Deep Freeze Bucks By; Joel Johnson Back in 2000 I wanted to add another whitetail hunt to my season. I did not have to look far being that I was born and raised on big woods hunting in the northern portion of my home state of Wisconsin, I found Minnesota to be the answer. Minnesota gun opener falls on the first Saturday of November and I can get a week or so of hunting in before heading to my camp in Wisconsin for the gun opener there. For you folks that say why not hit the archery seasons. I do and have taken many my share of animals with stick and string, the weather is mild and pleasant and is a great time of year to be in the woods. I used a long bow and cedar arrows from the time I was able to hunt small game around the farm until I was able to take up a shotgun at the age of twelve and then my first rifle deer hunt at fourteen. slow and easy over areas with good sign. I have enjoyed the November woods and hunting the cool leafless forests the most. Skirting the big spruce and cedar swamps, running just below the ridge lines searching for late and post rut activity. I was not one to spend a lot of time in a ground blind or tree stand, although I use them for archery and bear hunting. I like to see country whether I am hunting Big Game in our Western States, hunting north of the border or right here at home. I like to be on the move, moving quickly over trackless areas or At any rate I had set up and hunted out of my tent camp for two years at Nine Mile Lake in northeastern Minnesota. I had great luck taking nice bucks and enjoyed the solitude that was allotted me being I was hunting the fringe of the whitetails range. I saw many moose and few deer, some wolf sign and coyotes serenaded the woods every night. It was like heaven for the Deer Hunter. Just to make a quick note although the area looks the same with very few changes the deer population is almost non existent, what moose, you will seldom hear a coyote as the wolf have taken over the area. Also the bear population has gone up as well leaving very few scraps for us hunters.
I am now in camp with my two hunting partners who were unable to make it the previous two years but after the bucks, the big country and my recounting the adventures they could not bare to miss another. It was frigid cold and about a foot of snow covered the frozen ground. We used ten inch spikes for our tent stakes with the ground being frozen solid. We cut a hole in the six inch thick ice with our ax for water. And spent the afternoon prior to the opener cutting and collecting a large supply of firewood for our scheduled week in camp. While collecting our firewood I took the time to show Chet and Frank the diverse country we would hunt that week. Back at camp we got the wood stove going and with the temperature being in the singled digits, would stay that way for our entire hunt. We settled into our sleeping bags early after hot dinner wanting to be ready for action long before first light. No alarm clock was needed; I was up every couple of hours to feed the wood stove. Frank and Chet awoke to the sound of the coffee pot percolating. A quick breakfast and we were off each headed to a different area to hunt. I worked my way onto a ridge overlooking a cedar swamp and an old clear cut. I had good luck the previous year and with the fresh sign decided to sit tight until it got light. About two miles to the north unbeknownst to me Chet was up to his eyelids in action. He sat in his truck sipping his coffee waiting for enough light to start hunting, when a huge ten point buck stepped out directly in front of the truck and stood there looking at him. As soon as legal shooting time arrived he was hot on the track. By 7 am he spotted three bucks surrounding a doe in some pines and fir trees. Getting excited Chet settled the cross hairs on what he thought was the big bucks front shoulder and squeezed of a shot from his old J.C. Higgins 30-06. Aside from snow falling off of the trees the deer were oblivious to the shot. The bucks jockeyed for position and with the large buck ready to pound a smaller eight pointer who did not realize he was out classed Chet settled the cross hairs for another shot. At the shot all hell broke loose with deer headed in all directions, there were another half a dozen or so deer in the thicket that Chet could not see prior to shooting and why they hung up until his second shot?
This was too much action too soon for Chet, he looked back to see he was only one hundred yards or so from where he parked the truck. As he waited for a few minutes prior to jump on the blood trail he noticed a clean fresh blood trail heading in the opposite direction to which his big ten pointer headed. Mean while as I waited for good light I had quite a bit of deer movement myself. I watch a few does with yearlings file by below me along and into the cedars. It was about 8 am now and I was moving nice and easy along the ridge when I heard what sounded like a Sasquatch heading my way. Busting out of the trees covered in snow was Chet. What the heck are you doing hear I barked, can t you see I am trying to hunt. I said to Chet how did you know where I was? He said he saw my tire tracks headed in to woods and after he found where I parked he followed my tracks which made good sense to me. We sat down on a fallen tree, pored a cup of coffee and he walked me through what had transpired so far that morning. So now that my opening day strategy was thrown out the window we headed back to see what was going on with the blood trail. I had Chet stand at the spot on which he first shot and I went to where the buck was standing. It was not hard to find the spot where the buck stood with the fresh snow. There was no hair or blood where he shot. I could see that the bullet had cut branches high and slightly to the right of where the buck stood. I then continued a couple of yards to where the buck stood for the second shot and found the blood trail of which Chet told me about. The picture was clearing up, I could see where the buck faced the smaller deer and where the larger buck spun in the snow on the second shot and I followed his track into the brush for a couple of hundred yards. I was a clean miss, now I followed the retreat and blood trail of the eight pointed which went straight up hill for say three hundred yards. It appeared to be a muscle wound but with the steady trail of blood must have hit an artery. Soon after the blood trail stopped and with all the fresh sign it took a bit of work to sort it out. We back tracked and found that headed in a new direction and started down hill which was promising.
Within fifty yards we found him expired on the side of the hill. We brushed the snow off him, took a few photos dressed him and started the easy drag down hill and over the snow to the truck. We headed back to camp to hang him up on the meat pole and to see what kind of morning Frank had. We both hunted hard the next couple of days both seeing our share of deer but no shots were fired. Chet spent time making coffee, drinking coffee and feeding wood into the wood stove. He also took time to ride the few roads and to familiarize himself with this great country. Three days in Frank received a call from home that he needed to leave now which he did which left just Chet and I. As Chet spent his time bumming around site seeing I put in full days afield running and gunning. I saw many deer some of which were good bucks but I still had time so I kept looking. I saw at least a dozen moose with most of them being bulls, there were at least three over fifty and possibly the one making sixty inches. The weather continued to worsen as the week progressed with the temperature dropping every day, and by Wednesday night the wind picked up and the thermometer in the truck read minus twenty degrees Thursday morning. I let Chet know that I was headed back to where he found me opening day and if he wanted to do a little push or drive through the cedar swamp late morning I would be working that same ridge. After freezing my tail off with the high winds and driving snow I worked my way down a finger that gave me some relief from the wind and still maintain my face into the wind. About nine thirty am I noticed a large bodied deer working its way along a draw with the wind at its back. I was hard to pick out even with binoculars at only two hundred and fifty yards. But as he cut the distance in half I could tell he was a brute. I shouldered the rifle a couple of times but did not want to chance a shot not only in the thirty to forty mile and hour cross wind but there were plenty of saplings which made it very dicey at best. I thought I would watch him close the distance some and wait to see if he hit one of the small saw grass openings I could make a good shot into. At about one hundred yards
he moved behind and out of sight of a little knoll and did not come out. He could not have turned into the cedar swamp as I had a good view of the edge and had to assume he laid down. I waiting and contemplated my next move. I could not sit around much longer as I would have frozen solid. So just as I was getting ready to slip down and jump him out of his bed for a close shot I noticed him coming out of a draw about two hundred yards to my left and at about the same elevation I was at. I took a steady rest on a spruce branch next to me and still the cross hairs were jumping around, know in a couple of seconds he would be over the top and out of site he stepped to a slightly clear spot in front of spruces. Although he was moving slowly up that draw he stopped for a split second to look at his back trail my finger now frozen to the trigger squeezed off the shot. The 154 grain Hornady slug out of the Ruger M77 chambered in 7mm mag was on its way, I had a headwind so I did not compensate for any wind. All went quite for a second; I did not see the buck at all or anything brown moving anywhere. I was confident of the uphill quartering away shot; I blew into and rubbed my hands together to warm them up prior to putting my glove back on. I picked out the patch of spruces the buck was by when I shot, I topped over the ridge for easier walking and mad my way to where I assumed he would be laying. I arrived within a few minutes, I was sure this was the spot. No blood in the fresh now and no tracks, what the heck I thought to myself. I was only about five yards away from the spot and had a clear view from slightly above. At that very moment Chet the Sasquatch busted onto the scene from the cedar swamp below. Holly cow he blurted out he is a monster, Chet grabbed the antlers and lifted him up from a slight depression which the bucked dropped dead into on the shot. That explained why I did not see anything after the shot. I would have found him within a couple of seconds as I would have found and followed his tracks. We looked him over, took some photos, dressed him out and started the difficult long drag back to the trucks. I was good to hop into the warm truck and out of the wind. We headed back to camp where we hung him next to Chet's buck on the meat pole; we took a few more photos then settled into the warm tent where I unfolded the story for Chet. He said he had jumped into the cedar swamp a bit earlier then we had planned on. I guess he
ran out of coffee in his thermos and got bored so he started in early. At the shot he was just getting to the edge of the cedar swamp and saw the buck stop and look down at him as I squeezed off the shot and saw drop in its tracks. The bullet hit him high and behind the left shoulder coming out at the base of his neck which did him in. That s why Chet walked right to him and I did not realize Chet was out of the truck yet. We made the trip to the Trestle Inn that evening for a steak dinner and all the fix-ins. We started packing up our gear that night with the plans on striking camp and heading back home to Milwaukee, Wisconsin early the next morning. We wished Frank could have stayed around for the hunt but that s the way things go, we later found out that all was well and Frank would be in our Wisconsin Deer Camp in a couple of weeks.