I never really thought of cold as a patriotic thing, but I find that I can only relate to the American way of measuring temperature. I know what zero degrees Fahrenheit feels like. How the snow squeaks when you walk on it, how the air stings your lungs those first couple of breaths and how a cloud of steam will form around your face on a still day. I know at that temperature ice will form in your beard, pins will prick at your fingertips and it’s a darn cold time for waiting.
Here in Canada they use the Celsius scale, and no matter how hard I try I never can quite understand what it means. At their zero degrees, most don’t even worry about a jacket. (Canadians are a hardy breed.) They talk about 32 degrees (our freezing point) being too hot to do anything except pant. In my mind that’s the temperature needed to make the ice that goes in my drinks. (A glass of something smooth and amber might make me pant, but for a much different reason.) If it hits 50 degrees we Americans think about taking off our jackets, while they call an ambulance. It’s all very confusing.
Even this zero-degree day of hunting is subject to international attitudes because according to the guy on the Internet who did the calculations for me, the Canadians would say it’s minus 17.7777778 degrees. Somehow, saying “I sat in a deer stand all day at minus 17.7777778 degrees” doesn’t carry the same romance or have the same rhythm in the language as the American version.
The odd thing, though, is that zero (or minus 17.7777778, as you prefer) is a bit of a heat wave for November in Saskatchewan. This had the locals scoffing at our bundled clothing, snug sacks and heavy boots. But then they are not sitting for 10 hours straight every day in unheated blinds, so let them scoff; I am going to be warm.
Warm, however, doesn’t necessarily mean happy. I don’t mean to imply that I am unhappy, as happy is a relative term. I am hunting, not mowing my lawn, so in that context I am very happy. But when it comes to hunting styles, this is not what makes me most happy.
I am not a passive-approach kind of guy, and sitting on a stand all day is not my preferred hunting method. I am more of an action junky who likes to make things happen. I want to move, explore, spot-and-stalk, track, still-hunt and on these cold days do something—anything—to keep the blood flowing. For me, sitting still on a stand all day is much more of a challenge than climbing a steep mountain for goats or tracking a buck for miles in the snow. When it is cold, even by international standards, that challenge is compounded.
But if you hunt whitetails in Saskatchewan, odds are you will sit on a cold stand watching a bait pile. In most circumstances you will do that from “can’t see to can’t see,” which is how an Indian guide I once had in British Columbia described a dark-to-dark day.The bait piles are deer magnets and will attract whitetails from miles away and concentrate them in that location. Some will criticize this as non-sporting, but that’s simply how it’s done here. If you are going to hunt Saskatchewan you must adopt a “when in Rome” attitude and learn to accept this hunting style.
The plan is that sooner or later, a buck will be overcome with lust and try to grab a doe off the bait, or simply get hungry. If the hunter is alert, he shoots the buck and the guide’s legend grows larger. Sometimes it’s the monster we all lust after. But, typically it’s a younger, more impulsive buck. However, in Saskatchewan the deer grow big and even a modest buck is often the biggest whitetail a visiting hunter has ever seen. Thousands of hunters every year invade Saskatchewan and depend on this system to deliver a big whitetail buck. With high success rates on big antlered bucks, clearly it works. So, that’s how you hunt in Saskatchewan because what works doesn’t change, unless of course politicians decide to get involved.
For the guys who are good at sitting on a stand all day, like my friend and Nikon’s PR guru Jon LaCorte, this is the best path to trophy bucks. He loves to sit, watch and wait, and is often rewarded with a shipping bill to get a big set of antlers back to his New York home. This year was no exception, as Jon was the first of our group to connect. He took a 160-plus-class buck the third day, shattering the ice (which may or may not form at 32 degrees, depending on nationality).
Jon loves sitting on stand, but I do not. My body is geriatric in appearance, which hides the tyrannical toddler that is its true identity. When I try to sit still my body turns to its inner kid. It throws a tantrum; it wiggles and squirms, goes limp, wants a drink, is hungry, has to go to the bathroom and keeps moaning in a whiny voice “is it dark yet?” In short, my body, when ordered to sit still, is like a puppy with attention-deficit disorder.
But I love a challenge and that’s why I am here. The stubborn Irish in me says, “I can and will do this.” No pain, no gain, right? Like I said, it’s hunting, which is my passion in life, and way better than yard work, which is not. But it “ain’t easy.”
