Headed back North of the border to the land of the Giants for a 10 day whitetail hunt with Pam Zaitz. We will be hunting with Jim Shockey and it looks like the weather will be cooperating. Looking at the weather forcast the highs should be in the upper 20s and the lows will be in the single digits! This should get the big deer up and moving and hopefully the rut will be in full swing! I have spent a lot of time in Canada over the past 8 years and my hunters have yet to harvest a bruiser Canadian Whitetail. Hopefully we can break that streak on this trip!
Back in 2002 I made my first trip to Mexico. I would be hunting with one of the owners of an Outfitting service called Whitetail Adventures. His name was Bill and I had been on several hunting trips with him.
A little background Information to help this story:
Two weeks earlier we had been hunting in Saskatchewan for whitetail. We were hunting on an Indian Reservation so Bill had several tags he could use on this trip. The weather was very warm for October in Canada, it was in the mid 40s for highs. You just don’t get much deer movement when it is that warm. The next to the last afternoon we spotted an HUGE black bear in a cut oat field. I talked Bill into checking the bear out since we had a bear tag. The wind was perfect and we stalked to within 75 yards of the bear.
Living in Eastern North Carolina I get to see plenty of world class Black Bears and this one was right up there with the ones we had back home so I tell Bill to get his rifle ready. I wanted to get some good, steady footage of the bear and then I wanted to get Bill to harvest the bear. Well, one problem, Bill didn’t want to harvest the bear. After a long drawn out conversation I could not get him to harvest the bear.
Long story short, when I got back to the lodge I showed the other owners of the outfitting business the footage of the bear Bill would not shoot and they were a little upset. One even told me if it happened again for me to grab the rifle and shoot the animal!! By the way, the bear that Bill would not shoot ended up weighing 632 pounds and made Boone & Crockett.
Back to the story in Mexico:
Like I said, it was my first trip to Mexico and it was our first afternoon to hunt. We were sitting in a couple of tower stands and had been watching several young bucks come in and out of the brush, when I looked up and all I could see were tines coming out of the brush! The deer came out at 325 yards and began to graze.
Well as the old saying goes, you’ll know a good one when you see it!
I got Bill’s attention and he glassed the deer with his binoculars while I was getting some footage of the buck. The deer actually fed to within 80 yards of us while I was filming. Without looking at Bill, I told him “Shoot The Deer!” A few seconds went by there was no shot! Once again I said, “Shoot The Deer Bill!” Once again no shot!
I look over my shoulder to see Bill with his binoculars still in his hands! I asked, “Did you hear me Bill, SHOOT THE DEER!” I was getting angry with him and I was raising my voice. I was scared we were going to scare the deer off, but once again Bill was not cooperating.
He told me he wasn’t going to shoot the deer because he did not have any brow tines! Once he said that, I about blew a gasket. I told Bill that the chances of us seeing another deer that big on the trip was slim to none! Once again Bill said he won’t shooting the deer because he didn’t have any brow tines!
Finally I said, “Give me your rifle!”
Bill said, “Are you serious?”
I said, “Yes I’m serious, I will shoot that Buck in a NY second, GIVE ME THE RIFLE.”
Bill said, “Nope I’m going to shoot him.”
BANG!!!!!
Long story short, the deer scored 157″ as a 7 pointer and the next closest deer shot that year on the ranch scored 141″. Bill told me he would have never guessed that deer would be that big! I told him he needed to take up picture taking, because he sure wasn’t a hunter!!!!
Here’s a photo of the deer Bill didn’t want to shoot!
Well my streak has come to an end in Saskatchewan. I’ve been having an awesome year and knew I would come back empty handed sooner or later. In all it was a long, very cold week. We were hunting near Pierceland, Saskatchewan and we saw plenty of deer. The problem was that they had a large winter kill last year and the deer we were seeing were 2 & 3 year old deer. My hunter was looking for a mature buck.
We had 2 mature bucks show up this week. One came up beside our blind and stopped behind some brush not giving us a shot and the other was a giant 8 pointer that had half of his right main beam broke off.
The best part about the trip is that for the first time in about 3 years I got to share hunt camp with my best friend and fellow videographer Chris Douglas. We put in some long, cold hours but we managed to get in a movie every night trying to wind down. Needless to say we only got about 3 1/2 to 4 hours of sleep a night! By the way, Congrats Chris and getting that fine harvest on film the last day of the hunt!!!!! Boy did we work hard on this hunt!
The worst part of the trip was an hour drive by 4-wheeler (Quad in Canada) to the stand every morning. The warmest morning it was -4 F and the coldest morning was -27 F. Boy do those people have long, cold winters up there. The funny thing is that when I got back to Raleigh Saturday it was 69 degrees. I went through a 96 degree temperature change within 12 hours. Now that’s crazy!
The following are a few photos from the trip:
The Camper Chris & I stayed in
The area I was hunting
Chris & I the last night of the hunt, Can you see the joy in our face!!!!!!!!
Me outside of our ground blind we hunted, Check out the suit and moon boots!
All of the hunters in camp shot except us. Here are a couple of bucks from the hunt!
