Secrets of True Texas Trophy Hunters

Communication Breakdown: Staying Alive, Part 6
October 24, 2023
PIKE ON THE EDGE by Doug Pike
October 24, 2023

Tips from Hunters Who Bagged Big Free-Ranging Whitetail Bucks

Feature Story by MATT WILLIAMS

LISTEN: (6 minutes, 53 seconds)

 

 

TEXAS DEER HUNTERS are constantly looking for that silver bullet — a fool-proof game plan to boost their odds and ultimately put themselves in position to bag a whitetail buck worthy of a trip to the taxidermist. 

The bad thing about silver bullets in deer hunting is they don’t really exist. Just call them figments of the imagination, wishful thoughts that keep us hunting year after year in hopes that something magical might  happen one day. 

AJ Downs of Conroe has never been much on silver bullets, but he’s a firm believer in doing everything he can to make his own luck.

Downs knows a thing or two about deer hunting. The veteran archer has taken a number of outstanding bucks over the years.

In 2012, he arrowed a remarkable 27 pointer in San Jacinto County that nets 256 7/8 Boone and Crockett inches.

AJ Downs of Conroe with the 27-point, 256-7/8 Boone & Crockett scoring buck he took with a bow back in 2012.

AJ Downs of Conroe with the 27-point, 256-7/8 Boone & Crockett scoring buck he took with a bow back in 2012.
(Photo: Courtesy A.J. Downs)

It’s the biggest free-ranging buck ever taken by an archer in Texas and the sixth largest Texas buck ever reported to B&C.

Downs offered a few tips to help hunters improve their chances of tagging a wall hanger this fall:

Scent Control: Deer have an incredible sense of smell. Downs does everything possible to beat it.

 “I definitely play the wind and I always pay attention to my clothes. I take scent free showers, use scent free laundry detergent and I always store my hunting clothes in scent free totes. If the wind isn’t right for a particular stand, I won’t hunt it.”

Scout: “Use your game cameras and glass all you can. Cameras don’t always tell you the whole story, but if you run enough of them, they can tell you a lot. If you know a good deer is in the area, try to pattern him the best you can and do everything possible to make him get comfortable. Your chances are always best when hunting a stand for the first time. He’s not educated yet. Of course, there are plenty of them where it doesn’t work out that way.”

Choose Wisely: “If you are targeting a particular buck, be selective when you hunt. Put the odds in your favor and let the data tell you the best time to go. It could be trail camera pictures or the moon. If the moon is full and you know the deer are moving mostly in the middle of the day, don’t blow your chances by going in before daylight and leaving at 9 a.m.”

The Right Set-Up: “It is critical with bow hunting. I hunt mostly from brush blinds on the ground, and we keep them up year round. That way the deer get used to them. They grow up around them. I also try to hunt where the girls are.”

Ben Bartlett of Lufkin is another hardcore bowhunter who is a stickler for detail. According to Bartlett, hunters can improve their chances by spending as much time in the woods as possible when the rut is at its peak.

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“Being in the woods when the rut is going strong puts you at a big advantage,” he said. “That’s when a good buck is most apt to screw up and make mistakes. That’s not to say you can’t kill a good buck later in the season. But the longer the season drags on, the more your chances are going to diminish.”

Bartlett offered several other useful pieces of advice:

Going Natural: Plenty of solid bucks are shot with their noses in corn piles every year, but some years hunting around corn just won’t cut it.

Bartlett always feels better about his chances when hunting in relation to natural food sources. This is especially true when acorns and other goodies are available in abundance.

“Deer will always prefer natural mast over corn, so that corn feeder that was their No. 1 food source will become a distant second when the acorns hit the ground. Figure out what they are eating and hunt there.”

Watch the Wind: Bartlett says a buck’s eyes and ears are always elements to contend with, but it is his nose that hunters really need to be worried about.

“I honestly believe there are some bucks out there that could survive if they were deaf and blind,” he said. “Even if deer couldn’t see or hear, they still would be difficult to hunt.”

Bartlett says one of the best ways to shrink the odds of getting busted is to avoid hunting or approaching a stand situated in a spot where the wind will carry your scent directly to the deer.

“When I’m in the woods, I’m hunting a mature animal and I absolutely won’t hunt a stand if the wind isn’t right,” says Bartlett. “The wind is the simplest thing there is to overcome — just pay attention to it. The wind can kill a stand. I might walk 1/4 mile out of the way in order to enter an area on the downwind side.”

Willing to Relocate: Available food sources can change over the course of the season, and deer movements will change right along with them. Bartlett says you should be willing to relocate with the deer. Often times this will put you in spots which may not have been visited by other hunters.

“Deer patterns change from year to year and throughout the season,” he said. “They’ll go from a browse pattern, to a mast pattern and back to a browse pattern. I’ll move my stands regularly so I can follow these patterns. Trails leading to and from food plots can be productive as well.”

Bartlett added that he believes the most opportune time to take a big buck is the first time you hunt a stand.

“Every time you hunt a stand your chances of taking a resident buck diminish because the chances of that buck detecting your presence increase,” he said.

Here are some more solid tips gleaned from other successful buck slayers over the years:

Waylon Harvey, Longview on Post Rut Bucks: Hunt smart before and during the rut. “How much pressure you put on a good buck early in the season can make a big difference as to whether he stays there or not,” Harvey said. “One of the biggest mistakes hunters make if they suspect a buck is hanging out in an area is hunting the spot too hard. Put too much pressure on a big buck and he’ll go nocturnal on you. Worse yet, he may leave the area altogether.”

Kevin Smithhart, Lufkin on Game Cameras: On more than one occasion Smithhart has allowed mature “shooters” to walk, because his game cameras had found bigger deer in the vicinity.

 “Game cameras cause me to stay in the stand longer and hunt more carefully,” Smithhart said. “It’s much easier to do that when you know there is a big buck in the area. I’ll always keep 4-5 cameras in the woods during the fall.”

DIGITAL BONUS

Water for Wildlife

In the middle of a desert, in the middle of nowhere, is Black Gap Wildlife Management Area. It’s here that you can find a surprising wealth of wildlife such as deer, bear, quail, mountain lion and desert bighorn sheep. But without water, none of these animals could survive. So biologists build and maintain water catchment devises called guzzlers to help the wildlife. With the aid of game cameras, it’s amazing to see the variety of animals that benefit from the guzzlers.

—story by MATT WILLIAMS

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