TROPHY BUCKS: TO PAY OR NOT TO PAY

Raise Your Own Trophy Bucks Every Season

EDITOR'S NOTE: Regardless of where you live, how much money you make, how much you hunt, and how few bucks you've taken, you can find and harvest a trophy buck. But unless you have the very best of luck, you'll probably have to pay to hunt a trophy buck. The less you pay to take a trophy buck, the less likely that you'll discover one. The more you pay, the more likely that you'll bag that buck of your dreams.

Grow your own wall hangers as a middle ground between paying no money but investing a large amount of time and spending plenty of money and very little time for a big buck. You'll have to spend money to join or create a hunting lease and help pay for food-plot construction, maintenance, posting the land and other costs. However, you'll pay this total cost in small increments rather than one, large, lump sum like you do when you hunt a trophy buck at an enclosure or a hunting lodge. This type of investment can produce quality bucks for you to hunt each season. You'll have to spend time learning the land, helping out with the wildlife-management program, both food-plot construction and maintenance, as well as harvesting does and letting little bucks walk if required. You'll have to give both money and time to a hunting lease when you join.

In Upstate New York, a group of eight hunters leased five different farms that totaled about 12,000 acres. When these sportsmen began to manage the land they had leased by not shooting little bucks and feeding and planting for deer, the size of their bucks grew from an average of 100 Boone & Crockett points to 140 B&C points. Now they consistently harvest 130- to 140-B&C-point bucks every season. Today more hunters opt to grow their own trophy bucks to hunt on their lands.

TOMORROW: HUNT WHERE THE TROPHY BUCKS LIVE