Thursday, October 02, 2008
A Good Reason Not To Shoot An Opening-Day Buck
There is a fairly large number of people who could, if they chose, shoot a buck the first day of the archery season, and spend the rest of the fall bowling or doing something far less exciting than hunting.
Many of my friends, and I must include myself in this group, could easily dump a buck the first day. But we don’t, and for good reason.
The majority of really good buck hunters are not interested in a short archery season. If anything, we want to prolong our hunting time, and that is difficult to do if a person shoots the first buck he sees.
All of us subscribe to a basic philosophy: it’s as much or more fun fooling a buck, drawing on him if we wish, and then backing off and not taking the shot, than shooting it. Fooling the buck by being in his backyard without him knowing it, and knowing as much about him as we do, makes this a greater test of skill than arrowing a small buck.
There is a certain sense of being in tune with nature when you’ve got one or more decent bucks lined up, and know that they could be shot if you so desired. My buddy Dave Richey < http://www.daverichey.com > shot a buck on Oct. 2 last year, and it was a fine 8-pointer.
He couldn’t resist the shot at close range as it sparred with a larger buck, but although he seldom shoots a buck before the rut starts, he made an exception. He prized that buck, and is having it mounted, but kicked himself for taking one so early in the season.
The trouble, as he so well knows, is a buck shot very early in the season means the hunter is down to only being able to shoot a doe if they have a tag.
Preseason scouting tells us where to hunt, and I always have a number of locations where I can hunt at will on anything but an east wind. We love to sample a spot, and prove to ourselves that life is indeed good when we can narrow down a buck’s travels to the point where shooting that animal is more about knowing when to hunt the spot than almost anything else.
Granted, during the rut, bucks can cruise far and wide in search of estrus does, but they still travel known routes. If they bump into another hunter, it may cause them to change their travel plans for a day or two, but soon they will be following the same travel corridors.
It’s watching the buck approach early in the season, during the rut or the post-rut period, that lights me up. Shooting a buck is the least difficult part of the hunt. What is most difficult is studying their behavior, knowing how they move, and being in place before they move through, that provides me with the biggest kick of all.
It’s not necessary to always shoot a large buck. I’m content to shoot does as part of my herd management program, and in many cases, shooting an old doe is much more challenging than a big buck.
The long and the short of it is that we can, by not shooting bucks early in the season, prolong our hunting season. It gives us a reason to be out in the woods tomorrow, the day after, and every day next week.
Of course, many hunters don’t take their bow hunting as serious as some of us do, and that is fine. But if someone tells you he passed up a nice 8-point on opening day, don’t ask him “Why didn’t you shoot?”
Chances are he would tell you that the time just wasn’t right. The time he speaks of is too early in the season. If he shoots that buck, and a bigger one during the rut, what would he have to do during the firearm deer season, the December muzzleloader season or the December bow season?
He would miss a good bit of the season, and feel bad because he had robbed himself of so many deer hunting days.—The Whitetail Wizard