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BUCK PICKS HIS CORE AREA
Discovering the Core Areas of Southwestern Deer
Editor’s Note: If you can find the core of a buck's home range,
you'll enjoy much-better odds of taking him, since he'll spend most of
his time in daylight hours there. But what does the core of a buck's
home range look like, what ingredients must that core area have to hold
a buck and how can you find or create a core area to take more big bucks
each season? To learn the answers to these questions and others, we've
interviewed some of the nation's leading biologists and deer hunters.
 Brad Harris of Neosho, Missouri, the general manager of hunting accessories
for Fieldline, primarily hunts in Iowa, Missouri and Kansas. "The
number-one priority for a big buck in our area is cover. Since a lot
of the Midwest is farm country, I search for the thickest cover I can
find where I hunt to try and locate a buck's core area. When I'm squirrel
or rabbit hunting in thick cover, I look for trails, scrapes, rubs, marshy
swamps and places duck hunters like to hunt. If I can identify a part
of the marsh that's not acceptable for duck hunters to hunt, often I'll
find a big buck's core region there. During the rut, big bucks go out
at night, find estrous does and herd them into their core areas so they
can breed the does and stay with them during the daylight hours without
being seen. I think big bucks know that they are the most likely to encounter
danger when they leave their core area. Therefore, they try to do everything
they can during hunting season to stay in their core area during daylight
hours, and only travel outside their core region at dark.
 "Once I locate a productive core area that probably homes a trophy
buck, I won't hunt there until the wind is right, and I know I can get
close to that core area without the buck's seeing or smelling me. I'll
only hunt that site for three days out of each hunting season since I
know that after three days a buck will have figured out what and where
I am and how to stay away from me. I've found the best time to hunt a
core area is during the first day or two of deer season or just prior
to the peak of the rut. Immediately before the peak of the rut, a few
does will be coming into estrus, the buck will remain close to his core
area, and he'll return to his core area after he checks for estrous does.
During the peak of the rut, a buck will be chasing does all day and all
night, which will make him hard to pattern and even harder to take."
Using A Tactic That Always Works:
 I've
learned a strategy that's very reliable for identifying a buck's core
area. However, this tactic requires a commitment of time. You must spend
time learning whether or not a big deer lives in your hunting area on
public or private lands and also where other hunters hunt. Bucks won't
set up a core area near hunter activity. Since hunters tend to go to places
they've always hunted before, even when they haven't had success there,
I recommend you let everyone else on your hunting lease or club pick the
places they want to hunt first. Select your hunting site last. Or, if
you're hunting public land, get a map, and mark the spots where most of
the hunters will hunt with one color and the places where no one ever
hunts with another color. Generally the biggest buck on any property will
have his core area in an undisturbed site like this. To take an older-age-class
buck, you must pinpoint his core area first. To bag that trophy buck,
you must hunt him at a time and in a place where he least expects to see
you.
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