Your Deer Season Success in 3 Simple Steps
BBD. The best most cloud 9 feeling any hunter will ever experience. All of the hard work, patience, practice, blood, sweat, tears, and poison ivy scars have all led to this insurmountable climax of pure hunting success. Every one dreams of it, but ever year in the whitetail woods, there are old monarchs that claim victory over even the most seasoned of hunters. Playing on their home turf is Extremely difficult and we need to be completely on top of our game in every aspect of study and scout to reach that cloud nine pinnacle of autumn. In this blog, I am going to take you through the week where the 3 year quest for a stud buck came to and end and what techniques I used to finally achieve success.
If you are looking for more information on the application and results of any of the below strategies, I implore you to read on.
· Know your neighbors, know your deer.
· Cell cams are PRICELESS.
· Know when to strike but don’t over do it!
Know your neighbors, know your deer.
The story of this buck started back in 2016. I kept getting pics of what I thought was a 3.5-year-old buck with amazing potential. He would come and go from my property throughout the year, but never really staying long. All summer pictures I got of him were in the middle of the night which told me he most likely lived on a neighboring property to our north due to the length of time it took him to get to my camera in the evenings. That season came and went and I never saw him in person.
2016: Early August middle of the night picture of this buck traveling from a neighboring property to our North.
2016: He briefly shows up again during the rut checking doe family groups.
During the off season, I made an effort to reach out and get to know my neighbors and was pleasantly surprised that they were hunters and great conversationalists as well! 2017 deer season rolled through and I didn’t have any pictures of him and figured he was a flash in the pan and I wouldn’t see him again, until I got a picture of him in November from the neighbors and he had absolutely blown up.
2017: A picture from a neighbor confirmed our buck was alive and well.
Once again, the season finished out and I never saw him on camera or even on hoof. The neighbors ended up finding one of his sheds, thus confirming he survived all hunters in 2017. 2018 rolled around and velvet pictures from the neighbors proved he once again was still alive and had put on even more inches. Amount a few others that had showed themselves during the summer. This buck had rose to the top of my hit list for 2018.
Cell Cams are PRICELESS
Now onto the strategy. Humor me for a paragraph and put yourself into this situation. You know there are multiple big bucks in the area. You also know they don’t specifically live on your property, and merely cruise through. The success and failure of your hunting season will depend on your ability to crash into your best spots at the perfect time when those mature deer are temporarily calling it home while breeding the doe family group that calls your small parcel home. What do you do?
It seems this happens to hunters everywhere, every year. My first suggestion to everyone that can identify with this problem, go buy yourself a cellular trail cam that can send pictures to your phone! I did this in 2018 and I would not have been hunting within 150 miles of this buck the weekend I shot him if I had not had one in the woods.
The week of November 4th I was planning on hunting my rut vacation from work and going down south to film a buddy and hunt other properties in that area, but on Wednesday November 7th I got a picture of this buck sent to my phone. He had just passed through a rut funnel on our farm, pitch black tassel glands, and he was trotting, there was no doubt in my mind that he was dogging does on our property. The rest of the work week drug on until my Friday vacation day arrived.
2018: Our target buck gets caught in a rut funnel by my cell cam thus, changing the direction of my hunting plans.
Know when to strike but don’t over do it!
To say I was jacked to get into the woods and chase this boy down was an understatement. The weather had just turned and we were staring down a giant November cold front and I had a shooter buck trouncing around our property. Friday morning was a sit for the ages. I got in extra early, and took my time to creep down as quiet as possible into the deepest timber stand on our property. This particular stand is always killer during the rut. Part of the reason why is I let it soak until the perfect moment. Typically I sit it about twice a year because it’s so deep into the timber, slipped right between two thick bedding cover areas, it should always be an all day sit.
Ensuring you don’t over hunt any particular stand on your property or the area you are hunting is extremely critical to achieving mature deer encounters. Due to this, I had a hunt for a ages that morning. I spotted several different bucks and the action kept up all day long. Around 9am though, I got the sighting I was looking for a mature doe wondered up into some extremely thick bedding cover that typically gets torn up during the rut, and not 5 minutes later the buck I had known since 2016, and had seen on trail cam earlier that week was heading up to see her with his nose to the ground. I wasn’t able to pull him over close enough for a shot with a grunt so I let him go. I knew where he was going and I knew what he was up to. It was November 9th, he was following a mature doe into cover so thick you can’t see 5 foot in front of you. He was about to be locked down and breeding her for a few days.
If I told you I wasn’t a bit frustrated I would be lying. I knew I had played all my cards right and was just 50 yards too far for a shot. On the plus side I still had two days left to hunt that weekend. At that point, I had a choice to make, I could keep pressuring him, potentially alerting him to my presence, or I could keep the pressure low, let him do his thing, and then pick him back up on Sunday when he hopefully had finished breeding the doe. I ultimately ended up deciding to hunt a different parcel and another end of that parcel that Saturday. During that time I was able to pick up another trail cam pic of him from earlier in the week as well
2018: I pulled this card the day before killing him. His final trail cam pic.
He had obviously been working the does on our place all week and finally found one in heat. I had watched him follow her up into thick cover where I bet my chances of shooting this deer on the fact that he was going to lock down with her. After giving him the better part of Friday and all of Saturday, the time to make another move on him had come. I decided to go to another time proven stand on our parcel Sunday morning that was on the other side of the bedding cover I had seen him go up into two days prior, upon walking in, I climbed into my stand where I heard a snort wheeze up in the thicket where I assumed they were. It had to be him I thought, and sure enough it ended up being so. A short hour later, a doe came down the hillside over my left shoulder, and he was right there again following her step for step. One mouth grunt and a squeeze of my trigger later and the quest was over.
This mature buck’s reign came to an end on a cool crisp November morning that every hunter dreams of.
This experience taught me so much about mature deer, but also much more about using other resources to get me the right information to put myself into the right position to have the opportunity to harvest such a great animal. And you can do it too!
1. Making friends with neighbors not only reinforces what the great outdoors in all about, fellowship, but it’s a great way to get more trail cams in the woods and eyes in the field sort of speak. Given a mature bucks expansive home range, chances are he wonders several properties wide and long.
2. Once the pressure is on and the clock is ticking on your deer season you need to know when to strike without waltzing through your property bumping deer checking trail cams. Utilizing a cell cam can be an extremely useful in getting you real time information on the rut action on your parcel. Get a cell cam this year and put it in a rut funnel on your property. You will not be disappointed.
3. Regardless of the rut, hunting pressure will always remain King. Just because there is a mature buck in the neighbor hood and you want to harvest him it doesn’t mean you should lose sight of what got you here. Don’t hunt your “best” stands unless the wind is right, don’t over hunt any single stand, and don’t go sit your best spots without previous intel on the deer movement in that area.
The worst thing a hunter can do is simply climb a stand a hope. Do your homework, have a plan, know your target, and go out there and harvest a buck that makes you proud this year.
Author of this blog Caleb Andes poses with his family behind his buck. A trophy earned through the sacrifices of the whole family. For without them. None of this would have been possible.
