This article was first published in the December 2025/January 2026 issue of North American Whitetail magazine.
Every deer hunter worth his doe pee knows to be on stand first thing in the morning and last thing in the afternoon. Whitetail can be hunted at other times, of course. The rut makes bucks do crazy things, even in broad daylight. But devoted deer hunters make sure they are ready and waiting when the sun wakes up in the morning and when it slips off to bed at dark. That’s because, in the deer woods, magic is made in the shadows.
I have seen bucks step out of lengthening shadows like they just stepped out of the next room. Once, the tree branch that I’d been staring at all morning turned out to be the main beam and brow tine of my target buck. I had my binocular trained on the same shadowed gap in the tree line since the sun came up, a summer scouting trip having shown me that the trail that ran through it transported deer from their buffet tables to their bedrooms. I can’t tell you how shocked I was when the tree branch I’d been staring at all morning suddenly tilted backwards to scratch an itch. It was akin to seeing a stone gargoyle raise his hand and wave at me from his perch atop a building.
It wound up being more reflection than shadow, I suppose, but a few years back I was sitting in a ladder stand when I spotted what looked to be a buck floating belly up in a small pond. As it was getting dark and the water was wavering, I just assumed that my eyes were playing tricks on me. Right up until the image in the pool stomped its hoof. Turns out, what I thought was either a dead deer or a trick of the rippling water and diminishing light was actually the reflection of a nice buck. Judging by the way he blew at me and then hightailed it out of the county, the buck must have taken personally the perceived slight of my mistaking his identity.
The biggest buck I’ve ever seen on the hoof materialized out of thin air, as mature bucks so often do. One minute he wasn’t there and the next minute he was, conjured from some combination of a deer hunter’s dreams and prayers. The rising sun had thrown the timber into sharp relief that morning, every tree’s trunk as bright as the shadow it cast was dark. A doe emerged from those shadows first and the buck was right behind her. I let him walk all the way into the sunlight and cast a shadow of his own before I stopped him and squeezed the trigger.
I was admiring that buck’s shoulder mount last week and replaying in my mind the hunt that had hung it there when something magical happened. As the sun sank into the west, it sent its last beams of light through the leaded panes of my front door. When it did, it brought my best buck back to life. The deer on my wall casts a long shadow. He has since the moment I laid eyes on him. As I watched that shadow grow in the falling light, his silhouette swelling and the tendrils of his brow tines trailing along the wall, I could have sworn that I saw the buck’s ear twitch. I shifted my eyes then from shadow to substance, and I’m almost sure that I saw his nostrils flare. There was a sparkle in the buck’s eye that I’d never noticed before. It didn’t spook me, though. Nothing like that. No, it just reminded me of what I’ve long known to be true; when it comes to deer hunting, the magic is made in the shadows.
Wright Outdoors 