From First Light…

I first met Jeffrey during the 2002-2003 deer season.  He and my son were friends.  They were about 18 years old and just graduated from high school.  During visits, Jeff expressed interest in hunting, and would I take him out with me “sometime”.

  I let him use a decent little rifle, a .44 magnum Marlin lever action with a 2.5X scope mounted and sighted-in, shooting 180 grain bullets at around 1800 fps-more than adequate out to 150 yards or so.  I had Jeff take the Hunter Safety course, required by Mississippi state law for a license by hunters born after 1972, and buy his hunting license.  I allowed him to get familiar with shooting the rifle, on beavers in a pond on the property that the owner wanted controlled.  The water rats were burrowing into the pond dam and about to destroy it. 

One morning, while sitting in a ground blind we made overlooking a power-line cut, a nice, 125-130″, 3 or 4 year-old 8-point buck came out in the clearing.  I whispered to Jeffrey:  “Shoot him!”  Jeff moans:  “I can’t”.  His eyes rolled up in his head and he swooned into a semi-conscious faint, thrashing around on the ground!  The buck, only some 50 yards away, heard the commotion, high-tailed, and turned inside-out into an all-out dead run.  I shot at him, missed, shucked in another round and shot again.  I missed again.  The buck disappeared in the thicket on the other side of the cut.  Jeff was lying on the ground by his chair, moaning:  “I can’t believe that.  He was RIGHT THERE!”  We nicknamed the deer “the pass-out buck”, and we all, including Jeffrey, had many good natured laughs over the incident.

hey Mr. Ron
this is jeffrey.  i’ve been meaning to contact you for some time now but haven’t really had a chance. What’s your email address?  this “contact me” form just turned my whole email into a bunch of question marks and weird gray blocks.  to make a long story short i bought a 30-06 and want to get back in the woods.  i need some help getting there. I’m gonna get that monster that scared me into fainting years ago, haha.

Jeff:  you can hit “reply” on this email…I’m living about 45 miles north of Jackson just off I-55…I haven’t hunted at all this fall…trouble with the hip implants and the heart…maybe sometime..?

Man yeah! You name the the date and time and I’m there. By the way do you still keep in touch with that foster guy? I would like to see if I could get permission to go out there since it’s so close

I haven’t seen him in over 6 years now..since before I left Tupelo…he may be listed in the phone book…he may remember you from when we hunted out there on his place..?  ….no idea about him now…my hips are pretty bad, and I can’t get around very well…if and when I hunt, I just about have to drive to a stand or location….that’s why I haven’t been out since late last winter…

Well I got curious if there was any activity out there on his place. So i rode out there this evening and saw that the place was covered in “hunting club” signs. There was a truck parked where we used to go in.  I guess it’s WMA’s for me this season. I’m gonna go out to the canal section on hwy 6 by Amory tomorrow morning. I got a wma stamp when i got my license. What’s the deal with that? Do you have to pay at the ranger station when you go out? I know there are cards or something to fill out.  There are no good “deer for dummies” articles with info on the wma’s.

Jeff:  I had some more thoughts on Mississippi WMA’s…there is another down near Houston, MS.,  (Chickasaw WMA)…as I remember, it has about 55,000 acres….I turkey hunted on it many times.  i recall seeing a good bit of buck sign while trolling around for gobblers–scrapes, hooked/torn-up trees, trails.  By the way, scouting for bucks by turkey hunting, or getting out right after the season closes, is a really productive scouting technique.  If you find shed antlers, that is pretty good evidence that buck “made it” and will be near that area again next year.  The hooked trees, scrapes and trails are ones used in the hunting seasons, not early, summer/fall signs.  Back to WMA hunting–all have check-in/check-out stations on main access roads.  You can find maps, daily use permits, and the regulations for hunting on that area.  I suggest that you do a “ride-around” before hunting on a WMA, with a map and/or a GPS.  That allows you to see campsites of other hunters, parking areas (and how much they have been used), and familiarizes you with the overall area layout in relation to roads and other landmarks.  WMA’s are pretty heavily used, lots of hunters who may be tuned in to the same area you are hunting.  At any given time, you never know if and when someone may walk in on you, or vice-versa.  BE CAREFUL.  Wear-without fail-at least the minimum 500 sq. inches of hunter orange.  Be ever alert/aware of your surroundings.  You don’t want to get shot, or shoot someone!

Go to the mdwfp.com website…click on WMA’s-they have an interactive map…and tell on the site what, if any, fees are charged…plus, the phone number and contact info of the Area Manager is posted on the site, too….up north of Tupelo, off the Trace somewhere, you can get on the Divide Section….I can’t remember just where, but there is a lot of  Corps of Engineers mitigation land up there managed by the mdwfp…check out the website, and do a little research…the MDWFP manages a lot of mitigation land, owned (I think) by the US Corps of Engineers, lands set aside when the Tenn-TomWaterway was established;  several hundred thousand acres  It’s be a  a good bet to hunt on those areas to find a good buck.

One more:  when you find your spot, make some mock scrapes, and infuse them with both Intruder Buck scent, and Doe in Heat….will attract deer to your spot, and hold one in gun range while it checks out the “smell”…..you can double the quantity of the commercial scents by diluting them half and half with plain ole tapwater, and put it in a small spray or CLEAN spritz bottle….and use the spray to re-scent the scrapes….also, I use 35mm film cans with clean cotton balls stuffed in ‘em, tie a loop of hanging string or wire on it, and infuse the cotton with scent (carry them in and out in a ziploc bag)…hang ‘em around in shooting lanes on trails near your spot to also “attract and hold” target deer…..try these tips out…

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Around 1965, during one of the first Bow Seasons in Mississippi, I was hunting a field edge on a private club “over the levee” in the Delta.  The field was known as the “Pea Vine Field”, as the club grew field peas there to attract and hold turkeys and deer, and provide extra nutrition.  We found and noted the afternoon wind direction, and skirted the field on foot and out of sight to get to the down wind side to hide and hunt.  I found a distinct, well-worn trail leading to and from the field, backed off 20 yards from the field edge, and set-up on the ground in a thicket of second growth saplings, the slight, failing breeze distinctly in my face.  I had a clear shot along 10-15 yards of the trail from my hide-out.  In a short while, deer, turkeys and a few feral hogs began to enter the 45 acre or so field.  Watching them closely as they fed and frolicked unconcerned in the pea vines, I noticed one of them was a huge bodied deer, noticeably larger even at the over two hundred yards distance.  The sun had set, leaving only about 30 minutes of available shooting light, till “last dark”.  The big deer bluffed and bulllied the smaller bucks, chased and smelled the does, and gradually worked closer to my spot.  His rack became visible in the failing light the closer to me he moved.  It was wide, with tall tines and heavy mass.  Minutes passed, and he was close enough to make out a perfectly symmetrical 6 x 6 set of antlers, a twelve-point!   He had to weigh nearly 300 pounds!  I shook and shivered, as much from adrenaline-stoked oncoming buck fever as from the falling temperature.  He edged closer.  Just as light was failing, he began to head onto the trail just in front of me, not spooked, just using the trail as his exit route.  The wind or gentle breeze had died to complete calm-or so I thought.  I came to full draw with my 53 lb. draw Bear semi-recurve bow, the 30 inch cedar arrow tipped with a deadly Bear Razor-head, slightly quivering from my anticipation of the coming shot, and the exertion of holding the full draw.  As the huge buck came into my shooting lane, he stopped, raised his head, and looked directly at me.  He snorted, wheeled and crashed away off the far side of the trail through the saplings.  “What happened?”, I wondered, and probably yelled-no, SCREAMED- aloud.  It dawned on me, then, with crystal clarity:  I had forgotten the thermals.  My scent, borne by the faint, nearly undetectable air movement of the down-falling late afternoon thermal had billowed out in all directions from my spot!  The air all around me had to be saturated with my human scent!   That buck was then the biggest I had ever seen, and now, all this hunting and observing deer time later, one of the biggest I have EVER  seen.   Is it little wonder, then, why I harp on thermal air movement, wind direction and speed, and “hunting into the wind?”

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First thing to understand and accept is that human scent cannot be eliminated.  We breathe, have moist eyes and ear canals and other “openings” in our bodies that constantly exude scent.  The best we can do, therefore, is try to control or mask our “smell” to fool this number one whitetail sense.  A whitetail can differentiate scent particles as few as 2 or 3 parts per million.  To illustrate:  if a gallon of pure, 100% deer urine were poured into an Olympic-sized swimming pool, a deer smelling the water could determine the sex, age, general physical condition, probable date of a doe’s onset of estrous, what the deer from which the scent was extracted had to eat last, and many other individual characteristics.  Over 60% of a whitetail’s brain is devoted to scent detection.  They can smell over 10,000 times better than a human, and about 1000 times better than a bloodhound.  Considering that a bloodhound can pick up a lingering scent as long as 72 hours after it’s deposited, it seems futile to try to beat this sense, right?  Not necessarily.

The oldest-and truest-rule of deer hunting is “hunt into the wind.”  If the wind is felt on the back of our neck, or quartering or crossing from the rear, the deer will smell us.  Setting up two or more stands or blinds to allow for the most common prevailing winds in a given area is mandatory.  In my area, wind from the south is most common, while north wind quandrant is second.  Even in calm conditions, breezes and thermals will affect the selection of when and where to hunt a given area.  Another tip:  thermals generally rise in the morning, and fall in the afternoon and evening.  If the hunter is restricted by time and area constraints, a masking or cover scent must necessarily come into play.  Remember:  we can’t eliminate scent, or defeat the deer’s nose.  We can, tho, reduce the likelihood of being detected.

One year, I used a commercial scent killer.  It had a musty, damp leaf/forest floor scent.  It advertises being able to “eliminate up to 99% of REPLICATED human scent”:   key word being “replicated”.  What that means is that it COULD, possibly, eliminate UP TO that high percentile of scent that bacterial action in and on fabrics, textiles and exposed skin and leather or rubber may produce.  It COULD NOT eliminate the original production of the scent itself.  By experimentation, I found that by bruising and “barking” common red cedar limbs and leaves/needles, I did the same “elimination”, without the expense.  Another old-tyme varmint-type hunter  (kinda like me) used diesel fuel as a cover or masking scent.  He stated:  “there ain’t a deer alive that ain’t smelled diesel, and he ain’t afraid of it”.  He would dampen a new sponge with a tiny amount-very tiny-of diesel, tie the sponge on a cord or string five feet long or so, and use it for a drag behind him as he walked to a stand location.  Then, he’d wipe the sponge-using readily available, inexpensive rubber or plastic gloves on his hands-on the exposed surfaces of his blind or stand.  If a reader chooses to try this, use extreme caution, as diesel fuel is highly inflammable.  I’ve used this diesel-sponge and it works.  I carried it to and from hunting areas  in a well sealed, locking plastic bag.  Given, tho, the danger of the diesel sponge use, I use the bruised red cedar leaves and branches almost exclusively.  I’ve used other non-intrusive aromatics, too, like real, or “pure”-not artificial-vanilla flavoring, and fresh herbs like sage and rosemary.

Remember:  hunting into the wind is the only pretty near fool-proof way to insure a target deer won’t smell us.  If we can’t pick and choose when and where to hunt, try masking scents.  Just don’t depend on them to do more than mask or reduce our scent.

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