Another Working Deer Camp in the Books Bill Cooper for 11-22-19

I traveled to Shannon County, Missouri for deer season 2019, where I participated in the third annual Driftwood Acres deer hunting camp. Seven of us gathered at Brandon Butler’s cabin on remote cabin. A menagerie of outdoor media folks and friends arrived from as far away as California, Indiana and Tennessee. Sam Ayres, a relatively new California based hunter and social media expert, made his first trip to the Ozarks and fell in love with it. Kevin Orthman, the executive director of the Professional Outdoor Media Association hailed from Nashville, Tennessee, while “Paddle” Don Cranfill of SmallWaterJournal.fish and fireman Eric Hoskins came in from Indiana. Myself and Brandon Butler, public relations director for Roeslein Alternative Energy, and “Shags” McLeon, of the KCMQ Morning Shags Show, out of Columbia, represented Missouri. Butler had peeked everyone’s interest in joining in on the fun by sending all of us trail camera photos of three monster bucks coming in to his place, plus a very large black bear. He did, however, take the third largest buck, a beautiful 145-inch buck with his bow the week before we arrived for camp. We all met on Friday afternoon at Butler’s rustic cabin, which most of us had worked on at one time or another. The cabin is decorated with many outdoor heirlooms which have been passed down through Butler’s family. His granddaughter’s mule deer and antelope mounts hang over the fire place, as well as a wide variety of nostalgic items donated from friends. My old Big Bertha frying pan, with a 3-foot handle, hangs on the front porch. The place is a dream come true for Butler, and certainly a cabin that every outdoorsman aspires to duplicate. Every imaginable type of outdoor adventure stories flowed around the cabin on Friday evening g as we dined on homemade chicken noodle soup, my wife, Dian had prepared for us. We gravitated to a huge fire ring of rocks out in the front yard of the cabin to while away the evening telling stories about elk hunts in the Rockies, southern style duck hunts, bear hunts in Canada, tarpon in the Yucatan, and the grandeur of floating and camping on Ozark streams. The evening fire grew dim as group members made last minute preparations for the opening day of the Missouri firearms deer season the next morning. A band of coyotes howled far away. A barred owl sounded off up the creek, and as the last of us gave up the fire, someone noted the yodels of running hounds far out in the hills. Little did we know how the dogs would affect our deer hunting efforts over the next few days. Phone alarms started going off early the next morning. A jolly atmosphere formed as the excitement of our hunting party hit a crescendo. Electricity crackled in voices as everyone bade one another good luck and headed out into the chilly darkness to their respective deer stands. I hauled a crew to their stands in a CanAm Defender HD10 6x6 UTV, provided to us by Cowtown USA in Cuba, Missouri. The 6-wheeled vehicle proved remarkable in some of the roughest terrain in the Ozarks. It traversed steep hills, even deeper ravines, logs over trails, streams and muddy bottoms with ease. Group members selected hard to get to locations deep in the hardwood covered ridges and ravines of public lands near the cabin. They chose remote locations knowing I could get them there in the CanAm. “Shags” and Ayres climbed out at Shags’s favorite spot deep in the wilderness. He had taken two good bucks in as many years, and hoped to share his good luck with Sam. They hunted a half mile apart on separate ridge lines that pitched off into steep sided valleys. Paddle Don and I continued another two miles into the 75,000 acre continuous block of hardwood ridges. We began our hike into our selected spots. Don would hunt an east-west ridge, while I would hunt a north-south ridge. We had scouted our respective ridges the previous day and founds lots of rubs and scrapes and other deer sign. We had high hopes of killing a buck as we bade each other farewell and faded into the darkness. Daylight was still an hour away when I settled into next to a massive white oak tree 75 yards above a bench that traversed the face of the ridge. It appeared to be a deer highway. Two hours later nothing had materialized, so I made a move across a saddle and into another hollow. By that time, numerous shots had rang out though the hills, I silently hoped some of my buddies had scored. I caught movement and came to a stop. Two does appeared. I settled the crosshairs of my scope just behind the shoulder of the largest doe and fired. The way she ran off, I knew she had not been hit. It had been an easy 90-yard shit, but upon investigation, I discovered I had hit a sapling, which deflected the bullet. At the end of the first day, no one in camp had killed a deer. However, almost everyone reported dogs with tracking collars that were running deer. Apparently there was a well orchestrated deer dog hunting campaign going on, which is illegal. The end result was foiled deer hunts for most of us. Shags did manage to nail a very good buck on the second morning, making it three for three for his honey-hole deer hunting spot. However, no one went home empty handed. Some recorded podcasts, others wrote articles, and I landed a new job writing for one of the larger fishing tackle companies, thanks to Kevin Orthman. We deemed our camp a success and vowed to return in 2020.