5 ELEMENT OF A WINTER WHITEAIL HONEYHOLE

Thus far, our quest was unfulfilled.

My son Noah and I were hunting Nebraska’s late-season January antlerless season: on a search for winter whitetail venison to top off the freezers with our annual meat.

It wasn’t supposed to be this hard. After an unproductive first-evening hunt and a below-zero, early-morning sit with no action, a sunny afternoon afforded the opportunity to do some searching, scouting and still-hunting.

It was then that we found the motherlode. The hotspot. The honeyhole.

Working up a frozen creek that joined the Keya Paha River, we happened upon some open water. After another mile, three spring-fed rivulets revealed the source of such a rare commodity on the winter landscape.

And we started seeing more deer tracks. Fresh deer tracks. There was plenty of brush and timber along the creek to serve as hiding cover for whitetails. Hills and gullies afforded escape from howling winds. Deer beds pocked slopes that