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How to Find Deer Land to Hunt

A couple of years ago, I almost dropped the telephone receiver 3-weeks before deer season started when I heard the words, “The landowner has sold the land, and our hunting lease has been cancelled.” I had planned to scout the areas on our hunting property where I’d taken bucks before, cut shooting lanes and make sure that the deer fed on the nut trees they had in the past before the season. I enjoyed scouting for deer, because I considered it the true essence of the sport of hunting. But that year instead of scouting for a place to put my tree stand, I had to scout for new land to hunt. After talking to hunters across the U.S., I learned how often this same scenario had happened to them.

The search for a place to hunt that season began with my friends and my local sporting-goods dealer. At the store where I bought my hunting and fishing gear, the salesmen and the owner knew me, how I liked to hunt, what kinds of places I enjoyed hunting, and which people I’d get along with best. I asked all of them to let me know of any openings on deer leases. One of the salesmen suggested that, “You ought to talk to the local conservation officer. He knows every piece of property in the county and every other game warden in the state. If anyone can help you, he can.”

In thinking about my situation, I decided that two types of law-enforcement officers would know almost every landowner in a county – the conservation officer and the sheriff or the deputy sheriff – and would understand each landowner’s attitude toward hunters. Luckily my conservation officer knew another conservation officer in another county who helped me find a place to hunt that season. Since I never wanted to not have a property to hunt during deer season again, I started researching how to find hunting land when I didn’t have any.

I asked myself, “Who in the county would know the most rural landowners, how much land they controlled, and whether or not they would allow someone to hunt for free, lease their land or pay a day-usage fee?” Here’s the list I made:

* sheriff’s deputies and conservation officers.

* the bankers in rural counties and many urban areas, who had loaned money to landowners to plant crops, improve their lands, fence their properties, buy feed for cattle and/or borrow money to buy additional land. Hopefully the banker could act as a go-between or vouch for you and introduce you to a landowner.

* the newspaper man/lady who delivered the daily paper to rural communities. When in college, I became friends with an older student who lived in the same married-student apartments with us. Before class each day, he delivered morning papers from a nearby urban center to the rural region surrounding our university. He had permission to hunt and fish on more land than we could cover in our 4 college years, even though we hunted three afternoons a week and every weekend.

* the rural letter carrier/mailman, who might see deer as he traveled his route.

* the barber, who would know the men of the community.

Also a friend mentioned that I should contact colleges and universities in the area I wanted to hunt. Many hunters fail to realize that when alumni of colleges die, they’ll often leave their lands or a portion of their lands to the colleges or universities they’ve attended. Hunters seldom think to go to the land department of a college or university and look at the possibilities of leasing land to hunt. Although you may not find large blocks of woodlands contiguous to each other, you may pinpoint several small tracts available for lease during hunting season.

by: John E. Phillips, longtime avid deer hunter

Switch Hitting with the CVA Apex with a .300 Win Mag Bergara Barrel for Woodland Caribou with Joe Sebo

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I could reach out and touch a caribou at any reasonable distance.

I went to Newfoundland in 2012 to try for a woodland caribou with my CVA Accura. I also had an Apex with a .300 Win Mag Bergara barrel. I had asked my guide if he would carry the .300 Win Mag, while I carried the 50-caliber blackpowder rifle. I knew that sometimes caribou don’t come in close enough to get a shot with a 50-caliber rifle. I felt comfortable shooting my 50-caliber out to 200 yards, but past that 200-yard mark I felt more comfortable shooting the .300 Win Mag Bergara barrel. By having both, I knew I could reach out and touch a caribou at any reasonable distance. I scheduled a 5-day hunt for the caribou. Newfoundland is an island, so the caribou there don’t migrate like the caribou in the rest of Canada and Alaska do. The guide knew where they were before I arrived. These caribou were holding on a remote section of the island.

A friend and I flew into St. John’s, Newfoundland. We both had caribou tags. When we arrived, we loaded up in a truck and traveled about an hour to the lodge. The next morning we got up early and drove about 2 hours by truck and then took 4-wheelers to reach our hunting area. That 4-wheeler ride was one of the most-brutal rides I’ve ever taken. My jaws hurt for almost 2 months after the constant pounding we took on the 4-wheelers. There were no roads into our hunting area; the guide just drove the 4-wheelers cross country, and we followed. Finally, late in the afternoon after we had left the 4-wheelers, we found two caribou bulls sparring with each other. They pushed and shoved each other back and forth before drifting away from each other.

Then the nice bull I wanted to take started coming toward us. So, I prepared to make the shot with my CVA Accura 50-caliber. My guide had a range finder and continued to give me the yardage to the bull. The caribou got to about 100 yards and then turned and walked away from us. When the bull was at 275 yards, I handed my guide the 50-caliber Accura. I took the CVA Apex with the .300 Win Mag Bergara barrel.

I hand-load my cartridges, and I use a Hornady 270-grain bullet. I have Nikon scopes on both my guns, because I like the circle rings inside the scopes instead of crosshair reticles. Once you get your scope mounted, you can go to the Nikon website (www.nikon.com), enter the caliber, bullet weight and the muzzle velocity you’re using and get a trajectory chart. Then you know the bullet drop from 100 to 500 yards. With that information, I can set-up the circle rings inside my scope to aim according to the bullet drop at various ranges. I got a perfect double-lung shot on the bull, and he only traveled 20- or 30-yards before he went down. My friend also scored a caribou on that same day. By the time we got the animals caped out and quartered, both 4-wheelers were loaded down. My caribou was a Safari Club Gold Medal caribou.

I was trained in the military and taught there that 90 percent of the second shots a shooter takes are misses. Our instructor always told us, “Make that first shot count.” I’ve used that philosophy throughout my hunting career. This was one of the reasons I didn’t have a hang-up about using a single-shot muzzleloader rifle like the CVA Apex. Having the advantage of a range finder and having done my homework on my riflescope and at the rifle range, I didn’t hesitate to take the 275-yard shot. Even though I reloaded after the first shot, I didn’t have to take the second shot. I believe hunting with a single-shot rifle tends to make you a better hunter, since you have to know that you can make the shot.

By Joe Sebo CVA Pro Staff.

Why Tony and Angie Walker Put Out Minerals for Deer

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Why Tony and Angie Walker Put Out Minerals for Deer

Angie and I are borderline fanatics about putting out minerals. We put out Lick Magic Mineral from the Heartland Wildlife Institute (http://www.heartlandwildlifeinstitute.com) all year long. I advise you to read the contents of a mineral product before you buy it. If the product is 50- to 60-percent salt, then you’re buying salt instead of minerals. Too, consider whether the deer actually will take in the minerals you’re putting out. If the minerals don’t taste good to the deer, you’ve wasted your money. That’s why I like these Heartland minerals. They have a high mineral content and have been tested to make sure the deer will take them.

The biggest whitetail we’ve taken with a CVA muzzleloader was a 196-inch whitetail that Angie took. The video of the hunt was on Realtree’s “Monster Bucks” TV show. The buck was 4-1/2-years old, and we had videos of him taken by trail cameras the previous year. When he was a 3-year old, his antlers would score about 150 on Boone & Crockett, but one year later he had almost 200 inches of scorable antler. I think his antlers grew so quickly, because of the minerals he consumed from the property. There’s plenty of corn and soybeans in Indiana where we live, we have annual and perennial food-plot plantings on your land, we feed minerals year-round, and we provide sanctuary for our bucks on the property we hunt.

The minerals we use can be purchased loose in a bag. I take a shovel and break the ground up about 1- to 1-1/2-feet deep. I pour about half a bag of the minerals in the broken-up ground and mix that into the soil. Then I take the other half of the bag and mix it into the same area. When we make a mineral lick, we’ll carry two, 5-gallon containers of water and pour them over the ground where we’ve mixed the minerals. Then we mix up the minerals in the mud. Over the years, we’ve found the deer use these types of mineral licks more frequently than if we just pour the minerals on the ground. We may have as many as eight bucks coming to one mineral lick. By the end of the summer, that mineral lick may be 1-1/2- to 2-feet deep where deer have been pawing the dirt to get to the minerals. I put out a full bag of Lick Magic Mineral in April and then refresh the licks in July.

Once the bucks come out of the velvet, they usually will lose interest in those mineral licks. One of the biggest advantages that the mineral licks provide for us is they give us places where we can put-out trail cameras. We can see the conditions of our bucks and learn the sizes of their antlers as they grow and develop. If you put your cameras up and stay away from the mineral licks except to check the cameras, bucks will come to these mineral licks almost every day. I’ve been using the Bushnell Trophy Cam HD (http://www.bushnell.com/hunting/trail-cameras/trophy-cam/trophy-cam-hd-max) for about 5 years, because these cameras are the only ones I ever have been able to leave outdoors for an entire year with only one set of batteries. They take about 1,000 pictures a week on our animal licks. With other cameras, we probably changed batteries every few weeks and paid $10 or $12 per battery change.

By: Tony Walker who with his wife Angie hosts the “The American Way” TV show (http://www.theamericanwaytv.com) on the Pursuit Channel. Starting July 1 and running through December, you can watch their show on Monday nights at 9:30 pm and on Sunday mornings at 9 am.

Getting Ready for the Spring with Andy Weichers

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To be successful on my CVA hunts, I make sure I have plenty of food on my property for deer to eat. One of our my show’s new sponsors is the Whitetail Institute of North America (http://www.whitetailinstitute.com/). Since I love bowhunting as well as blackpowder hunting, I plant many little patches with the Institute’s Imperial Whitetail Secret Spot and Bowstand formulas in areas where deer will stage before coming into bigger green fields. I’ve learned deer often will stop in these small patches and eat the plants there, while waiting on dark to move into larger fields. These products give me opportunities to take bucks with either my bow or my CVA blackpowder rifle, while I still have good shooting and filming light. In my larger fields, I plant corn and soybeans with patches of Imperial Whitetail Clover around them. Later in the summer, I plant wintergreens and other brassica mixes.

I have three Redneck Blinds (http://www.redneckblinds.com/) set-up over 4- to 5-acre fields where I do many CVA hunts. I make sure I have a good winter crop for late-season hunting in those fields. Deer are browsers and like to feed on several types of food, so when I plant my green fields, I try to have more than one plant in each field. This gives the deer a variety of foods from which to choose. We often plant a large area of corn and leave it standing, and we catch the deer moving into the green fields from that corn.

I’m also trying to stay in shape. Often hunters wait until a few weeks before the season to start getting in shape for deer hunting, but I’ve found that staying in good physical condition is much easier than to wait until the last minute to get my body tuned-up. I’m planning a trip to Africa in May, and as soon as I get back, I’ll start my summer plantings. Then it’s whitetail season. So, we run a year-round hunting program. There’s always something to do, and always something for which we’re preparing.

The Advantage of Planting Year-Round Crops:

I’m a serious whitetail hunter who goes through all the steps all year to make sure I have trophy bucks to hunt when deer season arrives. Everyone wants to have big bucks to hunt on their property. The best way to ensure deer-hunting success is to plant supplemental food plots year-round. If you have winter food plots that will continue to produce food for deer during the first green-up as well as the winter months, plant your spring crops now, then plant summer crops followed by fall and winter crops, you’ll hold deer on your property after the season. You also will habituate your fawn crop to feeding in those green fields each year. If you consistently harvest the prescribed number of does for your land, you can build-up an older-age-class-buck population. If you don’t apply too-much hunting pressure, you can watch your bucks grow from fawns all the way to maturity. A serious deer hunter is involved in deer hunting all year, whether he’s planting crops, checking trail cameras, developing stand sites, putting-out minerals or just seeing the deer on his property.

by Andy Weichers, host of the “Campfire Stories” TV show on the Pursuit Channel that starts the last week of June, 2013.

Tony Walker on His First Turkey Taken With a CVA Apex and the Bergara 12 Gauge Turkey Barrel

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My 16 year-old son Ty.

Hunting season isn’t over for my wife Angie and me. We still have turkey hunts and bear hunts we’re planning. One of the bear hunts will be in Manitoba, Canada, and the other will be in Saskatchewan in May. We are also building episodes for our upcoming TV show, “The American Way,” from the footage we’ve shot this past year. We’ll be using the CVA Apex with a 12 gauge turkey barrel on it. My 16 year-old son, Ty, had the privilege of taking the first wild turkey ever bagged with the CVA Apex with a Bergara 12 gauge turkey barrel last season. We got the barrels on a Thursday afternoon and mounted and sighted them in before leaving for an Indiana turkey hunt. By Saturday morning, we had three big strutting gobblers in our decoy spread. Ty took one of those gobblers with that Bergara turkey barrel on this really-special hunt in Knox, Ind. We knew before the hunt that the turkeys had been roosting in a big pine tree grove, and that at first light the turkeys were pitching off the roost and flying to a cut corn field.

We went in late on Friday night before the first day of Indiana’s youth season, set-up our ground blind at about 10:30 pm, slipped out of the area, returned to camp and went to bed. The next morning we arrived at the blind well before daylight. Just as the sun started to appear, we heard odd noises just over our heads. Somehow, when we had gone in that night and set-up our ground blind, we had put it right under the gobblers’ roost tree. The strange noise was the gobblers drumming and strutting on the limbs. I didn’t know how we managed to set up our blind and not spook those gobblers off their roost the night before the hunt. After we heard the drumming and strutting on the limbs, we started hearing turkey poop drooping from the tree tops. When the turkeys flew down, they almost landed on top of our ground blind.

Hunting season isn’t over for my wife Angie and me

When we set up our blind the night before the hunt, we also had put out hen decoys and one gobbler decoy, with a fan that we could work electronically. I had put out a stuffer hen (mounted real wild turkey hen) as well as some Dave Smith turkey decoys that I think look more lifelike than any decoys in the industry. When the gobblers flew down in front of the blind, the hens that were roosting with them also flew down and began walking away from us. We gave them a few turkey calls. Within less than 20 minutes, we had half a dozen hens and four big longbearded gobblers coming to our decoy spread. We let the turkeys get in close to the blind, and they put on a show for the camera. When we finally told Ty he could shoot, one of the gobblers was 25-steps from the blind. Once Ty pulled the trigger on the CVA Apex with the Bergara turkey barrel, the gobbler crumbled. To see my son take a turkey on the opening morning of youth turkey season in Indiana was a real thrill. To know that he was the first hunter ever to bag a turkey with a CVA Apex with a Bergara turkey barrel really made it a very-special day. Too, once we realized we had the whole hunt captured on our video camera, this was the icing on the cake. We had done our job and gotten an episode for our TV show, “The American Way.”

We take our children on many of our hunts for our TV show. When our children are the designated hunters, Angie and I focus all our attention on making sure the children have a good time and are in a position to take whatever game we’re hunting. We always make sure we never steal their thunder or try and make the hunt our hunt instead of their hunt.

By: Tony Walker who with his wife Angie hosts the “The American Way” TV show on the Pursuit Channel. Starting July 1 and running through December, you can watch their show on Monday nights at 9:30 pm and on Sunday mornings at 9 am.

Andy Weichers Talks about the Importance of Trail Cameras

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Trail cameras are one of the least-expensive ways to monitor the human and animal activity on your property

Trail cameras are one of the least-expensive ways to monitor the human and animal activity on your property. I did my seminar schedule in 2012 on using trail cameras during the off season. Using my DLC Covert Cameras in the off season, I not only can watch my buck’s antlers grow, see what kind of fawn crop I’m having, determine the buck-to-doe ratio and monitor the general health of my deer herd, but also catch shed poachers. We have problems with people trespassing onto our property to take shed antlers. I was talking with a friend the other day, and we both believe shed poaching has gotten worse than deer poaching. I think people believe no one cares if you go onto their property to find and take shed antlers.

On the farms where I hunt, we watch our deer grow up. Every year, we try to find the shed antlers of individual bucks we’re planning to harvest later when they’re 4- or 5-years old. For many people, finding shed antlers is a passion. When someone else comes onto our land and steals those antlers, they’ve stolen a valuable part of our record-keeping. I know there’s a market for shed antlers, but I don’t think most shed poachers are trying to make money with them. I think most of them just enjoy getting out in the woods and walking on a sunny day, and if they can find sheds, that makes the walk more interesting. But if people want to hunt for sheds, they need to go to public lands where they can do it as much as they want, rather than poach on private lands where landowners and hunting clubs are trying to keep records on the bucks they’re raising.

I go there as often as I can to check my cameras.

I live 230-miles away from the farm where I hunt, and I have gates on every road. I go there as often as I can to check my cameras. After a fresh snow, I’ll find footprints where other people have been walking around in the woods on my land. So, running the trail cameras in the off season not only allows you to inventory your herd, but also helps you inventory people who are trespassing. I also put the cameras outside my gates to get pictures of vehicles being driven onto my property. Last year, about a week before prime rut in the deer season, I got pictures of a poacher carrying out the head and cape of a 165-inch whitetail he’d poached. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a picture of his face. What was really frustrating was that he’d left the rest of that buck in the woods to rot.

I also use my cameras to help me survey my property for turkey hunting. Many hunters don’t realize you can help yourself in turkey season by using your trail cameras to see when and where gobblers are feeding, coming into fields, strutting and moving with hens. Using those trail cameras before and during turkey season can make as big a difference in your turkey-hunting success as it does for deer hunting.

by Andy Weichers, host of the “Campfire Stories” TV show on the Pursuit Channel that starts the last week of June, 2013.

My Most Fun Turkey Hunt with a CVA Rifle

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I was hunting near El Paso, Texas, where you can hunt turkeys with a rifle. We had finished hunting that morning and were walking back to our vehicle. My cameraman, Scott Sawyers, took out his turkey call and yelped a few times. We heard a turkey gobble, waited about 4 minutes and called again. The turkey gobbled once more but much closer this time. We got behind a big tree with grass around it. A big Rio Grande gobbler came walking in and stopped at 45 yards. I shot and missed the turkey. I never cut a feather.

At the report of the rifle, this turkey jumped straight-up in the air. When he hit the ground, Scott purred a couple of times on his diaphragm mouth call. The gobbler took about three steps, fluffed-up and started strutting again. While the turkey was strutting, I hurriedly reloaded my .50 caliber CVA rifle. I knew the turkey wouldn’t stand there forever. In the process, I raked all my primers into the grass. I went ahead and poured the powder and the bullet down the barrel. I got down on my hands and knees, 45-yards from the turkey, and started trying to find the primer in that 2-foot-tall grass. Finally, I located the primer. I peeped over the grass and saw the gobbler was still strutting. I got in position to take a second shot, and this time I hit the turkey.

There are several morals to this story:

* Have everything you need in a handy location if you need to get off a second shot, when you’re hunting with a blackpowder rifle,

* Start calling again immediately if you miss the turkey the first time. If the turkey hasn’t been hit, all he knows is that he’s heard a big explosion he doesn’t understand. Even if he sees that white puff of smoke, the bird may think he’s just heard and seen a lightning strike or some other phenomenon in nature.

* Make sure you aim closely on your second shot, and take your time to make a good shot.

When hunting where the turkeys have had little or no hunting pressure, you often can get away with tactics that won’t work otherwise.

By O’Neill Williams, host of the “O’Neill Outside” TV show

Tony Smotherman’s Quick Draw Blackpowder Buck

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Editor’s Note: Tony Smotherman, the host of Travelin’ Hunter™ TV show, which will begin airing the end of June on the Sportsman Channel on Sunday nights at 9:30 pm, is a CVA pro and a veteran TV personality.

Back in the fall I was hunting in the northern panhandle of Texas near a town called Plaska at the Plaska Lodge with Oren Don Molloy, the creator of Mass XL, an all natural feed supplement for deer. Oren Don harvests Mass XL from the tree that the Indians named the “Wonder Tree”. He dehydrates the fruit from this tree and grinds it up and sells it as a all natural, 39% protein supplemental feed for whitetails. On this hunt, I was using a .50 caliber CVA Accura MR (Mountain Rifle) and a Bushnell DOA 250 Trophy XLT scope. The Plaska Lodge sits just across the Oklahoma border in Panhandle of Texas which is not the normal area that most hunters think of when they think of great deer hunting in Texas mostly due to the really dry and arid climate. And I must agree, looking at the land, you wouldn’t consider that it would be good whitetail country, but for some reason, the Man Upstairs decided to load this area that runs along the Red River with big whitetails. You and I both know that it takes a good food source and water to grow big whitetails and this area has both, fruit from the “Wonder Tree”, now available to the whole country in the form of Mass XL and the water from the Red River completes the package.

Oren Don, like many lodge owners, relies heavily on his trail cameras to locate big deer in the early season. When I arrived at the lodge, Molloy said, “Here are a half-dozen trail-camera pictures of bucks that have the right age structure to be harvested. If you see any one of them, you have the green light to drop the hammer”. I am a sucker for trail camera pics and I noticed right away that the deer in the pictures were much bigger and had much larger headgear than the deer I’d seen in south Texas. They looked a lot more like Oklahoma and Kansas bucks I had hunted in years past.

This week I was hunting was around the first week of November and the temperature was between 90 and 95 degrees during the heat of the day. In the mornings, the temperatures were 75 to 80 degrees which was not real conducive to daylight movement even if the rut was starting to kick off. Our hunts for the day with those high temps ended up being more like the first hour of daylight and the last 30 minutes before dark…to say it was slow was an understatement and I will admit I was a bit worried that I might be toting a Texas tag back to Tennessee with me.

On the evening of day three, my cameraman, Russell Knight, and I were on the way back to the lodge, and we caught a glimpse of a big 10 pointer pushing a doe and new right off that it was one of the big deer that we had seen trail cam pics of. Pumped was an understatement, so we went back to that same area to hunt that buck before daylight the next morning. We were hoping the doe he was chasing had not led him out of the area over night, and we new we’d probably only have one hour at first light to try and get this deal done before he found a shady place to bed down for the rest of the day. In making plans, we had decided to go to a big sand hill that overlooked the Red River basin. As we were walking thru a thick cactus flat in the dark to get to our observation point, I suggested to Russell that we stop and video the full moon going-down just before the sun came-up. I knew that piece of video would make a good opening segment for Travelin’ Hunter™. However, Oren Don said, “Tony, we don’t have time to get that shot. We have to reach the top of that hill before daylight so that we can see if anything is still on it’s feet. I don’t mean to rush you. I know we are trying to do a TV show, but we only have 2 days left fill your tag. I really feel like we need to get to the top of that sand hill now.”

After thinking about what Oren Don said for a whole .3 seconds, I agreed and we hustled-up to the top of the sand hill. Once on top, I grab my Bushnell Legend binos and started glassing the area in the predawn light just as Russell whispered, “Tony, I hear a deer walking.” My cameraman had bionic hearing due to the ear phones he was wearing and could hear everything the camera was hearing. “Tony”, he said, “I don’t know where this movement is coming from, but I can hear a deer walking.” Although we had legal shooting light, the area we were looking at was still fairly dark. Staring as hard as I could for what seemed like ten minutes, I finally caught movement to my left and I quickly realized the deer I was looking at was the big 10 we’d seen the previous evening. He was 60-yards away and walking parallel with us. We had walked through the his cactus bedding area to get to this sand hill where we were set-up. The buck was coming from the Red River basin, where he had been feeding, watering, and chasing senioritas during the night and was headed directly for the bedding area we’d just walked thru. Russell was trying desperately to focused on the buck, while I was attempting to get my scope turned back to a lesser power, get my Accura MR broke open, primed, closed, cocked, and pointed in the right direction. In less than 5 seconds, while shaking like a leaf on a tree, I got everything dialed-in and was ready to take the off hand shot. I was loaded with 110 grains of Blackhorn 209 powder and a 300-grain PowerBelt AeroLite Bullet that I knew could do the job easily at 60 yards, but at this point in the game I was the weak link. Being somewhat rattled, I looked through the scope and saw that big Texas buck was within two steps of disappearing into the cactus bedding area. Adding even more pressure to my already intense situation, I had to shoot quickly. When the rifle came to my shoulder, I almost shot instinctively. I didn’t hesitate!

I spend so much time on the rifle range shooting this rifle that it’s almost an extension of my body. I shoot thousands of rounds through my CVA muzzleloader each year. So, when I bring the rifle to my shoulder, my eyes automatically focus on the crosshairs, and the spot I want to shoot…..instantly. My shooting routine is to shoulder the gun and shoot the deer because we both know that in a hunting situation we don’t always have time to get adjusted, and as soon as my CVA rifle touched my shoulder, I squeezed the trigger. The buck flipped over and rolled down to the bottom of the hill like he just got hit by a train. After we all came back down to earth, Oren Don said, “I can’t believe you just made that shot without using shooting sticks or some type of rest.” I said, “bro, I made that shot because I’ve practiced it hundreds or possibly thousands of times and practice makes perfect my friend!” It’s just like a baseball player who steps into the batter’s box and doesn’t have to think to hit a baseball traveling at 90 miles plus miles per hour….just hit it.

See this whole episode come to life on Travelin’ Hunter™ on the Sportsman Channel this summer on Sunday nights. For more information on the gun I was shooting take a look at www.cva.com. To look into Mass XL you can go to www.massxl.com. If you get a chance look me up on Facebook at www.facebook.com/travelinhunter or on Twitter @travelinhunter.

By Tony Smotherman, avid blackpowder hunter and TV host.

GPS Receivers Equal More Bucks Each Season for CVA Muzzleloading Hunters

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A hand-held Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver can help you bag a buck every season with your CVA Muzzleloader. These navigation devices, introduced to the market about two decades ago, can put you in position to take the bucks other hunters never see, especially on public lands with intense hunter pressure. If you want to bag a buck each season, you must understand what bucks know about most hunters, they …

* hunt less than 1/2-mile away from a road;

* enter the woods at daylight;

* exit the woods before dark;

* take stands where they can see 100 yards or more;

* remain on their stands for less than 2 hours;

* come out of the woods between 11:00 am and 1:00 pm to eat lunch; and

* spend more time walking and less time waiting for a deer to appear. The larger, older-age class bucks already have learned these characteristics of the hunters who come after them each season.

Muzzleloading hunters must know a tremendous amount of information to hunt deer effectively. He must understand …

* which scrapes the bucks use year after year;

* which nut trees deer feed on each season; and

* where to find wild apple trees and persimmon patches that produce bucks in the early season and escape trails bucks utilize during times of heavy hunting pressure. By storing these locations in his GPS as well as places where he has seen and killed bucks during previous years, he can return to those same spots each year and often bag a buck.

Dr. Keith Causey, a retired deer researcher from Auburn University in Auburn, Alabama, explains, “Creatures of habit, deer often utilize the same scrapes, feed in the same places and walk the same trails year after year. Even when hunters harvest dominant bucks, the next buck in the pecking order often will follow the same pattern of movement as his predecessors. If you keep up-to-date information on deer sightings over several years, you can go to those same sites and take bucks from those areas.”

Another way to take the bigger, hunter-smart bucks with your GPS is to find thick-cover stands more than 1/2-mile away from the road that hunters use to come into the woods. To locate these stand sites, scout the area before the season, select the tree you want to put your tree stand in, use your GPS receiver to mark that stand as a waypoint in the memory of your GPS receiver, and save the route you travel from the road to that stand. Then, you can follow that route back into the woods with your GPS receiver before daylight on the day you hunt. When deer season opens, plan to use your GPS receiver for navigating to that waypoint 1-1/2- to 2-hours before daylight. You can arrive at your tree stand before daylight, give the woods time to settle before the other hunters begin hunting and allow the hunters to drive the smart bucks to you in your thick-cover sanctuary. Since the GPS receiver enables you to come out of the woods and walk directly to your vehicle without getting lost, you can remain on your stand and hunt those last few minutes of daylight, when the deer often become most active, and the other hunters have left the woods. Most hunters don’t hunt dense areas where the bigger, older-age-class bucks stay to avoid hunters, because the hunters fear they may get lost. But with a hand-held GPS receiver, you can go anywhere in the woods, even in the thickest, most-dense cover, without fear of becoming disoriented. Then you can stay on your stand longer and hunt more effectively, even if you hunt more than 2-miles away from your vehicle in uncharted territory. If you scout effectively, you’ll have morning, midday and afternoon stand sites and can hunt no matter the wind’s direction by consulting your GPS that has those stand sites denoted as way points.