The Hunting Beast

You've done your scouting and found his bed. You get the right wind and you get in stand. Everything is perfect and here he comes.He is the largest/mature buck you have ever seen.

Next thing you know your coming to full draw at the edge of his sanctuary and he sees you. He stops turns and runs off. How do you proceed from there.

Do you pull out for a couple of weeks and go back?

Wait til next year?

Hit it in a few days?

Forget the bed and hit his secondary staging area or travel routes?

You know after seeing this slob he's not gonna let you sleep.

I'd wait a few weeks then use a different tree when I did go back.

From what I have seen of big bucks they rarely relocate too far away. I would move and keep hunting him... in the same general area. Depends on how much ground you are working with... but to kill better deer you have to be aggressive IMO

I would hunt it again imeadiatly the next day but from a different tree... Then if nothing was seen I would hit the secondary bedding spot.

I would immediately tear it down and change trees to catch him, hunting me in that set. And I probably hunt that set the next three days in a row, although usually its the third day after, that I see them checking, but you have to catch him the first time back, so you're kind of stuck. After three days if I don't see him, I figure he's on to me, and having pressured that exit, essentially having stacked that side, I'll rotate to the opposite exit, for a couple consecutive hunts and then that hunt on that bedding is over for the year and at that point I'm moving to another animal. I'm not at the level on public land where I'm dedicating a season to a specific animal. I'll be honest I don't think I ever get there on public land.

At the end of the season I go back there and figure the story a little better based on the sightings and sign, refine the set and get it ready for the following year. A day or 2 at the most to scout it out and perfect the set, get everything done, get out and stay out. We need to minimize our footprint.

And just to clarify:".He is the largest/mature buck you have ever seen."

This is the premise for my response, because if that's not the case, and that was the animal I was hunting out of that set, I'm probably moving on to another set/animal.

I'll just refine it as seasons end, for the following year.

Got to be judicious with your time.

Buckfever wrote:I would immediately tear it down and change trees to catch him, hunting me in that set. And I probably hunt that set the next three days in a row, although usually its the third day after, that I see them checking, but you have to catch him the first time back, so you're kind of stuck. After three days if I don't see him, I figure he's on to me, and having pressured that exit, essentially having stacked that side, I'll rotate to the opposite exit, for a couple consecutive hunts and then that hunt on that bedding is over for the year and at that point I'm moving to another animal. I'm not at the level on public land where I'm dedicating a season to a specific animal. I'll be honest I don't think I ever get there on public land.

At the end of the season I go back there and figure the story a little better based on the sightings and sign, refine the set and get it ready for the following year. A day or 2 at the most to scout it out and perfect the set, get everything done, get out and stay out. We need to minimize our footprint.

And just to clarify:".He is the largest/mature buck you have ever seen."

This is the premise for my response, because if that's not the case, and that was the animal I was hunting out of that set, I'm probably moving on to another set/animal.

I'll just refine it as seasons end, for the following year.

Got to be judicious with your time.

That's why I added that because if it was an immature animal most everybody would move on to the next set because this isn't the animal they wanted.

Yeah even if it wasn't immature, it's got to be something special to deserve that kind of time. So it's good that you premised it that way.

In this situation I think I would be back there the next day in a slightly different location then, lets things cool down and hunt another deer for a couple of weeks.

Good point to hunt the secondary bedding location Dan, I don't think I know any bucks well enough to know where that is for sure but taking my best guess and hunting a buck bedding are close by is worth a shot.

You could flood the land and hunt on your porch!

Since I have had this happen more times than I care to admit I can honestly answer this.
I would let the spot cool down for about a week or so and go back only if the wind is perfect and make sure I set up in a different tree.

In the past I became too agressive and pushed a few bucks out and never saw them again. If the buck saw you in the tree chances are even if he didn't know what you were you can bet later he scent checked the area and completely figured you out and will be even harder to kill.

The biggest mistake somebody could do is keep hunting the same tree every day after the first encounter. After the first time your chances of killing him drastically drop unless it is during the rut but even then he may be miles away the next day.

dan wrote:I would hunt it again imeadiatly the next day but from a different tree... Then if nothing was seen I would hit the secondary bedding spot.

I would do the same, but if that didn't pan out I would go back in about ten days or as close as I could get to that without the rut screwing me up. If that didn't work I would go after him toward the end of the season unless I know he was killed. Even then I might give his area a hunt to see what may have moved in.

I think waiting a week or 10 days is a mistake... Unless there is rain right after you hunt your scent will be there for almost that long. My experiances are that a mature animal usually won't tolerate human scent in his safe Zone. On the occasions he does tolerate it he will stay the whole time, but be paranoid arond the area where the scent is located.
I have found next day to work the best, and that usually don't pan out. Heck, it usually don't pan out when the buck does not see you but gets by without offering a shot.. Maybe one out of ten times. But those odds in my experiances drastically reduce if you wait longer.
My personal rule is to let a bedding area rest for at least 30 days and hunt his other bedding area where he likely moved to.
Too much pressure on these spots will ruin a good bedding area and teach mature bucks that that particular bedding area is a trap. If a guy hunts a bedding / staging area once evey 10 days or 2 weeks he hunts it about every time his scent wheres away from the last time he was there and the deer never can feel safe there... I have seen really good buck bedding areas where I seen great bucks every sit go dead after some yahoo sets up a stand nearby and hunts it once every 2 or 3 weeks...

Your probably right about over hunting it, but if it was that big I would probably risk it. 10 days is assuming at least one rain. It seems that it's hard to go 10 days without getting 2-3 rains or more. I agreed with you on hunting the next day first. I know what you mean about it not being likely to see them again though. At the moment I can only remember seeing a one 3 1/2 and one 4 1/2 a second time ever. Despite not being seen the initial encounter with almost all the others. Maybe now that we have had this conversation I will do it differently if that situation comes up. I wouldn't want to get him killed by another hunter because of what I did. Plus you might catch him running saddles or other travel corridors during the rut. I would go back during the last three days of the season if I thought he was still there though. Especially if it had been bitter cold for a few days.

Depends on how far the season has progressed. If it was early season, I would let it rest for a couple weeks. Then I would likely come back to hunt him early rut, hunting from a different area from where I was spotted. If it was early rut or main rut, I would give it a day or 2 rest and then again hunt from a different approach. I would be relatively aggressive during the rut if I had a nice buck like that patterned.