The Art of Scouting Individual
Bucks
Just like Humans, Personalities determine daily Habits
By Bill Winke
If you do a good job of managing your land you are going to be hunting mature bucks within a few short years. That can be both good and bad.
Sure, bucks age 4-½ years and older are the goal: they’ve lived long enough to begin to express their full genetic potential but they also live a life that virtually defies our ability to understand. Believe me, I’ve tried for several years to come up with a consistent method for taking these bucks – a step-by-step approach like a page from a recipe book. I didn’t even care how complicated the recipe got as long as it eventually produced something good. Unfortunately, these older bucks are not as predictable as flour and eggs. My recipes always flopped.
Once a buck reaches 4-½ years of age, he becomes a different animal and you begin hunting individual deer with individual personalities rather than a class of deer with similar traits. This fact not only makes it tougher to figure out where to place your stand, it also makes it tougher to even learn what you need to know to come up with any kind of strategy in the first place. You can no longer ask yourself when scouting what a buck is likely to do, you have to ask yourself what this buck is likely to do.
Learning what you can about individual bucks is the key to taking them with any kind of purpose. However, even the process of scouting is fraught with tradeoffs. Mature bucks are extremely sensitive to human pressure; if they sense they are being hunted, they turn into ghosts and disappear into the woodwork. On the one side you have to scout enough to learn something useful but on the other side you need to keep your scouting down so you don’t educate the bucks you’re trying to hunt.
Here’s an analogy that helps explain the downside of scouting when hunting mature bucks. I studied engineering in college. In one of my material science classes we discussed destructive testing. In a destructive test, you attempt to learn all you can about a certain material, but in the process you destroy it – like pulling it apart to see how much stress it can take.
Done too close to the hunting season, traditional scouting has the same effect on your hunting area – it is a destructive test. In other words, you may get some idea what the deer was doing before you showed up, but more than likely if you really picked his area apart he won’t be doing it anymore, at least not without extra caution.
Scouting is definitely a balancing act: do just enough to peg a pattern
but not so much that you put the buck off that pattern before you even have a
chance to hunt him. Knowledge is
the key to doing it well. You must first know how much information you really
need to make good stand placement decisions and then you have to come up with
the very best ways to get that information without alerting the bucks. Good luck
-- you’re going to need it.
How Much
Information Do You Need?
It’s dangerous to make generalities when dealing with mature bucks. They are all individuals once they reach age 4-½ and need to be hunted as such. One buck may be fairly visible or have a distinct rack that makes it easy to tell which trees he’s rubbed, while others may be completely nocturnal and not make any sign. Some of these bucks will participate in the rut actively, while others will hang back in the shadows and breed only one or two does all fall.
To become good at hunting individual deer, you first have to enjoy getting to know them. Once you decide to take on that challenge, you have a big learning curve in front of you. You have to get to meet the deer on his terms in the same way that you might try to befriend a shy stranger – a little at a time. He’s not going to show you who he is all at once. Instead, you’ll pick up a little here and a little there until you have some feel for his individual habits. It may take weeks, months or even years. The better you get to know that buck, the better you can predict what he will do next. Maybe you will even find some part of his daily life where he is vulnerable.
Scouting for fully mature bucks is not the same as scouting for bucks in general. When scouting for the latter you can easily determine the best funnels, best feeding areas and the places where the does bed to attract bucks during the rut. While you can get lucky and take a fully mature buck in any of these locations, the odds don’t favor it. Your chances for taking him go up (they will never be very high, by the way) when you start to learn more about him as an individual.
I recently spoke with a whitetail research biologist about the personalities of deer. Specifically, I was wondering if he knew of any studies that had been conducted to determine the degree of similarities and differences between mature bucks. Of course, I was looking for anything in their common behavior that could be exploited. I learned that no such research had been done, at least not to his knowledge. But he assured me that the individual personalities of the bucks would take precedence over all other factors in determining their daily habits. In other words, there was no such thing as a stereotypical mature buck. They are all different.
He elaborated by saying that a certain percentage of the bucks that seem to disappear are still around. They may not be smarter, but they do have personalities that produce behavioral patterns that keep them out of sight. In other words, you don’t see them because they move very little and then only when absolutely required – often at night.
He elaborated that this transition usually starts to accelerate when the
buck reaches 4-½ years of age. It is at this point that they start to become a
different animal. Their systems
gear down and their movements become much more a product of their dispositions.
Some may be aggressive and come rapidly when they hear rattling, for example,
while others may hang back or even slink away at the same sound.
If you are bent on shooting a mature buck, it does little good to just scout. You have to focus your efforts on those one or two granddaddy bucks that call your hunting area home. The first job then is simply finding one. In my experience the best way to do this is to watch the protein-rich feeding areas during the summer. Even many of the mature bucks in an area will expose themselves during the daytime in the middle of the summer while feeding in alfalfa, clover and soybean plots. At this time of year the bucks are really putting on the feedbags and are very relaxed.
The biggest bucks my friends and I see every year are first seen during the summer, generally in late July and early August. Sometimes we never see them again, but sometimes we actually get them during the fall.
Spend plenty of time watching fields from a distance at this time. Pull out the spotting scope or a good set of binoculars so you can see every detail of the buck’s rack even from 200 to 300 yards away. This is not only a great way to find a buck to hunt in the fall, but excellent entertainment and a fine time to assess the kinds of bucks that live in your hunting area.
Ideally, you will locate more than one mature buck in the hopes that at least one has behavior traits that you can use to your advantage. Get as much information as you can from every sighting. It is especially important to know where the buck comes from when he enters the field and which other bucks he lives with during the summer. Find out what other feeding areas he visits during the summer.
If you hunt in an area where the bow season opens in late August or early
September, you have a tremendous advantage over those who can’t start until
October. You have the privilege of
hunting the buck while he is still on a fairly steady feeding pattern. As soon
as they shed their velvet these mature bucks become much more difficult to
pattern and the kinds of information you need changes. Let’s take it one step
at a time.
When hunting a buck in late August and early September you can learn everything you need to know by watching his feeding areas. This is where you need to focus because hunting deeper in the cover carries too much risk. Why take the chance of putting the buck off his pattern by hunting him where he’s most sensitive, when you know where he’s coming out to feed?
Now is also a good time to place a ground blind or two in the locations where the buck is feeding most actively. I’m assuming you’ll be bow hunting when the season opens, so you need to be close. Don’t get caught in the middle ground but put the blind right where he feeds. He’ll quickly accept the structure if it is placed in July or August and by the time the season opens, he will be feeding around the blind with no concern for its presence. Do everything you can to make the blind scent-proof so other deer feeding in the plot won’t smell you before the buck arrives.
Next, put all the sightings together to try to come up with a specific tree the buck passes often where you have some kind of wind advantage. Study all the other deer too because if you spook a non-target animal before the big buck comes out, you’ll likely never see him. Bow hunting the edges of feeding areas from tree stands is tough because it seems that no matter how you set up, there will be some deer downwind. The only exception is when you can set up with a natural barrier on your downwind side such as a lake or river or a steep bluff. Pick out one or two good stand locations for each feeding area and hold these in reserve in case the ground blind strategy falls apart.
The best way to get this information is from the distance with a spotting
scope. Don’t be tempted to get
close or the deer will find out you are nearby. Stay several hundred yards away
and watch from the downwind edge of the field. You may need to relocate a few
times so you can get a better look at exactly where the buck comes out of the
cover. Not only is this important information for setting an early season
ambush, it is also critical for the next phase of the hunt.
Once the bucks shed their velvet, they quickly become much more reclusive. You can see their behavior change in only a few days. Usually they stop using the feeding areas in any kind of predictable way within a few days of shedding their velvet. In fact, it is fairly common for the buck to completely stop using the food source he used all summer – at least during daylight hours. In some cases, he may have dispersed to a distant area, but usually he is nearby somewhere but not moving much.
When the buck stops showing up at his preferred feeding areas during the daylight, your scouting strategy should shift into second gear. It’s time to look deeper in the cover. Ideally, you will know the general area (a ridge, a swamp, a high point, etc.) where he likes to bed, because that becomes the focal point for hunting the buck during the second half of September and throughout October.
Think back to your late summer sightings. Where was the buck coming out of the cover most often? These are your starting points. Work into the cover from here looking for big rubs. Typically, the mature bucks will make the first big rubs of the year and do it shortly after he sheds his velvet. Finding these September rubs will help you backtrack the buck to his preferred bedding area or areas. Carry a stand with you in case you find something that looks really good – a funnel, for example, that you suspect the buck is traveling through.
A line of big rubs or several sets of huge tracks on a trail, at a creek crossing or even in a scrape, will indicate where the buck has most likely been traveling recently (you may never know they were actually his for sure). Prior to the rut – during the doldrums of mid-October – the buck will decrease the range of his movement, making the bedding area more and more important.
Scout carefully and slowly. Use
your knowledge of the area to predict the buck’s bedding area and the trails
he uses with the least possible scouting. The goal is to figure out where he’s
likely bedding without actually scouting the location itself. You’ll
eventually want to set up somewhere near the biggest sign as close to the
assumed bedding area as you dare get without being seen, heard or smelled.
Buck movement becomes almost random during the rut. It is very likely that the buck you are hunting is not on a pattern of any kind, so don’t try to scout too intensively. It makes little sense to do a bunch of scouting, trying to predict where he’ll be next, when half the time he doesn’t even know himself. Stick with tendencies and focus on what you know about the terrain to predict where he is likely to travel when out looking for does. Often it will be along the least likely routes – they rarely follow trails at this time. This is why the effects of terrain are so important. An intimate knowledge of the terrain is best gained from post-season scouting trips, but if that option wasn’t available, you can still learn plenty from studying aerial photos and topographical maps.
Most of the information you gained by watching him during the summer and
by finding the buck’s trails between bedding and feeding areas, is essentially
worthless now. Even if he were
nearby, it would be pure chance that he would use these trails.
Forget about them and focus on macroscopic movement patterns near his
core area and hope for the best.
Late season buck hunting is very similar to early season hunting: you spend most of your time simply trying to find the buck and you hunt him near or right at his feeding area. Again, your scouting should be confined to long-range surveillance. Don’t leave any scent needlessly. Remember, the buck has already gone through nearly an entire hunting season (at least his fourth). He’s not going to put up with any nonsense.
Once again, the goal should be to find a few trees along the edge of the
feeding area for your stands and one of two good locations for your ground
blinds, right in the middle of the feeding area. If you don’t get the cold
weather needed to bring the buck out before dark, you may need to hunt deeper in
the cover near his suspected bedding area.
Carry binoculars and learn while you hunt. You may be able to spot him in
the distance using a slightly different area.
In the end, trying to pattern a buck by his sign is frustrating and produces heavy impact. It’s a destructive test. Instead, use actual sightings early and late in the season when patterning makes sense and use knowledge of the terrain features -- and how bucks relate to them -- to figure out the best place for your stands during the rut. Eliminate preconceived notions of what is supposed to happen – there is no such thing in this game. Keep a completely open mind and get to know each buck as an individual. Not only will this make your hunting more satisfying, it will also make it more productive.