2 Enormous Bucks, 2 Enormous Stories!
By Bernie Barringer Get ready for two of the most bizarre deer hunting stories involving gigantic whitetail bucks. You really can’t make this stuff up, and the fact that they both happened basically at the same time, early in the 2021 deer seasons, with a lot of similarities, created a lot of confusion. Listen carefully because this is going to get really strange. On September 11, Blake Keating of Kansas had the shock of his life when he checked a trail camera over a corn pile. Standing there big as life was the biggest buck he had ever seen. Like the biggest buck anyone had ever seen. Like world class. Like world record class. he’d never seen it before nor had a hint that it was alive. Kansas has an early muzzleloader season and you know right where Blake headed out and sure enough, he shot the buck a couple days later. The buck scored over 300 inches as a nontypical. Yup, World Record size. But something nagged at Blake; there was a small hole in this deer’s ear. That nagging feeling became a roaring surge when the photos of the buck hit the internet. He was soon contacted by a deer farm 10 miles away from where the deer was shot; they kinda recognized that buck. Turns out they had been transferring some of their giant bucks between pens when one buck went missing. Now a buck like this is worth tens of thousands of dollars to the owners, maybe even as much as 100K for sales of semen and eventually the fee for someone who would pay a very large price to shoot this buck and take it home with them. I’m not interested in discussing the motivations of people who shoot deer that have been kept as livestock and mount them to hang in their “Man” Cave. I don’t have any interest in doing that and I don’t fully grasp why someone would pay $20,000-$50,000 to kill one of those penned deer. But that’s not the point of this story. Blake thought he had hit the whitetail hunting lottery, killing a potential world record buck. He was legit in his hunt, and legal all the way. He was also heartbroken when he learned that the buck was an escapee from a deer farm. It’s likely he will get to keep the buck, or get paid a big fee to return it. Either way, he has an amazing experience to tell his grandchildren about. Now contrast that with an even more bizarre story that happened beginning on September 9, 2021. A giant nontypical showed up on social media, reportedly shot in Kentucky by Derek Settle with a crossbow. Nearly 300 inches of antler on this one as well. He had legally checked it in as a Kentucky bow kill and he insisted on the details of the hunt; it was all on the up and up. He even had trail camera pics of the buck! Derek’s fame was short lived, as within a couple days, word came out that the buck had been killed on a deer farm in Indiana. And the deer farm, Patoka River Whitetails, had the photos to prove it, and guess who was the happy hunter in the pictures with the penned deer? Yes, Derek Settle. This was a buck they had raised and was known as “White 352.” He had killed the deer legally on the deer farm in Indiana, then took it to Kentucky and registered it as a Kentucky archery kill. Whether this is a violation of the Lacey Act is yet to be determined, but if it is, he’s in a lot more trouble than just a heaping helping of embarrassment and a few fines. What’s really bizarre about this case is the head shaker that Derek could think he could get away with this. With the speed of gale force winds blowing a wildfire, info travels across the interweb with blinding speed. It only took a few hours before he was raked across the coals for trying to pull off such and idiotic stunt. We’ll keep you posted as the final details come in, but in the meantime, Blake has a big buck to look at and a clean conscience, while Derek is lying awake at night wondering what will happen to him.
An October Hunt: Go Early or Go Late
By Bernie Barringer Much has been said about the October “Lull.” It’s no secret that bucks are hard to find out and about during the daylight during this period of time; they spend the majority of the daylight hours in some shady thicket, waiting for the sun to set. The middle two weeks of October is simply a poor time to plan a bowhunting road trip. If, like most travelling hunters, you have only one or two weeks to do a DIY hunt, you probably don’t want to spend it during the middle of the month of October. The first and last weeks of October; however, are a different story altogether. There are some significant advantages to going early and late in the month, not the least of which is the amount of hunting pressure. Parking lots of large public hunting areas which may be full of trucks with out-of-state license plates the first two weeks in November, may be entirely vacant during the month of October. Let’s take a look at what these two weeks have to offer. As we dive into the details, you may want to consider adding an October DIY hunt to your schedule. Go Early The first week in October brings some opening day bowhunting opportunities in several states. This is a chance to catch even mature bucks totally off guard. There has been very little disturbance in the deer woods and if you make your move with stealth, you might find a buck right in your lap with no idea he is being hunted. Early October can find bucks still in bachelor groups, although they are likely to be more loosely connected than they were a month previous. At this time, the bucks are primarily focused on food and their movements are somewhat predictable, something that cannot be said of any time during November. Find the preferred food source and you will find the deer. The preferred food source is not likely to be exactly where you would have found the deer in August. Bucks may still be using large fields of soybeans and alfalfa if they have not been cut, but they are likely to arrive in those fields after dark because the daylight hours are growing shorter. Instead, focus on smaller food sources near bedding cover. Many state wildlife departments plant small food plots back away from the roads. These can be golden. Corn in particular is preferred at this time. Soybeans may be at that stage where the leaves are yellow and the beans are not dried, they may be getting some use, but not as much as other, more palatable food sources. Apple trees are a magnet this time of the year. An abandoned orchard can be a focus of deer feeding at this time as the apples begin to drop. I know of an old farmstead with two apples trees and three pear trees that gets absolutely pounded at this time of the year. An oak ridge with an abundance of acorns can attract deer at any point during the day. Never overlook water during warm spells. A secluded pond during a hot Early October afternoon may be just the ambush point you are looking for. Get a scouting camera on it and make your move according to what the photos tell you. Go Late I love the last week in October. The first signs of the rut are appearing more and more by the day. Bucks are getting edgy and this offers several advantages to the DIY hunter. This is the one time of the year when visits to scrapes take place in the daylight. It’s the one time when I consider hunting over an area all torn up with rubs and scrapes to be well worth it. During November, bucks will mostly visit scrapes under the cover of darkness, or cruise by downwind to scent-check the scrape. But during the last week in October, they are more likely to walk right up and give it a few strokes and a fresh dose of urine rubbed through the tarsal glands. Find an area with several active scrapes, set up downwind of it and put in your time. Scents and lures work best in this pre-rut period. Mock scrapes or natural scrapes with a scrape dripper and some Active Scrape or Estrus lure will be checked out periodically. Bucks are feeling the urge at this time and are more likely to come to scent that they will be in a week when their nose is full of the real thing. The end of October is a great time to use calling and rattling to bring in a buck. Bleats and grunts are sounds that appeal to a buck’s sense of curiosity. They are often just rutty enough to walk over and check out the source of the sound. Choose a good calling site where the deer cannot see the area around the source of the sound. Calling or rattling may be just the right tactic to bring a buck out of his bed during the daylight. Set up on pathways that lead from the bedding area, using the wind to your advantage and rattle the antlers periodically during late day hours. Some gentle ticking of the antlers together may be enough, but don’t fear creating a racket by imitating an all-out brawl. Sometimes a lot of noise is what it takes to get their dander up and cause them to make a move. The huge majority of DIY hunting trips take place during November; that’s not likely to change any time soon. Consider breaking the pattern to take advantage of the first and last weeks of October and the opportunities those weeks present. The rut, with its frenetic activity has its appeal, no doubt, but there are some real advantages to getting there ahead of the crowds. You just may find you have the woods, and the deer, to yourself.
Five Important Keys to Opening Day Success
By Bernie Barringer Every bowhunter can relate to this scenario: You have watched a particular buck off and on all summer. He’s been quite visible in the fields feeding in the evenings and he’s even somewhat predictable in his habits. This could be the year you actually pattern a buck in the pre-season and shoot him on opening day or shortly thereafter. After all, you see it on TV and in magazines, it’s bound to work for you sometime. Just a few short days before the season, he’s gone. He’s not in the field during the last hour of daylight, and he’s not even in the fields of nearby properties. You’ve checked them all. You’re sure-thing just turned into a bust. What happened? During the month of September, bachelor groups of bucks begin to break down and bucks tend to relocate, but the chances are he hasn’t gone far when the bow season opens the middle of the month. He probably hasn’t “gone nocturnal” on you either. Unless some sort of pressure caused him to move out, he’s conducting business as usual, just a little differently than what you are looking for. When you were watching the sun go down on him during early August, what time was it? 8:30? 9:00? Now it’s mid-September and the sun is long gone at that time. He may be coming out at the same time, but the darkness just caught up to his patterns. There are still ways we can put ourselves within striking distance of him during the daylight. Let’s take a look at how to solve this puzzle. Key #1 – Bucks are individuals First of all we must talk a little bit about “patterning” to begin with. Some of the things I have seen in print would lead you to believe that bucks have some sort of internal alarm system that tells them where to go and what to do at any given time. In 40 years of bowhunting and observing whitetail behavior I am becoming more and more convinced that what we refer to as patterns are really overrated. Sure, individual bucks tend to bed in the same areas given the same environmental conditions, and they tend to feed where the best available food is found, but that’s about all that’s cast in stone. It seems to me that bucks have an instinct to switch things up occasionally, because the ones who don’t are more likely to be turned into venison than those who do. A buck gets up from his bed, stretches a little and heads down the trail towards somewhere he knows he can get a bite to eat. He comes to a fork in the trail and instead of going left like he did for the past three days, he goes right. He doesn’t know why he went right, any more than the guy sitting in the stand wondering why he didn’t show that night. Some deer are fairly consistent, some are frustratingly random. Trying to pattern deer is like pushing a rope. You simply can’t make any headway. It would help us all to put the idea of putting a deer on a specific schedule and think more in terms of trends and tendencies. We will be better off and a lot less frustrated if we do. If we think in terms of what the buck might do on any given evening based on the environmental conditions (temperature, wind speed and direction, etc.) we can get ahead of his movements better than we can if we concentrate on what he has been doing. Of course we are not going to throw out all our observations of his behaviors we have stored in our memory, but we should just view them as one small piece of the whole puzzle rather than the complete picture. Key #2 – Mistakes can be deadly Some deer are prone to be homebodies and some range widely. GPS studies have shown that some deer have very small home ranges and others travel quite a bit. One thing that these studies have shown us is that most bucks have at least two home ranges that they know well; they can exit one and enter another when they feel hunting pressure. If you have a buck that disappears on you for a while, he may be in a secondary area. The worst thing you can do is get aggressive and try to move in and find out what happened. You want him to settle back into a comfortable mode when he arrives; if he smells you or sees more disturbances, it’s another strike against you. If the buck figures out he is being hunted, you chances of putting your tag on him plummet. When he senses intrusion in the way of ground scent, sudden changes like the appearance of a trail camera or a bunch of cut branches, he may bug out for a few days. If he smells you directly or has a bad experience such as a situation that causes alarm, he may be done with that particular spot for the season. It’s hard to sit tight when you really want to know what’s on that trail camera, but you are much better off to wait for a light rain that will smother your ground scent to go check it. There’s no faster way to kill a spot than to walk in and check your trail camera every day. Put the stands up early and trim shooting lanes well before the season. One of the biggest mistakes you can make is to hunt a stand on opening day when the conditions are not right. Patience is critical. You may only have one chance, so you want to make sure you have the odds stacked in your favor. If the wind isn’t right, hunt somewhere else or don’t hunt at all. Key #3 – Find the bedroom door It pays to be familiar with the preferred bedding areas. An entire