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John's Journal... Entry 218, Day 2

HOW TO TAKE HOT-WEATHER BUCKS

Salt, Mineral Licks And Pea Patches

Editor's Note: Biologists know the old adage that bucks don't move in hot weather isn't true. Bucks have to feed, bed and get water, regardless of the temperature. Bucks just move very little in hot weather. As the world experiences global warming, we'll have to learn how to hunt for hot-weather bucks during bow season. You can bag bucks with your bow in hot weather. The sportsmen interviewed this week hunt primarily in the Deep South for at least three or four months under hot-weather conditions each year and consistently bag their bucks every season.

During hot weather, deer have a need for salt and minerals they don't have when the weather cools down. Therefore, two places will provide hot-weather honeyholes for the archer-old smokehouses and mineral springs. Throughout the nation, early pioneers preserved their meat by smoking and salting it. They brought their meat into a smokehouse, packed it in salt until it was dehydrated and then smoked it to add flavor and help preserve the meat. The salt pulled moisture from the meat, and the mixture from the salt and the juices from the meat dripped into the ground. Because old homesteads passed down from generation to generation, later owners found the ground under these old smokehouses totally saturated with salt after several decades. After the old smokehouses deteriorated, the salt remained in the ground for the deer to find. Look for a site in the woods with an old home place and a smokehouse to pinpoint a honeyhole for hot-weather bucks. The deer will come into these salt licks from many directions, paw the ground and get the salt from the earth. Some of the salt licks that I've seen may lay as much as 4- to 5-feet deep with the ground pawed-up all around them.

Don't try and hunt these salt licks after the weather turns cool, because the deer will rarely utilize a mineral lick in cooler weather, as they will when it's hot. "Once I found a site in the woods where several trails came together at a very small spring on the side of a dried-up creek bed," Larry Norton, a guide at Bent Creek Lodge in Jachin, Alabama, recalls. "At first I thought the deer had come to the spring to get water during the hot weather. But as I investigated, I saw the deer had pawed-up the ground around the spring. Apparently, this spring came from deep inside the earth and brought minerals to the surface the deer needed in hot weather. I found three distinct trails leading to the spring, which made it an ideal bow site. I hadn't spotted the spring before because it lay 30 yards off a main road and down a bank. No one would expect deer to move that close to the road or come to a mineral lick that close to highway traffic. However, after I discovered this spot and told some friends, those who didn't mind listening to road noises while hunting took several nice-sized bucks that came in to get minerals from this spring.

In many areas of the country, peas continue to grow until cold weather. Often, black-eyed peas, crowder peas, purple-hull peas and a wide variety of other peas will grow in agricultural fields and small gardens in rural areas. Southerners have difficulty keeping bucks out of pea patches. Deer love to eat peas because of their delicious taste and high-protein content. Some landowners even plant cow peas for the deer. Find a trail that leads from the deep woods to the pea patch. Take a stand well away from that pea patch early in the morning to bag a buck with your bow as he moves down the trail from the feeding site to his bedding area. Or, late in the evening, move closer to the pea patch, and take a stand on the trail 50- to 100-yards away from the pea patch to bag a nice buck in the hot weather.

TOMORROW: CUT THE GRASS TO ATTRACT A BUCK

 

 

Check back each day this week for more about HOW TO TAKE HOT-WEATHER BUCKS ...

Day 1 - Hunt The Mast, The Birds And The Squirrels
Day 2 - Salt, Mineral Licks And Pea Patches
Day 3 - Cut The Grass To Attract A Buck
Day 4 - Hunt The Water
Day 5 - Solve Hot-Weather Hunting Problems


John's Journal