I cursed beneath my breath as I scanned the ground for the spent brass. I was still not convinced that I had missed the deer cleanly, though the buck exhibited no signs to the contrary. I replayed the scene in my mind, the buck slipping through the dense timber, wary, but not startled, appearing, then disappearing through my scope until he passed through an opening and the crosshairs settled on his chest. The first shot seemed too easy to whiff and I was sure the buck must be dead-on-his-feet, though he headed for higher ground sans any visible limp. The follow-up shot clearly found tree bark before he vanished into the timber.
The lack of blood at the scene, and the undeniable recall of the buck’s reaction, or lack thereof, to the shot told a story that I didn’t yet want to believe…somehow, I had just missed a chip shot at the biggest whitetail of my life.
On the somber walk back to my buddy’s truck I had plenty of time to identify a scapegoat and concluded that I had brought the wrong rifle with me. Though our intention was to intercept whitetails moving into the Bitterroot foothills from the Clark Fork river bottom, this was Montana, and opening day for elk too. I had opted, at the last second, to pull my .300 out of the case that morning in lieu of my favorite deer rifle, thereby jinxing myself and guaranteeing that I was prone to miss a deer with my elk gun.
As I pondered this cosmic blunder, I caught movement on the horizon just above our truck. A cow elk paused at the sight of the pickup and surveyed the scene. I tucked into the base of a tree and took a rest on a limb. One-by-one, a succession of cautious cows and calves appeared on the ridgeline and followed the lead cow. I waited and hoped for a set of antlers bearing brow tines to appear. In the timber behind the herd I caught one more set of legs belonging to an elk seemingly reluctant to follow the group and risk exposure. I waited, and waited. Finally, the elk emerged and my suspicions that the final holdout was a bull were correct. My one and only opening-morning bull died within fifty yards of the truck. The dark cloud over my blown whitetail hunt lifted and I was sure glad that I had the .300 in my hands.
Several years later my buddy and I followed fresh elk tracks into a mess of waist high deadfall at the end of a long day of fruitlessly searching for elk high in the rugged Crazy Mountains of central Montana. It was a miserable end to the day, and my legs were starting to cramp up and the light was fading when we finally emerged from the blowdown. We entered a clearing and immediately locked eyes with a whitetail buck that threw up his flag and darted for the timber. I had just enough time to drop to one knee and emit a whistle. That old trick worked again, as did my elk rifle, and the tenderloins made for a delicious appetizer that night in the wall tent, while we planned another morning assault on the elk.
When I moved to Montana a decade-and-a-half ago, primarily to dedicate more time to the primitive sports (hunting and fishing), I expected to shoot plenty of mule deer while chasing my favorite quarry, elk, through the high country. Whitetails, on the other hand, were a denizen of the low country and I could hunt that deer in the river bottoms once my mountain tags were filled.
However, my pre-conceived notion of whitetails as a bottom-dweller were thrown into question on my first outing as a Montana resident, when I jumped a pair of nice whitey bucks at 9000 feet while bowhunting elk. More-and-more, I kept running into whitetails in my wapiti-wanderings and once I shot my first buck and tasted the backstraps, I was hooked.
I love mountain hunting, why I love elk hunting, and sitting in a treestand just ain’t my bag, but following a set of whitetail tracks through fresh snow along the spine of the Continental Divide sure is! I now have another excuse to head to the high country to fill the freezer; even after my elk tag is punched. For the ever-adaptable whitetail, there’s plenty of room to roam between the floodplains and the alpine in Big Sky country.
A variety of tactics work, and don’t, for mountain whitetails. Whiteys at the timberline are no less wary and I’ve sent far more deer fleeing into the timber than I’ve snuck up on. At first and last light I often set up in ambush on high saddles. From a good vantage I may catch a buck feeding out in the open, warranting a spot-and-stalk approach. Most of the time, however, I find them in the dark timber and it’s a game of who sees whom first. Sneaking through the whitetail woods, one slow step at a time, with my head on a swivel, has made me a better midday north-slope elk hunter as well.
During the rut, from mid-November through the end of rifle season, is obviously the peak period of buck activity and one of the best windows to kill a Montana buck. Thanksgiving means friends, family, and a store-bought bird to most folks, but my most memorable holidays have been spent solo, packing wild meat back home.
