This was going to be my second trip to North Dakota, archery hunting, in two years. Last year I took a 10 pt whitetail that scored 130 BC. This year I would be hunting with three friends of mine, Al Nutter from Gaylord, Nathan Lavoie Jr from Chicago and Ed Dobbs of Charlotte. We departed from Lansing at 7:00am on Sat December 6th, and after a brief stop in Chicago to pick up Nathan we traveled to Fargo, North Dakota where we grabbed a hotel for the night. We departed Fargo in the morning and arrived at Billy Freitag’s house in Dickinson around 12:00pm. I was pleased to see that Dave Ciekot from Maryland was going to hunt in camp again this year. Dave was in camp last year when I hunted with Billy.
The 14,000 acre ranch that we would be hunting on for the next five days was about 1 ½ hours travel time away. When you talk about hunting places for whitetails and mule deer most people don’t think about North Dakota, they think about Kansas, Iowa and Illinois. In fact, when you bring up North Dakota most people think about flat prairie lands, not monster whitetails and mule deer. As we got closer to the ranch and the foothills of the badlands the more deer we saw along the road.
After unloading our equipment, Billy told the five of us to load up in his suburban and we would go and scout for some deer. Billy wanted at least one of us to grab our bow. The mulies were in full rut and you might find them anywhere. Dave brought his bow and after driving a short distance Dave saw a mule deer doe in a ravine just below the trail we were driving on. A second later Billy saw this very nice mule deer buck a short distance away from the doe and he wouldn’t leave the doe even after seeing our vehicle. Billy decided that we would drive a short distance down the trail and let Dave out and hopefully the mulies would head this way and present a shot for Dave. After driving about 50 yards down the trial we saw an ever bigger mule deer buck dogging another mule deer doe. This buck was about 27 inches wide and 30 inches tall, Billy figured it would score about 180 BC and the first buck would score 160 BC. The bigger buck headed off the trail and back off the road out of sight. As Dave was getting out of the suburban with his bow, the doe in heat that we had just seen with the first buck had work her way down to where we were along the side of the trail the vehicle was on. It appeared to all of us that the doe was going to cross the trail about 20 yards in front of the suburban with the first buck right behind her. Dave had already taken cover and was waiting for the deer to cross the trail. Then out of no where the larger buck appeared about 50 yards down the trail in front of us. It was amazing to all of us that neither of these two big mule deer bucks paid any attention to the suburban or it occupants. But just when everything looked like it was going right, the doe crossed the trail, the bigger buck ran after the doe and caused the first buck to run after the both of them. Had the bigger buck not appeared, the first buck would have walked right crossed the trail about 20 yards away from Dave, up until then the first buck was walking right behind her. Never had any of us ever seen anything like this before and we hadn’t officially even started our hunt yet.
On this 14,000 acre ranch there are 56 blinds, most of them are Cabela’s 15 foot ladder stands and there are also several ground blinds that look like a bale of hay that work quite well. Most of the stands have bales of oats that the deer feed on, but there are also several stands that are placed on heavy used trails and crossings. This is an archery only ranch with very little pressure.
Just prior to our arrival in North Dakota an artic blast from Canada moved down into the states and the forecast for the up coming week was a high of 10 degrees and a low of minus 10 degrees, usually the temperature for that time of year is around 20 to 30 degrees. If that wasn’t bad enough the entire 5 days that we would be hunting would be during the full moon. Usually when there is a full moon the deer will feed all night and bed during the day.
The first two days of the hunt, just about everybody was seeing bucks, but nothing very big. Nathan and Dave had tried on a couple of occasions to stalk close enough to get a shot on big mule deer bucks that were dogging mule deer does in heat. Because it was so cold and the snow was so crunchy they couldn’t get close enough to get a shot before they were heard.
On the third morning I was taken to a different stand to hunt. As we pulled in before day break we kicked several deer off the stand. My blind was going to be a small farm house that was built in the 1950’s. It was the size of a single car garage, there was a bale of oats sitting about 15 yards away. I would be shooting out of the window on the side of the house facing the bale. To the right of my location were large open fields and to my left was about 40 acres of woods. You really couldn’t see the deer until they were on top of you or you heard them in the crunchy snow. At 9:00am, while several deer were feeding at the bale a very large 140 class 10 pt just appeared out of no where and began to feed. The buck was standing broadside and he was about 15 yards away. After I released my arrow I was very surprised to see that I had missed. My arrow had just taken a dive and hit the ground in front of the buck. I was even more surprised to see that none of the deer had run off, the buck was now about 25 yards away trying to figure out what had happened. With the other deer still around I thought that the buck would calm down and come back to feed. So I decided not to try another shot at him from that distance, after a couple of minutes he decided he had enough and left. After picking up my arrow I noticed that one of the vanes had been ripped, I figured that with it being as cold as it was maybe it had hit something when it was released or that it was damaged while being transported in the back of the suburban.
After lunch I was back in the same stand hoping that the buck I had missed might return and give me another opportunity. I started thinking about the missed shot from this morning, I started looking at my arrows and discovered that the nocks had been placed on them incorrectly. I tried to twist them around into their proper position and was unable to do so. I bought these arrows a year ago and had never used them before. I had used other, older ones I had for practice.
Around 4:00pm I had several deer feeding and all of a sudden they all moved at once and this monster whitetail buck walked right over and started feeding. I had to force myself to control my breathing. I tried not to focus on the antlers on this monster, but I knew he was very big and a lot bigger than the one I missed in the morning. My bow was sitting behind me on a crate with the arrow nocked. As I turned my upper torso around to pick it up I noticed a doe about 20 yards away looking at me though the opening where there would have been a door, the door had fallen off sometime ago. When I grabbed my bow I had to make sure that not only did I grab my bow, but I had to hold the arrow in place so it wouldn’t fall off the rest and alert either deer. After I picked up my bow and turned back around I had to slowly move my feet so I could line myself up directly in front of the window for a straight on shot at the buck. While I was doing all of these things I was wondering with it being as cold as it was if I was going to be able to pull back my string. The string came back a lot easier then I thought it would. I lined the pin up on the very top of the buck’s back thinking this would allow for the drop that the arrow was going to take. When I released the arrow I was very happy to hear it make a solid hit on the buck.
All of the deer took off running, but I was able to keep an eye on my buck which ran a short distance down a ravine and disappeared. I waited a few minutes before stepping out to pick up my arrow. When I did the noise from the crunchy snow alerted the buck and he stood up about 75 yards away. He looked at me for a couple of minutes and then slowly walked up the hill out of sight. Based on what I saw I decided to wait until the morning to retrieve him. As I saw Billy driving to pick me up, I decided to meet him half way and not take a chance on the suburban spooking the buck any further.
This had to be one of the longest nights I have had in a long time. Besides going over what had happened with each of the other guys I thought that this might be the biggest buck I have taken to date. I felt I had a good hit on him but I was still little concerned that I might not find him. After breakfast in the morning and then dropping off the other guys, we finally arrived at my stand. About 10 yards before the buck entered the woods I had very good sign that showed me that it was a good hit on the buck. We found him about 75 yards away from the last time I had seen him. Talk about no ground shrinkage, it kept getting better as we got closer. Billy and I both figured that the buck would weigh about 250lbs, the rack was very symmetrical. Billy figured he would score just under 170 BC, and that he was 5 1/2 years old. Talk about a happy guy, besides taking my biggest buck ever I didn’t have to put up with that cold weather any longer. When we picked up the other guys for lunch we had the buck wrapped up in a big piece of carpet sitting on a deer carrier and wouldn’t let the other guys look at it until we got back to the ranch.
In the afternoon we placed one of the other guys back in my blind and he missed a whitetail buck that he thought was almost as big as the one I took. I spent the next two days riding around with Billy and we saw several big mule deer bucks and a couple of whitetail bucks. I was the only one of the four of us that took a deer, besides the one missed, but everybody saw bucks. There wasn’t any doubt that the full moon played a big role on the amount of big whitetail buck activity that we saw. The reason we saw so many mule deer bucks was because they were in full rut. I sent three other hunters out there to hunt the first week of November and two of them took bucks that scored in the 150’s. After I returned home I got a call from Dave and he shot a 160 class mule deer buck the day after we left.
There are two things that I learned on this trip, check all of your equipment before you leave on a trip and never book another hunt during the full moon phase. If you’re interested in a hunt with Billy you can contact me at 989 344-9038 or jptrophyhunts@hotmail.com. The season for archery runs from September thru January 6th. Some of the best hunting is in October when the bucks are feeding in the grain fields and you can hunt them while they are coming and going to these fields, in much milder weather.
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