SECRET
MAN-DRIVE TACTICS FOR TROPHY BUCKS
Techniques for Western Drives
EDITOR’S NOTE: On a western hunt several years
ago, I couldn’t see a tree, a bush or a blade
of grass on the horizon. Accustomed to hunting the river-bottom
swamps of my home state of Alabama, I couldn’t
imagine how we would drive deer in this wide-open country.
Although I had heard that deer in other parts of the
nation did not seem as hunter-sensitive as Alabama whitetails,
I still thought a buck would have to lose his mind to
walk across that open ground. I told my guide, Chris
Yeoman of Rapid City, South Dakota, “There’s
nothing out here to drive deer out of,” as we
looked over the bleak prairie country.
But
Yeoman assured me we would drive the deer out of, “Those
creek bottoms,” as he pointed off to our left
to a ribbon of trees about 100-yards wide by 1/2-mile
long. Alabama hunters would have called these creek
bottoms drainage ditches, because a 5-year-old boy easily
could have jumped across them. I mentioned to Yeoman
that, “This kind of hunting reminds me of shooting
ducks in a barrel. If a deer walks down that ‘creek
bottom,’ it either will have to remain in the
woods or break out of the woods and run across that
open ground. So I guess we’ll take stand in the
woods, right?”
“Wrong,” Yeoman said. “We’ll
shoot the deer when they break out of the trees.”
Yeomen explained further that one driver would zig-zag
back and forth through the creek bottom while the standers
took positions on the edge of the woodlot. “Will
we take shots at running deer?” I asked Yeoman.
“Almost always,” Yeoman answered. When I
asked how far we would have to shoot, Yeoman smiled
and said, “About 200 to 500 yards.” From
this Western drive I learned that unlike Eastern hunters,
when these Western outdoorsmen saw trophy bucks, they
didn’t get very excited. They took their time,
lay down on the ground, set up their bipods and aimed
at the bucks as they ran. Accustomed to shooting coyotes
on the run, they didn’t find shooting an animal
as big as a deer a problem. According to Yeomen, “If
a buck runs all out at 300 to 500 yards, you may have
to aim at his nose to cause the bullet to land behind
his front shoulder. If that buck runs up a canyon or
a mountain at those same distances, I may put the crosshairs
on top of the buck’s head where the antlers go
into the skull. By using that aiming point, the bullet
should land in the center of the deer’s back.”
This Western style of driving deer breaks with my traditional
concept of what makes up a deer drive. These hunters
don’t expect to take standing-still shots or close
shots at bucks. But, they often have successful deer
drives because most sportsmen in their area don’t
believe these creek bottoms will hold trophy-sized bucks.
However, trophy hunters like Yeoman and his hunting
buddy, Dr. Jim Nelson, also from Rapid City, have learned
how to overcome all the reasons most outdoorsmen find
not to hunt and bag bucks in these creek bottoms. They
use their unusual man-drive tactic and combine it with
their skills as long-distance shooters to take bucks
that score more than 150 points on the Boone & Crockett
scale every season.
TOMORROW: ONE DAY, FIVE BUCKS,
FIVE DRIVERS
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