Editor’s Note: “I've been wearing Mossy Oak since I was a little girl,” says Nicole Reeve, co-host of the TV show “Driven with Pat and Nicole” on the Outdoor Channel. An official member of the Mossy Oak Pro Staff for 8 years, Nicole’s an admitted adrenaline junkie. “This spring I decided I would take a brown bear with my bow. For many years, I had wanted to hunt a brown bear. I thought there would be a huge adrenaline rush when I got in close to a dangerous animal like a brown bear. I like the excitement of the hunt, and I enjoy making eye-to-eye contact with dangerous game. I’m a certified, bonafide, you can get papers on me, adrenaline junkie. What can be more exciting than getting close enough to a brown bear to take him with a bow and arrow?”
I'm often asked, “What’s your favorite Mossy Oak pattern?” For many years, I wore Mossy Oak Treestand. But since Mossy Oak came out with Break-Up Infinity, that’s the pattern Pat and I now wear on all of our hunts. We’ve found that this pattern fits in with many different terrains where we hunt. Although Pat and I do a lot of adventure hunts, “Driven with Pat and Nicole” is mainly about hunting whitetails. Pat and I both cut our hunting teeth on whitetail hunting. This past fall, we went to Saskatchewan, set up a Double Bull Blind, and Pat and I both harvested mature whitetails from that ground blind with new Muzzy Trocar broadheads.
We had setup Eyecon trail cameras. We knew there were two really good bucks coming into the area where we had set up our blind. Pat and I like to film each other. So, on the morning of this hunt, Pat said, “You're up first. You get your bow in your hand, and I’ll film, but I'm going to take my bow along also. We’ll plan to stay in the blind from before daylight until after dark.”
One of our favorite places to whitetail hunt is Buck Paradise Outfitters in Saskatchewan Canada, operated by Grant and Shelly Kuypers. We also took Mike Jahnke on the hunt with us. He was going with Brian Limpkey to film for him, and Pat and I planned to hunt together and film each other. About 9:00 am, a big 9-point buck came in with chocolate-colored horns, 23 yards from our blind. I made a good shot right behind the buck’s shoulder. He was one of the bucks we had seen on our trail-camera pictures that we wanted to take.
I had seen the buck coming from about 80-yards away. I had to wait until he gave me a good shot. After he took the arrow, the buck only went about 40 yards before he went down. We filmed the recovery, field dressed the deer, tagged him and got him back to camp. Once the deer was in the cooler, Pat and I went back to the blind. Pat picked up his bow, and I got behind the camera. After we had been in the blind for only about an hour, the second big buck we wanted to take came down the same trail as the first buck. Pat made a good shot on him and the buck fell about 5 yards from where my buck had fallen. I thought, “What a great day!” Pat and I were able to take two nice bucks on the same day out of a small ground blind, probably not more than 3 hours apart. Both bucks had fallen within 5 feet of each other.
