12 Reasons Why You Didn’t Tag A Mature Buck This Year

12 Reasons Why You Didn’t Tag A Mature Buck This Year

By Ricky Kinder

In order to tag a mature buck year after year you need some luck on your side, but the hunters who consistently put a tag on an Iowa giant don’t rely on luck. Instead they rely on not making mistakes or more importantly learning from mistakes they made in the past. Below I gathered 12 common reasons why hunters don’t harvest a mature buck.

Not How Much You Hunt, But When You Hunt
The old adage that you can’t shoot a deer from your living room is certainly true, if you have time to hunt then get out and do it. However truth be told, tagging a buck isn’t necessarily about how many days you hunt.Sure it helps improve your odds. However, tagging a buck is more about how many “good” days you hunt. I will take three days of ideal deer movement conditions versus 15 days when conditions usually call for low deer movement. If you are out hunting in 80 degree weather the chances of seeing a buck is pretty slim and all you have really done is given the deer another chance at detecting your intrusion into their home. Sometimes quality wins over quantity. Make sure and plan your hunting trips based on weather conditions and time of the year to maximize the potential of seeing bucks up on their feet moving around.

No Pre-Season Scouting
Scouting gets talked about a lot in the whitetail world and that is because it is so important to the overall success of hunters. If you can swing it you should always be scouting your properties and surrounding ones too. Once the season ends your scouting efforts should begin. Start by shed hunting, this will give you an idea of any deer that made it through the seasons. Then move on to trail camera recon in the late spring and all the way through the season. Using trail cams will give you a visual on deer using the property and a timeline of their antler growth. In late summer and early fall is when you can get some eyes on the prize and start glassing your property in search of buck patterns. Keeping tabs on deer the entire year will greatly improve your odds of being in the right spot at the right time when the season rolls around.

In Season Scouting
One of the biggest mistakes a hunter will make is giving up on scouting once the season has started. Deer patterns and behaviors are in constant flux. What a deer was doing in late summer and early fall is not what they will be doing during the season. If you are not seeing a good amount of bucks, take time to scout a day rather than hunt. Continue to use those trail cameras too. Knowing what deer are doing during the season is just as important as knowing what they were doing during the off season. If you can find big deer, then you can hunt big deer!

Poor Stand Placement
Setting a stand or blind isn’t difficult in theory; climb a tree and lock it into place or cover your blind in with brush. However, there is much more that goes into setting a good stand. You need to determine wind directions, pick the right tree, deer travel patterns, will the sun be in your eyes, will the wind blow directly into your face, will the wind blow your scent towards oncoming deer, do you have enough shooting lanes, poor entry and exit routes, etc. Not thinking stand placement through is a huge mistake a lot of us make. Take some time to analyze your stands and determine if they are in the correct location.

Wasting Stand Locations
Some stands are good in the mornings, some in the evenings, some early season, some mid-season, and some during the rut. Make sure you have a good understanding of what stands you should be hunting and when to hunt them. Also pay particular attention to the wind direction on any given hunt. Human scent being blown into the direction of approaching deer is a surefire way of ending a hunt before it starts. Also don’t hunt a stand when you shouldn’t and don’t hunt a stand too many times. Scent detection and over pressuring a stand is a very common mistake hunters will make.

Entry and Exit Routes
Poor entrance and exit routes is arguably the number one mistake a hunter will make. If your entrance and exit tips off deer it won’t take them long to bypass that area all together. Make sure your route to and from your stand does two things. 1. Leave as little scent as possible to, from, and around your stand. Don’t walk on deer trails leading to your stand and make sure your scent is not being blown into bedding areas and food sources. 2. Leave little visual evidence of yourself. Deer might not have the best eyesight in the world, but they are great at detecting movement and determining what should or shouldn’t be in the area. If they see a two legged creature tromping through the field they know that isn’t right. Take time and plan your entry and exit from your stands.

Not Understanding Deer Behavior
As a hunter you need to understand deer behavior. If you know why a deer does certain things you can then figure out what they will do. Which all leads to you being in the correct location for an ambush. Study the deer you hunt, and get to know their patterns. What food sources are they traveling to and when? What do they do during any given weather condition? Where are bedding areas located? Do decoys work? Does rattling work? What do deer do doing the early season, rut, and late season? How do their patterns change? There really is no limit as to what you can learn about the deer you hunt. Simply put, the more you know about your adversary the better the chance you have at beating them. This is so true when hunting whitetails!

Stand Etiquette
Once you are settled in the stand and the day’s hunt begins you have to act a certain way in that stand. Other than scent, movement and not paying attention are key components of spooking deer. Too many times I hear the horror stories of “I stood up and there was a buck right behind me” or a good one nowadays is “I was checking my cell phone and didn’t have time to get my bow up”. The real reason to the latter is probably more along the lines of…”I was playing a game on my cell phone and….” Whatever the reason may be you need to be disciplined when sitting in a stand or blind. Sure we all get the case of stand hypnosis, where our minds’ wander. But you have to shake out of it and stay focused. Getting busted in a treestand happens, but it shouldn’t happen because of you moving around or simply not paying attention. If you need to stand up do so cautiously and always check your surroundings first. If you need some time to clear your mind and play with your phone do so, but make it only for a few minutes. Fight that urge to be on that damn thing! The art of remaining still for hours and hours is something all hunters should try and master.

You Missed
Hey it happens. You put the pin or bead where you wanted your arrow or bullet to go, but something goes awry and you make a bad shot. It happens to the best of us. If someone tells you they have never missed they’re either lying to you or they have never shot at a deer before. If you miss or make a poor shot and don’t recover the deer you first need to figure out what happened. The second thing you need to do is fix the problem. Be honest with your diagnosis or it will do you no good in the future. Did you hit a twig or branch? Did you shoot beyond your comfort range? Did you have poor mechanics? Did you simply not practice enough? Again, we all miss, but if it becomes a reoccurring problem then that is on you. Learn from your mistakes.

It Simply Wasn’t Meant to Be
Hundreds of hours in the treestand, countless deer encounters, and still no tag on a buck! You know what? Sometimes that happens. We can do everything right and still come up empty. This is hunting after all, more specifically this is whitetail hunting. We are in pursuit of one of the most instinctual and smartest creatures on earth. This isn’t supposed to be easy, it is supposed to be a challenge. Simply put, sometimes the deer wins the game of chess. They out smarted you, it happens. Some of the best hunters in the world come up empty. All you can do is tip your hat and look forward to the next game.

You Shot The First Buck You Saw
This one is pretty simple. You will never shoot a mature buck if you shoot the first 3 ½ year old that walks by you every year. If you have your heart set on a 150+ deer then you have to let the ones smaller than that walk. I know it’s not easy, and you will be faced with plenty of hard decisions to make on those so called “tweener” bucks. The ones that you want to shoot, but shouldn’t based off of your goals of shooting something bigger. Bottom line is if you want something bigger then you have to let a lot of nice deer walk.

You Don’t Care About The Size Of The Rack
Let’s be honest, the majority of hunters today are obsessed with shooting the biggest buck in the timber. However there are still plenty of you out there that simply don’t care about the size of the head gear and will opt to fill the tag with any deer versus holding out for a wall hanger. You know what? This is perfectly fine and shouldn’t be looked down upon. In fact it should be celebrated, while this article’s focus in on mature bucks, there is something good to be said about not giving in on what other people think about the size of the deer you just shot. After all, at the end of the day hunting whitetails is about the tradition of providing food, enjoying Mother Nature, and honoring the animal you just harvested. Just remember the old adage; you can’t eat the antlers.

As humans we are cursed with our abilities to make mistakes, after all isn’t that what makes us human? While hunting mistakes will be made, that is a certain. It is what you do with those mistakes that will determine how good of hunter you are and will become. If you fell victim to any of the above or other mistakes this year go out and fix them and make sure they don’t happen again. Making a mistake isn’t all that bad, but leaving it unfixed is inexcusable. That is the best advice and really the only advice I can leave you with.