Before you know it, states around the country will begin falling like dominoes as they kick off the most anticipated event in the hunting world: whitetail archery season. You’ve been daydreaming about it all summer, but if you don’t have a well thought out plan for the first time you hit the woods, you’re most likely planning to fail. Fact is, you need a tested strategy that works time and again to fill tags on bruiser bucks the first few days you hit the woods. If you haven’t hit the chalk board and figured out the X’s and O’s yet, don’t’ worry, we’ve got you covered.
We’re going to break it down into public land, and private land hunters. Why? Hunting pressure in your area will greatly determine the strategy you want to employ for early season, as well as the rest of the year. In this article, think of private land as low hunting pressure, and public as high hunting pressure, although you may need to adjust your strategy according to the relative pressure in your area.
Public Land Hunting – Develop a Quick Hitter
When I was playing high school basketball, we had several plays we could pull out of our back pocket to score a quick bucket. These were strategic, well designed, well executed plays for specific situations. Because of this, many times these were game-changers. If you are a public land hunter, you need the same thing: a quick hitting, strategic hunt to take that big buck by surprise before he knows what hit him.
Because an army of hunters will descend on the woods those first few days of season, you need to get to that slammer before he feels the pressure, changes his patterns, and turns into a ghost. You just have a day or two to do this. Hopefully you know some good spots and have several target bucks due to your summer glassing and other scouting you’ve done. In this scenario, taking risks to get to where these bucks are moving during daylight is necessary. You may just get one “shot” though, so plan it well. This could be hunting a field edge, but more than likely will include pushing a bit closer to bedding areas, and going for short transition zones just off bedding areas. After one or two days you’ll need to adjust most likely due to pressure you may place on the deer, or other hunters in the area. Once a few days tick off and you haven’t slammed one, you now need to start scouting other hunters. Look for areas other hunters have overlooked – where deer have not been pressured and where deer are still responding in their normal patterns. This gives you a phase 2 of sorts to get first chance before they realize they are being hunted. If you find that overlooked spot, make sure you keep it fresh and unpressured as long as possible. Properly managing your scent, visual, and sound impact are essential in accomplishing this. Meticulously plan you entry, exit, and how you will access your ambush locations for certain winds and your strategic strike. Bottom-line, you have a chance or two before the deer wise up. You need to hit quickly before the inevitable game of deer-hunter pinball begins, so develop a quick hitters for multiple locations on your target bucks to get the first quick crack at them.
When doing summer scouting, you need to not only identify a handful of shooter bucks, but also how shootable you think each one is. Identify where he’s bedding, how he’s accessing the preferred food source, what conditions are present when he does this, and strategize a plan to intercept him. Based on these things, then analyze and rank your ability to realistically pull off a hunt for each one. This will tell you where to start for the most high odds first quick hitter. Wait until the opener to let conditions tell you which is your best bet for morning, and evening of day 1, and implement your strategic strike.
Private Land Hunting – Run the Marathon
If public (high pressure) hunting is about hitting quick and taking big risks, then private is just the opposite. Aggressively hunt your private land hotspot and it will fizzle out quicker than a sprinter in a marathon. Starting slowly and pacing yourself will actually give you the most quality hunts, and the most chance to slam a hammer in the shortest time frame. Since you have more control, you can keep your area low-pressure and therefore good hunting all season if you treat it right. Going low impact and conservative is the key. Hunt fringes and observation stands early on where you have little intrusion. Use easy-access food sources with rock-solid entry and exit routes only, and if you don’t have the right wind, stay out. Make sure all gear is absolutely silent, and that you have no way for deer to smell, hear, or see you. This will take self-control regarding where you hunt, when you hunt there, and sometimes refraining from going out when conditions aren’t just right.
As season progresses though, you can start pushing more into whitetail core areas, but realize every time you do this you are increasing pressure and therefore changing deer behavior. This doesn’t mean that you cannot get a quick hit on a buck, especially based on intel from summer and early fall scouting or when current intel (like fresh sign or trail cam data) tells you a shooter is daylight active where you can hunt him.
In fact you should make a killer plan to put down that hammer while he’s still at home and before he possibly wanders during the pre-rut and rut. It does mean, however, that you shouldn’t take big risks and put your whole season in jeopardy for one hail mary hunt. On private land, think marathon and don’t be the reason your season heads south.
Adapt these strategies to your particular hunting areas and situations, and you will drastically increase your chances to slam an early season hammer buck.
HIGH IQ Takeaways and Challenges:
- Do you have a strategy to locate bucks before season that you can target? If not, formulate one now.
- Once you’ve found several good bucks on summer patterns, analyze your abilities to hunt them and rank these accordingly based on the conditions you need to be successful formulate plans for each one specifically, on paper.
- Download and start using the DEERIQ Journal HERE – your greatest tool to become a greater hunter and follow along with our podcast.
