FIVE MOST CRITICAL INGREDIENTS FOR BAGGING A BUCK WITH A GUN

David Hale -- Hunting Pressure

Editor's Note: The five most-critical ingredients for taking a buck with your gun at any time during the season include the wind, the weather, hunting pressure, food availability and the rut. Most hunters will tell you one of these factors has more importance to successful deer hunting than any other element. However, you'll need to consider all these ingredients to develop a successful hunt plan. This week we'll talk with some of the nation's best gun hunters about their ideas. David Hale, one of the founders of Knight and Hale Game Calls in Cadiz, Kentucky, has hunted deer all his life and also produces videos on deer hunting.

I've found places with the most deer sign don't necessarily mean you'll find deer there, if the region has intense hunting pressure. Areas with the most deer sign also usually have the most hunters. Even though deer may leave plenty of sign in a region, more than likely they'll frequent that area after dark. During daylight hours, deer will hold in regions with little or no sign because the fewest hunters will frequent these places. You'll find these spots ideal for locating trophy bucks, especially in areas with high hunting pressure: small fingers of woods like hedgerows that go out into large fields or a 20-yard strip of woods dividing two fields. Bucks will move into these fingers of woods and bed down where they can see in all directions.

The smallest hedgerows also provide productive places to take a buck during the rut. For a buck to mate during the rut, he has to see or smell a doe. Also a doe has to either see or smell a buck to want to mate. To find a doe, a buck may move into an area where he can see and pick up smells coming from a long distance. That's why hunters kill many big bucks in the middles of broom sage fields and old crop fields or in very open wooded areas where ordinarily no one wants to hunt. I've looked at some of the records of who takes big bucks. Many times youngsters on their first hunts, women who have never hunted much or older, less-agile hunters bag the biggest bucks. I believe this occurs because avid deer hunters will take these individuals to stands where they can see a long way and not mistake a hunter for a deer. Also sportsmen generally won't put less-skilled hunters in places where they think these novices will have a chance to take the biggest bucks. Most outdoorsmen want to save those best locations for themselves. Therefore, the young, old and inexperienced often hunt from stands with little or no deer sign where no one wants to hunt or expects a buck to be. To increase your odds for bagging a buck in areas with high hunting pressure, always look for the places where no one hunts. Then you may see trophy bucks those other hunters never will see and bag the biggest buck on that property.

To learn more about Knight and Hale Game Calls, visit www.knight-hale.com.

TOMORROW: DR. KEITH CAUSEY -- FOOD