2016: Game Over
Intro
October 1st hits and the feeling of deer season doesn’t register, it’s not real. We get to FINALLY hunt! We get to square up with those mature bucks we have been watching all summer on camera. Us vs. them, on their home turf where they know every tree ravine and draw. They can smell where you have been and hear your heart beating through your chest with every encounter. The excitement of the opportunity is so overwhelming it’s no surprise that we blink, and it’s over. No more sunrises and sunsets while freezing in a tree, failed shot opportunities and close calls haunting our dreams, and that fateful moment when we taste success drives us to never give up. Below we’ll pick apart some of the strategies we incorporated this year and how they linked to our successes and failures. Stick with us, learn with us, and enjoy!
Strategy and Encounters
Strategy, it gives us the upper hand. But how do we implement it? And if we knew how, what exactly is it? For us, it revolves around one word with two big meanings: PRESSURE.
Hunting Pressure is proven to be the number one cause for reduced daylight mature deer movement. I cannot be more blunt about it. The Quality Deer Management Association (QMDA), renown Universities, and whitetail fanatics with more trail cams than you want to know about have utilized hundreds of thousands of data points to prove this theory year after year. In 2016 we put our number one focus on reducing hunting pressure on our properties. The tactics we utilized were changing up entry and exit routes to stands, utilizing previous year’s trail cam data to know which phase of the season to hunt certain stands, and of course, waiting for just the right time to strike which brings us into the second kind of pressure.
Barometric Pressure has been proven to be yet another big influence on mature buck movement. We utilize Weather Underground to track weather patterns throughout the season. They have great graphical displays of wind, temperature, and barometric pressure. This makes it extremely easy to determine when your optimal sit opportunities may occur. And as we found out this year, if you fail to sit during a barometric pressure spike, don’t worry, your trail cams will pick up the slack for you. Can you guess which day below TPO team member Caleb Andes shot a very mature doe?
Successes
This year was a successful one for the TPO team. This year will be remembered by the team as the year of close calls. Beyond the close calls we were able to successfully harvest 5 does on 4 different properties in 3 counties as well as one of our target bucks we had some history on.
Although they weren’t harvests, the close calls with target bucks count in our book! Knowing that we managed our properties to provide ourselves with the opportunities at these beasts is truly a rewarding feeling. Although it was often a twig, some brush, or just one more step separating us from the best year in history, we are still proud to have the opportunity.
TPO Team members Billy Lewis and Colbie Andes were both able to harvest a doe during Iowa’s shotgun and bow seasons. Caleb Andes was able to harvest three does on two different properties as well. Doe harvest is crucially important to our whitetail management plan. Maintaining a healthy buck to doe ratio will benefit not only your deer herd, but your potential in shooting that mature buck you are after. For more specific information on doe management check out our other blog post "Why Shoot Momma".
The big success of the season was the harvest of our #2 Hitlist Buck “Swoops” by a member of the TPO family Randy Hans. The team had a year and a half long history with this buck as well as a few encounters in 2016. A cold front and a barometric pressure spike on December 13th proved too much for Swoops to stay in bed. Just before last light Randy caught him following a yearling doe through a creek bottom toward a cut cornfield. To read more history on Swoops leading up to this season check out our other blog post on him "Hitlist Buck #2 Swoops".
Lessons Learned
Finally and most importantly with every passing season we learn more and more from our successes and failures. This year’s lessons weren’t hard to nail down because they were sadly the reasons why things didn’t come together in the final moments.
First of all, Time flies! Get Organized! Our team is small, three members with two camera set ups, and 4 hunting properties. Three guys, each with full time jobs, a wife, some with kids, and 250 miles separating us. Getting a mature buck down and on the ground WHILE another one of us is filming the other is no small feat. Quite frankly it’s tough. And without proper planning, one could deem it impossible. Our most memorable hunts this year were when we were able to put plans together and get in the tree together on optimal sit days.
We all knew it was the biggest factor going into the season but once again our experiences reconfirmed our theories. It’s like the invisible killer of mature buck encounters and not to mention trail cams go dry for days on end. You can’t see it, smell it, or hear it but to the game we seek, it’s all of those things combined. It’s hunting pressure. All mature buck encounters this year were achieved on the first sit of a high quality stand that had not been visited for over two weeks. Being weekend warriors you could almost guarantee the Saturday morning sit would prove to be the best and the deer movement would decline as the weekend drug on regardless of the weather. There are a few ways we plan to better attack that in 2017 but you will have to stick with us for that blog.
Finally, the factor that cost the team from letting our arrows fly at 5 different 160+ giants this year. Shooting lanes. Ranging from literally one branch to an entire crab apple tree we failed to cut them. And they cost us, big time. It’s a sore subject with the team so you know where we can be found with our chainsaws this spring.
Conclusion
In all, 2016 was a success and one to remember forever. Close encounters, harvests and sharing the outdoors with family and friends are just some of our favorite highlights of not just deer season but all of 2016. For us, managing our deer herd and tracking these magnificent beasts is not just a thing we do in the fall, it’s a year round event. So it’s time to lift our frost bitten heads up and look toward 2017 because it has already begun. Stay tuned for more blogs and video blogs on our bucks that survived the season and sheds!
