Chambered For The Wild

Extreme cold weather. Warm hospitality. Big bucks. That’s what you can expect on a whitetail hunt in Saskatchewan. This year was an exception – the cold weather was missing!

At first you might think that is, a blessing but it had a direct impact on the movement of the whitetail. Sure, it made for a more comfortable day in the blind with temperatures hovering around freezing rather than the minus 40 I have experienced in other years. However, the warm weather can actually shut down the deer. Cold weather demands more energy. More energy requires more feeding. More feeding means more time searching for forage and less time bedded down. The more active the deer are, the more chance you have of seeing that tremendous buck you have always imagined tagging.

Once again, I chose to hunt through Pierceland Outfitters, operated by Zane Pikowicz. Zane has access to crown land adjacent to an air weapons range with many of the game trails leading from the range through his area. The range is off limits to all people so there is very little hunting pressure on these deer.

It is legal to hunt over bait in Saskatchewan. Zane has carefully chosen his bait sites to take advantage of the natural movement patterns of the whitetail while still giving the hunter a good field of view. The blind I hunted from was well back in the bush, accessible only by quad. The blind overlooked a large meadow with a frozen pond in the center. Deer traveled around the edges of the clearing but were forced to skirt around the pond to reach the bait. This brought them very close to my blind, sometimes only a few yards away. The snow camo pattern of the Lucky’s Portable Ground Blind I was using seemed to do the trick – deer only noticed me when they got close and then never spooked, despite the whirring noise of my cameraman’s video camera.

On the first day of the hunt, a large buck came out on the far side of the pond. This buck was a beaut – big, thick beams, high rack, 9 points but a tine appeared broken. In addition, you know how it is – first day of the hunt you think you can pass him up because he will be back tomorrow or there is always another bigger buck about to step out. Therefore, I held my shot and let him go and never saw him again.

I did see a good range of eight and ten point bucks the rest of the week but it was not until the second to last day of the hunt that my wait paid off. Through a thick, heavy snowfall, I spotted this big old buck with that typical Saskatchewan dark-tined heavyset rack. Thick spiral tines added to the uniqueness of his massive antlers.

I had chosen my Thompson Center muzzleloader for this hunt. I love the challenge of having to make that first shot count but would my Encore perform in this heavy wet snow? I aimed at the buck, waiting for the right moment to take him, hoping that my rapidly beating heart would not throw me off. Just as he began to move off, I gently squeezed the trigger. As the cloud of black powder smoke cleared, I could see that I had bagged one of my best bucks ever.

The success of my Saskatchewan hunt speaks volumes about the quality of the outfitters and the abundance of the resource. Even with the warm fall weather slowing down the deer activity, I was still able to see plenty of good quality bucks and take home a trophy to be proud of.