Effective Man-Drives for Deer at Any Time
Day 3: Driving Deer Electronically
 Richard Deramus and Bill Wicks have developed a method of man driving for their region that’s almost foolproof. “The land we hunt on has an extremely large amount of hunting pressure,” Deramus explains. “We know numbers of deer are on the property, but we can’t find them after the first week of the season. Our hunting lease is bordered by a large river, and in the middle of the river there’s an island about 2-miles long and 1/2-mile wide. From the river, the island appears to be nothing but a tangle of briars, honeysuckle and thick undergrowth. Finally Bill and I decided that the only place the deer could be was on that thickly-wooded island. We purchased two small walkie-talkies to keep up with each other in the thick cover.
 These lightweight, battery-operated devices had about 1/4- to 1/2-mile line-of-sight range. We went onto the island one morning before daylight. When we were about 75 yards in the cover, we found the woods opened-up and became a hardwood region with plenty of openings. Richard and I decided to walk the island about 75-yards apart. We planned to stay in voice contact with each other with the walkie-talkies. Richard would whisper into the walkie-talkie, ‘Hey, there’s a deer coming your way. He’s about 20-yards out in front of you.’ I’d start looking for the deer, because Richard had put me on notice. Sure enough I might be able to see a doe moving from the direction Richard said she would come. I wouldn’t have been looking for the deer in that direction and I wouldn’t have seen it if Richard hadn’t used his walkie-talkie.”
 “By using the walkie-talkies and moving slowly back and forth across the island, we both took a buck the first morning we hunted there. For the next week, we continued to hunt the island. I bagged two more bucks, and Richard took three more. What was amazing was the number of deer we saw – even though most of them were does.  When one of us spooked a deer and told the other hunter what direction the deer was moving to or coming from, then the other hunter could be looking for the deer. I believe we increased our ability to see and take deer by at least 75 percent because of man driving with the walkie-talkies. Remember though that we had the odds in our favor. We hunted an area that had been completely overlooked by the other hunters. This island had been a sanctuary for deer all season.”
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