| This is such an exciting time for most hunters, where on earth do you start? I mean really, where do you begin with scouting, with scents, with techniques, with scheduling time off from work in order to time the rut perfectly and so forth. Instead of being overwhelmed, lets take one issue at a time. Lets look at what the rut really is! |
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| First and foremost, the rut, is when the bucks and the does synchronize their mating needs as per the environment. That’s right, it’s the local conditions that trigger this need to mate. Diminishing sunlight is the number one cause of the rut. Does come into estrus in November and cycle 28 days later. Most hunters miss this “secondary rut” in December, which in most cases is a great time to be outdoors. * * * * Bucks “peak out” in November here in the Midwest and in other parts of the country. This “peak” time is calculated carefully and estimated by the states’ wildlife biologists thus determining the optimum time to schedule the upcoming hunting season with firearms. Sometimes they get it right, sometimes they don’t. |
The peak rut doesn’t last very long, usually a couple of days. Having said that, it doesn’t mean that deer activity diminishes to the point of having to hang up the gun or bow, it just isn’t the peak. The rut is also broken down into different phases, like the pre-rut, rut and post rut, each unique to its own. Each phase should be treated and hunted as a separate identity. Knowing these identities will increase your odds of harvesting that big buck you’ve always dreamed of. * * * *
Pre-rut the bucks will spar and "test the waters" with each other, thus establishing their hierarchy. Not a lot of antler bashing, just some messing around. If you are into rattling, rub your antlers against a tree simulating a buck rubbing his antlers on a tree. |
It’s just too early to begin a full fledge rattling sequence. The simulated antlers rubbing on a tree works REALLY well in a quiet environment and really brings them out! The late pre-rut is the optimum time to rattle! It also happens to be when bucks will often grunt. This grunt is their way of saying, “hey babe, you’re looking good, take a look at me” or if you’re another buck, “do you want a piece of me pal”? This is a great time to rattle or grunt. If rattling, ALWAYS set-up as to shoot downwind, as bucks will circle and often come in downwind of your location! Don’t be afraid to make some noise! Rattle, smash leaves, smash into brush, etc. to simulate a battle. * * * * The peak rut begins when you see the swelled necks of these monarchs, their hocks are darkened and stained looking, and |
the scraping activity increases. During that time bucks are extremely aggressive. They are on the prowl looking for the first receptive does and also looking to kick “someone’s you know what”! Testosterone levels are high and bucks are edgy, to say the least. If you rattle, use small sequences and repeat often, just don’t over do it. Try different lengths of time and different times of the day. Remember, you are trying to imitate a buck and nothing else. * * * * The post rut comes just after the rut. Bucks are settling down a bit and slowly getting into their normal routines. Treat this time almost as you would before the rut. Try to catch them in their feeding habitat, bedding spots and their home turf. |
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Dragging a Cotton Ball Good move and works great if you do it correctly. Once you have left your vehicle, have taken your clothes out of that plastic bag, have walked a fair amount of distance away from your vehicle, tie a cotton ball with a couple of feet of string attached to your shoe. Place a SMALL amount of estrus urine (if it’s the pre-rut or rut) on the cotton. Walk towards your stand. When about a third of the way, load a bit more estrus to the cotton, keep walking. Keep “heating” up the cotton until just before getting to your stand, then load it up good! Now before I go any farther, you just created a weak scent and slowly made it more prominent as you walked to your stand. Now you don’t have to worry about which way the buck will go once he finds it! He’ll only go towards the stronger scent, which is towards your stand. OK, once you are near your stand, stop 20 yards before getting to your stand and load that baby up to the sky! Walk in a complete circle 20 yards out all around your stand. Once you completed your stroll, drop the ball at that 20-yard spot and walk back to your stand and climb it. What you just did is directed that buck to walk to your site, but not to YOU. He’ll walk around your stand 20 yards out in a complete circle, offering you a shot somewhere in that circle, instead of walking directly to you! One word of caution here. If you decide to use this cotton technique, don’t lollygag around! Get the job done and move! During the rut, these bucks can be very dangerous once they whiff your scents. Another note is to try these techniques in an area where known does travel. Don’t set up in an area where does are not seen much. Working Gullies Works well! Loading up some rags with estrus and hanging them at the top of the gully closure will push that scent throughout the gully. The gully acts like a ducted vent system in your home and really pushes and confines that scent within. This is a very concentrated scent push and will get the attention of any big buck holding out deep in a crevice. When the bucks travel to your destination (at the top of the gully), they usually have their noses towards the ground giving you the ability to get a clean shot. Branch Scents A unique way of attracting bucks. Some manufacturers make gels that contain pre-orbital and forehead glands from whitetails for use on overhanging limbs, directly over a scrape. This is a great way to keep the attention of a buck as they frequently visit this location over and over. Working Scrapes Scrapes can be an asset in aiding a hunter in his/her quest of a big buck, but knowing when to hunt scrapes can make or break the hunt! Hunting mock scrapes that were created by you or working a scrape that was created by a buck, either way, there is a right way and a wrong way. Hunting a scrape can be dangerous, not in the true meaning of this word, but in losing a big buck. A scrape is a cornucopia of scents for the whitetail. His scent, her scent, the other guys scent and ….uh oh…YOUR SCENT, bye bye buddy! Don’t think you can get near a scrape over and over again and not leave your scent behind. It happens. When it happens, they go nocturnal and so does your chance of drilling him. Most hunters leave branch gels, estrus scents, etc. and sit and wait and sit and wait, etc…..and sometimes they get him. Other times, not. If you don’t get your buck after working that scrape for a long period of time, chances are he went nocturnal. Now what? Well, nocturnal or not, he’ll come back, mostly at night, except in bad weather! This one is missed over and over again by trophy hunters. When it rains, their scent gets covered up and they know it! Guess what, they can’t stand it. Rain or not, they’ll come back. Windy day? Oh yea, count on it. With leaves covering up their scent, they’ll be there. They know that this is their only chance to get the pretty girl and they will guard it with their lives. I can tell you of countless times when I have tested this strategy. A big buck prefers to freshen his scrape every few hours if not disturbed, so be careful!!! Noon hunting If you read last month’s letter, you read Ron Cook’s short story on hunting in the middle of the day, if you didn’t, we’ll haunt you forever with images of big bucks until you do….…nuf said. |
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It’s funny, you hunt for decades, your friends hunt for decades, the pros hunt for decades and if you were to ask anyone if they ever heard a buck growl in the wild and they will probably answer “what”? After reading up on the “latest and the greatest” growl call, it’s amazing how you will be “convinced” that you need one. What’s even more amazing is the fact that most of the data you acquire actually comes from the manufacturer of the product or one of their sponsors. As you read, the story intensifies to the point where everyone now hears a wild buck “growl” in the timber….and they have it on video, really, just listen real hard…..that’s a growl I tell you. All of a sudden all of the pros are whacking giant bucks using this amazing growl call, buy the video for $12.95 and you’ll see. |
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The growl call is supposed to mimic a buck being at his climatic vocalization. They can growl over a dead doe, if they want to get another deer’s attention, or if it’s dinnertime for all I know. The growl is louder than a grunt and sounds like a dog’s bark in a garbage can. By growling, the larger bucks should be coming in fast….they say. Now once, I remembered I growled at a squirrel that kept barking at me when I was trying to hunt a big buck and he ran like lightening! I can imagine what a big buck would do if I growled at him, he would probably slip, slide and run like heck just to keep distance between he and I.
OK, I think everyone out there gets our opinion on this gadget. We’re usually pretty lenient when testing new products as to give them a chance to work the bugs out, or at least give them credit for being innovated, but this thing? I know, some of you are saying "hey, it worked for me".....and maybe it did, but was it the "growl" that brought the deer to you or just the noise and his curiosity? Do you have a big buck hanging on your wall from this "noise"?
We believe the growl call is just another way to introduce another gadget to the outdoor world. For $22.99 you too can get this amazing call and try it for yourself. You can buy it online at: http://www.kolpin.com/product/madc05.asp We give this product a thumb’s down. GGGRRRRROOWWWLLLLL. |
Things to Remember!
 When killing a deer, get to it as soon as you can. There is no such thing as a “gamy tasting deer”. That game taste is actually the meat starting to spoil. When an animal sits after being killed, gas forms immediately and fills the capillaries full of gas. This gas, is spread systemically causing the meat to spoil and taste horrible. If the butchers who handle cattle let the animals sit after they kill it, it also would taste “gamy”. So field dress that deer “right now” if you want it to taste as good as it can. This information comes from our Pro-Staffer, Rich Kober, a butcher with 30 years of experience cutting deer, elk, bison, cattle and everything else in between. One other point with field dressing; If you drop a nice buck and you want to mount it, MAKE SURE you cut the head with the cape attached, BEHIND the shoulders about 3”. If in doubt, always cut too much as opposed to not enough. Too many hunters cut the cape too short thus robbing themselves of a good shoulder mount. Another mistake is cutting the hide up too far towards the rib cage. You only need to cut from the hind legs up to the rib cage but not past it! You have plenty of room to reach in the cavity and pull out the entrails. Your taxidermist hates to sew, so don’t over do it! The same is true about getting that head off quickly, as it is about field dressing! If you are going to mount that head, get that head and hide off of the carcass quickly and get it COOLED DOWN. Once the body is dead, that same gas creates bacteria that will eat the backside of your cape hairs thus causing the hair to slip once it is tanned. Slipping is not a good thing. Slipping is when the hair falls out and your cape will be ruined! Get it off and cool it down now! This information courtesy of Look Alive Taxidermy, a world class and nationally renown outfit. If you want to try another way to field dress your deer, you can do this; Remove the hide attached to all 4 legs, bone the meat out and place in plastic bag. Cut the hide down the back to remove the back strips (loins). You now have 97% of the meat with no field dressing and no carcass to haul back to the woods to discard! You also avoided hauling the deer to your home, etc. and no mess in your garage either. The only piece of meat you didn’t get are the tenderloins inside of the cavity. Now most will agree that the tenderloins are the best part, but they are so small, they are not always worth it to me. If they are to you, you will want to open the carcass up to remove them. This method is easy; it makes it easy to carry out the meat, saves the double work of having to haul the carcass out and in and also keeps the cleaning down to a minimum! There is no field dressing! Make sure this method is legal in your state as some states require you keep the carcass whole and checked-in at your local check station! |
| Isn’t it nice to look at your mounts on the walls and be able to remember each and every hunt? Our spouses think we’re nuts (and we are), but each head or animal on the wall tells a story, and a good one at that! Sometimes we don’t have a mount on the wall to remember a story by. Sometimes we have just a memory. It’s those memories that bond dads and sons together, friends with friends and hunting partners with acquaintances. I went down memory lane today and thought I would write a few memorable tales of some great times I had in the woods over the past few decades. I’m sure you’ll be able to relate with them! |
| Oh the pride in getting the “big one”. We know the “fish stories” get bigger with fish, but they don’t with hunting big game…do they? Early 1990’s. Spring Turkeys.  I let a buddy of mine hunt my farm on his day off from work one Spring, for turkey. My brother-in-law and myself joined him the very next day. After a brief “hello” we ask the never-ending question: did you get anything yesterday? After watching a grin on his face turn into a full-fledged smile, he answered “yes”, I got a long beard! “How long is the beard”, my brother-in-law said? My buddy says, “oh about 9” or so. FIRST CLUE something isn’t right here. How many hunters take trophy game and not know the size EXACTLY? “Where is it”, I asked? “It’s at home in the freezer”, he says. After we congratulated him on his bird, we headed off into the woods for our own turkey hunt. At midday, we were fortunate enough to bag 2 nice Toms. Now back in those days, we had to take our birds to a check station. The people at the station would weigh and measure your bird and POST it on a wall for everyone to see. Low and behold, our buddy’s name was on the wall with a big fat “J” next to his name, J standing for Jake (a young turkey). Busted. After a not-so-brief laugh, my brother-in-law and myself rushed back to the farm to ridicule and shame him for taking a small bird. After the punishment, and the red face, and the laughter, we had ourselves another moment to log into our book of memories! Then there was the time in the mid 1990’s. Bow hunting.  I was bow hunting with a friend on my farm. I asked everyone not to kill anything under 130” on the P&Y scale as to manage for big bucks. Everyone agreed it was a good idea and most people abided by those rules…most people. I set-up in a stand which just happened to be about 30 acres away from where my friend was hunting. After wishing each other good luck, we were off. About 2 hours into the hunt, I see this basket rack limping by me and fall deep into a gully behind me and die. I looked at it with disbelief and thought, where did that come from? Then it hit me, dog gone it, he stuck a dog! Dog, of course, is the term we use for small deer. After about 30 minutes or so, I see my buddy walking towards me. I say out loud: “what’s up”? He says, “Did you see anything come by here”? I play dumb and say “no”. He says, “Man, I stuck a big one”! I say “really, how big”? He returns with a “oh, 140’s or 150’s" with his hands opened wide. I respond, “Wow, lets go find him”! He answers, “I probably lost him, so it’s no use in looking for him” (knowing if we find him, he’ll eat crow for a year). I say “really now, how big do you think he was”? He responds with a solid “oh, it’s a 140 or 150 class buck”. I say to him, “ you are nothing but a dog killer, man”. He says, “What do you mean”? I say take a look down this gully! After a couple of “ it must be someone else’s buck” and “are you sure you saw it come from my direction”, and so forth, we sat down to eat a sandwich and had a good laugh and proceeded to field dress it. I rubbed that one in good for about a year! Late 1990’s. Hunting Spring Turkeys.  We locate a group of gobblers early but they seem to be about 5 or so acres away. We know we can’t make it there in enough time as the birds are on the ground and it’s getting lighter by the minute. We set up in the middle of a bottom ground surrounded by stacked logs that formed a circle. We (3 of us total) climb in the center as it gives us good cover and yet allows us to call to them and see through the cracks. We locate 3 mature gobblers with our binoculars, but they are about 200 yards away. I worked those birds for over an hour until they finally jumped a creek bed and started our way. We are about as pumped as we could be! We have 3 long beards coming our way and there are 3 of us! Yippee! After an hour of calling, they are coming our way! The safety switches are turned off and the guns are pointed through the logs…just another 50 yards or so and we will have bragging rights baby! Now about 40 yards from us, after the birds just walked about 150 yards or so right to us, they freak out and turn away, start “putting” and run like they are on fire! As we look at each other in disbelief, we stand up to see why they ran only to find a handful of COWS looking directly down at us! Where in the heck did these cows come from, one of us said! We’ve never seen cows EVER down here. So as they mooooooooed at us in curiosity, one guy picked up a huge stick and started beating this cow into a stupor! After laughing uncontrollably for about 5 minutes, one of the cows didn’t like getting beat and came in after us knocking over all of the logs, almost killing us by stampede and nearly destroying our guns! After grabbing my gun and turkey calls, we left with no birds but with one heck of a memory. Late 1990’s. Some guys get all the luck!  After bow hunting for 2 days by myself, a friend of mine joins me on the third day for the opener shotgun season. On the edge of being burnt out by not killing anything and hunting hard, I was actually going to welcome the use of a gun. He shows up around lunchtime as he drove in from out of town. After eating some “vittles” and briefing him on my 2-day excursion, we set off in our own directions in our quest of harvesting something big. Well, it takes me about 30 minutes to get where I want to hunt; a long haul through the bottom ground, through thickets, crossing a creek, setting up a new stand and ultimately climbing it up to the very top, then hoisting my equipment up with me. Ahhhh, finally, I’m ready to go. Nearly an hour in all and I’m ready to hunt. After getting my gun positioned, and relaxed, I hear a big “bang”, then a “bang, bang”. It came from where my buddy was, by the way, was only 5 minutes from the truck. 30 minutes later I see him approaching my stand with his arms extended out as to describe how big the rack is. I think horrible thoughts to myself like “that lucky son of a gun” or “he thinks everything he kills is big” or “I hate him”… :) I say out loud, (I say it loud because I know my hunt is already over if I have to help him haul a big buck out), “what did you get”? He says, “ a monster”. I think, great, what luck? He’s here for 1 hour and I’m here for 2.5 days and he drops a giant. Then I think to myself, if this thing isn’t a giant, I’ll kill him. I respond, “OK, I’ll help you”. After making it all of the way back to his site, he tells me that he fell asleep by a tree and was awakened by something running at him…….AT HIM! (Talk about a special delivery! He sleeps and is hand delivered a big buck while I work my butt off for nothing!) So I listen and he explains that he had drool dripping from his lips because he was sooooo tired from the drive there, and he fell asleep by a tree only to find a 280 lb. buck, 160 class rack, staring him in the face after being pushed by hunters on the bordering property. He simply grabbed his gun and shot. The first shot removed the hoof of the buck as he fell. (How did that happen)? On the way up, the second shot hit the shoulder….( good thing PETA wasn’t watching this hunt) the third and last shot finished the job, all less than 20 yards from Rip Van Winkle’s tree. After an eternity of yanking and pulling that monster out of a gully, it was time for dinner. A buck of a lifetime for a dog killer…some guys get all the luck! What a time and what a memory…..and I couldn't be any happier for him...really :) Marc Anthony Pro-Staff / Chief Editor Non-Typical Hunter, Inc. www.nontypicalhunter.net |
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About 2 lbs. of venison thinly sliced (much easier to slice when it's still partially frozen) 1/2 tsp. salt 1 tsp. chopped garlic 1/2 tsp. hot peppers, ground or sauce 1 can beer 1 tsp. ginger root, ground 1/4-cup Worcestershire sauce 1/4-1/2 cup soy sauce |
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