Gear Used:
Mossy Oak Sherpa Pant
Mossy Oak WPB Insulated Jacket
Savage Arms Impulse Predator in 6.5 Creedmoor
Leupold Open Country Rifle Scopes
Leupold BX-1 Mckenzie HD 10x42
Nosler Ammo
Tetra Hearing Protection
A crew from Mossy Oak, a few outdoor writers, and a rep from Savage Arms headed west to hunt some Oklahoma whitetails at Canadian River Hilton for the rifle season opening days.
From Mossy Oak, Rusty McDaniels, Director of Media Operations, Greg Hackney, Mossy Oak Fishing Team Member, Jessi Cole, Editorial Lead, and Gregory Sugg, Director of Media Relations and Licensing Support.
The other four hunters included RJ Contorno from Savage Arms, Derek Mleynek from Outdoor Sportsman Group, Rose Bier-Draper from NRA’s magazine American Hunter, and Dave Schlake from Wide Open Spaces.
Of the 8 hunters, 6 killed beautiful, mature whitetails. For only four days of hunting, that is incredible odds. The rut was on full swing, so bucks were chasing hard and wild cards were showing up that the guys from Canadian River Hilton had never seen before.
Just the week before, a 230-class buck that they’d never seen had been shot by one of their hunters. We all not-so-secretly hoped we’d be the ones to tag another one just like it.
Greg was the first of us to tag out—he shot an absolute monster just minutes after daylight on the first morning. He dropped the deer in his tracks! For the rest of the trip, he got to hang out and do a little predator hunting. Pressure off!
Watch the hunt below:
Rusty was next. He was over the border on some Canadian River Hilton land in Texas, and he had an awesome spot-and-stalk hunt on an ancient big-bodied whitetail. They spotted him with Leupolds down in a holler locked up with a doe about 600 yards off, and he got a shot at him at 200 yards.
Rusty's big-bodied old Texas whitetail.
Jessi shot hers on the second afternoon after watching him chase for 30 minutes without a good shot. Finally, he stopped to work a scrape at 160 yards and she pulled the trigger.
Read the full story here and keep an eye out for the video of the hunt.
Jessi and her old, tall 8-point.
Greg killed on the final morning after spotting an old cull buck working a doe. RJ and Derek both killed nice bucks on the previous afternoon, too.
Greg Sugg's old and wide buck.
Derek's nice Oklahoma whitetail.
RJ's western beauty.
In between hunts, we had a couple of range days with Savage’s new line of .22 rifles. They were incredibly accurate and fun to shoot, and just about every person walked away saying, “I gotta get one of these.” The take apart .22 was a crowd pleaser, for sure.
Savage’s Impulse Predator in 6.5 Creedmoor is what we all shot, and dang if they weren’t accurate. And the Nosler ammo was powerful. In fact, one of the guides thought that a deer had been shot twice when he was cleaning it because it had made such an impact.
No doubt the trip was a huge success, and we look forward to returning to hunt with our friends at Canadian River Hilton next year.
