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.
First I walk into the largest local woodlot with the wind in my face at a spot I found a heavily used trail going into the woodlot which would take me into the area as quietly as possible with minimal low hanging limbs, which block human sight and making noise as you pass through them. I would watch for large track leading away from the main trail that I was following.
After more than 30 minutes and about 200 yards I saw what I was looking for. A path in the snow leaving the main path that only had big tracks. I crouched down to be less obvious and get well into the limb visual level a buck could be 10 yards or 200 yards at this point, but away from this major through fare traffic. How far didn’t matter there was a buck somewhere at the end of these tracks. I traveled painstakingly slow for about twenty minutes when I spotted big bucks antlers distinguished from tree limbs because they were the only limbs that didn’t have snow on them.
The buck was looking straight away from me, and into the wind. His head was still, no movement whatsoever. I didn’t know if he knew I was there and took on the common stealth hold that big bucks do so well. Or then again had he dozed off in his fortress of woodlot oaks and cover, which usually he could hide in easily but this time because of him being the only thing in there that wasn’t covered with snow stood out like a beacon in the night.
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