Hunting is a sport of physical ability and knowledge, but successful hunting is obtained when you obtain a consistent display of those two items and your ability to provide those and similar detail in other attributes. The more astute you are at executing those attributes t the more often you will get your buck and the larger they will be test.
Knowledge can be your ability’s during the ground work, weeks before you ever put your boots on. It includes the boots you wear being waterproof and warm, yet not clumsy. The rifle you shoot and its accuracy and accessories down to the bullet type and weight you select. Your ability to shoot fast and accurately without even a moment’s notice, and the range time you took to get that way. Big bucks got big by outsmarting every hunter before you; this is no more than a game of chess with uncharted moves that change every time for both players.
Physical ability isn’t always your ability to leap tall mountains in a single ability but can even be you ability to quickly get your rifle off your shoulder, on target and taking a successful shot.
My whitetail hunt in Kansas a few years back is a good example, a big buck in my area that I had been watching before the snow and cold snap had disappeared from the face of the earth. After a morning in a cold tree stand. With very little movement I was certain that the 4” of snow, with scattered flurries and the temperature down in the single digits had put the big bucks down into an energy conservation mode where they only eat once per day, in the evening about 3PM the warmest part of the day. All morning I had seen does and fawn with an occasional small buck in an area with a high deer concentration but not my buck which had been a regular prior to the December opening morning.
I had hunted this situation before and had changed my tactics and done well with a heavy 14 point that watches over my desk in the office, and greets me every morning when I come in to work.
Big bucks have a lot of bulk and insulation. In addition it consumes a lot of energy just getting the mass from bed to food and back to the bedding area. During January and December hunts the bucks are worn down from the rut cycle and are in a rebuild to survive and energy conservation mode. Their stomach can hold enough food contents that they can eat enough in a 45 minute feeding in an agricultural field plus sticks and required digestive fiber to only trek out of their warm safe bed once every 24 hours.
The rest of the time they are in their warm beds chewing their cud and making heat by moving there meal from one stomach to the next. Minimum energy expelled, maximum energy received. This and nocturnal activity is the major reason you seldom see the biggest bucks in the area.
The does could do it but because of the fact that the fawns don’t have the mass to do so they are out morning and evening with the fawns and a few young bucks that haven’t learned the trait or don’t have the bulk either, plus they weren’t as affected by the rut as the more mature bucks. I was heading into heavy cover to play a game of cat and mouse but not without some experience in doing this successfully in the past.
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