Overlook the Obvious for Successful Deer Hunting
Forget the Feeding Site
 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.
Forget the Feeding Site:
Ninety percent of hunters act just like I have in years
past. When a hunter finds a tree with numbers of droppings
around it, three trails leading to it and acorn shells
all around where deer have fed, he'll set up a tree
stand in that area. A hunter who sits there for three
days without seeing a buck won't understand why. Although
he's picked an obvious feeding site, more than likely
three or four other hunters  also
have discovered this same spot. Too, the deer only may
feed there at night. Instead of hunting that feeding
site, follow the trail back to the bedding place, usually
a thick cover area like a 3 or 4 year old clear-cut,
a big briar thicket or some other type of dense brush
where the deer bed down during daylight hours. Plan
to hunt within gunshot or bowshot of that thick cover
region. If you hunt in the morning, get to the bedding
site early enough to catch the buck returning to his
bedding area after feeding during the night. Or, arrive
at your stand site early in the afternoon, hunt with
a favorable wind, and make no noise going to or climbing
into your tree stand, in hopes of seeing the buck leaving
his bedding place to feed.
Plan Your Hunt a Year in Advance:
Most hunters start thinking about deer hunting just
before they arrive at
their hunting camps. They make their hunting decisions
based on the experiences they've had the last time they've
hunted. However, successful deer hunters who bag the
big bucks decide where to hunt a year in advance. They
begin to scout after deer season by moving into bedding
sites and searching for deer trails, scrapes, rubs and
brush infested, overlooked places where no one has hunted
the previous year. You'll find that the spots you've
singled out for hunting after the close of deer season
last year will yield the most and the biggest bucks
this year. Scout for deer right after deer season ends
to pinpoint the places where the big bucks have held
during the season and where no one else has wanted to
go for fear of spooking the big bucks.
Work Hard For a Big Buck:
No one usually carrie s
a canoe, a belly boat or an inflatable raft with him
when he deer hunts. However, often you'll find the most-productive
place to bag big bucks is on the opposite side of some
type of water. Older age class bucks like to bed and
hold in regions where the hunter has to cross water.
Using water as a barrier, the deer can see and hear
the hunters as they approach. The deer also have learned
that most hunters won't cross deep water to come after
them. Because today you can buy small cylinders of air
to blow up belly boats and rubber rafts, you can carry
a flotation device into the woods with you to cross
water with and hunt in places other hunters don't hunt.
You can take a two man boat or a portable canoe to where
you want to cross water to hunt, hide your craft and
then return to your boat before daylight the next morning.
The more labor and time you expend to hunt a place no
one else can hunt, the better your odds for bagging
a buck no one else will harvest.
Tomorrow: Other Tactics
|
