Whether you busted the biggest, baddest buck of your life this past season or are hunched over your kitchen table eating tag soup, it's doubtful you celebrated the end of deer season. If you're among the former group of lucky sportsmen, you can't wait to get a chance at another big boy--particularly one that is bigger than the last. It's what fuels us. If you're among those guys or gals who never even saw the type of deer that makes bypassers stop and gawk into the back of your pickup truck, well then, you're probably feeling a little depressed. If you saw one, shot and missed, then you're seeking redemption. Regardless, the next deer season can't get here soon enough.
The good thing is that there are a number of concrete steps you can take right now to begin building a season that will be your best yet.
Inventory Your Bucks
I can't say this enough. Keep those trail cams powered up and snapping images for at least a month or two after deer season closes and all of the bucks have dropped their antlers. Hang them along food plots planted with turnips, kale and other tasty cold-weather brassicas, or if you're allowed to bait after the season, hang them near a feeder or a spot spread with Primos Swamp Donkey attractant or Hunter's Specialties' Vita-Rack 26 Lick Site. I tried both last summer and had deer mauling the stuff inside of a week.
Start organizing your photos into a log book or computer folders according to individual bucks that you are able to identify. Compare them to bucks your cams captured back in late summer and on through the hunting season. Note any injuries that could affect the deer's health through the remainder of the year or even hamper antler development next season. Typically, injuries such as broken bones or infected gashes to the right side of a deer's body will limit future antler development on the left and vice versa.
Also look for damage to racks and scarring in the face from battling bucks, which might indicate whether a buck has an aggressive or passive personality. If a particular buck looks battle scarred, he most likely has an aggressive personality, which means you'll want to challenge his dominance next year with aggressive rattling, grunting and a buck decoy. Passive bucks can grow big, too, but they'll be nervous approaching decoys and are best worked with low grunts and doe bleats.
Did you catch a buck on camera back in September only to have him disappear during the rut and then return after the season? Odds are the buck uses your land for the basis of its home range, but roams away from the area in search of does once the rut kicks in. This could always change next season if he becomes the dominant boy in the area, but more than likely he'll roam again. This means that if you get a shot at him in the earliest days of the season, you better take it. It may be the only one you get.
Hunt for Sheds
Check your cameras frequently or, better yet, buy yourself a SmartScouter, a trail camera that e-mails images to your online account with the company and notifies you by e-mail of new images. Check them at least once a week. Doing so will let you know when bucks are beginning to drop their antlers. As soon as they do, it's time to hit the woods.
READ: Sheds, Unlocking The Secret
Look in the same spots where deer are apt to find winter nutrition, then walk well-worn trails between those places and likely bedding areas. You're not worried about busting survivors from cover now, so plunge into those thick, nasty spots where bucks bed and give them a good look. Compare sheds with the images of your bucks taken after the season, as well as those taken before and during the season.
Hunting sheds is more than just a fun activity during the off-season, it provides you with one more piece of information to help determine which trophies survived and where you saw them or captured them on camera before and during the season. It tells you the late-season routes that deer use and how far they are apt to roam. If you catch a buck on camera and find his sheds in a bedding area less than 100 yards away, you know that buck is not moving much once the guns start booming. Next season you'll know that he is likely nearby, and you can focus your efforts on the nearby cover.
© 2012 InterMedia Outdoors