DEER HUNTING To bag a big buck, provide sanctuary

It's important to decide where not to hunt.
By JOHN PHILLIPS
BIRMINGHAM POST-HERALD
Dr. Grant Woods, a longtime deer researcher from Reeds Spring, Mo., says, "Deciding where you won't hunt is much more important and critical to taking a big buck this coming season than deciding where you'll hunt. You must decide not to hunt where the biggest buck on your property lives because if you hunt that spot, or, if you spook him, either by his smelling, hearing or seeing you, then that older-age-class buck may leave your property.
"To have big bucks on your property year after year, you must provide a sanctuary for them where they don't experience any hunting pressure but do have food, water and cover available. If you provide a sanctuary for the deer on your property, you may be able to take at least one nice buck off even 150 acres or less this season."
Each year, deer researchers learn more about white-tailed deer, and recent studies have proved that hunter contact causes more older-age-class bucks to leave a property than any other factor. This same research has shown that bucks that don't have human contact will much more likely remain on that property.
How it's done
To create a sanctuary, usually a thick-cover area, don't allow any hunter on the private land you hunt to go into the sanctuary during daylight hours, which will make that buck feel safe and secure. Mark that thick-cover sanctuary with signs and/or colored paint or flagging tape to ensure that no one accidentally stumbles into the sanctuary.
Move back 50 yards from the sanctuary, and hunt the trails going in and out of the sanctuary. Bucks probably only will leave their sanctuary at dark, daylight and during the rut, but they will live on your property.
Of course, finding a wounded deer that runs into your land's sanctuary presents a problem, and you will face that problem, particularly if you bowhunt near the sanctuary. Go into your property's sanctuary only after dark to retrieve downed deer.
Then even if you spook deer in the sanctuary, you'll spook them at nighttime and not during the day, which maintains the sanctuary's integrity during daylight hours.
Others will come
Also, if you create a sanctuary on your property, then you'll often attract your neighbors' older-age-class bucks, especially if they hunt their entire properties. The mature bucks on your neighbors' lands will move into your sanctuary to dodge hunting pressure.
"If you don't give your bucks reasons to leave home, generally they won't," Woods explains. "By providing food, water and sanctuary, you're giving that buck everything he needs so he has no reason to go somewhere else, except if he strays off the property chasing a doe in estrous."
Start looking at setting-up a sanctuary on your hunting land before deer season begins. If you use the sanctuary philosophy of deer hunting, you can attract, hold and have older and bigger deer to hunt than surrounding property owners will who don't have sanctuaries on their lands.
UContact John Phillips of the Birmingham Post-Herald in Alabama at www.postherald.com.