Tips for hunting the whitetail

My Favorite Deer

Muley Versus Whitetail

It’s not about the money, or the outfitter, or even going someplace else and hunting the same deer I could be hunting for free right in my own backyard. It’s the trigger, you see – or really, the trigger finger. What I want to shoot is a big whitetail buck, but in my state, when you buy a “deer” tag, they don’t care if you shoot a whitetail or a mule deer: It’s a “you choose” deer tag, and what chooses to walk in front of me are muleys. When they do, my trigger finger has a mind of its own. I’ve hired an outfitter.

It’s not that I don’t know the difference. My first buck was a whitetail. Before I ever shot my first muley doe, I had a 4x4 whitetail on the wall. I was hunting by myself, because John was so anxious he kept walking into my stand just as the witching hour approached – what should have been a serenely quiet moment in the seam between alfalfa field and river bottom willows, moments of peace cherished not just for the hunting but the place itself. I’ve never been able to put a finger on it, but this Type-A, coffee-jangled head of mine slips into a gentle purr when in a whitetail stand. But about the time the deer started moving, there was John.

“I thought I heard a shot,” he’d say. Or, “I saw some deer walking down toward you.” But it was always too soon, always blew the hunt – like the alarm going off in the middle of a REM cycle. I had to make him stay home.

But that was two bird dogs ago. And the deer I’ve killed since, I’m simply not going to tell the outfitter about – until it’s over.

There’s been this string of muley itch, nice muleys. Nobody in his right mind would blame me for any of them, especially the Fish and Game Department with its “you choose” deer tag.

It started with Rob’s deer. Rob says he was 100 yards down the trail, and we hadn’t waited for him. But that’s not how John and I remember it: Rob couldn’t see the deer. Then he couldn’t see the antlers. We’d walked a mile up a closed logging road, just approaching the first of a series of small clear-cuts when we saw a small group of deer bedded down. We stopped in the last small stand of Douglas fir and glassed.

It was late November, deep into the rut, and right in the middle of six healthy looking does was an over-mature 3x3 muley buck. John and I commented on the mass of the beams, the wish that we’d found him a year or so ago when he was in his prime, and waited for Rob to get his rifle up and shoot. As we waited, the does stood.

“Where is he?” Rob asked. We both pointed, holding our hands close to our bodies, to screen the predatory point from the everwatchful does. “I don’t see him.” Rob had his binocular up, his rifle over his shoulder, scope caps in place.

“Look through your scope,” I suggested. The lead doe stomped her front feet and snorted. And now the buck was up and starting to move away.

John slid a desperate index finger across Rob’s cheek and whispered softly, “He’s right #$*&^%@ there!”

Rob nodded, put his binocular up again. “I just don’t see any antlers.”

“Three points to a side. Nice mass.” John whispered insistently.

Rob put his binocular down and swung his rifle from his shoulder in a wide arc. “I’m going to look at him through my scope.”

As Rob adjusted his scope, John pointed to a nearby stump. “Eileen. Get ready. If he stops, shoot him.” It made a great rest, and as I sighted on the buck, he hopped over some deadfall, headed for cover. Rob still couldn’t decide, or see, or something. My trigger finger inched into place. John whispered in Rob’s ear: “He’s not going to stand there forever.”

I waited, following the buck up the hill with the crosshairs on his shoulder: Shoot, Rob, shoot . . . SHOOT. The only reason I was along on this trip was in case an elk showed up. This was my only deer tag. Nothing against mule deer; whitetail just fit me better, plus I had whitetail plans.

The does filtered single file into the trees. The buck followed close behind them, still not knowing what the does were worried about but ready to follow them anywhere.

The crosshairs moved with his shoulder, hanging steady. Then he stopped – broadside. Rob said, “It’s hard to tell what . . .” So I shot. It was a very nice buck. With more mass than we’d thought, and he made a nice European mount. But it made me adamant: Now I had a very nice mule deer head on the wall next to my whitetail. Next year would be whitetail again – absolutely.

The next November we hunted an eastern Montana cattle ranch – John and I, and a friend who knew the rancher. It was John’s hunt. I was along for the ride – again – since I wanted a whitetail. Adamant. And there was some whitetail cover. But John was into big muleys that year, so we stuck to the sagebrush and the breaks, looking for the big muleys. We had glassed and evaluated many bucks over the course of several days, but none were big enough to suit John’s addiction.

We had about given up when we spotted a nice mule deer buck a half-mile off, halfway between the ranch two-track and a small creek. We decided to make a stalk on it, partly to see what it looked like close up. Mostly to stretch our legs. I grabbed my rifle.

Thirty minutes later, the three of us were stretched out across a prickly pear-infested gumbo ridge, glassing into the little creek. The creek wound along the sage in front of us, the closest bend within good rifle range. Yet, it took us another 20 minutes to spot the buck. He’d bedded down in the creek, and while it was barely deep enough for his body, his antlers blended in with the sage and rabbit brush. He was all but invisible, a 4x4, but unfortunately not a Johnny-buck.

“Do you want him?” I whispered to John. He shook his head, and then Bill shook his head too. “He’s not a bad buck,“ I said. So I shot him. And as he crumpled to the ground, two bucks jumped out of the little creek he’d been hiding in. One was a mule deer John would have been quite happy with, but the other was a head-cracking 5x5 whitetail, bigger by far than the one I was so proud to have on my wall.

As I field-dressed the mule deer buck, John patted me on the shoulder. “Nice whitetail,” he said.

“Next year.” That was all I could say.

But it’s that next year’s buck that still leaves me shaking my head: the alfalfa buck. After I’d sworn there’d be no more itchy finger mule deer bucks, sworn I’d never carry a rifle again where I didn’t absolutely know all the deer were whitetail, and up jumped the devil in mule deer hooves.

We had joined a local hunting club that included a piece of whitetail heaven about 2 miles from our house: a cold, meandering trout stream, thick with willows, cottonwoods, wild roses and, most important, big whitetail bucks. One November afternoon, as the Odocoileus virginianus hormones had shifted into overdrive, I headed out for an evening in the stand. A perfect autumn afternoon: crisp, clear with a taste of snow coming. I had scouted this alfalfa field in late August. The whitetails were fat, happy and well-antlered. And there were no muleys – never.

I parked the truck just off the county road, slid under the fence and edged my way down the irrigation ditch, keeping to the high grass, keeping the wind in my face and eyeing the willow and cottonwoods that framed the wide alfalfa field. Halfway to the intended stand, I was thinking: Only three o’clock; lots of time to get there, get settled and get lost in the woodwork, before the does even came out. Then, he was right in front of me. A buck, with his head down, chest-deep in alfalfa, quartering slightly toward me, little more than 200 yards away.

I collapsed as quietly as I could, sat and pondered the options. One: I could shoot him. Two: I could wait and see what all of him looked like. But between the alfalfa and the tall grass, that opportunity might never come. The most likely possibility was that he’d continue grazing until the wind changed or he worked his way downwind.

Had it occurred to me that it was a hair early in the afternoon for a whitetail buck to be out, especially a mature whitetail buck – and this one’s rear tines were long enough to assume, well, lots of things – I probably would have chalked it up to rutty nuttiness. To find our mroe about hunting the US whitetail, check out our USA Whitetail Deer Hunting page. They’ll do anything when the hormones rage. They’ll do anything when they get enough hunting pressure. Put the two together – a day like this one, deep in the rut and the last few days of hunting season? What couldn’t happen? Hadn’t I seen big whitetail bucks bedded down in the middle of wheat stubble?

Option one sounded pretty good. Even on this bit of hunting club land, the last 10 days of rifle season would only see more pressure with fewer dumb bucks – temporarily or otherwise. Plus I had deadlines. I was stealing time from work as it was. Option one made sense. The buck wasn’t a monster, but it appeared to have a good 4x4 rack, better than the one on my office wall.

By then, he was only about 125 yards away. I could see most of his chest, enough for a carefully placed shot. The hardest part was getting into a kneeling position – so the muzzle could be above the grass – without making any noise; then to raise the rifle, without him seeing me and check that there wasn’t a branch in front of the muzzle.

In the quiet, crisp autumn air, the shot was an emphatic clap announcing the end of my big game season. I put another shell in the chamber and started to walk toward him. But he didn’t fall where I’d shot him. I stood still, looking all around me, wondered for a second or two if he could have dived over the cutbank into the creek without me hearing him. But that was 50 yards away, a long way for me not to hear or see him.

Out of the corner of my eye – movement. I’d walked past him. Now, between me and the long uphill climb back to the county road, I saw just the top of the deer’s back slowly moving to my left.

It was textbook wily whitetail behavior. The grass was knee high, but all I could see was the top 2 inches of his back. As I watched, as he inched his way through the grass, his back rose in ever so small increments, creeping to my left, then making the turn, trying to go around me, back into the deep cover of the creek bottom.

Had he a bit more of his wits about him, and perhaps a little less adrenaline, he would have realized that turning right would have been faster – and safer. But as it was, I couldn’t shoot. There were houses in the distance, houses a .270 could reach out and touch, easily.

I waited, watching the buck make his circle, slowly rising as he did, unable to totally control the impulse to flat-out run, until finally he was again south of me. He’d risen enough to give me a good view of his chest, and I shot again. This time he stayed down.

After a drought of several years, I had a nice whitetail buck. I walked up to him, approaching from the rear, to be sure he was dead.

It was an odd-looking butt for a whitetail. Then it dawned. Not an odd looking butt – it’s a mule deer. But it has whitetail antlers. And then I took a close look at the antlers. There were no forks, but when you looked closely, when you got right on top of him, it was obvious. I decided to get the worst part over with first, so out came the cell phone. I called John. He’d heard the shot while he’d been out reloading in the garage.

“Did you get a nice buck?” he asked.

“Yes, very nice. I’ll field-dress him, but I could use some help dragging him back uphill to the truck.”

I was almost done when I saw John park on the county road. I finished up, arranged the buck more comfortably, and sat down on his rump, waiting for John to get close enough to figure it out.

At 30 yards, he stopped. I knew he would be able to see a good bit of the antlers from there. “Nice whitetail,” he said, beaming.

“He’s a nice buck,” I said.

John walked closer. “So how far did you have to shoot?”

“About 150 yards. He was grazing about where you’re standing.”

John checked the sun. It was still an hour before sunset. “He was out early,” he said.

I nodded. John was only 20 feet away now, still unable to tell. It wasn’t the antlers that would give it away. It was the butt. And, in this deep alfalfa, he wouldn’t see that until he was upon us. Plus I was sitting on it – put it off as long as possible, because it would be awful once it started. And it would go on forever. Maybe I should have just told him on the phone.

“He’s a really nice deer, honey,” John said, as he got to me. He kissed me on the cheek, and moved around me to see the antlers from the front. I kept my seat.

A suspicious look came across his face, and he quickly walked around behind me.

“Oh,” he said, and broke out laughing. I couldn’t look at him.

He took a few steps back uphill. “He was in the grass, wasn’t he. And those are perfect whitetail antlers. Three to a side, no forks – and brow tines.”

“Just laugh and get it over with,” I said.

“It is pretty funny, Ms. Whitetail. I can see how you could be misled. But the butt . . .”

“Yes, I noticed that – after.”

His eyes twinkled. Maybe I would never hear the end of this. Not three in a row.

So, you see it’s become important. It’s not the money. And it’s not the outfitter. Well, in a way it’s the outfitter. I know him. He’s seen me fish for pike and walleye; he’s seen me hunt turkeys. He thinks I’m competent. And he’s not married to me. To see other hunts in the US, also see our USA Black Bear Hunting page. He would bite his tongue before he’d laugh, or say the things John would if I shot another mule deer. He simply wouldn’t do it. He would choke before he’d give me a moment’s misery. So, for his sake, I need to leave my itchy trigger finger in my pocket – and shoot a whitetail.

Unless, of course, a non-typical muley comes along. A massive, mossy-horned, thick-necked . . . whitetail. I’m thinking whitetail.

By Eileen Clarke

This article and many more like it can be found by Successful Hunter Magazine. Visit them at www.successfulhunter.com