Overlook the Obvious for Successful Deer Hunting
Hunt When Other Hunters Don’t
Editor’s Note: You can scout out the perfect spot
for taking deer, put up your stand and camp out to wait
for deer to come along, but all your work will do you
no good if you’ve picked an obvious place that
other hunters also will choose. The trick to bagging
big bucks is to think like other hunters don’t.
Here are some tricks I’ve learned through years
of deer hunting that have helped me overlook the obvious
and take more bucks.
 Hunt
When Other Hunters Don't:
Most hunters like to get up in the morning, drink their
coffee, eat their breakfast and reach their stands 20
to 30 minutes before daylight. But if you'll get up
30 minutes before the other hunters, skip the coffee
and breakfast, and reach your stand an hour before the
other hunters ever come into the woods; then as they
enter the woods they'll drive big bucks toward you.
Or, if you sleep in one morning and leave to hunt when
the other hunters return for lunch, you can hunt through
the middle of the day when the other hunters don't hunt
and the  big
deer will move. If you'll go deep away from an access
road, stay in your tree stand, and hunt the last legal
minute of shooting time, you'll hunt at a time when
most other hunters don't hunt, because they can't navigate
in the woods after dark.
Learn To Scout For Hunters Like You Scout For Deer:
If you'll begin to  pattern
the deer hunters where you hunt, you'll understand what
the deer know. When you can think like a trophy buck,
you can outsmart a trophy buck. Learn where other hunters
hunt by studying trash trails. At the end of the season,
search look for cigarette butts, candy wrappers, empty
pop cans, flagging tape and scars on trees where hunters
have put up their tree stands in the woods. Mark all
these spots with your hand-held GPS receiver. Then when
you hunt next year, look at the waypoints you've marked
as high hunter activity spots. Avoid these sites just
like trophy bucks do. When you bag a trophy buck in
an area, you usually can return there year after year
and consistently take a big buck. A trophy buck understands
he can hide there without encountering any other hunters
besides you, if you don't tell all your friends where
you hunt.
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