The first day of the mule deer hunting season for rifles dawned with snow on the ground and temperatures hovering around zero. Brought back memories of hunting season with Dad, and why I had decided it wasn’t for me. The fact that I didn’t really like killing pheasants or partridge was only partly to do with my heart pounding from the sudden flush of a bird or several: when the heart settled, they were out of range. I just wasn’t comfortable with it. Never did hunt for anything bigger, as a result. But, I can’t say I ever held it against those who did, except for poachers of course. So, I had asked to come along on a deer hunt with Ken and two of his sons. I took my Pentax with a long lens. They had rifles with long barrels. Shooting things from a distance has something to do with the principle of length.
Snow on the ground is supposed to be better for hunting. Makes it easier for tracking. As well, it’s a sure sign the temperature is low enough so that if you do shoot something, there’s time to clean it before it starts to spoil. Trouble with this snow was that it was wet and really just turned the prairie northeast of Taber into mud. Tough slogging in the coulees. I was supposed to watch for an old blue pickup between 9 and 9:30. Ken and sons had started the day’s hunt looking for white –tailed deer at about 5:30 a.m. near where the Bow and Oldman Rivers merge. They found no white-tails – apparently they are much harder to hunt than mule deer – but lots of mud on the road that slowed them by about an hour as they worked their way west. When they arrived, I parked my little red Jimmy and climbed into the extended cab back seat of the pickup. Tight. We drove to a spot overlooking the Oldman on property they had permission to hunt on. Beautiful country. Before opening day, they had scouted the area and found a spot in a coulee deer seemed to favor. Within 10 minutes, a four-point buck fell to a single shot from Mitch’s .270 Winchester. “I was shaking so much, I’m surprised I was able to pull the trigger,” Mitch said later. Ken didn’t hunt when he was a child. He got interested in it when he worked in Saskatchewan as a young adult. He had befriended two First Nations men who would talk about how hunting fit into their culture. More recently, he resumed hunting as a way of further bonding with his sons and otherwise enjoying the outdoors. “And we do enjoy the meat and share it with others in the community.” From a wildlife management standpoint, the mule deer hunt is based on a draw system as a way of controlling numbers of deer and hunters, says wildlife officer Egon Jensen. After the season opener, the province’s mule deer population had dropped by at least three from 188,000. |
