. In Saskatchewan there are whitetails that live and die without ever catching so much as a scent of a human being. And some are big enough that no hunter has ever had to have a second thought about them. That was the kind of whitetail I needed-the no-questions-asked kind.

To hunt in Saskatchewan, though, a nonresident is restricted to the northern half of the province, in what is designated "provincial forest." It is in actuality an interminable hell of poplar and spruce where a hunter will get irretrievably turned around in 10 yards. (The standard admonition guides give their hunters is never to go into the bush alone, not even on the trail of a wounded deer.) Still-hunting borders on physically unfeasible, and to attempt spot-and-stalk hunting would be like trying to find Waldo in a satellite photo of Calcutta. As for drives-considering that they only propel deer into some equally impenetrable sector of the bush-bailing a boat with a net would be more productive. So in the hope of seeing at least one no-questions buck in my life, and in my sights, I dressed in layer upon layer of poly, wool, and down, covered it with a white suit, pulled polar-expedition boots onto my feet and mitts on my hands, and sat in a ground blind watching a small clearing marked with fresh scrapes and rubs.

{The Long Wait}
I sat all alone in the blind and waited quietly (no talking, no laughing-though after a while I was strangely tempted) from well before dawn till long after sunset. When you wait on whitetails in Saskatchewan, there are other things to see. On the rarest of occasions, a moose, elk, black bear, or wolf might wander by. NaÂ¿Â¿ve ruffed grouse also strolled about, easy and tasty pickings for the locals who lamented nature's oversight in not creating the 250-pound economy size. At intervals during the iron-cold day, ravens caw-clucked overhead, flying so low the grunts that came from them with each wingbeat were audible. Mostly for me, though, surrounded by the poplars and spruces, there was only the silence of the limbs as the waiting developed into something resembling a state of terminal ennui. Luckily, deer appeared just often enough for total psychological collapse to be narrowly averted.

Almost always it was does that came. They materialized in the small clearing with wary gaits, heads bobbing apprehensively. The smaller does came first, to be driven off by larger ones that pressed back their ears and flailed with their front hooves. Even the largest does, though, were subjects of abuse, with magpies hopping onto their rumps. The deer wheeled in annoyance, flaring the black-and-white birds, which hopped right back on, until the does dematerialized, driven to distraction. At the very start of the Monday that was the first day of the hunt, the does came and went. Then at 9:30 A.M. the first buck showed up, and he was only the biggest I had ever seen and could have legally killed. He walked out like an inevitability, a 150-class 10-point, antlers burnished like the arms of an antique oak rocker. Seeing a buck like that, you begin to understand what a peculiar condition maleness is, especially during the rut. The buck wasn't drawn by any promise of food. He had come to find does, and if they weren't there, he might only lope through the clearing or hover tormentingly at the margin of the poplars before simply fading away.

He stood, though, in the open, right in front of me; and that should have been that. But once moree, unable to help myself, I thought about it. It was less than two hours into legal shooting time on the first day. Couldn't something bigger possibly come along? My answer was to watch him walk away, even as a tiny voice in my head was bawling, What have you done?

No more bucks came out that day, and after dark the guide arrived to get me. He asked what I'd seen. I told him.

"Monday buck," he said with a shake of the head, meaning that more than one hunter had lived to regret not taking that first-day's deer. Monday, Monday, can't trust that day; and after a full day Tuesday of sitting and seeing only one wee buck glide through the clearing, I was thinking that maybe I shouldn't be trusted, either, at least not when it came to making up my own mind.

{A Better Buck}
On Wednesday there was a doe in the clearing under the moon before shooting time, then an 8-point in the first gray light. Even he would have approached a personal best, but after Monday I'd established a benchmark. There was no giving in, and if I had to sit out the rest of the days on stand and go home, babbling, without a deer, that's how it would be. As absurd as it might sound, having seen one real deer, I had to see one even more real before I could pull the trigger.

The day went on with ravens, does, and magpies and lunch from a sack. I fought sleep. Every hour or so I checked my watch to see how much time remained. It was 4 P.M. when he filled up the gaps between the poplars.

He was already standing there when I sensed him, feeling him in my spine as much as seeing him. Ten-point antlers heavy as an elk's rack crowned his broad head. This was without a doubt the deer I'd passed up all the others for over the years, and now my mouth was dry and I kept telling myself to move slowly as I pulled off my mitt and brought up the .300 Winchester Magnum. There was absolutely nothing to think about, except whether he would come out of the trees.

The buck went on standing, looking into the clearing. He took a step back. He took another and turned to his left, the trees shielding him. Now that I didn't have to make up my mind, he was going to take away the decision anyway. He walked forward, moving off, going. Then he began to circle in toward the glade. I almost jumped.

He came out from behind a tall pine an inch at a time, first his muzzle with the tips of the black, wide main beams extending past his nose. His head and neck appeared, but I waited, and then I could see his shoulder, and after that his side. I didn't wait anymore.

I thumbed off the safety, held behind his shoulder, and fired. He spun and was gone. I left the blind and walked the 80 yards to where the buck had stood when I shot. I looked for blood and hair but could find none. I turned toward the poplars and spruces and remembered the guide's dire warnings. Still bundled in cold-weather gear, I stepped into the bush.

In the trees, a web of brown-leafed trails tangled through the snow. An hour of light was left. I looked back and made the tall pine my landmark and started down the first trail, pushing through the trees. After a few hundred feet I had cut nothing and turned back to try another trail. Twenty yards down the fourth I found one drop of blood, already frozen to a leaf. Ten feet farther was a second.

He lay big and yellow-brown 75 yards from the first blood. His almost perfectly symmetrical antlers were more like black walnut than oak, the flats of the beams wide as the palm of a hand, the eye guards long and thick. (Later, the antlers would green-score 1632/8.) I was safe in imagining I was the first person ever to see this buck, certainly the first hunter. I risked going stir-crazy for that privilege, and what I saw was a deer beyond doubt, at last. >

McIntyre hunted with Jim Shockey's Hunting Adventures, 250-748-6413; jimshockey.com.

Trip Journal: Texas Rattler

fieldandstream-editor — Thu, 12 Jan 2006 04:15:00 -0500

Most Novembers find me in a treestand in New York's Catskill Mountains, overlooking some ledges and trails where I've taken nice bucks in the past. It's tough hunting here, though, with the deer few and far between. So this year I figured I'd try rattling in a Texas buck before the New York season opened in late November.

I booked a hunt at Stasney's Cook Ranch in the Texas Hill Country. The 24,000-acre ranch, about an hour northeast of Abilene, proved to be more than I could have hoped for. The first hour out of camp, on the first day, my guide Frank and I saw a 150-class buck not more than 100 yards from the truck. You can shoot deer from the vehicle in Texas, but I held off, hoping for more of a one-on-one type of hunt.

After lunch, still driving, and having seen three more shooting-sized bucks, I asked Frank if we could get out of the truck and hike a bit, maybe do some glassing and stalking. He readily agreed, and we were soon hoofing it down a rutted Jeep trail, deep in the hill country. We set up and tried rattling from one spot, and while Frank and fellow hunter Jason Nash from Federal Ammunition had a glimpse at two nice bucks that were interested in the rattling noises, no one got a shot.

An hour later, we set up overlooking a brush-choked gully, and Frank began to rattle, lightly tickling the antlers at first, then building up to an all-out fight. And it worked. Scrunched down against a scrub oak, I was watching the far end of the gully when a rack buck appeared, maybe 200 yards away. He was headed in our direction, and coming fast. In less than five minutes, he was in range, though I couldn't get a clear view of his antlers, much less a shooting lane to his heart-lung area. I waited, heart pounding, and sure enough, suddenly I saw his head and neck pop up over the lip of the gully, looking in our direction, trying to find the source of the rattling antlers. I had a throat shot at 45 yards and took it as soon as I saw he was a huge 9-pointer. The 338 Winchester cartridge--a new caliber from Federal, one with incredible power and no more kick than that of a 30/06-did the job efficiently, dropping the buck literally where he stood.

Later in the day, toward dusk, Nash and Frank rattled in a beauty of a 10-pointer, which also fell to a well-placed neck shot from Jason's 338 Sako. It was an unbelievable day, to say the least.

Rattling in Texas--it doesn't get much more fun than this, especially for a Northeasterner used to hunting in 20-degree weather and not seeing many bucks in a season, much less in a day. Our day ended with two happy hunters--that is, until we saw a 165-class buck as we drove back to the ranch at sunset. My only consolation is that I know I'll be going back.

If you're interested in going after a trophy whitetail, contact Stasney's Cook Ranch at 888-762-2999; www.stasney.com. Wild boar, quail, predator, Rio Grande turkey and dove hunting are also available, depending upon time of year.

Trip Journal: Dave Petzal Takes a Big Montana Buck

fieldandstream-editor — Wed, 11 Jan 2006 04:30:00 -0500

Last fall I made a typical whitetail trip to Maine. Hunted for six days. Sweated, froze, got sleeted on, rained on, snowed on, and never saw a deer. That's why I appreciated the hunt I made recently near Ringling, Montana, which is near Livingstone, in which I didn't suffer at all, saw more deer in 2 hours than you would in 20 years of hunting in Maine, and killed a 240-pound, 11-point buck with very little effort.

This all came about through a hunt with Black Mountain Outfitters of Emigrant, Montana, which offers a late-October elk/antelope/whitetail hunt on a series of ranches they've leased. The whitetail ranch is located in a bottomland, and is cut by a river, steams, and cottonwood thickets. It has huge alfalfa fields which it irrigates well into the fall, and the unseasonably green alfalfa draws whitetails like a dinner bell.

While the other hunters in camp went after elk and antelope, I went out for whitetails with Scott Sallee who, with his wife Sandy, operates Black Mountain. Leaving our lodge in the dark of the morning, we were faced with a freezing fog, which thrilled neither us nor the deer. First light arrived at about 7:30, and between then and 9:45 when I shot my buck, I saw 60 whitetails. Scott said this was pretty disappointing, as you can expect to see 250 to 300 on a good morning.

The buck I shot was an 11-point 240-pounder who was watching us from behind a weed thicket 175 yards away. He thought he was hidden from view, but that was his last and worst mistake. He was a fine, fat buck.

The elk hunting is damn near as amazing as the whitetail hunting. After two days in camp, six of the eight elk hunters had taken bulls. It's fair chase, and you walk, and sometimes you walk your ass off, but the animals are there and if you can shoot even half well the odds are pretty certain you'll get a bull.

Hunting like this is almost too good to be true, but believe me, I can take a dose of it now and then without feeling any guilt whatsoever. If you'd like to try it, contact Sandy Sallee at 406-222-7455; BlackMtn2@aol.com.

Master Class: How to hunt late-season whitetails

fieldandstream-editor — Wed, 04 Jan 2006 04:20:00 -0500

Hunting from a Stand

Driving Deer

After the Shot

fieldandstream-editor — Tue, 08 Nov 2005 04:25:00 -0500

Even a hard-hit deer can cover lots of ground before it goes down for good. There's only one certain path that leads to your trophy: Follow the steps below to make the job of following the blood trail easier and increase the probability of recovering every whitetail you shoot.

[BRACKET "1"] Never assume you've missed. Just last year I watched a buck walk away after my shot, seemingly unscathed. He paused in a clearing, looked calmly around for half a minute, then tipped over dead. Until you confirm that you've missed the shot, assume you've made it.

[BRACKET "2"] Watch the deer carefully as it runs off. You may see blood on the buck's hide that indicates where your bullet or arrow struck. Body language can also provide clues: paunch-shot deer frequently hunch up, and heart-shot bucks may leap when hit.

[BRACKET "3"] Memorize two locations before leaving your position: Point A is where the buck stood as you shot, and Point B is the last landmark you saw him pass.

[BRACKET "4"] Go immediately to Point A and search for blood. If none is present, walk slowly toward Point B until you find some. Mark the blood trail with surveyor's tape or reflective markers.

[BRACKET "5"] Analyze the blood. The presence of bubbles means a lung shot. Green or yellow matter within the blood indicates a hit to the paunch. Very dark red blood suggests the bullet went through muscle.

[BRACKET "6"] Proceed on the blood trail now if you're certain the hit was immediately fatal. Otherwise, wait several hours (on morning hunts) or overnight (on evening hunts). The exception is if you expect major precipitation, which could wash away the blood.

[BRACKET "7"] Go slowly and mark the trail every several yards. If the blood diminishes, this will help you determine the buck's likely path.

[BRACKET "8"] Remain patient if blood becomes difficult to find, and try these two tricks: (A) Stand at the last drop, look behind you at your marked trail, then project it forward. The next blood is apt to be along this line. (B) Make small circles ahead and to the sides of the last sign of blood, searching for further evidence. Gradually expand the size of this cloverleaf pattern until you pick up the trail again.

[BRACKET "9"] Keep at it. Recruit some buddies if need be. And when you find your buck, take some time to consider exactly what he did and where he went after the hit. Wounded whitetails exhibit similar behaviors. The more you learn from each buck you recover, the more readily you'll find the next one.