The Wind Is Your Friend

By the time the firearms deer season arrives in most of North America, weather often becomes a force to be dealt with. Snow and ice storms overpower many regions. Those storms are nearly always preceded--and followed--by strong, blustery winds. Those winds and foul weather are known for driving whitetails into deep cover and hunters home with an unfilled deer tag in their pockets.

It doesn't have to be that way.

Opening day of the firearms season in the Midwest in 2007 was typical. Opening morning, I'd been on stand for about thirty minutes of legal shooting time when a soft drizzle turned to hard, freezing rain. That rain soon became hard pellets of ice blown sideways. The icy impacts felt like being in a gravel storm. By noon I gave up and went to camp. Heavy rains continued falling until the next morning, when powerful winds began whipping the region. I saw few deer moving by noon, so I carefully climbed down the icy ladder. The deer were bedded, and the clock was ticking away the precious moments. I'd have to find my deer in its bed.

First, I determined which way the wind was blowing. As the winds pushed from the west and brush swayed and leaves danced across the ground, I slowly walked to the eastern edge of the property I was hunting. Then I began sneaking into the wind. I soon spotted two yearling deer--both bedded on a ridge top--and I tiptoed past them. They never spooked. I next entered a buck bedding area and slowly stepped ahead when the wind blew with force. I made long pauses and carefully scanned dense brush, slight depressions and the horizon with my binocular. An hour had passed, and I'd moved less than 300 yards.

As I crested the next ridge and paused to glass, I spotted them. Odd colored and sharp-shaped twigs became tines--the long tines of a hefty buck. I studied the form that was more than 200 yards away and looked for a route to close the distance. When the wind blew, I moved ahead ever so cautiously.

To tell you I walked right up and shot that buck would be untrue. At one point I stepped as the wind abruptly ceased, and the twig that sharply snapped underfoot brought the buck instantly to his feet. My heart nearly stopped beating. Only 150 yards separated us. After staring directly at me for ten to fifteen minutes, the buck walked up- and downhill from his bed, pausing to look back in my direction. His ears had not failed him during that windbreak; something had snapped. Then, after another long pause, the buck walked back and lay down in the same bed by a log. I waited another ten minutes before moving again.

As the wind gusted, I turned sideways and shuffled quietly to a thick tree about seventy-five yards ahead. This move took more than thirty minutes. When I leaned out and ranged a log behind the buck, the rangefinder reported fifty-four yards. It was the end of the stalk and time to act.

As the strong wind continued blowing, I eased to one knee and leaned out while steadying the muzzleloader against the tree trunk. I picked a hole through the brush, studied the buck's position and flipped the safety forward. When I stopped shaking from the rush of being so near, I pulled the trigger. Under the cloud of thick smoke that belched forward, I saw the buck roll forward and lie motionless. My fourth deer shot on a windy day while I walked on the wind was dead. Beating a bedded deer only added to the trophy quality of the twenty-four-inch-wide antlers.