Editor’s Note: Planting a green field doesn’t guarantee that you’ll take a buck on it. Some green fields produce high-quality bucks every season, while other green fields rarely if ever even yield a buck. What factors make for a great green field, and what makes a green field a waste of time and money? To learn the answers to these questions, we’ve contacted Dr. Grant Woods (http://www.growingdeer.tv) of Reeds Spring, Missouri, an avid hunter and one of the nation’s leading deer researchers and animal-nutrition experts.
Woods says that deer sometimes won’t come to a green field, because they get spooked before they arrive there.
Minimize Odor: To prevent spooking the deer before they reach the green field, take care not to leave human odor in or around the outer edges of the green field before you hunt the field. To minimize odor around green fields, some clubs use flagging tape to create a 50- to a 100-yard buffer zone from the edges of the green field where no one can hunt, until after they harvest their limit of does. Then the club will permit them to hunt on the green field.
Reduce Hunting Pressure: You also can reduce the pressure on green fields by not hunting every green field every week. “If a road divides your property, hunt on one side of the road one week and on the other side of the road the next week,” Woods recommends. “This pattern allows you to minimize the amount of human odor you leave behind in the woods each week.”
Carefully enter, and leave your stand site, so that your human odor doesn’t blow across the deer trails leading to the green fields. The more you protect the sanctuary of the green field, the more likely that you’ll take a big buck from the green field each time you hunt it. Remember that the less hunting pressure that the green field and the area around the green field receive during hunting season, the more likely that you’ll see bucks on that green field.
Tomorrow: Tie Deer’s Bellies to Their Brains
How to Hunt and Take Big Buck Deer on Small Properties
In this book, you’ll hear from 14 hunters who either have gained permission or leased properties as small as six acres to as much as 250 acres, and how they consistently take older-age-class bucks off these little lands.
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Jim Crumley’s Secrets of Bowhunting Deer
Using a black magic marker and a gray work jumpsuit, Jim Crumley of Buchanan, Virginia, drastically changed the nature and purpose of hunting camouflage when he created the first sportsman’s camouflage – Trebark. Crumley’s love of bowhunting and his desire to be more invisible changed hunting clothing forever.
In this hunting guide, he shares the wisdom that he’s learned throughout his lifetime about how to be a hunter, how to find a deer lease, how to scout for deer, and more.
Special features include how to:
- Have a magic 60 acres to hunt
- Decide the best equipment to use
- Find deer year-round
- Locate land to hunt
- Know the best place to put your tree stand
- Get bucks within bow range
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How to Hunt Deer Like a Pro
How do you know if the land you hunt has a trophy deer on it? Wildlife manager Bob Zaiglin, of Uvalde, Texas and Jim Crumley, the father of modern-day hunting camouflage, tells you how to find out. GPS can make finding and taking that trophy buck easier. This hunting guide will teach you how to hunt big bucks where no one else can find them, how to call deer, and how to become versatile as a deer hunter, so that if one deer tactic doesn’t work, another one will.
In the chapter, “How to find Bucks at Scrape,” Dr. Keith Causey, retired professor of Wildlife Science at Auburn University, describes the best way to hunt a scrape.
Brad Harrison of Neosho, Missouri, is a nationally-known videographer, professional deer hunter and master at calling deer. Another master is Will Primos of Primos Game Calls. These two experts will tell the best deer calls and when to use them in this book.
And for over 20 years, Bo Pitman, lodge manager of White Oak Plantation, has been studying deer movement patterns. He explains what types of conditions are best for predicting deer movement.
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Deer hunting and deer hunters are drastically changing each year. To learn new techniques for hunting deer and have more places to hunt, I’ve interviewed some of the best deer hunters in the nation and share their tactics in How to Hunt Deer Like a Pro: Volume II.
In Chapter 10, Jacob Lamar tells you his tactics for consistently taking older-age-class bucks on public lands in several states. Chapter 11, Bob Walker explains how to find places on public lands where you can hunt that 99 percent of the other hunters never have considered hunting. The Bonus Chapter with David Ramey tells you how, where, when and with what equipment to take big Kansas bucks on public lands by hunting in 100-degree weather when others won’t hunt.
Chapter 13, Mark Drury, his family and his guests take mature bucks every season by having more small places to hunt rather than one large property. Drury explains the strategy of having satellite farms to hunt that only may be 50-150 acres each or less. Chapter 15, Pat Reeve, who hunts far-northern states and Canada, says, “I don’t like hunting for mature bucks until the weather is 20 degrees or less.” Chapter 4, Dr. Larry Marchinton says that funnels are the most-reliable stand sites to hunt for big bucks and tells why.
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You may also enjoy:
Learn about Deer on Green Fields Day 3: Create a Green Field Deer Will Use
Learn about Deer on Green Fields Day 5: Tie Deer’s Bellies to Their Brains
Learn about Deer on Green Fields Day 2: Don’t Shoot Green Field Does
Learn about Deer on Green Fields Day 1: Realize Green Fields May Not Yield Deer
Hunt Deer in February Day 5: The Best Stand Sites for February Deer
How to Find, Plan, and Take Big Deer Day 4: Plant Food Plots for Deer Opportunities
