Tip 1: restrict oneself to less than 4 whiskey drinks the night before. 2: drink lots of Mountain Dew in the way to the stand. 3. Limit phone porn to a minimum 4: only play online poker during the slow hours 5: Do NOT use a PSE That pretty much sums it up
Let me know what you mean by this bud.......EVERY year we see and have bucks on cams in late summer that we are drooling over and then come the season they are gone.....not always but pretty damn close. We leave the cams up too so it's not just us not seeing them from stands. If we are confident in anything after hunting this land for 6 years it's that we WONT see these bucks come fall. Any ideas?? Couple questions.......what if they are bedding on the neighbors land or you just plain don't know or aren't sure where they are bedding? Also how do you KNOW the bed you found is his and a RELIABLE place he will be?? I watched a nice buck rise from his bed twice last year in October and never saw him again in any way until he appeared on a cam after the season. Acorns are a nightmare for us LOL..........no joke they are EVERYWHERE!!! We have 350 acres and littered with oaks. They carpet the ground and tons go un eaten. We have 6 acres of food plots scattered around and there is random corn as well. The area is HEAVILY managed and there are food plots everywhere they will grow (neighbor has 41 1-2 acre plots as good example). Do you still think we can rely on acorns or should we look for a less popular option?? It's so difficult to find any consistency when the food changes so much year to year. Our whole property has been changed year to year based on what we plant and what the neighbors plant...........frustrating because they grow in the fall and blow the summer all to hell. Nice to see you man.........hope all is well.
My early season possibilities are rather stunted, it will not improve I perfect my beer can grunt call. We all know how deer react to the sound of a beer opening nothing but white flags. I am working on a cap that goes over the top of the can and when you pop the top the energy and sound is converted to a grunt call. Such a pain to climb up in a stand and have to open 6-8 beers and arrange them on the stand platform so you don't spill when you stand up for a shot.
No mornings; really? I get tons of late morning trail cam pics in WI until about the first week of October. After that nearly zero. Problem is I haven't been able to get up there to hunt until late October. That changes this season, for sure.
As of now I plan on hunting behind a downed oak tree on a well used trail that goes through a stand of white oaks. Hoping to catch a big 8 I saw in the spot last year!
From the description you gave of your area, it seems the bucks have many choices on different food sources from how heavily managed your area sounds. The areas that I hunt, are not like that at all. I would say it has to do with the abundance of food / choices the bucks have in your area compared to the areas I hunt. I'd say darn near every year that I have run trail cameras (I don't always run them, I enjoy hunting without them... Every deer sighting is a surprise) I killed a buck that I had on cam over the summer. When I run cams I pull them 2 to 4 weeks before deer season opens because of high theft rates. If they are bedding on your neighbors land or you are not sure where they are bedding, you are just stuck guessing or hunting destination areas. I strongly dislike hunting destination setups. Every trip "you" are putting more pressure on them. Your odds of pressuring them closer to their beds, or between their beds and their destination is far less when utilizing the wind and solid entry / exit routes as they only pass through those areas, rather than congregate there like destination areas. There are different kinds of beds. Primary and secondary. Primary big buck beds are always (outside of summer) single. (When ever you find a cluster of beds, those are doe beds.) Primary buck beds generally have large droppings of different states of decomposition, rubs within standing distance of their beds and often times scrapes very close by. You will find these beds wore to the dirt (look for large tracks to confirm it is a big buck using that bed) and white hair in and all around the bed from repeated use. You will sometimes find these beds placed so the buck can lean up against a tree trunk or a blow down. They like to bed where they can take the most advantage of their tremendous senses. Smell, sight and sound (in that order IMO). Sometimes the spot that is most advantageous for their senses is a nasty thicket but that's not true more often than not, especially if you are in hilly topography. Their sense of smell trumps all, they use winds and thermal currents to detect danger long before it becomes threatening to them. When they are able to combine their senses such as smell and sight, they are very difficult to setup on (hilly topography or overgrown hedge rows etc are examples of areas where they can use more than just scent to detect danger). If available they really like to utilize edge habitat, where two different types of canopy or topography meet. A lot of times this is right on property borders where the properties have been logged in different years... Where forest regrowth meets overgrown or crp fields... Where timber meets a river, lake, swamp or creek etc etc. Seems you are falling into the "to much of a good thing" category when it comes to feed options for your deer. In a scenario such as yours, the food tactics would be hit or miss if you don't have a real good idea of the areas or specific beds your bucks are using.
Hunters like Buckeye scout a ton of ground, can read terrain and sign, understand buck bedding and during early season generally have enough spots where you're hunting virgin sits over and over again. These virgin sits in the right spot allow you to catch a buck by total surprise. In the end ability to disect a property, hunting first time sets in the right spots produces a wall full of big bucks.
