By Curt Wells, Equipment Editor

"That's a 150-class buck!"

Normally, that whispered exclamation would have been directed to no one other than maybe a fox squirrel. But on this occasion I was talking to my cameraman, Steve Jones, who sat in a stand on the other side of one of my favorite box-elder trees in Minnesota.

"I didn't see the left side of his rack, but if it's anything like the right side, he's a really good buck," I said, my voice trailing off as I squinted through the binoculars and hoped for another glimpse. It had to be the buck my hunting buddy had spotted from his small airplane back in September.

Because we were going to hunt North Dakota that evening, we hadn't planned to hunt this spot all day. But our plans had just changed.

"It's only 8:30 now, but we're going to stay until that buck gets up and comes back our way," I warned Steve. "If that takes all day, so be it."

It's a beautiful thing when the real star of the show actually follows the script!

That's the rule rather than the exception when you're working to create a television episode. Whitetail footage is always in demand at Bowhunter Magazine TV, and Steve and I were on a three-state, 15-day mission. We planned to hunt Minnesota, North Dakota, and Iowa over that span, which would mean 15 very long days, all starting at 4:30 in the morning. Do that for two solid weeks, hiking into the woods, climbing trees, sitting all day, and hanging stands after dark, and you'll begin to understand why TV hunts are more than just fun -- they're hard work.

The real work for me began when I first found out that I'd have a camera looking over my shoulder during prime whitetail hunting on my home turf. The Minnesota and North Dakota portions of our mission were do-it-yourself hunts on public land, and on private land where I had acquired permission to hunt.

The land I hunt in Minnesota is a private chunk of riverbottom. To maximize the potential of success, especially under camera pressure, I did some preseason work around my favorite rut stand, which is about 40 yards from a riverbank. Years ago engineers had straightened the river, cutting out the turns and creating oxbows. The spoil dirt they piled along the riverbank created a ridge that whitetails love to travel, especially during the rut when bucks are cruising for does.

I've never had a clear shot to the ridge trail from my favorite treestand, but the stakes were higher now with a camera involved, and I absolutely didn't want a buck to sneak by me. So I decided to do something about it. Rather than just clear a shooting lane that would give me a risky 35-yard shot, I hoped to divert the deer to within 15 yards of my stand. I chose a spot to build an "off-ramp" from the well-worn trail, and then I cut a four-foot-wide path sloping down past my stand. I did the same thing on the ridge trail coming from the other direction. Both new paths funneled the deer right into more open bottomland by my stand.

But I didn't stop there. I then piled all the cut saplings and brush on top of the ridge trail, so any buck walking down the trail would find his path blocked. If a deer is relaxed and just walking along, he won't crash through thick cover just for something to do. He'll take the path of least resistance -- in this case, my new off-ramp.

Even something as simple as a few branches placed on a trail can divert relaxed deer in a direction that will increase your odds of success.

Continued -- click on page link below.