Editor’s Note: The first week of deer season in any state usually creates the highest amount of hunting pressure in the deer woods. Thanksgiving, the Christmas holidays and the last week of deer season also are times of the year when the numbers of deer hunters drastically increase – and don’t forget weekends. So, if you hunt at these times of year, longtime, avid deer hunter Terry Drury, who with his brother Mark Drury created Drury Outdoors, offers these suggestions. Drury often has to hunt high-pressured deer and through his experience knows the tactics for taking them.

From a young age, bucks in high-pressured areas have smelled every single scent imaginable. They’ve smelled doe-in-estrus, tarsal, dominant buck – well, you name it, and they’ve smelled it. They also have become immune to every known foreign substance.

But, I know some people are lucky when using scents and lures, and I say more power to them. If scents and lures work for you, then use them. Actually, I feel the same way about calling, grunting and rattling in high-pressured areas. However, Mark and I prefer not to use scents or lures in high-pressured areas or call much. We don’t put any foreign substances on our boots or on our bodies when we go into or out of a high-pressured region. Deer have smelled these scents all their lives and know to skirt those spots and get downwind when they smell those lures and scents.

They may walk across a hunter’s track on the way in and simply turn around and go in the other direction. Although these bucks only may skirt you by 50, 75 or 100 yards, they still will avoid you. You easily can push a big, mature buck out of a region without much effort. When that buck smells that scent, he realizes that he probably will get rattled too, called to or grunted to, and you never will see him or know his location.

To learn more about hunting for deer, check out John E. Phillips’ bowhunting books, available in Kindle and print, “Bowhunting Deer: Mossy Oak Pros Know Bucks and Bows” (http://amzn.to/1QGvdQx) and “Bowhunting Deer: The Secrets of the PSE Pros” (http://amzn.to/VBr1qW). You may have to copy and paste these links into your browser. (When you click on the books, notice on the left where Amazon says you can read 10% of the books for free). To see more of John’s deer-hunting books, check out www.amazon.com/author/johnephillips.

Tomorrow: Terry Drury – Designate Sanctuaries in High Pressured Areas