10 days of hunting, and strategizing brought us success!
In last week’s blog I talked about “The Rut Blues” basically illustrating that even though the rut can be one of the best times to kill a mature buck, sometimes the randomness of deer movement can make it difficult to connect. I also offered some advice on how to overcome it. One of those bits of advice was “To be out there as often as possible”. Sounds simple but, I believe, it puts the odds in your favor. Well at least it did for us!
DO AS I DO, AND AS I SAY…
Taking my own advice, my cameraman Josh Lawler and I put mornings and afternoons in different stands over the past 10 days. We talked strategy every morning before heading out, scouted during mid-day (mostly Josh) and planned in the evenings after the hunt. Always thinking about where the bucks might be and what area we should hunt next. Basically Being out there as often as possible.
BRINGING IT ALL TOGETHER
Part of our strategy has been utilizing trail cameras to help us keep an eye out across the farm for bucks as they show up at community scrapes, travel corridors and corn piles. We were catching no movement on scrapes as is typical when the rut peaks nd for several weeks we were getting a lot of nighttime activity on our travel corridors which was nice, but without daytime movement we felt we’d be wasting our time. The corn piles had some small bucks and does on them but no mature bucks were showing up… Until a few nights ago… One of our corn piles started getting visited by one of our hit-listers, an 11 point that had broken the G-3 on the left side of his rack and a brow tine on the right. We call him the “Broken Ten” which is wrong because he was originally an 11 point being he had a small one inch G-5 on his left beam. But I digress… He was appearing in the evenings right at legal shooting light and a few times during the night. We looked at the forecast and the wind was set to come out of the Northwest at around 10 miles per hour and that was perfect for that particular set up.
Our Browning Trail Cameras were an extremely important part of our strategy.
Trail cameras helped make us aware of this buck's presence in the area.
KEEPING IT FRESH WITH CLIMBERS
We’re using climbing treestands on this set up. That’s pretty much all we use as climbers offers us the ability to stay mobile and doesn’t tempt us to overhunt one site day in and day out. We exclusively use the Buckshot Equalizer Climbing Treestand. We love these stands and I’ll tell you more about all the great features in another upcoming blog.
A typical set-up with climbers whether archery or rifle.
THE AFTERNOON
The wind was perfect coming out of the Northwest and it helped to screen our movements and any errant noise we might make, we quietly slipped up to our predetermined tree and like a well-oiled machine connected our stands to the tree and softly eased up to our desired height. It wasn’t long before a young buck showed up first and fed for about 20 minutes before wandering off. As the sun set behind the trees I caught movement in the same direction as the buck walked off and I could see several does making there way to the corn. I could see that the largest doe was nervous and was locked onto something across the clearing. She quickly wheeled around and started walking away and I looked to see antlers moving low through the brush. Josh saw it too and we simultaneously whispered “Big Buck, Big Buck, Big Buck!” I quickly dropped my binos and grabbed my .270 and peered in and out of my scope to try to see where the buck was at. For about 3 minutes the buck chased the doe and we saw glimpses of hide and antler as they darted through the brush while the other does quietly watched from the corn they were feeding on. Through all the chasing, the buck was now back on the original side he’d appeared from and I could barely make him out through the brush. He glared at the two does and they quickly blew out of the clearing for a safer space and then the buck walked out into the clearing to smell where the does were standing. Being already down on the gun I whispered to Josh if he was ready. Josh confirmed he was. The buck was facing me now at about 40 yards and once he lowered his head I settled my crosshairs just in front of where the spine meets the shoulders and squeezed the trigger. He immediately hit the ground and our year long quest was over.
We are fortunate to be able to have a job that allows us to chase NC's top outdoor critter the whitetailed deer!
TAKE-AWAYS
Reflecting back I think we did just about as good a job as we could in trying to stay in the game. What I mean is that we utilized current recon intel from our cameras to keep close tabs on the bucks in our area, We utilized corn and food plots to hold does in and we put the time in the tree to offer us the maximum chance of being in the right place at the right time. The rut blues have definitely turned to rut joy!
-Chris-
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