HUNTING ARTICLES Get To Know Your Buck By Matt Adcock As I sat motionless on the cold November morning, a twig snapped less than 30 yards away. I slowly turned my head as a buck emerged from the overgrown thicket, a good 8-pointer and a piebald at that. He rapidly approached my entry trail, and I knew I had to shoot quickly or he would be gone. Within seconds, it was over. I had finally gotten the 16-inch piebald 8-pointer I had been hunting. There are many reasons why this hunt ended successfully, but I believe the most important factor was scouting. The fresh deer sign I found the morning before indicated where this good buck was traveling, putting me in position for success. Hunting a mature whitetail is similar to fishing a bass tournament on a large lake. You must first locate the big bass, then you must get them to bite. Finding a mature buck is difficult enough, getting him to bite is a whole different story. Anyone can have beginner's luck, but to consistently fill your tags with mature whitetails you must scout smart and scout often. You are out to learn three things: the terrain, the deer movements, and where to position your stand in relation to these movements. Learning the terrain where you hunt is vital to your success. In most situations, deer movements can be determined or predicted by examining the terrain. You should never hunt a piece of property without first obtaining an aerial photo, which can easily be obtained at the county courthouse for a small fee. If you have internet access, they can be found at www.terraserver.microsoft.com. This will not only show you the layout of your hunting property, but can also show you the layout of the property next to you. There may be a major food source just a few hundred yards off of your property that will certainly affect deer movement on your club. It can also show property boundaries, hardwood bottoms, streams, and planted pines. Pine trees are evergreens and will look dark on most aerial photos. Most oak trees are deciduous and will appear lighter in color, especially if the photo was taken during the winter. Knowing this can save you a lot of time when scouting a new area. Topographic maps can also be a useful aid when scouting for mature deer. Bucks like to rub on ridges and like to walk in areas with slight depressions. I mostly hunt in southern Laurens County where there is not a lot of elevation change, and the reason I use topo maps is to find the low areas or the wet areas. Finding water is essential when hunting early bow season. When there is a rain deficit like there has been for the previous few years, finding the water means finding the deer. Learning the terrain should be an ongoing process that occurs every time you hunt. Every year I learn something about the property I hunt. While walking through a thicket several years ago, I came across three crabapple trees that were very small and did not produce fruit. After cutting several trees that were blocking the sunlight and adding a little fertilizer, I now have a great early-season location to bow hunt. Learn to look for food sources while walking in the woods. Crabapples, persimmons, muscadines, and oak trees are just a few of the food sources to look for when scouting, and when you find one of these seasonal food sources, look for potential stand locations. A second reason to scout for mature bucks is to learn about their location and movements. I am referring to locating a mature buck's core area. Rubs and scrapes are very important indicators of a big buckos presence, but on occasion, rubs and scrapes can be misleading about the size of the deer leaving the sign. A big buck can make a little scrape or rub a little tree, which is why I feel that a deeros track is the most consistent indicator of the size of a deer. I use my fingers to measure the width of a deer's track to give me an idea of the deer's weight and age. Over time I have learned that a deer track in Laurens County, Georgia, that is three fingers (2 1/4 inches) wide is usually a mature doe or 1 1/2-year-old buck. A track that is 3 1/2 fingers wide (2 1/2 inches) is usually a 2 1/2 or 3 1/2-year-old buck. I often hunt deer that have 4-finger-wide tracks (2 3/4 inches). These Laurens County bucks are usually older than 4 1/2 years and weigh well over 200 pounds. I use a simple logic when hunting. If I do not find wide tracks in an area, I keep looking until I do. Another indicator that a mature buck might be in the area is the length of the deer's stride. My favorite hunting partner told me one time that any deer that has a walking stride over 18 inches is a buck. I take a lot of what I hear about deer hunting with a grain of salt, but when he tells me something about deer hunting, I believe it. After measuring the stride of a few walking bucks, I have yet to prove him wrong. I start my scouting at food plots or food sources. I consider scouting food plots low impact as far as making my presence known, and looking in these areas for wide tracks can quickly give you an indication if any large deer are in the vicinity. You should scout as much as possible, and in my opinion you should scout throughout the hunting season, but I can't emphasize this enough: you must make a conscious effort to minimize your intrusion into the whitetail's habitat. I support every effort to either reduce your scent or mask it with a cover scent. Always wear rubber boots and never scout upwind of a bedding area. When possible, I like to scout just before a rain so that any scent I leave will be washed away during the rain. Yes, you run less risk if you donot scout at all during the hunting season, but I believe you gain more by staying attuned to what's going on? So long as you are cautious about your impact. Most of the time, rubs can be good indicators of a mature whitetail's presence. A researcher's study I once read about suggested that any rub on a tree that is bigger than four inches in diameter is made by a mature buck. I have noticed that mature whitetails will often push on smaller trees when making a rub, so if you find a 2-inch diameter tree that has been rubbed and pushed over, it was probably made by a mature buck. Mature bucks are usually much more aggressive than smaller bucks. If you find a tree that has been ripped to shreds, odds are it was done by a mature buck. Rubs can also indicate the direction from which the buck approached, since bucks will usually rub the side of the tree they approach from. After finding multiple rubs in a row, it is possible to determine the exact path traveled by the buck. Last year, I was hunting a mature buck on a lease in Laurens County and couldn't quite pattern his movements. One day while making a two-man drive with my brother, I came across a single rub in a thicket that answered all of my questions: the deer was crossing a hilltop of pines and then skirting the edge of a thicket. I waited until post-rut and a falling barometric pressure before I hunted this location. If I had paid more attention to detail when scouting, I would have killed this 18-inch 8-pointer. The rub I found was actually 20 yards off of his trail. Because the area I was hunting was so thick with vegetation, I could only shoot a small area in front of me, and the large-bodied 8-pointer walked within twelve yards of my stand without me being able to make the shot I wanted. Mature bucks will often rub higher on a tree than a smaller buck. This is partly due to their increased body size and larger antlers, but sometimes there are other reasons. A few years ago, I found several rubs that were four feet off of the ground. They ranged from waist high to as high as my chest, and I knew that this had to be a mature buck and a special one at that. The very first time I hunted this area, I arrowed this 195-lb., 17-inch 7-pointer. The deer only had three legs and could not get enough leverage to bend down and rub like other deer, so it rubbed with his head up. On my hunting property, I often find rubs on the edge of suspected bedding areas. The direction from which the rubs were made has led me to conclude that the bucks will often make these rubs just after they get up to leave their bedding area. These rubs are often solitary rubs adjacent to inaccessibly thick areas, and I find myself hunting these type locations as much as I hunt feeding areas. Scrapes can also give you valuable information about the mature bucks in your area. Large bucks often make large scrapes, it is true, but through the use of infared cameras I have also seen that large scrapes are frequently worked by multiple bucks of all sizes and they get large over time. Many people hunt near scrapes, and I am no different. I have had good success hunting over scrapes, but as hunters and researchers are learning through the use of cameras, most scrapes are checked at night. Do not spend all of your time hunting over scrapes? Hunt there once or twice if at all and move on to another location. I often do not hunt the scrape itself but the area between where the deer is living and the scrape. I use the word "living" instead of bedding because most mature bucks will spend a vast majority of their daylight time living in areas that are void of human scent . . . or else we would kill them. I heard a deer making a rub several years ago and I grunted at him with my mouth to try to bring him within range. He ran straight to me ready for a fight. After not seeing another buck in his territory, the mature 5-pointer made a scrape two yards from the tree I was sitting in. That large scrape was made out of aggression and just goes to show that scrapes can be made just about anywhere. This is why I try not to hunt around a solitary scrape. I look for concentrations of scrapes near thickets and try to hunt them in a cross wind. A mature buck will check his scrapes in his core area during daylight hours if he hasn't detected any human odor in the area. When you find fresh deer sign from a mature buck, hunt downwind of that location either that day or the next. The deer's core area must remain as odor-free as possible, and you accomplish this by moving stand locations frequently and only hunting around fresh sign. This means you need to scout every day you hunt. Without a vast knowledge of the terrain this method of hunting is not possible. With this method, you win some and you lose some. Last year while scouting at noon, I found several large scrapes in a scrape line that smelled of fresh urine. I mentally reviewed the direction from which the deer had approached, extrapolated back to the nearest thicket, and the next morning before daylight I was perched in the thicket a quarter mile away ready to intercept this midday buck. At 10:40 a.m., the large buck came down a trail and made a scrape just out of bow range. He continued down the trail ignoring several series of my grunts. At 11:20 a.m. he returned, coming back down the same trail he left on, but this time he was in a hurry. The next morning I was sitting 15 yards from where the deer had traveled with bow in hand. I sat until almost 1:00 p.m. with no success, and I assume my scent in the area caused this buck to change his mid-day pattern. If you are going to hunt near a scrape, you must only hunt when the conditions are perfect. I only hunt close to scrapes during the early pre- and post-rut and preferably on a falling barometric pressure. Here in Laurens County. the rain seems to get the big bucks moving. There are other signs to look for when scouting for a mature whitetail. Extremely large clumps of deer droppings are a sign that a large deer is in the area. I usually do not find these droppings in food plots, but rather in close proximity to bedding areas. This leads me to believe that these mature deer often defecate as soon as they leave their beds. Finding these droppings in close proximity to a thicket might give you an idea where that large deer is living and which direction he is traveling. Often a buck will run the same trail when checking his scrapes. I call this trail a buckos circuit, and it is simply the corridor that connects all of the scrapes that he actively checks. This trail is rarely a true "trail" that you can see, and it is a lot easier to find rub lines or scrape lines, but I have noticed that bucks often enter and leave an area on the same trail. I do not have to explain, therefore, why locating this avenue gives you a great advantage. Again, consider the big picture around scrapes: where is the buck coming from, where does he travel as he checks the scrapes and where is the nearest food source likely to hold does? Scouting for a mature whitetail doesn't end after a successful hunt. If you are fortunate enough to harvest a mature whitetail, examine his stomach contents to see what he has been eating. You might learn about a preferred food source for your hunting property. I did this on a large-bodied 12-pointer a few years back and found berries that I later learned were from a honey locust tree. I didn't even know there was a honey locust tree on our farm. Now that you have some information on what to look for while scouting, the next part is for you to get out there and do it. My philosophy on hunting mature bucks is simple: every mature buck will make one or two mistakes a year, and you must be in the right place at the right time to capitalize on these mistakes. Scouting is the primary ingredient to being in the right place at the right time. Originally published in Georgia Outdoor News, August 2000. | |
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