The first week in October marks the opening for bow season in Texas every year. With much anticipation, hunters leave their residences and head for the hill country to their hunting lease or public land to potentially harvest that highly sought trophy class whitetail buck. Whether its a magnificent trophy above the fireplace, bragging rights to your friends or reason to give your wife or husband for all the time and money you've invested in hunting this elusive animal, I believe all three to be viable reasons to continue your pursuit.

When managing whitetail deer especially trophy class bucks it is important to shoot as many genetically inferior whitetail bucks as possible to ensure the highest number of trophy potentials for the following year. I look forward to this time of year because when you have as many whitetail deer that we do at Escondido Ranch you can really have your work cut out for you. Managing whitetail deer takes a lot of time, preparation, and knowledge of the animals. We take it all of it very serious at Escondido Ranch. We often use game cams to help us determine the whitetail deer we will need to harvest that year. This year due to the above average rainfall all year long, coupled with our year round supplemental feeding program, made it a perfect year to cull inferior deer.

That being said, there was a particular deer that kept popping up on our cameras at several different locations. He was a mature deer that had a typical brow tyne and 4 additional points on the right side, but had a cluster antler on the left. My mission was simple. I needed to find the target and eliminate him from the gene pool.

I actually spent several weekends hunting this whitetail deer, and finally, right after Thanksgiving weekend, managed to catch him in the open during peak rut. During the rut, the survival instinct of a whitetail buck takes a backseat to its overwhelming need to breed. The rut provides whitetail trophy hunters with a more leveled playing field .

Once again, I started out that Saturday afternoon in pursuit of this particular buck. After covering most of the ranch in a vehicle, I spotted two bucks in a pasture. The first whitetail spooked, as do most deer out of rut. But the other one, the one I have been seeking, just stood there and looked in my direction. This was a large, mature whitetail buck.

I really wanted and needed to take out this animal. In a couple more weeks, when the rut is over, he would become a ghost. As I got into a shooting position, the deer turned and started quartering away from me. I still had a view of the vital and the subsequent shot was good enough to drop him in his tracks. Mission accomplished!

The whitetail buck ended up weighing upwards of 180 pounds. The meat was donated to the local Charity Wild Game Dinner in Junction, Texas.

Labels: whitetail buck hunts, whitetail deer management bucks