It’s hard to imagine how crazy November can be when you’re trying to get as many hunts filmed as possible in the narrow window of the rut. This year was one of the craziest ever and oftentimes we only had three or four days to film an entire episode for Extreme Pursuits.
One of the craziest hunts took place immediately after taking the sunflower buck. That evening cameraman Lonnie Garland and I hatched a plan to leave in the dark the next morning, travel to a nearby Indian reservation and try to complete a hunt in less than 1 ½ days.
I called outfitter Lyle Anderson of Double A Outfitters and he pointed me in the right direction to get the job done fast on tribal lands. To make the show reality based I began the show with the fact I had less than two days to get the hunt done.
Then, I did what I do on every hunt. I looked for the most out-of-the-way areas and focused on them. I could tell there had been a lot of hunting pressure from talking with locals and from the tire tracks at access points. Instead of wasting time in zones easily accessed by others, I hiked around to a roadless area to access a super, thick section of riparian zone.
In the process of sunk into a muddy creek up to my crotch and barely was able to free myself. It was worth it. Two hours into the stalk and I rattled in a mature buck in the dense jungle using my HS rattle bag and True Talker grunt tube. We had a stare down for nearly 10 minutes and finally the buck turned to give me a less than perfect shot in the tall vegetation. I guessed on the buck’s vitals and rammed the Hornady bullet through the brush.
The highway of blood told a great tale and sure enough a big-bodied buck lay at the end of the trail. It was an enjoyable sunset of gutting and dragging. We wrapped filming the next morning and headed off to another whitetail adventure.
My pants are mud-soaked, I’m freezing from the waist down, my gun is muddy, but hey, I got my buck and in record time!