«Return to Main Page

Tim Herald

Endeavor Travels North

I will be the first to admit that I hate hunting in severe cold. Thus, November whitetail hunts in Canada’s big buck factories of Saskatchewan and Alberta have never been high on my list. I talked to Barry Samson who owns Safari River Outdoors (www.huntcanada.com) in Sask. about his October hunts, and he told me that he felt pretty sure that he could put me on a good buck and the weather should be quite bearable.

Barry does a lot of trail cam work on his huge concession near Meadow Lake, and when hunting buddy, Larry Caan, and I arrived in camp, Samson had a pretty good idea of some stands that were active. Our luggage was lost by the airlines and my muzzleloader didn’t show up until the next morning (and Larry’s clothes and gear didn’t show up for 2 days.) We went out to the range and tuned in our Endeavors and had some breakfast, soon we were packing up our essentials for the day’s hunt. This was Larry’s first hunt with his new Endeavor, and he was shooting 1.5” groups at 200 yards. I had taken a 51” moose in BC the month before with my Endeavor, so I had a lot of confidence in the gun and load.

Larry got to his stand just before noon, and deer were spotted almost immediately. He watched some does and yearlings feed and play for a couple of hours, and then he caught the glint of an antler moving through the brush off to his side.

Since his bag had been lost, he had no binocular, so he threw up his muzzleloader to check out the buck through his Omega scope. The buck walked out paralleling Can at about 90 yards, and he could see 3 tines up on the close side, and it looked to have good mass. Larry quickly got into shooting position, as the back was headed toward some really thick bush, and he cocked the hammer.

A few steps before the buck disappeared into the brush, Caan squeezed the trigger, and dumped the heavy whitetail. The buck ended up being a nice 9-pointer with 42” of mass.

I went a different direction, and reached my stand at approximately 11:30 AM. Before I got settled in my stand that was 25 feet up a huge spruce tree, there were deer moving. I watched several does and 3 young bucks all afternoon. They fed, sparred, rubbed, and provided a nice afternoon’s viewing. I love hunting in northern Canada whether it be bear, moose, deer, etc. as there is no road noise, few if any jets going over, and you feel like you are in the real wilderness.

About 3:00 my cameraman said he got a quick peak at a buck behind us, but he had no idea how big. I turned and watched over my shoulder for about 15 minutes, but he never emerged from the thicket. I had two year and a half old bucks feeding at 80 yards to my right, and I noticed they were watching something in the direction where the buck had vanished.

A few short minutes later, a huge bodied buck stepped out, and the little guys vacated the clearing. I checked the buck through my bino and could see that he was a nice 10-pointer. He looked heavy, but not too wide. Then he turned his rack in profile, and I could see that his G-4 was as long as his G2 and G-3, and his G-2 was forked. It didn’t take me long to decide he was a definite shooter.

I rested the Endeavor on my stand and took a deep breath. Just after I settled my crosshair on the big buck’s shoulder, I squeezed off and sent a 250 grain Shockwave into the boiler room.

When we recovered the buck, I couldn’t believe his mass. He had a typical 10-point frame with both G-2’s and a brow tine split. We had to measure him 3 times back at camp before I would accept the total we got. I just couldn’t believe that four hours into my October hunt, I had taken a huge Canadian whitetail that measured over 178 inches. It just goes to show that you don’t have to freeze to death to kill a trophy buck in the Far North.