Outdoor Life - Trophy Bucks RSS

DSI: The Second-Chance Buck

OL Editor — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 11:29:44 -0400

This week we’re going back to the 1,200-acre farm of Dave and Tracy to look at a great deer Tracy killed last season. The story of Stickers, as she called him, goes back four years when he showed up on a wooded food plot.

Tracy took a shotgun shot and missed. That was the last mistake Stickers would make for a long time.

Check out previous episodes of DSI:

DSI Video Tip: How to Triangulate Deer Location with Trail Cameras

DSI Video Tip: Three Season Camera Survey

OL Editor — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 11:22:05 -0400

Knowing what buck you're going to target starts with knowing what deer are on your property. There's no better way to do that then with a trail camera survey. But getting good pictures takes more than set-and-forget.

To get the most out of your pictures, setup a bait site with something the deer will gravitate toward. Corn and mineral blocks work great. Find a place with a dark, clear background -- like a pine grove. Avoid areas with excess branches that can make reading antler size difficult.

After a week or two of baiting, setup the camera about 12-feet away, pointing slightly upward. This will eliminate wasted card space on pictures of racoons and gray squirrels. Then lay down a strip of bait corn. This will have the deer feeding trough-style, rather then clustered around a central pile. It's all about getting good pictures.

Check out previous episodes of DSI:

DSI Video Tip: How to Triangulate Deer Location with Trail Cameras

DSI: The Flipper Buck

OL Editor — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 11:16:29 -0400

This week we're going to look at a deer I named after the kill. We watched this buck grow up on our farm, but it wasn't until his personality change in his sixth year that he earned the name Flipper. His flip in personality was so extreme it seemed fitting.

For the first five years this deer was pretty much a loner. We didn't get many trail cam photos of him at the social gathering areas of the farm. He never seemed too interested in the girls, even during the peak of the rut. But in his sixth year everything changed...

If you're lucky enough to hunt the same deer year after year, you'll likely see these changes, too. It can inform your hunting strategy, and all in all make for a more rewarding deer season.

Check out previous episodes of DSI:

DSI Video Tip: How to Triangulate Deer Location with Trail Cameras

DSI Episode 8: The Cringe Buck

OL Editor — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 11:12:00 -0400

I first met Jim five years ago when he asked me to look at his property. A landscape developer, Jim wanted to know how he could apply his trade toward shooting bigger, more mature, deer.

The first thing I noticed about Jim’s property was the makings of a good funnel. Imagine his land as hourglass shaped. Jim needed to make the narrow mid-section a little tighter, thereby concentrating deer around two or three stands, rather than five or six.

To do this I told Jim about a hinge cut, whereby a tree is cut ¾ of the way then pushed over. The tree stays alive through that living hinge and the canopy continues to grow year after year along the ground. These cuts act as living barriers and also provide food in the leaves and buds that are now near the ground.

Jim is something of a timber purist and thought heresy of this technique. He called it “cringe” cutting instead of “hinge.” Then one fall he came out to our deer lab in western New York and I showed him how it worked. He was converted and soon saw proof in the bucks he killed. This deer, what were calling the Cringe Buck in his honor, is just one of the many good deer he’s taken in the last five years.

Check out previous episodes of DSI:

DSI Video Tip: How to Triangulate Deer Location with Trail Cameras

DSI: Laura & the Double Main Buck

OL Editor — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 10:50:45 -0400

This week we're introducing another husband and wife team, Laura and Jason. For the last five years the couple have managed a broken ag-land funnel that's produced some truly world class deer. Their secret: keep the pressure off. They cut trails and clear paths in the summer months, but outside those work days the land is left alone for deer. They use trail cameras, but in a minimalist way - abandoning them soon as they identify shooter bucks. When you get to know Laura and Jason, as I have, it's no surprise they've had such success year after year.

Check out previous episodes of DSI:

DSI Video Tip: How to Triangulate Deer Location with Trail Cameras

DSI: Video Tip: Know Your Planting Percentages

DSI: The Cringe Buck

DSI: Laura & the Double Main Buck

OL Editor — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 10:13:43 -0400

Check out previous episodes of DSI:

DSI Video Tip: How to Triangulate Deer Location with Trail Cameras

DSI: Video Tip: Know Your Planting Percentages

DSI: The Cringe Buck

DSI Video Tip: Know Your Planting Percentages

OL Editor — Thu, 02 Aug 2012 10:48:49 -0400

Earlier this week we saw how Jim has had continued success on his small piece of hunting property thanks largely to landscape design – deer-scaping. Much of that has to do with proper food plot development.

Most hunters, I believe, consider food plots nothing more than a field someone hunts over every fall. But the truth is a little more complicated. Deer have different nutritional needs at different times of year. Deer-scaping, or designing your hunting property for deer year round, requires meeting those needs. Deer-scaping 101: Know Your Planting Percentages. This video will hopefully start you off on the right foot.

Check out previous episodes of DSI:

DSI Video Tip: How to Triangulate Deer Location with Trail Cameras

DSI: The Cringe Buck

DSI Episode 8: The Cringe Buck

OL Editor — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 14:12:03 -0400

I first met Jim five years ago when he asked me to look at his property. A landscape developer, Jim wanted to know how he could apply his trade toward shooting bigger, more mature, deer.

Check out previous episodes of DSI:

DSI Video Tip: How to Triangulate Deer Location with Trail Cameras