Do you fall into one of these five categories? Even if you don’t, learn how and why deer hunters from these regions outsmart wary whitetails in the hardest-to-hunt areas of North America.
by Patrick Meitin
Like fly fisherman attributing intellect to trout they cannot catch, all deer hunters believe their deer are smarter than those you pursue.
Some guy from the Midwest, for instance, who kills a 150-plus-inch buck each year without fail, will put forth the proposition his whitetails are smarter than yours. The world’s whitetail experts become experts by virtue of killing higher-scoring bucks than you and me.
But are they really great hunters?
I’ve long said I’m not particularly interested in what a guy regularly killing monster bucks from prime Midwest (or other exclusive) properties has to offer in way of hunting advice. I’d rather hear from someone hunting marginal or hard-hunted habitat who semi-regularly tags 125- to 130-inch bucks. That hunter obviously knows how to work around challenging conditions. With that in mind, what habitats, and the conditions these regions present, produce the best deer hunters?
In my opinion the best deer hunters are made in the following five regions/areas:
1. Deep South Deer Hunters
At times it seems the Deep South proper (to my mind this means the Carolinas, Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and even East Texas) offers too much of a good thing — too much cover, too much food and sometimes too many deer. These factors offer unique challenges, combined with lesser genetics that make high-scoring bucks much rarer than in Midwestern states.
Long-time Georgia resident Brian Murphy, executive director of the Quality Deer Management Association (QDMA), is no stranger to Southern deer hunting. He sees the South’s biggest problem as homogeneous habitat, particularly huge pine plantations that appeared after the spotted owl debate in the West shifted much paper/timber production to the South. This type of land management leaves hunters with no easily discerned real focus points, as are common in better deer habitats, making pin-pointing stand locations difficult.
Murphy highlights land management as what makes Southern deer hunting more challenging, or more productive. Southern deer herds, lacking climate challenges and any serious predator threats (coyotes the new exception), can quickly overrun their habitat. Too many deer suppresses trophy quality and results in strung-out ruts without concentrated movement to focus efforts around. Murphy points to intensive deer and land management as the key to better Southern deer hunting, including reducing overall herd numbers to create more productive landscapes.
On average properties Murphy says avoiding mature forests and concentrating on younger habitats (clear-cuts, burns, land clearing) results in increased deer sightings. He is also a big advocate of trail camera intel, especially when hunting difficult Southern properties.
2. New England Deer Hunters
New England offers unique challenges, largest among them extreme hunting pressure resulting from some of the nation’s most concentrated human population masses. Maine deer hunter Bob Humphrey illustrates other challenges. “Maine’s tradition of implied consent is unique and somewhat rare today,” he said.
“While not the law, tradition dictates that private land that is not posted is open to hunting for everyone. Combine that with some of the densest human populations in the country and the picture becomes clear. Once the guns begin roaring deer turn understandably nocturnal, especially mature deer.”
According to recent QDMA Whitetail Reports, Maine produces some of the highest yearling buck harvests in the nation, at around 70 percent. Very few bucks live past 1½ years old. Habitat also factors, offering the polar opposite of prime Midwest habitats. Instead of limited cover and plenty of open agricultural spaces, New England is dominated by unbroken forest, with few open areas. Deer can travel, feed and bed almost anywhere, making it easy to avoid hunters in the dense cover. Successful hunters are tasked with the challenge of first trying to find mature bucks, trail cameras important here because few deer are active during daylight.
The next challenge is then patterning these deer, because there are few places where they move during daylight, even before season. Try to pattern them, which is tough, because deer generally don’t follow patterns. The typical game plan is to try to get a crack at them during bow season or the first few days of gun season. Once the shooting begins it becomes a matter of using pressure and subtle funnels leading into escape cover.
There are those seven magical days of the rut when bucks might let down their guard, but intense hunting pressure stacks the odds against you. Humphrey says he sat 120 days and witnessed four does and three bucks during the 2018 Maine deer season.
3. Northwoods Deer Hunters
The wooded and often swampy northwoods of Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula — as prime examples — are large and sprawling. Added to the complications is the fact these habitats result in very low deer density, as harsh winters including heavy snow accumulations annually trim herds.
The Northwoods also present a lack of distinct food sources — nearly the opposite of Midwest farmlands with nearly unlimited groceries. Finally, easily accessible areas receive intense hunting pressure, with lightly pressured areas accessed only through great effort due to wet and swampy terrain.
Minnesota deer hunter Mark Melotik knows Northwoods whitetails, a lifetime resident who enjoys the solitude and extreme challenge of these deer habitats. He has several bits of advice for prospective Northwoods hunters. He says getting away from crowds is priority No. 1. He dons waders to slog across nasty swamps to reach habitats others will not work to gain, and just as often uses canoes to cross lakes, rivers or navigable swamps to hunt areas that others seldom reach. He is especially fond of wilderness lakes and rivers that require a real commitment of time and sweat equity. In fact,
Melotik says if you are serious about Northwoods success you should devote at least two weeks to any hunt. These remote areas and the effort required to access them generally preclude extensive trail camera scouting. Instead, hunters must accurately read and hunt sign, namely scrapes and rubs lines. Melotik says he concentrates on bucks running wilderness rivers and pinch points along such corridors. He reminds hunters you can sit for days without seeing a deer, but says to trust in the sign and to remain patient.
4. Northwest Big Woods Deer Hunters
Many of the same challenges experienced in Northwoods regions apply to the Inland Northwest — northeastern Washington state, northern Idaho and far-western Montana. To those challenges add mountainous terrain. You are essentially pursuing whitetails in vast elk country. Washington state makes things a bit easier by allowing baiting for deer, but these sites normally require more effort than a Texas corn feeder, packing bait into remote locations on your back to leave competition behind. Idaho and Montana do not allow baiting, which adds a new dimension of challenge.
Habitat generally lacks defined bedding and feeding areas, such as better farmland habitats, essentially meaning the entire world is one big feeding/bedding area. Feed is also less defined. Early September seasons (often including velvet antlers) relinquish success through feral fruit trees (pears, plums and apples) and water holes (at least during warm periods). Later, rub lines and especially major signboard scrapes are your avenues to success.
Early success is easiest won — if you have done your scouting and found that needle-in-a-haystack site. For instance, I have a single isolated apple tree I have now tagged three early season bucks from, but I can hunt it only on a particular wind, which keeps me away the entirety of the season on bad years. I’ve not had much luck on water (the Northwest is over-watered), but I do capture trail cam images of mature bucks on key springs and watering holes, so I know it’s possible.
The rut has resulted in several of my best-scoring northern Idaho bucks guarding major scrapes, but it is inherently time consuming. I went to the very last day of the season this year, sitting some 25 days straight before getting a shot. Topography is also important to funneling low-density deer, saddles (when the wind makes this feasible), ridgeline trails and ridge-point off ramps. I normally run 25 to 30 trail cameras at a time in an attempt to keep abreast of it all, which means I don’t get to take naps after early wake-ups and late evenings. The rut is a marathon in the Northwest and stubborn persistence is imperative to success.
You have to really want it.
5. Suburban Deer Hunters
I bowhunted some of my first whitetails in suburbia — a strange gig for a guy used to prowling the wide-open spaces of the West. Hunting pressure is intense and mature deer quickly learn to work around human activity.
Two ploys ruled: working mightily to avoid burning out stands, and thinking outside the box. Avoiding burning out stands was imperative because hunting spots were extremely limited, meaning you were forced to hunt the same stands repeatedly. This is where I learned to apply obsessive scent-control measures.
You also had to really think entrance and exit strategies through, and it was quite common to get pinned in a stand hours after dark while waiting for nocturnal deer to pass through. Thinking outside the box was all about figuring out how deer were avoiding that intense hunting pressure and doing what others were not to create deer encounters. This largely consisted of hunting some pretty ugly places; places so ugly others simply discounted them out of hand. I sat in ground blinds situated behind buzzing electric transfer stations, in a line of trees behind a junkyard or along a narrow strip of woods wedged between an active railroad track and major river. I also mastered the art of wheedling trespass permission from strangers — being painfully polite, presenting myself only after cleaning up a bit, and always reminding landowners I was bowhunting and no firearms would be involved.
Playing the desperate guy who’d traveled far to enjoy their bounty also helped, playing on regional pride or a good host mentality. I killed a few bucks in earshot of rushing traffic or after-school pick-up games, had deer die in strange places (such as a church parking lot, though I received more encouragement than scorn). But I also learned how to kill white-tailed deer under the toughest of circumstances, which ultimately made me a much better deer hunter and made deer hunting in places such as the Midwest seem almost too easy.
— Patrick Meitin is a widely traveled bowhunter and former big game hunting guide. He hails from northern Idaho.