Getting up close and personal is one of the best muzzleloader hunting tips for killing more whitetails with a smokepole — and getting the most enjoyment from the experience.
Modern muzzleloaders perform feats that would astonish our pioneer forefathers, but like any hunting tool, they work best at close ranges. The limitations of primitive muzzleloaders demand close shots to cleanly kill whitetails, but for traditionalists, intimacy is part of a values system. They strive to cheat a whitetail’s highly adapted senses of sight, smell and hearing to get as near as possible to the game. The shot is merely a means to an end.
There’s a word for that. It’s called hunting. It’s a skill where practical and ethical principles apply equally to hunters who use advanced and primitive muzzleloaders.
Ed Cook of Stilwell, Oklahoma, epitomizes the modern muzzleloader hunter. His customized CVA Apex is a flat-shooting rig out to long distances. Cook expects and attains that level of performance with custom loads and frequent practice. That’s how he was able to kill a trophy buck at 238 yards in Illinois with his muzzleloader, but he took that long of a shot only because the situation required it. That’s an extreme example, for sure. Muzzleloaders are not designed to be long-range machines, but it goes to show that knowing your gun and practicing religiously are two things that can improve your accuracy.
Optimally, Cook prefers his shots to be within 100 yards, because the probability of success increases as distance decreases. Also, most of Cook’s opportunities are inside 100 yards because of where he hunts. He often participates in controlled draw hunts on public land around the South and Midwest. Thick cover characterizes these places.
Cook has won a phenomenal number of coveted draw permits, including two consecutive hunts at the Freddie Black Choctaw Island Research Wildlife Management Area in near Lake Village, Arkansas. Situated along the Mississippi River, Choctaw Island WMA is one of the Natural State’s top areas for mature bucks, but it is a low odds draw.
Cook drew his first Choctaw Island permit in 2013. He passed on a 150-inch buck because he had not yet shot a requisite doe. He later passed on a 170-class buck because it appeared two minutes after legal shooting time. Amazingly, Cook drew the Choctaw Island hunt again in 2014, and he parlayed his lessons from 2013 into success.
“I killed a super buck, a main-frame 8-pointer with two little stickers on the right side,” Cook said. “His rack was 23 inches wide, and his gross score was about 162 inches.”
When Arkansas Game and Fish Commission biologists trapped, tagged and released the buck in 2011, they estimated its age at 3.5 years. The buck still wore the ear tag when Cook killed it in 2014.
That was one of about 15 muzzleloader kills for Cook that scored higher than 130 Boone and Crockett. He said he’s lost track of how many in that class he elected not to shoot.
“In my early days I would shoot 130-inch deer, but now he has to get to that 150 mark or bigger,” Cook said.
To find that caliber of bucks, Cook said company is not welcome. He seeks out spots far from roads to find the best habitat for mature bucks.
“Sometimes you might be a mile or a mile and a half off a road to get away from people who pull up at daylight and go 200 yards off a road,” Cook said. “That cuts out 75% of people who hunt public land.”
Mapping Out a Plan
To find those areas, Cook says he orders aerial maps from MyTopo.com. The maps are printed on water resistant paper, and Cook absorbs their subtleties.
“You can learn a lot about a place by studying a map,” Cook said. “An aerial map doesn’t have topo lines, but if you can put an aerial map beside a computer map that has topo lines, you can fill in the puzzle.”
Even in the digital age, a hard copy map is indispensable, Cook says. If you rely on your phone for intel, you might fly blind.
“If you don’t have a phone signal, then you don’t have a map,” he said. “You can’t always count on getting phone data.”
Cook says he looks for pinch points between distinct features. Examples include strips of woods between two fields, or a treeline between two brushy fields. There, he finds a tree that allows him to cover a broad shooting zone that encompasses entry points, exit points and crossings.
“Deer follow the edges, the transition zones between major features,” Cook said. “You need to find somewhere that you can cover as much of that as you can within 100 yards.”
Prevailing winds determine range, Cook added. This entails monitoring weather forecasts to anticipate wind direction at peak deer movement times.
“I like 30-yard shots better than 100-yard shots, but if getting closer makes your wind blow into open fields where does will smell you and start stomping and blowing, a buck will probably not come out,” Cook said. “It’s not just about where deer are coming from, but where they are going to. You have to plan ahead and move your position relative to the wind.”
Cook said the rut phase factors heavily into his strategy. He selects ambush points to intercept bucks on the move during early and peak rut times. Before and after the rut, he said he keys in on food sources.
“If I’m hunting the rut, I’m going to look for pinch points and travel corridors,” Cook said. “Bucks will be walking and looking for does. If it’s later, I’ll look for food sources, and I’ll try to reach the area manager or the biologist for that area and see what they have for food sources.
“If there’s been rain and food plots are good, I’ll gauge that. If there’s a lack of acorns or gobs of acorns, that can determine whether deer are using food plots.”
Finally, Cook recommends staying in the stand.
“If I averaged all the deer I’ve killed, it would be pretty even from morning to midday to evening,” Cook said. “If you get down at 10 a.m. and leave an area that you’re going to hunt in the morning and evening, it’s like doing a one-man deer drive at 10 a.m., and another at 2 p.m. when you come back. If you’re walking and deer are bedded down 150 to 200 yards away, they’re going to smell you and leave.”
Old School Strategies
On the traditional end of the muzzleloading spectrum is Mark Marraccini of Lawrenceburg, Kentucky, former communications director for the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife. He builds and uses his own primitive muzzleloaders. Patched round balls and blackpowder are his whitetail prescription.
“It’s just a nice hobby I started in the late ’70s and continued through the years,” Marraccini said. “I like the flintlock look, and I like to hunt that way.”
Of course, primitive means open sights, which require getting close to deer. Close range increases the hunter’s odds, but it increases a deer’s odds more.
“You have to remember that since a deer was a newborn fawn, something has been trying to eat it,” Marraccini said. “By the time it becomes an animal that you really want to hunt, its survival skills are really good. Getting closer to an animal like that requires more skill on the part of the hunter.”
Marraccini will hunt from an elevated stand, but he appreciates the versatility of hunting from the ground. “You can just slip into areas where you think they’re going to be moving,” Marraccini said. “Pay attention to the sun’s position, whether you’re backlit or face lit. Don’t be silhouetted against the sky. And pay attention to the wind direction, and whether they’re coming to or going from bedding areas and food sources. I approach it as if I were an archery hunter. I want to get close.”
The Ground Game
If you play the wind and the sun correctly, hunting from the ground is not disadvantageous if you can keep still. Deer don’t ignore movement at ground level.
“In the woods, deer walk behind trees, and you can move when their sight is blocked,” Marraccini said. “Sometimes you have to wait until it’s looking the other way.”
Marraccini recalls one buck that he shot from the ground at 65 yards. It wasn’t particularly big, Marraccini says, but he felt accomplished to slip in undetected while it browsed on persimmons on the ground.
“The sun was right, and the deer was really occupied with those ripe persimmons,” Marraccini said. “I was surprised that I got that close.”
In Kentucky, the October muzzleloader season slightly precedes the rut. You can still pattern bucks at that time, Marraccini says, so he hunts trails between bedding areas and food sources. “Deer primarily eat acorns in October,” he said, “but they might also feed in harvested and unharvested cornfields.”
My hunting methods place me between Cook and Marracinni. My favorite muzzleloader uses modern, polymer-tipped copper bullets powered by Hodgdon Triple Seven propellant and 209 primers. It wears a 3-9X40mm scope, and it’s dead accurate out to 200 yards.
Even so, most of my shot opportunities are within 40 yards. My favorite muzzleloader stand overlooks the convergence of several trails in the dense, brushy understory of a mature pine thicket. Deer almost always visit during the last 30 to 45 minutes of legal shooting light. In 2017, I killed an 8-point buck at 35 yards that strolled through at dusk in search of does.
During the 2018 Arkansas muzzleloader season in mid-October, a mature doe and two — sometimes three — yearlings came through almost every evening.
I recognized the mature doe from previous seasons. She’s always accompanied by twins in October, so she’s obviously a breeder. I’ve also watched bucks chase her for two seasons. She’s a good one to have around.
I refrained from shooting a young doe early in the season to avoid spoiling my chances for a buck. However, I wanted to earn a Triple Trophy Award, which the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission bestows on hunters who kill a deer with archery equipment, muzzleloader and modern gun during the same year.
On the last day of the muzzleloader season, I resolved to take a young doe, but only one presented a clear shot. The waning light among pine-roofed brush was hazy with dust and humidity. My finger was closing around the trigger when the deer turned its head at an angle that backlit two faint, spidery wisps of antler against the dark backdrop of a pine tree. I wouldn’t have seen the spikes without the scope. Even with the scope they would have been indistinguishable at a greater distance.
Spike bucks are not legal in that deer management zone. I breathed a heavy sigh of relief as I lowered my rifle. That’s why I get close — for self-preservation.
— Bryan Hendricks is the outdoors editor for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in Little Rock, Arkansas. He is an avid deer hunter who covers all aspects of deer management in the Natural State.
