Allie D'Andrea riding horseback. (Photo courtesy of Can-Am)
April 05, 2024
By Lynn Burkhead, OSG Senior Digital Editor
Sometimes, as bowhunter Allie D'Andrea is about to show viewers, the familiar hunting life we’ve grown comfortable with can lead to a little bit of complacency. There may also be an unfounded hope that the good moments of the past and our present experiences will magically carry forward, becoming the blessings of the future that our children and their children will inherit.
When this happens, we often forget the rocky path we had to negotiate to learn a woodsy craft — the failures and successes that shaped our skills. Once we become comfortable and proficient in our hunting pursuits each fall, it’s easy to fall into complacency. At times like these, a gentle nudge off the high center is necessary to remind us of the demanding journey each of us undertook to reach the top of the mountain, so to speak. After all, there's more to the hunt than what typically meets the eye or what's captured in a social media selfie, isn't there?
VIDEO
In this episode of Can-Am's original series, More Than The Hunt , we meet self-taught hunter, chef, and entrepreneur Allie D'Andrea as she seeks to let an arrow fly from her compound bow and put some lean protein in the freezer.
In previous weeks, we’ve seen that to be the case on the other episodes of Can-Am's original series More Than The Hunt
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From the beginning, the familiar elements of hunting—mud, snow, ice, camouflage, and wildlife—have been in the Can-Am series. These are the topics often shared and discussed around the hunting community’s campfire. However, the series also introduces a mix of unexpected elements, enriching our experience and reinforcing our passion for the sport of hunting.
In those previous two journeys captured by video cameras, the familiar landscape and hunting pursuit were acknowledged, but there was also a reminder that the world of hunting continues to change and evolve as the 21st century rolls on. And that’s a good thing, because what we’ve taken for granted, well, we can’t do that any longer if future generations are to see and experience all that we’ve had come our way.
Watch other episodes of More Than The Hunt :
In the third and final installment of Can-Am’s More Than The Hunt series, we tag along with a bowhunter seeking to fill the freezer with venison, but not where you might typically plan an autumn hunt for white-tailed deer.
In this episode, we meet up with self-taught hunter, chef, and entrepreneur Allie D'Andrea as she seeks to let an arrow fly from her compound bow and put some lean protein in the freezer.
This isn't a hunt for corn-fed whitetails in the Midwest or climbing high into a tower stand overlooking a prickly pear cactus flat in South Texas, mind you, it's chasing wild and wary venison slipping quietly through the steamy labyrinth somewhere north of the Florida Everglades, ground where boot sucking swamp mud, bloodthirsty mosquitoes, and alligators are also waiting.
Luckily for Allie, she's got her Cam-Am off-road vehicle to help her navigate the muddy maze of sub-tropical turf as she searches for the primary ingredient for tonight’s dinner table experience.
While the chase itself is familiar, D’Andrea admits that this deer hunt was a little bit different than the usual whitetail hunting content the hunting community is used to seeing each fall as the leaves change colors, the north wind begins to stir, and bucks begin to move about with thoughts of the approaching rut.
All of that still happens in Florida but the leaves don’t really change colors all that much and the wind doesn’t often turn out of the north, even if visions of Mr. Big roaming about in daylight hours for the first time in months still grips the bowhunter’s soul.
"The hunting in Florida is unlike any other hunting that I've experienced," said D'Andrea. "It's very much like an Everglades vibe (with) palm meadow, palm trees, slash pines (and) alligators. And there's a lot of water and there's lots of mosquitoes."
Yeah, that doesn't sound too much like the corn country many whitetail hunters know so well each fall, now does it?
But take a closer look, as D’Andrea did, and you'll find that whether one is in gator country or in a place where merino wool is needed by Halloween, the pursuit of autumn whitetail remains the same, even if the playing field of this woodsy game is not.
"You wrap that all into trying to pursue a (Florida) deer," she said. "Seemingly, from the surface, it feels impossible."
D' Andrea admits that she has succeeded in some areas of the Florida whitetail hunting game, and not so much in other areas in this unique spot for a whitetail quest.
"D'Andrea admits that she has had mixed success in the Florida whitetail hunting game, succeeding in some areas while struggling in others in this unique spot for a whitetail quest."
But like other deer hunters who have experienced the sport's highs and lows in more traditional whitetail country, Allie put into play the one ingredient that all successful deer hunters must have, and that’s the ingredient of perseverance.
"It's a process that repeats itself over and over again," she said of her Florida hunt and how it compares to hunts elsewhere. "It's learn something, try and apply it, fail, try and apply it again, and then go back to the drawing board and start over."
Sounds pretty much like the experiences of most of North America’s deer hunting camps if you ask me.
You know, try, try, and try again. Because eventually, you'll punch the woodsy deer hunting clock long enough and that magical moment arrives when a whitetail slips into range, the sight pins or the crosshairs get steadied, a tag gets notched, and a memory that will fuel the deer hunting pursuit for years to come finally gets made.
"It's a long, hard process to teach yourself how to hunt," admits D’Andrea. "And I'm just glad that I never quit."
That includes the chase of whitetails on public land in Florida, where D'Andrea puts her Can-Am off-road vehicle—the Defender —to good use as she heads into the snake-filled, alligator-infested deer woods of the Sunshine State. As she lets the throttle go, Allie counts on her Can-Am to push aside mud and water in the ongoing search for some of the leanest, healthiest table fare to be found.
Once D'Andrea's off-road vehicle has delivered her to a chosen starting point, it's then time to put some boot leather on the ground—or rubber boots, in this case—and hike in further to a spot where the opportunity to climb up into a tree and hunt from a saddle seems good.
And that's where the deer hunting magic happens, a place where time slows to a crawl, the silence of nothing more than a hunter’s own thoughts take over, and we all learn once again that such woodsy wonder is waiting to be discovered each and every morning as the sun blushes the horizon, no matter where we are in whitetail country.
"Once I'm up in that tree, it's perfectly still and quiet," said D'Andrea. "And it's cliche, but the peace, and like, the mental clarity that you feel in that kind of moment is indescribable."
Indescribable indeed, because as you wait for that soul-stirring moment when a twig gets broken and a flash of brown hair slipping through the woods is finally seen, we all discover yet again that when it comes to the wild chase in the autumn woods, there truly is More Than The Hunt to be found – even in the swampy deer country of Florida.
