SANCTUARY: THE KEY TO TAKING TROPY BUCKS

The Price You Pay To Take Bucks

Editor's Note: Trophy bucks don't have to move when you're hunting them. Mature bucks can find and have everything they need and want after dark - food, water, sex, companionship, exercise and socialization - without traveling during daylight hours. Too, older-age-class bucks have learned they're more likely to encounter predators when the sun goes down. Therefore, a trophy buck has locating sanctuary - a place where he can stay during daylight hours and not have to contend with humans - as his number-one priority.

My friend, James, (I won't tell you his last name because then all of his friends will know where he hunts) bags two or three nice bucks each season from a lease he's hunted for many years. James hunts a flood plain on a major river system. During the fall and winter months, a good portion of the property he hunts floods. At times, he'll find the water in the woods anywhere from ankle-deep to just above waist-deep.

A few years ago, James scouted while wearing a pair of waders and discovered several high ridges close to the river near the back of the property. "The only way to get to those ridges is to wear a pair of waders and walk an hour or go by canoe," James told me. None of the other hunters in James' club wanted to go to that much trouble to take a buck. And they definitely didn't know the productivity of hunting in this natural sanctuary. James had the ridges to himself throughout the latter part of deer season when the bucks moved the most while rutting. James only hunted this sanctuary about once every two weeks and only when he had a wind that would blow his human odor out onto the water and not back into the sanctuary. You'll have to scout intensively to find natural sanctuaries. However, older-age-class bucks will stay in them to survive.

TOMORROW: THE DOCS SPEAK