While most Alberta big game hunters will toss and turn in their beds for many sleeps yet, as visions of big bucks dance in their heads, others have been hunting for more than a month already.
Those others are bow hunters, who are privileged in Alberta to have as much as two-month longer hunting seasons than the huge majority that hunts with firearms. I always resisted joining the archery ranks because I found it challenging enough to do it right with my rifles, and that too many new bow hunters cared only for the longer seasons, and nothing about the discipline and demands of the bow.
One of those new bow hunters who never practised shooting had to go to Rocky Mountain House for more arrows before noon on opening morning. So later, I was not surprised to find several landowners who would not allow a bow hunter on their land ever again, when, after the first season, they found too many dead deer with arrows stuck anywhere in them, and had too many of their cattle seriously injured by “lost” razor-sharp broad head arrows.
All that said, a handful of bow hunters rank high among the finest hunters I know. Now I add chiropractor Lindsey Paterson of Pincher Creek, also the angler who caught Alberta’s record brown trout in the Waterton River in 2010.
At first light on Sept. 1, bow hunting opening day north of Pincher Creek, Lindsey glassed 21 mule deer bucks from a high ridge. One wore huge, distinctive antlers he immediately recognized as the buck he passed up last season, hoping the deer would survive the winter, to be even bigger this year, which he was.
At 9 a.m., the big buck and three others bedded down, and Lindsey’s more than eight-hour stalk started. By 10 a.m., Paterson, within 200 yards, took a last drink of water, took off boots and pack to keep a lower profile, then commenced crawling through thin cover that included thistle and stinging nettle. Worse, he crawled over an ant hill; he was still picking biters off his hide two hours later.
By 11 a.m., within 45 yards, the bow hunter discovered he had a problem: the big buck was bedded on the far, upwind side of an eight-foot snow fence with inch and a quarter gaps between its slats, and the three smaller bucks were bedded 30 yards away on the near side.
Lindsey had two hopes: that the big buck would join his three buddies in the shade of the snow fence, and/or that the rancher had been a post or board short and that there would be a wider gap. Three times the big buck rose, but just turned and bedded in the sun again. Patterson was enduring heat, bugs and such a thirst that he’d have paid $50 for one glass of cold water.
At 5 p.m., the three closer bucks rose, fed to within 15 yards, then away up a hillside. Paterson crawled to where the three smaller bucks had been bedded, and, don’t LOL, the rancher had been one board shy of a load and there was a four-inch gap in the fence directly across from the bedded buck, just 30 yards away.
After 20 minutes, the buck rose, stood broadside, and Lindsey, from his knees, made an instantly killing shot with one arrow from his Hoyt compound bow, through that four-inch gap in the fence.
The bow hunter stood, inhaled great gasps of air wafting from the Livingston Range to the west, and paid his respects: probably, thanked the departing spirit of the great buck. Paterson does liken his hunting to a spiritual quest: “I believe hunting is so much more than killing an animal and, if you think it isn’t, you’re missing the point.”
The rack is a nine by seven, totally and, unofficially, “green” scoring 199 gross, 193 net, non-typical, Boone and Crockett points. I am green with envy, not so much of the antlers as of the account of as long, arduous and accomplished a stalk as I have ever heard of.
My best mule deer buck scored only 160, typical but, on the second last day of the 1987 season, and the day before my 50th birthday, I tracked him for three hours on month-old, tracked-up corn snow through the swamp near where the Panther and the Dormer Rivers join. Then I did a big button hook downwind and back, sat on a log and killed the buck who was trying to sneak out behind me at 20 yards with the only hunting shot I ever took with the .270 Winchester Model 70 presented to me as part of being Winchester’s 1983 Canadian Outdoorsman of the Year.
Whether you hunt with bow or rifle, first day of the season or last, the real trophy is the feeling you get when you know you did it the right way.
Bob Scammell is an award-winning columnist who lives in Red Deer. He can be reached at bscam@telusplanet.net.