And The Deer Gods Smiled

Despite more than 30 years of whitetail hunting, the author discovers on a big-buck hunt in Saskatchewan that experience isn't always necessary

HE LAY IN THE FIELD LIKE A SIDE OF BEEF-dark, long and 300 pounds strong. I dug my hands into his gnarled hide. My fingers dipped in past the knuckles; his flesh was still hot. I reached for his tines, 10 of them, tall and black as sticks of walnut. It hit me and I started shaking: Lord, I just shot a 170 buck.

That was in 1987, when Saskatchewan was first making opportunity available to nonresident hunters. I was one of the first writers to travel there and shoot a giant whitetail. My story swamped the outfitter with letters and phone calls, Bruce, God rest his soul booked his little camp on the shores of Ministikwan Lake solid for years. The pilgrimage Americans heading north lot molester bucks had begun.

Unless you've been living in a cave, you know there's no better place to hunt for big deer. Since 2000, the province has put some 130 bucks in the Boone and Crockett record book. That doesn't include the giants shot in 2005. Of course, Saskatchewan has become most associated with the biggest of the big, the 213 5/8-inch typical that resident Milo Hanson shot near Biggar in 1993. Still standing as the No. 1 typical whitetail ever taken by a hunter, it's become the record to be Someday, a hunter will break it, and while stales like Kansas and Illinois are likely spots, Hanson's province is just as apt to produce another record and maintain its standing in deer hunting lore.

That is why I keep going back every chance I get. I don't have a silly illusion that I'll kill the new No. 1 buck (well, maybe I do just a little), and hunting near bait is not my favorite tactic. But this I know: If I can hack sitting in a blind for eight hours a day six days running without freezing or going stir-crazy, I'll have a good chance of seeing a beast unlike anything in the states.

Like the one my friend Grant Kuypers was skinning when I pulled into his camp last November. The outfitter gave me a bear hug and grinned, "What do you think, eh?"

What I thought was, Unreal. A guy from New York had shot the 179-inch giant close to the lodge earlier that morning, his first in the bush. The brute would surely net Boone and Crockett.

Late Arrival
To reach Grant's camp I had flown thousands of miles, endured three hellish layovers and driven four hours from Saskatoon in a compact rental crammed with duffels and gun cases. I'd been on the move for 24 hours.

"We've still got a couple of hours left," Grant said. "Go for a quick hunt, or rest up for tomorrow?" I glanced over at the Booner hanging on the meat pole and nearly pulled a hamstring running for my rifle.

I quickly joined Grant and his cousin Brandon at the dock. He cranked the motor and our big aluminum boat bounced up and planed off across the lake. Thirty minutes later, Grant cut the engine and scraped the boat onto the shoreline's rocks. I slung my Remington over my shoulder and crept off on the tiny trail that snaked through the willows. Before motoring for the far end of the lake, Grant turned and called out, "I'll be back if I hear you shoot."

Yeah, right. I didn't plan on seeing a buck on this quickie hunt, much less shooting one. I just wanted to check out the setup I'd hunt for the next week.

My pop-up blind was not far from the lake, tucked inside a copse of spruce and willows precisely 149 yards downwind of a narrow meadow. (I know because I zapped it with my range finder.) Somewhere out there in the grass was a smattering of alfalfa hay and oats.

I'd killed my first buck up here 18 years before by watching a scrape line on the edge of a wheat field, hunting the rut like I might back home in Virginia. Things are different now. Nonresidents are required to hunt north of the province's prime farmland, in what is known as "provincial forest." Another good name for it is an interminable hell of evergreens, poplar and willows dotted with little meadows and swamps. Outfitters scatter grain in the openings to lure deer out of the jungle. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. It's the way they do it up here. If it's not for you, feel free to stay home.

The Quick and the Dead
I climbed into my blind and checked my watch-3:15 p.m. I held my water bottle aloft and toasted the northern deer gods: "To a good hunt." I took a swig and caught a flash of movement.

Was it just a magpie? One thing I had learned from years of hunting in the bush was to expect a lot of downtime. You don't see much--a few magpies or ravens, the odd squirrel, a moose once in a blue moon and a smattering of deer on your lucky days. The woods can be dead and still for hours.

I caught another flash. I raised my binocular and saw the tan of a deer through the timber. Small buck or doe, I thought. Then he strode out.

They say that when you see a true monster you'll know it. No need to glass or study antlers: Just shoot, man. That might be true in the middle and especially toward the end of a week's hunt, but not minutes in. This deer, wide and thick as an Angus, was mature for sure, but was he a first-day shooter?

Too many people go to Canada and freak out when they see a creature absurdly bigger than anything they've ever seen back home, shooting it dead on theft first or second day in the bush. It's a nice buck, but maybe 30 or 40 points smaller than the deer they might have killed if they'd just been patient. I'd done that before and wasn't planning to mess up that way again.

Usually I can glass a rack and quickly come within 10 inches or so of its gross score. But the frenetic pace at which this hunt was playing out--if you can call 10 minutes a hunt--caught me off guard. It froze some chips in my brain. Would he go 140 inches or 200? I hadn't a clue.

A Split-Second Decision
The buck lugged across the meadow, his rack growing bigger and bigger in my Leica with every step. That was to be expected: The longer you glass an animal at 10X, the larger and larger it seems to get. I hissed out loud, "How many points? How heavy? How wide? Is he big enough, dammit?"

The buck turned toward the blind as if to give me one more good look at his headgear. Two huge, black daggers for brows, one of them forked, leaped out at me. I flipped off the Model 700's safety and centered the crosshair on the deer's shoulder. Two more steps and the animal would be lost forever.

My 7mm RUM roared like a cannon.

I sat rocking and mumbling like a dazed old man. I checked my watch--3:35. Had I just shot a titan, or jumped the gun? I had no idea, but naturally I feared the latter.

Finally, I crept out of the blind and spotted the deer in a heap 20 yards from where I'd shot him. I took off running for the buck.

I knelt and ran my hands through his hide. It was coarse and hot, just as I had remembered all of them being. The rack was mahogany colored. I counted the points, burrs and stickers; there were 22 in all. The beams were as thick as axe handles. He was a mainframe 10-pointer, and when you tacked on all the junk, he'd score 181 and change. I had to think twice, five times, ten times about shooting this thing? It was absurd.

I heard the boat return and soon Grant and Brandon were jogging across the meadow. They stopped and gawked at the giant and then at me. Grant has seen hundreds of burly bucks with racks of every shape and size pulled out of the bush over the years. But even he seemed a bit amazed with this one.

Figuring Things Out
We each grabbed an antler and dragged him to the boat. He wasn't the heaviest Canadian deer I'd ever shot; still, he'd go 275 on those huge hooves.

Grant cranked the outboard and off we went. I looked at the monster bobbing in the bow and tried to sort things out. I had traveled for two days and thousands of miles to hunt for less than a half hour and shoot a buck I expect never to top and, strangely, hope I never do. I chewed on that for a long while. Somewhere out on that lake at the top of the whitetail world it finally sank in: Sometimes it really is better to be lucky than good.

Eighteen years after tagging a 170-inch buck

the author one-upped himself with a 180-inch trophy

By: Hanback, Michael, Outdoor Life, Sep2006