Blizzard Bucks and the Secondary Rut

We are getting some pretty heavy snow this evening throughout most of Indiana. I love hunting in the snow. It is a change of scenery after the first 70 days of the season.

Winter hunting centers around one thing. Food! All deer and bucks especially after the rut are looking to hang out somewhere close to food and filter in and eat in the evening. I try to find a heavily used trail into a grain field (usually corn) and sit on the southeast side as the prevailing winds are usually from the northwest this time of year. Does will generally make their way into the field much earlier than the big bucks (much like early season) and as shooting light is fading the mature bucks will get on their feet. If you're lucky, he'll use your trail.

Because of the heat and drought, a lot of the corn was picked very early in Indiana this year. That means that a lot of what the combines missed has already been eaten. The good news, though, is that the deer will be more concentrated into fields that still have food left. Think back to October about which fields were latest to get picked. This seems like the best place to start in my area.

I've found that this type of hunting takes a guess and check strategy. Find a good trail, set up, and see where they come out. If they come out on another trail, I may need to move. Another way to go about it may be to scope the field one evening and see what kind of action you see and make note of where the deer enter the field.

In areas with a higher doe population, this period in early and mid December can produce some pretty good rut activity. It's not quite the rut, but a lot of yearling does will come in to estrus in this period and bucks won't let them go unbothered.

A buddy of mine has had a big buck nearly run him over as it chased does into a corn field twice in the past week. Unfortunately, this happened after shooting light. He has now moved his stand up further into the staging area hoping to get a shot with a little shooting light left.

So if you can brave the cold, this could be a fun final 20 days of the season in Indiana.

Hunt Report December 8th

I bundled up this morning and headed to the "Sanctuary" for a half day hunt. It was going to be a full day, but I ended up getting some tickets for the UK game so I had to get home to get some work done before the game.

It was 8 degrees with a WSW wind. The "Sanctuary" had been flooded earlier this week, so there were still some ice puddles. The pylon, where I wanted to hunt, was surrounded by an ice puddle. I still got in it, but i couldn't get my safety harness over all of my clothes. Like I said, it was 8 degrees! I got down and kicked out a spot in some down timber. Had three does come from the poplars to my east at about 8 o'clock, and a decent 9 pointer followed about ten minutes later. That was really the full extent of the action. I left about 12:30.

Preliminary Plans for TD-80

I finally got a Google Earth image of the property on the blog, so I'm gonna lay out what we want to do with this property.

Goals
I think Dad and I are in agreement about our goals for this property. First and foremost, we want to have fun working and hunting on it. Second, we want it to hold mature bucks.

Accomplishing the  Goals
Goal number one will be accomplished while and after goal number two is accomplished.

Holding mature bucks on the property is an interesting proposition. Knowing that it is only 80 acres, I am not naive enough to believe that we will have mature bucks that are on our 80 acres 100 percent of the time. That is unrealistic. What I would like to accomplish is keeping two or three mature (3.5 years or older) bucks on the property throughout most daylight hours. If we can keep a buck on our 80 acres for 80 to 90 percent of his daylight hours, then he is ours for the taking.

As I see it, there are two major components that will hold a deer on our property for most of his daylight hours. First, there has to be great bedding cover. Second, there has to be more and better food than anywhere else.

Cover
Decent bedding cover is not hard to come by in these parts. There are a lot of wooly areas with low-hanging conifers to offer great cover. However, what we can offer more than the public land area is undisturbed cover. This is what most people call a sanctuary. Hopefully we can make a couple of places very attractive for bedding (most of this has already been accomplished naturally), and then KEEP OUT! These  places are marked in red on the map above. If we keep our presence at a very low key in these places, then they can hold deer for a great majority of the daylight hours in the fall.

Food
I put this one second because that is where it falls in importance. Cover is the most important component. Nothing can replace it. Food has been the hype of whitetail hunting for many years now, but cover is the key.

However, there is no substitute for food. The top priority of a deer is survival. That includes three things: security, food, and water. Security is in the cover. Once we have food, we have created two of the three and there is a small watering hole in the middle of the field.

I invision two food plots. The first is marked in yellow on the map. This will be corn. We will plant corn and leave it standing all year. This is another provider of cover. Corn is a deer magnent. In an area with very little agriculture, the deer should flock to it.

The second food plot is marked in green. It is about .3 acres. This will be a summer plot. I hope to plant the new Biologic Sudden Impact blend. This should give the bucks plenty of good nutrition in the summer as they grow their antlers.

I would love to make both of these plots bigger. If the dozer is capable, then we will. But for now, I'm keeping my expectations low so as not to be disappointed.

We are also looking into a couple of feeders. Obviously these would be shut down in August or September, but they can be a wonderful food source during the harsh winter months up until the summer when the Biologic comes up.

We can't wait to get started.

New Camera!

I received my new camera today. It is a POV camera made by Wildgame Innovations. Hopefully I will be able to put this camera into use before the end of the season.

I also hope to get a new Flip UltraHD in the near future which will complete the filmed hunt experience.

New Property!

I've waited a few days to put this news on the net, but things are looking pretty secure so I'm gonna post it.

Dad received word this week that the landowner of a piece of land that Dad has coveted for many years was willing to lease it. My family is a normal middle class family. Nobody has a ton of money to blow on stuff like a hunting lease. However, this guy gave us an incredible deal that we couldn't pass up.

The property is 80 acres in the area that I spent most of my childhood. Most of the adjacent property is public ground. The public ground has its positives and negatives. The big negative is that the area receives a ton of hunting pressure especially in firearms season. There are two pretty big positives though. First, our lease is adjacent to 1,000+ acres that we can hunt. Second, with all the hunting pressure that the land around it receives, our property should be a great deer holder if we can make the deer feel secure there.

Because of how Dad has long coveted this property, it will be referred to as "The Dream 80" (or TD 80).

The lay of the land is valleys on the southeast and northwest with a ridge in between. Both of the hillsides feature a ton of big hardwoods. White and black oaks are often very productive in this area. On top of the ridge is a 17 acre overgrown field. This is the piece of the property that I am most excited about. The field has two fingers that are great thick bedding areas. In the main body of the field we will probably clear out a couple of signicant areas for food plots.

Needless to say, Dad and I are excited about the opportunity to work on, manage, and hunt this property. We're also looking to talk to others who have tried their hand at property management for big whitetails and get any advice we can soak up.