Best Laid Plans
By Greg Busch
May/June 2009
We have all read many stories over the years that start out with the familiar, “I couldn’t believe it when I found out I drew a once-in-a-lifetime tag.” In that sense, this story begins in much the same way, but departs quickly and evolves into something truly special. As you read on you will recognize, as I did, the special tag was not nearly as notable as the incredible man who held it and the higher power who had ideas of his own on how this hunt would play out.
My father called me in April of 2007 and informed me he had drawn the North Dakota Statewide Mule Deer Permit. This tag is the closest thing we have in North Dakota to a “Governor’s Tag.” It allows the lucky recipient the opportunity to hunt mule deer anywhere in the entire state, for the entire rifle season. A truly great opportunity, more so in this case, as my father has never taken a mule deer buck in his life. My father is a Minnesota resident and the odds of him ever drawing a mule deer buck tag in North Dakota were slim and none. My father could hardly contain his enthusiasm as we talked about where we would hunt and what he needed to do in order to prepare. I remember thinking my father sounded just like his nine year old grandson, Jacob, who recently told me about his first “girlfriend.” Both were as proud as banty roosters strutting in the morning sun and if they didn’t start to breathe they would most likely blow like a cork off of a champagne bottle!
I should quickly tell you about my father and why he is such a special man. My father was happily married to my mother for 26 years. Unfortunately, our lives were forever altered when my mother was diagnosed with bone cancer in March of 1991 at the age of 46. She aggressively fought the cancer with every medical option available and a lot of prayer, but passed away eight months later. This left my father with four children, ages 10 to 21, to finish raising on his own. Time and again he stepped up to the plate and was an example for us on how to live our lives and taught us the hard lessons of right and wrong. He sacrificed his time, personal interests and money to provide for us. While he was not always perfect, it was not for lack of effort. I hope I can be half the father he is if I ever find myself in a situation that difficult.
Because of this and many other reasons, I committed to scouting as much as possible to insure sure my father enjoyed a quality hunt. It was one small way of saying thank you for all he had done for my brothers, sister, and I. One of my passions in life is hunting mule deer in the Badlands of North Dakota on public land. I am very familiar with one unit in particular and planned on concentrating my scouting efforts there, as it produces great bucks year after year. Over the summer I spotted and captured trail camera pictures of many great bucks. After every scouting trip I would call my father and send him e-mails with pictures of the deer I was seeing. We were both impatiently waiting for the next two months to pass so we could head west in search of his deer.
By September, I had three bucks identified that dad thought looked great. He was exercising, shooting his rifle and things were going along as planned. On September 9, I received a call from my sister that dad had fallen six feet off of a ladder onto a dirt floor. He had been working in the quonset on his hunting property in Minnesota when the injury occurred. As a result of the fall, he had shattered his right elbow and fractured his pelvis. Before he went into surgery, I spoke to him by phone and one of his greatest concerns was that his “hunt-of-a-lifetime” was now over. I told him to get patched up and we would worry about the hunt later. Dad’s surgeries were long and complex, 11 hours in all, particularly the repair of his elbow. Initially there was concern from the surgeons on how functional his right arm may ever be.
After dad was out of surgery and doing better, I started thinking about how to proceed with his tag. I contacted Brandon Mason, Regional Director for the Mule Deer Foundation. I explained the situation to Brandon and he immediately went to work to see what could be done to help us, without promising anything. Brandon contacted the Director of the North Dakota Game and Fish Department, Terry Steinwand, and relayed what had taken place and the tag my father held. Brandon worked with Terry to find a way to defer the tag until the 2008 season. When Brandon called me back two days later and told me the news I was overjoyed. There is no way to say thank you enough to Brandon and the Mule Deer Foundation, as well as Terry and the North Dakota Game and Fish Department. Without their understanding and assistance, the story would have sadly ended here. Instead, I was able to call my father and remind him he was retired and his only job for the next year was to work hard at making a full recovery because his mule deer hunt was on for 2008!
The next year was filled with painful physical therapy sessions and endless hours of exercise for my father. I had the easy job and reminded him of that fact regularly; all I had to do was continue to scout. We both took our jobs seriously. He made a better recovery than anyone in the family could have hoped for and I continued to keep close tabs on numerous great bucks in the Badlands of North Dakota.
A new dilemma arose during the summer. My hunting partner, Kirby Evanger, and I had been unsuccessful in drawing Badlands mule deer tags the last four years. It takes us, on average, five years to draw this tag and we were very close to drawing out. We had about 30% odds going into 2008. I called Kirby and explained how important it was that my father experience a quality hunt. I asked Kirby if he would be willing to put in with me, and someone else with no bonus points, thereby dropping Kirby and I down to a 3% chance of drawing our tags. The sole purpose of this change was to make sure we didn’t draw out in 2008. This would allow me to focus solely on my father’s hunt. Kirby, a true friend and great hunting partner, said yes without hesitation. Well you know what they say about best laid plans! In early July, Kirby called me at work and informed me we had beaten the long odds and drawn!! I was absolutely shocked and came to the conclusion the good Lord had plans of his own and they involved all three of us hunting together.
Opening day arrived with snow, cold and wind. It was great to see dad moving up and down the hills with relative ease and a smile on his face. He and I hunted for two days looking over many bucks. Dad saw one buck in particular, a great 3x3 with brow tines, which he really liked. Unfortunately, as so many times happens, the buck slipped away while we were making a stalk never to be seen again. It was apparent the rut had not kicked in yet and we decided to go home and take a few days off.
Kirby and I went out the following Saturday and set up my wall tent and wood stove in preparation for the last nine days of the season. We were to hunt together for a few days before my father came back out. It was more of the same. Kirby and I covered a lot of ground and saw a lot of deer, but it was mostly does and small to medium sized bucks. We were still waiting for the rut. I told Kirby I thought when the rut really started it would be like a light switch being thrown and things would get crazy. Well on Monday, November 17, 2008, at about 2:00 pm that is exactly what happened. All of a sudden there were bucks, and lots of them, coming out of the woodwork. I had the rare opportunity of watching 50+ mule deer with nine different bucks in a “rutfest” below the butte I was glassing from Monday evening. One buck in particular, a dark, heavy horned 4x4, stood out from all of the others, but never offered a good shot opportunity.
I called dad that evening and explained the situation. He was raring to go and decided to make the seven-hour drive from his home in Minnesota to hunting camp a day earlier than planned. The next morning Kirby and I left camp early to get to the same butte I had been on the night before. On the walk in, we spotted a fantastic buck skylined on the horizon about two hundred yards from us. When we looked at him through the binoculars we could see he was very interested in a doe and there about 13 other does and bucks bedded below them. We backed out to get the wind in our favor and climbed up a nearby butte that gave us a good vantage point. In short order, we verified this buck had fantastic fronts, backs and was definitely a shooter. We watched as the four bucks in the group pushed the does into a draw below us and came out on a flat in the morning sun. It was my turn to shoot that morning and Kirby got to watch me miss my first shot at 425 yards. It was dead calm and the deer seemed to have difficulty figuring out where the shot had come from. I made a slight adjustment on my second shot and the buck dropped to the ground like a rug had been pulled out from under him. When we got up to him he was a great 4x4 with no browtines. There was no ground shrinkage with his front or back forks, they were huge and I was thrilled.
Kirby and I spent the morning taking pictures and packing my buck out to the road. We had a good lunch and got ready for the evening hunt. Kirby and I went back out to the same area and worked our way out to the butte we had never reached that morning. Again there were a number of mule deer below us. We spotted some nice bucks, but not the dark, heavy horned 4x4. We were loosing light and on a hunch I left Kirby to glass an area behind us. Immediately I found the 4x4 in a small draw with about 25 does and bucks. They were obviously rutting hard and in a great position for a stalk. I sprinted back to Kirby and was out of breath when I reached him. I excitedly blurted out, “I found the big 4x4, let’s go!” We quickly put on our packs and dropped to the bottom of the butte. The wind was in our favor and it was one of those stalks you just can’t screw up. In no time at all we were glassing the big 4x4 as he chased some does into the draw 150 yards away. We were concentrating so intently on the 4x4, I failed to notice another good buck 90 yards downhill staring at us. I quietly whispered to Kirby there was a nice buck right below us and he should seriously think about shooting it. After a few quick questions, Kirby decided this was the buck for him and anchored him with one shot. At the shot, deer took off in every direction. Even as we walked up to Kirby’s buck, the dark, heavy horned 4x4 looked at us from the top of a butte in easy rifle range. Kirby’s buck is a 4x4 with browtines that is 24 inches wide and 25 inches tall. A great first mule deer! It was getting dark fast so we took pictures, dressed the buck and hung him high in a tree in the nearby draw.
It was getting quite late when Kirby I and I pulled into camp. I knew dad was there waiting for us as the lantern lit up the wall tent and there was the smell of wood smoke drifting out of the chimney. There are not many sights or smells better after a hard day of hunting! As you can imagine, dad was thrilled with our success and eager for the next morning to arrive. I knew he was excited because I didn’t hear the thunderous snoring he is well known for within ten minutes of the lights going out. I just knew he was curled up in his sleeping bag with thoughts of big mule deer flashing through his mind!
The next morning dad and I worked our way back to the same “rutfest” butte that had been so good to us. It didn’t disappoint this morning either. We spotted numerous good bucks that morning, including the heavy, dark-horned 4x4 that pushed some does into a draw before I could get dad in position for a shot and a 170” buck we watched for an hour until he bedded down in a heavily wooded draw. Dad and I snuck out and decided we would set up that evening on the 170” buck. We drove back to camp and got Kirby, as we had to pack his deer back to the road. On the way back to Kirby’s deer we came around a corner and I spotted a flash of antler in a distant creek bottom. I told dad to stop and found a large framed buck sniffing around four does feeling frisky. Upon closer inspection, I told dad this was the big 3x3 we had tried to stalk opening weekend. He asked if I was sure, as it was some distance away from where we had originally seen him. I told him there was no doubt about it and reminded him we had just bedded down the bigger 170” buck less than an hour ago. Dad said, “If that’s the 3x3, let’s go after him.”
We backtracked, got the wind in our favor and moved in on the buck. After 30 minutes of fighting through the melting snow and clay gumbo, which was slippery as heated axle grease, we were within 100 yards of the buck. The problem was he pushing the does around in the tall willows of the creek bottom and we could never get a clear shot. Eventually he bedded down less than 80 yards from us and we could only see the tips of his antlers. I whispered to dad that we had two options. We could either wait him out or make a big downwind loop and uphill stalk to get on an enormous butte overlooking the creek bottom. I told dad I was confident the buck was going to be bedded for a while and he decided to try the stalk.
Dad dispelled any doubts I may have had regarding his recovery from the fall a year earlier. I pushed him pretty hard over the next 45 minutes while making a long, difficult stalk that would have tested any hunter. When we crawled over the lip of the butte overlooking the creek bottom below, it took me about five seconds to find the buck. He was still bedded and sprawled out like a black lab laying in the sun on a warm afternoon. He had his head and antlers stretched out on the ground and was oblivious to everything around him. Dad had a difficult 200 yard shot at a steep downward angle. In addition to being a great father, he was a Marine and served in Vietnam back in the day. The shot he made would have put a wide grin on any “Leatherneck’s” face. At the report of dad’s 7mm Remington Magnum, the buck flinched slightly, never raised his head and never moved again! I couldn’t believe it and could do nothing but give my father a huge bear hug. After the celebration, we worked our way down the steep slope of the butte to the creek bottom below and dad’s first mulie buck. It was indeed the unique 3x3 with browtines we had stalked opening weekend and dad had a smile that covered most of his face!!
If you are anything like me you’re a planner. I plan everything, sometimes in excruciating detail! This hunt with dad’s special tag, injury and resulting recovery; Kirby’s sacrifice; and my plan to avoid drawing tags took me on an emotional rollercoaster ride over 20 months that I won’t soon forget. It also reminds me my best laid plans are just that, plans. The outcome, whether it is in hunting or life, is usually uncertain. Sticking with it, staying flexible and seeing how everything works out makes it all worthwhile! Thank you Kirby and I love you dad.