When followed on their home range, bucks usually travel greater distances between stops than does, usually traveling in the thickest and most diff cult parts of their range. When bucks are with does, they follow the does' lead, and all the hunter must remember is that the buck is seldom at the head of the parade. Quite often bucks refuse to bed down with does, but go off by themselves for their daytime rest. It follows that if a hunter is able to place himself between one of these bucks and the nearest doe, he will have a good chance for a shot if some other hunter can start the buck.



Two companions and I were roaming the woods one morning, looking for deer or for tracks that we could follow. We came to a place where several deer had been feeding on the previous night. In checking the tracks, we saw where a large buck had left the other deer and headed south. I was quite sure that it would be an easy task to locate and hunt the does, but the buck's track was a challenge we couldn't resist, so we followed him in an effort to get a line on his intentions. We came to a twenty-acre field, which the deer had skirted to the west. South of this field was small but ideal bedding where we suspected the buck would be resting.

One of my companions was a young man who had never shot a deer. Wishing to give him some experience, I stationed him at an open gate, which was about midway in the fence that ran along the north edge of the field. His instructions were either to shoot the deer or to get out of the way and permit the deer to pass unless he wanted to get run over. I left the other man at the southwest corner of the field to cover the deer's back track. I circled to the south so as to approach the deer's probable location from the south. I did not see the deer when it left its bed, but two shotgun blasts followed and, after a time, a third. This told me that I had made the right moves. The young man did not hit the deer, but we all have a right to a touch of buck fever when we see a ten-point buck heading for the exact spot where we are standing. I doubt if he ever forgot that hunt.

In this case I had made all of the right guesses. I had assumed that the buck would attempt to rejoin the does. (This is usually the case unless they have no further use for him. If that is the case, the buck would be seeking other does and would not bed down in the vicinity of the deer which he had left.) I had assumed that he would return to the place where he had left the other deer, either by the direct route across the field or by his back track. (This reasoning involved the assumption that the buck did not know the exact location of the other deer's bed and that he must follow their tracks to them. If these deer had bedded in a place where their scent carried to the buck's resting place, he would have gone directly to them and none of us would have had a chance for a shot.) Of course, if I had had any idea that the buck would not have returned to the other tracks, I would have used other tactics and would have attempted a cautious stalk to his resting place instead of merely trying to jump him out and into the range of my companions.

There is a lot of guesswork involved in deer hunting that a hunter have to make while hunting, but it is surprising how many times the hunter is right, if he has a good knowledge of deer habits and of the country being hunted.