I look for a nearby branch, a log, a dry spot, anything to get me out of this mess I got myself into. Nothing. The opening scene of Blazing Saddles flashes in my mind where Bart slowly succumbs to the quicksand.

Shit, this isn’t good. You’re going to look like a damn fool when your tombstone proclaims “Here lies an idiot, too stupid to stay out of the mud. Now six feet under where he belongs.”

I’m knee-deep in a thick paste that lured me in under the pretenses of solid ground. Not the case, the muddy sublayer is clamped to my boots and holding tight as if snagged by a bear trap.

With nothing else available I use the only tool at my disposal. I lay my bow flat on the ground using its surface area to help leverage one foot at a time out of the deep vat of cream cheese. With the added weight of a day’s worth of hunting gear and a treestand strapped to my back, I was in quite a predicament.

I finally managed to get out of the death trap and scrape a healthy portion of the snot from my boots.

This is stupid man. There’s no way deer are walking through this. They have the intelligence to stay out of here, apparently, you don’t.

I look behind me in disgust. The hike I made down to this strip of trees looked promising on a map. Far away from the convenience of a road. Hefty elevation loss (and therefore gain) that would scare the typical whitetail hunter away. A perfect funnel between a bedding and feeding area. Everything was perfect. Everything except for the fact that there was no way in hell a deer could walk through this river bottom filled with oatmeal.

South Dakota had seen flooding of Biblical proportions since spring. I should have known something was awry when I saw homes submerged in lakes that were farm fields not 6 months ago.

I take a last look at the landscape before I walk back to the truck with my tail between my legs. It looks shockingly like a pin cushion. Smooth and flat with interspersed vertical pins, ie. trees. No underbrush, no place for deer to hide. Just silty ground with trees struggling to hold their footing in this moonlike landscape.

I was screwed.

It was plain and simple. The deer weren’t here.

I knew that I could play the part of the victim ever so popular in society today or man up and figure out how to solve this problem.

I at first consoled myself and internally whined how Mother Nature had done this to me because she is a malevolent bitch that’s sole purpose was to destroy my good time. Once the pity party was over it was time to get to more productive work.

They’re somewhere. Maybe not where you’re used to finding them, but they’re somewhere. They didn’t just stand there with a dumb look on their faces while the river was rising.

You didn’t have to be a genius to figure out where they sought safety.

Up.

The creek rose and pushed them to higher elevations in the surrounding hills. The cuts and cedars of the higher ground became their new home. From time to time you could see them venture down to dip their toes in the same muck I decided to leap into. They wanted to get back to the safety of the thick forest of the river bottom, but it wasn’t happening anytime soon. For now, they had to make do with the refugee camps set up in the hills.

And I was ready to go a knocking on their doors.

You can make a compelling argument to the deer and tell them where they should be, or you can go out and find where they are. One gives you a chance of success, the other gives you an excuse for failure.

I ditched my vacation plans of relaxing in a stand, crushing levels of Angry Birds and waiting for them to come to me. I was a western hunter after all, so it was time to do what I felt more comfortable with anyway. It was time to get to stalking these transplants in the surrounding hills.

I traded my Lacrosse 1600 gram Thinsulate for my hiking boots, threw the stand in the back of the truck, grabbed my backpack and spotter and pointed the truck to the rolling hills of South Dakota.

At the top of these hills sat copious amounts of feed. Long flattened out and turned into cash producing land, it created the perfect setup for well-fed deer. Hit the buffet on tops of these hills at night, then meander down the cuts in the hills below and look for a cedar to provide shade and cover for the day. Rinse and repeat.

My job was to intercept them without being noticed. Hold tight in the shadows of a bush like some creep in a city park and let an arrow loose if it all came together.

That was plan “A” at least. Otherwise, let them bed and put a stalk on one, as designed by the Western Hunter’s Handbook.

sunrise hunting whitetail deer in south dakota

The wind rocked me to sleep as I lay in the bed of my truck that night. It was howling out there. I hoped some of it would stick around for the morning’s hunt as I knew what a pain in the ass it was to stalk in the dead silence of a windless day. As wet as it was out there, the tall grasses that called the hills home decided to not absorb any of the moisture and instead do their best impression of Rice Krispies.

I was finishing my second cup of coffee as I rolled into a parking area about a mile from where I wanted to hunt. The wind decided to bless this out-of-stater with a welcoming continuance of its presence.

I ditched the headlamp, grabbed my backpack and bow and made for a lookout point I thought would do the trick while perusing my maps the night before. It was a clear night with stars illuminating the path well enough. No use advertising my intrusion anymore than necessary with a glowing orb attached to my head.

I made my way to the glassing knob, parked it, pulled my hood up to keep the piercing wind from attacking my neck and waited for the alpenglow of the sky.

What if it decides to not rise today? What if this is all a scam, we’re in a simulation and there is a glitch in the system and they forgot to flip the switch for the sun? What if the glitch sends me back some odd million years and a T-Rex pops out instead of a deer and now I’m no longer the hunter but the hunted? I should start looking for an escape route.

The sky starts to glow and deer start to appear. No glitch. For now at least…

The hills are loaded with deer. Two bigger bucks have made their way down a good bit ahead of the rest.

Typical. It makes sense really. Experience has taught them to get the hell out of Dodge before the clumsy two-legged creatures with pointy sticks and god-awful odors start flinging projectiles at them. Little did they know that this clumsy two-legged dimwit likes to sit out in the dark earlier than his brethren.

I follow the two in front with my glass as long as I can before the undulated terrain conceals them.

The smaller of the two eventually squirts out the bottom. The bigger guy did what bigger guys do; he disappears.

With a Kansas tag burning a hole in my pocket and rumors of the rut kicking in down there, I put my glass to my eyes and watch the decent buck make his way to his bedroom, all the while asking if I’d be happy with my tag wrapped around him.

What are you here for? A giant, meat or the thrill of a perfect stalk?

I opted for two and three. If the stalk went down exactly as I planned it, he was going home with me.

Looking across the hill at the whitetail deer bedded.

He beds between some cedars, facing out over the small valley and looking my way. Using my rangefinder I gauge the distance from him to the closest point I could sneak to without getting caught.

96 yards. That ain’t going to cut it. I picture my pin dancing over him like a drunk driver trying to touch his nose for the glaring officer. The wind was howling, he was bedded and I wasn’t going to risk it. As I told myself earlier, I was only going to shoot him if it was the perfect stalk.

I scan the hillside and find a bush that couldn’t be more than 35 yards from where he is laying. It was downwind and offered to block my approach for me.

If the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, I managed to find the absolute longest possible distance while still staying within the constraints of the public land I was hunting. I took the full tour of the area in order to make the stalk happen.

The bush I had seen 45 minutes early appears just over a ridge I had been using for cover. I pull out my release and get to crawling. The wind does its job and keeps the firecrackers I’ve been setting off on the approach inconspicuous.

I slide around the predetermined bush at a snail’s pace. I’ve made it this far, no use blowing the stalk because I wasn’t patient enough in the closing moments.

I see fur tucked into the cedar ahead of me. Occasionally I can see antler moving about lazily as if going through the motions to secure the perimeter, but not really having its heart in it.

36 yards. Spot on.

I turn the wheel on my sight and let it stop on the correct hash mark. I load up an arrow and attach my release to the d-loop.

Breathe it out buddy and get that heart rate to where it needs to be. Don’t go home kicking yourself because you got sloppy through impatience. He has no idea you’re here, you have all the time in the world. In through the nose, out through the mouth.

I rise up to a standing position. Nothing changes in the buck’s world, he is oblivious. I pull with the center of my back and dig into the back wall. I look at my pin and place it right behind the ribs. Perfect for this angle. I let the pin go blurry as I bore a hole with my eyes at the spot where I want the arrow to hit.

A little more tension with the back and the arrow is on its way.

I see it rotate clockwise as it splits a gap in the branches.

A burst of fur and then a tumble. Everything goes quiet except for the howling of the wind in my ears. It roars just the same as it did before I shot, assuring me that nothing I’ve done has made the slightest hiccup in the world. No glitch.

I walk up to the piled up animal as he takes his last sucking gasps of air. He is gone. I am here. At least until the day where I’m the one gasping for his last few breaths. Life moves on and the world doesn’t skip a beat.