TROPHY BUCKS: TO PAY OR NOT TO PAY

Hunt Where Trophy Bucks Live

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.

When you hunt out of a lodge or with an outfitter, you pay for the landowner or the guide's ability to locate a trophy buck for you to hunt or to raise a trophy buck on that property that you can hunt. Both the Ford Ranch in Texas and Whitetail Outfitters in Manitoba, Canada, provide trophy-buck opportunities for hunters -- each in its own unique ways. In Manitoba, you'll hunt more than 1500-square miles of wilderness where hunters harvest less than 30 bucks each season. Whitetail Outfitters plant no food plots and do not manage the deer on this land. Your ability to harvest a trophy buck in Manitoba depends on your guide's ability to pinpoint an area where trophy bucks move and to put you into a tree stand where you have a chance of seeing one of those big Canadian whitetails. On many of these Manitoba hunts, 70% to 80% of the hunters will bag the bucks of their lives.

At the Ford Ranch near Melvin, Texas, hunters take many trophies each season because the ranch intensively manages its deer herd. The ranch keeps the number of does low and the number of bucks high and only harvests older-age-class bucks. Although, this ranch has approximately 33,000 acres of land, the ranch only permits hunters to harvest 100 bucks each season. Every year Forrest Armke, the ranch manager, conducts an aerial survey to try and determine the number of trophy bucks he has available for hunters to harvest and the general areas where these big bucks live. Then the ranch sets up feeders to insure the bucks remain in those sections, so the hunters have opportunities to bag them. You have a very high chance of bagging a buck of a lifetime on this hunt.

Both of these hunts cost about $2,500 per hunter, excluding air fare, a large sum of money to pay for the opportunity to take a trophy buck. However, you haven't had to invest any time in scouting or money for game management or the cost of leasing of the land. If you use the Trophy Buck Calculator, you may discover you've paid less than you think to hunt either of these two trophy whitetail hot spots.

For more information on the Ford Ranch, call (915) 286-4572, or write the Ford Ranch, Route 1, Box 81 Melvin, TX 76858. To learn more about Whitetail Outfitters in Manitoba, Canada, call (888) 398-3459, visit the website at www.whitetailoutfitters.ca, or, e-mail them at hunt@whitetailoutfitters.ca

TOMORROW: OTHER TACTICS FOR BAGGING THAT TROPHY BUCK