I told you this past September that wildlife officials in the Peace Region of British Columbia extended the general 2007 deer hunting season by 10 days in a number of management units near, and south of, Ft. Saint John. This area offers some of the best mule deer and whitetail hunting in BC. To be sure, most deer hunters wouldn’t include this Canadian province on their list of top deer-hunting destinations, but that would be a mistake, as BC is shaping up as one of the real sleeper areas for outsized whitetails.
Indeed, the area we are talking about here produces as many, perhaps even more, whitetail trophies per hunter (or per square mile, or any other measurement you want to use) as Kansas, Saskatchewan or any of the other more famous free-range trophy spots. As evidence of the trophy quality, here are a few scores of some bucks that I heard were taken this past season: three mule deer scoring 240, 204 and 198 points; a whitetail scoring over 200 and another one scoring 177, along with several others in that range. These were killed by locals during the general season in a relatively small area.
The very biggest deer in this region live in the bush country and in breaks along the rivers surrounding the agricultural lands. They leave these sanctuaries to find does during the rut. Later, it is deep snow and lack of feed that pushes them out of the bush. That’s why this new extended season allowing hunting through November 30 piqued my interest so much: It offers hunters a chance to go afield precisely when conditions should be pushing trophy bucks out where they can be shot.....
