Legendary Spooks

The buck on my trail camera was big. So far, the biggest one for the summer. But oddly I wasn’t pumped about it. Instead, I felt a knot in my stomach. I had set the camera only the day before and I could tell he smelled my intrusion. He took a few cautious steps toward the scrape then paused, licking his nose. Turning, he walked out of the frame and out of my life for the next few months, not making another appearance until after I was tagged out late in the season. Granted, I didn’t run cameras on every possible travel route, and he could easily have skirted the ones I had deployed. One thing is clear. I had intruded into his “safe zone” and by doing so had blown any potential chance at harvesting him at that scrape before the season even started.

Same season, different scenario. This time it’s late season and it’s the top buck on our hit list. I had a collection of camera photos and videos of him in six different locations over a one-mile stretch of various habitats. Only one single video capturing him on the edge of daylight. One night he ventured in front of a camera set in a thick transition between food sources and within a second of the video starting, he tensed up, whipping his head around to stare directly at the camera then, after a few long seconds, hurried out of the frame. I assume the almost unnoticeable red glow of the infrared light is what spooked him as the camera makes no sound when triggered. From the dozens of does and lesser bucks on that camera, he was the only one that so much as glanced at it.

To me, these and other encounters have led me to change my questioning from “how do bucks survive on heavily pressured public lands?” to “how do you kill a mature buck that has survived multiply seasons even with that pressure?” It has become increasingly clear to me that placing a tag on a deer like that is the ultimate challenge for any whitetail hunter  and will force you to adapt and improve your strategy no matter what your skill level.