How to Take the Buck that Nobody Else Can Bag
Take A Shortcut Buck
 Editor’s
Note: Bucks of legend, those seldom seen and mostly
nocturnal, that no one can take but that everyone chases
have developed reputations of having almost supernatural
powers over the years. Here's a look at how some of
the nation's deer hunters successfully have pitted their
skills against the bucks with the big reputations.
Two different times when Troy Ruiz of West Point, Mississippi,
came out of the woods from hunting, he spotted a nice
buck on a ridgetop as he walked back to his vehicle.
Although Ruiz tried to slip in close enough to get a
shot at the buck with his bow, the deer always spotted
him and vanished. "I was hunting in Prentiss, Mi ssissippi,
in Jefferson Davis County," Ruiz, the videographer
for Mossy Oak camouflage, says. "The hunting pressure
was heavy, and the area had been hunted with dogs. I
tried hunting that buck early in the morning, late in
the afternoon and even in the middle of the day. But
I never could get a shot at him. I also knew I wasn't
the only person hunting that deer because other hunters
in the area had seen him." The 8-point buck had
a 17-inch inside spread of the main beams. Though many
hunters wouldn't consider this buck a trophy, Ruiz knew
he was a really-nice buck for that section of Mississippi.
Ruiz continued to scout intensively, sure that the buck
fed at night in a cornfield located about a mile away
from the hillside where he'd always seen him. "Right
below the hill, there was a 5- or 6-year-old clearcut
that had grown really thick," Ruiz explains. "I
felt that the buck was feeding in the corn at night,
staying in the clearcut during daylight hours and moving
to the mountain to get a few acorns in the middle of
the day. But I couldn't find a place to set-up my tree
stand where I could t ake
a shot at the buck." For the buck to go from the
cornfield to the big thicket where he bedded, Ruiz knew
the buck first had to cross a road. Then to take the
shortest route, the buck had to come across a young
clearcut before reaching that older clearcut. Someone
had stacked-up a pile of logs to be hauled off in a
clearing at the end of the young clearcut. Although
Ruiz didn't see any well-defined deer trails, he decided
to go to the corner of that clearcut, take a stand and
wait on the buck.
“I thought the deer might be cutting the corner
of the young clearcut to get to the older one because
the ground was more open where that log yard had been,"
Ruiz mentions. "I just believed that the deer had
to walk that way." The next morning before daylight,
Ruiz sneaked into the o ld
log yard. Using a climbing tree stand, he went about
20 feet up a tree he'd picked out the previous day.
"About 15 minutes after I'd been in my stand, I
spotted a doe," Ruiz says. "The doe came out
into the old log yard, walked across the opening and
continued to walk right under my stand." Five minutes
later, Ruiz heard a buck running in the distance. As
he watched the edge of the clearing, he saw the buck
he wanted coming across the old log yard. When the buck
reached the halfway point of the log yard, he looked
around for the doe. When the buck didn't see the other
deer, the buck turned to walk in the direction from
which he'd come. "But then I whistled, and the
buck turned around and started looking toward where
the doe had gone," Ruiz explains. "I grunted
at the deer, and he continued to come to me. When the
buck was at 60 yards, I took the shot and dropped him."
When Ruiz scouted the area after he'd downed the buck,
he found a small creek nearby, bordering on the clearcut,
which had helped to funnel the buck to him. "I
learned these deer weren't following a trail, they were
only meandering through this region. Many times, if
you look at land, you can define the shortest route
a buck can take from his feeding to his bedding area,
and locate the best stand sites. I was hunting the buck
in an area I'd never seen him in, while the other hunters
were looking in the places where they'd spotted him
before."
Tomorrow: Bag a Farmland Buck
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