Making Your Own Adventure:

"Water"
Bridging the gap

with The Benoit Brothers

Water. In the summer it is warm and inviting, but in the fall and early winter when the rivers are raging and the rocks are covered with ice it is treacherous. For a couple of country boys  who grew up in the hills around Duxbury Vermont, the Benoit Brothers know more about it at this time of year than they want to. Your see, all too often while tracking a big buck, they find themselves wading rivers, over their boot-tops in swamps, and precariously crossing lakes and ponds on thin ice. These are things that would probably all cause an ordinary hunter to give up the chase…but not the Benoits.

“When you push a deer hard enough, they will almost always take you to water,” said Lanny Benoit with a chuckle, remembering more than his share of stories. If you have watched some of their videos, then you know what he is talking about. Those adventures though, are just the tip of the iceberg.

Shane’s Walnut Eight Pointer

Shane Benoit remembers one incident in particular, while tracking a buck up near the St. John River in Maine.

“He was a big eight pointer with a walnut colored rack,” said Shane. “I was getting pretty close to him, and when he jumped I heard him when he went into the water,” he said. “I got to the side of the river and he was still swimming across. As a sportsman I didn’t want to shoot him while he was swimming so I decided to wait until he got to the other side. I put the peep sight right on the rib cage and when he started to climb out of the river I fired,” he said. “ Just as I started to squeeze the trigger though he jumped, and I shot just under him.”

Not to be deterred by the river, Shane took off his boots and crossed, only to find out the buck went a few hundred yards downstream before crossing back. This meant his boots came off again, and back across he followed.

“Let me tell you, that river was some cold and hard on tender feet that day,” he said with a laugh.

Shane stuck on the track. Eventually he heard a shot right in front of him, and came across another hunter who had fired at the deer Shane was tracking. This hunter had just nicked him.

“I never did get that buck,” recalls Benoit wistfully.

Shane actually made four trips across the river that day, having crossed it twice in the morning while tracking a big buck with Lanny that was also shot in front of them.

Spoke Too Soon

There are other days when even though things appear to be staying pretty dry, it changes in a hurry.

“We had been in the Suburban four wheeling all day looking for a track,” remembers Shane. “Lanny was driving and I had just made the comment to him that he was doing pretty well that day ‘he hadn’t scared me once.’” [If you are a regular reader than you understand what he is talking about].

Well no sooner did we go down the road—I mean only 200 yards—than Lanny rolled the Suburban right off a bridge,” he said with a chuckle.

“I See You”

Lanny remembers one buck he started at about 10:00 in the morning. He was hunting next to a lake that had a swamp at the far end of it.

“I was pushing him hard, and I was pretty close to him,” recalls Benoit. “I could hear him breaking through the ice on the edge of the lake in front of me. He was a big buck and he was smart,” he said.

“The tracking was slow going. He took me through the swamp at the end of the lake. I was going over my boots plunging in deeper with every step I took. I jumped him again and got a glimpse of him, but nothing to shoot at. Then it’s back into the lake we go—I could hear him breaking the ice again.”

“Finally he made a mistake. He bottle necked himself on a little peninsula. He tried to hide and laid down with his head flat on the ground. ‘I see you,’ I said to myself.” The buck never got up.

The Benoit Brothers newly released third video “Hunt Smarter Not Harder” is available, as well as their other books and videos, on their website at Benoitsbigbucks.com or by calling 1-888-Benoits.