I could write a book about the benefits of using preferred food...corn - standing or from a bag / fruit trees - orchards / wolf white oaks / food plots and in one instance water to kill a mature buck early in the season.
My strategy is pretty simple...use food and cameras to find the buck...then use cameras to figure out where he's coming from...then ambush him on his way to the food. Hands down the most effective method I know for consistent success early.
A couple truisms about baiting:
1 - Mature bucks HATE feeders or any man made feeding apparatus. Will they visit them? Yes - but the majority will not. And those that do will visit primarily at night and usually in the middle of the night. The only time I've seen feeders draw mature bucks with any consistency is in areas where they've been established for years and the deer grew up around them...and they still don’t like them! I've proven this to myself over and over. On more than one occasion, I've run cameras over a feeder all year with no pics of mature bucks then spread feed on the ground 100 yards away, set up a camera and get a photo of a big buck that I didn’t know was there on the first night. Running a camera over a feeder does not give an accurate inventory of what's using the area. Running a camera over bait manually spread on the ground gives a much clearer image. If you're going to bait, by far the most effective method is to crack open the bag, walk around and make the feed look as natural as possible...like it fell out of the trees. Deer are like Dorothy and Toto...they follow the yellow brick road...(and when the first case of CWD shows up in Ohio it will be "good by yellow brick road"). Consistently going into an area and spreading bait has the added benefit of desensitizing the deer to your presence…you no longer smell like the enemy…you smell like the ice cream truck. Dropping feed on the ground is expensive, inefficient, inconvenient and effective as hell for finding mature bucks in the early season. It probably works just as well in the late season but I personally don't have nearly as much experience with it as I’ve only carried an either sex tag into the late season one time in the past 30 years.
2 – Hunting directly over bait or any isolated preferred food source is a great way to kill “A” deer. It’s a difficult way to kill a mature buck. The first deer to show up at any preferred food is rarely a mature buck. Chances are great that the bucks in the photo’s Kim showed ran off young bucks, does and fawns that where already feeding. Deer feeding on concentrated food sources don’t just pass by…they hang out…sometimes for hours and if your fortunate enough to fool all those eyes, ears and noses long enough for a mature buck to show, your chances of getting drawn on him are slim to none without something picking you off. Another big disadvantage to hunting directly over a preferred food source is spooking deer off when the hunt is over. At a minimum, you need to have someone from the ground come and run them off so they don’t repeatedly see you come down from the same tree.
Again...the secret is figuring out where a mature buck is coming from. Their home range is still pretty small in the early season so you don’t need to get to far back from the food...usually just far enough that you can get in and out without detection by the deer gathered at the food source. By using the food as the hub and placing cameras in the spokes, you can deduce a bucks travel pattern and your chances of encountering him in the daylight go up with every step outward that you take!
