A TYPICAL DAY FOR A DEER GUIDE

Scott Dillon of Waterloo, Ohio, lives there for only a couple of months each year as he stays on the road from one end of the country to the other guiding hunters and anglers to various species of game and fish.

QUESTION: Scott, tell me what the life of a deer-hunting guide is like. Everybody thinks all you do is go hunting. What are you doing from the time you get up until the time you go to bed? White Oak Plantation near Tuskegee, Alabama, has 28,000 acres and some of the finest hunting in the world. What does a deer hunting guide do at a lodge like that?

ANSWER: My average time to get up is 3:30 to 4 a.m., depending on the time of the year. I go into the lodge to make sure everyone is up. After we eat breakfast, from 4:45 to 5:30 a.m., I take all the hunters to their stand locations for the morning. I go back to the lodge. If we have to track any deer, we start looking for those at daylight. Sometimes we have deer to clean or cape. If we don't have to do something like that, there's a lot of maintenance to do on the lodge, which involves mechanic work, carpentry, plumbing, you name it. Then we pick up the clients around 10:30 or 11:00 a.m. Next we'll go and look for what they've shot at that morning. We have lunch. Then we do what we need to do around the lodge to get ready to take the hunters out at 1:30 p.m. If we have any other deer that we haven't looked for that morning, we'll go out and finish looking for those. We come back and even haul garbage sometimes. After that we may sit and listen for shots and figure out if we'll need the four-wheeler that evening. At pitch dark, we'll pick up the hunters, find out what they've shot at and bring the hunters back to the lodge. Then we guides will go back and look for the deer the hunters have shot at and hopefully find them. We'll bring the deer back to the lodge, field-dress them, cut them up, package them and put them in the cooler. Then we clean up, go in and eat supper. By the time we go home and take a shower, much of the time we won't roll into bed until 10:00 p.m. or maybe even 11:00 p.m.

QUESTION: So, you're going to bed at 10:00 or 11:00 p.m. and getting up at 4:00 a.m. most mornings?

ANSWER: We do that seven days a week the whole time we're at a deer-hunting lodge.

QUESTION: Don't you get tired of that schedule, Scott, and doing it seven days a week?

ANSWER: I don't because of the different people coming in every three or four days or even six or seven days. When we get a new group of excited hunters, they kind of spring us up and keep us going.

QUESTION: How much of your time is spent following wounded deer or shot-at deer and/or following up shots or dragging deer out of the woods?

ANSWER: We've been known to chase a wounded deer for four days before. You never know how long trailing a deer may take. Sometimes you may not need but 20 minutes to find a deer that someone has shot at the evening before. Generally we spend 1/4 to 1/2 of our time chasing deer, looking for deer that people have shot at or just going out and checking stands to make sure everything is OK.

To contact White Oak Plantation, call or write the lodge at (334)727-9258, or 5215 County Road 10, Tuskegee, AL 36083.

TOMORROW: LIFE AS A TURKEY GUIDE

Check back each day this week for more from Preston Pittman...

Day 1 - Getting Started As A Hunting Guide
Day 2 - A Year In The Life Of A Migrant Guide
Day 3 - A Typical Day For A Deer Guide
Day 4 - Life As A Turkey Guide
Day 5 - Salmon Guiding In Alaska And Elk Guiding In Wyoming

John's Journal