Veteran Archer Shoots His Buck After Long Wait

Steve Mitchell, perched on an aluminum stand 20 feet above the ground, sat patiently and, as usual, a little uncomfortably, for more than 2 hours scanning the place he knew was the home of a whitetail buck that carried massive antlers.

It was Dec. 7, Pearl Harbor Day. The sky was overcast, the temperature just above freezing and weather forecasters had predicted snow would fall that evening.

Time was running out for the 47-year-old archer to have a chance to take the furtive, wary buck he’d seen and hunted several times since the fall of 1996. The late archery season would end a week later.

“I began to wonder whether I had chosen the wrong spot to hunt,” he said.

Then out of the trees walked the buck of his dreams. Mitchell is one of the Northwest’s most successful archers. He has killed nine whitetail bucks, two of which wore record-class antlers, nine out of the previous 10 years.

Few other archers can boast that kind of record.

He’s a successful archer because he knows the habits of the animals he hunts, finds the homes of big bucks, studies the terrain, determines prevailing wind conditions and decides where he should put up a tree stand and a scent rag. He also is a master archer.

Mitchell saw the buck of his dreams for the first time during the early 1996 archery season. He was carrying an tree stand on his back and intended to set it up.

“He was bedded down as I approached his bedroom,” Mitchell said. “He stood up, looked at me for a few seconds and then trotted off. I could see that he was a fully mature 5x5 buck. (five points on each side) I saw him two more times that September, but he was out of my range.”

The ice storm that paralyzed northeastern Washington late that fall and winter caused nearly all deer to move out of the area Mitchell hunted.

Not knowing where the buck had moved, Mitchell hunted a different area during the late archery season. He shot a four-point buck from a tree stand.

When the early 1997 season opened, he was back in the big buck’s home country in north Spokane County.

“I saw him twice,” he said. “The first time, I saw him through a spotting scope. He was a quarter of a mile from me. I saw him again with three other bucks in the lights of my pickup just as I was leaving the hunting area after shooting time. I hunted three or four more times in September, but didn’t see him.”

His son, Erik, 20, and other hunters prowled through the buck’s territory during the rifle season, but they never saw him.

Meanwhile, Mitchell had attached an aluminum stand to a tree facing the buck’s bedroom. Surrounded by small trees and brush, the buck could feel safe. By Dec. 7, the stand had been in place for a month.

Like many other serious archers, Mitchell has several of the lightweight stands. When he finds scrapes, deer droppings and other sign that a buck is living in the area, he sometimes puts one up and leaves it until he is ready to hunt. He never hunts the same spot from a tree stand more than three times.

This time, he didn’t start hunting the dream buck until 1 p.m. Before climbing into the tree where he had attached his stand, he squirted 10 to 20 drops of doe urine taken during estrus on a “scent rag” and hung it where he could see it. A scent rag is meant to cover a hunter’s scent and to attract a rutting buck.

Finally, after waiting for more than 2 hours, the big buck suddenly appeared. Then things happened fast. Mitchell blew softly on his grunt tube, mimicking a buck’s grunt. The buck headed for the noise and circled around the tree where Mitchell waited.

He drew the string of his High County compound bow.

“Because I was 20 feet over him, he didn’t pick up my scent,” he said. “He got wind of the scent rag and headed for it, his head high.”

Mitchell’s arrow went through the buck and dropped to the ground. Mortally wounded, the buck bolted and then collapsed about 70 yards away.

The 6- to 7-year-old buck had five points on one side and six on the other. Mitchell had the head mounted by Scott Brewer of Spokane, operator of Custom Wildlife Art. The Pope & Young Club’s gross score was 167, the net score 161-3/8, making it the second-largest whitetail buck taken by a Washington archer.

Mitchell recently received Pope & Young’s Glenn St. Charles award in Seattle.

Meanwhile, he’s already dreaming of a bigger buck. He’s spending weekends scouting possible hunting sites, even though he knows the big bucks shed last year’s antlers and are starting to grow new racks.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo

MEMO: You can contact Fenton Roskelley by voice mail at 459-5577, extension 3814.

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Fenton Roskelley The Spokesman-Review