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Inaugural SLR Rifle Deer Hunt 2007

November 16, 2007

My bother-in-law, Jay Podorsky, and father, Jean Dugas, both of Prairieville, Louisiana, joined me for what turned out to be a very successful deer hunt at Swanson Lake Ranch. The bayou hunters arrived Thursday afternoon, in time to get into the stands before the evening hunt. I hunted with my father, on the west side of the property, while Jay hunted the east. It was a calm and quiet Nebraska evening, but things got busy in a hurry. On the west side, twenty large toms strutted, almost in unison, to within 30 yards of our blind, and throughout the evening there was numerous doe and buck activity. My son, Andre, and I had scouted the area earlier in the week and saw a large shooter late in the afternoon, but on this day that big guy would not appear. Meanwhile, Jay had a large bobcat in his sights early, and several deer in and among the trees, but he too, left the field without a buck.

Friday would be a different story. It was a spectacular morning, again cool and calm, and we were in our positions an hour before first shooting light. This time, Jay was in the west stand, Jean was in the east stand, and I was closer to the river bottom. Jay was in deer early and at 8:30 a large buck darted into view, chasing a doe. He was headed east, but Jay called aggressively and the buck changed course. He was still trailing the doe when Jay hit him at 75 yards on the run – a perfectly placed shot that dropped the 5x4 in his tracks. Pictures were taken and we hauled the deer to our field dressing station. After a couple of hours, I took over position in the west stand. Jean, by this time, had been over on the east side for approximately eight hours. Within minutes after arriving to my stand, I spotted some movement, which I thought was a turkey in the tall grass, but turned out to be the antlers of a 4x4. The deer was in thick cover, and not visible other than its antlers, and within minutes had moved out of view. Several hours later, around 4:30, Jay called out on the radio that he had heard a shot and asked if it were mine. I said no and Jean, who had not been in contact on the radio all day, responded that it was his shot and he had a nice buck down.

We were coordinating plans to retrieve Jean’s deer when I saw buckskin appear in the grasses 300-400 yards away. Jay and Jean continued to talk while I quickly glassed the buck and determined it was a nice shooter. From the broadside view the deer first presented, the antlers did not seem particularly tall or long, but they had great mass, and when the buck quartered away from me I was stunned by the width of the rack. I had the buck in my scope, and again he presented broadside, but at that moment I had a severe case of onset buck fever and was breathing heavily – more so than I can recall in many years of hunting. I quickly reached for my shooting sticks, steadied the butt of the gun, held for a shot behind the shoulder and fired. The buck dropped immediately and I held on the grass field and saw no movement. At that moment, Jay again asked, “Mike, did you just shoot?” This time, though after a considerable delay, I answered in the affirmative. I continued to watch for movement and after five minutes or so proceeded to the deer.

When I arrived I was again stunned at the size of the deer and its antlers. Its neck was enormous – the largest white tail by far I have taken. The rack, a 6x6, was massive. We later measured 6” bases and four other measurements on the circumference of the main beam nearly 6”. The tine length, as I had originally guessed, was not off-the-charts, but the rack’s inside spread of 21”, and its mass, made up for the lack of length. All said, it was a spectacular mature buck, perhaps my best trophy ever. Adam and I had estimated we could harvest 150-point class deer at SLR, but this buck (and others we glassed) lead us to believe the deer might be bigger than we anticipated. It gives us confidence we can adhere to our self-imposed rule of not taking bucks with an antler width less than the ears, which might help cultivate even larger bucks than we have currently.

The week, needless to say, was a huge success. Jean’s deer, a beauty, was his first buck ever taken. The deer dropped from a single shot from a 30-06. Jean tells the story…”It was a perfect morning, around 40 degrees with stars covering the sky. I started my walk to the east stand about 1 hour before day break, which gave me plenty of time to get settled in the stand before shooting time. The only problem was that I had not been to this stand before and had a 300 to 400 yard walk through brush and cedar thickets to get to the blind. Confident that I could find the stand in the dark based on verbal directions and a few flag markers along the trail, I started my trek with only a small pen light which barely illuminated the ground when held at waist level. After about 20 minutes of walking, I realized I lost sight of the trail markers and started looking blindly for the stand. After approaching several dark shadows which turned out to be large cedars (and not the deer stand) I started to think I would never find it. For fear of disturbing the entire area, I decided to take cover under a large cottonwood tree and wait for a little daylight to see if I could see the deer stand. As dawn approached I saw the stand approximately 10 yards to the east of where I had taken cover. I slowly moved to the stand and finally I felt relaxed and ready to kill my first buck. Soon after I got settled in the stand, I saw what appeared to be a large deer about 200 yards to the east, walking past an opening in the cedar thickets. About an hour later I got a glimpse of him again and, except for a doe that came within about 150 yards of the stand, that is all the activity I saw that morning.

Fortunately I was able to listen to the conversations between Jay and Mike when Jay got his 4X5 buck, and to the play by play of all the wildlife they were seeing at the West stand. I was entertained for a while by their dialogue, but eventually found myself dozing off in the early afternoon. I was determined to stick it out in the stand until the last bit of daylight, but the time between noon and 4pm seemed like an eternity. Finally around 4:15, a doe came out of the thicket to my south and slowly approached my stand. This deer walked directly toward me and stopped about 10 yards east of my stand. About 15 minutes after the doe, a buck appeared in the same area as the doe. He was out about 120 yards and looked like a nice-sized buck, based on the spread of his rack. I watched him for a couple of minutes through my binoculars as he moved northeast in the high brush. At about 100 yards out, he got sight of the doe just below my stand and at that time I readied my rifle for a shot. I took aim just behind the foreleg and squeezed the trigger. The gun snapped but didn’t fire. Both the doe and the buck snapped alert, wondering what was going on. Now I was getting panicky about loosing the opportunity but I slowly lowered my rife into the blind and quietly as possible rejected the round that was in the chamber. When I pulled back the bolt, I realized that the locking lever that holds the bolt in place was in the wrong position. After repositioning the lever and chambering a new round, I again positioned my rifle for a shot. To my surprise the buck was still there; definitely alerted to an abnormal situation by this time, but thankfully he was watching the doe who was watching me during this process. After what had just transpired I wasn’t even sure the gun would fire; but as I squeezed the trigger, and the gun sounded, the deer jumped and turned to run. When he did so, I saw a massive blood stain where the bullet exited the deer and I knew I had my first buck. I slowly got out of my stand and walked to where I last saw him turn toward the cedar thicket. I found a nice 4x4 buck, stone-dead about 20 yards from where I shot him.

As I was contacting Mike and Jay to let them know about my kill, I heard a rifle shot from the West which turned out to be Mike’s Swanson Lake Ranch record buck. It was getting dark and I new it would be some time before they could get to me with the 4-wheeler, so I decided to field dress the deer with my pocket knife and to drag him to the trail where they could find me more easily.

The gun I used was a WW II model Springfield 30-06 that my dad had fitted with a scope and custom stock. Although it had been shot several times at targets, it had never been used for hunting.”