You Won’t Strike Out When Hunting With Central
Montana Outfitters
The Whitetail Adventure Begins
 Editor’s
Note: I love to do any type of hunting. I’ve learned
many years ago that some of the biggest white-tailed
deer in the nation live in the Northwest. And, although
I love to hunt mule deer, I truly enjoy hunting big
whitetails.
I’d always had so much fun hunting with Chad
Schearer in years past, that I hardly could wait to
get to camp in the fall of 2006. His camp consists of
sheepherders’ tents, but instead of being the
usual type of sheepherders’ tents that get blown
around due to the winds of 50-60 miles per hour or more
up in that high country, Schearer has stabilized his
tents with heavy log braces to make them much more solid
and durable. Schearer also has wooden floors in his
tents to increase their comfort and warmth. We had some
50 mph winds while we were hunting in 2006, and I really
saw the advantage of the log braces and the wooden floors.
Inside each tent was a small sheepherder’s wooden
stove. Each night and every morning, we added wood to
the stove. Although the temperatures dipped way below
freezing at times, we stayed toasty-warm. Every year
Schearer upgraded his camp. In the fall of 2006, I couldn’t
believe what he’d done. Schearer’s number-one
guide, Dale Yonkin, built lodge-pole wooden beds and
put mattresses on them. When we climbed inside our sleeping
bags on the mattresses each night, we were as warm and
comfortable as we would have been at home. Yet, we still
enjoyed the adventure of sleeping out in a tent. Schearer
didn’t out more than two men in each tent, although
each had plenty of room for four people. However, if
you were like me, once you unpacked all your junk, you
would be glad of the e xtra
room.
On my first morning’s hunt, I was in a small
thicket on the edge of a wooded bottom adjacent to an
alfalfa field. I spotted several deer that morning,
but most of them were 110-120 B&C bucks. I also
saw more pheasants than I’d ever seen even at
a pheasant farm. “Here I am, wrong-gunned, hunting
the wrong species in the wrong place,” I told
myself. I was convinced that if I’d had a .22
with a scope on it, I could have shot a limit of pheasants
the first morning of hunting. For a fellow from Alabama
like me, pheasants were a novelty. Although I was hunting
deer, those pheasants continued to grab my attention.
However, my attention’s being focused on the pheasants
changed just before dark when I spotted a monster-sized
whitetail, 358 yards from my stand. I knew the distance
to the whitetail, because I had a Bus hnell
range finder and a quality pair of Alpen binoculars
that I kept glued on that buck. Finally the buck moved
to within 325 yards of me. Perhaps I could have made
the shot, and maybe I couldn’t. I bet on “maybe
I couldn’t.” I hated to wound or spook a
nice buck like that, when I still had four days left
to hunt. Although this buck was the size I’d come
to Montana to take, I didn’t want to push my luck.
To learn more about CVA’s top-quality black-powder
guns, click on www.cva.com.
For more information on Central Montana Outfitters,
call or email Chad Schearer, www.centralmontanaoutfitters.com;
chad@centralmontanaoutfitters.com;
(406) 727-4478
You can go to www.alpenoutdoor.com
to learn more about Alpen’s top-quality binoculars
and to www.bushnell.com for more information on Bushnell’s
fine products.
Tomorrow: Take a Break And
Hunt Pheasants And Partridges
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