Area: Northern Ohio. One of Ohio's worst county for deer numbers and big bucks. Extremely wide open and flat as a pancake. Very, very low deer numbers in this general area. I've hunted this area for 4 years and have only taken one buck but have has some very close calls on great deer. It is by far the most difficult area I've hunted but I'm stubborn and just won't give it up.
Bucks/Deer: I see a deer about 1/9 sits or so. The farms I can hunt are all open, very little cover, and don't get hunted much by other bowhunters due to lack of cover and deer. When I do see a buck there is a good chance it will be decent.
This particular farm has about 5 acres of cover on it and the rest is agriculture fields (beans/corn). In fact it is the only woodlot( 5 acres) in 3 square miles. The rest is made up of thin tree lines and shallow drainage ditches and is wide open as far as you can see. When the corn is up there are some deer in the area but once it comes down this entire square mile gets very little use.
When I first acquired permission on this farm I marked up potential bedding on the aerial photo, one of which was this creek/ditch bend. Upon scouting it in the spring I found a bed right where I had marked on the map ( Pin mark on pic). It had definitely been used but didn't look like a bed that was used often as the grass was just matted down. I kept it in the memory bank but never intended on hunting that particular bed because of the infrequent use.
The Hunt: I set up on the ground (red dot) in case I needed to put the mohican sneak on a buck out of range. Wind was straight north (yellow arrow). I had a tree stand in the same spot but thought I needed the mobile advantage for this particular hunt. I was hunting a 10 pt that I had gotten pictures of a few days before along the corn edge on the West side of the wood lot and popping out into the beans in that corner. Up until this particular day I have never seen a buck come out of this bed (pin). About an hour before dark I look behind my location and see the buck rise out of the exact bed I had scouted. He started heading my way until about 50 yards out I believe he caught my wind. He did not spook badly but definitely knew something was up. He then crossed down wind of me and proceeded to walk though 1.5 miles of open ground and out of sight (blue line travel).
My access was just upwind of that buck..in fact I must have sneaked by within 50 yards of him. I'm not sure if he just didn't smell me or if he assumed I had vacated the area?
Anyway, it was really cool learning experience for me to the importance of knowing the bedding areas and never take for granted the satellite beds when accessing ground and playing the wind. The day prior I hunted close to the same spot and on my access in I crossed a big set of tracks heading from that creek bend into the standing corn). Tracks looked fresh and I assumed it was a buck heading to the corn for bedding that morning and set up appropriately for that. Now I know it was the buck leaving his bed in the evening from the creek bend. Had I waited for a NW wind and accessed from the east I probably would've tagged this buck.
This is a really good buck for this particular area and one you just don't see but every few years. Hope I painted a clear picture of this hunt and it helps somebody tag a buck this fall.
