Manitoba Journal

You've heard about the huge bucks in Alberta, Canada and the world record buck taken in Biggar, Saskatchewan. Well you shouldn't overlook the great whitetail hunting in Manitoba. I recently had the opportunity to sample the hunting out there with a good friend of mine, Rick Poulin of Rick's Whitetail Enterprises. (Rick sets up guided hunts out there.) We arrived at the location on Sunday morning, and when we walked in, were greeted by a huge buck that graced the wall of our host, (Lloyd Lintott) it scored 182 Pope and Young, on the opposite wall there was another that scored165. (pictures in the photo album) After a fantastic lunch Lloyd gave us a tour of the various hunting areas. He has access to over a thousand acres of private land. I was like a kid in a candy store, there was deer sign everywhere, and with no Sunday hunting in Manitoba we decided to glass some of the crop fields that looked promising.

That evening I saw approximately 25 deer including 2 bucks that would have made the book with room to spare, easily in the one-forty class. Rick also saw one in the field he was glassing. Rick promised that I was going to see some record book deer, so I was expecting to see one or two for the week, but not two in the same field on the same evening. We were hunting in September, and these guys were actually travelling together.

Our first day was fairly uneventful, not that I didn't have chances to harvest a couple of nice fat does and a six point. They passed my tree stand at less than 15 yards, but this was a trophy hunt and I wasn't going to settle for anything less than a Pope and Young buck. We had a little accident that evening, Rick slipped off a deck in the dark and twisted his ankle. He was having trouble walking, so we decided to switch stands, his stand was a half mile walk and mine was a lot easier to get into.

Found his stand without too much trouble, he had set up a trail of "brite-eyes" that led me right to it. It was overlooking an alfalfa field with some great shots into the bush behind me. That morning I had three bucks come by, using the trail just behind the stand. A couple of small six point, a descent eight, and several does and fawns but Rick had told me he had seen a real good one in the area so I just watched them go by.

Rick's ankle was starting to turn blue so I had to force him to go get an X-ray, turned out it was just a bad sprain. He was still having trouble walking so we made the same switch that we did that morning. I climbed into Rick's stand at about 4 PM and almost immediately had two does and a their fawns enter the field I was watching. They were joined about a half hour later by one of the six points I saw that morning. They entertained me for the better part of an hour and a half when I heard a rustling of leaves behind my stand. It turned out to be the buck Rick had warned me about. He was on the trail that passed twenty yards behind the stand. Best chance was to let him go by and try for the shot as he was quartering away. Everything was going just great until one of the deer in the field snorted (must have caught me moving.) This made the old buck stop to see what was going on. But by this time I was at full draw. Released the arrow and it looked like the buck jumped as I let it go and hit him a little far back. Waited about thirty minutes and pussyfooted over to where the buck had been standing. Found my arrow covered with slime, but judging from the angle that the buck was at, I could have caught the lung on the left side. Followed the trail he had used for about ten yards and found some blood on a bush about four feet high. Now I was certain that I had caught the lung, marked the last blood and backed off.

Rick was impatiently waiting at the pick up spot. I think I cleared the four foot fence in one jump. After telling him the events of the evening we decided it would be best to go have some dinner and give the buck a chance to lie down. It was all I could do to eat dinner that night, couldn't wait to get back on the trail of that buck. Finally after two hours (that seemed like twenty) we headed back to where I arrowed him. Found the marker I had left where the last blood was and started from there. The trail was a lot easier than I figured it was going to be, or so I thought. We found a spot where he had stopped with a lot of blood, and then nothing. So we started to search from the last blood. It took us half an hour to pick him up again. Lloyd figured it out, he has a lot of experience trailing those Manitoba bucks. What that wily old buck had done was to backtrack his trail for a few yards and then take off in a completely different direction. After that it was fairly routine, he circled around and we found him about fifty yards from where I had shot him, however he had traveled over one hundred and seventy yards before he went down for good.

Upon closer inspection of the deer it turned out that he was 10 to 12 years old and his coat was so gray it looked as though it was white. To this day Rick tells me that he was half blind, half deaf and mostly senile. He even accused me of pushing him down the stairs just so I could hunt his stand. (We still have a good laugh about it) His green score was 131 Pope and Young and ended up 129 7/8. That's him on my opening home page (I'm the one with the silly grin).

Decided to sleep in after all the partying from the night before, had to take my deer to the butcher anyway. That afternoon tried another alfalfa field that was on the side of a hill next to a swamp. Sat in a ground blind with my back to a tree and had a nap. Was awakened by a loud crashing noise that sounded like a tree falling down. Got ready to shoot, could make out some movement off to my right. But something looked odd, if this was a deer it was the biggest deer I had ever seen and awfully black. It turned out to be a bull moose that came to within 15 yards of my blind, it just stood there and gazed at me for what seemed forever. I couldn't shoot him, no tags and besides there wasn't supposed to be any moose within a hundred miles of this place. He finally decided he had seen enough of me and decided to walk off, and I'm kind of glad he did. He was as big as a freight train with antlers about forty inches across, and wasn't alarmed at seeing me there at all.

Party hunting is legal in Manitoba so long as the other members of your party sign your license. Rick signed my license and gave me a warning that it had better be the biggest deer in Manitoba if I was going to shoot his deer. The morning was crisp with a heavy frost. So much for the still hunting I was planning to do so I went back to the field where I had seen the moose. Got into the ground blind as quietly as I could and with a full moon I could make out movements across the field. The deer seemed to be headed in my direction, and with a breeze in my face there was no way they were going to catch me. There were four deer, all does, so when the first one passed me at less than five yards and caught my scent it took off snorting into the bush behind me. The other deer just stood there trying to figure out what was wrong. It took them a few seconds before they decided it was best they get out of there.

Moved down to the bottom of the field next to a creek and positioned myself so I could glass the whole field. After about an hour or so I caught a movement on the side of a hill some two hundred yards away. Turned out to be a huge buck easily in the 160-170 class. There was also a second buck with him, and when they stood together the second buck was dwarfed by the big guy. They were feeding in my direction, but when they got to within sixty yards the two deer entered the bush. A few minutes later I heard some splashing in the creek, the deer apparently had crossed the creek. Went over to where the deer had gone into the bush and set up a ground blind for the next morning. Also found where they had crossed the creek and it looked like the big guy had crossed there a few times. His three inch track was on both sides of the creek in the mud. Stuck some "brite-eyes" in the tree next to my ground blind so I could find it easily the next morning. If he repeated his pattern I was going to be ready for him. That evening sitting in my original stand, I didn't see any bucks but was entertained by several does feeding in the buckwheat field I was watching. Besides I couldn't get that monster out of my head.

Knew exactly what I was going to do. I walked all the way around the field and approached the blind from downwind, so as not to spread any scent on the path the buck had used. Got there about forty-five minutes before it even started to get light. I was there for almost an hour before it was light enough to see if there was any deer in the field. Turned out there was three does heading straight for me, looked like they were going to use the trail I was watching. They passed me at twenty yards without an inkling that I was there, the set-up was perfect. I had set the blind so that I was completely hidden except for three holes in the brush, one to the field and two to the trail that led to the creek crossing.

Sat there patiently for over an hour until I saw a set of antlers coming over the hill about seventy yards out. It was the six point that was travelling with the big guy the day earlier. A few minutes later the buck I was after topped the hill. He was fantastic, the biggest buck I had ever seen, easily in the 170 class. If they repeated their pattern they would pass me at twenty yards. Everything was going great until the small buck entered the bush about forty yards up the field from my location, and the big guy followed him. The creek crossing was forty yards from where I was, so I decided to move. Got on my knees behind an oak tree with a perfect twenty yard shot to the crossing. The little buck showed up about five minutes later and crossed the creek, completely unaware that he was being watched. By this time the old heart was just pounding. My eyes were fixed on the point where the little buck had come from. Five minutes went by, then ten, I was starting to think that something had gone wrong. Then for some reason I glanced toward the field, and there, standing twenty yards away was the old buck, staring at me. I tried to move so slowly to get a shot, but he wasn’t having any of that. The last time I saw that old buck he was trotting across the alfalfa field with his great white tail in the air, moving from side to side as if to say bye bye. If I would have stayed in my ground blind he would have passed me by less than twenty-five yards.

Rick wasn’t to be denied on this hunt. He took a real nice ten point with ten minutes left in our hunt. It wasn’t the buck he was looking for, but a real nice deer in anybody’s book. The score was 118 Pope and Young. (pictures in the photo album) All in all a fantastic hunt, even the old buck that outsmarted me. The moral of the story is, sometimes you get the buck and sometimes the buck gets you.

by Billy Bowhunter