WHERE THE PROS HUNT AT THE BITTER END
Midwestern Bucks
Editor’s
Note: They've been chased, shot at, cussed at, spooked
and aggravated 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
bucks each year. These masters of the hunt tell us their
tactics for bagging late-season bucks.
A master woodsman, Brad Harris of Neosho, Missouri,
looks forward to end-of-the- season hunts because he
knows where the trophy bucks will stay in his home state.
"At the end of our season, the rut is over,"
Harris says.
"We don't have the advantage some states do in
hunting scrapes where does congregate to find trophy
bucks. Taking a trophy buck here often is difficult
during that time." Like most of the other late-season,
trophy-buck masters, Harris plans all year for his end-of-the-season
hunt. He starts immediately after the season ends the
previous year. "I walk into thick-cover areas and
jump bucks out of those spots to learn where the trophy
bucks have remained all season," Harris explains.
"I also religiously hunt sheds after the season,
because shed antlers will tell me if I will have a trophy
buck to hunt the next season and the general area where
that trophy buck holds and I can expect to find him."
But Harris doesn't stop his scouting program for trophy
bucks after the season. During the summer months when
the deer sport velvet antlers, he once again deliberately
goes into thickets to spook trophy bucks and learn where
they live. Also prior to the beginning of hunting season,
Harris hangs tree stands in thick-cover bedding areas.
But he doesn't go
to these stands until the very end of deer season. "Also,
you must choose the best day to take a trophy buck in
thick cover at the end of the season," Harris emphasizes.
"I wait until I hear a howling wind or see rain
pouring down to hunt these bedding sites. Since the
buck already knows what a hunter sounds and smells like,
I use the wind and the rain to blow my scent out of
the region and to cover the sounds I make as I approach
my stand. If bad weather takes away the buck's ability
to smell and hear me, the wind’s moving through
the thick cover also masks the deer's ability to see
me. By using the elements of nature, I'll enter an area
I've never hunted before without spooking a deer, and
I can hunt that spot undetected."
Missouri's
sub-zero temperatures toward the end of the season also
give Harris another advantage. Most hunters don't want
to sit in a tree stand during those bitter cold days
to wait for a buck to appear, especially if they have
to contend with a plunging wind-chill factor or rain
that makes hunting conditions even more miserable. "Christmas
season two years ago, the wind howled and the temperature
fell to around -9 degrees," Harris recalls. "Because
the weather remained so bad and the wind blew very hard,
I got into thick cover within 80 yards of a very nice
buck without his hearing, seeing or smelling me and
bagged him." Harris also places tree stands in
areas where he anticipates bucks will hold during snow
and ice storms. "I put tree stands on south-facing
slopes with plenty of brush and cover since most of
the wind and snow we get comes from the north,"
Harris reports. "The deer move onto these hillsides
during a snowstorm to dodge the wind and ice and to
get under the cover and brush the south slope provides.
In the middle of the day when the weather warms, these
bucks will stand up, feed and move some. When they do,
if I'm in my tree stand using my binoculars, I can spot
them and get a shot."
TOMORROW: MIDWESTERN BAD-WEATHER BUCKS
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