The good news is that for most of us, the bow season is finally here or at least it's so close we can start checking the 10-day weather forecast and planning our sits. The bad news is that it's really easy to screw up during the first week of the season. This is partially due to being a little rusty from nine months of no hunting, and partially due to unchecked enthusiasm that it's finally here.
This brings to mind something I find myself preaching to my twin six-year old daughters that also applies to most of us during the first seven days of bow season - make better decisions. When they (my daughters, not bowhunters) throw a fit over something trivial, I tell them to make better decisions. When they throw haymakers at one-another over which cartoon to watch like absolute savages, I tell them to make better decisions.
When it comes to this article, I'm going to say it five times in different ways.
The Best Stand Trap
If you've done your pre-season work, you've got one stand that checks more boxes than any other one. There are probably multiple reasons for this, but the main one will be how it's set up, what trail camera images tell you about its location, and pure instinct that it is the spot of all spots. This is a good thing, until it isn't. Don't push it with this stand in unfavorable conditions. If it's as good of an ambush site as you believe, then let it happen when your chances are the best. Don't rush it until everything is as in your favor as it's going to get.
Set That Alarm
Nearly everyone says that you shouldn't hunt mornings in the early season, let-alone during the first week of the season. This, oftentimes, is a mistake. Hunting mornings during September takes extra work most of the time. You've got to scout out travel corridors that you can get to without spooking deer. Some hunting areas have several of these spots, other areas not so much. You won't ever know unless you do the scouting necessary to make a good decision on whether that's true for you. Last fall I killed two great bucks in September in the morning, one of which was nearly 150 inches – on public land. It's possible; you just have to do it right. Don't sleep in solely because other hunters say you have to.
Locked On The Edge
Hunting cameraWe all love a stand hung over a soybean field or maybe a one-acre patch of clover. There's nothing better than getting into an edge stand in the early-season and waiting for the deer to start showing up. Those spots can undoubtedly be great, but don't forget there are other options. Staging areas off of destination food sources, river crossings, and random travel routes can all play into an opening-week strategy. By all means, sit your field-edge stands, but don't forget there are plenty of other options out there.
Early Out, Late In
The tendency to believe that most of the deer movement will happen at first and last light during the early-season can be dangerous to your strategy. Sure, most of the deer will move then, but not all of them. Try to sit an hour longer than you would in the morning and get in at least an hour earlier than you think necessary in the evening. A few years ago, I watched a stud of a buck browse through just out of range in mid-September at 10:30 in the morning. By all accounts, he should have been snoozing away, but he was in some security cover and decided to grab brunch. That decision almost got him killed by yours truly.
Waning Focus & Boredom
The woods are thick, the leaves are still out, and it's easier for deer to move more quietly now than any other point in the season – at least until the snow flies. A buck can be on you before you know it, and that's bad news if you're checking Twitter or are just generally distracted by your smartphone. I don't know how many buck encounters go the deer's way because hunters aren't paying attention due to their phones, but the answer is more than zero. Don't let that happen to you. Pay attention to your surroundings, and you'll have less chance of having to try to reach for you bow 45 seconds too late.
My heart sank, as the young doe the triple-beamed monster was following tried cutting left, when I so desperately wanted her to cut right. Just that fast, it appeared the doe that was bringing Mr. Big into my life was about to tear him away, when all I needed was a few more steps in my direction.
Hunting cameraLuckily, Mr. Big didn't seem to care much for what his estrus doe wanted. He was going to get a drink at the water hole my stand covered, and she was coming with him whether she wanted to or not. Hooking around her, he tined her rather forcefully in the side, redirecting her to the water hole. Moments later, I was shaking like a leaf, trying to compose myself, before daring to climb down and walk over to where an Easton my Mathews had sent through his boiler room had laid him to rest.
Without a doubt, studying the topo map the previous winter was what alerted me to the potential stand site. Located where the three tapering points met, it formed a busy intersection for bucks going from, to and between the higher ridges above. However, it was the early-April foot scouting trip that sealed the deal. With various-sized beds dotting the high grounds, and rubs and scrapes smattering about those tops, it was obvious that this was as busy an intersection as I first suspected. The scrape marking the intersection, approximately the size of the hood of a truck, only cemented in my mind that this was THE spot to be.
As technology increases, foot scouting is seemingly becoming a less and less important part of filling buck tags. Between up to date aerial photography, readily available topo maps and trail cams, we can study our grounds more thoroughly than ever before.
That said, foot scouting is still mission critical. Frankly, it is what I rely on to confirm or disprove the potential stand sites I find on photos and topos, as well as banking on it alerting me to key info one can not find on photos and topos. Here's what to look for when hitting the woods this spring.
Unraveling the Rut
Starting off with a bang, the biggest payoff spring scouting provides is the road map for the local bucks' rutting patterns. Make no mistake about it. For as much as we're told that you can't pattern rutting bucks, that's pure malarkey.
Rutting bucks have a pattern they loosely follow for finding estrus does every bit as much, if not more so, than a typical buck's feeding pattern can be ID'd in early or late season. After all, a deer's "patterns" are nothing more than unearthing one of more things they have the tendency of doing. By definition, tendencies mean that they won't always do it and there will be exceptions. A buck feeding somewhat regularly on a specific food source isn't any more of a pattern than a buck somewhat regularly checking the same doe bedding area for estrus does.
Before spring bloom occurs in earnest, most all of the previous year's most regularly used scrapes — the ones we really care about — and virtually every rub stands out like a sore thumb. No, bucks aren't rubbing and are very rarely pawing the dirt at scrapes in spring. However, before the new growth of grass and weeds swallow the scrapes or leaf out makes seeing last year's rubs harder, spring provides us the opportunity to study the cumulation of the previous rut's most serious rut sign postings, such as scrapes and rubs.
Being able to study the sum total of all rubbing and serious scraping at once, while not having to worry about out scouting efforts harming our hunting, is dang near invaluable. So much so that it is the foundation of my coming season's scrape hunting activities. It's impossible to tell how seriously a scrape will or won't be hit, when first opened. However, the bowled shaped appearance and/or size of the pawed earth beneath the licking branch of the previous fall's scrapes do wonders for alerting us to which scrapes were worked the hardest the previous year.
Keep in mind that the most heavily hit scrapes exist because that specific location is effective in advertising these scrapes to a large number of deer. So long as massive changes in overall deer patterns don't shift deer away from this location, it's a pretty darn safe bet that the scrape location will be prime again this coming fall. The most common deal breaker is when the lick branch for the scrape gets broken off or otherwise destroyed. Even that can be fixed by merely attaching a licking branch to the tree.
With the area's most seriously worked scrapes located, I merely zero in on the ones that are back in deer cover — where I believe Mr. Big would feel safe visiting during legal hours — that I can also get to, hunt and get out of undetected. I also pay particular attention to the serious scrapes surrounding doe bedding areas, as setting up on them can work great on through the peak breeding phase and even later, as mature bucks continue looking for any doe fawns that eventually achieve estrus. Those are the scrapes I will be hunting during the upcoming fall's peak scrape phase. I find most all of them the previous spring, as that time of year allows me to gauge their use or comparative lack thereof.
I'll be brutally honest with you all. I generally feel that rub lines get more exposure than they deserve. I can count on my fingers how many I've been able to put together over the years, and most of those were in big woods settings, where buck numbers are low and it's easier to feel confident that the same buck is tearing up those bugger trees, as mature buck numbers tend to be low.
That said, I have seen a couple obvious rub lines in farm country, as well as the larger handful in the big woods, and each has been well worth setting up on. In both cases, that rub line almost always marks the trail Mr. Big follows between bedding and feeding. As already alluded to, that's a lot easier to do if all the rubs from the previous fall are already made and leaf off allows one to see better.
What I do find more consistently are loose clusters of rubs. That's also important, as it is a strong indicator that a or multiple bucks spend a decent amount of time in this location. This explains the clusters of rubs one often finds along the edges of prime food sources. It simply tells us that bucks are feeding there.
Now look at that cluster of rubs and or scrapes found back in the woods a bit, say 50 or 100 yards off that food source, maybe around a small opening within the deer cover. That most often indicates that bucks stage in that location, before and/or after venturing into the food source. These are often the very best places to hunt bucks' feeding patterns, as we can often better slip in, hunt and slip out undetected, as opposed to setting right up on the food. Best yet, more legal light movement tends to occur in the staging areas than the food source provides, buying us those precious minutes of daylight movement that we so often need.
Putting It All Together
The other invaluable opportunity spring scouting provides is the best timing for tying everything together and seeing the big picture of how deer use and flow through our hunting grounds. Though mentioned a couple times already, I cannot overstress the importance of being able to study all of the previous year's rutting sign at once. Now add in buck beds, doe bedding, trails, pinch points, food sources and everything else we can learn spring scouting.
As you can see, up until spring green up is the best time there is for putting everything deer did the previous fall and early winter together. When we can understand what the deer have historically been doing on that ground we can use our most powerful weapon, our brain, to determine the odds of those behaviors being repeated and how best to setup on them.
Never underestimate our analytical powers and use that weapon to its fullest extent. However, the key to pulling that off most effectively is having thorough and accurate data to work from. Yes, the deer that left the sign found in spring may already be dead, but there was a reason Mr. Big chose that spot to bed, that spot to feed, that spot to stage and loosely followed the rutting patterns your spring scouting efforts unearthed. Because he was Mr. Big, he could do what he wanted, where he wanted to and when he wanted, within the confines of the deer world. You can rest assured, there was a solid reason for it. Even if he is dead, odds are very high that the next in line will assume his patterns, as he had claimed the best of the best for himself.
Conclusion
Spring scouting provides us an invaluable opportunity to see how most of the more important aspects of last season's deer patterns played out. With solid and thorough data to work with, we can then use our most powerful weapon to its fullest capabilities. We can use our brains to analyze and determine the best hunting strategies for the upcoming season.
The most prominent trail camera strategy in today’s deer-o-sphere is using them to confirm what a hunter already suspects about local whitetails. This is why so many of us mount cameras over standing soybean fields or the edges of food plots in July. We know bucks feed regularly in those spots, and we want to get pictures of them.
It’s pretty simple, really, but often not all that productive. If you’ve got a property locked up and know that no one will come in and mess with the summer patterns, then yes, you can plan a strategy around those images. But be honest, you were going to hunt those spots anyway, because they’re no-brainer locations for early-season bowhunting setups.
The problem with scouting that way is that it works with a good summer destination food source — but then, those patterns crumble just before or right after you get your first chance to slip in with a bow and try to intercept a target buck. This is where trail cameras can hurt us if we’re not careful.
It’s easy to hunt on memory, but a buck that has bailed on his summer food pattern isn’t likely to return to it in a way that will allow you to encounter him during shooting hours. This is especially true if you’re hunting pressured ground, whether public or private.
A better bet with scouting cameras is to use them to figure out what is going on in the places where you’re really not sure what the activity level is, or to sort out the routes target bucks are taking as they travel to/from food sources. Practically speaking, this is what scouting is all about, and it’s possible with the right camera strategy.
KILLABLE DEER IN HUNTABLE SPOTS
The idea obviously is to identify good bucks that might be moving during legal shooting hours, then pin down locations you can sneak into, and actually hunt, correctly. Doing so isn’t nearly as easy as we’d like to believe, though. If it were, success rates would be much, much higher.
Each year I hunt whitetails on public land in four or five states, and if there’s one thing I find consistently, it’s that the easy spots are nearly always worthless to hunt outside the hottest part of the rut. The better bucks I see, and occasionally arrow, almost always have made the mistake of moving during daylight either on a travel route or in a staging area, both of which will be in security cover.
While some big bucks seem to be terribly ensconced in a nocturnal lifestyle, most aren’t. They just don’t move a whole lot during daylight in any place but their favorite sanctuaries. This information matters, because those might be the only spots in which you’ll ever encounter them with enough daylight to get a legal shot.
These spots will almost always relate to a destination food source. That’s true even in the Northwoods, where there isn’t an agricultural field or food plot within miles. The deer usually have a feeding place in mind, but they’ll take their sweet time getting there — and most often, you’ll run out the clock before they poke their nose into any open areas.
So while the soybean field on your farm or parcel of public land is where the bucks will probably end up each night, how they get there and how they leave are what matter most to us hunters. The same goes for the oak ridge in the big woods or an irrigated alfalfa field out west. My typical strategy is to start at the most obvious destination food sources and place cameras in the first patch of good cover off them, hanging in what appear to be high-traffic spots. This might be a ditch or ravine crossing or simply a trail carved down the face of a bluff. Regardless, the idea is to get an idea of which deer are moving through the cover near the most obvious food.
It’s important to remember here that the July woods can look a lot different from the September woods, and another thing entirely when you consider November. The first, most likely staging area off the food will last until the leaves drop or hunting pressure on the field edges pushes the deer deeper, or maybe persuades them to stay even farther back.
NO DICE…NOW WHAT?
The reason many of us don’t want to engage in this strategy is we won’t run in danger of having our SD cards maxed out with images. In fact, you might not capture anything that gets you excited. That’s a bummer, but it’s important. Eliminating dead ends isn’t as exciting as checking your camera and realizing that a herd of Booners has been traipsing through every day, but it’s also not nothing. Knowing where not to hunt matters, because it allows you to focus your efforts elsewhere.
This is why I try to run at least a couple trail cameras in question-mark locations. The idea is to figure out travel patterns in the cover, but you also must weigh the value of that information against how often you’ll slip in to check cameras and thus disturb the area. (That assumes you aren’t using a cellular camera, which eliminates the need to visit the spot regularly.)
If possible, I try to time my camera checks around rainstorms, but that’s far from a reliable strategy for minimizing disturbance. Instead, I force myself to give a camera at least a month in any given spot during the summer scouting period. Leaving a trail cam to “soak” in a spot for a minimum of four weeks means the deer will have plenty of time to get used to it, and all kinds of weather and the accompanying fronts will pass in that time. This allows me to compare deer movement to conditions and decide if there’s anything worth really paying attention to there.
If I do capture a good buck doing his thing a few times, it also gives me enough time to try to hang some more cameras and attempt to further pin down his daily habits. This is where different trains of thought merge onto the same track. Most of us think nailing down an exact buck’s routes is the goal, and it’s easy to slip into the mindset that deer do pretty much the same thing every day. But while they’re habitual critters, they don’t walk the same trails and utilize the same beds day after day unless they’re very comfortable in one given spot.
For most of us, those spots are behind plenty of “No Trespassing” signs and come with a serious price tag. The reality is, whitetails travel through their world in relation to the conditions and how they’ll be able to use their senses to stay safe. This means the buck that walks down a specific trail once a week is going somewhere else the other six days. Where are they? Ask yourself questions and try to answer them with long-range observation and more camera work.
For example, even though the travel pattern of a good buck on a specific ditch crossing might seem random, it probably isn’t. Think about where he’s coming from and where he’s going. Maybe there’s a pond tucked into the timber 200 yards away. Is he visiting it to get a drink? A well-placed camera can tell you.
Maybe the buck surprises you one evening as you’re swatting mosquitoes and looking through the spotting scope at a green bean field on your farm. Instead of emerging from the woods the way most of the other deer do, he pops up in a grassy swale on your neighbor’s property and hops a fence to reach the groceries where you can hunt. All such in-person observations and clues gathered by your cameras will allow you to start homing in on an area that your target buck prefers. And that matters — a lot.
THE RIGHT NEIGHBORHOOD
While scouting for bow season we always strive to identify the exact tree from which we’ll arrow a good buck, during mid-summer we’re really just trying to pinpoint his preferred territory. Due to the fact so much can change from July or August to opening morning of the archery season, the idea is to get in the right neighborhood without letting the buck know you’re onto him.
This will allow you to set up a strategy for hunting the early season, but also be careful enough to preserve a buck’s safe zones until you need to slip in. Naturally, this is easier if you’re hunting private ground with limited pressure but is also a possibility on public land. You just need to understand there are no guarantees with the latter category, but that doesn’t give you an excuse to push it in a specific area.
What I’ve found through extensive camera work and summer scouting missions is that the areas I identify as hotspots for specific bucks in July are usually pretty close to where those bucks will be in September. There seems to be a big change in deer movement at that time, but a lot of it is simply that the big buck is becoming more cautious and not running into a field in broad daylight to munch away with his buddies.
That’s OK, though. If you run a practical camera strategy this summer, you’ll know where to set up off the easy food sources yourself. You’ll be able to tease out useful threads from the tapestry that is a buck’s daily habits, so you’ll know where to go even if the easy daylight activity dies on you.
Your Plan B will be way more well-thought-out than your hunting competition’s. So as you slip into a staging area or along a trail you know a specific buck uses under those conditions, you’ll have a better chance of filling an early-season tag.
IN CONCLUSION
Use cameras wisely. Your summer scouting mission isn’t finished just because you put out a bunch of cameras in June. Check them once a month and tweak their locations as needed in order to figure out why the local bucks are doing what they’re doing.
Tie that camera work into some long-range glassing and eventually you’ll start to see patterns emerge with specific bucks and how they conduct themselves on a daily basis. At that point, you’ll be in a good spot to get in and make the most of your early-season sits.
If you want to be consistently successful on western big game there are two ways to get there. The first is to buy your way in to opportunities. With a big enough bank account, all of your 400-inch bull elk dreams can come true. For those of us with more modest means, the answer comes from work. Old-fashioned, one-foot-in-front-of-the-other work.
This goes for elk, of course. But also applies equally to antelope, mule deer, western whitetails, and the limited-tag high-country dwellers that we might pursue once or twice in our entire lives. Getting to where they live, whatever they are, is the most important step in the process.
This might be aided by horses at some point, but eventually you'll have to slide from the saddle and shoulder the weight of your pack all on your own. For this to be as misery-free as possible, you'll need to consider a few things.
Outfit Yourself
Trekking poles are all of the rage in the mountain hunting world these days. They can turn you from an awkward bi-ped to a somewhat less awkward bionic four-legger. You'll want the right base layers and outer layers to keep you comfortable throughout an all-day hunt that could go from sedentary to full-on exertion and back several times.
Quality boots matter — a lot. Anyone who has hiked a few miles in poorly designed boots knows this all too well. Quite a few years ago I had a mule deer hunt go south in a hurry because the boots I was wearing wore holes into my heels. I had to cover open wounds with duct tape and carry on, but believe me when I say that it wasn't much fun.
Great boots for western hunting camera have to be designed to handle all types of terrain, which was the impetus behind the Alsea from Danner. These boots are designed with full-grain leather and a rugged, GORE-TEX®-lined upper to keep your feet dry and comfortable. They are 100-percent waterproof, yet breathable and are built to keep you upright no matter how rugged the conditions are in which you choose to traverse.
This is made possible through an outsole that is outfitted with large perimeter lugs, which essentially promote extra surface contact which translates directly to better traction in all environments. The eight-inch Alsea are offered in several versions, including non-insulated and insulated options. The non-insulated boots tip the scales at 51 ounces per pair, which means they are ideal for mountain hunts where every ounce matters.
Plan Your Routes & Don't Waste Calories
A newbie mistake in the big vistas of the west is to spot an animal or a tasty looking mountain basin and decide to go from point A to B. This works on the plains for antelope (sometimes), but is usually a fool's bet in the mountains. A savvy western hunter will find an animal or a likely looking draw, and then dissect the mountainside to pick a route that allows for a couple of things.
Head him off if at all possible, which might mean that your lazy day of crawling has now turned into the kind of endeavor where you need to dip behind the nearest ridge to jog your way a mile closer before slowing down.
In a different scenario, you might spot your antlered prize bedded down with no intention of going anywhere. He's secure in the topmost edge of a mountain basin watching the whole world below him. You'll want to make a move, obviously, but in this case you'll want to avoid getting in front of him. In fact, you'll want to get around and above, which means it's time to climb. High-country critters don't often face predators that approach from above, so that's where you need to be. This means that after three hours of glassing and sitting on your haunches, you'll suddenly have to go into full-on rock climber mode.
With either scenario, and countless more, you have to be prepared to go up, down, fast or slow as the situation dictates.
If you're planning to cover some serious ground in search of western hunting adventure, go at it the right away. Plan to work hard, hunt smart, and outfit yourself with the gear that will get you there comfortably.
Most of my duck spots are public, just like most of my bowhunting spots are public. What this means is that a significant portion of my fall is spent on ground open to anyone. And because of that, I've gotten awful good at ferreting out the spots others won't work to get to, or simply don't know about.
Now, that comes with a caveat considering I live in the Twin Cities – there are just some areas where there aren't any secrets left. And if there are enough willing hunters around, a certain percentage of them will work just as hard – or harder – than you to get to the good hunting.
With the playing field leveled in such a way, it becomes a lot more difficult to work around the competition, but not all hope is lost. There are still some ways to hedge your bets while hunting ducks on common ground, but you'll need to plan ahead.
Wednesdays Are Best
The reality is that most of the hunters will be out on Saturday and Sunday. Hunting pressure for ducks – and pretty much all game – flows into full volume on the weekend and ebbs mid-week. What does this mean for you?
Well, you'd better go to your boss and your spouse with your cap in hand and eyes cast downward and plead your case for some time to yourself during the middle of the week. This will do a couple of things for you.
First and most obvious, you'll have fewer sky-blasters out in your spots. The fewer the hunters in your immediate area, the better your hunting will be. Now, there is an argument that more hunters out in general puts more birds in the air, and that is true in certain situations, but it doesn't mean they are going to fly over the public ground you're on. They will, more often than not, suss out as only pressured ducks can, the water where no one is hunting.
This effect, which brings to mind no-hunting refuges with rafts of greenheads flipping off distant hunters, can also push birds into places that can be hunted but just aren't being disturbed currently like public land in the middle of the week. This is the beauty of migrators, because they don't get to know the local hunting pressure the same way resident ducks do. The places these ducks settle are best hunted on a Wednesday or Thursday morning when those lulled-into-a-false-sense-of-security birds are yours for the taking if you can find a few free mornings while the rest of the working stiffs are suiting up and heading to their cubicles and job sites.
Operate Correctly
A few years ago, a buddy and I tucked into a wooded berm near some flooded backwaters hoping to catch the last of the wood ducks or a random greenhead passing overhead. We knew the best in our setup was to pass-shoot them as they cleared the treeline and most likely, spotted us. The hope was that it would be too late by the time they figured out their waterhole was being guarded by a couple of dudes holding 12 gauges and an eager black Lab.
Hunting cameraWe did manage a drake and a hen wood duck in the spot, and we also got to witness what not to do duck-wise. Two hunters had slipped into a pond 400 yards from our setup. Instead of tucking into the brush at the edge and trying to hide, they stood at the top of a hill and sent three shots apiece at any duck within a football field's distance of where they stood.
Even if you get out mid-week, you've still got to figure out the best way to hunt your spots on public. The ducks that cruise through the airspace overhead will undoubtedly be a bit cautious, because that's just how they operate. How you should operate is to figure out each spot and where you should be set up. Maybe you can build a sweet blind in the brush, or maybe you've just got to count on getting the jump on them when they finally clear the closest trees and give you those few precious seconds as they try to flare out of the way of your pattern.
Really Camo Up
This is a simple one, but so many of the duck hunters I run into on public land seem to take a half-hearted approach camo-wise. It's as if they either don't know what they are doing, or have given up most of their hope for a decent hunt long before they actually go. Honestly, there is probably a lot of both going on.
Either way, camo up. Use a facemask or face paint and make an attempt to keep hidden if at all possible. Don't give those common-ground ducks the extra advantage of a poorly-hidden or poorly covered hunter unless the spot just doesn't allow for much else. You're working hard to earn the birds in this situation, at least make them work somewhat hard to survive any encounter with you.
Conclusion
Public-land ducks can be tough, but there are plenty of ways to hedge your bets and ensure that you'll have better hunts than most of your competition. You might not limit out on greenheads every time you step out of the truck in the dark, but you'll have a good chance of having a better-than-average hunt and just might end up with some of the most satisfying ducks any hunter can take in any given year, and that's not nothing.
What's worse than that is the fact that the remaining deer have usually had enough of the pressure. At no point in the season are they cagier and less wiling to move during daylight than right after the end of the general firearm's season.
This also happens to be muzzleloader season, and while there is the always the chance to knock down a giant, most of us would be well served to tamp down our expectations and set our standards accordingly.
For this particular hunter, smokepole season is a venison quest. Here are three ways to add some healthy protein to your diet while toting a frontstuffer. Staging City
It would seem that if you're hunting any deer in the herd, setting up on a food source would be the right choice. That's what an awful lot of the whitetail experts will tell you to do. But what if you hunt a place that has been absolutely pounded and the average fawn is savvier than the mature bucks that those hunters protect on premier ground until they are hit-list worthy? Then you need to back off of the food. Naturally, if it's unseasonably cold and the deer are running a calorie deficit, they might charge into a chopped cornfield with plenty of shooting light left. But probably, they won't.
They will, usually, get up from their beds a little early and browse their way slowly toward the food source. This is a bowhunter's strategy adapted to the muzzleloader's world, and it works. The key is to find the thickest, nastiest cover on your property and get as close as you can without making too much noise, or worse, allowing your wind to blow through the cover.
This may seem like an evening-only strategy, but it works in the morning as well provided you've got the right entrance route. Most of the time, you don't need to be more than 100 or 200 yards off of the destination food source to make this work. The Mini-Drive
In general, I'm not a fan of driving deer. That's probably because I grew up bowhunting only, and never took part in the traditional deer drive. I have, a few times, found good situations in which to move some deer in the right direction of a stander during muzzleloader season. A few years ago, while hunting public land in Minnesota, I found a river-bottom that was covered in beds and deer sign. It was a narrow stretch of cover that was too thick to set up in, so I posted my dad on one end and circled wide. Within about one minute of stepping into the thick stuff I heard him shoot. Several does and fawns had trotted by, and one long-nosed doe had made the mistake of stopping 15 yards from him.
If you've got a situation where you can make a mini-push, plan it out and go for it. Just make sure to be quiet, and keep it slow and simple. It doesn't take much to get late-season deer to move, and the goal is to get them up and walking - not sprinting for the next county. Old-School Still Hunting
I love to still hunt. This tactic, which hasn't been popular in a long, long time, is a lot of fun with a muzzleloader. I keep my eyes glued to the weather and if there some fresh snow on the way, or it's going to be super windy, I plan a sneak. Ditto for any rain in the forecast.
Hunting cameraConventional wisdom says you are supposed to move so slow you'll make a sloth look like Usain Bolt, but that's silly. Very few people can do that, and who only wants to see 100 yards of the woods during a three-hour sneak? I try to move slowly, and stop a lot to glass but I don't go so slow that moss grows in my beard. The key to a successful still-hunt is to hunt in a place where you have confidence the deer will be. If you believe any minute you'll spot a doe or buck slipping through the timber, you'll hunt with the wind in your favor and your eyes peeled for a flash of brown.
The first time I did this, I hunted during a crazy storm and spotted a doe and fawn 50 yards from me. I missed her clean and thought my season was over. Later, I crested a ridge and looked at the valley below me. A doe was bedded 35 yards away, oblivious to my presence. It was the only time I've ever shot a whitetail in its bed.
The key to the second shot versus the first, was that I took a careful rest while lying prone on a rock outcropping. The first I shot off-hand, which is always a bad idea. If you're going to go the sneaky route, carry a pair of shooting sticks or try very hard to remember to take a solid rest. The importance of that can't be overstated. Conclusion
If you're meat-poor and own a muzzleloader, you've got options. There are plenty of ways to get a tasty doe or young buck in your sights but just remember, it might not happen on a food source like it's supposed to. You just might have to get a little creative in your tactics.
While it's true hunters today are taking more and bigger bucks than ever, it's also true there are more big bucks around. Certainly, technology has revolutionized the way we hunt and, to some extent, made it easier to be successful, but don't let it lure you into thinking you can kick back, watch trailcam images roll into your smartphone, and then know exactly what's going on in the woods.
Fact is, the most successful whitetail hunters combine proven tactics with modern technology to augment their knowledge. They use woodsmanship to determine if there's a mature buck on their property, where deer feed, and how bucks move; trailcams just let them actually see racks. Here are some old-school tactics to enhance your quiver of new tricks.
Boots on the Ground
Google Earth and apps like OnX are wonderful for seeing the general lay of the land, but nothing beats boots on the ground to learn what's happening below the treetops. But don't just barge in anytime. During fall, you'll spook deer and spread scent; in spring and summer, deer display vastly different behavior than during the hunting season. Therefore, the best time to scout is the day after deer season ends.
At this time the woods are an open book with a story to tell. It's also one that's easier to read because the foliage is gone so you can see the bigger picture. If there's snow on the ground, even better. This is when you should walk ground to learn subtle ridge trails, draws, hidden pockets of cover, and any contours that dictate deer travel patterns. You'll find obvious signs, like trails, tracks, scrapes, and rub lines from the past rut. This intel will help you determine stand locations for the coming season.
Rub Lines
Hank Tassitano has been killing big bucks on public land since the 1960s. Back then, hunters had only their wits and a weapon to take a buck, which was a rare sight in itself. Tassitano has killed many mature bucks by hunting near rub lines, especially if he can find where two rub lines converge. While there is debate about the value of a rub, Tassitano feels strongly about them. "The size of the rub is generally indicative of the size of a buck," he says. "And while one rub just means that one buck was there once, a rub line usually means a buck routinely works that area."
Trails
Understanding how deer traverse your property is vital. But don't think bucks just wander down trails like does. In October, when bucks transition into breeding mode, mature bucks walk perpendicular to major trails so they can maximize their chances of winding a doe. So even if your trail cam that's placed on a major trail reveals no mature bucks, it doesn't mean none are around. Rather, think like a buck and trust sign. Find places where bucks cruise so they're somewhat hidden yet can cross as many deer trails as possible.
Food Sources
In fall, food sources alone are probably overrated for attracting big bucks. That's because most years there are so many food sources around, including mast, forbes, browse, crops, and fruit, that betting on one carries lower odds than betting on does to attract bucks. Nonetheless, deer must eat. So, you should be an expert on deer food.
Hunting cameraOld-school hunters know what specific trees perennially produce mast and when deer hit them heaviest. If you know that a white oak is raining acorns — something a trailcam can't reveal — strongly consider hunting there immediately. Learn the trees in your area, nearby crops, and what food is most palatable when. This is best learned by spending time in the woods and by observing from a distant vantage point. If you can place trail cams on various food sources, great! Because if you can find the hot food source — especially those in cover — you'll find does and, likely, mature bucks.
Tracks
Tracks are the trailcams of yesteryear. A track made in dirt records when a deer was there and, to an extent, its size. In general, the tracks of mature buck are bigger than all other deer tracks in that area. In my area, for example, a track that measures three inches long is undoubtedly a mature buck, so I notice them. Tracks reveal where a buck has been and where he went.
Rangefinder Trap
Old-school bowhunters were not dependent on laser rangefinders. While rangefinders are revolutionary for long-range shooting, they're also responsible for saving many bucks annually. That's because hunters who have become overly dependent on them often range a close-by buck when they should be shooting. Savvy hunters are accurate to 40 yards or better by using their natural depth perception. All it takes is practice.
Sneakiness
Many modern hunters drive too close to their stands. Some are afraid of the dark; others are just lazy. Fact is, if a big buck is near your treestand — where you'd expect him — and he hears an ATV announce the presence of a human, he's gone. And then you'll wonder why you didn't see him that morning.
Old-schoolers ninja in. Unless you know that deer are absolutely conditioned to living with trucks, say, on a busy ranch, this means parking a half-mile or more from your stand and sneaking in. Use cover and available natural features like creeks or rock ridges to disguise your entry.
Sun and Silhouette
Old-school hunters always factor in the sun before setting a stand. They also avoid silhouetting themselves. While you never want the sun beaming directly in your eyes, just as important is concealing your silhouette as the sun sets at your back. View your stand from a deer's perspective and consider adding foliage behind you.
Wind
"Scent control is huge," says Tassitano. "I'm often surprised to learn that the wind at my stand is doing something different from the predominant wind in the area. So I tie a small feather on a thread and hang it from my bow so I can see how the breeze shifts when I hunt. This teaches me how winds affect certain stand locations so I can more wisely choose where to sit in the future."
October lull: Fact or fiction? I'm still not convinced, though I have on occasion experienced a lull around the third week of October as many others have. But are the deer actually reducing their daytime activity, or are they merely moving it somewhere else? And how do you tell?
Trail cameras can be invaluable in keeping up with how deer make subtle changes in their areas of daytime activity.In many parts of the whitetail's range, October is a month of transition. It begins with warm temperatures. Leaves are still on the trees and deer are just starting to abandon their summer routines. Things are changing, and in order to stay on top of those changes, hunters sometimes need to double their scouting efforts. Fortunately, they can narrow their focus. In general, deer are on their feet during daylight hours for two things — feeding and breeding.
Feeding
This time of year both food availability and preference change. With less need for protein, deer spend increasingly less time in those clover fields you've watched them in every evening. Instead, more time is used for seeking out foods high in carbs, like hard and soft mast. Where I live, the white oaks drop their acorns first, and over a relatively short period. Deer will be on the sweeter, smaller acorns right away, but the bounty won't last much beyond mid-October. Then they move on to the more bitter, but larger red oak acorns. Sometimes the change is subtle and other times it can be quite dramatic.
I once did an early season hunt in Kansas where, based on the landowner's reports, we spent the first few days hunting the edge of soybean fields. But the deer seemed to have disappeared upon our arrival. "A typical October lull," we thought. Then somebody discovered a small grove of persimmons dropping fresh, ripe fruit. One of our party killed a nice buck that evening and I saw at least seven rack bucks the following afternoon. Hunting crops can be hit or miss, as the aforementioned example illustrates. The deer weren't on the beans early, but I've had great luck hunting bean fields in December in Iowa. Corn can be similarly problematic. Hunting in and around standing corn can be tough, but you're going to want to be along the field edge the day after they cut the corn, particularly if it's not a super-efficient machine harvest. These are but a few examples. The deer where you live may go through other diet shifts as need and availability change; and you'll just have to get out there and study. Breeding
Things are also changing with regard to social interaction in October. The transition is slow at first, but the pace picks up as the month rolls on. Bucks open up a few scrapes in early October, but may not revisit them for a week or more. They're waiting for a trigger.
From reams of research we know that in mid to northern latitudes, most does enter estrus around the same time every year — mid-November. There are exceptions, including a couple smaller peaks, one occurring roughly 28 days before peak rut when a few early does cycle and their pheremones incite a sudden increase in buck activity. But if the does move away from where they were in early-October, so will the bucks — especially with love in the air. If you want to be successful you have to keep up with these transitions. Keeping Tabs
One way to try and keep up with changes in deer activity is to be in the woods as much as possible. But no one can be everywhere they want to be every day. You can't hunt every day, and even if you could, you wouldn't want to put that much pressure on one place. Additionally, you can't hunt multiple locations at once. But your trail cameras can. I usually put mine out in late August or early September, mostly to take stock of this year's crop. It will give me a rough idea who is out there and where they hang out, but I know the latter can change over a relatively short period of time, based on the aforementioned factors. It's not at all uncommon for an early-fall spot to go dry. Then I start to move my cameras around and put more out to see where the deer are.
That info is valuable in and of itself, but it can be exponentially more useful when evaluated over time. If you use an app, like ScoutLook, you can plot activity around and between stands from your image files and look for patterns. Over several seasons you may also start to recognize trends using the time and date stamps on your images.
Every situation is different and it may take you several seasons to figure out what's going on in your area. And one year may be different from the next as farmers rotate their crops or natural foods like acorns experience cyclic variations, or environmental conditions like drought alter food availability. But studying your quarry is all part of the fun. The more you learn about the biology and behavior of the animals you hunt, the more enjoyable and successful your efforts will be. Bob Humphrey is a certified wildlife biologist, registered Maine guide and an outdoor writer. He has studied and hunted white-tailed deer for over four decades across North America and is considered a leading authority on whitetail biology and behavior.
Many things aren’t quite as they seem. Flip through a fashion magazine and you’ll see how drastically someone’s appearance can be altered if enough time is spent and enough cash changes hands. From silkier hair to whiter teeth, fuller lips, thinner thighs and so on, the available tweaks are all but endless. Whoever first said life is but an illusion might have just laid down a copy of Vogue.
There’s also a lot of fakery in the hunting world. Generations of waterfowlers have tossed wooden ducks onto the water. And over the past few years, many hunters have begun using turkey decoys. Bird hunters regularly employ such fakes, in combination with calling, because their sharp-eyed quarry can be notoriously hard to coax into lethal range of a thimbleful of pellets.
Mimicking waterfowl and turkey sounds is something with which nearly all whitetail bowhunters can identify. Over the years, innovative deer calls for making grunts, bleats, snort-wheezes and even “roars” have become standard gear. Around the rut, few archers would think of heading afield without some sort of call in their packs. Being able to make sounds that lure bucks into bow range is often a huge advantage.
But what about the visual fakery? Where’s the deer decoy? Most bowhunters have heard of them, and even seen them used on TV hunts, but they aren’t using one themselves. If the thought of decoying has crossed their mind, it evidently was but a fleeting notion.
I don’t claim to be an expert on whitetail decoying. But maybe that’s why I’m pretty sure I can help you. Because while I don’t decoy that often, I’ve still had great success over the years. That tells me you could, too.
The Point of It All
Decoys work for different species for different reasons. Fake ducks and geese are effective because those birds are gregarious and associate other flocks with safe places to feed and rest. A migrating flock might never have seen the pond your spread is on. They’re relying on other birds to tell them it’s a good place to land.
Of course, with a turkey gobbler it’s all about reproduction. Come spring a tom wants to mate, and few things ignite his passion the way the sights and sounds of a breeding opportunity do.
What we’re looking to do with a whitetail decoy is much closer to a setup for turkeys than for ducks or geese. Even during the rut, when many bucks roam widely, they likely know where the food sources and bedding areas are. They don’t need other deer to confirm it. But they do keep their eyes open for other whitetails, whose presence might signal a chance to reproduce.
If you’ve ever had a 3-D buck target mangled by a yard-invading buck, you know how strong the visual attraction can be. When a feisty buck sees what looks like a rival, there’s potential for an aggressive response. What influences whether or not he comes all the way in is more complex. But you need not be a master decoyer to make it work.
As with most other whitetail tactics, entire books could be written on this one. In fact, my friend the late Gary Clancy did just that a number of years ago. But you can have fun decoying, and fill tags with good bucks in the process, if you follow a few simple rules. Hunting cameraOK, “rules” is too rigid a term. Let’s go with “guidelines.” Which means go by them, but be willing to amend or even ignore them as conditions dictate.
Guideline 1: Buck vs. Doe
You might assume that for a rutting buck, a doe standing by her lonesome, waiting for him to join her, would be the hottest ticket to success. Every nerd’s dream at the school dance, right?
That setup can work. In those rare places where the sex ratio is super tight, resulting in a short window of breeding, every doe is getting checked constantly. There, when the time is right a standing/feeding doe decoy is a real attraction. I’ve seen one of these work on mature bucks even without a buck decoy as part of the setup.
But a doe isn’t what I normally use. Most of the time, I feel, you’re better off with a buck decoy. Maybe with a doe in the setup, but often not. I’ll use a lone doe only if I don’t have a buck available.
The main reason I don’t like lone-doe setups is that real does don’t like them. Put a fake doe in a food plot or field and when the old herd doe arrives, she’s likely to freak out. She’ll often stomp around indignantly, then try to lead the rest of her clan back off the plot. If they don’t follow, she’ll become even more agitated. Prepare to listen to “blowing” for a while, as that doe prances around with her tail hairs flared. She just doesn’t like having a strange lady on her turf.
Replace the doe decoy with a buck and things tend to go better. Yes, it’s still a “new” deer, but the matriarch seems to accept that he’s an outsider just passing through. That sort of thing happens during the rut. In many cases, the boss doe quickly calms down and goes on about her business.
You might feel there’s no harm in letting that old doe lead her pack out of the area. You aren’t trying to shoot a doe anyway. But having live deer around can be helpful. They’re living decoys. Yes, too many does present can distract a buck that otherwise might have come to your decoy, but that’s when a little calling and/or rattling can come in handy.
So in most cases, I feel a lone-buck decoy is best. And in most places, a 30-day window starting around Oct. 25 often is the time to try it. After that the libido of most bucks begins to drop, with less aggression displayed.
I know of a few big deer shot over buck decoys right before velvet shedding and of a few others shot deep in the post-rut. I assume a blend of dominance and curiosity explains those approaches, as it’s unlikely they were related to breeding interest. But we can never be sure just what any buck is thinking.
Maybe because it’s often a chore to lug two decoys, few hunters use the deer equivalent of a “spread.” However, I’ve arrowed two bucks while using buck decoys standing over doe decoys. One of the fake does was a full-bodied model, minus legs and antlers, mimicking a bedded doe in heat; the other was a standing cardboard doe silhouette.
Guideline 2: Positioning Matters
Just sticking a decoy in front of a stand is a good way to educate deer. You’ll get educated too, but it could prove costly. So let’s try to get it right the first time.
Does it matter which way a buck decoy faces? I think so. Young bucks often sheepishly approach from the rear, but a big deer rarely will. He wants to intimidate this intruder, not simply gouge him in the ham. So most big bucks will come in from the side or swing around in front. Position the decoy so that either of these approach angles eventually will result in a close broadside shot.
I always have a buck decoy face me. Maybe not straight at me, but within 20 degrees one way or the other. While broadside can work, I’d rather not set it that way. One thing you’ll never see me do is face a buck decoy away from me. Again, I want to encourage a buck to see the decoy, swing around it to make eye contact with it and, in so doing, offer a good shot angle while looking away from me. Folks, that’s about as easy as bowhunting big whitetails ever gets.
How far? I like to put a buck decoy at least 22 yards out. If picking an ideal range, I’d say 25-27. But what matters most is that it be several yards inside maximum comfortable bow range. We can’t control from where a buck will come or which line he’ll take. If he goes a few yards behind the fake and stops, it might be the best shot you’ll ever get. Make sure that distance isn’t too far.
On the flip side, if the decoy’s too close to you, there’s not much room for a buck to get in front of it. If he starts in from somewhere beyond the decoy, with a tight setup he might never turn broadside until he’s right under your tree.
Be extra careful to avoid this “too close” error if you’re on the ground, as I often am on hunts for North American Whitetail TV presented by Quick Attach. Sure, I want a chip shot if I can get one — but at eye level with a mature buck nearly in my lap, all sounds and movements are magnified. I really don’t want him close enough to spit on.
In general, the more open the habitat, the better for decoying. A roaming buck might be hundreds of yards off when you spot him, and at that point he might not yet have spotted your decoy. You can rattle and/or call to get his attention and hopefully get him to see the setup. Once I know he’s seen it and is showing interest, I call very little, if any.
Don’t assume that because a decoy is easy for you to see, it’s just as visible to deer. Not only cover but also small humps or dips in the terrain can hide it from passing bucks. Even an alert deer’s head is much lower than a person’s. When in doubt, I often kneel where I’m wanting to set the decoy, then just look around. If I can’t clearly see a certain corner or other spot from which I think a buck is likely to appear, I’ll assume he couldn’t see my decoy, either.
This decoy’s ears are “alert” because it had been placed over a bedded doe. With a lone-buck setup, lay the adjustable ears back ..Is there such a thing as too open? I’m not sure there is. Naturally, it can help to place the fake so a buck will feel secure in approaching. But I’ve seen how much trouble deer often have picking up decoys in timber or brush. And when their first glimpse is at close range, it can spook them. I’ve watched even big bucks bolt upon spotting decoys they felt were too close for comfort.
Setup and takedown can be tricky. If you put up a decoy long before daybreak, you risk having it approached, and even attacked, as you wait for light. This also can happen if you leave it up too long at last light. So I cut both ends of the hunting day as close as I can.
When decoying a field or plot, I’ll wait until right at legal light to pop my decoy into place, assuming no deer are in sight. In the evening, I’ll use the same approach. (Escaping any feeding area at day’s end is easier if a friend bumps deer away with a vehicle as legal light ends.)
Guideline 3: Scent Solutions
I’ve never found that big bucks insist on getting downwind of decoys, as many do when coming to rattling. Still, I often put scent on the ground, to reinforce the ruse. I’ve had great results with Evercalm, from Conquest Scents — but I wouldn’t hesitate to use an estrus scent or buck urine along with it.
Wildlife photographer Mike Biggs once told me that when he began using decoys in his photo setups, he couldn’t tell handling them with bare hands was a negative. He made no effort to keep his decoys clean and still got a lot of great photos of big, hunted bucks coming right up to them. My experience has been similar. Of course, there’s no advantage to pushing your luck on human odor. You can clean a decoy with ozone, a spray-on odor neutralizer or even a garden hose.
Guideline 4: Don't Overdo It
Next to spot-and-stalk, decoying is the most exciting archery tactic of all. Once you’ve seen it work, I think you’ll be hooked. But that’s why I must caution you: It can take serious self-control to keep from burning out a spot.
As with rattling and calling, constant decoying in one location tends to grow less effective. Yes, often we’re trying to intercept bucks roaming a wide area, and that can extend the life of a setup; the buck you fool today might have been two miles away yesterday. But over time, resident whitetails grow leery of seeing the same “frozen” deer standing in the same spot. The young buck you educate to a decoy in 2018 could be the giant that keeps his distance in 2020.
Last Nov. 10, I decoyed a big 9-pointer into crossbow range on my Missouri farm. He came in from an unexpected angle, and grass blocked any shot before he reached the Dave Smith Posturing Buck. He then bumped off a few steps but didn’t bolt. At that point I was able to get on him with my TenPoint, and within seconds it was lights out.
I doubt that buck had ever seen a decoy. Why? Because nobody had used one on the farm since 2009. The deer I shot hadn’t even been alive then.Find a place where deer haven’t been decoyed much. Should you have an encounter there but not fill your tag, maybe tweak the setup or move on to another group of deer. At a minimum, rotate stands often. Try to keep things as fresh as possible for as long as possible.
If you have a big piece of land to hunt, or a number of smaller ones, in theory you can decoy a lot. But if you’re hunting one small property, take care to limit the technique to the times, places and weather conditions in which you feel it’s really likely to pay off. That won’t be every day, and it won’t be every stand. But it doesn’t have to work every time.
In Conclusion
Some bowhunters still see decoys as gimmicks or too much trouble to bother with. But a decoy is a valuable tool. For the time, effort and dollars invested, no other tactic yields as many good shots. Around the rut, I’d far rather go bowhunting with one arrow and a decoy than a full quiver but no decoy.
Figuring out what the conditions call for is the art of all deer hunting, not just decoying. The details vary by time, habitat, weather, hunting pressure and more. But decoying isn’t just some fad. It works. So if you’ve been on the fence about trying it, hop over to the “unreal” side of whitetail bowhunting. See for yourself what all the buzz is about.
If you expect to toss some seeds on the ground and watch them grow into a big-buck Shangri-la come November, you might as well just throw some cash in the trash, too. Because if you don't prep your ground before planting at the right time, you'll just be wasting time and money. Trouble is, most of us aren't farmers — we don't know what to plant or when to plant it. We're hunters who want to improve the herd's nutrition and maybe take a homegrown buck next fall. So here are the basics about what you need to know for sowing a successful food plot.
Steve Scott is vice president of the Whitetail Institute and an expert on food plots. His company makes numerous products to attract, hold, and nourish deer. The Alabama-based firm also provides consumers with free info on how to best grow food plots in their particular regions. What follows is Scott's advice, given in step-by-step form so you won't forget a key date. After understanding the concept and the order of events for food plot planting, go to whitetailinstitute.com to find out when to plant in your area. And don't hesitate to call for custom advice.
January — March
After the fall hunting seasons end but before spring, research and decide what type of crop you wish to plant. This will dictate your to-do calendar.
Scott keeps it simple for beginners by recommending one of two types of forages for deer: a fall/winter annual blend like his company's Pure Attraction that contains oats, winter peas, and brassicas; or a perennial crop like clover that's planted in the spring.
The fall/winter blends are planted in late summer/early fall. Most annuals are designed to top-out in fall and winter to attract and hold bucks and to be hunted over. Seed blends are ideal because they hedge against certain types of seeds not doing well in your soil; plus, they give deer variety, so there's always something sprouting in fall that's palatable. Assuming it all doesn't get eaten, fall blends provide nutritional value to deer all winter long.
Perennial crops like clover provide nutritional value during the spring and summer months. Unless you live in extreme southern states, they're generally not intended to be hunted over. Their role is to help whitetail does during gestation, thereby creating healthier fawns, and they can enhance antler growth in bucks. Clover is best planted in spring; it matures in spring and summer.
For the best of both worlds, hunters can choose a mix of perennials and annuals by planting a big plot and halving it down the middle or by planting multiple plots. Choose a forage or forages based on your goals.
Any time before spring starts to green up, choose ground for your plot or plots and decide on size. Your time, budget,
and machinery along with how many deer you hope to feed and for how long should be deciding factors. To determine plot locations, consider stand location, predominant winds during hunting season, access to treestands, proximity to roads, and ground quality. Obviously, if you select a tract that's laden with rocks, those rocks will need to be removed first for best results. So be smart.
March — May
As soon as the ground thaws and grass starts greening, take a soil sample and send it to your county extension office for analysis or get a kit from the Whitetail Institute and return it. Also, include your crop selection information with it. This is the single most important thing you can do to ensure great results. The test will reveal your soil's pH. The analysis will instruct you in how much lime, if any, to spread over your plot before planting to make the pH ideal. The analysis also will tell you what type of fertilizer you'll need.
March — July
Purchase your products, including lime, herbicide, seed, and equipment, such as spreaders and sprayers. While most crops can be purchased cheaply at your local feed store or co-op, the advantage of paying more for specialized products from firms like the Whitetail Institute, Tecomate, or others is that the seeds are engineered to have a higher nutritional content for deer. No doubt, many hunters do just fine buying locally.
Once you have your equipment, during the spring, spray, brush hog, and/or disc your plot to eliminate grass and weeds. A Roundup-type herbicide is best.
March — June
After the grass dies, disc the plot so that three to four inches of topsoil is broken and is loose for planting. This is best accomplished with a heavy tractor and disc for new plots, but it can be done with an ATV and implements with many passes.
As soon as possible after discing, apply the appropriate amount of lime. Lime needs time to lower the soil's pH. Every month or so after discing and liming — but before planting — disc, spray, and break up the soil routinely to keep grasses from reestablishing.
From March to July, disc your plot to break up grasses and weeds. Then disc the plot again so the soil is loose for planting.
March — July, perennials; August — November, fall/winter annuals
Plant your crop. Try to plant when the soil is moist and rain is expected, but always plant within your area's suggested time window, which can be found at whitetailinstitute.com. Most seed types can be broadcast with a hand, push-type, or mechanized seed spreader.
Immediately after broadcasting, drag the plot. If you have a cultipacker, use it to lightly bury them. Note that the larger the seed, the deeper it should be buried.
Immediately after dragging, fertilize the plot.
March — September
Begin placing stands. Consider placing two or more stands — one on the south side of the plot and one on the north, with corresponding access avenues for north and south winds.
September — November
Wait. If you're religious, pray for rain. Then watch your food plot pop up and the deer flock to it.
Books have been written, stories have been told and lies have been concocted in an effort to identify the perfect North American big game cartridge. Many believe it's the cartridge they've chosen, others think specific cartridges must be matched to specific animals, and some claim perfection does not exist. When it comes to rifle cartridges, perfection may not exist but we should still be able to make a faultless choice given the vast options we have.
But How?
First, we should define the parameters of determining the perfect North American big game cartridge:
The cartridge should be able to push a bullet fast and flat enough to limit trajectory as much as possible.
The bullet should provide enough penetration to pass through the vitals of any animal we shoot, while expanding to increase tissue destruction.
Ideal external and terminal ballistics should be provided without excessive recoil.
The cartridge must fit in a repeating rifle compact and light enough to carry all day, with a reasonable magazine capacity.
Now, for the specifics: Trajectory (external ballistics)
An 8-inch kill zone is a reasonable average for North American big game animals. From a trajectory standpoint, our cartridge should allow you to hold in the center of this kill zone out to 300 yards and still hit it, even in a moderate cross wind. Penetration/Expansion (terminal ballistics) Given reasonable shot angles, for a bullet to pass through the vitals of all North American big game animals, from pronghorn to moose, it should be capable of penetrating 18 to 20 inches in 10 percent ordnance gelatin. To maximize tissue destruction the bullet should also expand between 1.5 and 2 times its original diameter. Recoil
How hard a rifle kicks is subjective and somewhat dependent on rifle design. That said, most hunters find that a rifle/cartridge combination producing a free recoil energy of more than 25 to 30 pounds is uncomfortable to shoot. Cartridge/Rifle Size Long cartridges increase rifle length and weight. Fat cartridges diminish magazine capacity. Long and fat cartridges do both. And some magnum cartridges need long barrels to really be magnums. What's ideal? Eight pounds is a good target weight for a field ready rifle and 40 inches or less is a reasonable length. You must shoot once and a coup de grace might be needed. You also might miss, so you need at least three shots. And, since you never want an empty rifle, capacity must be four or more.
Is there a cartridge that fits these specifications? The first that comes to mind is the .308 Winchester. It will work splendidly on whitetails — I've done that — and its sufficient for moose — I've done that, too. It's compact and allows for a properly sized rifle with an ample magazine capacity. With good bullets, 20 inches of penetration is easily obtained, even with 2x bullet expansion. When properly zeroed it will allow you to hold dead on out to just the other side of 300 yards. And, in an 8-pound rifle it will generate less than 20 ft./lbs. of free recoil energy.
Your search is over.
But what about the big, mean and nasty brown colored bears you say? We're talking about hunting cartridges, not charge stopping, dangerous game cartridges. If your plan is to shoot a charging grizzly at 20 paces you do not merely need the perfect North American big game cartridge, you need a specialized, dangerous game cartridge and rifle setup. If you hope to hunt and then shoot a big bear at a reasonable distance, the .308 will kill him just like it will kill an elk. But what about shooting at really long range you ask? Look, if you want to shoot big game animals out beyond a quarter of a mile with regularity and success, again you'll need a specialized rifle and cartridge. This would not be a rifle to tote into the timber with the hopes of jumping a whitetail buck.
What we're talking about is the perfect, general-purpose cartridge/rifle combination, a single solution for all your North American hunting needs. One of the greatest firearms experts and teachers conceived this combination as early as 1966.
Col. Jeff Cooper originated the scout rifle concept just for this purpose, citing it sufficient for animals weighing up to 1,000 pounds. For this rifle he selected the .308 Winchester cartridge. You might opine the .308 not adequate for hunting all of North America and you have a right to your opinion. I do not share it. I've seen the .308 employed with sensational success in North America and Africa on animals large and small.
We really don't need a modern treatise on this subject to discover the truth. Long before Cooper, in his 1927 book, Wilderness Hunting and Wildcraft, Townsend Whelen wrote that the best big game cartridges were the "'¦6.5 mm Mannlicher, .270 Winchester, 7mm Mauser and .30-06 U.S. Government."
Practically speaking, these four cartridges are ballistically identical to the more compact .308 Winchester, which was not invented until 1952. Yes, there are even more modern cartridges and they offer similar or improved ballistics. But none of these more modern cartridges make big game animals harder to kill.
Hunters seem to have figured all this out the same way Whelen did — through field experience, though without stopping power formulas and gun writer drivel. According to a leading ammunition company, last year the most popular big game cartridge sold in North America was the .308 Winchester.
However, we've left out a very important element of big game cartridge anatomy. Many hunters develop an unbreakable and sometimes unreasonable bond with certain cartridges. That relationship can be very important to the overall enjoyment of the hunt and without enjoyment, hunting is just hard grocery shopping. Your perfect North American big game cartridge will and should be one you like. For that reason cartridge anatomy arguments will continue as long as there are campfires. Which cartridge gets your vote as the perfect North American big game round?
When deer movement slows, get out and lay down some white meat.
It's common for folks to add a fall turkey permit or two to their pocket in case an unsuspecting flock wanders just a little too close to their treestand while bowhunting for deer. Fewer folks actually dedicate hunts specifically to fall turkeys. Some reason that it infringes on their deer-hunting time. Others deem it senseless to invest time and money into a hunt that yields as little as five pounds of meat or less.
These are somewhat-valid points, but let me reason that it's the fun and experience, first, that make fall-turkey hunting alluring. And, with some knowhow, that measly five pounds of meat could be some of the finest you'll eat all year. Plus, what else are you going to do when it's too hot or the wind direction is wrong for your deer stands?
Now, if you've never hunted fall birds or have had little success doing so, I'm outlining five tips that will help you learn the curve and waylay a fall turkey or two. Let's review.
Fall Turkeys Aren't Spring Turkeys
Many folks who hunt spring gobblers never step foot in the fall-turkey woods. If that's you, let me start by saying that fall turkeys rarely behave like spring turkeys. Plus, hens and poults are legal in most states, so you aren't necessarily hunting toms.
Aside from the occasional gobbling that happens on rare fall mornings when the stars align, you won't be locating birds to hunt by listening for gobbles at dawn. However, fall turkeys do make a racket. Hens yelp frequently, and poults create a whistle often followed by yelping. Hen and poult flocks keep continual communication to ensure everyone is in the ranks.
Leaf tossing is another sound you'll hear on calm autumn days. And when there are crunchy leaves on the ground, a flock simply meandering through the hardwoods sounds like an army.
Spot Them
While listening for hen/poult talk or tossing leaves can be productive, I instead prefer to drive back roads rich with agriculture to find birds to hunt without stepping into the woods. Nearly all of my fall turkey success generates this way, and most landowners happily grant access. In fact, most farmers kiddingly tell me to "shoot 'em all."
In my area, turkeys are rather plentiful, so finding a flock generally takes little time. Plus, I've been hunting fall turkeys for years and have several farms at my disposal that are absolutely money each fall.
I suggest taking a pair of decent binos along on your scouting drives. Places to glass are hayfields in early fall and picked cornfields mid-fall through the end of the season.
As for timing, I usually take my drives an hour or two after dawn or flydown. This tells me where the birds hang out after they fly down, as hunting roost sites is dicey. Of course, if you can set up quietly in the pitch dark, then hunting a roosting area in the morning can be productive. This is easier done with a shotgun than a bow.
Observation Hunts
During my early fall turkey hunting days as a teenager, I'd often bowhunt a hayfield or picked cornfield from a blind to observe bird movement rather than scout. Fall turkeys are generally patternable. An observation set can yield a shot opportunity, but at a minimum you can see the specific areas turkeys are frequenting and move in for the kill the following day.
Confidence Decoys
While targeting hen/poult flocks, placing one or two realistic decoys within shooting range can be wise. Fall hens and poults can be inquisitive, and a hen decoy can draw them in for a closer look. Hens can also be territorial, so it's possible one could respond out of anger, even attacking the decoy with pecks, kicks and wing jabs.
In any case, I've never had decoys ruin my fall hunts. In fact, one September while targeting a 10-tom flock, I placed a strutting jake decoy in the large hayfield I was hunting. I did it because the turkeys didn't seem to favor any particular portion of the field, and I needed to try something creative in order to bow-kill one of them.
The first morning I hunted them, all 10 toms came in from 250 yards away, several posturing next to the decoy 18 yards away. I thumped the lead tom just before he attacked the decoy. Yes, decoys have a place in the fall-turkey woods.
Gun and Go
One of my favorite ways to shotgun hunt for fall turkeys is to spot and stalk them. It might seem impossible given a wild turkey’s keen eyesight, but I've claimed a heap of birds using this strategy.
The best days to stalk turkeys are in roaring wind and when the ground can be negotiated quietly — powdery snow or damp leaves are best. It's also important to have terrain features or other natural obstructions at your disposal so you can remain hidden until you're within shooting range.
Fall turkeys often provide more than one shot opportunity, so if you have multiple tags, be quick on the gun. Many of my shotgun stalks end with a double, and that makes for a thrilling hunt.
End Results
Once you bag a fall turkey or two, consider making the spoils part of your Thanksgiving or Christmas feast. Be sure to cut across the grain to ensure tenderness. Also, soak the chunks in salt water or buttermilk for 24 hours prior to cooking, which tenderizes the meat.
I often batter and deep-fry breast chunks and serve them with BBQ or bleu cheese dipping sauces. If that, along with the other points I’ve presented, doesn’t interest you in fall turkey hunting, nothing will.
The ram was in no hurry. He was picking his way along the top of a ridge while my wife and I were easing up a ridge parallel to his. We were only 200 yards apart, and I wanted a good look at his horns. He seemed oblivious to our presence and never looked in our direction. Finally, he turned his head, and I saw all I needed to see.
“Cover your ears,” I said. I settled my rifle on my backpack, which I had arranged on a rock, and found a comfortable prone position. After flicking off the safety, I started the trigger squeeze when a shot rang out from far below. I saw a bullet hit two feet under the ram. The animal took one bound and disappeared. I couldn’t believe it. I was a split-second from making the shot when the other hunter fired. He was at least 600 yards away—and this was before the interest in long-range shooting. The hunter climbed up to our position and apologized. He said he hadn’t seen us, even though I was wearing a blaze orange vest. I shared a few choice words with him that I won’t repeat here.
That incident stands out as a prime example of competition among hunters. All of us compete with one another when we’re in the woods. Of course, there are exceptions, say, a dove hunt in Argentina where thousands of birds are in the air all day long and it doesn’t matter who is standing where. But by its very nature, hunting is the best where people are the fewest. Often, successful hunters are those who get into the woods first or stumble onto the quarry before someone else. Some of that competition can get downright nasty, such as the time our group slogged along in deep mud, carrying heavy loads of duck decoys to our blind far out in the marsh. Another party of hunters carried no decoys and set up just far enough from our spot where they’d get first crack at the ducks we were calling.
Because of this rivalry, hunters often go through all sorts of shenanigans to outwit others. I have a honey hole for cottontail rabbits that is truly amazing. It’s a one-acre pile of old pipe, culverts, timbers, and all sorts of miscellaneous junk discarded from a nearby oil field. It’s tucked back in a draw and holds dozens of rabbits. You can shoot a limit of 10 with a scope-sighted .22 and not walk more than 10 yards. The bunnies sit boldly in the snow where they can easily jump to safety from an incoming eagle or coyote, but they haven’t learned the perils of a speeding bullet. The only hunters I’ve taken there are visiting pals from other states who would never return without me. I’ve never taken a local hunter there for obvious reasons. One day, while driving through the oil field to my spot, I passed a truckload of local rabbit hunters. They followed me at a distance, staying with me through all the forks and turns, so I led them on a wild goose chase. After a half hour of this, I stopped at one of my lesser spots, plinked a rabbit, and continued on my way. They stopped to hunt, and I circled back to my spot, far enough away that they wouldn’t hear me shooting.
But the most elaborate scheme of trickery I’ve encountered was on public land in New Mexico where I hunted DIY elk for years. I drove down a well-used forest road and saw tents pitched at the mouth of three big draws I liked to hike up and hunt. Disappointed, I drove on to another spot and walked up the mountain. I was on a trail when I saw a hunter walking down toward me, carrying an elk quarter on his back. I congratulated him on his success, and while making small talk, I told him that there were more hunters than usual in the area and mentioned all the tents. He grinned and told me that he and his buddies had set up those empty tents to keep other hunters away. I’ll admit I had to laugh in admiration of their creativity.
Among the outdoor sports, you can be successful in crowds when the fish are running and everyone is catching them. You can enjoy camping in a crowded campground if you’re a social person and like people. But if you’re a hunter, the last thing you want to see is someone else’s pickup parked in “your” spot. As I like to say, all is fair in love, war, and hunting—maybe.
There's no doubt finding sheds can be exciting, but once you've found them, what can you do with them? The answer is: a lot. From collecting and crafting, to decorating and eating, the uses for discarded bones are endless. Even if your wife doesn't approve of such primitive things in the house, all is not lost for a good shed hunter.
Hunting camera Collecting
There is just something about shed antlers. The way they look and what they mean to the hunter invokes those that find them to want to hold on to them. Keeping shed antlers is a physical record of a particular hunting area, or even a particular animal. There is something valuable about being able to put actual tape on antlers from an area you hunt. There is even more value in being able to track a deer's growth from year to year. This data aside, the excitement of a find makes some sheds too precious to do anything with besides watch collect dust.
For the shed hunter, the most unique antlers deserve a place in the house for all to see. The rest join the collection pile outside. Many avid shed hunters take pride in their shed pile. Like any collection, the collector has a desire to constantly add to the lot and keep searching for the few treasured sheds that are good enough to bring inside.
Some shed piles are a sight to see and can tower the tallest of hunters. The best public collections can be found outside of the National Bison Range in Montana, or the famous shed piles in downtown Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
Crafting
Antlers have been crafted into useful things for thousands of years. Although the origins may have been purely for survival, like making weapons and tools, today we can appreciate the art of antlers. Shed antlers can be used for something as simple as making buttons, or something as intricate as making knife handles.
All sorts of items can be easily made at home. Antlers are fairly easy to work with when using the proper tools. A Dremel tool set is the single best tool for antler working. With a little know-how, antlers can be used to create hundreds of different items. Cribbage boards can be a fun and an easy one to start with that almost anyone can craft.
Eating
You've heard the adage "you can't eat the horns," but that's not necessarily true. Deer antlers are edible, and not just as a pill used in eastern medicine or a health supplement. Antlers can be used to make gelatin by boiling the ground antler and straining off the remains, which could be used to make fruit gelatin or added to homemade jellies.
Processed antlers can also be used in baking recipes. Although rare now, some old recipes still call for Hartshorn. This product is made from distilled, ground antler by burning in kilns, which makes ammonium carbonate. This was the predecessor to baking powder, which is still used today in thin shaped cookies and crackers. When heated, the gaseous ammonia is released in the baking process, acting as a leveling agent.
Although you would not just bite into a shed antler or boil it up and put it on a plate, recently antlers have grown in popularity as dog chews. This is now a large part of the shed antler market. Dogs enjoy gnawing on them and get calcium as an added bonus. Just because you're not willing to eat the antler doesn't mean your dog won't be thankful a shed hunting trip.
Brown Gold
It's like money just lying in the hills. Shed antlers are big business, and buyers are out there looking to pay you to find them. Most antlers are purchased at a price per pound and on a quality grading system.
As a general average, brown mule deer antlers fetch around $10 per pound and brown elk antlers average $12 per pound. Last year's white antlers in good condition are $8 per pound for mule deer and $10 per pound for elk. Chalky, white antlers still have a value, but around $1-3 per pound. Fresh whitetail sheds generally fetch around $6-8 per pound, but are not as easily sold as mule deer and elk. This is because the market is saturated with humongous whitetail antlers from farmed deer.
Although some buyers will pay a premium for sets, this generally only applies to extremely large or unique antlers. A 400 class elk can fetch over $1500, while a 200-inch mule deer can be worth $500 or more. In some instances, individual antlers or sets have been sold at a much higher price to collectors looking for giant or one-of-a-kind animals.
As for smaller matched sets, a 170-inch mule deer goes for around $60, and 300 class elk sells in the $200 range. If nothing else, shed hunting can turn into a hobby that pays for itself or provides you with a little extra cash for when the real hunting begins.
Given reasonable shot angles, for a bullet to pass through the vitals of all North American big game animals, from pronghorn to moose, it should be capable of penetrating 18 to 20 inches in 10 percent ordnance gelatin. To maximize tissue destruction the bullet should also expand between 1.5 and 2 times its original diameter.
Long cartridges increase rifle length and weight. Fat cartridges diminish magazine capacity. Long and fat cartridges do both. And some magnum cartridges need long barrels to really be magnums. What's ideal? Eight pounds is a good target weight for a field ready rifle and 40 inches or less is a reasonable length. You must shoot once and a coup de grace might be needed. You also might miss, so you need at least three shots. And, since you never want an empty rifle, capacity must be four or more.
