My dad was a better than average deer hunter, but he mainly gun hunted over scrapes and didn't vary much from that.
Although dad did tell me a couple things that came in handy later on.
One was that if you find a deer bed all wore down to the dirt it was a buck bed.
Of course I never really applied anything to it other than knowing what one was when I seen it.
I stumbled around the deer woods for years pretty much hunting like everyone else and having the same success.
Then I decided to start coming up with better plans and executing said plan.
About the time I decided that, I started seeing a real nice buck on a farm I had permission to hunt in 2008.
img]http://www.hunt101.com/data/500/HPNX0021.JPG[/img]
The only issue was that he didn't bed on the farm, but about 20 does did.
So my plan was to stay off the farm until the rut. I started bouncing around hunting the downwind side of all the different Doe bedding areas about the 2nd week of November.
When gun season came in I spent the first 3 days sitting from daylight until dark on the downwind side of a little bowl that 9 different Doe liked to bed in. I could actually see them milling around from time to time.
I hit paydirt about midmorning on the 4th day.
I had another buck targeted for 2009.
I had never laid eyes on him or got a pic of him, but had 3 years worth of sheds from him.
I thought I knew where he was bedded at in a chunk of Hoosier national forest that I am very familiar with.
I found a persimmon tree in the general area that the deer had been tearing up and hung a camera on it and got this.
Went ahead and hung a stand there and scored on him Oct. 12. Wasn't my target buck, but he'll do.
The only problem was is that he didn't come from where I thought he would, and the direction he came from meant he had to come up out of a holler. The very holler that dad told me there was a spring in the bottom of that bucks liked to bed by.
So the next day I went and checked and sure enough there was a buck bed about 100 yards over the hill from my stand right where dad said there was 30 years before.
Wore plumb to the dirt.
That got the gears in my noggin crankin just a tad.
The only reason I killed that buck was because I was in thick cover within 100 yards of his bed. I got to thinking bucks don't travel too far from their bed before dark until the rut kicks in.
I had some new ideas for 2010.
I planted about a half acre of soybeans behind the house where our property borders the Hoosier national forest.
Started getting pics of this guy on a pretty regular basis.
Of course the beans had dried up by the Oct 1st opener and the oaks had started dropping, but by that time I had already figured out where he was bedding and had a pretty good idea where he would be hitting the oaks on the western edge of the old clear cut he was bedding in.
Hunted there the first day I got the right wind and he showed up.
I googled buck bed hunting about a year ago and this site popped up. I been lurking for a while and finally decided to join so I could have someone to talk to that didn't think I was crazy when I told them you had to get within 100 yards of a bedded buck or you was wasting your time.
