By Brenda Valentine

Large whitetail bucks are the things dreams are made of, the visions which inspire us to rise out of warm beds and crawl into frosty treestands day after day and season after season.

The adrenaline rush just from the sight of a big buck is enough to warm your spirit long after the season closes. A mature whitetail buck is what the majority of bowhunters desire most, yet the statistics show the success rate of archery-killed trophy bucks is very low.

I'm sure that everyone knows some bowhunter who seems to tag a whopper buck year after year, and you wonder what is the secret to their deer hunting success. Very likely, these productive bowhunters do not have exclusive places to hunt, are not better shots, nor do they have superior equipment.

Most of them do their homework by scouting year-round to put the pieces of the big-buck puzzle together and have the necessary confidence in themselves and their equipment to successfully handle the situation when a monster buck comes within bow range.

The scouting process varies somewhat in every section of the country, although deer predictably leave many of the same clues about their daily lives. It is the overall deer population, food and water sources, terrain, weather, hunting pressure, cover availability, timing of the rut and the buck/doe ratio that makes the difference in how you decipher your scouting results.

In much of the Southeast, bowhunting for whitetails is a three- or four-month sport. With this extensive season, bear in mind that many changes will occur in the daily life of the deer. Knowing and preparing for these changes will keep you ahead of the game, instead of scratching your head in confusion over the absence of deer coming by your stand.

Bow season predictably begins long before the first frost, when an abundance of food choices are available. With soybeans, corn, milo and other grains ripening in the fields and persimmons, wild cherries, dogwood berries, honey locust, pecans and a wide variety of acorns, it is very hard to rely on food alone as a sure way to tag your deer. Deer sign is also usually obscure at this time due, in part, to the profuse undergrowth. The often-dry, dog days of summer have baked the earth to a brick hard surface which leaves few tracks.

Rut is still just a fond memory to the older bucks and physical evidence in the form of fresh rubs and scrapes are yet to surface. How, then, can a bowhunter effectively scout and accurately pinpoint the deer-rich Southeast?

My formula has long been to be a year-round whitetail student. I hunt deer almost every day of the year, hunting only to discover and study each piece of the whitetail puzzle during the first nine months and hunting to harvest the buck of my dreams during the last quarter. The day our state-appointed hunting season officially ends, I am out gathering all the whitetail secrets I can find.
Trails are now visible in the rain-softened earth and abandoned scrapes and rubs read like road signs. Areas with an abundance of last season's buck sign can almost always be relied upon to be frequented by male deer year after year. Staging areas are places with a large number of rubs and scrapes in a small area, usually adjacent to a main food source. These are the places I like to hunt in the pre-rut period.

Rub lines signify a travel route, and sometimes a territorial boundary. These are recognizable by the often larger signpost type rubs which follow a distinct pattern. Hunting rub lines can be productive at any time and are usually the trails where the buck feels secure.

Deer, like water and many people, will usually choose the path of least resistance. They will go out of their way to find a hole or low place to cross a fence rather than jumping over it, although they are very capable of doing so. Whitetail deer are excellent swimmers, yet they will usually ford creeks and rivers in shallow water and almost always where the banks are less steep. Anytime deer regularly move through a specific area, be it a fence line, drainage ditch or river crossing, it is called a funnel. Funnels are a basic stand setup site for whitetail bowhunters.

Choose your tree carefully. Trees, void of foliage, look completely different and may prove to be useless after the first frost. There have been many disappointed bowhunters who hung their stands in well-concealed treetops during late summer, only to find themselves quite exposed when the autumn leaves fell.

Selecting your stand trees during mid winter lets the hunter make a much wiser choice with regard to cover. Remember, deer scouting does not end with locating where the animals are, or will be. It also includes scouting for the best possible vantage point for a close, well-angled shot. Intense scouting and the most perfect stand site in the world is useless if you are mentally, physically and equipmentally not ready.

By this I mean that, mentally, you have to be prepared to sit quietly and patiently sometimes for long hours or even days for Mr. Big to appear. This kind of patience comes from having the gut feeling that you're in the very best possible place within your hunting area to get a shot. Gut feelings usually come as a result of all the preseason scouting you've done.

Mentally prepared also means having the ability to handle the shakes and a runaway pulse while drawing down on the buck which has haunted you all season. Most important, mentally prepared is knowing your shooting abilities and limitations and having the self-control to let this govern your actions.

Physically prepared is something you owe to yourself. Don't be cheated out of that dream buck because of the inability to draw your bow under pressure or from an awkward position. Practice shooting from standing, sitting and leaning-out situations. Shoot from elevated places as well as ground level. Put on your face mask and the rest of your hunting clothes. If there is interference or binding problems, it's certainly best to find it out now during dress rehearsal than later at the real deal. Physically prepared also includes hiking with all your gear, climbing trees and hopefully dragging out all of that venison connected to big antlers.

Equipmentally prepared is the greatest confidence booster of all. Just knowing that your arrows are flying perfect; that your bow is quiet and well-tuned; that your pins are dead on; and that your broadheads are razor sharp gives you the mind space to concentrate on hunting instead of fretting over equipment "what-ifs?"

Learning to do these things yourself or having a competent bow technician is necessary when it comes time to replace strings or cables, or perhaps basic set-ups on new equipment.
A well-stocked local pro shop with a knowledgeable staff is perhaps your first step in hanging that buck on the wall, a shop that cares enough to stock quality equipment that will withstand the rigors of hard hunting and long seasons.

Successfully taking nice deer year after year with a bow is simply a matter of preparation, practice, persistence, proper equipment and an occasional dose of good luck.