Whitetail Scout School Part III: In Season

Behind the eight ball is not a good place to be on the opening day of the Wisconsin firearms deer season. But that's exactly where I was, thanks to a naïve statement I'd made to my cousin the week before. Scott and I were hanging stands for the opener, and as he anchored the last tree step on his setup I announced: "I think I'll sit in some out-of-the way spot this year, instead of one of my usual standbys. You know, think outside of the box. Dare to be different. Whaddya think?"

Scott smiled and nodded. We have hunted this property together since we were 12. Scott lives on this land and knows the whitetails intimately. Many of the bucks I've shot I owe to him telling me "this stand instead of that" or "forget that ridge--hunt this one." But Scott is all about independence, and when I lugged my stand to an oddball pine flat, he shrugged his shoulders and said "Well, no one's sat here before. Might work. Who knows with deer? You could kill a monster."

But by one o'clock I knew I'd paid for my creativity. Seven deerless hours on opening day in this country means you've screwed up royally. After the opener, you find big bucks living all alone in weird places, but during that initial blitz of hunting pressure, the whitetails are social critters. When they panic and flee, they do so en masse, which means if you're not seeing does, you ain't seeing bucks, either. It's that simple--and simple was how I was feeling.

Now a patient, confident hunter would have simply stuck to his game plan and either ate the goose egg or shot a trophy. Then there are guys like me--guys who twitch and fret and agonize about all the deer we would be seeing if only we'd picked the right spot instead of this one. Feeling like a moron, I bailed out of the tree and did the last thing I thought I'd do with three hours left on opening day: I went scouting.

Thankfully, a fluffy skiff of snow had fallen the night before, and I could walk noiselessly. I followed a narrow cross-country ski trail that wound past my stand toward a little swamp hole. With my Hawken blackpowder gun in the crook of my arm, I slipped down the trail for 300 yards until I came to a swale in a little humpbacked ridge.

On one side of the ridge was the swamp, on the other a brushy highland. Deer had carved the dark line of a trail in the snow through the swale that fairly screamed "Hang stand here!" So I did, scurrying back to my original spot, breaking everything down and relocating. By the time I was done I was sweating and exhausted, but at least I'd cured the fidgeter inside me.

A half-hour before dark, a little doe appeared in the swale and eased down the trail. I spent so much time worshipping this first deer of the day through my binoculars that I didn't notice the buck behind her until he was in gun range.

He was worth all the wait and the sweat and the mental brow-beating I'd subjected myself to. Nine high points arched from a chocolate-brown rack that he carried like a crown. He grossed in the high 140s and field-dressed close to 200 pounds. I know that because five minutes after I missed him, he ran to one of the neighbors--who didn't. Later that night, my friend was kind enough to let me ogle the deer as it hung in his barn.