Setting Sights on “The Buck”

STEVE SMOLENSKI

09/17/2015

Deer season is almost here…do you know who you are going after? Join The Buck Advisor’s Weston Schrank as he runs through his hit list and how he plans on patterning those bucks.

We are well into September now our habitat and food plots are finished up and archery season is within a couple weeks. The only thing we have left to do is target bucks to hunt. This year I have a few farms I plan on hunting, and several different bucks I plan on targeting.

We’ll start with a 70 acre farm. Most of it is dense cover, I have been managing and hunting this farm for about 4 years now. This year we are looking for 3 bucks to return in September/October. We have “Oscar,” which I estimated at 2 years of age last year, also we have “Dallas” which was 2 last year. Both bucks won’t likely be harvested this year. Our hit list buck “Jax”, is a weird buck we had a couple encounters with now for two years. He is a big 4 or 5 point with long swooping antlers but he will be mature this year, in size he is just a big buck. He is a resident of this farm, uses the sanctuaries a lot and I am pretty sure that’s what keeps him around. We don’t have pictures of any bucks yet but we know they survived last year’s season from out trail camera survey last year. We expect those deer to show up on the farm anywhere from now till archery season starts. Last year our first pictures of bucks occurred on September 9^th, and October 5^th in daylight, so that’s the plan for this year.

The next property is 40 acres of one big ridge, It’s not something we spend a whole lot of time on, it doesn’t hunt big, and what I mean by that is it’s just one ridge, you hunt one section your basically hunting the entire property. We usually don’t see good bucks unless it is a great white oak year, this year it seems to be dead for white oaks. Last year was a good year we just didn’t see the bucks we expected to mainly one that we called “Drifter”, a giant mature 4 year old, he came around two or three times on trial camera over minerals, probably just coming through when his home range started to change last September. We know this property will get a nice buck on it just waiting for a trail come to pick it up once deer movement starts to increase.

The third property I want to cover today is a brand new one we got permission on, it’s in big Ag and we have been scouting pretty hard. Unlike the other two properties this has bucks on it now…two actually! Our first buck is “Pumpkin” a mainframe 8 very nice 4 year old, and “Loppy” a 7pter that we estimate to be 3 years old. “Pumpkin” is definitely on the hit list “Loppy” will likely get a pass. We know other bucks will move into the area with the large section of woods, oaks and plenty of does.

But in any case super excited for this property and hunting this year. As we go transition further into September and into October I will give you another update on what bucks we are seeing and targeting and how we plan on hunting them as the season progresses. There’s always a chance we get giant moving into the property during this time of year. That’s it for today and make sure you check back with us next week for more videos and updates at buckAdvisors.com