ORIGINAL: KYHEADHUNTER2
Some good advice has been mentioned! That's an incredible collection you got there GregH. I could only hope to have half that many deer on the wall one day.Congrads on your deer this year, he is a brute for sure. Any advice to help a young hunter out other than putting the hours in the woods and passing immature deer? Do you run trail cams to help locate big deer? Do you shed hunt?
I've been using trail cams the last few years but I haven't found any of the bucks I've shot on them!!
I do shed hunt in the winter and scout while doing it. Post season is the best time to scout because you can see what was going on during the rut by finding rubs, scrapes and preferred trails and bedding areas. I also scout in the summer and walk around the crop fields where they are feeding looking for BIG tracks. I try to figure out where the tracks came from and went to and why. Then I sit in observation stands to see where the deer are coming from when they enter the field. I also keep track of the does and where they're bedding so I can hunt trails that I think a buck will travel when he's checking on the does.
I forgot to mention before, you have to know there are big bucks living where you hunt. You can't kill what isn't there.