For the next four days, I learn a disheartening lesson from Midwestern weather and hard-pressed whitetails. Mike shows up promptly the next morning--as does a persistent, dismal downpour. We decide to go out, at least so I can get a feel for the terrain. Topping a steep rise, Mike pauses and points to a yonder knoll that he tells me is a prime bedding spot for bucks. As we close in on the hump, a wide-racked deer with tall, heavy tines bursts from cover. Ready to shoot, I instinctively swing the bead on the fleeing animal.

Had "he" been a "she" I might have triggered the rifle. But I can’t fire. We’re in a CWD management zone where wildlife managers are attempting to minimize disease transmission by drastically reducing deer numbers. Regulations require that an antlerless deer must be killed before a buck is taken. Then an "Earn a Buck" tag is issued for each antlerless animal killed. With no such tag in hand, I can’t shoot the buck.

Conditions remain awful the rest of the day. The rain never lets up and the deer are obviously snuggled down in heavy cover. I catch a fleeting glimpse of a doe at the edge of an abandoned field late that evening, but have no opportunity to shoot.

The next morning I decide to try a new area. A short drive takes me to Devil’s Lake State Park, most of which is open to hunting. Although the rain has stopped, a fierce wind is now howling, making it just as miserable as the previous day.

Being a Saturday, I figure locals will be pushing the woods. Well before dawn, I pull the pickup from the highway, take a GPS reading and head to a distant ridge that I surmise deer might use as an escape route.

Standing on a hillside, scanning the open hardwoods, I estimate I’ve kept an hour’s vigil since dawn and start mulling my next move. Stay put, I quickly conclude as I spy a deer picking its way along the far side of a steep ravine. Please, oh please, be a doe.

The buck, a promising young eight-point, pauses when I grunt--brown, brash and broadside at 150 yards. How very odd to be ruing the sight of antlers, hoping instead for a "slick head," as Mike referred to the fawn-rearing members of the species. Late afternoon yields another shooting opportunity, again at a buck. What will it take to find a doe?

A change of weather might help. It does--change--not help. The next morning I awaken to a brisk wind and plummeting temperatures. Yesterday’s soggy leaves are now crusted in ice. My "still-hunting" sounds like a gorilla playing basketball on a court of corn flakes.

Sometime around noon, it strikes me that this hunt is going awry. "I’ll get a doe in the first day or two," I’d confidently told my wife before leaving home in Montana, "then I’ll hold out for a big buck."

Somewhere, someone was laughing. The hotshot from out West can’t even bag a Midwestern doe. How will he explain that to his friends or the readers of the story he intends to write about the hunt? How will he handle his own perceived failure if he slinks home sans Wisconsin whopper?