WHEN GUN-HUNTING PRESSURED BUCKS, IT ALL

COMES DOWN TO WHAT YOU KNOW — AND HOW YOU

REACT TO WHAT’S GOING ON AROUND YOU.

BY STEVE BARTYLLA

3 WAYS TO FILL

WYOUR TAG FAST

hen Lisa Brunner crawled up the steep ridge leading to her stand, she had high hopes of filling her Wisconsin gun-deer tag with a Booner. Listening to her describe the stand, her hopes were justified.

“The stand is almost at the top of a steep ridge,” she explained. “It’s so steep getting up there that I have to crawl on my hands and knees. Once you get there, it’s real brushy. It’s the type of stand that over the years, you don’t see a lot of bucks up there, but the ones you see are the big ones.”

Less than a half hour after the opening minute of opening day, Lisa met up with the buck she was after.

“Because it’s so thick, I only caught a glimpse, but could tell he wasn’t very wide,” Brunner remembered. “Then, all of a sudden he turned his head, and I could see the mass and tines. That’s when I decided I’d try to shoot him.”

It’s a good thing she did. Her well-placed shot filled her tag with a 12-point that grossed 181⁶/8 B&C. (For the full story of Lisa Brunner’s buck, visit deeranddeerhunting.com, or pickup a copy of Booners magazine, available now on newsstands.)

Brunner was able to kill this huge buck because she employed the three most effective tactics for the start of the season:

1. Strike Fast

In states and provinces that experience heavy gun-hunting pressure, there’s no better time to tag a buck than the initial hours of opening day. After all, each passing minute of season means there are fewer bucks alive in the woods.

Bucks don’t get old in these settings by being unaware of their surroundings. When hunting pressure is high, you can bet mature bucks realize the danger lurking in the woods not long after the first shot is fired. Heck, many know it even before first light. The sea of orange-clad hunters hitting the woods moments before first light

often results in the largest unorganized “deer drive” many properties see all season.

As I cut my teeth hunting, like many others, I mistakenly believed that most bucks were either dead or holed up in lands off limits to hunting after opening day. It wasn’t until years later that I realized how wrong I’d been. I changed my views after literally stumbling across a few good bucks well after the respective gun seasons were in full swing.

Next, there was one of the first good bucks I had ever shot with my bow. Walking to my stand I spotted him in his bed. Unfortunately, he’d also spotted me. With no chance of sneaking up on him, I continued walking as if I hadn’t seen him.

At 40 yards, despite not believing the shot would happen, I nocked an arrow. At 30 yards, as the large 8- point crouched as low in his bed as possible, I came to full draw. After walking 10 more steps, I released the arrow and filled my tag.

What in the name of ballistics does this have to do with tagging out early in gun season, you ask?

Almost everything.

In the early 1990s, with those experiences already under my belt, I read a D&DH article about the radio telemetry study conducted by South Carolina deer researcher Charles Ruth and his team during an entire gun-hunting season. That’s when the light bulb finally went on — and stayed on — in the predator lobe of my brain.

The gist of the findings was that the more savvy deer didn’t go running to parts unknown when the shots started. On the contrary, the researchers concluded that mature deer find a pocket of cover and basically stay there until the pressure subsides. In one case, a buck was bedded within shooting distance of the researcher questioning hunters exiting the woods.

In other words, mature bucks quickly learn that their odds of survival are much higher if they hunker in cover and remain still, rather than bolting.

44 | December 2007

www.deeranddeerhunting.com