A Fun Quiz for Deer Hunters
Day 3: Selecting the Right Stand Sites, Knowing the Habits of Dominant Bucks During the Rut and Finding Bucks in High Pressure Hunting Areas
Editor’s Note: To consistently bag the white-tailed deer, there are questions the hunter must learn the answers to, including the behavior patterns of the animal, the effects of the weather and the signs a buck leaves behind after he’s passed through an area. And, the more questions a deer hunter can answer about the animal he hunts, the more likely he is to unravel the riddle of where to find a deer on a particular day. Sometimes the deer hunter hears and believes wrong information. Then because he’s misinformed, he may miss his rendezvous with a buck. Take the deer-hunting quiz, and see whether you pass or fail.
 7) Question: If you could choose between the following stand sites for bagging a buck during the rut, which would you pick? A stand:
(a) 20-30 yards off of an active scrape;
(b) on the edge of a field where you have seen does feeding;
(c) in a natural bottleneck between two scraping areas;
(d) where you have seen a buck earlier in the season.
 Answer: (C) A stand in a natural bottleneck between two scraping areas is the correct answer. Bucks are constantly on the move in the rut. If a hunter can find a natural funnel between two scraping areas, then the buck should pass through this bottleneck going back and forth to check different scrapes. Because the region does funnel deer between two types of habitat, you should see more deer activity in this place than in any other region.
Any of the other stand sites described in the question may produce a buck. But according to Dr. Larry Marchinton, a retired, longtime wildlife researcher at the University of Georgia in Athens, “Taking a stand between two scraping areas in a natural funnel provides the best opportunity for the hunter to bag his deer during the rut.”
8) Question: All the bucks within a given area have the right and do breed the does in that region. True or False.
 Answer: False. Although a buck may try and breed a doe that comes in estrus, the dominant buck in a region has claimed the right by combat to breed all the does in his dominance region. Therefore he will attempt to chase off and suppress any other buck who attempts to breed the does in his area. This is nature’s way of passing on the strongest genes to future generations of whitetails.
9) Question: When hunting areas with high hunter pressure, your best chances of bagging a buck are to:
(a) find good feeding places and arrive at those places early before other hunters do;
(b) locate the most-remote regions with the thickest cover and hunt these places, assuming that the deer will prefer sanctuary over any other need;
(c) look for the most-open spot you can find, because the more land you can see and glass with your binoculars, the better your chances are of seeing a buck that has been spooked by another hunter;
(d) hunt escape routes knowing that when deer are spooked, they will utilize these routes to escape hunters;
(e) stay up a tree all day long, thinking that eventually someone will run a deer by you, due to the large number of people in the woods.
Answer: (b) Locate the most-remote regions with the thickest cover, and hunt these places, assuming that the deer will prefer sanctuary over any other need is the correct answer. Deer respond to hunter pressure in a brief time. Smart deer, older deer will go to the thickets and the remote places quicker than young deer. So, the hunter who discovers these regions greatly increases his chances of taking a buck. The other answers also may be correct, but this answer is the most-correct one.
 10) Question: When hunting in places with high hunter pressure, the best time to kill a buck is:
(a) in the morning when hunters are coming into the woods and spooking deer;
(b) in the middle of the day when most hunters leave the woods to eat lunch;
(c) in the afternoons when the hunters are going home and spooking deer.
Answer: (b) During the middle of the day when most hunters leave the woods to eat lunch – is the correct answer. In many public-hunting areas with a great deal of hunter pressure, more bucks are bagged in the middle of the day when the hunting pressure is the lightest than at any other time of the day. Deer become conditioned to hunter-movement patterns. They soon learn that the times when the hunters are the most active are the times of greatest danger. When the hunters are the least active, the deer can be the most secure. Therefore in the middle of the day when most of the hunters have left the woods to eat lunch, oftentimes deer will move much-more frequently.
For more deer-hunting tips, click on each of John E. Phillips’ Kindle eBooks “How to Hunt Deer Like a Pro,” “How to Hunt Deer Up Close: With Bows, Rifles, Muzzleloaders and Crossbows” and “PhD Whitetails: How to Hunt and Take the Smartest Deer on Any Property.” Too, you can go to www.amazon.com/kindle-ebooks, type in the name of the book and download it to your Kindle and/or download a Kindle app for your iPad, SmartPhone or computer.
About the Author
John Phillips, winner of the 2012 Homer Circle Fishing Award for outstanding fishing writer by the American Sportfishing Association (ASA) and the Professional Outdoor Media Association (POMA), the 2008 Crossbow Communicator of the year and the 2007 Legendary Communicator chosen for induction into the National Fresh Water Hall of Fame, is a freelance writer (over 6,000 magazine articles for about 100 magazines and several thousand newspaper columns published), magazine editor, photographer for print media as well as industry catalogues (over 25,000 photos published), lecturer, outdoor consultant, marketing consultant, book author and daily internet content provider with an overview of the outdoors. Click here for more information and a list of all the books available from John E. Phillips.
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