05/24/2026
The deer above are my three best. 202, 212 and 210. It took 18 years of living in the Midwest and three moves to find an area I really liked. There’s a few things each of these deer have in common. They all were in heavily hunted areas, people knew about them and they had small daylight cores. I knew of several people that had pics of each buck. But all failed to narrow down his core for different reasons.
I tend to hunt on the aggressive side and scout more than I hunt. For each of these bucks. I consistently moved cameras throughout the summer into the fall trying to narrow down movements. If a camera didn’t produce a picture of them in a week or two. It would get pulled and moved again. The ones that would get pictures would stay. I always start close to food and back track in towards cover or isolated, overlooked areas. I like to cover all the trails leaving thick areas. Each of these bucks had a very specific routine and would only use two to three trails on a regular basis. It took multiple trips moving cameras to figure out these trails. That’s where a lot of people fail. They won’t go the extra steps to really narrow down a bucks core or they fear of pushing in too far. With smart scouting and thinking about access while scouting and setting cameras. You can get aggressive by being smart about your ins and outs of the woods.
Each of these deer had a daylight core of no more than 30 acres. The rest of my pictures were nighttime outside of that core. They knew these areas I found were safe, hard to access and everyone around overlooked these spots. Most big deer find locations like this and that’s why they age. Most hunters don’t get aggressive or push in to find deer in fear of bumping them. I’ve seen guys with hundreds of acres and only hunt the edges and never push in and wonder why they never killed the target bucks. Or guys satisfied with a trail cam pic every now and then and think they will just wait him out.
I want the odds in my favor. I keep scouting until I have that deer every few days, daylight and have his bedroom narrowed down. I’ll look at all my access points and go a mile around to access a stand just to slip in the back side of a bedding area or trail he uses every 3rd day.
The amount of time I scouted and searched for these bucks core areas was weeks upon months, leading up to the days I harvested them. The amount of time in the stand for each buck was less than a week for each buck. I’d rather scout more and find high odd spots than grinding it out hoping he slips up outside of his core.
So as the summer goes on don’t get complacent with your same spots. Keep scouting, searching and moving cameras as you find the bucks you want to target. And start looking at places most guys miss.
