Steve Bartylla
Bowhunting Alberta for Whitetails with Northern Wilderness Outfitters 2004 - Alberta - Day 1 In reality, this trip began in the spring while bear hunting with Northern Wilderness Outfitters (see spring bear logs). I was quite honestly blown away. Everything exceeding my expectations, so I jumped at Steve Wright’s offer to return for a fall whitetail hunt. On the surface, that may not sound like a big deal. That is, until you consider that the hunt was so good that outdoor writer, Lisa Price canceled a plan bow hunting trip to Africa to return to bear hunt with Northern Wilderness Outfitters in the spring of 2005. With that type of hunt already under my belt, you can understand why my cameraman, Mike Anderson and I were pumped when we hit the road for the 25-hour drive to Alberta. Driving straight through,
we fought through their first significant snowfall to pull into camp at
8 AM the next day. With the guides cutting up a couple of their client’s
recent moose kills, we entered the shed to be met by two impressive whitetail
racks. Even more impressive than their respective high 130ies and 140ies
gross scores, was that they weighed in at 273 and 324 pounds, field dressed.
To really blow your mind, they were aged at 2.5 & 3.5 yrs old! In my
entire bow hunting life, I have harvested one buck that came in at over
300 lbs. Not only was that live weight, but it was also a 5.5 yr old animal.
That was more than enough to convince me that Steve Wright hadn’t been
exaggerating when he told me of how large this subspecies of deer is.
This may sound like a sacrilege, but I really don’t even care that much if I take him. The reward, and I’d be lying if I denied that there’s a little bit of an ego boost to it, is knowing I outsmarted him enough to get within bow range. Frankly, if it were the kill that did it for me I would hunt the outfitter’s stands. Only a fool believes that they can go into an outfitters home and find better spots on the land that the outfitter knows like the back of their hand. With that said, Steve Wright was nice enough to allow me to rip apart a small portion of their land and hang my own stands. Of course, outfitter and head guide for Northern Wilderness Outfitters, Larry Jolliffe, would be bringing us to and from our stands, but we got to be the ones to play the chess match. Jumping on ATVs, Steve gave us a not even surface scratching, 3 hour tour of the “small portion” of their lands he was giving me. It’s size was put into perspective when I asked how deep into the woods I could go before I was off their land. When he replied that it would take me more than a full day’s walk to get there, I was no longer concerned about trespassing. The unbelievable part was that he wasn’t being coy about it being a small portion of what they control. Amazingly, all of their hunters have that much land set aside for them. Even with a full camp, they have large chunks of land that sit unhunted. The setting was fantastic. Being located along the boarder of where the big woods meets Alberta’s farm land, fields were flanked by endless miles of forest. Because of that, as the in woods food sources dry up in the fall, these fields draw deer like magnets. A buck whose home was twenty miles away last week, now is concentrated around the fields, along with numerous other deer. With the 12 inches of fresh snow just stopping as we drove the edge of the field, I was surprised to see the high number of deer tracks entering and exiting the field. It was around 10 AM and the conditions were such that the tracks were all less than an hour old. It was apparent that my image of hunting Canadian whitetails wasn’t accurate in this area. I wouldn’t be sitting all day, only to see one or two deer. Seeing deer wouldn’t be an issue at all. That was further proven that afternoon. However, before we get to that, there is something I need to address. After Mike and I rushed to get two Rivers Edge stands up, I flung a couple arrows. One of the first things I did when we arrived was to set my bow case outside. My first practice shot reinforced the importance of doing that. Even though the temps were only down to the high 20ies, I had come from practicing in the upper 60ies. I was 2 inches off at 20 yards, 3-4 inches at 30 and 5-6 inches at 40. One simple adjustment and I was right on again. Hopefully, this makes two points. The first is that, a person should take some shots before heading out. This is even more critical when you’ve just got done transporting your equipment over relatively long distances. The time to learn that something got out of whack is not when the arrow is impacting the dead zone of a buck of a lifetime’s upper ribcage. Furthermore, significant temperature changes affect equipment. The best way to counter this is to allow the equipment to remain at outside temps and readjust your sights/aim to compensation. Say, on a 20 degree morning, it’s 70 degrees inside, where the bow is stored. A fifty degree temperature change will affect equipment. Over the course of the first hour, this difference will continue to change, until the equipment matches the outside temp. Now, even if you’re only talking an inch or two that can be significant enough. That inch becomes 2-3, once nerves are entered equation. Now, add in wind and contorting one’s body. All of a sudden, that inch or two can get to be 6 or more. The odds of a good hit are much better when hitting 4 inches off of where you aimed, as opposed to 6 inches. This is also where sights that allow easy adjustments are worth their weight in gold. For example, the TruGlo Micro Adjustable sight I use is as easy as turning two knobs to tweak the pin positions. Because the pins can be moved independently or in unison, one adjustment can adjust all of the pins for temperature shifts. On the flip side, it’s much more time consuming when each pin must be adjusted independently. When it applies to any piece of equipment, I have found that ease of use makes it much less tempting to take short cuts or ignore potential problems. With showers out of the way, Larry, Mike and I headed for the afternoon stand. I had chosen a rise along the edge of the snow covered alfalfa field. With the snow covering any of the previous evening’s sign, I decided to do a hunting & scouting combo. The rise covered what appeared to be a decent trail, a smattering of rubs and would allow me to see a good share of the field. To help tilt the odds, I put out my RoboCoy decoy. I slapped large antlers on the real deer hide, remote controlled decoy. With some Mega Tarsal Plus placed between his hind legs, I climbed into the stand and settled into the stand. For what it’s worth, a doe and two fawns watched us walk in, set the decoy and climb in to our stands. Feeding in the middle of the field, they never gave us a second thought. It seems that the guides were right. The deer were seemingly far more concerned about timber wolves than humans. Because of scouting and hanging stands, once we got settled in, we only had two hours left of light. They flew by at warp speed. One after another deer would emerge from the woods, only to do a quick survey for wolves and run to the middle of the field. About a half hour before dark, a yearling buck emerged from a trail about 100 yards down the field and made a beeline for the RoboCoy. After saying hi, he joined the other deer in the field. As time was swiftly running out, a 2.5 yr old, followed by a slammer entered the field, from the same trail as the young buck had. Alberta does not allow using any form of electronics on decoys. Because of that, I removed the batteries and left the remote for the RoboCoy at camp. What was about to happen is the prime reason that the RoboCoy is by far the most effective decoy I’ve ever used. The bucks approached to within 60 yards and stood there, waiting for the decoy to acknowledge them. If only I could have used the remote to turn the decoy’s head to face them and toss in a couple tail flicks, past experiences all but guarantee they would have waltzed right in. However, they stood there, waiting for the decoy to move, until shooting light had faded and then headed to the middle of the field to join the rest of the deer. Returning to camp, having seen 4 does and fawns, 17 1.5 yr old bucks, 3 2.5 yr old bucks and 1 slammer, I was met by hors d'oeuvre and a meal that would rival the best that any 4 star restaurant has to offer. It was such a good day that the news I was about to receive couldn’t even bring me down. Originally, I was going to do an 8-day hunt. However, before I left home I realized that another personal commitment meant that I’d have to come home after four days. Thinking that still wasn’t a bad hunt, I decided to go anyway. Then, my four day hunt suddenly became three days. During dinner, I was informed that the zone I was hunting in Alberta didn’t allow hunting on Sundays. I only had 2 more hunting days to make it happen. My 8-day hunt now became a total of 2.5 days in stands. The bright side was that I could spend the entire next day scouting, hanging stands and observing deer. To book a spectacular bear, trophy whitetail, moose or elk hunt, contact Northern Wilderness Outfitters via their web page or by phone:
 For
those looking for every advantage in understanding whitetail deer, Steve
Bartylla's column Becoming
A Student Of Whitetail Deer is a must read. |
