My cousin gave me a call today and asked if I would help him hang a stand. I was over that way anyways checking cameras so I went ahead and cruised over there. They don't own much land, but what they do is prime for deer hunting. After we got done getting his stand setup I asked him he minded if I checked out a spot on their property line. After I got the permission I took off with a Stealth Cam. The particular spot I was looking for was an old overgrown pasture that had been bulldozed and was now planted in corn. My dad had shotgun hunted this spot years ago, and it is in here that my cousin killed a 205" 18 pointer 10 years ago. Once I got to the area I found sign and lots of it, and within all of the tracks were BIG BIG BIG tracks. Now what it looks like to me is the deer instead of walking through the thicket or what are now being funneled along the edge of the field from the brush being pushed up along it. The woods behind this place are way to thick for me to even walk in let alone be able to hunt, and this is where I think a big boy maybe bedding. The pink on the map is where the pasture was dozed, the green along the field edge are the dozer piles, the white is the property line although the neighbor does not care if we hunt on him, and the red circles were the best trees in the along the field.
Another interesting spot on the map is the grassy area running between my cousin's field and the neighbors. It is filled with grasses and weeds about head high. An old buck could walk through here and be nearly impossible to spot.
This isn't my style of hunting. I only have one stand on a field edge, but it is set up on 2 paths coming out of big timber. The thicket on the map is the thickest nastiest stuff you could imagine and then multiply that by 10. I didn't find a single path coming out of it into the field, but in the places I was able to crawl into it there were paths crisscrossing it. All the sign I saw was along the field edge where the dozer piles were forcing the deer around them, but they are also traveling between the piles and the edge of a corn field. The corn will be out in 2-3 weeks. After that how does that effect the travel of the deer using this "funnel"
I'd put a stand in as close as possible. If the corn is out in 2-3 weeks it might be prime time to lure him to you with a decoy
A decoy would be an interesting idea, as anything traveling between the 2 fields in the the tall stuff might be lured out into the open.
Decoys when they work always work better in the open where they can be seen at long distances. If your buck is a bruiser he may come in. But remember he may want to circle downwind if he's sly so the wind direction is crucial so you don't get busted, and a little dominant buck urine on your decoy will add realism if he does go downwind to scent check the decoy. If he's not a dominant buck the large decoy may scare him off. Sometimes leaving only one antler on can make your buck think the intruder is a pushover
BTW you don't have a problem you have a golden opportunity, but with a large buck like that one mistake can blow it. You'll probably only have one chance at him!
haha I consider it a very good problem to have although I have not seen the buck I'm after other than his tracks.