Hunting In The Big League
Maine has a lot to offer a deer hunter, but it's not famous as a destination for trophy bowhunting. The Midwestern grain belt holds the most opportunities, but when it comes to outfitter reputations, I have found it hard to sort the wheat from the chaff.
A few years back I hunted out of state, contracting with an Ohio outfitter for a DIY hunt on his leased land. It turned out to be a budget trip with very little success. Toward the end of our hunt we were having a beer with one of the outfitter's guides and he told us that he wasn't surprised that we weren't seeing deer. "if we thought that land was any good we'd be guiding on it this week."
So when Cumberland County detective, and registered Maine guide, Jim Estabrook came to investigate an attempted burglary at my house, and mentioned that he'd just come back from Saskatchewan, gun hunting with an outfitter called Buck Paradise ("absolutely the best place to hunt whitetail deer in North America") I quickly sent in my deposit. I had tried the budget trips, and out of frustration was jumping several levels to sign-up with the best outfitter in the hottest spot on earth. This was a very pricy world-class hunt, with an outfitter that was featured on multiple TV shows, and my hope was I would get what I paid for.
Arrival at Saskatoon airport was like hitting the waiting room for some giant Cabela’s store. I've never seen so many gun cases and so much camo in public. A sure sign that I was in the right spot. I had chatted up a group of hunters in the Toronto airport - hard to miss, with their camo clothing and daypacks. They were headed to another outfitter's camp and would be shooting black powder - that's the season this week, archery and muzzleloading, with the rifle season the following week.
These guys were familiar with Buck Paradise, had heard good things about it, and also knew that pro hunters Pat and Nicole from Driven TV would be in my camp this week. On the road the next day I knew I wasn't in Maine anymore when the radio announcer said, in a dramatic pro-wrestling-kind-of-voice, "coming next week ... the event you've been waiting for ... converging on Saskatoon are all the top curling teams in the world!!!"
When I got to camp I shot my bow to see that the sights were still on, unpacked, and started to talk it up with the other hunters. I made friends with Tim, Greg, and Brian from Green Bay. It just so happened that on the TV that afternoon the Packers were playing the Minnesota Vikings, and these guys were hardcore Packers fans. They had dressed in their game jerseys and Greg showed photos of the ambulance that he has converted to be a dedicated Packers tailgate vehicle, complete with extensive kitchen and keg. The graphics on his Packermobile were impressive.
Brian had hunted at Buck Paradise twice before and each time had shot a 160 inch monster. We looked at the photos he had of those deer, as well as the ones he passed. Some were even bigger.
The "event" of the evening was when Pat and Nicole arrived. Being from Minnesota, they were not too pleased to see all the Packers jerseys, but managed to force smiles when Greg presented them with their very own Packers memorabilia. The Wisconsin boys knew that P&N were from Minnesota so they had this all planned, and it was pretty funny. Then things turned odd as P&N had us all help them stage a "meet and greet" scene for the TV episode they were making of this week's hunt. We were directed where to sit, and how to look, as they staged another entrance and greeted the owner as long-lost good buddies. It was creepy, but Nicole did turn out to be cuter than she looks on TV - is it that old adage that TV adds ten pounds, or doesn't insulated camo do much for a woman's figure?
We bought our licenses and met our guides. I was scheduled to have Reggie as my guide, along with another hunter named Pete. Pete is P&N's dentist back in MN, and sometimes tags along on hunts. He made a quip about being the "team doctor," always there in case something happened to their TV smiles.
Reg picked us up at 5:30 the next morning and we headed out into "the bush." We drove in the truck to a spot where Reg could take each of us to our stand by ATV. He towed a trailer behind the quad with a bale of alfalfa and a bag of oats. Hunting in Saskatchewan is like nothing I've done. It's big woods hunting on land owned by the Crown and is strictly controlled. There are a set number of hunting permits for non-residents, and only locals can hunt unguided. The locals aren't interested in trophy bucks, and will either shoot a fat doe from the road, if they hunt deer at all, or go after moose. They prefer moose meat to venison. Wolf packs travel the area, followed by coyotes that clean-up their leftovers, so the deer herd is kept in a healthy balance. Deer do not experience any hunting pressure from humans back in the bush, and are allowed to grow to maturity. The Buck Paradise website states that only 140 inch or greater buck can be taken, unless you are a "first time hunter" or over 70.
A 140 inch buck refers to the formula measurement of the rack and that is a big number. A deer will typically be at least four years old and well fed to attain that size - bucks in Maine are usually shot when they are one or two, so they don't get a chance to reach maturity, or they live in the north Maine woods and don't get enough nutrition. The world record "typical" rack (meaning free of unbalanced tines and kickers) was on a deer from Saskatchewan. Saskatchewan bucks regularly exceed 200 inches. The icing on the cake up here is that Saskatchewan bucks have unique genetics that produce chocolate brown antlers that are distinctly attractive. The extremely cold winters also produce bucks with huge bodies that will far outweigh deer in the States - 300 lbs is not unusual. This is an amazing place to hunt whitetail deer.
They don't do a lot of bowhunting at Buck Paradise because it is usually bitter cold during the deer season, but half the camp this week is using a bow - the other half are shooting black powder. The weather is warmer than it should be and the buzz from the guides is that the hunting will be slow. Below freezing at night and about 40 during the day makes for tolerable hunting temps, and plenty cold for Maine deer, but the big SK bucks only move when it is cold and there's snow on the ground. I'm not sure what to expect.
The strategy is to put alfalfa and oats out weeks ahead of the season and see what baits are getting hit, and if there are any scrapes or rubs indicating buck activity. Reg has been guiding for 30 years and some of these bait locations have been used for nearly that long. They tend to be deep in the woods where deer trails intersect - you need to reach them by ATV. I am riding behind Reg and it's pitch black and bitter cold. I hold my bow in one hand and hang on with the other as we hit potholes and roots. Other than being in a hardwood forest, I can't tell much about where we are from what I can see in the headlights - it's a rollercoaster ride as I concentrate on not banging my bow on the quad or catching it on a bush. Bows are built strong to withstand the force of sending an arrow at 300 feet per second, but they have cams and strings and delicate sights that can't afford to be knocked out of whack. The rough trail is cut out of the blowdowns from a big storm this year, and we finally come to the turnaround end where the stand is and Reg will add more grain and hay to the baitpile.
Reg shows me to the stand and I climb up. I start setting-up as he spreads out the bait. It doesn't take long for him to finish, and I listen to his quad fade into the night as I wrap-up my preparations. Reg left branch stubs on the tree for me to hang bow, pack, and quiver. It's cold so I get into my Heater Body Suit - a kind of camo sleeping bag with feet. It keeps me toasty in the worst weather, and yet I can quietly unzip and shoot because the interior shoulder straps will keep it from falling down or getting into my way. I also have a muff hanging from my waist with a couple chemical hand warmers in it, so I can wear light archery gloves and still be comfortable. I am wearing several layers under insulated coveralls, and at 10:00 each day I put a Thermacare heated back wrap on under my Scentloc undershirt - this keeps my core warm as I spend 12 hours on stand. I have on two pairs of socks with recycled vegetable bags between them as a vapor barrier, and I'm wearing 1000 gram insulated rubber hunting boots so my feet are comfortable all day long. I've developed this system over the past few seasons and it works well for me.
I sit there in the dark. The sun won't be up for about an hour as today I will be dropped off first and picked up last. I try to keep my movements to a minimum as I wait for light. Stars are in the sky, but here in the woods it's hard to tell the difference between having your eyes open or shut. It isn't long before the crunching starts.
Oats make a loud crunching and popping noise when being eaten by deer. In the dark it can become an exciting sound that causes your pulse to race and your imagination to run wild. Is it Mr. Big, or just a doe? And that makes you speculate about just what the hell you would do if in the first minute of the first day of your week-long hunt you were face-to-face with a shooter buck. Long minutes slouch by as the sky grows lighter. Shapes start to form - sky, trees, ground, and ones you can't identify. Is that blob a deer? Or a rock? Gradually a moving deer-shaped blob emerges so you have something to focus your speculation on. Longer minutes later you can declare with certainty that it's just a local doe coming for breakfast at the sound of the quad. Pavlov rings true for deer too. The hunt has started.
Each hunting day starts this way. A cold ride in the dark. Setting up in the stand. The wait for light. And the speculation about what the hell is making all that noise. The amazing thing is that the deer are so close to the stand for almost the entire day. They come and go all day long just 30 yards away. They fight. They get spooked by me. They come back. And all the while I get a chance to watch the deer like I never have before – it’s like I’d tuned-into The Deer Channel. If you are passionate about this sport you have to be fascinated by deer, and I have never had a chance to see them like this. I see two bucks accidentally tickle their racks together as they feed, which sets them into a fight that gets downright violent - I winced as I watched because I have to think it hurt like hell to have those daggers shoved in your face. I saw mature does standing on their hind legs pummeling each other on the face and head with sharp hoofs. A weaned fawn trying to nurse from mom but rejected. Does grunted at other does as they ran them off the bait. It was pecking order, boys bullying girls, get out of my food, I don't like your fawn, I'm bigger than you, and I just don't like your face ... all day long. I saw two 120 class eight points square off with lip curls, hair on end, and a kind of a snort-wheeze that was more wheeze than snort. They pawed the ground until one intimidated the other to back-off and walk.
That first day I saw a dozen different deer, three of which were bucks, but nothing even close to a shooter. Over the four days I hunted I saw at least 20 different does (with no rack, you can never be sure) and nine unique bucks. The deer at first were very spooky and would freeze every time I moved or made a noise. I thought to myself "how will I ever get a chance to stand up and draw if a shooter comes in?" Then a two year old eight point came in to the bait to feed, pushing the does out of the area. He was confident - plunging his face right down into the hay to get at the oats below. I noticed that the bucks didn't get as nervous and jumpy, and that if they were focused on the bait, and other deer weren't close-by, I would be able to stand and draw. But what if there were other deer around when Mr. Big came in?
From then on I developed a strategy to educate the deer hanging around the bait with the goal of getting them not to jump, blow, or stomp their foot at me when I moved. Every time a new deer or two came in I would wait until they settled down to feed, then I would shift around a bit to get their attention. They would freeze on full alert and stare at me. I would freeze and wait until they calmed down again, and went back to the feed. Then I would do it again. After a while they would learn that I meant them no harm and they would ignore me. Even when the wind would occasionally swirl and my scent would drift over the bait area, something that would guarantee that a Maine deer would bolt for the next county, these guys just stuck their long noses in the air and sniffed - they looked like they were thinking "what is that interesting odor?" It got to the point that I could stand, get food out of my pack, use my pee bottle, and even talk on the radio. Back in camp at the end of the week one of the other guides said he heard me on the radio with Reg during our mid-day check-in saying that I was "eating my lunch with a 125 inch eight-pointer." One time I had to get down and use the sandbox, and I got within 15 yards of a pair of does before they ran away. When I came back they jumped again, but they were back on the bait by the time I climbed back up into my stand.
Have you ever known a wild thing that was so truly wild that it behaved as if it was tame? Saskatchewan deer are not tame. They are in fact the extreme opposite - so wild that they have never seen a human. And certainly not up in a tree. I was a big camo bird to them - scary at first, and then just a curiosity. Buck Paradise hunts 500,000 acres of Crown land. There's no army of hunters driving the woods each November like there is in Maine. The deer have enough to worry about with the large number of bears, wolves, and coyotes, but the locals are not a threat, and the occasional trophy hunter is only after their alpha males. All but one of the deer in this vast forest have absolutely nothing to worry about from me.
When the light got too weak to see the fiber optic pins on my bow sight that first day I packed up and climbed down from the stand. Reg said I would be picked up after Pete so I should have realized that it wouldn't happen right away. I was now on the ground and it was completely dark. I sat down on a log between my stand and the bait area. I was comfortable, though it was getting cold, but my mind wandered and I thought of the comment that Reg made about wanting us in tree stands rather than ground blinds. He said that an early frost had killed the berries this year so the bears were not yet hibernating and had been seen on the bait piles. He had run them off, but he didn't want to take chances. I started to think about bears.
That morning another hunter had shown me a photo of a bear that had climbed up his tree when he was bear hunting here, and after he took the photo he had to hit the bear twice across the face with an arrow before it would leave. The photo showed the head of a snarling bear right next to his foot. I started to feel real fear. I could hear vague noises around me - the snap of a twig behind me, rustling in front, a distant thump. When I started to think about the TV show I had seen featuring bear hunting at Buck Paradise, and the hunter had five bears on his bait at the same time, I decided to climb back up in my stand. I stood up and switched on my headlamp. There were five deer in front of me with a small eight point only 15 yards away, and it wasn't like I had been sitting motionless! What an amazing place to hunt.
When I got back to the truck, and I have a chance to compare notes with Pete, I find that we are not without complaints. Reg is one of the best guides at BP, but he specializes in guiding rifle hunters during the rut. He is inexperienced with archery setups, and with effective strategy at this time of the year. This is the time when you can put out trail cameras to pattern the biggest bucks as they are still feeding at the bait sites. But Reg doesn't use a lot of cameras. He has developed his own set of very productive bait sites and looks for the ones that are getting hit hard during the day, but that really only works during the rut, which has yet to get going this season. During the rut the bucks stop feeding and spend all their time traveling in search of a hot doe, so active baits are a great location as that's where the does are. But we need to find where a monster is living and feeding, not where there are a lot of does and small bucks. The scrapes that Reg has found are just as liable to be made by a two year old than a five year old buck. Without colder weather and snow Pete thinks we are in trouble.
When we get back to camp we hear that three hunters scored today. They are Nicole, another pro hunter in the P&N group that had a broken ankle (from before the trip), and Tim from Green Bay. Tim's deer is a nice 140 class that his guide had on a game camera. P&N's guide also uses extensive cameras, and in the first four days the four members of their group take huge bucks, each filmed for their TV show. I hear that this is really a job for them, and that it's no fun for anyone if they don't shoot deer. They are under pressure to travel during the entire deer hunting season and film their episodes. They get cranky if they don't shoot something.
I stop into the garage to see Nicole and the other pro having photos taken of them posing with the deer they have taken that day. There are about ten people in front of them admiring the deer and taking photos. Pat is filming video. Nicole and the pro smile warmly from one camera to the next. Back in September my wife and I struggled to find a spot on my butcher's front lawn that was free of dogdoo as we hurriedly snapped a few shots of me with the biggest buck I'd ever shot - a 159 inch trophy 12 point I shot during the Maine expanded archery season. (Read the story about that hunt by clicking here) I guess that's the difference between amateurs and professionals. I find the groupie thing to be a bit weird so I go to my room to shower and change for dinner. I mention to my roommate KC that the P&N cult is creepy. KC says that the pros "rip the soul out of this sport." KC is from Texas.
The schedule in camp is tight. We wake up at 4:15, shower, eat, organize our gear, get our lunch, and leave by 5:30. We're hunting from 6:30 to 6:30, and then back to camp by 7:30 or 8:00. Eat, have a beer, go through emails from work, and try to get to sleep by 10:00. Never enough time. A hunter's life is tough.
Day Two is a repeat of Day One for me, and that evening Reg says that he will be moving us to different stands the next morning. Pete is frustrated. He says that he can only take so much time alone with himself. "I just don't enjoy my own company that much." Pete is a joker.
When we return to camp that second night we learn that Nichole's father and Greg from Green Bay had shot bucks. Greg's scored in the mid-130s and, when I ask him for details, he says it was a nightmare. After my shower I track him down to get the story. His buck came into the bait area and he carefully sighted his scoped muzzleloader on the buck's vitals and squeezed the trigger. Greg didn't see any evidence of a hit as the buck ran off. The deer circled around and came back to the bait to resume feeding. Greg lined-up again and took another shot. The buck did the same circle and came back to the bait. This time, thinking that the scope was off and he was shooting low, he aimed over the deer and squeezed again. The buck ran off, so Greg got out of his blind and went to look for blood - he searched but couldn't find any. Not wanting to get lost in the middle of who-knows-where, he headed back to the blind to get his bearings. The same buck was back on the bait pile. This time he removed the scope from the gun, aimed using the open sights, and dropped the buck on the spot.
After the first day of sitting in my stand and not seeing a shooter I started to think about what I would be missing if I hunted the full week and flew home on Sunday as planned. I have a son in college and a daughter who's a senior in high school. She is co-captain of the Greely volleyball team and they’d just won the playoffs. They would now be playing in the Maine state championships on Saturday. I emailed my wife and asked her to change my flight to Friday - I now had only two more days to hunt.
Day Three was a ton of fun. I saw more than a dozen different does, and at one point had eight on the bait at the same time. And I started to see some nice bucks. I saw a 120 inch eight point, a 125 inch eight, and a 130 inch nine. At the end of the day, in the final few minutes of light, a big-bodied buck came in and he looked like a shooter - the problem was that I couldn't be sure. I had enough light to see my pins, and he presented me with several perfect quartering-away shots, but I just couldn't be sure that he was over 140 inches. At first I thought that he was the bigger eight point, but then I noticed that his tines had a nice curve to them, and I was sure that I hadn't seen a buck like that before. Not wanting to make a mistake, I let him walk.
I left my hangers screwed into the tree because I wanted to be back in that stand the next morning.
On the last day of my hunt I was the only hunter with Reg. The outfitter decided to put Pete with another guide - maybe that would change his luck. Pete had not seen a single deer all day long at the new location - not a one, while I saw 15 or more! It could be wolves or bears that spooked the deer away from his site, but we never found out. There was a trail camera at Pete's site, but Reg didn't check it.
Day Four was similar to Three. A couple new bucks showed-up, a four point and a five, and a lot of does. At 3:30 a buck walked out of the woods across from me and I could see that he had a nice rack. At first I thought that it was the big eight or the nine point, but then he settled into the bait and I got a good look at him. He was an eight point with good mass and nice curves to his rack, almost like an elk. I now realized that he was the big guy from late the night before. Here he was in broad daylight on the last day of my hunt! But was he a shooter?
He turned sideways - what a bull of a deer! Heavy muscles like a football player. He had to be four years old and I think he would weigh well over 220 lbs. dressed-out - significantly bigger than anything I had seen so far. I studied him for at least 30 minutes. He was a trophy anywhere ... but here?
If he had had one or two more tines, making him a nine point or a ten, there wouldn't be any question, but I just thought that his tines were not quite long enough to make him a 140 inch eight point. He was close. After studying him through the binoculars (through 10x lenses at 30 yards he was all rack!) I concluded that he was probably around 135.
I knew that others in camp had shot 130 class deer (later KC would say that one of the muzzleloaders shot a deer that was around 125) but I didn't want to violate the 140 inch rule. At breakfast a couple days before, the owner of the company that makes my safety harness said that during the same week last year he shot the smallest buck in camp - mid 130s - but he just really liked the looks of it and wanted to bring it home. This had struck me odd at the time because on the phone the outfitter said the smallest last year was 140, and I knew that they said on their website that they would charge you an extra $500 if you shot a buck less than 140 inches.
The longer I studied this deer, the more I fell in love with that rack. It was heavy and thick, and the color was something you could only find up here. The tips of the tines were lighter, vanilla contrasting against the chocolate beams. He was a beauty.
I decided to pass.
He had hung around for at least 20 minutes, giving me plenty of shot opportunities at less than 30 yards, head buried in the hay with no other deer around. Soon after he left I began to have second thoughts on my decision. I thought that maybe, if he showed up again, I would shoot him. That thought, and the hope for something bigger, stayed in my mind until darkness fell and my hunt was over.
When Reg arrived to take me home I told him about the 135 and how I agonized over the decision to shoot or not shoot. Reg said "why didn't you just shoot him?" I said that I wanted to obey the 140 inch rule. Reg said that the rule only applied to hunters that had hunted with them before. He said that I was a "first time hunter." "Didn't Grant explain that to you?" No, Grant didn't explain that to me. I thought that they meant a hunter new to the sport. Reg said "anyway, I let my hunter shoot what they want." Reg hadn't explained that to me either. After some thought I said "well, Reg, if I'd know all that, I probably wouldn't have shot the 135 anyway ... because I would have already shot the 130 inch nine-point at 11:00 AM."
Back at camp I packed all my stuff so I could leave for Saskatoon at 5:00 the next morning. Pat was at dinner, distressed about the 180 inch buck he gut-shot that afternoon – I think he was back at camp catching-up on things while the guides tracked the deer. Judging by his photo I saw later on the Buck Paradise website, they found his buck.
The next day would be a long one as a mechanical problem in Calgary forced me to miss my connection and spend the night in Toronto – I only got home a few hours before the State Championship game. Of course our Greely girls beat Scarborough for the title in a nail-biter. Leaving early was absolutely the right decision because you can always find another deer to hunt, but a high school senior only has one final chance to win the Big Game.
At 5:00 AM on the day I left Buck Paradise I said goodbye to the hunters that were getting ready for their day, grabbed a fried egg sandwich from the kitchen, and carried my bow case out to the car. I remember thinking that I really did not want to leave. I was going to miss watching all those deer … and getting my shot at a monster. All in all, it was an amazing hunt, and I made it almost all the way to Saskatoon before I started thinking about coming back the next year.