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Deer Hunting On the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, Part 2

November 28, 2011.

Continued from Part 1

Using my maps and some advice given to me by a veteran Standing Rock hunter, I found my way to several contiguous square miles of tribal land that was supposed to be good whitetail country — if you were willing to get away from the roads.

As I stopped for one last check of my maps, a pickup load of surly looking hunters from Wisconsin turned off the main road and pulled ahead of me. They did not return my friendly wave, and did not stop to talk.

The Wisconsin guys dropped a member of their party on a corner of a pasture, and I passed them to go to the corner farthest from them.

After I parked and as I was getting my gear ready, they pulled in about 100 yards from me (again without a wave or without stopping to talk) and dropped another guy off.

This guy was right on top of me, but I wasn't planning on sticking around near the top.

I had picked out some nice thickets about a mile from the truck where I planned to spend my evening hunt, and I was pretty sure my Wisconsin neighbors wouldn't be doing much walking.

The walk was downhill towards a river bottom. The area was covered in gorgeous foot-high grass for the most part. The bottoms of drainages had deep gullies and thick brush.

As I continued to drop down towards the river bottom, it occurred to me that it might be a little tough to get a deer back up to my truck, but I was in a good mood and didn't worry too much about it.

There was one more gully and one more ridge between me and the thicket that I wanted to hunt.

As I started to move down in to the gully, I kicked up a deer when I got within about 40 yards of it.

It charged down in to the gully and came up on the facing slope. Then it paused to try to figure out who/what I was.

I had already dropped to my knees and laid my .300 WinMag on the BogPod tripod I had been carrying in my left hand.

I put the scope on the deer, which I could just barely see through an opening in the brush.

It was a buck, with a reasonable number of points, although the tree limbs kept me from getting a count through my scope.

I cranked up the magnification on my scope. The buck looked at me, and I could now see he was about as wide as his ears.

Quickly, I processed a whole bunch of information in my head. I had a decent buck offering me a broadside shot at 100 yards. A cold front was supposed to hit in a couple hours, featuring single-digit temps and 6-12 inches of snow. And I still had that other tag for the Cheyenne River reservation.

This was just too good to pass up.

I pulled the trigger and dropped the buck in his tracks.

A doe boiled out from the bottom where the buck had been, and I briefly thought about taking her with the extra doe tag that came with my Standing Rock tag. Then a little yearling buck came out as well.

Knowing I had a mile-long uphill trek back to my truck, I ignored the other deer and went down to my buck. My goal of taking a North Dakota mulie hadn't panned out, but I was pleased to have taken my first South Dakota whitetail.

With nightfall fast approaching, and with the unpleasantness of the impending cold front in my mind, I moved fairly quickly to get the deer out of the woods. It was almost exactly a mile uphill back to the truck. I decided to dump my rifle and gear at the truck, pick up a game cart, and bring him out whole.

As I hustled back up to the truck, I couldn't help but smile a little when I thought about how irked the surly Wisconsin hunters would be that I had shot a deer (the four of them didn't shoot that evening).

It was pitch-black dark outside by the time I got back to deer with the game cart. Without my GPS I never would have found him in the dark.

Hunting in the Dakotas doesn't sound like that ambitious of an adventure, but this is some big, open, empty country. The nearest house to the spot where I had killed my deer was about 3 miles away. The closest house after that was probably 6 or 7 miles. Couple this low population density with steep terrain and the constant threat of bitter cold weather, and a guy could get himself in trouble pretty easy.

I started lugging the deer up the hill in the dark, and pretty quickly regretted that I hadn't quartered him and packed him out on my back. The constant up and down of the terrain made pulling the game cart a real headache, and crossing some of the deeper gullies was truly back breaking.

And it was DARK.

After about 4 hours of work, my GPS was telling me that my truck was 40 yards away. But it was just over a rise and I still couldn't see it. My headlamp finally lit up the truck, bringing a close to the toughest deer drag I've ever done.

By the time I had the deer and and game cart loaded in the truck, I started to realize how dangerously tired and cold I had become.

Sleep that night was tough, as I kept having to get out of bed and walk off painful muscle cramps, but I slept in late the next morning and regrouped a little. With my Standing Rock tag filled, it was time to figure out the Cheyenne River Sioux reservation.

More to follow on that....

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