Not 48 hours ago I arrived home from whitetail camp in Colorado. The hunt was snowy, cold, and offered very little in terms of deer movement. I came home with much more than a hunting story. It was a new addiction I feel coursing through my veins as I type this.
A few days before I was supposed to leave, my buddy Jace Bauserman sent me a video of bucket loads of snow falling from the sky. It was like nothing he’d seen before in November. Normally, they don’t get snow until Dec/Jan. Mother Nature was unleashing what would later be called a 10 year storm. It lasted a few days and dropped 3 ft. of snow. Needless to say, my trip got delayed a few days to let the highways open and storm to fully pass. Jace had no idea what the hunt would look like now.
My hunts normally look something like me hiking into a remote location with a heavy backpack and a dream. Sleeping in the dirt and getting ready in a small tent via headlamp is my normal. This hunt was totally different. Jace and his wonderful family hosted me at their house. They cooked me breakfast, lunch, dinner, and made for some incredible company. Being away from home a lot in the Fall wears at me. I think of my wife and daughter a lot. This environment was refreshing to me and felt like home away from home.
Jace has managed the property I’d be hunting for the last 10 years. The shoulder mounts that adorn his house is proof of it too. In 10 years of managing the property, he’s never seen what had happened with the snow. Trail cameras went from having in upwards of 9 bucks on them down to zero. Things were different and I was not going to get the intense whitetail rut hunt I was dreaming about all year.
All of the food had been covered by snow. So, it forced the deer to move out of the area entirely. We were left with pretty much nothing but bobcats and pheasants. By the way, I did get to see a bobcat snag a pheasant for breakfast! That was super cool.
After a few days of sitting in a treestand in 16 degree temps, I saw one doe. Jace and I did see a few more does working the edge of a standing cornfield. Other than that, the deer seemed to have evaporated. Luckily, Jace had a backup plan. We drove 30 miles to his friend’s property. It got way less snow and he had deer on camera that morning.
On our way into the area I’d be hunting, Jace spotted a deer not 10 yards from us standing in the doghair thick brush. It was a 2 point with eye guards. Of course my bow was attached to my backpack, but I honestly didn’t have a shot anyways. Nonetheless, it was promising to see a living deer at this new spot. For the next 3 days I’d hunt here until the buzzer.
After all was said and done, I had a doe come through at 12 yards one morning and a real nice buck at 8 yards one evening. With both encounters, I had zero shot opportunity. It was borderline infuriating after such a slow hunt. I felt like I was window shopping. I could look, but couldn’t touch. The buck especially was frustrating. He was a great big 10-point and there was nothing I could do about him being so close. This would be the extent of my deer encounters in bow range. On another morning I did see a few deer out at 200 yards, but they never came any closer.
One of the most common questions I was asked during my time in the whitetail woods was “are you going crazy sitting in a tree?” The answer to that is quite the opposite. I enjoyed sitting in a tree watching time float by immensely. What did drive me crazy was being limited on what I could do when deer were in range to create an opportunity. Even though I didn’t walk away with a deer, it gave me just enough taste for whitetail hunting to want to come back next year not after a 10-year storm hits. This all comes back to the window shopping vibe. Jace showed me the pictures of bucks, bucks on the wall, and I even saw one in person. I could look, but couldn’t touch.
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