The Blanchardville Buck
By Jordan Senf
Many of the people in Wisconsin don’t know how great their state really is. We are all proud of being Badgers and Packer Fans and all that. But I suspect that too many Wisconsinites do not appreciate the diverse geography that makes up our state. For example, I live in a virtual ocean of cornfields. Not far to the north a plethora of pine trees. But one of my favorite parts of the state is in Blanchardville Wisconsin, in Iowa County.
One of the things that I like about going down there is to go hunting. I like going to Blanchardville because Blanchardville is hilly and I like to hunt in those kinds of environments. Where I live, people tend to shoot deer as the move along fence lines between cornfields. We really enjoy the feeling of privacy that the bigger woods gives us. We sit in a tree stand right at the bottom of the valley. But we still have trees surrounding us from the back and front. Then for about twenty-yards it is wide open and there aren’t any trees then it goes up pretty steep. On the top of the valley there is an alfalfa field where some of the deer come and eat then come walking down a path that they made straight down the valley right in front of my stand.
This past deer season we were getting ready to go down to my grandparents’ house in Blanchardville to go hunting. I had just sighted in my .243 bolt action the week before and was psyched to go and hopefully get a shot a big deer. My dad and I got to my grandparents’ house on a Friday at about nine o’clock. So when we got all our stuff in the house we stayed up for another half an hour and then went to bed.
The next morning my dad came into the room I was sleeping in and turned the light on and said,” Get up we are going to go and try to get a big buck.” It took me a little to wake up but when I did, I was ready to go and get in the tree stand. One of the great things about hunting at my grandparents’ house is, we can just walk out the door and we are in our stand in ten minutes. We left around 5:15 and had to get inside the pasture gate without letting the cows inside out. It took us about 10 minutes because a couple of them were standing in front of the gate.
We were sitting in the stand at 5:30. We thought that it was going to be a long day because that’s how the previous years had been. We were sitting in the stand for about an hour. It was just getting light about 6:30. The biggest deer I had ever saw on the property came walking down the valley strait across towards my stand. It was a twelve pointer. I was so excited and was hoping that he stayed walking in the clear where I could get a shot off at him. He did, I had my scope on him the entire time. Then when he stopped and looked around I shot him. He ran for about fifteen yards and then fell in the trees.
I really wanted to jump down out of the stand and go running towards the deer, but I knew that I should wait about a half an hour to make sure that he was down. That was the longest thirty minutes of my life it seemed like. When I could finally go see my deer I was freaking out because that was the biggest deer I had ever shot. When it was all over I found out that it scored a 138. Too bad that I wasn’t in the local deer hunting contest.
I hope that others take advantage of the great outdoors of Wisconsin. Hunting is not only about getting the big deer but it is also about hanging out with family. It is also for making memories and keeping a family hunting tradition alive.