Freshie

My wife came home and noticed it. She immediately marched over to me, gave me a visual beat-down like an alpha dog to her pup and angrily exclaimed, "I thought we agreed!"

I played dumb. "What do you mean?"

"You know exactly what you did!" she persisted.

Sheepishly, I answered, "I know, honey, but she was much younger than you and I'm tired of redheads. She was a blonde." My feeble attempt at humor was not well received, and how she knew about the three new treestands hidden in the garage was a complete mystery to me. Somehow she figured it out coming down the drive. It's not so much that my wife minds me spending the money, it has something to do with the other 50 or so treestands in the garage. If I had my way, I would own a stand for just about every tree big enough to hold one on our property.

As a wildlife biologist, the most common questions I get asked when hunters call are "Where are the big bucks?" and "What's the best way to hunt big bucks?" The first thing I can say is that you do not hunt big bucks; you hunt a big buck. You have to locate a stroker buck and then hunt that specific deer. Second, as for where the big bucks are, Illinois, Ohio, Texas…if you want a more specific answer, ask me for my ATM pin number or ask my wife how much she weighs; you'd have a better chance of getting a response. Of course, you could simply do your homework and find your own. The last thing I am going to do is take a call after months of scouting and give you the GPS coordinates to a Boone & Crockett buck.

What I will reveal to you, however, is absolutely essential to hunting a trophy buck. Some stand locations are better than others. It can be a ridge, trail inside a field edge or something near a core area. It varies depending on the terrain, features and available food sources--no secret there. The trick is to save your best stand sites for the hottest days of the season. This is probably the single best thing you can do to up your odds at a trophy buck.

I would say that better than 80 percent of the tags I have validated for hunters who took deer that would qualify for Pope & Young or better were shot the first time they hunted the particular stand from which they shot their buck. This number is slightly lower for gun shooters taking a poke across fields at distances most won't admit to, but for the vast majority who actually hunt the bucks, not just shoot at them, that first time sitting a particular stand is magic. If you make no other changes to your hunting plan this fall, hunting fresh stands from around Halloween to mid-November is an absolute must (for most regions of the states).

Deer, both bucks and does, are far more adept at knowing when they are being hunted than most hunters believe. Even when a particular deer is not the target, they know something is lurking around their area and become wary. This uneasiness spreads like a bad flu and infects every deer in the area. Certainly, leading the herd out of the area will be the buck you sought. After all, he did not make it to 4 1/2  years old or older by being stupid.

Scent Trails
I have tried every type of scent-elimination device on the market with varying degrees of success. I am not sure how much any one particular product helped, but in combination I believe they certainly can give you an edge. A few years ago, lacking a dog sitter, I took my lab to a friend's lodge for a hunt. After going through my entire scent-control/elimination routine, I headed to my stand a good 800 yards or so from camp. A few hours later my dog escaped his chains of bondage and within minutes was sitting under my stand. It ended a prime morning hunt, but it also proved to me that "scent-free" is a myth. If he could scent-trail me to my stand, so can deer.

Deer Reactions To Scent
As deer cross a human scent trail, they tend to react differently. Young deer, both bucks and does, seem largely unaffected by a faint trace of human odor. A mature buck will normally tuck his tail, drop his head slightly and make a stealthy escape undetected. And then there is the mature doe. Here is a scenario I am sure we can all recall. When a mature doe hits your trail, instead of slinking away like a buck, she will track you down. Slowly and stealthily, she will seek out the source of the danger. When she finds you, she will spend the next 30 minutes or more snorting and blowing, warning every deer in the area to the danger--you. It's not hard to shoot a doe this way--in fact, it can be a great tactic if you have a pocketful of doe tags to fill--but I have never shot a good buck who was wary and following my back trail.

In the interest of full disclosure, I am talking about largely undisturbed tracts of land, areas where deer do not normally come into contact with people. Roadways, parks, walking trails, etc. are areas where deer become accustomed to people. As a result, they will react less to human scent. These are not the areas where one would normally find and hunt mature bucks, though.

Every intrusion into an area with a mature whitetail is going to be noticed and affect deer movement. The first time may make them vacate the area--maybe you can get away with it and just put the buck on a state of higher alert. If that buck runs across fresh human scent a second time, you'll spend a lot of time looking at squirrels, not monster bucks.

Above Ground
I have never found a solution to eliminating airborne scent. We breathe and therefore become scent factories polluting our area. I pay attention to wind speed and direction to the point that it's practically a religion when I hunt. However, finding a good hunting location where big bucks frequent but a deer cannot get downwind of you is about as likely as finding a four-leaf clover--they may exist, but I haven't found one yet. Once a deer gets downwind and the snorting and stompfest starts, you might as well give up on the area for at least a week. Every deer in the area might not avoid that spot, but they may be too wary for you to effectively hunt it. With a fresh stand each time you hunt an area, you can eliminate this worry.

Getting Spotted
If a deer simply smells you or picks up your scent trail that's one thing. If, however, a deer spots you, that is a whole other matter entirely. I do not get too concerned if a deer spots me on a walking trail or roadway, even entering a farm field or food plot where human intrusion is not that uncommon. When a deer spots me entering a core area or sanctuary or picks me off when I am in my stand, the area is dead for a couple of weeks--probably the prime weeks--and I will wait until the following season to use that stand site again.

Conclusion
Saving your best stands really is a no-brainer. The problem in the logic: What the head knows, the heart often overrules. Every trip into the woods leaves something behind. You may feel like you got away with it, but odds are you did not. If shooting does to fill the freezer is your thing, by all means find an area with heavy traffic and drop them in droves. If you are on a good stand but get busted by a doe and have a tag, make sure she does not have the opportunity to bust you ever again. If a trophy buck is all you seek, start making room in the garage for plenty of stands so you will have plenty of options during the best days of the season. A final tip: If your wife is opposed to you owning more stands and you are trying to hide them from her, don't buy them at the sporting goods store where her sister works…