Bighorn Whitetails

With more than a dozen peaks reaching beyond 12,000 feet in elevation, and a few ascending above 13,000, the Bighorn Mountains rise from the Wyoming prairie just northwest of Casper before petering out along the Bighorn River across the state line south of Billings, Montana. To disinterested passers-by, the Bighorns may appear to have been peeled from the Rockies like a torn toenail.

- Lee J Hoots

With great admiration for the snow-capped peaks of the West and the hardy souls that long ago eked out existence in and around them, I view this off shoot of the Rockies a little differently. Heaved fourth from the earth some 70 million years ago, according to geologists, satellite images reveal a near perfect crescent – like that of a painted warrior’s bow braced with twisted sinew and thrusting eastward in defiance of ever-approaching colonization.

More relevant here, however, is that the foothills of the Bighorns are home to a sizable population of western whitetails. Interstate 25 cuts due north from Casper, following the mountains’ eastern skirt – rolling foothills to the west and east, covered in grass pastures and pockets or long ridges of sage – and joins with I-90 at Buffalo before passing through Sheridan on its way into Montana. These routes are well known to hunters, some heading into public land within the Bighorns after elk and mule deer and occasionally moose. For good reason, pronghorn hunters are drawn to the region too, but in the last 20 years or so the grasslands flanking the Bighorns have become increasingly well known for good white-tailed deer hunting.

In some circles it is a sore subject, but as is true in most places in the U.S., the best whitetail hunting near Sheridan is generally found on private ground, and access is traded for cash. A Florida resident who has spent too much time earning a living and not enough time hunting since leaving the family farm in South Dakota as a young man, my uncle Richard knew this, as did his son Brian and son-in-law Neil, who also hail from Florida.