HOW TO FIND BIG BUCKS IN YOUR OWN BACKYARD
 Looking
at Your Own Backyard
Editor’s Note: If you live in suburbia like I
do, less than 15 minutes from metropolitan Birmingham,
Alabama, and its more than 1/2-million folks, you'll
often hear reports of big deer spotted within walking
distance of your house. But everyone knows you can't
hunt bucks downtown or in your own backyard, or can
you? We often forget that white-tailed bucks travel.
Although you may see them standing
on asphalt or crashing across a creek, they must come
and go from somewhere. Sometimes those backyard bucks
have travel routes that will cross property you can
hunt, if you'll research your options. Often  you
may find a trophy-buck hotspot less than 30 minutes
from your home where no one else hunts or has permission
to hunt.
"Dad, you're not going to believe
what I just saw coming out of our sub development,"
my daughter told me. "I almost hit a huge buck
out on the road. I've seen that deer there three or
four times before." I knew my daughter could
recognize big deer and large antlers
from her years of hunting. Some weeks later as my son
fished a small stream from his canoe less than three
blocks from my house, he spotted a
nice 10-point buck that, "Jumped into  the
creek and swam to the other bank. Dad, I looked at both
banks and apparently that buck ran a regular trail there.
We might be able to bow hunt him this fall."
If you want trophy-buck hunting close
to home, you have two options -- raise them or research
them. For a deer to become a trophy, he must have an
abundance of nutritious food, survive long enough to
put on heavy body weight and grow large
antlers,  and
come from a gene pool that produces trophy antlers.
Wildlife researchers over the years have named age and
food as the most critical ingredients
for producing trophy bucks. If you own or lease 2,000
acres of property or more, you can control the habitat
and the harvest of deer on that land. Over a period
of years, you can grow bigger bucks with larger and
heavier antlers. However, you'll find this process quite
expensive. Let me tell you about a better way to locate
and bag bigger deer.
TOMORROW: PAYING THE PRICE TO LOCATE THE SANCTUARIES
OF TROPHY BUCKS
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