FIVE MOST CRITICAL INGREDIENTS FOR BAGGING A BUCK WITH A GUN

Ronnie Groom -- The Rut

Editor's Note: The five most-critical ingredients for taking a buck with your gun at any time during the season include the wind, the weather, hunting pressure, food availability and the rut. Most hunters will tell you one of these factors has more importance to successful deer hunting than any other element. However, you'll need to consider all these ingredients to develop a successful hunt plan. This week we'll talk with some of the nation's best gun hunters about their ideas. Ronnie Groom, of Panama City, Florida, the owner of C & G Sporting Goods, takes several nice-sized bucks each season with his gun, his bow and his black-powder rifle. If a slingshot season exists anywhere, Groom will probably hunt that state with that weapon too.

The rut marks the most-critical time of the year to bag a big buck with a rifle. During the rut, big bucks will show themselves in open places where you may never had seen them before and they may make stupid mistakes. To bag a buck during the rut, go back to the sites where you've taken a buck in years past during the rut. I've learned bucks generally like to breed in specific areas year after year. However only hunt these spots during the rut for the most success. A prime place to look for rutting bucks is open areas adjacent to thick-cover regions. Then if the deer sense danger at their scrapes they can get into that cover quickly. In Florida where I hunt, during most of the season bucks like to stay in the palmetto swamps. However, if I can locate an oak ridge running into a palmetto swamp, then I usually will find a buck along that ridge during the rut. During the rut, hunting in the middle of the day may produce just as much success as hunting early in the morning or late in the afternoon. Last year during the rut, I took a nice-sized buck pawing a scrape at 1:15 p.m. At any other time of the year, that buck probably would have worked that scrape only at night. When the rut's on, you often can go to a place where you've seen a buck, sit in that same spot and more than likely that buck will come through that area that day or within the next day or two. The rut makes bucks much easier to pattern. When you hunt a rutting site, always watch for does. Most of the time does will tell you when a buck is approaching by the way she acts by either running, walking or acting nervously and looking over her shoulder. During the rut, always carry a grunt call. If the buck comes close to your stand catching a doe, blow your grunt call to stop the buck before he runs past your stand.

Don't shoot the first buck you see most of the time because you may see more than one buck -- sometimes three or four -- chasing a doe. Often a little buck will come right behind the doe. Then you'll see a larger buck with his nose down and his ears back moving along the same trail looking for the doe. I also have found success at any time of day using mock scrapes to attract bucks during the rut. When I make a false scrape, I use doe-in-estrus scent and some form of dominant-buck lure. If I make eight or 10 mock scrapes, often bucks will work five of those scrapes. Always stay downwind of the scrapes and out of the bucks' sight and hearing to bag a buck during the rut.