Use Pressure to Your Advantage | Understanding Mature Bucks

As hunters or managers, most of us curse hunting pressure. If it just weren’t for all those pesky neighbors, we’d be golden! What few realize is that we can often also use that pressure to both our hunting and management advantages. The beauty is it’s actually easier than most would think, in many situations.

This is Chapter 17 of Steve Bartylla’s free online book, Understanding Mature Bucks.

Since mature bucks react to pressure, it only stands to reason that those of us that hunt pressured bucks must cater our tactics to their adaptations to hunting pressure, assuming we want to be consistently successful. Since doors really opened up for me, about 25ish years ago, I’ve split my time about 50/50 between hunting pristinely managed grounds and dirt open to any and everyone. Trust me when I tell you that it is soooooooooooo much easier to look smart on the pristinely managed grounds, as well as most every tactic one can try being MUCH more effective.

Hunting pressure has the ability to make mature bucks the toughest animal I’ve ever hunted. Remove the pressure factor and they become infinitely easier. I DIDN’T say easy, but, without a shred of doubt in my mind, mature bucks not under tremendous hunting pressure are almost always easier to tag than those that fought hunting pressure far more days over season than not, spread over three or more seasons, just to still be one of the few left standing. I’m telling you, there’s not a shred of doubt in my mind that pressured, mature bucks are a different breed from mature bucks on managed grounds. Those in pressure cookers just don’t have room for error. When they get sloppy, they die young. On managed grounds, they typically get older, anyway.

If you’re hunting heavily pressured bucks, throw 90+% of hunting tactics and gadgetry right out the window, as employing them will do you far more harm than good. In fact, a buck I arrowed a few years back was slinking away from another hunter’s calling and rattling sequence. No, the buck I shot didn’t seem to bust the hunter calling and rattling. He apparently merely heard the sequence and knew it was time to head for his daylight core area, now!

Stop to think about it for a little and it makes all the sense in the world. Gadgetry literally fuels the hunting TV market, with a gaggle of hunters shown every day using that year’s new calls and the groundbreaking synthetic antlers that the show sponsors just came out with. Because of that, a bunch of hunters spend a bunch of money every year on calls and synthetic antlers. You can bet they’re going to use them. If the ground is truly pressured, that means you can also bet that any 3.5-year-old or older buck on that ground has heard calling multiple times, not just that season, but also the season before and before and before. Any pressured buck that’s overly likely to respond to calling and rattling is already dead or not really a pressured buck. Those that head the other way just may survive.

My very first rule when hunting pressured bucks is to hardly ever draw any attention to myself. The only time I’ll ever do any calling is when I actually see a buck I want to shoot and it appears he will not naturally offer me a shot. I still won’t rattle, but I will go so far as a grunt and doe call. That’s as crazy as I ever get, and it’s only in that exact situation, and I try to be overly generous in giving Mr. Big the benefit of the doubt that he will circle back around. I just have that poor of luck calling truly pressured, mature bucks. Even when they respond positively, they almost always hang up, just out of range, not approaching closer, unless they spot these phantom deer.

Now, calling with another deer near as a decoy, when Mr. Big wasn’t coming in naturally, has worked for me. Obviously, there’s a calculated gamble to that, as well, and you can’t put live decoys where you want them, when you want them. Just keep that in your bag of tricks, though, as it may fill an extra buck tag or two over the years, as it has for me.

That said, I try VERY hard to not even voice grunt a buck to stop. If I have to cross a shooting lane to get to stand (will try to avoid it, if possible, but not always possible), I’ll dribble a little deer pee on the dirt, as that’s often enough to get them to stop. The buck I shot that was slinking away for the calling was smelling some, as the arrow met his vitals. If that doesn’t work, I’ll shoot him on a walk (practice doing stuff like that, IF you’re going to try it in the deer woods, please). If trotting, I’ll voice grunt, but I don’t like to. Doing so has caused two walking bucks to tear out like I’d double lunged them, merely at the voice grunt. I suspect it had to do with similarly close calls of their youth leaving scars, but that’s just a guess, and knowing why doesn’t put those bucks back in my shooting lanes, anyway.

Next, I’ve hunted a whole bunch of pressured grounds over a bunch of states. One thing every mature buck I took from any of that dirt had in common is that they found pockets where we just didn’t go, and that’s where they burnt their daylight hours. The location of the slinking buck was only a couple acres, actually right next to the road and within sight of the parking lot for the ground. No self-respecting hunter would ever set a stand in there, instead of going for the big timber and nasty swamps comprising the majority of that public ground. I’m supremely confident that’s why that 3.5-year-old buck was burning daylight there. “We” hunters ignored it.

All of these overlooked spots have fallen in one of two categories, in my experience. You just heard one of them, those overlooked areas. I figured that out from doing big buck profile articles, way back when I had to take any work I could get. Most all of the world-class bucks I did pieces on, that happened to be shot on pressured grounds, were shot by kids or otherwise inexperienced hunters, hunting those locations where we are just too dang smart to hunt, as no way Mr. Big is going to lay up in that small pocket of cover or that strip of timber along the Missouri highway one kid did or climb up that one tree in the middle of wide open pasture on a property in a program allowing hunting or any of the other seemingly ridiculous locations other kids and first timers I did pieces on took the giants they they did. “We” know better!

And why were the giants living there? You don’t grow to be old on pummeled grounds by bedding in areas “we’re” hunting. They have to find pockets where we’re not or have very short life expectancies.

The other category I’ve found are those areas just too much work to get to. An honest half mile walk leaves most behind and a mile leaves nearly everyone. Nasty ditches and steep ridges can be enough too, though. For those willing to break out waders or a canoe, water is actually an easy barrier that leaves most others behind. Even a lot of clear cut operations eventually create back sides that are a real pain to get to. That said, you snake your way through that 10ish-year-old aspen regrowth to the back side and that edge, where the slashings meet up with mature timber, is often a great stand right there!

Frankly, the type of setup I’m going to be looking for is going to have a lot to do with how big the otherwise unhunted area is. In the case of the slinking buck, the pocket was so small that all I was trying to do is cover his entrance trail. In many cases, on 10+ acre pockets of otherwise unhunted cover, I’ll hunt that pocket with the same approach as I would managed grounds, by hunting scrapes, does, funnels and such.

Now, I know I blathered on in the weather chapter about not letting weather stop me from hunting, and I don’t, but I sure do use it to help select where I’ll be hunting. I don’t go into these areas on seemingly bad deer movement days. Instead, I’ll hunt other areas, even if it’s a low-odds area of pummeled grounds.

Along with that, I wait until the very last week of the scrape phase, before going in. I’ve got an extremely small margin for error on these bucks. I want to make it happen the first or second time in, as odds of him not figuring it out by hunt three start getting slim.

Also, just because these areas are often very fragile, most all sits involve me getting in well before others and sitting all day or until I let the arrow fly, whichever comes first.

I wish I had something more exciting to say on this topic, but my approach really is that straight forward. How to hunt pressure bucks is easy. Find where others don’t hunt to find Mr. Big, do nothing to draw attention to yourself and wait for a good weather day on a peak movement phase of season to go in and get it done. The biggest challenges are burning the boot leather and pouring over aerials to find them and then make it happen. My approach is really that straight forward.

Read Chapter 1: Whitetail Tendencies

Read Chapter 2: Whitetail Home Ranges

Read Chapter 3: How Deer Use Core Areas

Read Chapter 4: When Core Areas Shift

Read Chapter 5: Seasonal Shifts

Read Chapter 6: Family Group Dominance

Read Chapter 7: Male Dominance

Read Chapter 8: Deer Population Dynamics

Read Chapter 9: Deciphering Deer Breeding Phases

Read Chapter 10: Big Deer Breeding Behavior

Read Chapter 11: Whitetail Rut Stress

Read Chapter 12: How Deer Deal With Winter Stress