WEIRD PLACES I'VE FOUND BIG BUCKS WITH RAY EYE
More Weird Places to Find Big Bucks with Ray Eye
Editor’s Note: Ray Eye has hunted deer for more
than 30 years and has been a member of Hunter's Specialties
Pro Staff since 1985. This week Eye will tell us about
weird places where he's found big bucks. To take a trophy
buck, you need to locate a big buck in a region where
nobody else is looking for him. Many times these little
overlooked spots can and will produce that dream buck
you've searched for your life. After reading about where
Eye has discovered big bucks, start searching for overlooked
honey holes this season to take the buck of your dreams.
I was hunting just north of Kirksville, Missouri, during
a December muzzle-loading season one year. I'd been
hunting soybean and corn fields and creek bottoms in-between
them. Another group of hunters hunted the farm next
to us, and I noticed that these guys didn't come out
to hunt or go to their stands until daylight.
After putting my hunters out one morning, I had stopped
on the side of the road to lock the gate that we used
to go in and out of the property we were hunting. I
watched as the hunters left their camp in their trucks.
I soon saw a herd of deer come up the fence line on
their property, jump the fence and come onto our property,
cross the pasture and go into  some
thick cover near some old machinery sitting on the edge
of the pasture. I waited for a little while to let the
deer clear out, and then I went over to investigate
the area where I'd spotted the deer going into the cover
behind the machinery. I discovered a row of cedar trees
there that had some huge rubs on them.
This whole area was pretty much wide-open pasture,
but there was a small ditch that the deer could get
into and move without being seen. Once they crossed
the road, they had a line of cedar trees they could
use for cover to go into another field. The area was
so open that there was no way that anyone would ever
think deer would be there.
The next afternoon, I decided that if those deer were
crossing the road in the morning, they had to be bedded-down
on our neighbor's property and that more than likely,
they would be coming back to that bedding area across
our property late in the afternoon. I parked my truck
about 50 yards down the road from where I'd seen the
deer come onto our land. Then I walked up to the spot
where the deer had crossed, went down the bank, got
into the ditch that I was sure the deer had been  traveling
and walked about 40 yards up the ditch until I found
a scooped-out place in the bank. From this scooped-out
place, I could see the row of cedars about 60-yards
away that I knew the deer were using to hide their movements.
I backed-up in that scooped-out place and waited for
the deer.
About 3:00 p.m., I heard the hunters in the other camp
getting in their trucks, slamming their doors and driving
away from camp. About 4:00 p.m., I saw the deer coming
down the cedar trees. I spotted several does first,
before seeing a big buck right at the end of the line
of does. When I spotted the buck, I mounted my muzzle
loader and let him come in to within 50 yards before
I took the shot. The buck weighed over 200 pounds, had
a 20-inch spread and was all scarred-up from fighting.
If I'd taken you to the place where I was hunting and
told you, "This is my deer stand," you'd have
laughed out loud, because there didn't appear to be
enough cover to hold a buck, and there surely wasn't
enough food for a buck to eat in that area.
Yes, the buck and the does weren't living on our property,
but you'll find that often some really-nice bucks will
travel across the lands where you hunt at odd hours
and odd places where no one sees them or ever thinks
to hunt. If I hadn't actually seen these deer cross
the road during daylight hours, even if I'd found the
rubs and the trail, I probably would have assumed that
the deer were coming through this region after dark.
The place was just way too open to ever expect to see
or take a nice buck in it.
But remember that deer not only use cover but also
terrain to make  themselves
invisible. They'll move through ditches, walk on the
sides of hills, move through a small fencerow or even
use a briarpatch to hide from you. When a buck has his
head down and his neck out, he only ma be 3-1/2 to 4
feet tall. Even a big deer will rarely be more than
18- to
20-inches wide. So, a deer doesn't have to have a lot
of cover to move through to be invisible.
My suggestion to you is to start looking for deer in
open places where no one hunts during the time of the
day when most of the other hunters are in their tree
stands or ground blinds. That's the time of day deer
will move the most through places where the hunters
aren't. By not hunting when and where other hunters
hunt, you'll see and take bucks that other hunters never
see.
TOMORROW: THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY WITH RAY EYE
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