South Dakota Whitetail Bow Hunt - Come Home As a Killer Or Don't Come Home at All

“You got three days. Come home with a deer or don’t come home at all,” Hazel says to me as she pops her head into my office.

“I’ll see what I can do,” I smile at her as I shut down my computer.

The smile wasn’t returned.

Shit. She’s might be serious.

With family coming for the holidays, the list of wild game recipes stacking up on the fridge and the way we blow through meat like a socialist blows through other people’s money, I was taking this as a threat, not a suggestion.

“Let me rephrase that. Can do,” I say as I kiss the kids goodbye and headed for the packed truck.

Three days, a snowstorm coming, a tag in my pocket that has the ghost of four previous misses on it and I didn’t need much more motivation. But I received it anyway.

I gas up the truck up and look east to the wall of steel grey clouds building over the plains. The smell of cow manure clings to my nose hairs. Any Denverite knows the smell all too well. A surefire sign that snow is coming by the winds screaming across the cowtowns to the north.

An hour into an eight hour trip and I’m already in four-wheel drive at a breakneck speed of twenty-five miles an hour.

This may take a while.

I pass the time by looking for roadkill as a backup plan as Hazel’s last words echo in my head.

The extended drive time due to the ice skating rink that I’m now driving on also lets me replay ad nauseam the multitude of misses from my previous South Dakota foray a few short weeks ago. Certainly not long enough to let the wounds to start scabbing over.

Deep down I knew I needed to prove to myself that I wasn’t building a bad habit of folding under the pressure of a kill. There was a bit of redemption attached to this trip, but mostly it was way more simple than that.

I. Love. To. Hunt.

Plain and simple, I love to hunt. I don’t care if it’s chasing rabbits with my bow, pounding the mountains with my bird dogs or hunting big game. This is why I am here, this is what I planned my life around and this is what I do. I hunt.

Thirteen hours later and I’m looking for lodging. Being that it’s fourteen degrees out, the bed of my truck isn’t looking too appealing. I look for a hotel where even the cockroaches are afraid to sleep, you know the type of hotel where you sleep with your boots on. My kind of place, cheap.

The next morning I slip and slide my way to the killing fields. I don’t want to set a stand in the dark so instead I sit on a hill and watch where the deer make their way back into the security of the trees.

They leave the salad bar in droves. Noticing the first one make it in safe, they relax and follow suit.

The fresh snow makes it even easier as I follow them in a few hours later. You might as well of highlighted a trail on a map for me.

I set my stand as high as the climbing sticks will allow. There’s no cover since the leaves are down and being that these whitetails walk staring at treetops more than the ground, I know I’m going to be put to the test to control my fidgeting self.

I plunk myself down and zone out. A half hour before sunset the woods comes alive. On cue the herd makes their way no more than twenty yards from my stand.

They pile through and on multiple occasions I start to draw back on my bow. Death is twenty yards from them and they never know. I let them all pass, doe, fawn and buck alike.

“You see any today?” Hazel asks as the Campbell’s soup comes to a simmer in my Jetboil.

Did I see any? I think the Miss Whitetail South Dakota pageant was held today and the runway was right under my stand.

“Uh, yea a few I suppose,” I reply sheepishly. “How are the kids?”

I throw out the smoke screen. Safe for the moment at least. I know she has faith that I’ll get it done. Me on the other hand I’m not so sure. Passing up a couple of chip shots might not have been the wisest move. I’m on a meat run, not window shopping at the mall.

“I’ll knock one down tomorrow,” I tell her before hitting the sack.

Hell, I still have two full days to redeem myself.

Day two is a bit more challenging as the winds shift to a less optimal direction and the deer decide to visit a new trail. Just far enough away to not be able to get a clear shot, but close enough to reveal themselves and taunt me and my decision making skills.

The sky fades to black and I call an audible. I break down my stand and shift locations for the mornings hunt.

“Nothing came close today,” I murmur as I flick a unidentified bug off of my bed. “I’ve got them dialed now. Don’t be alarmed if you hear a victory scream waking you up in the morning all the way in Denver. That’ll be me as I celebrate the two-hundred inch whitetail I’m standing over.”

“Riiiiighttt,” comes the drawn out response from Hazel.

Stop dicking around, it’s go time.

Damn it. Fifty yards off. Right location, wrong tree. A midday relocation and I’ve got my relationships stability hanging from a tree. I either made the right choice and go home to a happy woman or I start to question how I’m spending my free time.

I settle in and suck in my breath to thin myself against the small trunk behind me. I’m not overly happy with the position of my stand as it puts me smack dab in the middle of the game path, but no other nearby tree was sufficient to accept the temporary residence of my stand.

I throw every layer I own on, knowing that the shivering that will ensue is not going to help my chances.

Stay still, draw your bow back slowly and close this deal.

First I need a deer to walk by.

This comes at the predicted time in a ball of full with legs protruding out like a centipede. They’re clumped up and moving my way, eyes fixated on the green fields behind me.

I pull air in through my nose and slowly exhale through my mouth, slowing my heart rate in the process. With the speed they’re moving this could be tight on time as the forest turns a deeper shade of blue.

All does. There’s got to be at least one buck still thinking he’s got a chance of scoring around here.

They move closer.

Don’t look up, don’t look up.

Poof! She smells my fear and acts on it. A doe’s head rockets up like a periscope and her eyes lock on me.

This grabs the attention of her lady friends and everything goes still. They know something is wrong but not wrong enough to blow out of there.

The head doe gives a few stomps on the ground like she is packing in dirt around a fence post. You can feel the tension in the air and it doesn’t look like this is going to go my way.

How are you going to explain this one to Hazel. A herd of deer not thirty yards from the stand and you can’t kill one?

The drama continues as the doe tries to get a better angle on me, tries to figure out if I’m just a lump in a tree or something there with more nefarious reasons.

Some of the does have enough and decide another trail close by would be the better option to get to the green fields that I’m cutting off. Why chance it?

I catch movement deeper in the woods, a large bodied deer making his way with his head down.

That has to be a buck.

Not just a buck, but my favorite kind of buck, a clueless one. He has no idea what is going on and makes his way to the front of the herd. He moves on as if this theatrical scene hasn’t been playing out for the last ten minutes.

Lights almost gone and this is your last chance. The time for caution is long past.

I lock onto him and slowly raise up my rangefinder. I pick a clearing he is on a trajectory for and angle myself for the shot.

The does don’t like this once still lump moving on them and they let everything within earshot know it.

They scatter, snort and throw a temper tantrum to rival any three year old toddler.

The buck freezes, still not knowing what the drama is about. According to him there has been nothing odd going on and the drama queens behind him are stopping him from a mouth full of green clover.

Come on, come on!

The dark blues of the forest let me know that time is very short now. His vitals are comically located behind a large tree trunk as if he were framing this story with the necessary suspense.

Time moves on and not a twitch from him. So much so that I’m starting to question if I was just seeing things and I’m standing there like an idiot staring at a stump.

I no longer can feel my fingers as the cold works through the bows aluminum riser and seeps into my hand.

Just one more step and this will all be over.

And it is.

He transforms from a stump back into a deer. In one smooth movement my bow is drawn and the arrow is loose.

I hear the telltale “thwack!” as the arrow punches through hide.

With the dimming like and shaking from the cold I’m not sure of the exact location of the shot but I know deep down that it will suffice. A huge exhale is released along with the tension of the pressure to get this job done.

The woods is silent as I pull my cell phone up to my ear.

“You got one?!” I hear on the other end of the line. It startles me hearing a human voice in an area where human voices typically are avoided at all costs.

“Yes ‘mam. Now I just need to find him. I’ll let him sit the night and find him tomorrow. I’ll be home by dinner,” I reply with obvious relief in my voice.

I can imagine her flipping through more recipe books as I’m relaying her the information.

“So I can come home?” I ask knowing this will get a rise out of her.

“I suppose this will get you a free pass through the front door,” she kids back.

I break down my setup in the dark and as I do so an odd feeling creeps over me. I feel like I’m not alone in this woods. That there are thousands of others around me that have done this same exact thing a thousand other times for the same exact reasons.

They were here to provide. To them perhaps they didn’t analyze what they were doing as much as we do these days, but there is a simple connection. We are here because there are people we love elsewhere depending on us to be successful.

// Fred Bohm

Bow Hunting Whitetail on Public Lands of South Dakota

“10% of the hunters kill 90% of the game.” Goes the saying. A year of training, scouting and flinging carbon was put forth to eek my way into that ten percent.

This was my year to make it happen. Invest the time, become so obsessed with getting the result I wanted that failure would not be an option.

Let me tell you a little about the last part of the previous sentence. Failure is an option, it’s  always been an option. Whether you like it or not, it’s the truth. Quoting some superhero from an action movie doesn’t make it a reality.

Failure is an option for us because the consequences aren’t dire. If we don’t kill an animal, we can stop by the supermarket on the way home and pretend we did.

Now the creatures on the other side of this equation… For them failure is not an option.

For them failure means death. From what I can tell they have a little more incentive to be on the winning end.

Overthinking it a bit you say? I agree.

As you can see, I was down in the dumps from my 2017 season so far. I got my butt handed to me by elk, deer and a wide assed bear I had been chasing for the last 20 days in the backcountry. I was having a bit of the “whoa is me’s”.

It was time to switch up my game. Switch up the animals I would be chasing and hopefully change up my luck.

It was time to hang up my worn out treaded hiking boots. Time to air out the tent, give my backpack a rest and recover my lungs with some lower elevation hunting.

It was time to chase whitetail.

My buddy Joe had reintroduced me to chasing whitetail the year previous. It had been some twenty-five years since I sat in a stand, waiting for the always skittish, air sniffing whitetails to walk on by.

At first I thought I’d be bored out of my mind. I was used to chasing velvet clad mule deer in the high country, creeping in on them, forcing the situation. I was more into the proactive side of hunting.

I didn’t think that I was prepared for all day sits in a small little piece of real estate waiting for the action to come to me.

Just like the “Lefties” thinking welfare is a good idea, I was wrong.

That first year back in the stand taught me that this style of hunting was just as hard as any high-country hunt, perhaps not as physically hard, but certainly it was just as much a battle of wits.

This year I went into the whitetail season with the anticipation of any man in desperate need of redemption. I had to prove to myself that I was still a hunter, not just an outdoor enthusiast taking my bow for a walk.

I wanted to kill and I wanted to do it on my own accord.

The plan was that Joe and I would head up to South Dakota the weekend before our nine day hunt and hang some stands, do some scouting and see how the animals were recovering from EHD.

The truck was packed as we sped out of the frigid temps that had sneak attacked Denver from the north. Our bodies were fueled by anticipation and the rocket fuel of whatever energy drinks that was being absorbed in our stomachs and shortening our lifespan.

We had some areas in mind that we had hunted the year previous. We’d hang some stands in those areas as a backup plan, but our ever adventurous minds had pushed us away from the familiar and into some unexplored areas.

We pulled up deep in the night and rolled out the sleeping bags in the bed of the truck. Lights out.

Waking up to frost on my pillow and snot frozen to my face had me wondering why I was so damn cheap and didn’t just get a hotel room.

“Whatever, suck it up buttercup.” I thought to myself as I started dressing inside my fart sack.

Time to get glassing and see what this state has to offer.

The deer had obviously made a comeback. We saw more deer that morning than we did in all of the nine day hunt the year previous.

Plans were made. Stands were hung in the regular haunts and we sat and ate some lunch as we prepped ourselves for the evening sit.

The area we were about to walk into probably hasn’t seen a hunter in years. It was only a mile or so off the road, but more importantly it was denser than a tropical forest during monsoon season. No man belonged in there. Hell, no deer belonged in there either, but we knew they would be with all the pressure they’d been receiving over the previous month and a half.

Bags were packed. Gear, piss bottle and books. All the necessities for a whitetail hunter.

We crossed the river and peeled the waders off. I looked at the patches and yet again questioned my cheapness.

“Well I ain’t buying new ones” I said to Joe as he looked at the wet spots on my pants from the leaking neoprene. “Looks like Hefty garbage bags will be getting my business from here on out.”

We made a plan to meet at this spot at the river at dark. Like two explorers at odds, we headed off in opposite directions looking for our lost city of gold.

I take the river bank as far as it will let before I am forced into the jungle. As I stepped in I saw tunnels in the brush that the deer were using as arteries to maneuver the complex webbing of tangled mess.

I crouch down with stand, pack and bow in hand and crawl along like I’m taking fire from a hostile force.

“How the hell am I going to get a clear shot even if I see one in here?” I quizzed myself.

Well it’s either sit in the river or advance into unchartered territory.

I pressed on, seeing fresh sign and knowing that this is a haven from the madness.

I spotted a few trees that had the potential of holding my 150 pound frame.

Gear was thrown to the ground as I stared the tree up and down looking for the best spot to attach myself to it.

“I think this is how they did it in the Youtube video…” I reassured myself as I checked my wallet to make sure I had my health insurance card with me.

Hey, I’m used to crawling up 13,000 foot mountains to creep up on elk, not lashing myself fifteen feet up to a twig waving in the wind.

I hauled the last bit of gear up to my stand as I looked for the nearest bush to launch myself into in case all went wrong.

I settled in and exhaled.

Silence.

This is why I’m was here, to get a bird's eye view of the deer sanctuary from my reconnaissance stand and to breathe it out from the ever increasing pressures of life.

My mind started to wander when I’m suddenly snapped out of it from the consistent crunch of leaves. Not the quick scamper then sudden stop of a squirrel, but the methodical crunching of a four legged animal with the plan of going from point A to point B.

I peeked over my right shoulder. Thirty five yards away and closing comes a rack with brown fur carrying it.

“Christ, I spent nine days in this deer-barren state last year and saw a few does for the effort. Now comes a respectable deer no more than thirty minutes into my sit.” I whispered to myself in disbelief.

Luck doesn’t make sense. It’s not supposed to. But you seize it when it shows itself.

“Stay calm, don’t move and see what he does.” I chanted to myself over and over.

He did what any smart deer would do. He walked away.

I reached down for my buck grunt and try to remember what those guys in all those terrible whitetail shows would do.

A few grunts came out of the call and through the wall of brush I could see him pull a U-turn.

“This might actually happen.” I said to myself as he crept himself closer.

He wearily came within fifteen feet of my stand, in one of two spots that I could get a shot off. Luck struck again.

He locked up and just stared that million mile stare as if contemplating some deep quantum physics calculation.

Ten minutes went by. Then fifteen. He just stared off into space and in doing so not offering me a shot.

“Stay calm, don’t move.” I reiterated to myself.

He comes back to.

He turned to walk the direction he came from and offered me the perfect opportunity.

I raised out of my seat and spun. My bow came up and I drew at the same time.

He had no idea that death was standing fifteen feet away from him.

As the arrow slid through him he still didn’t know.

He walked off twenty yards and fell over like a title boxer taking a unprotected shot to the jaw.

Was dumbfounded. This happens to guys on TV shows, to first time hunters and people who pay insane money to hunt in high fence operations.

This doesn’t happen to me. I’ve come to expect my kills on the last hour of the last day of the hunt, not the first day of the scouting trip for a hunt that’s supposed to take place a week later. Hell, I almost didn’t bring my bow into the woods on this little foray.

I’m happy and sad all at the same time. On one hand I’ve just taken the only whitetail buck of in my life, on the other hand I know I’ll be missing hunting camp with my buddies the following week.

I contemplate this as I walk back to the predetermined meeting spot with Joe. I break the news to him when he asks if I saw anything.

I answer by holding up my phone with a picture of me and the buck I took no longer than thirty minutes ago.

“Holy hell, congrats man!” He breaks the silence of the woods. “Now you’re going to need to find another tag for next week.”

As we walk back to start the process of turning my deer into meat I reply, “Nah, maybe I’ll stay home and put in some more work. It’s my busy season after all.”

He looks at me with a raised eyebrow.

“Right…” Comes his reply, not hiding that he doesn’t believe a word I’m saying.

By the time we’re out of the woods I’m already looking up other archery OTC tags in neighboring states.

“Time to join the 10%’ers.” I say to myself as we point the truck west.

// Fred