When Stephan White Sr. walked into the Lake Parlin Lodge in Jackman, Maine on Wednesday, the room erupted.
“It was like a surprise birthday party,” says White. “Everybody was sort of pulling for me. I didn’t really want that, but [also] I did. I thought it was great. It was very encouraging.”
This celebration was long overdue: After hunting for 36 years, the 61-year-old had just tagged his first deer. And not just any deer, either. White had tracked a big buck for nearly two miles in the snowy wilderness of Maine’s North Woods before shooting, trailing, and dressing it on a solo hunt.
“It was important to me to track it. That’s what I wanted to do. I had invitations to go sit on a food plot, in a blind. And on bad days, I will sit,” says White, who occasionally posts up on a stump or a fallen tree. “But this is how I wanted to do it.”
Tracking deer in the North Woods of Maine is notoriously difficult. Deer densities there are as low as one to five deer per square mile. In 2024, for example, just 41 deer were harvested around the town of Jackman; the statewide harvest was just over 42,000 deer. Usually, hunters must set out on foot to have even a chance at seeing deer. Last year on Maine’s opening day, White tracked and missed a buck — the first deer he’d ever taken a shot at. It turned out to be the only buck he would see the entire season.
“It was the first time I saw a buck up here that wasn’t on a pole,” says White.
This year, everyone told him, would be his year. But that was a phrase White had been hearing for decades.
Four Decades of Deer Hunting
As a kid growing up in the Boston suburbs, White didn’t hunt. It wasn’t until he met his wife at college, in Vermont, that he started. His now father-in-law and his wife’s five brothers-in-law welcomed him to deer camp. They also took him duck and grouse hunting.
“It was funny, I had such little outdoor experience that they were more than eager to teach me and take me out into the woods. And I was more than willing to learn, because I just loved it.”
White’s enthusiasm for nature — the woods, the birds, the calm — would carry him through years of unsuccessful sits.
“Everything is blocked-up in these postage-stamp lots,” says White of the challenges of deer hunting in Vermont. “It seemed like everything was posted. We found 50- and 60-acre parcels, and my brothers-in-law would have permission and they’d set me up on a spot. Some days we’d just hunt all day and sit. And we sat, and sat, and sat.”
Those long sits ultimately led White to Maine, where the deer hunting isn’t necessarily easier, but it is more active. One day White was carving decoys in his woodshed and listening to an episode of the Big Woods Podcast with Hal Blood, a legendary Maine deer tracker. Hearing seasoned hunters describe the woodsmanship and tracking skills required to deer hunt was nothing short of “amazing.” So when the hosts mentioned they were accepting guided clients for the first time, White called and booked on the spot.
That was six years ago. After guide Joe Kruse showed him the ropes, White returned to the lodge each year and began hunting by himself on vast tracts of publicly-accessible land owned by a paper company.
“It’s grueling and it’s not for the faint hearted,” says White of tracking deer. “If you think you’re in shape, it’s [still] a whole different world. My biggest challenge is my comfort zone in the woods, and not getting turned around. You’ll rely on electronics but they don’t always work, so you have to have an idea of how to get around. I’ve slowly but surely expanded the distance I’ll hunt, the more comfortable I get. There aren’t a lot of deer. You get on a track and you go. You could be two to three miles away from your car by the time the day is over, and you may never have caught up to that deer.”
Tracking a Big Woods Buck
This season had been another tough one. White tried hunting a few spots but kept bumping into other trucks. On Nov. 12, however, Kruse told him over breakfast at the lodge that “today was a perfect day” to go find a track. There was fresh snow on the ground — a little less than an inch, but just enough to track a deer.
So White did just that. He was walking down a logging road in the early-morning dark when he cut a track. The prints were not in a straight line, but side-by-side in the road, which suggested a buck. So White followed them into the woods.
“If you don’t like the process, don’t do it. I love every minute of it,” says White. “I was going through fields and then pine groves and then firs, then hardwoods. The deer even crossed a stream. It was everything you wanted in a deer hunt.”
At one point a doe appeared to join the buck and the tracks muddled, puzzling White. Then they split up. A Yogi Berra quip popped into White’s head: “If you come to a fork in the road, take it.” White eventually decided the tracks on the left looked a bit fresher, and followed those.
As he walked, White remembered the bits of advice he’d picked up from other hunters at the lodge. Watch the woods too much and you might lose your track. Stare at the ground too long and you might miss a deer.
“I was on the track and I just picked my head up, and there was a buck standing at thirty five yards, his head above these whippets,” says White, using a Hal Blood-ism for saplings.
The buck lowered its head out of sight, and White pulled out his grunt tube and produced a wheeze — the tube was clogged with snow.
“I finally got a good tone out of it and this doe popped her head out of the woods.”
The doe snorted at him and disappeared. White grunted again, and this time, the buck raised his head — and started forward.
“It was an amazing feeling being there with this animal by myself in the middle of nowhere. I can’t explain it. People said to me that they can’t explain it, and now I know why.”
“It was one of the most amazing things. I picked my gun up, as calm as a cucumber. I wasn’t shaking. I wasn’t nervous. And he was walking right to me. I put the crosshairs right on his chest, and I shot.”
The buck tore off into the woods, seemingly uninjured. White was sure he’d hit it.
“I was shocked that the thing ran, but I started looking for hair and blood,” says White. Eventually he found hair, and let Kruse know with a Garmin InReach message. As White expanded his search into a thick, brushy area, he discovered a few drops of blood.
“I said, ‘Well, I’ve got blood, I’ve got a track, and I’ve got all day.’”
But after just 10 more steps, White walked up on his first deer — a beautiful six-by-six buck with busted brow tines, just lying on the ground in front of him.
“I cried and I laughed. And I laughed and I cried. And I pumped my fist. It was an amazing feeling being there with this animal by myself in the middle of nowhere. I can’t explain it. People said to me that they can’t explain it, and now I know why. It was exhilarating. I don’t know how long I stood there.”
Field Lessons
Kruse was off tracking his own deer. So, at last, White got down to field dressing — something he’d witnessed other hunters do just twice in his life, and years before.
Normally, White carries two field guides: one on how to survive in the woods, and another on how to gut a deer. Recently he’d pared down his gear to just a fanny pack, and taken a gamble. He had ditched the survival guide and kept the field-dressing booklet.
“Here I am, sixty one years old and reading this thing,” says White. “You can’t get YouTube out here.”
He dutifully followed the instructions and, as Kruse later told him, did a great job. (“His approval of my field dressing was really important to me.”) White had begun dragging the buck out — a tall order for a buck that weighed 177 pounds dressed — when Kruse, who had lost his track, came to find him.
“You absolutely want to share it with somebody,” says White of his hunt. “I spent so much time with [Kruse] in the woods when he was my guide, and he was really psyched because he really wanted me to get a deer.”
Kruse insisted on taking traditional photos of White with his buck, and then they dragged it the rest of the way to the truck.
The most cynical hunters could (and have, in the comments on the video of White’s warm reception at the lodge) ask why White stuck with deer hunting for so long without success. The answer is simple.
“You finally figure out what makes you happy in life. Being outside in the woods makes me happy.”
“I like being outside. I like the tradition. The anticipation. The close encounters. There are certain things I associate with hunting. It became a thing with my family. It made me stick with it. It almost became a running joke, you know, wait until next year, or this is your day, or this is your year. I just thoroughly enjoy being in the woods. I told my son, who’s twenty seven next month, I said ‘You finally figure out what makes you happy in life. Being outside in the woods makes me happy.’ I just love it.”
If it had been a grind, says White, he wouldn’t have continued deer hunting. The community he’s found through deer hunting, both with his in-laws and among the deer trackers he’s met in Maine in the last six years, are priceless.
“My mother-in-law passed away four years ago to the day I shot the deer. I went to her house every year to deer hunt, and she kept me going. She’d make me poached eggs every morning, she’d pack my lunch, and she’d send me out saying, ‘This is the day.’ I’d hunt all day, and she’d be waiting at the window for me to come back. She’d have a pot roast waiting. Then we’d get up and do it again the next day. And when the season ended, she’d say, ‘I hope you’re coming back to deer camp next year.’ And I did. I did it every year.”
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