PLOT YOUR WAY TO A BUCK
How To Time Your Hunt
 Editor’s
Note: You can blueprint a deer's movements and accurately
predict when, where and from what direction you can
expect a deer to show up. But to have a successful deer
hunt, you must get to your stand without spooking the
buck you hope to take. Although most deer hunters know
this fact, few sportsmen understand how to accomplish
this feat. This week we'll look at ways to plot your
way to a buck.
Although deer never do what we think they will all
the time, usually they are creatures of habit. Generally,
deer will feed at night or early in the  morning,
return to their bedding area just at daylight and eat
again just before dark. In regions of intense hunting
pressure, deer may remain in thick cover all day or
may feed in the middle of the day when the smallest
number of hunters stays in the woods. During the rut,
bucks often will appear in the daytime at any place
that does frequent, including scrapes and feeding sites.
Based on these assumptions, you can hunt two or three
stand sites in one day, if you know how to navigate
effectively. For instance, if you hunt a bedding area
or a scrape next to a bedding place during the rut,
then you'll probably see a buck just before daylight
until an hour or two after daylight.
If the section of land you hunt has plenty of hunting
pressure, you know  most
hunters will leave the woods around 11:00 a.m. and return
about 2:00 p.m. from their lunch breaks. After you've
hunted a bedding region in the morning, you may want
to move to a feeding spot where bucks may appear during
the middle of the day to feed. They know they more than
likely won't have a hunter encounter at that time of
day. At 12:30 p.m. you may want to change stands again
and move to a creek crossing or an escape trail, knowing
that as hunters come back into the woods, they'll spook
deer. The bucks then will head back toward their thick-cover
sanctuaries. At 3:00 p.m. or so, you may want to move
your stand site again and walk to a bedding area where
you hope to see a buck leaving this region just before
dark to go to his feeding place.
 However,
just changing stand sites won't insure your success.
You have to know before you move that when you get to
the new stand site that you can hunt with a favorable
wind, which allows the buck to walk to you without smelling
you. You also must understand how far you are from the
stand and in what direction you need to walk in to move
quickly to that stand. A GPS receiver will give you
this information if you've logged all your stand sites
in as waypoints. Also with a GPS receiver, you can stay
on your stand until the last minutes of shooting time
and still walk out of the woods in the dark to your
vehicle with no difficulty.
TOMORROW: HOW TO FIND YOUR BUCK
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