I’ve had the opportunity to spot and stalk animals
before. I really enjoy that style of hunting. I feel a
kinship to our ancestors, I feel closer to the land and
to the animals.Black Bear
&
As I said, I’ve stalked animals in the past, for
bear, antelope, moose, caribou and mule deer. Five
years ago I was at Bear Paw Outfitters in Alberta,
Canada on a spot and stalk mule deer hunt. The
mule deer were feeding in the canola, which made
them easy to spot, and they would usually bed
near where they were feeding, which made for a
lot of stalking opportunities. The hardest part on
that hunt was getting close enough for an archery
shot. I had good stalks on world class mule deer
but couldn’t get a shot on the giants. While I took a
good representative of the species, I vowed to return
to hunt one of those giants as soon as I could.
By Gus Congemi
Fast forward to August 2014. I was excited
to return to Bear Paw Outfitters but a warm dry
summer forced an early harvest of the crops. With
this change in conditions, all bets were off and the
dynamics of this hunt changed. The fields that were
once filled with canola are now harvested and bare.
The mule deer that once felt comfortable feeding and
bedding in the canola are now forced to bed in the
dense Canadian bush. Now we would only see
them in late morning and early evening.
I spent most of the days trying to pattern the
deer from where they were bedding to where they
were feeding, and setting up an ambush point, much
like you would hunt whitetail. Unfortunately, mule
deer don’t follow the same trails and seem to wander
more, so getting an ambush point in bow range
proved to be a challenge. I had a few deer pass
within bow range but they either changed direction
and ended up downwind or moved into an
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