The doe moved and gave me the shot I needed. I cocked the hammer on my CVA Optima Elite in. “Doe, doe, doe”, I said to myself as they individually came through the clearing. There was a small clearing 100 yards in front of me. I moved quickly to the bottom of the drainage and put my gun on shooting sticks. A large high tined, long beamed buck ran 300 yards above me and dove right back into the cover. The next buck and doe that appeared made my jaw drop. Within minutes I watched two does and a small buck move out of the bottom then pop back in 100 yards from where they had exited. After I was set up James circled around to start his drive. I positioned myself on the side of a dried out creek bottom that had intermediate cover filling it. The more James and I talked we realized that a silent one man deer drive would be the only way to go. I had visions of deer flying by me at full speed and just getting a glimpse of antlers as a big buck passed by. Not that I have anything against it, it just isn’t my style of hunting. The idea of driving deer has never really appealed to me. Many times I have hung stands late in the evening in transition areas while the deer were at a major food source just so I would not disturb an area. I like to enter and exit an area undetected even if it means sitting in the dark for a few hours. I have always been a whitetail hunter that likes to not pressure the animals. (Brilliant aren’t we.) With the clock ticking our outfitter James Burnett of Cimarron Valley Outfitters devised a plan to do a drive. We knew this because we had hunted every other possible area without any success. With the high amounts of wind we had experienced we devised that the deer had to be congregated in the densest cover. The area we were hunting in consisted of small patches of cover surrounded by wheat fields or CRP. A few deer would cautiously enter the edge of the field then dart back into the cover.Īfter four straight days of not seeing a decent buck we knew we had to completely change our strategy for the last day of the hunt and the final day of the Kansas season. When that didn’t work it was back to sitting in blinds on the edge of freshly planted winter wheat. When this wasn’t working we tried glassing the CRP (Conservation Resource Program) fields at first light for deer. We saw some deer and a few small bucks but nothing quite big enough. Then we hunted the edges of food plots in the evenings where the deer were coming to right before dark. We started by hunting transition areas where the bucks were moving from their feeding areas to their bedding areas. So where were all the big bucks at? We had employed several techniques that all could have rendered a big Kansas bruiser. However, we knew the deer were there because the outfitter had been scouting with Bushnell trailcams prior to the season and had several pictures of bucks that would make any hunter happy. There was sign everywhere but we were not seeing the bucks I had anticipated seeing in Kansas. Because of this unsettled weather the deer had diverted from any pattern that they may have had during the last month. In fact, one morning it was so windy I crawled out of my tower blind because I was worried it was going to blow over. I had experienced rain, snow, wind, (lots of wind) drastic temperature changes that caused our camera gear to lock up and did I mention it was windy. It was the last day of my Kansas deer hunt.
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