Nov 1st is a rut day that I had never taken a good buck. Nov 1st is also a day that I would not have expected to have a mature buck making a steady showing on my cams on the farm. Most of the time, any sense of pattern had been long gone and the bucks I had been chasing in the early season would have been on to neighboring properties with better chances of finding the ladies.
This property has a long history of a lot of great deer hunts through the years, but it has been consistently inconsistent. It just needed some more cover and lots of it. Cover for doe groups and cover for mature bucks. If they don’t have to leave and always feel safe to be here, then that makes the chances of taking a mature buck go up. When I moved closer to the property in 2017, I came up with a plan to hold more deer and have more shot opportunities on mature deer. It’s been 7 years, and the improvement is something to see. I could talk about what I’ve done for hours but basically, I’ve created layer after layer of edge and browse and some of the gnarliest cover and bedding with a chainsaw. I started with an outline of where I wanted to select cut the woods and made a hinge cut outline. Once the select cut was done I created entry and exit paths to stand locations. Every winter since I have been burning areas and hinge cutting more trees in layers to create buffers and barriers and bedrooms for doe groups and bucks. I have designated parts of the property that I will never set foot in until it’s time to shed hunt. This year I have even changed how I park at the farm for the first time in over 35 years.
I took a fantastic 10 point 2 years ago in October on acorns. He was bedding in some of my hinge bedding but he did not spend much of his time on the farm. I had never gotten a pic of the buck. I spotted him as I was entering the oaks on the day before and went back the next day and shot him on the same trail I had seen him on the day before. It was an awesome hunt and a beautiful deer. Things were definitely on the right track. All of this is occurring while our area was pounded by ehd it was 2 solid years of lots of dead heads. Some good ones too. I passed on more bucks than ever last season including some of the biggest deer I’ve personally passed. Tough to do but plenty of does to fill the freezer kept me in the game.
As the 2024 season got closer, I was feeling as though the improvements I have been making to the property were really going to starting to pay off. I was seeing more and more consistent deer activity. Good bucks that were actually holding tight to the property.
One buck that I really wanted to have a chance at was always around. He spent a lot of time in and around my struggling plot in the woods. I tried planting oats 3 different times this year but never had the rain to keep it alive. It was crazy seeing the buck there on the cam the same night I would burn or plant. He was also hanging out in my somewhat less struggling plot near the pond. The coolest part was where he was bedding most of the time. Early in the summer he was bedding behind the pond in a new hinge cut area that I had just created last winter. He was frequenting the neighbor’s soybeans and cruising back through my small plot in the woods in the morning. Closer to the opener he was coming to the woods plot almost shooting light. He daylighted 3 different evenings when I couldn’t hunt because of wind. When I did hit him there 4 times I felt like my entries and exits were perfect as I’d still see him on cam when I escaped for the night. I never tried him in the morning. The beans turned and things changed for the better. He started hitting my rye, wheat, and sorghum plots near the pond.The wind was even harder to hunt him there. It was very swirly around the pond. To make things even more intense. I got some of the live WiFi cams and numerous times while either at home or hunting another spot on the farm I would watch him walk into the plot while I could not be there.
As we rolled in toward Halloween I was trying hard to find the right timing to make this happen. I’m still blown away that this buck has not bailed. Not so much from my pressure which I was trying like hell to keep to a minimum. But here it is almost November, and he is still here. This has never been the case in all these years, but I feel it’s because I’m holding more does now. The cover is holding them in places I won’t enter, and they don’t see me come and go. The drought conditions this year also had a large number of deer congregating around the I acre pond which was dry down to a 40-yard puddle. The deer were leaving their bedroom and grabbing a drink before coming to the plots. After a couple blown hunts and even trying to change the tree I hiked up to alter my wind I had to give it a rest. After about a week of no sightings of him on the cams… Ol boy was back on the plot 2 nights in a row so I risked an iffy wind on Nov 1. I bought some nose jammer as a last ditch effort for the swirls I had over there and headed in to the pond stand early. I sat there soaking up one of the prettiest views on the farm but was feeling anxious because I felt the wind getting a little sketchy. It wasn’t the buck smelling me I was worried about. It’s all the does in the plot early and all over the place. This particular evening, I only had some little ones, and a spike come in early. They went and got a drink and came back with no alarm. I was feeling a little more confident.
I was kind of caught in a daydream. Thinking about what I’m gonna do to this place this winter when I heard it. The sound of a buck scraping leaves. I knew before I turned my head around that it was him. Here I am. My ass slouched back in my saddle. Caught off guard. He’s a lot earlier than he had been. My back is to him. My bow is hanging up. He is directly behind me at 25 yards on the edge of some Hollys and small pines. He’s scraping and head up in the branches. I got turned around enough to film. I knew he’d come out to the plot but how? He took a couple more steps in the wrong direction. Stared under me into the plot. Scopin. Sniffin. My heart was in my throat. The wind was edging right past him. Please no more steps. He turned around as if he was satisfied the plot looked good to proceed into. As he walked around into the path where I had always envisioned it, I thought how I just saw the missing piece of the puzzle to where exactly he was bedding and moving into the plot.
It was perfect now. All I had to do was make the shot. And after all these years… I needed a dog for the first time. I knew what I did. I have seen it before. A couple times. It happens and it sucks. I hit liver. And the way he wheeled made me think that I got nothing else. And I was right. I bailed and came back in the morn to zero blood and immediately called my buddy Paul. I knew he’d have a connection. Very cool watching that little wire hair dachshund finds my deer. 80 yards from my stand. I knew I would eventually find him. Buzzards or some other way. But this was the move. Happy ending.
So other than my horrible shot execution this hunt was as close to the whole package as I’ve been able to make happen here. Hundreds of trailcam vids and pics. Good footage before and the shot. And the first Mature buck in my UC HD that I took the pics for. Stoked for that.
I’ve felt this before when I comes to shooting a number one target buck that you have a ton of pics and history with. I feel like I shot my buddy. No more pics of him on the cam. But just as I’m feeling like that I get the notification and I’m looking at a pic of the next one.
