There aren’t too many times that deer hunters in eastern North Carolina have the opportunity to hunt whitetail deer when there’s snow on the ground. When these conditions do happen, some memorable hunts can occur.

Probably one of the most memorable hunts of this type happened to me and a friend some 23 years ago when we were hunting deer on the Urquart Tract of the Roanoke River Game Lands downstream from Scotland Neck.

Deer hunting or turkey hunting the Urquart Tract has long been one of my favorite special opportunity hunts offered by the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission. You have to apply for one of these limited hunts well in advance and then be selected to have the hunt through a computer drawing. That’s the simple part of the hunt. The real carrying-out of the hunt begins with the planning and the actual hunt.

The only access to the Urquart Tract is by boat. By launching at either the NCWRC ramp in Hamilton or near Scotland neck it usually a little over an hour by motorboat to get to the Urquart Tract. It’s a scenic boat ride and the two-day hunt can be done on a daily basis or you can camp out for several days on some of the higher banks of the river on the tract. We always like to go with the camping version so we can hunt every available minute that we’re allowed to hunt and not have to make the long boat trip during the dark.

When camping on the Urquart Tract, you must realize that you have to pack to your camp everything you might need. That means clean water, food, firewood and a full array of camping and hunting gear. When two hunters load up a 14-foot johnboat with gear you can bet that you’ll have a boat loaded to the gunnels.

The hunting dates we had been awarded were for an early December hunt and, luckily, we followed the rules of the Boy Scouts of America and went well prepared for cold weather. The weather forecasters had predicted temperatures in the mid-to-low 20s with light snow. For the lower Roanoke River, that was really cold temperatures but it didn’t seem to be any matter of concern about “light” snow.

Setting up our six-person dome tent as a first priority it didn’t take long to fill the extra floor spaces with the array of gear we’d taken along. We unloaded the boat, stowed the gear and, without guns, set about scouting the surrounding swamps for deer sign. As usual there was plenty of it.

Immediately after quick supper just after dark we crawled into our warm sleeping bags and settled in for the night. All went well until about 4:00 in the morning when I became aware that the walls of the tent were sagging-in rather ominously. Unzipping the door of the tent brought in a hatful of fresh snow and a glance to the outside world showed maybe 8 to 10 inches of snow on the ground. In usual form, the forecasters had underestimated our North Carolina weather. For this area, this was a big snow.

One of our friends back in Scotland Neck was the well-known Rambling Ranger of the Roanoke, Bill Johnson. Bill was a member of the Clark Gun Club, which bordered the Urquart Tract, and he was intimately familiar with the terrain there. Seeing what Mother Nature had unexpectedly dumped on us during the night, Bill became concerned that us younger outdoorsmen wouldn’t know how to handle this rather extreme

Eastern North Carolina weather and started rounding up various friends to send in a rescue party to us campers along the Roanoke River.

Paul Brouha and I were field dressing our first deer of the hunt late in the morning of day one when we heard the sounds of a couple of ATVs pushing their way through the swamps in our direction. The Rambling Ranger and his search party were bringing in fresh supplies for us snowbound hunters.

They were impressed to find that rather than shivering and desperate in the deep snow (by Tar Heel standards anyway) we were quite comfortable and even had a handy portable heater going. Our “rescuers” shared a hot lunch that we prepared and even shared some of the “emergency liquids” that they’d thoughtfully brought into the wilds of the Roanoke River Game Lands to share with us.

The taking of a few of the deer from the Game Lands isn’t unusual but the circumstances under which the deer were taken will be a favorite memory for the rest of our lives. Bill Johnson and the other rescuers from the Clark Gun Club were “on the ball” is sending in help to us “Roanoke Tenderfeet” even though we were surviving the weather quite well without help.

Another eastern North Carolina deer hunt in the snow story that I always remember happened in Beaufort County some 24 years ago when we’d had about 10 inches of snow. It was really cold (frozen coastal creeks and speckled trout dieing, etc.) and the snow wasn’t about to melt any time soon.

I’d cautiously climbed up into my ladder stand that afternoon just to see if any deer were wandering around in the snow and a nice six-pointer had come out of the thick brush around the stand as if he was lost (he probably had never seen this kind of snow before). I took the easy shot and dropped the little buck just in time to get him out of the woods and to my car before dark finally fell that afternoon.

Having snow on the ground made the dragging of the carcass easier than usual but still I worked up a sweat just to get him out of the woods.

When I arrived at my truck I took my rifle off my shoulder, placed it on the truck’s camper shell and managed to drag the deer into the bed for the trip home. Luckily the bitter cold had turned the ordinarily deep and muddy roads into rough but hard ice and the little truck made it out to the hard surfaced road without any trouble.

Even on the hard surfaced road the ice and packed snow made for a really rough ride home but the truck skidded and bounced its way home fine, I unloaded the deer carcass and suddenly had a sinking feeling in my stomach. I’d just remembered that my Winchester pre-64, Model 70 had been left sitting on the top of the truck’s camper shell when I’d left the woods.

Somebody upstairs had to have been looking after me in more ways than one that afternoon because when I desperately looked for the rifle where I’d left it---It was still there. How it managed to stay on top of the truck through all that bouncing around on the icy roads I’ll never know. There were no rails on top and the cover was very slick yet that rifle had remained on top for the entire ride out of the woods and to the house.

It had been another memorable, in the snow, deer hunt. I’ll remember it not for the deer that was killed but for the miracle of how that valuable gun remained on top of my truck all the way home.