I think its time to change my mindset of whitetail hunting

[hunter10]

For years ive hunted and passed up many small bucks always looking for the mature ones that leave all the heavy sign on the lands i hunt but fail to have encounters with them. I think many people experience this and although beast style works great its a fine line between burning out a spot and smoking that monster buck

Until the rut i feel most mature bucks hang tight to their core areas. I get great buck pictures every year before season starts in OCT and the sign is there each year but pictures fall short during the season even if i dont pressure the land (no hunt) what do you think the leading mistakes I and others would be making that are creating these "non encounter" seasons.

there is clearly a mistake being made if the people around me hunting the same type of land have atleast encounters with shooter bucks and i am not?

what do you think fellas?

[yungbuck]

I am new to the game but this happened on a property i hunt...come season no big deer. For me out was the reality all four sides had hundreds of acres of corn and so literally none of the deer bedded on the property. Every buck and doe I saw was coming from a corn field. Now corn is coming down and sign Is showing up but I am done hunting so it was a lesson learned.

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[Brad]

Have you killed a lot of deer before? I think a big(and practically overlooked ) part of big buck hunting is that you have killed a fair amount of deer, any deer. You learn something from every deer you kill no matter what it is. Andrea talked about it on one of the videos, you don't want to jump to major league hunting without the foundation in place first. I have killed around 8 or 9 bucks 2.5 years old or older and about 45 deer over all, and I still sometimes question if I have what it takes to get it done on the bigger boys, they simply do not come easy.

I would say if you have a good foundation go back to the basics and try and find something being over looked, food source, bedding area, transition areas, pressure influencing movement etc. If someone was fairly new to hunting (especially bowhunting) i would say concentrate on killing deer period for a few years, as you taste success you gain confidence and confidence keeps you on stand longer, keeps you motivated to go out day after day and keeps your chin up when it would be easy to tilt it down. Hunting is a personal experience so its different for everyone but that is where I would start.

[hunter10]

Ive killed enough deer and passed up enough young bucks to be confident to pursue mature bucks only but I cant find the key ingredients to make it happen or what mistakes im making. my situation now can be summed up as:

"if i fill my tag on young bucks i will never kill a mature buck BUT, something in my strategies isnt correct to figuring out mature deer"

[superseal]

Ive killed enough deer and passed up enough young bucks to be confident to pursue mature bucks only but I cant find the key ingredients to make it happen or what mistakes im making. my situation now can be summed up as:

"if i fill my tag on young bucks i will never kill a mature buck BUT, something in my strategies isnt correct to figuring out mature deer"

I think it's key to hunt property that is capable of holding mature bucks..... more than just the rut. I hunt some small properties and it doesn't take long to bugger it up with too much hunting or trail cam intrusions. I struggle with this all the time.

[Stanley]

Ive killed enough deer and passed up enough young bucks to be confident to pursue mature bucks only but I cant find the key ingredients to make it happen or what mistakes im making. my situation now can be summed up as:

"if i fill my tag on young bucks i will never kill a mature buck BUT, something in my strategies isnt correct to figuring out mature deer"

What have you killed (bucks and does) in the last 10 years of hunting?

[MOBIGBUCKS]

Personally, I'd ditch the trail cameras if you're using them anywhere other than food sources where they expect your scent. Otherwise, I'd do Like Stanley and leave it out for an entire season and use that knowledge for another year. Sometimes you just have to trust the sign you are finding and not worry about getting a pic of the buck. I think too many guys get way too involved with trailcameras....

How many times a year are you hunting this property and how big is it???

[PK_]

True mature bucks are few and far between in most places. If they are not bedding on your land or you are not hunting close to their bedding, you won't have encounters with them.

One mistake I made for years was thinking that passing small bucks leads to shooting big bucks. While passing small bucks is important you also have to change when/where/how you hunt to encounter the big boys. A good example is the last buck I killed. A 1.5 year old buck came cruising through an hour earlier. He made it out to the food source before dark. The mature buck I shot an hour later, was not going to make it to the field before dark. So one of my family members was hunting the field edge and saw does and two small bucks, one being the 1.5 year old I saw. Him passing those small bucks was inconsequential to him having a shot at the big buck.

Personally I don't believe killing a bunch of young deer helps you learn to hunt for big bucks. That experience will certainly help you at the moment of truth but other than that it is pretty worthless. Some of the best deer hunters I know, have literally killed hundreds of deer and very few if any mature bucks. They think big bucks are just deer and sooner or later one of the deer they kill will be a big buck. This mindset will get you nowhere fast in filling your wall.

[Kraftd]

As a relative newbie to this, I'll offer up that finding some other spots and really branching out helped me a ton this year. I ended up killing my two biggest bucks off of the main property I have hunted the last couple of years two weeks apart....the key perhaps being with only one other sit between those dates, and only one or two low impact sits before my first all day rut sit when I killed my first buck. Last year I probably would have had several sits before the first buck and another couple between them. This year, I have several sits on several new pieces of public. Even if you're not seeing deer (yet) on the new properties, you are hunting, learning, and resting the other spot.

I have by no means put all, or even most of, the pieces together, but one thing I firmly believe after this year is the notion of not overhunting properties or stands. I'm starting to think even relatively small moves (100-200 yards) can help. On our land in Central Wisconsin last week, I made two fresh sits at the back of our swamp that hadn't been accessed since August and had decent action on a morning and afternoon hunt the same day about 500 yards apart. The next morning, nothing at one of the same stands from the morning before. A small move may have gotten me back in deer, but only had time for a couple of hours because I had to help my dad track a deer and went with the pre-set. That being said, my dad had good action sitting the same stand three days in a row (multiple buck sightings each day out of the same stand), which I believe was because there was at least one hot doe in his spot. The bucks I saw the same day were cruisers. So, hunting hot sign now, one of the other cornerstones of the Beast, is also worth it. Hard part is interpreting hot sign (night vs. day), still working on that one myself!

Are you hunting close to bedding on your property? Maybe less sits, but more aggressive sits would be a start?

[Chasman]

Trail cameras give guys the wrong impression. Yes that deer was on your land, and most of the time its during non hunting hours. That deer or those deer for the most part depending on the amount of land you own or hunt don't live on your land. They might live a half mile away or maybe next door but no hunting takes place there. I have had bucks that score 150 to 170 for the last 5 years on camera and seen one of those deer during day light and yes it was during the rut. Look at the times they show up. You can get an idea of their travel, and how long after dark it takes them to arrive. I have an idea of where these deer live and I can not hunt, or no one hunts these properties till gun hunting. I have also noticed I get these SLOBS early, sometimes together then they disperse. Become nocturnal, and go solo until the rut. Finding bucks that are huntable is key. Putting your boots on the ground after season and leading up to the season is key to what Dan and the Beast style tells you. I am not an expert, I have hunted for many years, and I am still learning. But to me this is what keeps me going. I love it. I hunt 98 percent public, it get to ya. But when you bump or have an encounter with a 3.5 or older on public its worth the work because you did something most do not.

[JoeRE]

Chasman has some very good points about how far deer move.

In the end I agree with you though - [glow=red]the #1 rule to killing big bucks is hunt where big bucks are[/glow]. If you are not seeing any tracks, pictures, visual sightings of big bucks early season, then they are not there! If you want to kill one in that time period, you need to hunt where they are.

A guy can sit his whole life in the best spots in the county trying to kill a booner...but if there are no booners in the county he will fail.

Also, it seems like there is still the perception that targeting big buck bedding is high impact, you are not supposed to sit over the same bedding all season. All the guys that hunt that way a lot have vast amounts of land they do it on to spread out where they sit. No more than one or two sits at any spot. I hunt over 3000 acres of public land than have less than half a dozen really good buck bedding areas total. There are other spots bucks bed, but less routinely so I don't target those.

[PK_]

Another thing to remember is that popping on this forum and seeing all these bucks hitting the ground could give a man the wrong impression. Make no mistake about it, this stuff is not easy. Once in a while you will have one of those sits where you climb up and a big buck falls in your lap but that is generally after hundreds of hours and hundreds of miles of scouting/observing/planning etc…

JoeRE hit it on the head about the amount of land hunted by many of these guys. I generally hunt about 10 different pieces of public each season only 1-2 times per property. I find what I think is the best and most predictable buck bedding on map, get boots on the ground one way or the other and generally only have 1-3 spots per area, the area may be 10's of thousands of acres but I only want to hit the highest percentage spots. Then I move to the next. Look at the guys who are successful year in and year out, they all have something in common, they are either hunting PRIME land, or only PRIME spots on 'lesser' land, usually they have a good amount of either at their disposal.

[hunter10]

Good information and I 100 % agree that big bucks dont live everywhere BUT,

1. my trail cameras over the years have shown repeat visits by certain deer close the times heading back to bed or coming out to feed or within an hour or so after dark so they are close.

2. I have sole access to a few farms so id expect the neighbouring pressure to push deer into my farms

3. deer in my area rotate over several pieces of land in their movement (land i cannot hunt) but other guys pound. i hunt all my spots sparingly and since getting my LW climber and Alpha and sticks ive enjoyed fresh sits

4. Example: I placed a camera in late september on the edge of a very thick bedding area under an apple tree. i checked the cam 1x during a rain storm with a proper wind and caught a 140" 8 pt on it 3x during daylight and then a couple hours after dark. a month ago i checked a camera about 1000 yds away from this bedding thicket on field edge scrape and got him again after dark but he was coming from that bedding direction. i have hunted this bedding area 2x and never saw 1 deer even though it was pre rut and my wind was perfect. Ive thought about giving up on this deer for the season and busting into that bedding area to either kick him out and get a look, find his bed, or absence of him even bedding there.

[fishlips]

Not saying this is right but busting him out of his bed might give you valuable Intel you may never get. Might screw the bed up for the short term, but he or another one will go back and you'll be able to better hunt him because of the intel.

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[Zap]

Not very many great bucks are killed each season and better than half of those are killed by luck.

You need the right property, and either luck or dedication.

You cannot kill what is not there.