The big woods of Saskatchewan's "fringe" forest scream, "Big bucks!" Deer sign is everywhere.

AFTER SETTLING IN AT Kent Wolowski's RockRidge Outfitting lodge the previous evening, I had a choice to make: Would I dress in all white, yellow, blaze orange, or red? Gun season would open the next morning, and Saskatchewan law dictated that I wear one of the aforementioned colors. Camouflage would be illegal.

Reluctantly, I chose red, thinking it would be the least conspicuous. While that probably was true, I sure didn't feel inconspicuous as I climbed into my stand the first morning of the hunt. And one look at video cameraman/editor Josh Viste, who was also dressed in red from head to toe, reinforced that feeling. Sitting in a stand near me, Josh looked like a giant tomato waiting to be picked off the vine. Since I'm bigger than Josh, I must have looked twice as goofy.

This color thing was probably more of an issue for me than for any deer, but it took some getting used to. Well, actually, I never did get used to it, because my entire body seemed to glow. I was dressed more for loading toys into a sleigh and cracking the whip over a nervous team of caribou than for bowhunting. I could only hope the Canadian bucks were colorblind.

Okay, I'm whining, but some aspects of this hunt were foreign to me and not just the dress code. The hunting tactics proved to be as well. To relax and enjoy the hunt, I had to accept the time-proven saying, "When in Rome..."

Ah, but I'm jumping ahead. Let's begin at the beginning.

Cameraman Josh Viste and I looked like ripe tomatoes in a tree as we waited for action.

OUR INITIAL HUNT STRATEGY was simple: Josh and I would sit in treestands while Rob Nye, a well-known Canadian outfitter, guide, and outdoor writer, worked his deer calls and rattling antlers at ground level.

The approach seemed flawless. The Carrot River area lies at the edge of Saskatchewan's agriculture lands. Nonresidents are not allowed to hunt on the ag lands, so we were hunting the fringe where farmlands meet forest, an ideal mix of large, open fields surrounding dense patches of spruce, pine, and poplar. The region is known for its huge whitetails, and we found deer sign everywhere.

To clinch the deal, we were there in early November, prime time for rattling. Unfortunately, that's where we hit a flaw. Temperatures were 20 to 30 degrees above normal, and as every whitetail hunter knows, warm weather is a plague that suppresses daytime deer activity. Most of North America had a severe outbreak in the fall of 2005, and we were at the core of it.

Continued -- click on page link below.