How to hunt your buck!

 

It's time to share some tips on how I achieved a success ratio of 28 out of 30 successful whitetail deer hunting seasons. My hunting buddies laugh at me when I tell them I can smell a whitetail buck's tarsal gland aroma if I walk across it's path. This is more likely to happen during the rut, which occurs at the tail end of the hunting season.

 

The fastest way to get good at something, is to model someone who excels in it. Deer are curious animals. An old indian friend of mine explained how I could use this to my advantage. Here is my story, and I'm sticking to it!

 

I can only wish that some of you have the opportunity to bring your children deer hunting with you. It's an adventure that will bond them with nature for life. I ALWAYS hunt alone, except on these occasions. I decided to use Yoda's technique one day when my 12 year old son decided to come with me on a deer hunt.

 

I hunted whitetail deer on a wildlife garden of 80 acres of mixed forest for the first 20 years, until this piece of heaven got attacked by the sawmills. I got to know the lay of the land, and picked an area I called the pitcher's mound to hunt with my son that day. This plot of deer scrapes, rubs, multiple trails and deer tracks, bordering two swales, was hotter than deer steaks on a barbeque. There was thick underbrush that made my approach very noisy, and I would always jump a massive whitetail buck and his doe, but I could never get a clean shot. My luck was about to change.

 

My son and I ventured in the area, wind in our eyes, waiting for the white "tails" to start flagging. We finally arrived at the mound where the swale meets the edge of the cedar thicket. The doe took off with the big antlered buck right behind. I explained to my son how we would trick this buck and test Yoda's theory. I asked my son to walk noisily, following exactly where the doe had gone, and I would hide and wait for the buck to come around to investigate what spooked them. My son walked and followed my direction. I waved at him to stop when he got to the edge of a thicket where the deer may find difficulty seeing him. I saw some movement coming around to get down wind from the noise that my son was making. The deer head came into view but it looked like the doe. I saw it again a second time and again it looked like the doe, but when it turned it's head to look towards the noise that my son was making, I saw the antlers through the alders. The buck made one side step to get a better look at the noisemaker and offered me a perfect head shot, at 88 steps. Now you see how tandem hunting can be used to your benefit.

 

To be successful at whitetail deer hunting, you need to study deer behavior, learn to respect nature and learn to adjust to the variables. Ask other successful hunters to share tactics that work for them. If you can't see the forest for the trees, you will never see the whitetail deer that live in there!

 

 

Whitetail deer are very adapted at sneaking around

you, especially when you are still hunting. Here in Eastern Canada, the best hunt in my opinion, is still hunting for the whitetail buck.

 

You can expect the unexpected while chasing down the wise old bucks. They know all the tricks, that's how they get old, big and wise. On this occasion, I was making my way to the hunting zone at the edge of the swale where the most deer signs were visible. I was actually using a deer trail to get me to the downwind side of this swale where I usually started my walk, look, look, look tactics.

 

I have always looked around when I hunt whitetail, I mean all the way around, including behind me where I just came from. This time, I harvested an 8 point buck whitetail deer using this method.

 

As I crawled under a windfall and stood up on the other side, I spooked 3 deer running away to my left. I crawled back under the windfall to get a better view. These 3 deer were actually walking, 3 in a row, directly in the path I had just walked in. The buck momentarily stopped to sniff the air and presented a perfect head shot at 88 steps from where I was standing. The two does fled as the buck dropped in it's tracks.

 

This was the third whitetail deer I shot using this method of looking behind my trail, the first two were smaller bucks. I am going out tomorrow with this and many more tactics in mind. Hunting the bottleneck is the style of hunting I'll be using, more on that on my next story.

 

Good luck, hunt safe and have fun!

 

See this post and other hunting stories in my hunting blog.