HOW TO FIND BIG BUCKS IN YOUR OWN BACKYARD
Paying
the Price and Locating Trophy Buck Sanctuaries
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.
To
consistently take trophy bucks, a sportsman has to pay
the price either from his pocket or
in hundreds of hours of research. Either system will
work, but I prefer to do the research rather than spend
the money. In most states, you
can find trophy bucks close to home if you know where
and how to look and the requirements for hunting
those deer. Begin your research with a map of the county
you plan to hunt. Go ahead and spend the $5 or $10 required
to buy a quality county map because you'll find this
map your most-important tool for
pinpointing and taking trophy bucks.
Use
your county map to locate the sanctuaries where big
bucks may live to avoid hunting pressure.
These areas can include parks, wooded industrial regions,
farms that no one can hunt, state sanctuaries, kids'
camps and other lands that don't permit hunting. The
conservation officer or game warden in your area often
can provide you with the best information about big-buck
sanctuaries. You need to know where the trophy bucks
live now and have lived for a number of years, if you
want to develop a strategy to take them.
As
you locate these large sections of land that no one
can hunt, use a colored highlighter to mark each sanctuary
on your map. Try to pinpoint every possible big-buck
hideout in your county. If you do an effective job of
researching, you'll identify every large tract of land
in your county where no one can hunt. Target these areas
to take your trophy buck. Once you have the sanctuary
sections in your county colored, you can begin the second
stage of your research -- negotiating.
TOMORROW: GETTING PERMISSION TO HUNT TROPHY BUCKS BY
FINDING THE
LANDOWNER’S HOT BUTTON
|