Tristan Brodeur, 38, of Otis took off two weeks from work to hunt deer this year. But he had trouble getting up in the mornings in the first week, missing those early-hour opportunities.
Brodeur’s solution: tent out in 18-degree temperatures. That way, he would already be in the woods.
It turned out to be a good plan because on Friday, Nov. 17, he shot a deer of a lifetime — a 10-point 235-pound buck. It was his first deer in six years, he said.
Brodeur left his parents’ house in the Millinocket area Monday, Nov. 13, and drove 2.5 hours north into the woods where he pitched his tent for a week of hunting. He sat beneath the stars at night, breathing the cold air and thinking about the summer camping he didn’t do because of how rainy it was.
“This was exactly where I needed to be,” he said.
The temperature dropped to 18 degrees that night, but he was prepared for winter camping with Buddy heaters, a winter-weight sleeping bag and survival gear. He sat in shirtsleeves in a camp chair inside the tent, sipping a glass of wine, he said.
He rose at 5 a.m., made coffee and was walking a woods road at legal shooting time, thinking it was great to be so isolated. A vehicle came down the road about then, smashing his plan for the day.
Brodeur spent the day scouting in the woods where he found a heavily traveled deer trail in an area where the trees had been cut in recent years — a chopping — where visibility was approximately 100 yards and there was lots of moss, which deer eat.
On Wednesday, Brodeur left camp before sunrise and returned to this spot with doe-scented deer calls. He attracted a small buck. He waited for it to go broadside to put it in an ideal position to shoot, but it didn’t. The hunter shot anyway and missed.
He later jumped a doe in the chopping but missed that shot too.
Brodeur was using a special gun — a 1952 Remington Model 721 — that he called his “rescue rifle.” He had found it rusted and neglected in a gun shop in 2014 and over the next few years, rebuilt it to its former glory. He finished refurbishing it in December 2022.
Although he had missed two deer with it, he felt a personal connection to the gun and kept his faith in it.
He went back to the same hunting spot on Thursday and didn’t see or hear anything all day. He hiked a ridge to think about what to do, finally deciding to give it one more chance on Friday morning before heading back to his parents’ house.
Brodeur made a campfire Thursday night and enjoyed milder temperatures while consoling himself that at least he had a camping experience out of his hunting week.
On Friday, Brodeur didn’t even make coffee. He threw together what he needed and went back to the same spot in the woods, thinking about how nice it would be to get a deer and praying for the opportunity to help his family due to the cost of meat in the stores.
He decided he would leave by 10 a.m. Shortly before 8 a.m., he saw a large object moving and thought it might be a moose.
Then he saw it. A massive deer with a huge rack.
“I raised my rifle and said to myself ‘Don’t miss’,” Brodeur said.
He stepped into the clearing and shot the buck from 30 to 40 yards away. The buck ran but left a good blood trail, which Brodeur was marking with GPS waypoints. When he came out on a road, he was looking for new signs and found the dead animal on a bank.
Brodeur said looking at the deer brought tears to his eyes. It wasn’t just a deer, but a trophy deer, on the ground in front of him, he said. And he would be able to provide for his family.
He texted his mom a photo.
Now Brodeur was alone in the woods at least an hour from any help, with a spotty phone connection and a huge deer to load on his truck. He dragged the deer onto the road and used his cooler to extend the bumper, allowing him to pull the deer up the tailgate.
The deer was so long that once the antlers hit the back of the cab, Brodeur still had to get the hind quarters into the truck bed. He used his legs as leverage to swing the buck around to get him all in.
His mom texted back that his dad wanted to know if he needed help. It was hours after his initial text to his mom before he could tell his parents he was all set, he said.
Brodeur said he didn’t want to leave his deer, but had to in order to get his truck. He started to walk away but went back to gut the deer so it wouldn’t get up and leave, he said.
He had his camp packed up by noon. He couldn’t believe it when the scales held at 235 pounds at the Wilderness Variety tagging station in Mt. Chase.
“Getting that buck was the capstone of my trip — the capstone of all of my hunting,” he said.
