The Best Week for Finding a Trophy Buck
Where to Find Thick-Cover Sanctuaries
 Editor’s
Note: Famed baseball announcer Dizzy Dean once said,
"If you done it, it ain't braggin'." And friends,
I've done it. I've found the magic week to hunt deer
that increases my odds for bagging a trophy buck. You
don't have to bet on moon charts, tide charts, soothsayers
or any hunting aids. But you can bet on experience from
top biologists and hunters. Read on to learn how to
down a buck during the best week of the year.
Where to Find Thick-Cover Sanctuaries
Many deer hunters have the mistaken idea that a thick-
cover sanctuary must cover 30 acres of a 5-year-old
clear cut or a briarpatch as large as a football field.
"Though does may hold in as much as 30 acres during
the time of estrus, they may spend most of their time
in patches of cover as small as 1/2- to 1-acre,"
Dr. Keith Causey, former professor of wildlife science
and a wildlife researcher at Auburn University in Auburn,
Alabama reports. "The doe will look for a thick-covered
region where she feels sure a buck will come to sometime
during that 24-hour period when she is in estrus."
Often overlooked honeymoon sites for deer include .
. .
* a patch of thick cover,
* the edge of a drainage ditch in a field,
* a pile of limbs,
* sticks and tree roots piled up in the middles of fields,
* a briarpatch in the center of a mature pine forest,
* a cane thicket that runs along the edge of a creek
or a branch and/or
* a patch of thick cover behind a gate, a house or a
barn.
Remember t o
search for a thick-cover honeymoon suite big enough
to only hold one doe away from the spots where you see
young does and yearlings. "Hunting these little
patches of thick cover by using a man drive often will
pay big-buck dividends," Harold Knight , the co-creator
of Knight and Hale Game Calls in Cadiz, Kentucky, mentions.
"If you know places where does go and hold during
the rut, and you put on a man-drive in that region,
you'll move-out the does along with the buck hoping
to breed them." You can pinpoint the best week
of the season to take a trophy buck based on when most
of the does in the area you hunt conceive. However,
weather conditions can slightly alter when that week
occurs. Generally you will see and have the opportunity
to take the best bucks on or near the date the biologist
in your area gives you as the peak of the rut. By hunting
isolated, thick cover, you'll greatly increase your
chances for taking a trophy buck.
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