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My First Colorado Whitetail

October 27, 2011.

Never judge a whitetail when it's quartering away.

These are words I'm going to repeat to myself before all my whitetail hunts from now on.

Not that I should be complaining about anything.

I just got back from a fun hunt for whitetails on the eastern plains of Colorado. This is something I've wanted to do for years, and hunting in this treeless country for whitetails is definitely an interesting experience.

This hunt hadn't originally been in my 2011 schedule. I felt like I had a gap in my lineup, however, and started cruising Craigslist looking for an interesting landowner voucher for deer.

Under Colorado's system, landowners who own at least 160 acres of agricultural land can apply for up to 15% of the deer, elk, and pronghorn licenses in each limited draw unit. Landowners receive these licenses as vouchers that can be used to obtain hunting licenses in the unit where the land is located. The vouchers can be used by the landowner, or transferred (freely or for a fee) to another hunter. If a landowner sells you a voucher, he must allow you to hunt on his property.

I found a voucher for sale for whitetails-only in a unit near the town of Burlington in far eastern Colorado.

You can hunt mulies in the area too, but the either-species tags are much harder to come by. The Colorado Division of Wildlife introduced these whitetail-only tags a couple years ago, both to more aggressively manage growing whitetail populations and to increase opportunity for hunters who were willing to forego a chance at the more highly-desired mule deer in the region.

The landowner seemed very nice, and was an avid hunter himself. He shared some trail cam photos and lots of perspective on how to hunt the deer in his area. What's more, he told me that I could join the rest of his party and hunt with them. The ability to tap in to so much local expertise really sold me on this opportunity.

Leading up to the season, I kept in touch with the landowner via phone and email, then met up with him and his party on opening morning. His brother had a whitetail-only tag, as did his high-school-aged son.

At first light on opening morning, we glassed the open country for deer.

This part of the Colorado plains has quite a bit of agriculture, including dry land and irrigated corn, sunflowers, alfalfa, and CRP. Of course, there's also lots of grassland where cattle are grazed.

From a hunter's point of view, corn is the most important crop. It's a great food source and highly attractive to the deer. It's also phenomenal cover as long as it's standing. If the corn harvest is going slowly, it can result in many thousands of acres of effectively impenetrable cover for the deer.

The CRP acreage is also critically important. The grasses planted on the CRP offer excellent cover, and turned out to be the preferred bedding areas in the region for both mulies and whitetails.

This year, the corn harvest was progressing nicely. About half of the corn was already in, reducing the amount of escape cover for the deer, and creating open, visible areas in which to spot them feeding.

On opening morning, this is exactly what we did — we glassed from high points to spot deer feeding in cut corn, then watched them move to CRP and standing corn to bed for the day. Right at first light, I located a group of about 10 mulies doing exactly this. Since our tags were for whitetails only, we decided to go explore some different country. As we turned the truck around to leave, we spooked a nice whitetail buck out of his bed in a patch of CRP, only about 200 yards from the truck.

Disappointing, but not too heartbreaking since it was just the first morning.

We did a lot of glassing throughout the morning, but had no luck. Standing corn is simply impossible to glass, and much of the CRP held chest-high grass that was also impossible to glass for bedded deer. Temperatures in the 70s didn't help, either.

We did bump some deer as we moved about, but didn't have any legitimate shot opportunities.

In the mid-afternoon on opening day, we joined up with some other hunters that the landowner knew and decided to push a large patch of CRP. It had chest-high grass to offer bedding cover, and was adjacent to a cut corn field that offered a good food source.

Sure enough, we started kicking whitetails out of the field like crazy. One by one, 9 does got up as we moved through the field, 5 of which I had good shot opportunities on.

As we approached the end of the CRP, still very thick and tall, I was on high alert. Maybe we had pushed some deer to the end of the cover, like pheasants?

Sure enough, a buck sprang up from the cover. It started porpoising through the tall grass, and I instantly could tell it was a whitetail buck. I got my scope on the buck and started figuring out what to do.

At the arc of its first bounce up above the thick grass, I could tell it had a lot of points and looked pretty mature.

At the arc of its second bounce, it occurred to me that we weren't seeing a lot of bucks and as a good team player I better shoot this deer.

At the arc of its third bounce, about 60 yards from me now, I led the buck and fired.

The buck crashed to the ground, but recovered and kept bounding away.

Knowing it was hit, but not sure how well, I sent two more followup shots that did not connect.

The buck disappeared over a rise, and I regrouped with the farmer and his brother to strategize.

We advanced to the edge of the CRP and starting glassing the open fields around us.

There was no sign of the buck in the direction he had been heading. I was nervous, having hoped to see him lying dead in the open fields.

"There's your buck!" yelled the farmer, pointing in nearly the opposite direction I had been looking.

The buck had unexpectedly changed direction, and then covered almost a mile on a dead run, heading for a patch of timber that surrounded some farm buildings.

He was clearly hit hard, and appeared to be bleeding heavily.

Just beyond the timber patch was a standing field of thick irrigated corn.

If the buck disappeared in to that.... I tried not to think about it.

We went back to the truck and circled to the timber where we had lost sight of the buck. I've never lost a deer when hunting with a centerfire rifle, but visions of that vast cornfield had me nervous that I might be facing my first.

When we pulled up to the trees and saw the buck lying there, I was overwhelmed with relief.

Then, I was overwhelmed by the effects of ground shrinkage.

It was a pretty 5x5, but not nearly as big as I had thought when I saw him quartering away from me and I was faced with a split-second decision about whether or not to shoot. From that angle, he truly looked pretty darn big to me. But on the ground, he was obviously narrow and years away from reaching his prime.

I was glad to have gotten a deer, but also knew that if I had had time to think about it, I would have let him walk.

Still, it was my first 5x5 (I have a long weird history of only shooting 4x4 whitetails, for some unknown reason), it was my first Colorado whitetail, and it was a whole bunch of corn-fed venison.

The farmer's brother took a 4x5 on Monday, and his son is still hunting. They gave me an open offer to come back to hunt pheasants — which they have a lot of! — so I may spend some more time in eastern Colorado this time, for a different species.

But the next time I hunt whitetails, I'll remember: Never judge a whitetail when it's quartering away.

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