Hunting Pressure: Key to Big Bucks
 The Tools You’ll Need
Editor’s Note: A deer hunter who consistently takes big bucks has to know those trophy bucks’ thoughts and determine what the buck will do before he do es it. White-tailed deer more than 2-1/2-years old have gone to school on deer hunters. They’ve studied the hunters’ habits and schedules and have become masters of hunter evasion. “We had a group of wildlife biologists and deer hunters hunting a certain piece of property for several years and studying the deer there,” Dr. Grant Woods of Reedsville, Missouri, one of the nation’s top deer researchers, says. Woods’ team of wildlife biologists and deer hunters had set up hunting areas in grids to determine who hunted where over several years. “We learned that deer set up travel corridors to avoid places where the team was hunting. These deer managed to outsmart these trained wildlife biologists and some of the best deer hunters anywhere.” The older the buck, the less likely that you’ll locate him where you expect to see him, if that’s where all other hunters hunt. A hunter needs to understand the effects of hunting pressure and learn where a buck retreats when he experiences that hunting pressure. 
Using motion-sensor cameras will give you the best opportunities to see and locate big deer on your property. If a hunter can get p hotographs of a big deer with a motion-sensor camera that times and dates the photographs, then the hunter can see from which direction that buck comes, and what time of day or night he’s moving. By putting out two or three cameras in the buck’s location, hunters can get a good indication of the buck’s schedule before, during and after daylight. Once you know the big buck’s course he’s traveling, you can set up a tree stand or a ground blind to take that buck based on his routine.
Other important tools a hunter can use to try to take a big buck include a hand-held GPS (Global Positioning System) and a compass. The GPS and the compass enable you to navigate before daylight and after dark to the deer’s location and your tree stand and travel back to your vehicle. Getting into deer lands before other hunters and coming out after the other hunters already have left will impact how many highly-pressured big deer you see to hunt.
Tomorrow: Hunt the Stupid Places and the 2-Wheel Advantage |
