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John's Journal... Entry 220, Day 4

SANCTUARY: THE KEY TO TAKING TROPY BUCKS

The Docs Speak

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.

Dr. Keith Causey, a deer researcher at Auburn University in Auburn, Alabama, consistently takes large bucks off his hunting lease every season. "I let the rest of the hunters on my lease choose their stand sites first," Causey commented. "I always hunt the places where no one else wants to hunt and/or thinks you can't hunt, because these places have become natural deer sanctuaries where older-age-class bucks have to live to survive." Dr. Grant Woods of Reeds Spring, Missouri, a nationally-known wildlife biologist and researcher, also mentioned that, "having a sanctuary is one of the most-critical areas of deer management and often the least understood. If you shoot both bucks and does on your green fields, then you train the bucks and the does to not come to those green fields during daylight hours. The more you hunt a green field, the less likely you are to see an older-age-class buck on that green field during daylight hours. If you want to take mature bucks, never harvest does off the green fields and seldom shoot bucks off your green fields. Make those green fields sanctuaries."

Every piece of property needs to have some type of sanctuary where you let the deer rest. You can create sanctuaries in two ways by using natural barriers and through hunter regulation. Then you'll have older-age-class bucks stay on your property. "The less hunting pressure you put on the land, the greater your odds will be for taking an older-age-class buck," Woods recommends. "By leaving some green fields alone and only hunting them once a year or never hunting them, you can create sanctuaries in these places. Or, by hunting half of your property one week and the other half of your property the next week, you can provide sanctuary in a different part of the property during various weeks of deer season. Plus, by creating a rule that no does can be taken from the green fields, the green fields become sanctuaries for the bucks and the does. If you consider creating and maintaining a sanctuary as an integral part of your land-management program, you can produce and hold more older-age-class bucks than if you hunt all your land every day of the hunting season."

TOMORROW: SANCTUARY TO CATCH AND KEEP YOUR NEIGHBOR'S BUCKS

 

 

Check back each day this week for more about SANCTUARY: THE KEY TO TAKING TROPY BUCKS ...

Day 1 - The Wisdom of the Insane
Day 2 - The Gallberry Thicket
Day 3 - The Price You Pay To Take Bucks
Day 4 - The Docs Speak
Day 5 - Sanctuary to Catch and Keep Your Neighbor's Bucks


John's Journal