Hunting, patterning and killing your #1 buck.

[Stanley]

Great topic for sure. If I had to rely on settling for a one and only target buck Id be goat roping myself biggly. Most of the bucks I have on camera are killed by other hunters. That is probably the case with a lot of hunters they just don't realize it. I had two bucks this year I was after. Saw one one time and never saw the other. No idea if they are still alive? Gun season ended yesterday so I will start to keep an eye open starting today. I don't gun hunt.

What I try and do, is try and find a buck on a pattern and then go after the buck. I don't have the volume of land it takes to hunt one specific buck. Just reality. I did kill the #1 buck I was after in 2015, but that is one of the few times that has happened. From my experience most bucks change where they live from year to year. Food sources change and that is part of it. This makes it even tougher to keep tabs on 1 certain buck.

If you have a couple of square miles + of land to hunt that would help immensely. That is unheard of where I hunt. You kind of have to adjust your hunting to where you hunt and go from there. Like I said before this is a great topic for discussion.

[oldrank]

In my case with the buck named Big Mac I’m staying out till the wind is perfect to try and get close . I’ve got a good idea where he is bedding but I can’t access that spot. It borders the property I hunt. I’m just waiting for the right wind and some extreme cold to get him up early.
The buck I wounded I have no clue with. He just randomly shows up. There’s no pattern yet.

I don't disagree with your thoughts at all. I'm sure every piece of land is different, every buck is different n so on. However my thoughts on waiting changed this year. Do you have a better chance of killing a buck if you hunt him 3 times when conditions are perfect in one general area?Or hunting him 25 times in a bunch of areas controlled by the conditions?

[brancher147]

double post

[brancher147]

I don't ever have a #1 buck, and have never "patterned" one in the mountains with any consistency, but I do hunt some nice bucks every year, and do have ones in particular I am hunting. I have been hunting one for 3 years. I saw him once last year (and missed him with bow), and once this year. His pattern is to wander around on about 3000 acres including 1000 acre canyon that is barely accessible to people without climbing gear. I have access to hunt him on 2 parcels that are 3 miles apart on about the Northern and Southern tip of his range (i think). Last year I saw him on the southern parcel (200 acres), and this year I saw him on the northern parcel (450 acres). In 3 years I have gotten 1 daytime trail cam pic of him during the rut. I have never found any primary buck beds on this mountain, other than in the canyon which I don't have access to. I just try to hunt him in terrain features close to food or does depending on the time of season, and where other people don't hunt. I think I have done pretty well to even have a shot at him the last 2 years given the circumstances. I do try to bounce around and only hunt with good entrance and exit and good wind. And there are a few other shooter bucks in the area, and there are always some surprise bucks that show up out of the canyon.

[mheichelbech]

I am always curious as to how guys are able to intellectually analyze the sign and put together the thoughts that are able to establish a pattern without actually observing the buck much or any. That is the thing I have the most trouble with. For example, determine what way a buck is likely to travel for a given set of conditions and setting up on him.

[Wlog]

When I first joined the site and started layering my info I was going with a more open plan. I hunted many different areas hoping to stumble on to a random buck. That was the perception I had of bed hunting. Hit it and move on. What I started seeing was I would hunt a spot than give up on it thinking it was burnt. I would come back in a month or so later to sign every where. I was spreading myself thin all over a couple counties.

I decided to tighten it up and focus on killing a buck not any buck all over the county. My theory was they dont burn as fast as I thought. If you have one big buck living there he isn't going anywhere. He is gonna continue using the area based on what pressure dictates. If bed "A" gets pressed he moves to bed "B". Still in his home range though. If "B" gets pressed he goes to "C" ... still in his home range. He will continue this until season ends or he gets killed. Next yr he starts again in bed "A" and the pattern will repeat.

If you can figure out what his moves are as seasons go along you can kill him by beating him to bed B or C. If you know his rut circuit you can beat him by being there before he is. If you know his early season feed pattern you can be there before he is.

Your post here describes exactly the conclusion I came to a year or so ago. It is possible to spread out to so many different properties that you never fully grasp what's going on at any single property. However I think it's part of the natural progression of hunting beast style. In the beginning I was just ecstatic to find a buck bed. You really need to bounce around to figure out what properties you can eliminate and which ones have greater odds of holding a good buck.

Searching out bigger properties where you can push the envelope with less of a chance of pushing a buck to an area you can't hunt has become my focus on public. On private you are limited to a small section of a bucks home range in a lot of cases. I'm having this exact problem on one of my private spots now. Bucks are staying over the property line and coming over after dark. There is better cover over there and no one to push them back to me. They've pretty much got a free pass to go back and forth.

[vtbuck]

In my case with the buck named Big Mac I’m staying out till the wind is perfect to try and get close . I’ve got a good idea where he is bedding but I can’t access that spot. It borders the property I hunt. I’m just waiting for the right wind and some extreme cold to get him up early.
The buck I wounded I have no clue with. He just randomly shows up. There’s no pattern yet.

I don't disagree with your thoughts at all. I'm sure every piece of land is different, every buck is different n so on. However my thoughts on waiting changed this year. Do you have a better chance of killing a buck if you hunt him 3 times when conditions are perfect in one general area?Or hunting him 25 times in a bunch of areas controlled by the conditions?

I get the point about 3 times versus 25 and such. Half of my info is trail cam pics. The other half is info from the landowner. So while it seems I’ve got dependable info it also narrows his bedding down significantly because of his presumed entrance point into the field he’s feeding in basically every evening. I haven’t seen this for myself. I’m planning on doing some shining Thursday after I hunt. The ENE wind makes hunting this spot a no go.

[Lockdown]

Oldrank I’m intrigued by the more aggressive multiple Hunt approach vs the one and done approach. That is something I planned on testing this year (and one of the points I was making in the drawing your own conclusion thread) but I didn’t have the encounters to put it to the test.

This summer while scouting and observing I had a real nice buck (for sure 3.5) use a bed in a low spot in some CRP 4 or 5 days after I just walked through there. I was soaked in sweat and mosquito spray too. Seems odd with very little pressure in the area he’d pick a bedding area that stinks like crazy

We’ve also heard Dan tell the story about bumping a buck from his bed three days in a row and then set up on him the 4th and he wasn’t there. I think a lot of this boils down to the bucks personality but there are obviously other factors as well.

I can see how a buck living in miles deep in a huge swamp wold vacate because of human scent. At least for a bit. Part of me feels like the biggest reason Dans one and done approach works so well for him is because he has lots of good spots to go to. We’ve talked about it before... if a newer Beast has one or two REALLY good bedding areas and the rest are just so-so, to me it’s silly to hunt the good stuff once or twice and sit inferior spots the rest of the season.

Especially if you hunt a bedding area and there’s no big tracks, no big rubs, no big poop, to me that means he’s not home and not going to know you were there unless you get unlucky and he shows up within a day or two.

[Stanley]

I am always curious as to how guys are able to intellectually analyze the sign and put together the thoughts that are able to establish a pattern without actually observing the buck much or any. That is the thing I have the most trouble with. For example, determine what way a buck is likely to travel for a given set of conditions and setting up on him.

I actually go pretty much by sightings and camera intel from previous years. Lot of times a buck will travel in an area, not just one route. Also morning routes and evening routes are quite often different. A nice squeeze point can be huge.

[oldrank]

I am always curious as to how guys are able to intellectually analyze the sign and put together the thoughts that are able to establish a pattern without actually observing the buck much or any. That is the thing I have the most trouble with. For example, determine what way a buck is likely to travel for a given set of conditions and setting up on him.

I actually go pretty much by sightings and camera intel from previous years. Lot of times a buck will travel in an area, not just one route. Also morning routes and evening routes are quite often different. A nice squeeze point can be huge.

Stanley, I leaned heavily on your tactics discussed in other threads this year. I also leaned heavily on the discussions of rut circuits.

A buck doesn't have one bed, one trail, one area. He does have one home range. My advantage became me knowing his home range as good as him. Instead of focusing on one bed I focused on what a buck should be doing at that time of the year and then trying to pick him off when he changed patterns.

One other thing. I knew exactly how he exited the bedding area into the woods and to the thicket. It is a small trail crossing the sand pit and sneaking up a small valley into the woods. I never once hunted that trail. I wanted him to stay on that route. It was the one pattern I had pegged and it opened up all my options to hunt around it. If I would​ have burnt that trail I wouldnt have been able to keep on him by keeping tabs on his tracks.

[Stanley]

I am always curious as to how guys are able to intellectually analyze the sign and put together the thoughts that are able to establish a pattern without actually observing the buck much or any. That is the thing I have the most trouble with. For example, determine what way a buck is likely to travel for a given set of conditions and setting up on him.

I actually go pretty much by sightings and camera intel from previous years. Lot of times a buck will travel in an area, not just one route. Also morning routes and evening routes are quite often different. A nice squeeze point can be huge.

Stanley, I leaned heavily on your tactics discussed in other threads this year. I also leaned heavily on the discussions of rut circuits.

A buck doesn't have one bed, one trail, one area. He does have one home range. My advantage became me knowing his home range as good as him. Instead of focusing on one bed I focused on what a buck should be doing at that time of the year and then trying to pick him off when he changed patterns.

One other thing. I knew exactly how he exited the bedding area into the woods and to the thicket. It is a small trail crossing the sand pit and sneaking up a small valley into the woods. I never once hunted that trail. I wanted him to stay on that route. It was the one pattern I had pegged and it opened up all my options to hunt around it. If I would​ have burnt that trail I wouldnt have been able to keep on him by keeping tabs on his tracks.

I would say you played it perfectly. The outcome is proof in the pudding. I think your less aggressive plan of attack was key in getting the job done. Lot of guys jump in with both feet and ruin their chances before things develop.

[jman22]

I have been fortunate enough to kill a few bucks that I considered "target bucks" and I have had many great encounters with other target bucks, even though I didn't end up putting a tag on them.

The majority of my hunting occurs in private farm country. My biggest key to success is past knowledge. Trail cameras and sightings while in the stand are what I rely heavily on. I keep good notes regarding pics/sightings and use that info to try and keep a step ahead of the deer. I have hunted these farms for years so I also pay attention to where the deer bed and how crop rotation affects the bedding. For instance I have a very small pond/swale area that has super bedding. It's right near the road and very unassuming. For whatever reason I have found that in years where the surrounding fields are in soy beans, a nice buck or two will bed in this area through the pre-rut. When the surrounding fields are corn, it just doesn't seem hold a big buck. If I had to guess, I'd say the visibility is better from the deers point of view when the fields are in beans as compared to corn.

The buck I killed this year, I had pics of as a 2 and 3 yo. He was all over my cameras from June till late sept/1st week of Oct. Then he disappeared until the very end of Oct and would show up more regularly through the end of the season. I saw him a few times from the stand in 2015 and also once in 2016. I was after a larger buck in a different area during 2016 so I wasn't hunting the piece he was on that year and was relying on trail camera pics. After finding the beast I did a little more scouting then I usually do and found some beds and moved some stands around that would put me closer to bedding and along interior transitions. In 2017 the buck seemed to be on the same pattern, so I threw a few field edge sits at him early in the season to try and spot him. I only checked my cameras that were minimally intrusive and was only checking them every 3 weeks or so. After not seeing any sign of the buck, I just waited. I got a great wind during the last week of Oct for a new stand I had set up that was on a swamp transition. I had hunted the stand twice in early season and noticed little sign and saw no deer. First thing I noticed when I got to my stand on Oct 27th was multiple rubs and scrapes. I just had that feeling the buck was back in there. Lucky enough for me my "target buck" showed up and I was able to get my hands on him that night. My takeaway with that deer, was using past knowledge to put myself in the best position to see that buck. I didn't waste time hunting and laying scent down when the buck has not historically been there and I wasn't checking cams very often (again, laying down more scent). Of course I also depend heavily on luck!

I'll say that with farm country, you don't always have long window to kill a buck you're after unless you are hunting a very large farm with big acreage. I'm in a heavily pressured area (especially during gun) and many of the bucks I have been after are killed by neighbors during gun season. It seems if I want to get a glance or shot at a buck I'm after I have to get the job done during bow season. I just really try to use that past knowledge to try and put the pieces together. If conditions are right and I'm not spooking deer and still seeing the buck I'm after, I throw multiple sits out of the same stands bc I know if I wait too long that buck could easily change his pattern and be off the farm I'm hunting. This is especially true once the rut really gets kicking and those mature bucks are moving a bit more.

[oldrank]

I have been fortunate enough to kill a few bucks that I considered "target bucks" and I have had many great encounters with other target bucks, even though I didn't end up putting a tag on them.

The majority of my hunting occurs in private farm country. My biggest key to success is past knowledge. Trail cameras and sightings while in the stand are what I rely heavily on. I keep good notes regarding pics/sightings and use that info to try and keep a step ahead of the deer. I have hunted these farms for years so I also pay attention to where the deer bed and how crop rotation affects the bedding. For instance I have a very small pond/swale area that has super bedding. It's right near the road and very unassuming. For whatever reason I have found that in years where the surrounding fields are in soy beans, a nice buck or two will bed in this area through the pre-rut. When the surrounding fields are corn, it just doesn't seem hold a big buck. If I had to guess, I'd say the visibility is better from the deers point of view when the fields are in beans as compared to corn.

The buck I killed this year, I had pics of as a 2 and 3 yo. He was all over my cameras from June till late sept/1st week of Oct. Then he disappeared until the very end of Oct and would show up more regularly through the end of the season. I saw him a few times from the stand in 2015 and also once in 2016. I was after a larger buck in a different area during 2016 so I wasn't hunting the piece he was on that year and was relying on trail camera pics. After finding the beast I did a little more scouting then I usually do and found some beds and moved some stands around that would put me closer to bedding and along interior transitions. In 2017 the buck seemed to be on the same pattern, so I threw a few field edge sits at him early in the season to try and spot him. I only checked my cameras that were minimally intrusive and was only checking them every 3 weeks or so. After not seeing any sign of the buck, I just waited. I got a great wind during the last week of Oct for a new stand I had set up that was on a swamp transition. I had hunted the stand twice in early season and noticed little sign and saw no deer. First thing I noticed when I got to my stand on Oct 27th was multiple rubs and scrapes. I just had that feeling the buck was back in there. Lucky enough for me my "target buck" showed up and I was able to get my hands on him that night. My takeaway with that deer, was using past knowledge to put myself in the best position to see that buck. I didn't waste time hunting and laying scent down when the buck has not historically been there and I wasn't checking cams very often (again, laying down more scent). Of course I also depend heavily on luck!

I'll say that with farm country, you don't always have long window to kill a buck you're after unless you are hunting a very large farm with big acreage. I'm in a heavily pressured area (especially during gun) and many of the bucks I have been after are killed by neighbors during gun season. It seems if I want to get a glance or shot at a buck I'm after I have to get the job done during bow season. I just really try to use that past knowledge to try and put the pieces together. If conditions are right and I'm not spooking deer and still seeing the buck I'm after, I throw multiple sits out of the same stands bc I know if I wait too long that buck could easily change his pattern and be off the farm I'm hunting. This is especially true once the rut really gets kicking and those mature bucks are moving a bit more.

Good post. Had you hunted the swamp you killed him out of in previous years? It sounds like getting a predictable time line down was key for you. I think this is where cams can play a huge roll. I really need to master the cam game. I think it would take me years of visual sightings to equal what I could learn off of cams in a season. I'm just so afraid of getting them stolen... But they are not doing me any good in the basement. I find if I am uncomfortable doing something the only way to get comfortable is by doing it more.

Good post thanks for sharing.

[mainebowhunter]

I have been fortunate enough to kill a few bucks that I considered "target bucks" and I have had many great encounters with other target bucks, even though I didn't end up putting a tag on them.

The majority of my hunting occurs in private farm country. My biggest key to success is past knowledge. Trail cameras and sightings while in the stand are what I rely heavily on. I keep good notes regarding pics/sightings and use that info to try and keep a step ahead of the deer. I have hunted these farms for years so I also pay attention to where the deer bed and how crop rotation affects the bedding. For instance I have a very small pond/swale area that has super bedding. It's right near the road and very unassuming. For whatever reason I have found that in years where the surrounding fields are in soy beans, a nice buck or two will bed in this area through the pre-rut. When the surrounding fields are corn, it just doesn't seem hold a big buck. If I had to guess, I'd say the visibility is better from the deers point of view when the fields are in beans as compared to corn.

The buck I killed this year, I had pics of as a 2 and 3 yo. He was all over my cameras from June till late sept/1st week of Oct. Then he disappeared until the very end of Oct and would show up more regularly through the end of the season. I saw him a few times from the stand in 2015 and also once in 2016. I was after a larger buck in a different area during 2016 so I wasn't hunting the piece he was on that year and was relying on trail camera pics. After finding the beast I did a little more scouting then I usually do and found some beds and moved some stands around that would put me closer to bedding and along interior transitions. In 2017 the buck seemed to be on the same pattern, so I threw a few field edge sits at him early in the season to try and spot him. I only checked my cameras that were minimally intrusive and was only checking them every 3 weeks or so. After not seeing any sign of the buck, I just waited. I got a great wind during the last week of Oct for a new stand I had set up that was on a swamp transition. I had hunted the stand twice in early season and noticed little sign and saw no deer. First thing I noticed when I got to my stand on Oct 27th was multiple rubs and scrapes. I just had that feeling the buck was back in there. Lucky enough for me my "target buck" showed up and I was able to get my hands on him that night. My takeaway with that deer, was using past knowledge to put myself in the best position to see that buck. I didn't waste time hunting and laying scent down when the buck has not historically been there and I wasn't checking cams very often (again, laying down more scent). Of course I also depend heavily on luck!

I'll say that with farm country, you don't always have long window to kill a buck you're after unless you are hunting a very large farm with big acreage. I'm in a heavily pressured area (especially during gun) and many of the bucks I have been after are killed by neighbors during gun season. It seems if I want to get a glance or shot at a buck I'm after I have to get the job done during bow season. I just really try to use that past knowledge to try and put the pieces together. If conditions are right and I'm not spooking deer and still seeing the buck I'm after, I throw multiple sits out of the same stands bc I know if I wait too long that buck could easily change his pattern and be off the farm I'm hunting. This is especially true once the rut really gets kicking and those mature bucks are moving a bit more.

Good post. Had you hunted the swamp you killed him out of in previous years? It sounds like getting a predictable time line down was key for you. I think this is where cams can play a huge roll. I really need to master the cam game. I think it would take me years of visual sightings to equal what I could learn off of cams in a season. I'm just so afraid of getting them stolen... But they are not doing me any good in the basement. I find if I am uncomfortable doing something the only way to get comfortable is by doing it more.

Good post thanks for sharing.

100% agree. It's a gamble for sure. Mount them high. And lock them. Cuts down on a lot of people taking them. I ran 25 to 30 cams this year and had 1 stolen.

The one stolen was not locked or mounted high.

[Jonny]

Good post. Had you hunted the swamp you killed him out of in previous years? It sounds like getting a predictable time line down was key for you. I think this is where cams can play a huge roll. I really need to master the cam game. I think it would take me years of visual sightings to equal what I could learn off of cams in a season. I'm just so afraid of getting them stolen... But they are not doing me any good in the basement.I find if I am uncomfortable doing something the only way to get comfortable is by doing it more.

Good post thanks for sharing.

That's really the only way to ever learn something and to improve. If you aren't making mistakes and pushing your comfort zone, you aren't getting better. Something you can do in your every day life as well.