Like most of the people that purchase any bowhunting magazine, I find myself obsessed with pursuing the elusive white-tailed deer.  I have spent a large portion of my life planning, scouting, shooting, hunting and just plain breathing bowhunting deer.  When the season is over, there is always time to read about deer, scout deer and shoot my bows.  Pretty much the same thing I’m doing when the season is current.  I had harvested several whitetails over the years with my archery gear but never the megabuck that all hunters dream about.  With this whitetail obsession, I decided several years ago to “go where the big bucks live”.  I very well could have spent my money on hunting another species whether it be bear, pronghorn, elk or whatever.  But my mind was made up that if I was going to spend my hard-earned money it was going to be spent pursuing big whitetail antlers. 

The year was 1994 when I booked a hunt with an outfitter in the then blossoming whitetail mecca called Illinois.  I knew I was taking a chance because the outfitter had only been in business for two years.  I had several conversations with the outfitter before booking and asked all of the poignant questions that I could muster.  The outfitter reassured me that I had a very good chance of seeing book deer.  He never guaranteed that I would harvest a deer because after all this was a fair chase “hunt”.  I scheduled the hunt at the end of October beginning of November in hopes of partaking in some of the rutting activities.  To dash the boredom of driving ten hours alone, I coerced a friend into spending the cash and making the ten-hour drive with me to Illinois.  Needless to say, I was “pumped” over the prospect of possibly taking the buck of a lifetime.

Time passed quickly and before you could say “Pope and Young” I was on my way to my first guided hunt.  I left not only with a full tank of gas, but tons on enthusiasm and was packing one hell of a positive attitude.   I was going to hunt hard and reap the benefits of not only my persistence but also my chosen location for hunting.  I was one of only six hunters in camp for the entire week.  I hunted hard for five days and was rewarded with plenty of big buck sightings and even a shot at a book size animal that was ruined by one of those darn unseen twigs.  In my mind, the hunt was a success even though I went home with a truck bed minus antlers and venison.  I carried the vivid memories that made me certain that “I will be back”. 

The year was 1995 and I booked early for a repeat attempt at a monster buck with the same outfitter.  They had harvested several nice bucks in 94’ and the photos reassured me that once again my money and time (two valuable items) were going to be well spent.  A monkey wrench was thrown into my hunting operation when my then girlfriend and I decided to get married.  The only available date for the church and the reception hall was the day before I was supposed to leave for Illinois, October 28^th.  The wedding went off without a hitch and I now had a new wife and had talked her into joining me in Illinois for our honeymoon.  My wife had been well aware of my hunting obsession long before we got married and had long ago decided, “If you can’t beat them, join them”.  She had been shooting 3D for quite some time and had started bowhunting.  This hunt the outfitter had added a bunkhouse and there were around ten people in camp for the week but I was still figuring on a quality hunt.  I was not let down and ended up harvesting a decent buck but had seen plenty of trophy bucks including a few book-sized animals.  My wife had also seen big bucks and even drew her bow on a drop tine only to have the peep not turn.  She could barely talk she was so excited when we met at dark. 

Two boys later and several years of hunting around the house I was once again itching to journey off to the “land of giants”.  It wasn’t until this year that I gained permission from my better half to make the trip again.  This time I was going all out and booked during the peak of the rut hoping to catch a big buck at his most vulnerable.  To make things even better, my brother and only true hunting partner was going to join me on this trip.  To say I was excited was a large understatement.  I kept in contact with the outfitter through the years through the website and by making repeated phone calls just to see how his luck had been.  2000 had been a banner year for him and several Pope and Young animals had been harvested.  The pictures on the website were definitely the deciding factor that made me book for the third time.  My financial picture had improved over the years but the cost of the hunt had also “improved”.  My brother was not as fortunate as I was money wise, and had also just taken the plunge into marriage.  His financial picture was not as bright and he was definitely going to be spending money he did not have to go on this hunt.  Regardless, he was determined that he was going no matter what (another whitetail addict).  I called the outfitter a couple of weeks before the deer season to see what kind of bucks he had tied up for me upon my arrival.  The outfitter told me that because of the standing corn, they had not really seen any good bucks but were sure they were there.  I was a little disturbed by this because I new that even with standing corn in some of the areas, good scouting should have turned up at least a few bucks to brag about.  The outfitter also stated that he was still in the process of building a new lodge on his property and this had been occupying a huge portion of his time.  I inquired about the number of hunters he was running through the camp in five days and I have to admit I was taken aback by the volume of hunters.  My only question, “are you getting to big to offer a quality hunt”???  His answer was an emphatic “No, of course not”.

My brother and I arrived in camp on November 5^th.  The new lodge was a bowhunters dream with all the trimmings.  We paid the second half of our fee and had a roundtable discussion with the outfitter to go over all the logistics and answer any questions the hunters might have.  There were twelve hunters in my lodge and around ten more in the adjoining camp.  We awoke in the early morning and were full of anticipation for bagging a big buck.  The outfitter was taking us to a new lease that had not been hunting except by the landowner’s family for several years.  My brother and I would be hunting close and were able to communicate by radio.  After the outfitter walked my brother almost to his stand with tennis shoes on, my brother and I both managed to see bucks that morning.  We had both pulled an all day sit in the stands at the outfitters insistence and met at dark.  I normally don’t like sitting in the same stand two days in a row but it was decided that because of the buck sightings and the rut in full swing my brother and I would sit in the same stands for the next mornings hunt. 

This is where the hunt took a nosedive.  We saw a couple of does in the morning and decided to move to different stands that afternoon.  The weather was not cooperating and it had become warm during the day.  It almost seemed as if we were burdening the outfitter by asking to move to different locations.  I figured that after a day and a half in the stand and with as much scent prevention as possible, the spot was starting to stink.  My brother and I were disturbed by the attitude of the outfitter but understood the amount of pressure he was under to produce deer for his clients.  We were moved to stands on the edge of a field.  This was not a green field, food plot, standing corn or any other food source, but a plain old field.  I got in my stand only to find a knot in the tree the size of a football that conveniently fit in the small of my back when sitting, and in the crack of my backside when standing.  Obviously, not much time had been taken is setting this stand and I felt as though its purpose was holding a body not producing a shot on a deer.  My brother called my on the radio from his twelve foot high treestand to tell me about the fresh cigarette butts that were smashed into the bark of his tree.  Being a scent free fanatic, it was just killing him to know that someone had been smoking in the stand he was trying to kill a monster buck from and he still hadn’t recovered from the outfitters tennis shoes the morning before.  The outfitter also told us nobody had hunted there for at least three weeks yet the field was littered with tire tracks and the cigarette butts were as fresh as fresh.  We both saw the same three-point that we figured would score at least fourteen inches and we aptly nicknamed him the “Marlboro Buck”.  Even with the stands from that evening, I refused to loose my positive attitude and my trust for my outfitter. 

The following day was a turning point for my positive attitude.  The outfitter dropped my brother and me off at a farm forty-five minutes from camp.  Before dropping us at our location, he dropped off two other hunters.  The one hunter was going to be hunting out of the same tree that I had stunk up for a day and a half.  As the hunter was exiting the vehicle, the outfitter was explaining how he had just hung the stand the day before and how it was in a hot location.  As the hunter trudged off to his “fresh” stand, the outfitter asked me to lie to his paying client if he asked me about the stand.  I explained that if there was one thing I possessed, it was integrity.  The stands my brother and I sat in that morning were definitely not winners.  I was at least a whole ten feet off the ground.  At six feet three inches and two hundred and thirty pounds, I stuck out like the proverbial sore thumb.  My brother called me soon on the radio to tell me about the monster bovines that were circling under his stand in the middle of an occupied pasture.  His stand was also quite low.  I had seen a couple of does (that saw me in the tree) and a coyote after a couple of hours.  My brother called on the radio and we decided to get down and meet in the middle.  While walking to meet, we were both scouting to look for possible afternoon stands.  We both encountered tons of sign, sign that would have been noticed if the outfitter had actually scouted the area.  By walking a couple of hundred of yards into the woods we both had found areas we figured were much better areas to hang stands.  If you are thinking that we are novices that think we know more about hunting than the outfitter, you are wrong.  Between the two of us is 35 years of bowhunting experience with quite the success rate in a heavily hunted state.  Besides, the deer sign was obvious for even the biggest nimrod to read.  Here comes the amazing part, somehow the outfitter knew we had left his chosen stands (a mortal sin we had not been warned about) and he was livid.  We figure he had to have overheard our conversation on our radios somehow.  We returned to camp at lunchtime due to the high temperatures and were met with one hell of an attitude for lunch.  The outfitter demanded to know why we left our stands directing most of his anger towards my younger brother.  Mind you, several other hunters were in camp for lunch including the female cook.  At this point I began quite irritated but figured that calm heads would prevail.  The outfitter became quite loud and was way out of line when talking to a paying customer.  I figured that in my three visits I had put well over ten thousand dollars into his pocket and did not deserve that kind of treatment.  I also figured that even if my brother and I had paid him ten dollars we were still his “customers” and deserved his services and fair treatment.  Somehow, even after insulted, my brother kept his cool and I managed to stop myself from stomping a mudhole in the outfitter and walking it dry.  Offending ones family member is usually not a good idea in my book.

For the following two and a half days my brother and I became commuters as we traveled to another camp a half-hour away to hunt at the insistence of the outfitter.  How dare we get out of our poorly placed stands?  Here we were greeted by one of the outfitter’s guides and it was like a breath of fresh air.  He was genuinely one of the nicest people you ever wanted to meet (he also wore rubber boots).  After the next morning of seeing deer, my brother and I asked he guide to go to a spot that had not been hunted at all that year but he knew was capable of holding good bucks.  The guide pointed us in the direction of a parcel of woods smack in the middle of cut cornfields and we set our own stands for that evening’s hunt.  For the next day and a half we both saw Pope and Young and possibly Boone and Crockett size bucks from the parcel of woods from stands that we set ourselves.  No shots were taken but we both had experiences' that hunters dream about.  Having deer of that caliber in eyeshot and even bowshot made the hunt and confirmed the fact that deer of that size really do exist.

We left Illinois with mixed emotions.  I did my best to take the side of the outfitter and realized the enormous amount of pressure he must feel to harvest trophy animals.  I also understood that he had to cater to hunters of different caliber’s that ranged from novice to hardcore whitetail enthusiast.  I also realized that he had stands set for minimal impact on the deer activity and also that some clients did not care to walk far to get to them.  Still, the emotions ranged from disgust to elation.  I felt disgust for the lack of preparation by the outfitter, being asked to lie to another hunter, and a lack of respect by the outfitter for his clients.  Leaving our stands and scouting on what we thought was a remote farm did not seem like such a horrible thing to me.  After all, I paid a substantial amount of money to make that decision.  I also felt disgust because my brother felt he had spent the little money he had only to be rebuked by the outfitter.  Elation was felt in the fact that we were doing what we loved to do, hunt deer.  I was also elated in the fact that we had had the opportunity to share quality time as brothers and hunting partners and elation in the fact that we had seen deer that are usually only seen on TV or in magazines.  It was definitely a learning experience.  Will I return for a fourth investment of time and money…I don’t think so.