Deer hunting hasn’t changed in hundreds of years. But what has changed is our knowledge of the animals and the equipment we use for hunting. If you’re planning to take a big buck this season, this formula that follows drastically will increase your odds for success.

1) Find the biggest bucks that live on the property you hunt. Using aerial photos, topo maps, and trail cameras and talking with wildlife biologists in the area you hunt can reduce the amount of time you have to spend scouting to pinpoint big bucks that may live on the property you hunt. You may want to take a 150-class buck this season, however, if the biggest buck on your property only will score 120, then that’s the big buck you should hunt.

2) Pattern the bucks you want to harvest this season. Learn where they bed, where they feed, and where they scrape. Once again, trail cameras, topo maps, and aerial photos will improve your ability to locate these sites, and a hand-held GPS receiver can help you return to those locations when muzzleloading season arrives.

3) Set-up stand sites based on wind direction. On your GPS receiver, mark places you want to hang a tree stand or setup a ground blind for each big buck you plan to hunt. Also, include the wind direction you must have to hunt from that stand site. If you’ve done an effective job of scouting, you’ll have 3-4 sites marked that you can hunt from, based on any wind direction.

4) Plan for change. During the course of hunting season, bucks will change their feeding pattern as the food sources change. If the deer are feeding on agriculture, then once the crops are harvested, they may switch to acorns. In the early season, they may start eating soft mast. Talk to a wildlife biologist to set up a timetable to try and determine when the deer will switch food sources. Change occurs before, during and after the rut, so you need to plan where you’ll hunt the bucks you’ve chosen to hunt during those three phases. Hunting pressure also will change a deer’s movement patterns, so if you don’t take one of the bucks on your hit list during the first weekend of deer season, learn the location that the deer have to move to when they start feeling the effects of hunting pressure.

5) Don’t bet on one big buck. Pattern, and set-up this season’s hunt plan to try and take four or five different bucks, even if you’ve hunted an area that only has a one-buck per-season-per-hunter limit. Assume that you’re not the only hunter who has found and patterned the bucks you want to take. I’ve known hunters whose seasons have been ruined completely when they’ve come out of the woods on opening morning of muzzleloading season and seen the big buck they’ve been patterning, studying and researching and planned to harvest on the back of someone else’s pickup truck. If you don’t have other bucks patterned before the season, an event like this mentally can destroy your hunting season.

In other words, to be successful, you have to gather a lot of information, and you need to find multiple bucks to hunt and have multiple stand sites set-up to hunt each of these bucks during muzzleloading deer season. You also need to be able to gather, store and utilize this information. You either have to have a photographic memory or have to have a way to compile this information, sort it and be able to use it during hunting season.
To collect, sort and choose to hunt each day of the muzzleloading season, store each bit of information in your hand-held GPS receiver and/or in a hunting log that you carry with you every time you go hunting. Another tremendous hunting aid is the new apps for smartphones enable you to mark where you’ve found each big buck feeding, bedding, and scraping, where each stand site is, and what the wind direction is that you need to have to hunt those stand sites. (see blogs)

With these new apps, every morning when you get up to go hunting, you can check your hunting apps and see what wind direction you have at each stand where you want to hunt. So, because of technology, including trail cameras, hand-held GPS receivers and new hunting apps for cell phones, gathering, storing and sorting information about the bucks you plan to try and take this season is easier, quicker, more accurate and more useful for the muzzleloader. If you’re anti-technology, take a youngster scouting with you. He or she can teach you how to use your trail cameras, hand-held GPS receiver and/or the hunting apps in your cell phone. To use technology successfully to help you take the big buck of your dreams this year, remember: take extra batteries for your GPS hand-held receiver; have a portable charger for your cell phone on hand; and always carry extra batteries and flash cards for your cameras.
By: John E. Phillips, a longtime student of deer behavior.
Questions:
* Have you incorporated any technology (trail cameras, GPS, phone apps etc.) into your deer hunting this year?
* List by importance three hunting aids you plan to rely on the most this season.
* Tell us how the products mentioned here have helped you to take a nice big buck in past seasons.
To get John E. Phillips’ new free book, “How to Make Venison Jerky – the Ultimate Snack Food,” go to http://johninthewild.com/free-books.