MATURE BUCK TAGGED | PONDS, PINCH POINTS & FOOD PLOTS (EPISODE 665 TRANSCRIPT)

This is the video transcript. To watch the video for this episode, click here.

>>GRANT: The Thanksgiving holiday was modeled after the pilgrims and the Native Americans celebrating a great harvest. You know, my family also has a lot to celebrate, and I hope yours does too. This Thanksgiving let’s celebrate with going out of our way to show kindness to everyone around us. Happy Thanksgiving.

>>GRANT: Chase and Rylan White have a lot to be thankful for, measured in pounds of great-tasting wild game and inches of antler.

>>GRANT: Several weeks ago, Chase tagged his first elk with the Winchester 6.8 Western.

>>CHASE: What do you think of that Ry?

>>RYLAN: He’s huge!

>>CHASE: That’s awesome!

>>GRANT: Just a couple of days later Rylan was hunting about an hour and a half east of here, still in the Ozark Mountains. He was hunting on a family lease and tagged a bruiser mountain buck.

>>GRANT: One of the keys to Rylan’s success is he was hunting where he could overlook an area of oaks that have produced a lot of acorns and some food plots – they called Golden Corral.

>>GRANT: There’s a gap in an old cattle fence between the big stand of timber to the north and the Golden Corral food plot, and that gap serves as a great pinch point.

>>GRANT: This is a new lease for Chase and Rylan and during the past year Chase has completed a lot of habitat improvement work, including timber stand improvement and establishing food plots.

>>GRANT: Those improvements have been paying big dividends because much of the land around their lease is mature hardwood forest and quality food and cover are very limited in the area.

>>GRANT: By implementing his habitat improvement plan, Chase’s lease has become very attractive to lots of critters.

>>GRANT: During the opening morning of Missouri’s firearms season, Chase was behind the Winchester and Rylan was behind the camera.

>>GRANT: They saw a couple of young bucks cruise through the hidey hole food plot they were watching.

>>GRANT: This is a great example of how a hidey hole food plot in the middle of a big patch of timber can create a bottleneck. Now the bucks didn’t stop to eat but, clearly, they went out of their way to travel right through there.

>>GRANT: Mid-day Chase moved the Redneck blind and put it on a pond dam that overlooks the Golden Corral food plot. His strategy was that a mature buck would come through grabbing a bite to eat during the rut or swing by scent checking for receptive does.

>>GRANT: The blind allowed Chase to look at a scrape he’d been monitoring with the Reconyx camera, and that camera had produced several good images of mature bucks. They were using the scrape or cruising the edge of the food plot.

>>GRANT: One of the bucks that triggered the Reconyx on November 3rd was a buck they had named Homestead Junior.

>>CHASE: [Whispering] Well, it’s opening day of gun season. We saw a deer this morning. Bucks are kind of doing their thing but they’re still on feeding patterns it seems like too. They’re checking does.

>>CHASE: [Whispering] We just had to change up and get up here to the Golden Corral. My brother met us back at the house to eat lunch and there was a good buck feeding in the middle of the day over here in this plot. So, we’re going to sit here and – and see if we can kill one in the Golden Corral just like Rylan did.

>>CHASE: [Whispering] Just heard the neighbors shoot a couple of times so, the deer are on their feet again. Let’s see what happens. See if Rylan can film me kill a big deer just the same as he did the big elk.

>>GRANT: It was still early during their hunt when they spotted a fawn.

>> ANNOUNCER: GrowingDeer is brought to you by Bass Pro Shops and Cabela’s. Also by Reconyx, Green Cover Food Plots, Winchester, LaCrosse Footwear, Thlete Outdoor Apparel, Morrell Targets, RTP Outdoors, Fourth Arrow, HuntStand, Scorpion Venom Archery, Case IH Tractors, Burris Optics, G5 Broadheads, Prime Bows, and Redneck Hunting Blinds.

>>GRANT: They were seeing a lot of deer, but Chase was looking for mature bucks.

>>CHASE: [Whispering] He’s that little one and there’s [Indiscernible] coming in.

>>RYLAN: [Whispering] Oh, big buck. Big buck.

>>CHASE: [Whispering] Oh yeah.

>>RYLAN: [Whispering] He’s going to eat some [Indiscernible].

>>CHASE: [Whispering] What?

>>RYLAN: [Whispering] It’s a shooter.

>>CHASE: [Whispering] I’m going to get it.

>>RYLAN: [Whispering] I’m on him.

>>CHASE: [Whispering] Okay, buddy.

>>RYLAN: [Whispering] Yep. I got him. All right.

>>CHASE: [Whispering] [Indiscernible]

>>RYLAN: [Whispering] I’m right on him.

>>CHASE: [Whispering] You got him?

>>RYLAN: [Whispering] I got him.

>>RYLAN: [Whispering] Smoked him.

>>CHASE: [Whispering] Yeah!

>>RYLAN: [Whispering] Let’s go!

>>CHASE: [Whispering] That’s a good buck.

>>RYLAN: [Whispering] Oh yeah. I got it. I had it right on him.

>>CHASE: [Whispering] Did you?

>>RYLAN: [Whispering] Yeah.

>>CHASE: [Whispering] Oh, my goodness. You just [Indiscernible].

>>CHASE: [Whispering] We’re sitting in the Golden Corral just right across from where he killed his buck and coming out of the same fence gap that he killed out of, a buck just came through. It appears that it’s Homestead. Rylan found his shed last year. That’s awesome. We’re gonna get out and go take up the trail while we’ve still got some daylight.

>>GRANT: Chase knew his Burris was dialed in, and that buck wasn’t going far.

>>RYLAN: I see him.

>>CHASE: Oh, he’s right there. He’s right there. That’s a real good deer. Well, my Missouri rifle buck is down. Rylan filmed me shooting this buck. It’s actually the buck we call Homestead Junior. A nice, four-year-old buck. I can’t believe Rylan filmed it for me. He got to film me at an elk hunt and now he got to film me a whitetail. He’s growing up. Letting dad shoot a little bit. This is awesome.

>>GRANT: Congratulations, Chase and Rylan, on tagging another great Ozark Mountain buck. I’m very proud of Chase and Rylan for improving the habitat on their lease and designing some great hunting strategies.

>>GRANT: I’ve shared in the past that one of my favorite rut hunting strategies is to look into thick cover. Oftentimes bucks will cruise thick cover looking for a receptive doe or does will come into thick cover trying to keep pesky bucks from finding her. Either way it’s a buck magnet.

>>GRANT: Chase employed another strategy that I also use sometimes and it’s very effective. Chase decided to hunt over food because he knows during the rut, especially that mid to late part of the rut, bucks have lost about 30% of their body weight. It burns a huge amount of calories seeking for and chasing does. And oftentimes, especially during that mid or late portion of the rut, bucks are going to stop by a quality food source to grab a snack and see if there’s any receptive does around.

>>GRANT: Once the peak of the rut is past and most does have been bred, bucks will tend scrapes but probably not as aggressively as they did during the pre-rut. In general, the deer herd will return to a food/cover, food/cover pattern. And during that stage of the deer season, a very good hunting location is travel corridors between food and cover or hunting those quality food sources, especially during the afternoon.

>>GRANT: I mentioned that one of my favorite rut hunting strategies is hunting over quality cover and I’ll share with you in a few days how I recently used that strategy to tag a good buck.

>>GRANT: I hope your Thanksgiving is more than sitting on the couch and watching football. Although, that’s a great time to sit back and relax.

>>GRANT: But I hope you have an opportunity to get outside and enjoy Creation with your family and friends. And more importantly, in that hustle and bustle, I hope you take time, every day, to intentionally be quiet and seek the Creator’s will for your life.

>>GRANT: Thanks for watching GrowingDeer.