Our hunters arrived on schedule from Georgia on Sunday December 27th. We do not like to hunt on Sundays as it gives us time to complete our weekly chores and also affords us time to get acquainted with our hunters before the hunt begins. Dan and his father Captain Dan are from south Georgia and they do not get much snow down on the gulf coast. Their arrival was timed perfectly with the Christmas snow. By the time we went to bed there was about two inches of fresh snow on the deck. It is hard to describe how much better a deer hunt can be with a fresh snow until you have actually witnessed it.
When we awoke on the first morning, Dan and I quickly made plans to walk to the Shadow Hunter Stand for the morning hunt. This stand is enclosed with a heater and it overlooks one of our clover plots and is situated along the south ridge of the “sanctuary”. My hopes were that the deer would be hitting the clover early before heading into the sanctuary hollow to bed down. The walk out in the darkness was very exciting for someone that had not experienced a good Ashtabula County lake effect snow. The flakes were coming down about two inches an hour and the temperatures were somewhere in the single digits.
After settling into the stand, we began discussing what type of buck Dan was interested in taking. His number one goal was a “typical look” with something over the 160” class. Dan is a very experienced hunter and has taken many mature south Georgia bucks with the largest scoring somewhere around 130”. Our goals were set and the snowy hunt was underway.
Our first deer came into the food plot sometime around 7:00 AM. A mature doe and two fawns fed for about fifteen minutes. I told Dan that I had seen this doe often in the food plots behind the lodge and that normally she had three fawns with her. They continued to feed but kept checking on the approach of another deer. As the fourth deer approached, it turned out to be a yearling buck that had broken off everything on his right side from fighting. This yearling was intent on checking the doe fawns and he managed to push all of them out of the food plot and into the surrounding brush. With the movement of these deer so early and with the buck showing signs of the secondary rut, I knew that we had made a good choice on location.
Well one thing I have since learned is that you don’t want to start bragging about your guide skills to early in the hunt. Once the four deer had moved out of sight it left us sitting alone for about three hours. You can only point out the beautiful snow covered surrounding so long and I know that Dan was starting to second guess my decision to stay in this stand. I will only open windows on one or two sides of the stand at a time so that approaching deer can not silhouette you through the back windows. I had just cracked the back windows to help improve our view when I spotted a doe running directly toward us.
I told Dan that there was a doe coming in fast and to be ready for what I hoped would be a buck chasing her. It is amazing how quickly your hunts can change and in a matter of seconds she was standing within ten feet of our stand. There was not one buck but five mature bucks chasing her. The doe bedded down in the brush and it allowed us to watch five bucks for an hour and a half. What an exciting ninety minutes! We figured that there was one 150” buck, one 160” buck, two 180” bucks, and one really big buck that should go over 200“.
The 200” buck was running the show as he would chase one buck out of sight and then return to guard his girlfriend. This went on several times and at one point the actually caught the 150” off guard and threw him about four feet in the air. At this point the 150” buck limped off carrying his right back leg and there was a steady stream of blood dripping from his tail and running down his leg. All of this action and never once was there a shooting opportunity but at least the guide had reclaimed some of his validity.
The doe finally decided that she was rested enough for another run and we were once again left sitting alone. After waiting to see if they would return and discussing the mornings events, we decided to check in with Captain Dan and eat lunch.
Well I think that was probably the longest lunch that Dan has ever eaten. Once we had finished, he was ready to see if we could go get a chance at that big buck. We knew our only hope was to locate the hot doe and that she could be anywhere. We decided to still hunt as it was snowing even harder now and while it would make our sight harder it should help us to get in closer if we located the deer. We were able to move through the fresh snow without making any noise and the visibility was only about sixty to seventy yards.
Our plan was to move back past the Shadow Hunter Stand and from there slowly work in the direction that we had last seen the bucks. As we approached the food plot I spotted a deer standing just off the path. After using the binoculars I had determined that there were two bucks and both of them had been with the doe earlier. They had unfortunately already seen us and were not there long as they showed us their tails as they quickly disappeared. Not wanting to move until we were certain that the other bucks were not in the area we scanned for several minutes and saw nothing. Just as we started to move Dan spotted another deer. We could not tell anything other than that it was a buck. He was in probably the thickest cover we have and he was not moving. Our decision was to try and circle him down wind and see if we could move into a better vantage point.
After we had moved about twenty yards one step at a time I spotted the doe bedded down in a brush pile about two thirds of the way to the buck. I told Dan that as long as we could get by her the buck wasn’t going anywhere. Once we could get a good look at the buck, we realized it was the big buck. Now we had to get into a shooting lane and have him stay with us long enough to get the shot. As it turned out he was more concerned with protecting his girlfriend than running and with hindsight I’m not sure that he could make us out clearly enough to know what we were in the snowstorm. The buck started to move and it was in our direction! He had his ears laid back tight against his head and he was stiff legging it in our direction. With everything in place, including me with a camcorder, we stood motionless to figure out his intensions. His approach took him around a brush pile at about fifty yards out, which with the snow made it look like 100 yards plus, and this turned him broadside to us. As he stopped to survey for the doe, Dan made a great shot. Dan had borrowed my 300 Winchester magnum for the hunt and it proved to be the right gun as it dropped the buck instantly.
Dan and I couldn’t believe what had just happened! As we approached the buck he seemed to get even bigger than he had looked that morning in the brush. His spread and mass made him look huge laying there in the snow. Dan had finally broken the 130” barrier and he had done it in grand style. The buck scored 203 1/8” with a 22” inside spread. The mass totaled 38 7/8” and is as close to 40” as we have gotten here at Oak Ridge.
The snow continued to fall and we enjoyed the rest of our hunting time each day sizing up the bucks that remained in the preserve. What a great time we had with Dan and Captain Dan during their stay. We look forward to hunting with them again and enjoyed the chance to share a great memorable hunt.