Hunting The Tiny Covers

The hunter who pays attention to deer movements and thinks small will find some out-of-the-way spots where big bucks live. Some of those locations are easily hunted and some are not, but all are worth trying.

Some of these out-of-the-way spots are found while hunting other game species. Some of the little hidey-holes where bucks lay up are so small that one wonders if there is enough cover for a cottontail rabbit to hide. Take it from me: it doesn't take much cover to hide a big buck when he wants to stay out of sight.

Some of my friends hunt in widely scattered locations. Many also hunt upland game birds, cottontail rabbits and snowshoe hares, wild turkeys and other types of game. The observant ones find buck hideaways that deer use when hunting pressure gets heavy. Most of these tiny covers become even better once snow covers the ground.

Forget about big swamps now. Hunt tiny covers.

A friend pays close attention to such things, and as he walked past an overgrown apple orchard after a hard rain earlier in the season, he spotted a big deer track going over the fence. He'd tried to get his pointer to work into it in search of birds, and the dog refused to go.

Being a patient fellow, he walked his pooch around the orchard, and found the way the buck left that orchard. He also noticed that the tracks went past a big pine tree. Two days later he scaled that tree in the late afternoon after putting the dog in the truck kennel, and took his bow with him. Thirty minutes before the end of shooting time a buck that grossed 152 points jumped the fence and walked past his tree, and he ambushed it.

He's no stranger to seeing big bucks. This one passed the tree at 22 yards, and my friend shot him. It is still his largest buck, but it points out the reasons why hunters should be more attentive to deer sign.

Another guy was out chasing ruffed grouse, and walked past a sumac patch on top of a hill with a good view in all directions. The man stopped to re-tie his boot laces, and was 20 feet from the sumac patch, and out busted a big buck. He was laying up there because most people walked past the sumac without stopping, thinking the cover was much too small to hold a deer.

I tell a personal story of hunting ringneck pheasants near Montrose, Michigan, 35 years ago. I was hunting along the edge of the Flint River. A rooster flushed wild at 30 yards ahead of the dog, and I swung and winged the bird.

Look for tiny islands surrounded by water.

The ringneck caught its balance in mid-air, cocked its wings and soared part-way across the river and landed on a tiny island of marsh grass and a few stunted trees. I checked the water depth, and it was only shin deep, and I crossed. My dog caught some scent, pointed, and as I approached the dog, a big buck jumped up and bolted across the river. He watched the buck splash across, crisscrossed the tiny island, and kicked up the pheasant and downed the bird.

I kept that oddball sighting in mind, and once the firearm season opened, my twin brother George and I waded across to the island just after daybreak. One of us went to the upstream end while the other walked through, and sure enough, we jumped the buck and killed it with one shot.

Talk to some farmers, and they all have tales of bucks laying up in tall weeds along their line fences or next to a barn. They push deer out of swampy little tangles perhaps 20 feet across. These bucks hold in such tiny bits of cover because few people think to look there.

A buddy has an elevated coop near a cornfield where deer congregate every night to feed. There is a tiny, narrow strip of brush 20 feet from it, and many people have seen big bucks get up out of that brush and move out to feed.

Dare to try something different.

The thing is that bow hunters can dare to be different. They don't have to follow the doctrine everyone else throws at them. They can walk through an area so small that it takes less than 10 seconds to get through, and often they find the home of a big trophy buck that no one knows about.

Cattail marshes hold bucks, and I remember a nice buck that my friend Larry Barrett shot as it came out of the cattails. He knew that buck was there, and when he shot it, the buck wheeled and dove back into the cattails and died there.

Don't stick with the status quo. Check things out. Know where these tiny patches of heavy cover are in your hunting area, look for those little nooks and crannies, and try to figure where a buck will come from or go to when leaving. That information is knowledge that you can put it  to good use during the rest of the firearm and muzzleloader seasons.

Try it the next time you hunt. It may produce a nice buck that you've probably overlooked in recent years.

Posted via email from Dave Richey Outdoors