Great post. I guess you could say I have been a bit of a case study for this exact premise. I used to target “deer”, would go into good areas way too early & often and shoot whatever came past. Had great success, but rarely the encounter with an older buck. Then I slowly figured out if I was going to start waiting on older bucks I had to be less invasive. So I started hunting does in the easiest, least intrusive spots. Then when the time starts getting right, sneaking in the middle of bedding areas. This and setting up on travel corridors between them has given me my best chances as mature bucks.

Now granted I don’t think this tactic applies to every place out there. If overall deer numbers are lower, many times a hunter will have to work hard for a doe and have to be more intrusive and make the game much trickier. This is when all the other things like scent control & entrance/exit routes become critical.