One cold Prairie winter. Two special draw licences for mule deer. Three hunters. Seven days. It would be a lesson in deer hunting the deep-freeze none would forget

The weather report didn’t look good for our deer hunt in Alberta’s Battle River breaks. A heavy snowfall warning was in effect. Temperatures were in the -20 to -30 degrees Celsius range, and wind chills were taking that further down to about -45 degrees Celsius. It was a regular Prairie blizzard for the first couple of days.

The small-town service station attendant waited patiently as I added a couple of containers of gas line antifreeze before he filled my tank. It was already dark and snowing heavily.

“Yep,” he said, “we’ve had over two feet of snow already, and it looks like we’re in for another half-a-foot tonight.” A few minutes later, we checked into the one and only local hotel. Our hunting partner, Chris Weintz, was not in a good mood. He’d come down earlier to line up some access and had to make a deposit on our room for the whole week or have it forfeited. To make matters worse, there was no refund if we checked out early. It looked like they had us over a barrel — we were here for the week, regardless of the rotten weather. My brother, Jim, and I sat down to take stock of matters and listen to Chris’ scouting report. Everything had worked out fine regarding access; we had permission to hunt on several ranches that looked promising. At least that was positive. The weather, however, had me worried.

Story & Photos by Duane Radford