THE KEY TO HOLIDAY BUCKS

Finding the Right Holiday Place to Hunt

EDITOR'S NOTE: Christmas and New Year's Day, times for family gatherings across the nation, are also times of high hunting pressure in areas where hunting season is still in, as it is in parts of the South. There families will assemble and hunt together according to southern tradition. This week we'll take a look at what hunters need to do to have the most-productive opportunities while hunting during the holidays.

Two different types of people take deer: hunters and shooters. A "shooter" is a man who spends hours sighting in his rifle and who knows how to shoot accurately from 50 to 300 yards with a particular rifle. Most of the time, a shooter will hunt over a green field. When a buck steps into the field to feed, the shooter will bag the deer. Actually, not very much hunting is involved. The "hunter" is the man who works the woods, finding a place where a deer will be most likely to show up. Once the hunter locates this kind of region, he remains there until a deer appears and then bags the animal. Generally, a hunter spends more time searching for a spot to hunt than he does waiting for the deer to show up. Rick Nelms is a hunter who specializes in holiday hunting and particularly from three stands.

According to Nelms: "For every one day I sit in my tree stand, I'll spend three days looking for a place to put my stand. I believe most hunters are in too big a hurry to hunt to be able to take deer. When I'm scouting for an area to hunt, I've got my rifle with me. If I see a deer, I will take him. Although I'm hunting when I'm scouting, the hunting is secondary to the scouting." When Nelms does hunt, he remains in his tree stand with bulldog-like tenacity. He is in his stand at least 30 minutes before daylight and remains there until dark. "I can stay in my stand from before daylight until dark because when I'm through scouting a region, I'm convinced that where I'm placing my tree stand is the very best spot in the woods to kill a big deer," Nelms reports. "I also believe that all I have to do to bag that buck is to remain in that stand until the deer shows up. I carry plenty of clothes to stay warm and food to eat. When I pick out a tree for my stand, I make sure I can get comfortable in it. Then once I climb up that tree, I tell myself, 'Rick, you aren't coming down until it's so dark you no longer can see anything.'"

To learn more about how master deer hunters bag their deer each year, go to www.nighthawkpublications.com's home page, and click on books. To order with a credit card, call (800) 627-4295. You'll find information for ordering with a check or money order at the site.

TOMORROW: MAKING A SILENT APPROACH