Of the more than 153,000 whitetail deer felled in Minnesota so far this fall, Mason Rudolph’s was different. This was a buck, and a good one, a nine-pointer. None of that was unusual. It was the animal’s coloring that was surprising, witnessed initially on a misty morning in farm country, during the firearm season’s first week.
From Sauk Rapids originally, Mason, 19, now lives in his family’s cabin on a lake not far from Brainerd, where he attends college. He bow hunts, bird hunts, fishes and, in the cold months, spears through the ice.
A young man for all seasons.
“I’m watching for lake ice just now,’’ he said the other day. “Waiting for it to form to go fishing.’’
Familiar enough with deer hunting in the central Minnesota woods, where in his free time he climbs into a tree with his bow and a quiver of arrows, Mason is perhaps most comfortable hunting whitetails in the state’s farm country, especially in Martin County, along the Minnesota-Iowa border.
“My dad, Nate, my brother, Ty, my two uncles, Guy Rudolph and Nick Smith, and my grandpa, Don, we all hunt on grandpa’s farm in Martin County,’’ Mason said. “It’s a lot of open country planted in corn and soybeans. We mostly hunt creek bottoms.’’
Grandpa’s place lies within Deer Permit Area (DPA) 252, which at 715 square miles is in the moderate size of Department of Natural Resources whitetail management areas.
Last year, about 1,300 firearms hunters scoured DPA 252 for deer, for an average of 1.8 hunters per square mile, which is in the low range for hunter activity. DPA 246, by comparison, which lies just north and west of Brainerd, featured 12 deer hunters per square mile last year.