How to Capitalize on the Limited Days You Have Afield

I’m a normal guy living a busy life. Between work, working out and my kids’ activities, my hunting time has decreased sharply over the years. Plus, just like a lot of bowhunters living here in the Midwest, I have seen the number of places I can bowhunt plummet over the last few years. Leasing and sky-high land prices have taken over, which means I am extremely grateful for the few places where I have permission.

Last July, I was sent, via my Tactacam Reveal cell cam, a blurry, foggy, morning photo of a particularly large buck on one of the farms I can hunt. It was hard to make out the details but easy to see he was a different class of buck than I had ever hunted before. I even sent the picture to a friend and we joked that he was the type of buck that will ruin your whole season, since we both have spent some years chasing ghosts that had long left our areas by the time we were in our stands.

Still, after going back over that image a hundred times, I decided I was all-in on that buck. It was him or bust, and I got busy coming up with a plan. Years ago, I would have just picked the best-looking trail in the area and sat the maximum number of days I could. But with limited days to hunt, and the fact that I was going against the survival instincts of a mature buck, I knew this year I had to hunt smarter, not harder.

Since my time in the field was limited, one of the best tools I had was cell cameras. Getting real-time intel about a specific location, as well as not having to go in there as often, was critical to my hunt-smarter strategy. After that first picture, I decided to set up a camera perimeter using that picture as my nexus. What I found was that I was lucky and had caught that buck on the edge of his core bedding and travel area.

I repositioned those cameras several times, always trying to do so right before a weather front moved in to cover my sound, with the rain helping with my scent. I continued to do so until I bumped the buck as I closed the loop of that perimeter. After seeing him on the hoof, I thought I’d found his bedroom and backed off.

From assessing the area that I now knew he was bedding in, I saw a thin sliver of trees intersecting two cornfields and a steep creek bank. It was a bit of a gamble, but waiting until the next rain, I quietly slipped in during the storm and set my stand on a trail between those fields. Now it was a waiting game.

The Pattern Shifts

Over the next couple of weeks, I often got pictures of that buck, but they were always in the dead of night. Then, in the third week of October, things started to change. The deer started to appear in the daylight while traveling both morning and evening. With the nearby beans already out and the corn looking ready, I knew I had to act fast but smartly.

The next day I had free, I decided it was time. It had rained heavily the day before and that kept deer movement down to a minimum. I asked several of the other hunters I knew who had cell cams out if they had much movement that day (another good strategy) and few had. I suspected that meant the deer would be up early the following morning.

Upon arrival at my hunting spot on Oct. 26, I parked in the field above my stand and made my way down to it using the slight breeze to my advantage. While I understand that the wind is critical, it can often change many times in a morning and that means you need to hedge your bets. Showering and scrubbing with scent-killing soap, using ozone and calming scents were all part of my intel-driven, hunt-smart strategy. So, I slipped in quietly and waited.

Since I anticipated the shot would be very close, I decided to hold my bow the entire time and stay away from my phone. This proved to be a smart move, as the buck simply materialized out of the corn in front of me. I thought I would have heard him in the corn, but I didn’t. One second he wasn’t there, and the next his form appeared about two rows in and he was coming closer.

I wanted to put everything I could in my favor, so I had purchased a short axle-to-axle bow with a smooth- pulling cam. I also didn’t want to compromise forgiveness, since I had learned from my hunting experiences that sometimes awkward shot angles are all you are going to get.

Awkward it was. As I clipped my release onto the string, the deer looked straight up at me. I knew I was pegged so decided to draw on him. That smooth EC2 cam on my PSE EVO XF made the 74-pound draw easy, and as I hit full draw he was still facing me, quartering toward me. I settled the pin close to but behind the shoulder. I have faith in the equipment I use and although it was not a shot I normally like, the look in the buck’s eyes said he had me identified and was leaving. I released the arrow and it connected right where I aimed.

Tense Moments

I’ve been blessed to have some pretty awesome bowhunting experiences in my life, from stalking Cape buffalo in Africa to chasing aoudad in West Texas. Normally, I can keep my composure and nerves settled, but climbing down from my stand I was in disbelief and couldn’t hold back my excitement.

Because of the angle of the shot and the lack of an exit wound there wasn’t much blood to trail, but I soon had the help of two great guys and trackers. It was more than I could have ever asked for, but they wouldn’t take no for an answer and came to help look. Of course, I am extremely grateful to them.

I actually walked by the buck completely, and one of my buddies found him. We had been trailing blood on the cornstalks for a while and then it suddenly ended. My heart started to sink as I walked ahead to try and pick up more. My buddy then called me back, saying he had found more blood.

I returned to the last blood we had found as he pointed into the corn. And as I stared into the corn rows, he turned me around and there was the buck — 180 degrees from where we found last blood, right on the edge of a steep creek bank.

Tagging the deer, celebrations and pictures soon followed, and then we had to get the animal into the truck. The deer, which was later gross green-scored at 194 inches by my taxidermist, had a stout, big body to go along with the most impressive rack I have ever hunted. It had 18 scorable points, with kickers, a drop tine and chocolate coloring all adding to the uniqueness of the rack. Honestly, he was everything I’d ever dreamed about in a buck.

The deer was fully mature and had the intelligence all big bucks seem to possess. He lived away from other deer, bedded in a small section of corn and always kept at least one escape route nearby. For most of my life, I have been an “outwork you” type of guy. I was never the most physically talented and my transcripts show I was not the best in class, but I am very thankful that after all these years I finally decided that sometimes you just have to work smarter and not harder to get on those big, old bucks.

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