An Alberta Adventure for Big Rutting Whitetails: Part 2

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I woke up in the pitch-black basement to my cell phone vibrating and ringing next to my bed. My screen showed that it was 8:30 a.m., but I was still groggy from arriving to camp at 2:30 a.m. due to delayed flights and lost luggage. I knew I was somewhere in southern Alberta, but since my cameraman, Jake Hanson, and I had crossed the U.S./Canada border under the cover of darkness, I had no idea what the house I was staying in, let alone the surrounding landscape, even looked like.

The incoming call came from my good friend and North American Whitetail’s Editor in Chief, Haynes Shelton. He knew how tired I was and that I needed rest, but he also knew that I had traveled over 1,800 miles from my home in Virginia to Alberta for one reason only: to hunt trophy whitetails in some of the world’s best deer habitat.

If you read Part 1 of this epic deer hunting adventure, you know exactly how my conversation with Haynes went. So, I’ll sum it up for you here. Essentially, Haynes said he’d already seen dozens of whitetails and multiple shooter bucks, and he strongly encouraged me to get out of bed and get in the field!

I took his advice and gathered my gear as quickly as I could. As my guide, Darcy Weaselhead of War Cry Outfitters, pulled into the parking lot of the cabin we were staying in, a mature muley buck walked across the gravel road inside bow range…of the front porch. That’s when I knew I was in for the hunt of a lifetime.

A UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY

I didn’t end up in this whitetail mecca because of my own research and planning. Haynes and I were hosted by Shaundi Campbell of Browning and LaCrosse Footwear’s Brand Manager, Troy Ball. The 545-square-mile area we’d be hunting belonged to the Kainaiwa Blood Tribe on the Blood 148 First Nations Reserve, and two partnering parties would be outfitting and guiding us. Corey Jarvis, owner of Three Rivers Adventures, and Darcy Weaselhead, owner of War Cry Outfitters and Blood Tribe member, teamed up with several Blood Tribe guides to ensure we had access to the reserve’s best whitetail habitat. And it didn’t take me long to realize just how good the area was after climbing into Darcy’s truck at 10:00 a.m. that first morning.

“Our plan this morning is to cruise around these river bottoms and ag fields to try and spot a buck to make a stalk on,” Darcy tells me as we cruise through the reserve with the Canadian Rockies in the background. “There is so much river bottom to cover, that it’s best to spend as much time as we can searching from the truck before going into an area on foot.”

Haynes had filled me in on the conversations he had the night before with Corey and Darcy about seeing hundreds of whitetails in a single day of hunting on the reserve. I had my doubts, but my skepticism quickly disappeared as we crested the edge of the first river bottom we stopped at to glass.

In the thick, brushy bottom below, I watched as countless whitetails fed, cruised and bedded along the river corridor. Among them was a mature 8-pointer — a buck I’d undoubtedly shoot on most of the hunts I’m fortunate enough to do each season. I’d only been hunting for 10 minutes, but I had already seen enough to know this was truly world-class whitetail country.

That first day was warm for Canada in November, as temperatures rose well beyond 40 degrees F. Still, we literally saw whitetails and mule deer all day long. I honestly never went more than 10 minutes without seeing a deer; it was mind boggling. As the rest of the afternoon passed, clouds formed overhead, and it became obvious a rainstorm was blowing in. About an hour and a half before sunset, Darcy and I spotted a herd of 20 deer feeding in a hayfield with two bucks in the mix that were significantly bigger than the rest.

“That one on the right has a big body, but his rack looks strange,” Darcy says to me.

“Yeah,” I reply. “He’s big and wide, but I think he has bailing twine caught in his antlers. He may be worth a closer look; he’s definitely mature.”

It was about then that Darcy directed my attention to the fence line a couple hundred yards behind the bailing-twine buck. A heavy-bodied buck with main beams extending beyond his nose stood sky-lined as he worked a scrape and rubbed a fence post. Confident that the big 8-point was at least a 5 1/2-year-old, I told Darcy I wanted to stalk the buck.

The wide-open prairie of southern Alberta is vastly different from the river bottoms that carve through it. There’s little to no cover in the prairie, yet the river bottoms can be so thick that they resemble moose country in the Yukon. Fortunately for us, the big 8-point was on one side of a large rise in the terrain, allowing us to sneak up the opposite side undetected. In a matter of minutes, Darcy, Jake and I were sitting 450 yards from the buck, and we took the opportunity to toggle between Sig Sauer binoculars and a spotting scope to accurately judge the 8-point.

“He’s a big deer, Blake,” Darcy says to me. “He’s got potential; he might be a shooter.”

I thought the same exact thing as I watched the buck through my glass. The deer had phenomenal tine length; his G-2s and G-3s were very close in size. His wide frame extended well beyond his ears, and as I mentioned before, his beam length was great. How could I pass him? I’d never had the opportunity at such a big 8-point. Still, I couldn’t ignore the feeling in my gut – I just wasn’t ready to pull the trigger yet.

“I think I’m going to pass him,” I quietly tell Darcy.

Darcy nodded, and we slipped down the backside of the hill undetected by any of the whitetails we’d been watching. As I write this, I still have no clue how I kept my finger off the trigger, and I seriously doubt I could do it again. He’s the best buck I’ve ever passed, but I felt better about my decision when I arrived back at the truck. The sun was setting as the rain began falling, and we received word that Haynes had killed a big 6x5 whitetail and Shaundi downed a great muley buck. I couldn’t wait to celebrate their success with them and spend the rest of the week hunting this incredible country.

COUNTLESS CLOSE ENCOUNTERS

That first afternoon of the hunt was by far the best half-day I’ve ever had for seeing whitetails. Looking back, especially since we didn’t have cold weather, I have to attribute the uptick in movement to the weather front that brought heavy rains to the prairie after dark. That was the only weather event that occurred all week, and temperatures remained warm for Canada in early November. It was so warm that if I was hunting anywhere else in the world, I would’ve been concerned that bucks wouldn’t be motivated to move. However, that thought never had the opportunity to enter my mind, because I consistently saw solid, mature bucks for the rest of the week.

I saw 15 total bucks during my five-day hunt that were 4 1/2 years old or older (I can’t begin to even guess how many young bucks we saw). All 15 of those mature bucks were 8-points or better, and I elected to pass on nine of the 15. The remaining six were either deer that we spooked and I didn’t get to choose whether or not I wanted to pursue them, or bucks that I encountered where things just didn’t work out.

Of the encounters where things didn’t go my way, the most memorable was the stalk I put on two mature bucks during the afternoon of day four. After not seeing what we’d hoped for in the area we hunted that morning, Haynes jumped in the truck with us and we headed for a river bottom where Corey had seen a mature 9-pointer multiple evenings in a row. However, we never made it to the river bottom.

On our way there, we spotted a group of whitetails feeding in a wide-open cut canola field roughly 1,100 yards from the road. After studying the group through the spotting scope, we determined there were two shooter bucks among the others – one really wide buck and another sporting a split G-2.

“I want to go shoot that split G-2 buck,” I announce to the group.

“Okay,” Darcy replies. “Let’s loop around to the road on the opposite side of that hill. I think we have a better chance of sneaking in without spooking them from over there.”

A barb-wired fence stretched across the canola field, and the bucks stood just on the other side of the fence. Several hundred yards beyond the deer was a large hill. Our plan was to creep up the backside of the hill and hopefully crest it within rifle range of the deer.

Unfortunately, by the time we crested the hill the bucks were further away than we anticipated. However, from our vantage point we noticed another terrain feature that could provide enough cover for us to sneak within range of the deer.

A small depression extended out into the canola field for several hundred yards before ending at the base of a short embankment. We collectively decided that the depression would allow us to cover the most ground the fastest. Although there was virtually no cover past the embankment, we had a feeling if we made it there undetected, one of the two bucks would be within shooting range.

Once at the base of the embankment, Darcy and I decided to crawl up it together, hoping to see a shooter and then we could have Jake reposition to capture it all on film. When we crested the top, we could see a deer just 250 yards away. However, we couldn’t determine what it was…until it turned and began walking straight away from us with its head raised high.

My heart sank as I watched the wide buck walk out of shooting range without ever presenting a shot. Seeing that we couldn’t waste any time if we did want to get a shot, Haynes made a game-time decision.

“We’ve got to crawl as fast as we possibly can if we want to catch him,” he explains. “It’s low odds, but we have to go now.”

For another quarter mile, we crawled on a deer trail desperately trying to cut the distance between us and the buck. Unfortunately, the deer moved much quicker than we could, and he walked out of our lives forever.

Covered in mud and sweat, the four of us began the long trek back to the truck as the sun set. With just one more day to try and fill my Alberta buck tag, for the first time all week, I began to wonder if I’d take a trophy whitetail back home with me.

SUCCESS AT LAST

When we all met up at Darcy’s house the final morning, it was obvious to me the whole crew was prepared to work hard all day to find me a buck. Darcy, Jake and I piled into the cab of Darcy’s truck and began cruising the river bottoms as soon as we could see. Corey, Haynes and the others took another truck to checkout different areas.

Around 9:30 a.m., we met back up on a high point that overlooked a massive, mile-wide river bottom. All week we had frequented this spot while looking for a shooter, and although the bottom always had deer in it, we never saw the “right” buck in a stalkable spot. But that was about to change.

“There’s a good deer bedded under the lone bush straight out there,” Corey says to us. “Blake, if you’re interested, I think he’s in a pretty stalkable spot.”

The buck was bedded 800 yards away, and through the glass I could tell he was a mature deer with a great rack, including an abnormally tall brow tine. I told the group I was ready to stalk him, so Darcy, Jake, Haynes and I dropped into the river bottom for one last push toward success.

The tall vegetation in the river bottom honestly made the 800-yard stalk easy. Not long after leaving the truck, we crawled the last 50 yards to the edge of some thick brush. Just 100 yards ahead of us, the buck’s brown rack rose above the tall grass surrounding his bed. With the camera rolling behind me and Darcy and Haynes on either side, I laid my Browning X-bolt II across the shooting sticks. The wind was perfect, and the buck wasn’t spooked; we just needed him to stand from his bed and present a shot.

As the minutes passed, I focused on staying calm by reflecting on our perfect plan. We spotted the buck, simply cut the distance and got into position, and now it seemed inevitable that the deer would stand and I’d make an easy, 100-yard shot to drop him in his bed. A long, incredible week of deer hunting would end with a textbook spot-and-stalk whitetail hunt executed exactly how I expected. Then I caught movement out of the left corner of my eye…

Two bucks we’d never seen before busted through the brush to our left and entered the opening, passing by our bedded target just 50 yards in front of us. The lead buck was a small 2-year-old, but the buck following him was a fully mature 9-point and I knew I wanted to shoot him the moment I saw him.

“Oh, right here. Two bucks,” I say to Haynes and Darcy.

“Should we shoot? You have a shot, Blake?” Haynes asks.

As the big 9-point trotted across the meadow toward the brush line, I grunted with my mouth multiple times frantically trying to stop him. Just as I thought he was going to slip away, he stopped quartering hard away from me at the edge of the brush. I let the cross hairs fall on his last rib to account for the angle, and I felt the Browning’s trigger break as the buck nose-dived into the cover.

IN CONCLUSION

My whole life I’ve dreamed of pursuing whitetails in Canada, and I can’t thank the folks at Browning and LaCrosse enough for helping make my dream a reality. To sweeten the deal, all the events from Haynes’ and my hunt in Alberta were captured on film for NAW TV, so you can see for yourself just how incredible the trip really was. To Corey Jarvis, Darcy Weaselhead and everyone else associated with Three Rivers Adventures and War Cry Outfitters, I can’t wait to head north again to hunt the bucks of the Blood Nation with you.

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