Hunting pre-rut bucks

Bone-white antlers of a resting buck show above weeds during the pre-rut

The buck was banging its antlers against a tree, and I listened to him working a scrape for 30 minutes late last October. The buck was within 20 yards of me but he was screened by thick brush and was invisible.

I sat in my tree stand and listened. He was close enough to hear the urine hitting the scrape, and he was upwind and the pungent ammonia odor was strong. He worked that tree over, yanked at the overhead licking branch, and for all the noise and commotion he made, the buck was impossible to see.

I checked the spot the next day. He’d been working two scrapes, and one was eight inches deep and as big around as two large platters. The buck had pulled the old licking branch down, and I replaced it. It suited him because the scrape had tine marks and a hoof print in it, and the new licking branch looked pretty ragged. The second scrape was opened up, and the licking branch was chewed to a frazzle.

A spot with two or more active scrape should produce  if you don’t spook it

What was even more interesting was that the buck had opened up a third scrape. Huge clots of wet earth was piled at the north end of the scrape, and he had made it the night before. How do I know?

Buck scrapes have dirt and debris piled at one end or another, and if the dirt is piled at the end closest to thick cover, it generally means the deer is tending that scrape in the evening as he leaves the bedding area for a night of chasing cute little does.

This told me several things: One is the rut had not started but the chasing phase had set in. This chasing phase lasts several days before the full rut starts. As long as fresh activity is seen at the scrape, and it is being tended one or more times daily, the rut has not begun. Once the scrapes show no sign of activity, that means the rut is underway.

One thing few hunters realize is that the mid-day hours just before and during the rut can produce a fine buck.

This buck may have other nearby scrapes that it had been working, but once a buck is shot and is taken out of the woods, another will take its place. Nature abhors a vacuum, and when a big brown trout or a big whitetail buck is removed, another moves in and takes over.

Hunting from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. works well during the chasing stage and the rut. If possible, be in your stand by 9 a.m., and sit patiently. The bucks will move during the mid-day hours.

Hunt the mid-day hours during the pre-rut

I first learned of this phenomenon many years ago while hunting ruffed grouse. Two days in a row a buck was seen darting away from me in the same area. I checked the area, found his scrapes, and went back and set up a stand 30 yards downwind of it. The buck came by that first day at about noon, wind-checked the scrape from downwind, and offered me a 12-yard shot.

Hunting the pre-rut and the rut during mid-day hours can pay off. Sure, many hunters can’t take time off work to hunt those hours, but keep it in mind for weekends. Hunt near natural funnels between bedding and feeding areas, and once the rut kicks in, start hunting the heavier cover.

My only real problem with hunting the mid-day hours is a personal one. I’m good for three hours maximum in a tree before everything gets sore. I’ll stick it out until about 2:30 p.m., grab a bite to eat, and then hunt from 4 p.m. until legal shooting time ends. It means spending long hours in a tree, but it can pay big dividends with a husky buck and the hunting is more fun than writing about it.

This method has worked for me, and can work for you regardless of where you hunt. Try it this fall and see if it doesn’t produce action at a time when no one is hunting. It’s rut hunting’s biggest secret, and now only you, me and several hundred thousand other people will know. Mark this blog and go back and read it again in mid-October, and maybe it will produce a nice buck for you next fall.

Late-season bow hunt

A nice December buck steps out of a thicket to feed.

It is a grand experience, this bow hunting for winter whitetails, but what makes it so special is that every day is different. Every day in the woods is one of pure joy, even on those days of hard east winds.

Not all days are created equal when it comes to bow hunting. There are those special days that come along perhaps two or three days each season where we know something truly special will happen.

The possibilities of what may happen are endless. Perhaps a beet-red sun falls out of the western sky at sunset, and we set and marvel at nature’s beauty. Sometimes the wind will switch at just the right time so the hunter catches a break and shoots a buck with large antlers, occasionally more by accident than on purpose.

Each December day offers something special to deer hunters.

Some days are memorable because we see a whitetail buck that we’ve never seen before, and the animal is large enough to have been around for four or five years but has escaped detection until now.

A hunting day can be spectacular when we watch two large evenly matched bucks fight for dominance. The dust flies, there is the thunder of their hooves stomping the ground, the grunting as they push and shove in an effort to whip the other buck. Some fights end in a tie, but most reach a finale when one buck, clearly outmatched, gives up.

There is always the pleasure and personal pride of exquisite placement of an arrow, and the knowledge that the buck will be dead in two or three seconds. A touch of sadness always comes over us when we realize that we’ve taken that animal’s life for our nourishment.

Just as we feel a bit sad, we also feel a keen sense of accomplishment. The downing of a grand buck is a happening; it is something we’ll long remember, and the memory of the buck will live on forever once it has been stored in our personal memory bank.

We take pride in our skills, and we pursue deer with a purpose. Some bucks will be passed up, and some will not. Much of the time we never know we are going to shoot until the trigger finger twitches on the release, and the buck goes down.

Winter hunting is more about winter hunting than just killing deer.

Hunting isn’t just about killing nor is it about letting all deer live. There is a mental and physical balance we must maintain within ourselves, and the deer herd, that tells us it’s time to stop.

Stopping hunting is out of the question for me. I may stop carrying my bow, but I hunt 12 months out of the year. All of it, in one form or another, is scouting. I remember late-fall deer trails, study where deer bed down in the winter, and learn where big bucks live and why they are found there during the hunting season.

Hunting is a never-ending endeavor to learn and study the deer we hunt. We greet each season with enthusiasm, we scout long and hard to learn the habits of good bucks, and we put forth more than a bit of energy learning our hunting area.

It means laying down plenty of boot leather, checking food sites and deer trails, and watching deer from afar to avoid spooking them. This love affair with deer may well be an addiction but it’s not a harmful one.

This is not an easy time to hunt but it can be rewarding.

The more we watch and study deer, both bucks and does, the more we learn. The more we know about why deer do what they do, the better we become as a hunter. When we reach a certain pinnacle of skill and hunting success, we begin making each hunt more challenging.

It is, after all, the challenge between man and deer, that brings both of us together in the fall and early winter. The deer-hunting days are dwindling fast, and I can’t speak for you, but I haven’t had my fill of deer hunting just yet.

 

Little Things can Change a Hunt

The result of good planning and the plan working out.

Many hunters think of bow hunting as a huge-antlered buck standing motionless at 20 yard with nothing but a few low-growing weeds and air between them and the deer.

This so-called calendar pose is what many short-term bow hunters expect to see while hunting. They’ve been conditioned over many years to expect such a shot, no matter how unrealistic it may be.

The same hunters seldom think of spotting a nice buck, his head held low, as it ghosts through a cedar swamp or tag alder tangle. The truth is that while an occasional shot is taken at a broadside, head-in-the-air buck, the reality is much different than what our imagination tells us is true.

The little things about bow hunting should tell us that a buck seldom offers an easy, open shot. Often, the animal is partially screened by brush or is standing in thick cover. Deer often stop when their vitals are screened by thick brush.

I’m not naive enough to believe they deliberately do so.

One of the little things that hunters must learn, and practice faithfully, is an extraordinary amount of patience. Hunters who get strung out by a motionless buck that doesn’t move are usually unprepared for a shot when the deer does move.

Patience is something all of us must believe in. It’s always better to sit motionless, and if the buck doesn’t move before shooting time ends, chalk it up to another night when the deer outsmarted the hunter. Such things happen far more often than most of us care to think about.

Sitting motionless and silent is far preferable than trying a Hail Mary shot that may make it through the brush to the buck’s vitals, but for whatever reason, it rarely does. Taking a low-percentage shot only educates or wounds deer.

There have been countless times when I’ve spent 30 minutes to one hour waiting for a good buck to move that last 10 feet to offer an open shot. More often than not, they refuse to budge and shooting time ends with the animal still standing motionless in thick cover, still looking around.

Another little thing to remember is to stay in your stand until the buck moves off by himself. Start crawling down out of a tree, and you’ll have ruined that stand for the rest of the year. Just hang tight, remain silent, and let him move when the mood strikes him. Wait for someone to come looking for you, and let them spook the deer rather than you doing so.

Building your patience level doesn’t occur overnight. It takes time and a great deal of practice, and blowing some possible shot opportunities, before you acquire the necessary skills to wait out a slow-moving deer.

Don’t do something stupid if the buck is slowly making his way to you. Perhaps you are in his travel route, and if you sit patiently, the buck may move to you. If you haven’t been calling, and suddenly start calling to a nearby deer, the animal may turn away. It may or may not spook, but if the deer keeps coming to silence, don’t introduce something new into the equation because it could backfire.

Be very cautious about dropping things. I’ve seen bucks and does stop 50 yards away because they saw something they don’t like. I once watched a buck come a long ways only to stop just out of easy bow range.

Why the buck stopped was beyond me, but stop he did, and he kept looking on the ground along the edge of a tag alder run between us. I studied him through binoculars, and tried to see what he was looking at, and it remained a big mystery.

He left without coming the 20 yards necessary to provide me with a clean shot within my established shooting distance. He walked off and soon disappeared, and as shooting time emded, I eased from the stand and walked over to that spot.

It took a moment of looking around but I found what had spooked the deer. A hunter had moved through that area while hunting grouse and woodcock near the alders, and apparently had shot at a bird.

I found an empty 12 gauge shotshell, and it was laying somewhat in the open where the setting sun would glint off the brass. It wasn’t much, but from where the buck had stood, there was still a tiny glint of sunlight there. The buck knew something was different, and turned and took another route out of the area.

It’s some of these little things that can make or break a bow hunt. Always be aware of what is going on around you during a hunt because it can affect how deer react.

Getting close to good bucks

Seeing a nice buck up close and personal is great fun.

Everyone knows that whitetail deer hit the chow line in farm fields every evening an hour or so before dark, especially in the early season. It’s one thing to set up along a field edge, and spend most of the evening watching deer at a distance.

It’s another thing to spend most of the night hunting. Granted, setting at the edge of a field in an elevated coop, ground blind, pit blind or tree stand, is much different than effectively hunting deep in the woods.

There are times when small deer ooze out of the woods and pass close to field-edge stands, but it really isn’t something a person can count on to happen on a daily basis. What they can count on is having better opportunities by sitting in a stand back in the woods, away from the edge.

Here’s the scenario. Deer leave their bedding areas, and mill around, back and forth, while slowly making their way toward the feeding fields so they will arrive an hour or so before the end of shooting time. Plan your set-up properly, and there is a very good chance one of those deer will drift past your stand with plenty of shooting time left.

Deer, as they move toward the fields, become much more suspicious and spend more time checking the edges when they get within 50-75 yards of the field. I’ve often watched bucks and does stand back in heavy cover for long minutes at a time, and study the area for danger.

The hunter that sets up shop 100 to 150 yards from the field (closer if the bedding area is near the field) has a much better chance of dealing with deer that are still wandering freely and are not nervous.

These animals often are led by a mature doe, and if you want to shoot bucks, it is imperative that the does and fawns do not smell or spot you as they pass by. Picking a spot this far from the woods requires finding an area where two or more trails move from the bedding area and join up to funnel deer traffic out into the field via specific trails.

Preseason scouting can help pinpoint those trails, and further scouting can help refine your knowledge of which trails bear the most whitetail traffic. Stands obviously must be set up downwind of those trails, and a hunter should have two or three ways into the stand to prevent the deer from patterning them.

Sitting at a field edge may allow a bow hunter to see five or 50 deer, but seeing them at a distance and having them within easy bow range, are two entirely different things. I know lots of people who are prone to saying “I saw 15 deer tonight, and five were bucks.”

They seldom say they saw those deer at a distance of 100 to 300 yards. Seeing deer is fun, but unless one is set up on the proper deer trail where a shot may be had, seeing deer doesn’t mean squat.

My idea of seeing deer is having the animals inside 20 yards. I know I can’t shoot 100 yards and hit a deer, but I know that any buck or doe within 20 yards, is in serious danger should I decide to shoot.

The reason I like whitetails close is I can’t see well, and I also know what my shooting limitations are. So, I work at getting close and do my best not to be spotted or winded by moving animals.

It goes without saying that anyone sitting in an open tree stand must be constantly mindful of the wind and of being scent-free. I wear my old Scent-Lok underwear, a new Scent-Lok suit, knee-high clean rubber boots and know how to sit still, and how and when to take a shot.

Seeing a dandy buck at 200 yards is a major thrill, but think about what a kick it would be to have that same buck move within 20 yards of you. The adrenalin flows through your blood stream like it is being shot out of a fire hose, and when the moment of truth comes, will you be ready?

I can promise one thing. A hunter who sees that buck at 200 yards will never be ready for a shot when the animal stops, 18 yards away, tests the wind and scrutinizes the trees.

Looking and seeing lots of deer is fun, but frankly, such stands seldom pay off with decent shots. Those hunters who have given up looking at lots of deer, and are content to see one or two bucks at close range, are those that get my vote for being a savvy hunter.

Change things THIS year

Bunches of deer or just one. A new hunting spot can certainly help.

Some things never change. Many deer hunters choose the same tree for a stand, walk the same trail into and out of a hunting area, and nothing ever changes.

Many will sit on the same stump, along the same runway, as they did 10, 15 or 20 years ago. It’s difficult for many sportsmen to break their old habits, and some deer hunters never try. It becomes a tradition to again hunt where a buck was killed sometime in the far distant past.

They often wonder: If it was good 20 years ago, it should be a good spot now. Won’t it?

Maybe yes and maybe no. That tradition of returning, year after year, to the same spot has probably saved the life of more bucks than poor shooting or a lack of preseason scouting.

Sadly, clinging to a traditional spot, even when it no longer is good, is a lesson in frustration. It also leads to fiery claims by skunked hunters that the Department of Natural Resources’ reports of deer numbers for whitetails are grossly inflated.

Perhaps this season is the time to cast aside the traditional old haunts, and think about trying a new area. Too many people never realize that food and habitat conditions can and do change, and if the landowner doesn’t do something to make the land produce more food and offer more cover, the deer will move on. It’s as simple as that.

Deer are animals of farmland and woodland. Granted, some deer live in deep forest and many live on farms, and that’s a fact of life in this state.

If you agree that a new hunting location should be tried, where should hunters start in their search for a new spot to test their luck or skill?

Hunters can start with the DNR. They keep track of deer trends, and know which counties have the highest deer numbers and which ones produce the largest deer. The county extension agent often deals with farmers and other landowners, and they also can help.

Determine if you want to hunt the Upper or Lower Peninsula, but if you’ve read hunting reports here or elsewhere about deer hunting prospects, the U.P. is not the place to go. The area with the most deer is south of an east-west line from Bay City to Muskegon.

Start asking questions. Learn which counties produce big bucks and lots of deer, and learn why deer numbers are high in such areas. Determine the availability of state or federal lands nearby, but both state and federal land is quite sparse and over-hunted in the southern Lower Peninsula.

Spend time scouting two or three different areas. Determine which ones offer the best combination of land, cover, deer foods, bedding cover and access. Walk around the land, and check for well-used deer trails leading from bedding to feeding areas and back.

Look for buck rubs and deer scrapes now. Check barbed wire fences for bits of hair that indicate deer passing through the area.

Talk with nearby landowners to determine their idea of hunting pressure. Often, in agricultural areas, the major hunting pressure is from the landowner and his or her family and close friends.

Consider the possibility of leasing hunting rights. Fees vary depending on length of the lease, property size, whether it is ideal or marginal deer habitat, and what it offers the hunter.

No one owes today’s sportsman anything in terms of hunting private property. I manage my land to produce big bucks, and crop lands are rotated and some timber is cut. Doing so helps maintain good hunting, but it’s a never-ending learning process to keep up with where whitetails travel after crop rotation and timbering takes place.

I spend many hours scouting for good spots. Deer habits change, food supplies change, and hunting pressure can make deer seek quieter areas. A hunter doesn’t know these things unless they spend time in the field on a regular basis.

Public lands feature too many hunters in narrowly confined areas, and the hunting pressure is too high. Food supplies are far better on private land than state or federal lands. Private property holds deer, and, in many areas, it supports more whitetails than public land. For this reason it’s easy to understand why more people lease hunting land even though the price of leasing acreage is rising.

Whether a hunter leases private land, hunts on public land, or manages to wangle an invitation from a landowner, scouting is a never-ending problem. Hunters who don’t scout old land or new land run a major risk of not being successful.

Knowing what lies over the next ridge and why deer travel one trail and not another is why some sportsmen bag whitetail bucks year after year, and why some hunters never tie their tag to the rack of a good buck.