How to Bag a Buck Deer Every Season
Day 4: Longtime Avid Bowhunter Jerry Simmons Tells his Scouting Techniques for Deer Hunting Success
Editor’s Note: To bag a buck every season, you not only must outsmart the buck you’re trying to take, but also you must hunt more diligently than the other hunters who are after that same buck.
Jerry Simmons of Jasper, Alabama, who has taken over 300 deer with his bow, also believes to successfully take a buck every year careful scouting is the most-important element of the hunt. “One of the reasons more hunters don’t bag a buck each season is because they hunt too large an area,” Simmons emphasizes. “When I go to a new place to hunt, I only scout 1/4-mile square of that land. Each day I scout, I’ll learn more about this small section of land, because I want to know every tree, each creek and every bush. I want to locate each spot in that region where I possibly can bag a deer and then determine which specific site is the very-best place for me to set up a stand. “Once I know all I can about that 1/4-mile of woods, then I’ll spend several days learning the next 1/4-mile of property adjacent to the first area I’ve scouted. I’ll continue this process until I have approximately a mile or 1,000 acres of woods with which I’m thoroughly familiar. Then each day I hunt, I take a stand according to the direction of the wind and what food the deer are feeding on in the very-best location on the land I’ve scouted.” Simmons is relentless in his scouting. If he bags a buck in the morning, he’ll take his deer and his bow back to his truck or to camp and spend the rest of the day scouting for a place to hunt on the following day. “Each day I hunt I want to be in the very-best spot in the woods to bag a buck,” Simmons emphasizes. “I only can discover that site by scouting constantly.”
Tomorrow: The Importance of Aerial Photos and Good Equipment to Successfully Bag Bucks with Nationally-Known Deer Hunters Dr. Robert Sheppard and Dr. Larry Marchinton
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