Big bucks love ditches...
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Re: Big bucks love ditches...
Good video Dan!!
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Re: Big bucks love ditches...
Wow, what a great title and message. I used to hunt pheasants with my pack of chessies back in the day in the thumb of Michigan. I was always distracted looking in those thick ditches in that farm country, and every now and again we would jump a deer out of them. I always wanted to go in there and hunt those but never did. Mostly didn't have permission to deer hunt and shame on me for never asking
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Re: Big bucks love ditches...
enjoyed the video, I smiled several times throughout as it gave me flashbacks to the farm hunting I did as a youth. I hunted public land too at my big woods cabin in northern Michigan.
when I was young and had access to a couple of farms I put arrows in big bucks, little bucks and medium bucks. If it was a buck it was getting an arrow...
far and away the vast majority of the bucks I recovered were dead in the ditch water or next to it. I saved a lot of work by tying a rope around the bucks antlers, walking the ditch bank and dragging the buck through the ditch water to the nearest road. It didn't take me long to figure out why all the bucks I recovered were along ditches, they were bedding there in the only thick cover in the area. They also head for water when wounded, but I found a good number of them in a ditch buck bed or close to one.
Potholes of water on a farm surrounded by thick brush and flood plain thickets along streams / rivers are also where the big bucks go if they survive a few years. An old acquaintance of mine (long since departed to deer heaven) made a trophy buck hunting career out of potholes and floodplain thickets on southern Michigan farm land.
These 3 water habitats in farm country often have no great trees near the buck beds to hunt them from either... all the more enticing to a mature buck.
If you arrow a buck in farm country and lose the blood trail... is there water in that direction? I have literally jogged several hundred yards to a ditch and began walking its banks... and there was my buck.
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when I was young and had access to a couple of farms I put arrows in big bucks, little bucks and medium bucks. If it was a buck it was getting an arrow...
far and away the vast majority of the bucks I recovered were dead in the ditch water or next to it. I saved a lot of work by tying a rope around the bucks antlers, walking the ditch bank and dragging the buck through the ditch water to the nearest road. It didn't take me long to figure out why all the bucks I recovered were along ditches, they were bedding there in the only thick cover in the area. They also head for water when wounded, but I found a good number of them in a ditch buck bed or close to one.
Potholes of water on a farm surrounded by thick brush and flood plain thickets along streams / rivers are also where the big bucks go if they survive a few years. An old acquaintance of mine (long since departed to deer heaven) made a trophy buck hunting career out of potholes and floodplain thickets on southern Michigan farm land.
These 3 water habitats in farm country often have no great trees near the buck beds to hunt them from either... all the more enticing to a mature buck.
If you arrow a buck in farm country and lose the blood trail... is there water in that direction? I have literally jogged several hundred yards to a ditch and began walking its banks... and there was my buck.
Bridge
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Re: Big bucks love ditches...
Good stuff Dan!
I would say roughly half of my big buck sightings have come from out of the way fencelines and drainages exactly as you described. If they aren’t there, they’re in the thick and nasty spots that are hard to get to.
And I see the same regarding beds on the highest of the high and lowest of the low. That is consistent whether you’re in a fence line or bigger habitat.
I would say roughly half of my big buck sightings have come from out of the way fencelines and drainages exactly as you described. If they aren’t there, they’re in the thick and nasty spots that are hard to get to.
And I see the same regarding beds on the highest of the high and lowest of the low. That is consistent whether you’re in a fence line or bigger habitat.
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Re: Big bucks love ditches...
Great video as usual. Loved the ending. Thank you.
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Re: Big bucks love ditches...
Good video. A new farm i get to hunt has ditches that i seen alot of good sign in. Hopefully it pans out this year.
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Re: Big bucks love ditches...
Back in the no safety harness days lol
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Re: Big bucks love ditches...
tim wrote:Back in the no safety harness days lol
That t-shirt looked plenty safe to me. Lol
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Re: Big bucks love ditches...
Thanks for posting the video Dan. Did you end up shooting something bigger that year? Do you have a ton of old footage that aren't necessarily kills? Thanks again
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Re: Big bucks love ditches...
minnesotahunter wrote:Thanks for posting the video Dan. Did you end up shooting something bigger that year? Do you have a ton of old footage that aren't necessarily kills? Thanks again
Ended up blowing an opportunity on the same farm at a giant, and ended up taking a slightly bigger buck. Yea, I have a lot of old stuff, but lost alot too, some really great stuff. Because it was stored on tapes that eventually deteriorated before getting saved
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Re: Big bucks love ditches...
Do you see a lot of bedding in one confined area? For instance on a tree line or ditch would a buck essentially just turn his body and be bedded with both scent and vision advantages for several different wind directions? Or do the beds shift around a lot to different physical locations?
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Re: Big bucks love ditches...
Josh_S wrote:Do you see a lot of bedding in one confined area? For instance on a tree line or ditch would a buck essentially just turn his body and be bedded with both scent and vision advantages for several different wind directions? Or do the beds shift around a lot to different physical locations?
There seems to be specific spots that offer greater protection and use in varying winds. Thinking of as few spots I know of, some offer an advantage on just about any wind, noise and access guard one or 2 directions and /or wind and sight guard another.Some the buck has no vision advantage, its all smell and noise, others its vision and scent. Often its a thicker spot on the treeline, or where it gets wider. I know of several ditches where 20 years ago I was jumping bucks out of a certain bed, and still am today...
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