Mule Deer:Deer Drives

Deer Drives
Are you a sitter or a pusher?
by Dennis Wintch

I can still remember following my dad as a very young boy, being his little shadow, on the deer hunts. Back then, I never even wondered why he walked where he walked or how he chose a location for each hunt. I just thought, “Wow,” I get to go deer hunting with my dad! More times than not, the day would get very exciting when a big buck showed up. I can still hear my dad working the lever action of his 30-30-94 as he got ready to shoot. At the end of the day, my dad would usually end up killing the biggest buck or, sometimes, the only buck. I can still remember my uncles and my grandpas saying as they were admiring my dad’s big buck, “Well, it looks like Dean was the lucky one once again.” Back then, I too thought my dad was the luckiest hunter alive. He always seemed to be the one in the spotlight at the end of the hunt. He just had to be one lucky man!

As the years passed me by, so did the deer hunts that I spent with my dad. A lot of that time was spent one-on-one, just my dad and me. Here again, I never really thought too much about why he did what he did. If he told me to walk over there, or go sit down and keep a sharp eye out on that hillside, I just did it because my dad told me to do it. The amazing thing about it all was that quite often a big buck would show up right before my eyes and I found myself becoming one of those lucky hunters also.

By the time I was thirty, I had a little black book full of “how to’s” on how to kill a big muley buck. My father had run me through, time and time again, every gauntlet he knew on killing a big muley buck. My dad was one of the best of the best in his style of hunting big desert mulies. Now when I look back, I appreciate even more the great privilege of being schooled by this great man. One of my father’s key tactics to killing a big buck was to always walk or put yourself in a spot so that if a big buck jumped out, you would get to see him and get some shooting. You can’t kill what you never see. Wow, being his shadow all those years has finally come full circle.

I have said it time and time again; there have probably been more big bucks killed running away from Joe and running into Fred than any other way. Being in the right place at the right time is a very important point. However, I have also come to know that most of the time it’s your brainpower that puts you in the right spot at the right time. My father was a hunter who liked to make pushes or drives. Once it was decided that a big buck was close by, he would give a shooter a chance to see him and make the shot. In the PJ’s and most desert terrain, you can never see very far, no matter what time of the day it is. Ninety-percent of the time, a big buck is always in the thick stuff laying down, feeding and doing what he does best - staying alive! Now, that’s a lot of a day to waste hunting isn’t it? Five-percent for the morning hunt and another five-percent for the evening hunt – that leaves ninety-percent of the day at camp sitting around doing nothing. Sounds like a lot of wasted hunting time to me. The harder I work, the luckier I get – imagine that! My dad and I made a great team. Sometimes I would be the pusher and sometimes I would be the sitter. But, most of the time, my dad liked to be the pusher. He would always tell me that he wanted the first go at him – always knowing that the sitter usually had a much better chance of killing old Mr. Big if he happened to sneak out ahead of the pusher. Over the many years I spent hunting with my dad, we killed many a big buck in the middle of the day by making drives and reading the land layouts. As you hunt or walk through any hunting area, always have your brain turned on and be recording all this input in your little black book. I guarantee you it will bring great results and big bucks hanging back at camp.

Just this spring, Nate Jacobsen, his son Hunter, and I went turkey hunting in Kansas. One afternoon after a zero for the morning, we followed our guide to a new area. I have never been to this area in Kansas before, so everything was a first. As we walked along a plowed field, there was a little river meandering off to one side. The river bottom was full of thick trees and dense vegetation to hide in. We walked for a mile or so, stopping here and there making a call – anything to get a gobble. But notta! Finally I said, “Let’s split up and work our way back to the truck.” I crossed the little river on my own, working my way back to the truck. Half-way up the river, I saw something running. A closer look told me it was a big Tom. I watched him cross the little river and work his way up the riverbank heading for the top. I had just walked up there only an hour ago and remembered that there was a big river turn on the land layout that would bring him to the end of the point. I ran to the point as fast as I could, crossed the river, and crawled up the bank on my hands and knees to the fence going into the big plowed grain field. With twelve-gauge in hand, I peeked through the weeds and, low and behold, walking right to me was a 10-inch beard Tom. I can still see the look on his face when I set up to shoot. When Nate and everyone else got up to where I was, they had not even heard me shoot because of the wind. As I told the group how I had got the Tom, Nate looked at me and said, “Way to go Wintch. You even use your deer hunting techniques to kill a big Tom.”

But, having been a guide for quite a few years, I know that my client’s greatest success always comes when I have him in the right place at the right time and old Mr. Big runs right to him unaware that he or she is there. You want to up your odds this year on killing a big muley buck? Then you should do a survey on the land layout. It doesn’t matter if you hunt high or low, there is and always are little saddles, passes, or trails that big bucks travel on and go through. But, you must use your brainpower to figure them out. If your guide tells you to go and sit on a hill or mesa, you need to be there, in that spot, looking the right way with 100% alertness until your guide comes and gets you or you kill old Mr. Big. Don’t ever let your guard down and start picking your nose or drawing lines in the sand if you don’t see a big buck after twenty minutes or so. Sometimes it takes hours for pushers to finish the drive and, if a big buck doesn’t run right by that rock or tree, you should be able to adjust to each situation as it unfolds. There have been many occasions over the years when one of my hunters should have had a big buck, but didn’t do the right things when the opportunity came their way. It’s not one big thing that kills old Mr. Big, but a whole lot of little things, and you had better learn to get most of them right most of the time. Mr. Big will always be on the cutting edge of staying alive, 24-7.

Stay alert and don’t find yourself among the hunters who, at the end of this ‘07 hunting season, will kick themselves in the pants because they quit, lost focus, got caught with their pants down, drawing lines in the sand or picking their nose just as old Mr. Big came their way. When your chance comes, be ready.

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