You Can Have a Second Chance to take a Buck in January
Day 5: The Best Places and Calls to Help You Have a Chance a Second Time to Take a Buck
Editor’s Note: To possibly have a second opportunity to bag a buck, you need to identify the most-productive places to hunt and calls you can use.
 Based on the factors that I’ve mentioned earlier, I believe that the more difficult identifying the hunter is for buck, the better the hunter’s opportunities are for bagging a deer that’s been spooked. Therefore hunting thick cover may provide the best place to take second-chance bucks. When a sportsman is stalking thick cover, many times a hunter will frighten a deer before he sees it. Then most hunters will think, “Well, since I’ve spooked that deer, I’ll have to locate another animal to hunt,” and continue-on with their stalk. However, I’ve learned that often if the hunter will stop his stalk and wait for as long perhaps as an hour, many times the buck will slip-back into that same spot to see what has made the sounds that have frightened him.
 In open woods, probably rainy or snowy days provide the best opportunities for getting a second chance at a buck. When rain or snow are falling, everything in the woods is moving. Being able to distinguish a hunter from a deer or some-other kind of critter is much-more difficult for the buck than on days when the weather is fair, and the woods are still. Windy days appear to be good days to get a second chance at a buck. When a strong breeze is blowing, and the hunter spooks a deer, although the buck may return to investigate, he’ll often come from downwind. Unless the hunter backs-up 40, 50 or 100 yards from where he’s spotted the deer originally, more than likely all that the hunter will hear or see if the deer snorting as he runs off. But if you backtrack, and the deer does come in downwind, you may have the opportunity to shoot, if you can see the animal before the buck picks-up your scent.
How to Use Calls Effectively:
 In my opinion, the most-effective tool a hunter has for taking spooked bucks is a deer call – whether it’s rattling antlers, a grunt call or any other type of device that will make a sound similar to that of a deer. If a deer doesn’t smell the hunter but is spooked because of something he’s seen or heard, then there remains a good chance that the animal will come-back to investigate to determine what the sound was that frightened him.  If the hunter uses some type of deer call or rattling antlers to fool the buck into believing that whatever he’s seen or heard is another deer, then the likelihood of that deer’s returning and the hunter’s getting a second chance is greatly increased. Yet another advantage in learning to hunt spooked deer is at least the hunter is assured that there are deer in his hunting region that he has the opportunity to bag. Hunting spooked deer is much like fishing. Anglers realize that if they get bites, then there’s fish in that spot that they may be able to catch, if they keep trying to entice the fish to take their baits. So, rather than leave the places where they’ve gotten bites, where they don’t catch fish, they remain in that same location and fish harder, since they know there are fish there. And, rather than hunting an area where you don’t know for sure there’s a deer, hunt the region where you’ve surprised deer. Although there are certain factors that influence whether or not you can take the buck you’ve jumped, if the conditions are right, and the deer hasn’t smelled you, you’ll likely have a second chance to harvest that spooked buck.
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