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John's Journal... Entry 177, Day 3 HUNT RUTTING BUCKS NOW Southern Techniques for the Rut EDITOR'S NOTE: Hunters have chased them, shot at them, cussed them, spooked and aggravated them all season long. But the biggest, the oldest and the smartest bucks on any property you hunt have managed to survive until the end of the season. These large, older bucks write the textbooks young bucks study to survive. Some of the nation's best hunters employ strategies that will take these end-of-the-season rutting bucks each year. These masters of the hunt tell us their tactics for bagging late-season bucks. Toxey Haas, president of Mossy Oak camouflage in West Point, Mississippi, employs midday methods to bag rutting bucks at the end of the season. Haas hunts each day by considering the wind, the weather, the barometric pressure and the deer's habits in the past few weeks. He also divides the southern deer season into three basic hunting patterns. During the early season, he hunts around food. In the middle of the season, he hunts trails, and at the end of the season, he prefers to hunt bedding areas. "To bag a rutting buck, you must put together all parts of the trophy-buck puzzle, regardless of the time of year," Haas emphasizes. "A deer must feed, drink, breed and bed down no matter when you hunt it. But when guns fire and hunters ramble through the woods, the way a deer approaches these activities must change if it wants to survive. Because I hunt deer all season, I'll know where those deer have bedded-down. During the rut at the end of the season, I'll begin to hunt closer to their bedding sites. But I don't move near their bedding areas without first planning ahead and observing where other hunters do and don't hunt. For example, I know of an 80-acre bedding area close to a soybean field that the deer feed on all season. However, the owner of the property doesn't allow anyone to hunt there. But I have permission to hunt that place for two or three days the last week of the season." When
Haas hunts leases with high hunter pressure, he searches for productive
bedding regions no one else hunts like ... "Once you learn where everyone else doesn't hunt, then you understand where the biggest buck on the property must live," Haas explains. "Although bucks avoid hunters, they won't bed down for 12 hours without feeding or breeding. They must get up and move sometimes in the middle of the day in those thick areas." Haas believes hunters have trained deer all season to know when the maximum hunter movement occurs from 30 minutes before daylight until 10:00 a.m. and from 2:00 p.m. until dark. Haas uses a sleep-late tactic for his hunting in the rut. "I sleep in late during the last two weeks of deer season. When everyone else returns from their early-morning hunts, I go into the woods. Then as other hunters return to the woods after lunch, I leave the woods. Using this philosophy, the bucks and I both experience the least amount of hunting pressure." TOMORROW: MIDWESTERN BAD-WEATHER BUCK TECHNIQUES FOR THE RUT
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Check back each day this week for more about HUNT RUTTING BUCKS NOW ... Day 1 - Hunt Rutting Bucks
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