I am back from the Wisconsin hunt, and pretty much the only thing I have to show for my efforts is a few more pounds lost, an increased knowledge of scouting techniques and I'm a walking map of the Tiffany Wildlife area in western Wisconsin.

We arrived there about lunch time last Monday, and were greeted by gale force winds and an advancing cold front. While the cold was a good thing for the hunt, the wind doesn't do archery hunters many favors. (Or firearms hunters for that matter.) So we decided to use the remaining sunlight to scout and pick out a few stand locations for later in the week.

We found heavily used trails, droppings, big and small rubs and scrapes galore. The latter two were made by some heavy bodied, tall tined bucks. The depth and size of the hoof prints, and the sizes of some of the trees that were shredded were the telltale signs.

After 18 hours of riding in the car, this was like a mega-dose of caffeine I can tell you. We all perked up at the thoughts of seeing a monster buck. This is what Wisconsin hunting is all about I remember thinking.

We walked the surrounding 5 miles, and found more likely stand locations than one could hunt in a month of Sundays. The area is so vast that narrowing down the best possible hunting locations was a chore.

The best friend we had at this point was the satellite / topographical map my buddies over at mytopo.com had sent to me. It helped us find the natural elevation funnels, while our scouting pinpointed other man made and natural contours. (felled trees and decades old logging roads) At the end of the day, my handy pedometer registered 47,384 steps taken, and the odometer read 1246 miles driven. Needless to say, the old eye lids were getting droopy.

We each settled on a main and secondary stand location for the forecast wind direction on Tuesday, and hit the rack.

As a side note here, the accommodations that the Dioceses of Lacrosse provided at their Round Hill camp are first class all the way. The cabin is a deer hunter's dream lodge. The church land is nestled in the heart of tens of thousands of public hunting acres, and is bordered just about everywhere by corn fields. If there is a more ideal location for deer in this area, I've never seen it. The old growth forest is dominated by trees that would provide a bounty of food for the deer population all by itself, but add in the corn, and you have deer nirvana.

But it was that nirvana that proved to be our downfall.

You see, parts of Wisconsin are labeled as "Earn a Buck" areas. You have to harvest an antlerless deer before you can harvest a buck. On the surface, this seemed like no big deal, but in practice, it proved to be a hurdle that none of my hunting party was able to overcome.

Reflecting back on it now, I can see the error of our ways, but I think it is a mistake that most any hunter I know would make. Here in the Heart of Dixie, for a good part of my hunting life, we let the does walk. Today, we have learned the folly of those old ways, and now encourage the harvesting of does. But here, you do not have to "hunt" for does. The harvesting of a doe is 99.9 out of one hundred times the consequence of hunting for a buck. They are just there and active.

But in Wisconsin, does are different. With hunters and bucks actively seeking them, for different reasons, the does were laying low in daylight hours. They were hiding from the bucks mostly I think, but that also meant that they were hiding from us.

Over the week we patterned the does to be eating in the uncut corn fields at night, and then bedding down before dawn, and lying all day until the next night. Most experts agree that deer need to feed every 6 hours, and they will, unless pressure forces them to go longer. Under normal circumstances, that means you can sit in the stand all day and wait them out, but not here. High fructose be damned!!!

So our mistake was to sit in stand and wait for the does. By the time we had figured out that the does were sitting still throughout the day, we only had 1 morning and 2 afternoon hunts left. Even still, had we figured out all of the dynamics of this area a little earlier, we just did not have enough man power to foster a proper deer drive. The area is just too vast.

We did see some bodacious bucks though. We walked into some VERY desolate areas that even the locals don't tread into, and the monsters were there. One very mature main frame eight with three points coming off the back, and one younger perfect 10 point come to mind. Both of these were less than 20 yards from my stand and oblivious to my presence. Either could have easily been harvested had I been able to do my part.

Just think what could have happened. But that is what keeps us going back to the deer woods, right?

One last point. A HUGE thanks needs to be extended to Dr. Michele Olsen and Ph.D. candidate Mike Esco at AUM. Without their help I could never have gotten into the kind of shape needed for this hunt. They have helped me make some beneficial life decisions, and I am indebted to both of them. You will hear more from me and them here in the future.