THE LAND OF GIANTS
Guthrie Gets a Good
‘Un
 Editor’s
note: J. Guthrie, the executive editor of NRA’s
Shooting Illustrated, was on the Canada hunt with me
at Garden River Outfitters. Guthrie had taken a nice
buck the year before, and this year he took another
really-nice buck. Here’s what Guthrie said about
his hunting experience.
QUESTION: Tell me about your 2004 hunt.
GUTHRIE: Well, in 2004, I sat on my stand for 64 hours
and then within the last 10 minutes of daylight, finally,
I killed my 10-point buck that scored 150 B&C points.
I wanted to come back and hunt again in 2005, because
I believe this is the best place in the world to take
a really big whitetail. The deer here, are the Borealis
sub-species of whitetail, which means they have the
biggest bodies and the biggest antlers of all the whitetails.
There’s not a lot of hunting pressure on these
deer, so they attain ages that allows them to reach
their maximum antler potential.
 QUESTION:
On the fifth day of this year’s hunt, what happened?
GUTHRIE: Previously, I’d had been sitting on the
same stand for four days, and the biggest deer I’d
seen was only about 115 inches. So I asked if I could
change stands. The weather had been cold, we had had
a full moon, and the bucks weren’t in a hard rut
yet. The morning started out as a bust. I was excited
about going to a new stand, but when we got there, the
platform didn’t have a blind set up on it. So,
the guide started to put the blind on the platform,
but the blind was the wrong size. Then the guide went
to another stand site, took the blind off that stand
and brought it back to put up on my stand. In the end,
I didn’t get the blind in place and all my gear
set up until about two and a half hours after daylight.
The weather was hot, and I was pretty well bummed-out.
The temperature had gone from –20 degrees below
zero, three days earlier all the way up to 40 degrees.
Not only was the weather frustrating me, but I felt
like we had made a lot of noise, taking the four-wheeler
back and forth, putting the blind on the stand and getting
all my gear into the stand. I felt like we’d probably
spooked off any mature bucks that might have been in
the area.
 The
area I was in really looked like it ought to hold deer.
I was overlooking a little meadow, with some low-growing
shrub that was surrounded by an old-growth forest on
one side and either an alder, red alder is the only
large tree of the alders; others are shrubs or small
trees commonly forming tangled thickets, or poplar forest
on the other side. So, we had three-different types
of habitat all converging at the same place. I noticed
a lot of big tracks on the road as we came in, but because
we’d made so much noise, I had pretty well decided
I wouldn’t see any good deer until late in the
afternoon. I started reading a book, and then I watched
a whisky jack fly by. I looked back toward the bank
and saw a buck coming in towards me. I put my binoculars
on him and quick-scored him at about 140 something points.
Then, I decided to take a real hard look at him, and
I determined he had good mass on his antlers, really-wide
tines and some cool, curled stickers on the ends of
his main beams. I decided to take him. I cocked my CVA
Kodiak Pro equipped with my Bushnell Elite 3200 riflescope
and a PowerBelt 275-grain bullet on top of 150 grains
of Pyrodex. Also, I was using a Winchester 209 primer.
The shot was about 60 yards. When I fired, I knew I’d
made a good hit. The buck ran through the meadow after
I’d fired, and I was pretty sure I’d heard
him fall, so I got out of my tree stand, re-loaded and
went to the spot where I had shot. I quickly and easily
picked up the blood trail, and in about 10 minutes I
was at the deer. I was very, very pleased when I saw
the buck. This fine buck had lots of mass and was very
representative of his age class. The photographs taken
of this buck and his mount on my wall, will bring a
smile to my face for many years to come. This buck had
some bark in the beading on his antlers down near his
brow tines, so I know he’d been scraping and cruising
for does. He was really an ‘against all odds’
buck because he came along about an hour after I’d
gotten in my stand when I knew I had made way too much
noise
 QUESTION:
What do you think about baiting deer here?
GUTHRIE: This land covers a very-large area. You might
be able to find these bucks and their travel trails,
but it would probably take you a minimum of two to three
weeks. I follow the rule, when in Rome do as the Romans
do. Baiting is about the only way I know to accomplish
the goal of getting a lot of different deer in front
of a hunter in a short period of time.
For more information on Garden River Outfitters, contact
Mo at (306) 978-2307, or you can write to him at Box
929, Martinsville, Saskatchewan, SOK-2TO.
You can learn more about Bushnell’s top-quality
optics by calling (913) 894-4224 or checking out www.bushnell.com.
To learn more about Black Powder Products, Inc. (BPI),
the makers of CVA, Winchester and New Frontier Muzzleloading
guns and accessories, call (770) 449-4687, or visit
www.bpiguns.com
|
