November 20, 2006 It's been an incredibly hectic couple of weeks since I last reported from the field. Sorry for the delay in letting everyone know what we've been up to . . . but at this time of year we're pounding the woods from dawn to dusk, then trying to get enough sleep so we can do it again the next day. Besides, as you might guess, some of the places we hunt are just a bit short on Internet access. But with a lot of our rut hunts now behind us, things should be settling down to a more manageable pace from here through season's end.
The good news is that what this report lacks in punctuality it makes up for in positive hunting results. You see, the North American Whitetail team has been hammering trophy bucks right and left, from the big bush of northern Saskatchewan to the Brush Country of South Texas and the corn fields of Illinois.
Early November saw Greg Miller get things rolling, as he arrowed a trophy at Game Trails Hunting Camp near Sturgis, Kentucky (270/333-9001). Brach Pulver shot great video footage of the action for our TV show. As usual, Greg's Mathews LX bow (www.mathewsinc.com) put his Beman arrow (www.beman.com) where it needed to be.
The first few days of the month also were kind to Stan Potts. Stan's first bowhunt was with Chad John of Sugar Creek Outfitters (309/257-2590), and the results were spectacular. In fact, our TV co-host put a Muzzy broadhead (www.muzzy.com) into a monster 11-pointer that had just approached his decoy. Deer hunting doesn't get much more thrilling than this, and fans of Stan can imagine how excited he got on camera when this deer dropped! Tim Potts, Stan's son, was behind the camera for this heart-pounding hunt.
"Team Potts" then drove a short distance to bowhunt with Rob Scott of Buckhorn Outfitters (912/632-8233), where Stan smacked another big whitetail on camera. (As a resident, Stan can legally take both of his allotted bucks with a bow, so there won't be any late-season gun hunting for him in his home state this year.)
Meanwhile, NAW editor Duncan Dobie got in on the act as well, hunting in deep South Texas in early November. On the final morning of his hunt, Duncan shot a great trophy, an 8 1/2-year-old buck with a drop tine. The Brush Country is great trophy territory, but this hunt was a full month before the rut, and conditions were challenging, to say the least. Duncan says he got this old buck while still-hunting some thick brush near a lush area of regrowth. The shot was only 20 yards -- not much of a challenge for Duncan's 7mm Rem. Mag. Thompson/Center Encore (www.tcarms.com).
As all of this was happening, I was also on the road. After our bowhunt in Texas (see last posting), cameraman Lance Tangen and I made our next stop at the Land Learning Foundation (www.landlearning.org), near Triplett, Missouri. We saw a number of bucks while bowhunting the first two days of the month, but the big deer on this huge property weren't yet moving much in daylight. As manager Marshall Murphy notes, while this region is legendary for its waterfowl hunting, there are also plenty of trophy deer around; we just didn't see them on this short hunt.
From there, I drove north to Minnesota, where I dropped off Lance and picked up another cameraman, Mike Clerkin. We then drove back southeast to the bluff country of Houston County, where we hunted with a private landowner friend for the first four days of Minnesota's gun season. Standing corn and southerly winds curtailed daytime deer movement, though we almost nailed a big buck with our vehicle bumper just after dark one evening. The most mature buck we saw -- a solid 9-pointer – was cruising a timbered ridge when he caught a whiff of the Hunter's Specialties (www.hunterspec.com) dominant buck urine coming from our Thermascent dispenser (www.thermascent.com). The buck was plenty close enough to shoot, but because of wind direction, he stayed just far enough into the brush to preclude an open shot with my T/C Omega muzzleloader. Still, it was fun and educational to try a state I'd never hunted, particularly since it gave me an excuse to visit with my friends at Bluffland Whitetails Association (www.blufflandwhitetails.org). BWA is focused on improving the deer herd in southeastern Minnesota, and the results thus far are quite encouraging. This region has super trophy potential; all it needs is less hunting pressure on young bucks.
Mike and I then repacked our gear and headed still farther north, to Rainy River, Ontario. There, we met up with Shane Gulbrandsen (www.gulbrandsenoutfitters.com), whose hunting area lies a few miles to the southeast of massive Lake of the Woods. Shane had tons of great buck photos on his Cuddeback Digital scouting cameras (www.cuddebackdigital.com), and we hunted hard in those areas. For whatever reason -- I'm blaming it on strong southerly winds -- the bigger deer weren't showing themselves in daylight hours. Even so, I did record the most deer sightings I've ever had on a hunt in Canada. The huge racks on Shane's wall remove any doubt about the buck quality in this "sleeper" region, but it apparently wasn't our turn to get one.
Last week, Greg and Brach bowhunted with J.R. Dienst (620/355-7118) in western Kansas, where they tagged another beautiful deer on camera. Our TV co-host had just climbed into his Summit tree stand (www.summitstands.com) when the buck walked in. No point sitting there all day when you can "git 'er done" before the seat even warms up! Greg has done exceptionally well on his hunts with J.R. over the years, whether with bow, rifle or muzzleloader.
Also last week, Dr. James Kroll traveled to northern Saskatchewan, to hunt with Fred and Oscar Gopher of Double Arrow Outfitters (www.doublearrowhunting.com). On last year's hunt there, James and cameraman Scott Landherr battled warm weather and slow deer movement; this time, they hit it just right. In only four total days of hunting, James shot a pair of great bucks with his T/C Pro Hunter. To say James was far from home on this hunt would be an understatement; his Lowrance iFINDER Hunt GPS unit (www.lowrance.com) showed the Double Arrow camp to be more than 1,700 miles from the hunter's own doorstep in Texas.
After finishing up in northwestern Ontario on Nov. 15, I dropped off Mike Clerkin at the airport in Minneapolis and picked up Lance Tangen again. Then we headed south, bound for western Oklahoma. En route we stopped in the Kansas City area to visit with Jeff Simpson of Heartland Bowhunter(www.heartlandbowhunter.com), who was finishing up work on a couple of new camera arms and bases for filming from our tree stands. This setup, called the Sniper Pro, works very well with large or small video cameras.
(Note: As we were driving to meet Jeff in the suburbs of KC in mid-morning, he called to say we needed to hurry; he was parked on the side of a busy road, watching a 170-class 8-pointer with a "hot" doe in the edge of a woodlot! We got there just in time to catch a glimpse of the brute before he faded into the brush. Yes, the rut was rocking in that area last Friday!)
Lance and I finally pulled into western Oklahoma that night, then met up with Steve Purviance of Mt. Hide Outfitters (www.mthide.com). Longtime NAW readers might recall that in 1998, we published the story of Steve's huge Oklahoma muzzleloader non-typical. Since then he's run a great trophy outfitting service in Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska and Texas. On Saturday, opening day of gun season, Lance videotaped the action as I downed a huge 9-pointer that was chasing a doe through the sandhills. The big buck went down quickly when struck by a 139-grain Hornady Interlock bullet (www.hornady.com). As usual, I was shooting my T/C .280 Rem. Pro Hunter with a 3-10x42 Swarovski scope (www.swarovskioptic.com).
Several of us on the team will be hunting this week, and I'll give you a report as soon as I get back to a computer with Internet access. In the meantime, happy Thanksgiving to all.
North American Whitetall North American Whitetail is designed for the serious trophy hunter. It provides authoritative coverage of world-class whitetails, the latest approaches to deer management and advanced hunting techniques.
