I spent a good bit of time and $ getting the right gear on hand for my first ever Canadian deer hunt this year. As it turns out most of it wasn’t needed.
I rolled into camp loaded up like I was moving in. It had actually rained a good bit that afternoon so things were a bit slick as nighttime temps dipped just below freezing. The weather forecast was not in my favor as the temps were slated to stay unseasonably warm through the week with periods of high wind added in to make it even more challenging.
The morning found me in a ground blind tucked into the timber along a travel corridor connecting some big chunks of harvested ag fields. SK allows the use of bait so there was a pile of barley and some hay set up about 100 yds out. Once I got situated in the blind, killed the headlamp and cracked a window for a look outside, there was already a buck on the feed. It was still 45 minutes until legal shooting time, but he looked good in my binos.
The buck wandered off well before shooting light but there was a pretty steady parade of deer to keep things interesting. A pair of yearling bucks had a tussle right on top of the feed pile. There were some bucks with more substantial headgear crashing horns and tearing up the woods very nearby, but they stayed out of my clearing. A large 4x4 who may have been one of the combatants, came in and fed for a couple of minutes before ambling off after the does he bumped off the feed. Overall, the rut didn’t seem to be cranked up as the bucks didn’t have darkened tarsals and weren’t harassing the does with any real intent. I couldn’t blame the deer for nut rutting to hard. I had the option to shed layers of clothes and did so. They were stuck in their fat-laden bodies wrapped in a fur coat.
At approximately 1:30, the pair of fawns I’d been watching feed looked up and promptly bolted straight away into the woods. A few seconds later a buck trotted through my clearing giving me just enough time to verify he was a 5x5 before being obscured by the timber. A few seconds later he came trotting back in the opposite direction angling to me at about 90 yds. My rifle had somehow made it from my lap onto the shooting sticks and I was now watching the buck about to head back into the wood line he’d originally came from. I remember thinking about advice from the guide on the ride in that morning - “these bucks have big bodies, so the rack might not look huge by comparison”. In my quick evaluation the rack looked pretty good vs the body. The next thing I knew I was coming out of recoil and watching the buck launch straight up in the air about 8’. As soon as he landed he was gone in one leap into the bush.
I sat there for a couple minutes marveling at how fast that had all happened and wondering if I’d made the right choice. I drank some cocoa, ate a sandwich and tried to replay the events in my mind. I couldn’t remember swapping my binos for my rifle, taking off the safety or any of the things that normally lead up to a shot. The sight picture of the crosshairs on the buck’s right shoulder as he crossed the opening quartering to me and the leap straight up at the shot are all that memory captured from the time I saw him reverse course until it was over.
I got out of the blind and crunched my way across the snow to the spot where the buck had crossed the clearing. A good amount of blood was present there and a steady stream where he’d bolted into the bush. I was 10 yards into the bush when I saw him laying dead another 10 yards away. He hadn’t gone far as the bullet took out the near side lung and a good portion of liver as it crossed. The entry point was a good 10” back from where I recall the crosshairs being but he was zipping across the cut when I fired.
He turned out to be 3.5-4.5 year old buck that didn’t have the massive body that some
Canadian bucks do. He is a great buck nonetheless and he is mine. The tenderloin I ate from him a couple days later was fork tender even after pan frying! I will return to try my luck next year and will hopefully get to test my cold weather gear the next go around.
Equipment details for those that care:
Tikka T3X Stainless fluted in 30-06 w/ Zeiss Conquest V4 3-12. Norma Bondstrike 180 gr. This combo puts 3 shots into tiny little clusters and I wouldn’t be afraid to use it anywhere in North America.
![[Linked Image from i.postimg.cc]](https://i.postimg.cc/7hR4bkSr/0-EC3-B395-876-E-48-C4-9913-711-DB54270-D0.jpg)
![[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]](https://i.imgur.com/X0n16mr.png)
