There are a lot of big woods and big-woods deer hunters throughout the country. For more great videos. However, within "big woods" or wilderness hunting areas, it is not uncommon to travel several hundred yards or more without finding any deer sign. In big forests, most often bedding cover can be just about everywhere. “Big woods bucks” will use streams or small lakes or ponds as watering areas, especially in dry years such as it is this year. Mr. Big will more often go as deep as he needs to find that thicket bedding area. During the spring and summer – when they’re not being hunted – mature bucks will act like any deer and bed closer to food sources. Hunting terrain features linking rubs to bedding and feeding areas can be a great way for outsmarting big bucks … ... simply keep an eye out for other deer sign and pinch points as you track your deer from food to bed or vice versa. Remember, big bucks don’t get big hanging around in wide-open spaces. If you're running into hunter sign everywhere you look, it's one of two things. That’s rarely the case. Finding deep woods bucks is easier when you can see their large tracks in the snow. If you are set on killing a big buck, you will also need to learn to be patient. These swales are basically saddles across open fields, a way for the buck to stay out of sight as he traverses open land. Finding shed antlers is much more difficult in the big woods, Appalachian region of Pennsylvania than most places in the country. He’s learned that thick cover equals safety. 2015 Ohio Buck – On a cool November afternoon, I grunted in this Ohio whitetail sitting on a funnel that had a cliff on one side, and a valley to my back. If you're a public-land hunter looking at a 5,000-acre tract to hunt this fall, it's easy to envy those who have access to farmland or ranches overrun with deer. Just because you find a lot of deer sign in area doesn’t mean it holds a big buck. In big-woods settings, where food sources can often be a challenge to pinpoint, knowing a buck’s bedding area is often enough. Challenging day to film due to weather but thought we would share. Sprawling cover gives deer the ability to seemingly vanish from the face of the earth. Almost all buck beds have one thing in common. 1) The Big Timber buck Not even the densest timber can stop word of a big buck from spreading. With that, one can typically follow … Locate bucks by finding the food. Finding Needles in The Big-woods Haystack - Read online for free. Bucks will typically bed not too far from doe family group bedding areas. Buck rub lines, while informative in their own way, have yielded mostly the same results. Question:When hunting big woods, what are the best terrain features to look for when trying to find deer signs? — Joe Barrett, Cheltenham, Pa. Saddles. Why bucks use them: Saddles may not be my go-to terrain feature because they don't occur everywhere, but they are easy to find and easy to hunt. Stay Tuned. After traversing miles on foot, you settle into a hunting site with promising sign. If you hunt in an area where hunting pressure is controlled, you have a better chance of finding a mature buck in one of these areas. Many people call field-crossing sites “swales.” If you think bucks love to use saddles when they are located in the woods, you should see the way they use them in an open field. If you can find one or two areas with deer sign that have consistent food and water availability near bedding cover in a general 100- to 150-acre area, regardless of how close it is to the road, hunt it. Most deer hunters know how important big rubs are to locating mature whitetail bucks in a particular area. You’ve graduated whitetail pre-school if you’re using satellite imagery to identify a buck’s destination food source. 6 | Big Woods. In my opinion, hunting creek bottoms can be one of the most effective ways to kill a big buck during the rut, but recognizing the right conditions is crucial to having the opportunities. Understanding the lay of the land and how deer use it (funnels are key) will bring about more success than any scrape or rub-line strategy ever could. So those folks know just how hard it can be to target a buck in that labyrinth of standing timber. From there, he’ll work to identify trails, sign, and buck beds. The best way to locate well-used bedding areas is to find a “hot” food source and then search for the nearest cover. You can’t hear or see any sign of humanity – … I’ve observed hundreds if not thousands of buck beds in the big woods of northern Pennsylvania. For bedding spots, wise old bucks always select a location that’s the most concealed or gives them the best vantage point over their surroundings, whether in the forest or in areas such as field edges or thickets. In flatter terrain, the family groups can often be found in the more mature woods around the food sources. There are no agricultural fields and food plots that make up a buck… They think bucks bed in the thickest, nastiest areas we can find. "A guy told me that there was a giant 8-pointer that people were seeing in one of my favorite hunting spots in Michigan," says Wisconsin resident Jeff Sturgis, 43. I picture that outing when I think about hunting creek bottoms during the rut in the big woods of Pennsylvania. "This was a really big chunk of timber--classic Northern big woods. Sound is low due to harsh filming conditions - headphones recommended . The big woods are challenging to hunt. The trophy bucks might be a lot deeper in the woods than young bucks and does. Major Trails, Close to Bedding Areas When you are talking about a post rut buck, you are talking about an … For the most part, the majority of big-woods sign plays a very small role in the overall scheme of things. And if you're not sure how those things are connected, understand that such a dual-pronged skill set is a very good thing. The Brutus Buck full length Short Film will be this coming Fall. They can really draw deer in. Sherk: The biggest mature deer, the dominant bucks, usually get the best hiding spots, the best bedding spots, and an education to go with it.Unless somebody kicks him out, or it's the heat of the rut and he comes by with a doe, he’s going to beat you 99% of the time. Either there are no big bucks in the woods, or you need to do some more scouting to find … Hunting Deer in Big Woods During the rut, funnels and travel routes are king. A young deer helped me arrow the big-woods Wisconsin buck. But if it’s the right deer, that’s all that matters. Big bucks do not get big by hanging out where hunters hang, they find the 5% to 10% of the land where it's over looked. Whether you’re in the big woods of Pennsylvania, or the mountains of Colorado, you can get away from your everyday, fast-paced life and enjoy the quietness of the woods. The woods offer deer a great environment for survival. This is higher education stuff and starts with a 30,000-foot view of your hunting grounds, coupled with a strategy to verify your digital findings. Rattled this great public land buck in on my first sit. Patterning big woods bucks can be challenging, given the vast acreage involved and seeming lack of food. JOIN THE HUNTING CLUB Outsmarting Big Bucks on Public Land. They hideout in the thick brush and cover and only come out at the safest times of day to do so. If the first step is finding the pockets where big-woods bucks live, beginning by scouting water, swamps, topography and clearcuts gives us good starting points. Click link to see Hal give a big buck a haircut during 2019 rifle season. Tricks and Tips for Finding and Hunting Big Woods Bucks. There’s nothing quite like a truly remote, wilderness hunt for whitetails. Hunting season can impact where bucks bed. But a lot of hunters have it wrong. So if you are planning to hit the woods in search of a post rut buck, here are some areas that you may consider moving your Big Game tree stands to. The areas and that big bucks in the big woods spend their time during the pre-rut are very similar to smaller parcels just at a much grander scale. For this reason, big bucks are rarer in the south because they often get shot before they reach 4+ years of age. Finding sheds in this region is so difficult due to the miles upon miles of unbroken timber. This spot had all three attractors to draw deer in a large clearcut, full of fresh aspen shoots, acorns, a … E-scouting for and successfully finding a mature buck’s bedding area is a different story. In an ideal scenario, Martonik will find these terrain features in close proximity to a known food source. Mature bucks will spend more time inside of cover than anywhere else. At age 46, northern Wisconsin's Mike Noskoviak has been trapping coyotes, bobcats, coons, minks, and beavers for as long as he's been a big-woods hunting guide—25 years. In these cases you’ll often find a heavy concentration of buck sign (rubs and scrapes) either just inside the field edge, or just outside of the bedding area. As we southerners say, “It ain’t easy.” Simply put, there is no silver bullet for hunting big timber. If you start seeing this increase in sign during mid-October but no buck sightings in the fields during shooting hours you may need to move your stand in closer to the bedding area to try and catch these bucks while they are staging. Mr. Big passed within bow range several minutes after legal light, but I couldn’t see my pin well enough and had to watch him pass. 3. To this day, I've yet to kill a big buck on a big-woods hunt when I didn't set up in an area sporting large-buck sign. However, a little buck’s antics outside the pocket where Mr Unlike hunting farm country, where numerous deer sightings are expected, seeing one deer in the big woods can be a challenge. Hunting pressure in southern Maine is much heavier than in the northern woods of Maine. By using food to define where the does bed, you can more efficiently determine the potential mature buck bedding locations. He’s a survivor and obviously has superior skills compared to most younger deer. The biggest bucks are the most experienced at evading their predators. For example, in smaller parcels of land where there is a lot of hunting pressure bucks seek hills, points of ridges, and swamps for … If you’re hunting bucks, look for buck sign near thick cover. Bucks in the big woods can be found, at some point, all across the many miles of forest. Following the Sign for Hunting Big Woods Whitetails.