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John's Journal... Entry 177, Day 2

HUNT RUTTING BUCKS NOW

Middle State Strategies That Will Pay Deer Dividends

EDITOR'S NOTE: Hunters have chased them, shot at them, cussed them, spooked and aggravated them all season long. But the biggest, the oldest and the smartest bucks on any property you hunt have managed to survive until the end of the season. These large, older bucks write the textbooks young bucks study to survive. Some of the nation's best hunters employ strategies that will take these end-of-the-season rutting bucks each year. These masters of the hunt tell us their tactics for bagging late-season bucks.

Jim Crumley of Roanoke, Virginia, the founder of Trebark camouflage, hunts deer with his bow until the last Saturday in January.

"But at the end of the season, you may sit over what looks like an active scrape all day for several days and never see a buck," Crumley says. "I hunt at the end of the season by not concentrating on finding a trophy buck but instead searching for areas where does travel. When the rut nears its end, bucks will look for the last estrus doe, and the does will be searching for food. Once I find food that attracts the most does, I'll set up a stand near the trail the does use to go to the food."

Crumley finds success in the late season by hunting abandoned fields -- alfalfa fields or other crops that haven't deteriorated completely.

"By fertilizing Japanese honeysuckle, blackberry bushes and broad-leafed forbs in abandoned fields in the spring, these plants will bring forth more-nutritious leaves than any other plants in an area during the winter," Crumley reports. "During that rut, the does will move into these fields and feed. Once I learn which trails does use to enter and exit the fields during the last week of the season, I'll put up my tree stands near those trails -- confident a buck will appear."

Even when the leaves on the blackberries and the honeysuckle look so brown they seem ready to fall off the plants, Crumley has discovered the deer still will feed on them. While others hunt thick-cover spots hoping to find rutting bucks, Crumley uses the opposite tactic and hunts the wide-open spaces of abandoned fields and pastures where he assumes the does will show up followed by large bucks.

TOMORROW: SOUTHERN TECHNIQUES FOR THE RUT

 

 

Check back each day this week for more about HUNT RUTTING BUCKS NOW ...

Day 1 - Hunt Rutting Bucks Now
Day 2 - Middle State Strategies That Will Pay Deer Dividends
Day 3 - Southern Techniques for the Rut
Day 4 - Midwestern Bad-Weather Buck Techniques for the Rut
Day 5 - More on Midwestern Bad-Weather Buck Techniques


John's Journal