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Hunt, Eat, Sleep, Repeat
By Steve Bartylla
It was the highlight of my hunting life. I’d taken my oldest daughter Beth with me a few times every year since she was 6, but we’d never connected on a buck together. Now I was sure it was finally going to happen.
Part of my optimism was because my client and friend Donal Barry Jr. offered up his ground. Having managed it for three years, I knew how good it was.
The other reason was I had the perfect spot to make it happen. With the right wind and deer hammering the mixed food plot, I knew just where to go.
It wasn’t long before we spotted a 3 ½-year-old management buck. Beth was calm as a cucumber until she made the shot. Then emotion took over.
As happy as I was for her, I also knew how important it was to get quiet and let things settle down. Sure enough, a doe stepped out moments later. It was only a few minutes after we rolled the doe that another of the bucks I was after materialized. I didn’t have a gun tag, but we enjoyed the show.
Two days later, I headed back to that same blind with a bow in hand. The wind was still right, and there were at least two shooter bucks still active at the plot.
Scratch that. Only one remained after that evening.
The following afternoon, my assistant had a close call with the buck Beth and I had been forced to watch.
You might think hunting the same stand three out of five days is overhunting the location, particularly when three deer were drug out during that time. If the wind hadn’t switched, I’d have sent my assistant in to keep hunting that blind until he killed the third buck — or we learned it had changed its pattern, which it did a few days later.
Hunters have been taught not to overhunt stands for good reason. Many burn out their best stands before the stands have a chance to get good. The longer I play this game, the more strongly I believe success comes from hunting the right stand at the right time.
The Bases
First, you must come to grips with a critical aspect of deer patterns. Just because a buck does the same thing every day this week doesn’t mean he’ll do it next week. Whitetails are nowhere as consistent as many of us experts make it sound.
Between the rut and the dynamic changes in food sources throughout a hunting season, deer patterns change constantly. As one food source dries up and becomes less palatable, another takes its place. Deer move accordingly.
What that means for hunters is we have a finite window in which to kill a buck from a given stand.
Let’s say there are 10 days of the season when soybean leaves are still green and growing. If you follow a self-imposed rule to give your soybean stand a four-day break between sits, you’ll hunt it only twice while it’s hot. That’s not a lot of time to get the job done, nor does it allow room for error or chance.
I would hunt that location all 10 days, assuming the wind is favorable, of course.
So what happens when your 10 days go by and you still haven’t taken the buck?
Well, that depends. If he doesn’t feel overly pressured, odds are the buck will shift to another food source reasonably close by. If you have brassicas or corn on your ground, you’re probably back in business.
The benefits of variety are why I promote mixing food plots with plants that become attractive at different times throughout the hunting season.
What if your soybean field was ringed by a 10-yard band of alfalfa and clover? What if you followed my advice from last month’s “Designer Food Plots” article and had hinge-cut edge feathers that drop browse down to a deer’s mouth level? If you top-seeded the soybeans with a mix of brassicas, cereal rye and oats, you’d have a spot that offers attraction throughout the entire hunting season.
Window-of-opportunity stand or season-long food plot, will having one or the other change how often you should hunt a given stand?
In either situation, a buck is likely to stay on the property as long as there is desirable food available — and he’s not overhunted.
I wish I could tell you there’s a simple rule to follow about how often you can use a stand, but the answer depends on the specifics of each situation.
Since a majority of hunters don’t have the luxury of multi-plant food plots, it’s important to learn about the food sources in your area and know when each becomes most attractive. For the lucky ones who have access to season-long food plots, you still need to know when sections of the plot are attractive, and which trails deer use to access the different foods.
Get the Intel
Not only must you know the property you’re hunting, you also need to know the buck you’re after. Thanks to multiple trail cameras, I typically know all the bucks on the ground I manage.
I believe every buck has a distinct personality, just like people. Some are fighters, some are passive and others are wanderers. Thankfully, most tend to be homebodies, particularly in areas with balanced age structures.
If a buck is a wanderer, keep hunting a stand where he’s showing up until you kill him or he moves on.
Pressured ground calls for other considerations. Most bucks that reach maturity on pressured land do so by finding pockets where hunters don’t go. The best way to tag such an animal is to hunt its daylight core area.
On the one hand, such bucks tend to be loyal to those locations; on the other, hunting a buck’s core area is a good way to send him packing. When you venture into his most familiar locations, you’d better get the job done in the first few attempts.
Pulling the Trigger on Overhunting Hot Stands
By now you’ve probably realized there are many factors to consider when trying to decide how often to hunt from a particular stand. The rut adds a whole new set of considerations.
For example, it’s generally a bad idea to overhunt a buck’s daylight core area, but that’s not the case once bucks are done scraping. At that point, testosterone levels and breeding urges cause them to move more in daylight.
I’ve taken several bucks by waiting until just before they started chasing does, and then moving in to hunt their core areas.
I use a core-area stand every morning I can, going in well before first light. I keep going back until I shoot the deer or peak breeding hits. The additional daylight movement associated with the chase phase makes invading core areas worth the extra pressure on the deer.
If a roamer buck shows up on one a trail camera, go after him hard. There’s no way to know where he came from or how long he’ll stay, so get on him quickly and stay after him until he moves on.
Sometimes you’ll see a buck that exhibits bursts of daylight and/or twilight activity separated by stretches of several days when you don’t see any sign of him. I believe such bucks bed fairly close but not necessarily on your property. Odds are your ground makes up only a portion of their range.
When you notice a buck in such an on-and-off pattern, make a move on him immediately after he shows up on your cameras. There’s a good chance he’ll be in the area several days. Conversely, don’t waste time on him if he hasn’t been around for awhile. Hunt somewhere else with more potential until he shows up again.
Finally
The best time to shoot a buck is when he’s on a predictable pattern. Whether that pattern lasts a few days or a week or more, hunt from a stand that takes advantage of that predictability for as long as it lasts.
Even so, overhunting a stand isn’t an excuse for ignoring wind or being sloppy with scent control. It’s critical to be extra careful when overhunting a stand since your scent and continued presence create more pressure every day. If you’re not careful, each sit becomes worse than the last.
The amount of thought and care you put into each setup, including how you get in and out of the woods, often determines whether you can overhunt it and still be effective.