Hey fellas, anybody have any luck hunting overgrown clearcuts? I'm heading to my club this weekend to do some scouting, stand building, and shed hunting.
I know of a buck on one of my properties who will contend for the Md bow record, as a typical. Well into the 180's from the shed I found this past season from the year before, and he looked even bigger this past summer than he did the one before. I suspeect the shed I have is from 3.5 or 4.5, so I expect his rack to bee HUGE this year. Plenty of food, the clearcut he lives in is surrounded on the back by 25 years old hardwoods, very thick, and in front and to the right with huge bean/corn fields. I can spot him a couple times a summer, as he works his way out of the pines into a little dogleg of the field. The wind is directly in his face, or he doesn't come out. After the rut, all you'll see is tracks.
The clearcut is about 400 acres, with a low swampy area in the middle, and a stream seperating it from the hardwoods behind it. Plenty of water,does, and food. I doubt he ever leaves, except to feed in the field at night, and maybe chase a doe or two before his come into estrus.
Ho do I hunt this guy? I've tried hunting the woods behind it, with success, but not on him. You can't bowhunt the field with out him smelling you, and you'd have to crawl into there to hunt. The trees are only about 15' high, so no stands, and a ladder sticks out like a sore thimb. I'm thinking of making some lanes into the briars and branches for a couple ground blinds. Maybe try to chance walking back along the property line and crawling into it, and hope he's bedding far enough over not to smell me. Or maybe put one back on the downwind side, entering from the hardwoods, for a morning hunt, maybe catch him walking that back edge scent checking for does in the prerut? I could drive back down the middle of the field, which is what the guys do who hunt th field edge, and then loop around to the left and come in to the pines from the back?
Any suggestions? This is the biggest buck I've ever hunted. This is 400 acres of the thickest stuff imagineable, briars, weeds, ect. You'd have to trim any lanes you needed, your shot is only about 4 yards otherwise.