Overlook the Obvious for Successful Deer Hunting
Overlook the Obvious
Editor’s Note: You can scout out the perfect spot
for taking deer, put up your stand and camp out to wait
for deer to come along, but all your work will do you
no good if you’ve picked an obvious place that
other hunters also will choose. The trick to bagging
big bucks is to think like other hunters don’t.
Here are some tricks I’ve learned through years
of deer hunting that have helped me overlook the obvious
and take more bucks.
I'd scouted intently and located a white oak tree producing
acorns on the edge of a swamp about 1/2 mile away from
an old logging road deep in the backwoods. Absolutely
certain I'd found the very best spot in the woods to
hunt, I arrived at my tree  stand
well before daylight and waited for the sun to come
up. Off in the distance, I heard what sounded like a
buck snorting. As the sun rose out of the fog, I could
hear a deer moving in the leaves. I readied myself for
the shot. The deer moved close, really close, and I
heard every step it made. As the thick woods and the
macabre looking swamp lightened, I braced my rifle on
the shooting arm of my portable tree stand. I waited
for the deer to step out from behind the bushes. Because
I'd spent my time finding the most productive place
in the woods to hunt, I thought I'd most likely find
this hunt one of my shortest ever.
The deer rustled the leaves and took a half step. I
looked through my riflescope, astonished at what appeared
there. I saw a blaze orange vest and hat coming toward
me as some
idiot walked right through the middle of my hunting
site. "Hey, buddy, what are you doing? I'm trying
to hunt here," I said angrily. To my surprise,
not 60 yards away from where I thought I heard the deer
grunt, I heard, "Yeah, me too." Looking midway
up a scaly bark hickory tree, I saw another hunter sitting
in a tree stand. As my mind raced back to when I'd heard
the deer grunt, I now realized that I'd actually heard
this hunter clearing his throat. Apparently, all three
of us had pinpointed the same good looking hunt site
to take a deer. The hunter on the ground had come into
the land with the wind at his back. He probably didn't
even know which way the wind blew, but he'd moved in
from the direction I'd expected the deer to walk. Now
like the other two hunters, I had to climb down from
my tree and search for another spot to hunt. During
that hunt so many years ago, I learned to overlook the
obvious and not to hunt where other hunters hunted.
Define the Problem:
Hunters often don't bag bucks when they go into the
woods to hunt because they hunt like all the other hunters.
These hunters move past the obvious deer sign and search
for the obscure.
If you'll consider that a trophy buck has lived long
enough to grow large antlers and obtain a heavy body
weight while hunters have harvested the younger bucks,
you'll realize that the trophy buck doesn't act like
most other bucks do, or else he won't grow to a monster
size. Sure, you accidentally may take a trophy buck
during the rut when that buck does something stupid
such as show himself in a clearing where he usually
never appears at any other time of the year. But in
most sections of the country, the rut only occurs for
a few days or weeks at best, generally when you don't
have vacation time or a day off. To bag a trophy buck
at any time of the year other than the rut, you'll have
to use different tactics than all the other hunters
do who don't bag these superior animals. Let's look
at the 10 keys to successfully take a trophy buck by
overlooking the obvious.
Tomorrow: Identify Other Hunter’s
Locations
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