EARLY SEASON STAND SITES
I have been fortunate enough to hunt the Milk River three times in my life. Every trip was fun, but the first time I hunted there we had an incredible camp. It was the first time that Realtree had brought outdoor writers to this camp. The prior year they had hunted it a bit, but with a very limited crew. In 1995, they decided to really ramp up their hunting and filming in this area.
I shot this buck on September 5, 1995 while hunting the Milk River in northern Montana. The buck was coming to an alfalfa field when he offered the 25 yard shot.
If my memory serves me, only one person left our camp without a buck. That was after only four days of hunting. It was incredible. Those in camp included myself, Judd Cooney, Harold Knight, Bob Foulkrod, Brad Harris, Bill Jordan, David Blanton, Michael Waddell (one of his first hunts as a cameraman) and several other Realtree employees and cameramen. Mitch McEwen filmed me on this hunt.
Many of the cameramen also had tags and hunted once their “hunters” were tagged out – which, in most cases, didn’t take long.
I think I killed the second evening. The evening before Mitch and I sat in the tree just east of the one I killed out of. We were just out of bow range of the main line of deer heading to the alfalfa field that evening.
This was the first time I had ever seen one of the slickest tricks in deer hunting. The deer on this farm are used to ranch trucks. They see them all the time, so the rancher always drove us right to the base of the tree and without shutting the truck off (and barely stopping) we would jump out and slip up the tree.
Then at the of legal shooting time, he would return, again to the base of the tree to pick us up so none of the deer in the alfalfa field ever knew we were hunting them. It worked perfectly and even though we hunted only a short distance away the first evening, the deer never knew it and came out naturally on September 5, the day I killed.
The shot was about 25 yards and the hit was pretty solid, probably one lung and liver. The buck turned and ran back toward the river and disappeared over the low levee before entering the cover. We never saw him go down so we waited until a few hours after dark to come back and look for him. We found him just a short ways past the berm.
It was the first (and remains the only) buck I have killed in velvet. When I got it mounted, the taxidermist had the antlers flocked with artificial velvet because the original velvet had peeled off in transit. It turned out awesome.
Patterns on the Milk River are pretty easy to figure out and the movement is very compressed because the feeding and bedding areas are only a few yards apart. The blue line is the buck’s path as he approached the stand and the red is the way he ran after the shot.
LESSONS LEARNED
Early season hunting can offer great opportunities if you can get to the deer before they start to disperse into the fall ranges.
I am not sure it would make a lot of difference on the Milk River because the deer had few options. They didn’t have a lot of places where they could bed other than the river bottom and the very best food was right there also (the alfalfa fields).
These Milk River deer didn’t disperse as much as those I have hunted in other areas (such as the Midwest). But, in general, it is ideal if you can catch them while they are still on their summer patterns and that was the case on this hunt.
Once they start dispersing (usually right about the time they shed velvet) they can be much harder to kill.
Lesson one is related to behavior. Early season deer are easiest when they are still on their summer patterns and become increasingly harder to kill the farther into September you go.
Lesson two had to do with the slick way the rancher got us to and from the stands without educating deer. I have used that approach many times since, especially when trying to get away from evening stands located on food sources. With the deer nearby, you can’t just climb down and sneak out. They will know and that will make them much harder to hunt their in the future.
Instead, arranging for a family member or friend to come and bump the deer off the field with a vehicle or ATV will give you the time you need to get out and away before the deer start filtering back. It works really well.
