Big Bucks Where No One Can Hunt Them but You
Bucks in Wide-Open Spaces
 Editor’s
Note: Thousands of acres of land throughout the country
home trophy bucks. Often the landowners don't hunt these
properties. But they also may not allow anyone else
to because they've had bad experiences with hunters
in the past or can find no benefits in letting someone
hunt their lands. To have a trophy, big-buck hotspot
no one else but you can hunt, solve a landowner's problem
before you ask permission to hunt. Here are a few ways
to hunt lands no one else can hunt by solving the landowner’s
problems first.
An o verlooked
region for finding trophy bucks includes areas no other
hunter asks to hunt, like a cattle ranch. Most sportsmen
believe the more woods you have to hunt, the greater
the odds will favor your taking a trophy buck. However,
older-age-class bucks usually confine their movement
to very small patches of woods in daylight hours during
hunting season. Once I found a productive place to take
a nice buck on a cattle farm. When I asked Mr. Powell,
the farm owner I had met a year earlier, if I could
scout his farm and see if I could locate a buck to hunt,
Mr. Powell slid his glasses further down his nose. He
looked over the top of his frames and said, "John,
can you tell the difference between a cow track and
a deer track?" "Yes, sir," I answered.
"Well, I've seen a lot of cow tracks on this place,
but I don't believe I've ever seen a deer track,"
Powell told me. "Even if you find a deer, you won't
get close enough to him to take a shot before he sees
you." I laughed and said, "You may be right,
Mr. Powell, but I'd like to slip around and see if I
can find a buck
on your place." Powell mentioned that no other
hunter ever had asked permission before to hunt his
land. Although he felt sure I wouldn't find a deer track
or a deer, he would give me permission to hunt.
After two days of scouting, I located a big scrape
along a small woodlot on the edge of a pasture and a
large honeysuckle thicket on the pasture's backside.
The 20-yard- wide woodlot ran alongside the fence. An
open pasture extended for 300 yards on either side of
the woodlot. Although the briar thicket measured less
than 30 yards in circumference, two well-defined deer
trails ran into and out of the briars. On the entire
farm, I only could spot deer activity at these two sites.
I decided the buck used the woodlot to trave l
back and forth from the pasture. I assumed the buck
would hold in the woods until just after dark and then
move into the pasture to feed and breed. Then he would
return through the woodlot to the thicket to bed down
just at daylight. I set up a tree stand at the thicket's
edge. On the following weekend, I climbed into my stand
an hour before daylight. Just as the sun rose, I spotted
a huge 8-point buck heading straight for the thicket.
With the deer 20 yards from me, I took the shot. That
afternoon I surprised the landowner with the buck. "That
buck had to come off someone else's property, because
I've never seen him on my land," Powell exclaimed.
"How did you find him?" "I pinpointed
an area where I thought a buck had to walk, set up a
tree stand and waited until he came along," I replied.
Many times, regions where big bucks hold will go completely
unnoticed by the landowner and any hunter who looks
at the property. In many instances, I've learned that
when hunting trophy bucks, the fewer places that can
hold a buck means the easier time you'll have finding
him and the less likelihood of someone else having hunted
there before you.
Tomorrow: Bucks in the Pines & Bucks Where No One
Wants to Hunt
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