Mike Jr. was going for a whitetail he’d been after for a couple of years. He was hoping to climb up a certain tree stand close to the buck’s travel corridor. But the shifting wind changed all that.
“There was actually one deer in there that was bigger than that one,” Mike told me later, “but we just couldn’t find him.
“We’d seen this deer a couple of times that week from a distance but just hadn’t moved in on him. Kinda rolled the dice that last morning because the wind hadn’t been right to go get in the tree stand that was down there, so we’d just been waiting it out. Not wanting to mess it up.
“So, that morning, we could see him across the cutover area. We just moved in as close as possible, set up on the ground, and killed him.”
Mike said the shot was just shy of 400 yards. He was shooting a 6.5 Creedmoor Savage Long Range Hunter with a Bushnell LRHS (Long Range Hunter Series) scope.
He estimated the heavy, mature nine-pointer would score in the high 140s.
As one would expect, we stick-and-stringers were a bit more challenged, with a 40-yard range being the general limit for an effective bow shot. There’s a practice range behind the lodge and we took turns shooting at 3-D targets and applying an inch or two of windage to each shot.
My first morning, Big Mike dropped me off by little Horse Creek, giving me the directions to my ladder stand. After a walk through an alfalfa field, I climbed into the stand attached to a gnarly old cottonwood.
Below me was the creek. It was chilly as the sun peaked above the horizon, but I was yet to feel the wind. I knew it would come, and I soon found myself hunkering tight against the leeward side of the cottonwood.
Across was an expanse of prairie grass that shortly began to come to life. First, a group of does nervously entering tall grass. Then a small buck stopped at the edge, looking for them.
You can reach Mike Stroff and South Dakota Lodge at www.westernhunts.com. Mike also offers hunts in Texas and Illinois.
Read the story in its entirety in an upcoming issue of Sporting Classics magazine.
