WHEN DEER DON'T SHOW UP AT DEER SIGN

Hunt For The Invisible Buck

EDITOR'S NOTE: Deer sign sometimes lies to hunters. If you could trust all deer sign, you'd bag a buck near every deer sign you find in the woods. But how do you know when deer sign lies and when it tells the truth? How can you tell if the deer has made the sign during the day or the night, today or three weeks ago? To hunt deer successfully, you must not only find deer sign -- you must interpret correctly what that sign tells you.

Dr. Bob Sheppard of Carrollton, Alabama, not only teaches bowhunting, he considers himself a student of the sport. "A few years ago when I hunted, I would see a big buck early in the morning each day," says Sheppard. "The deer would stand on the left side of the road as I approached the bridge and left the camp for my hunting site. I scouted the area and found a swamp chestnut tree where I thought the deer was feeding. But after three days of hunting, I never saw the buck. I decided the buck had to be feeding at the tree at night and then leaving at first light to go back to his bedding area. Since I was hunting this tree on the right side of the road and I saw the buck on the left side, I figured he was coming away from the tree each time I saw him in the daylight."

Sheppard decided to leave the feeding site and try to take the buck along its trail to the swamp chestnut. But he couldn't find the deer's trail. "From the sign I could locate, the buck apparently fell out of the sky, fed and then went back into the sky," Sheppard comments. "I did pinpoint a small creek on the edge of the feeding area and one of the trails that went into the creek. I finally decided that the buck waded down the creek to get to the nut tree and then waded back up the creek to leave. Now all I had to do was find out where the buck was entering the water." Sheppard followed the creek back to the road where he'd seen the buck. Instead of walking over the bridge, he remained on the edge of the creek bank and went under the bridge. "That's where I found the deer's trail," Sheppard reports. "The deer apparently would come out of the woods, walk under the bridge, enter the water and then go feed at the nut tree. When I followed this trail back into the woods, I saw a small clearing where I could set up my tree stand to watch the buck after he left the feeding tree. The next morning, I climbed into my tree stand before daylight and bagged that buck."

TOMORROW: LEARN WHY THE SIGN LIES